Illustrations of the Autobiography Continued. -- Anecdotes
of Scott's College Life.
1783-1786.
On returning to Edinburgh, and entering the College, in November,
1783, Scott found himself once more in the fellowship of all his
intimates of the High School; of whom, besides those mentioned in the
autobiographical fragment, he speaks in his diaries with particular
affection of Sir William Rae, Bart., David Monypenny (afterwards Lord
Pitmilly), Thomas Tod, W. S., Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth,
Bart., all familiar friends of his through manhood,--and the Earl of
Dalhousie,[57] whom, on meeting with him after a long separation in
the evening of life, he records as still being, and having always
been, "the same manly and generous character that all about him loved
as the _Lordie Ramsay_ of the Yards." The chosen companion, however,
continued to be for some time Mr. John Irving--his suburban walks with
whom have been recollected so tenderly, both in the Memoir of 1808,
and in the Preface to Waverley of 1829. It will interest the reader to
compare with those beautiful descriptions the following extract from a
letter with which Mr. Irving has favored me:--
"Every Saturday, and more frequently during the vacations, we
used to retire, with three or four books from the circulating
library, to Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat, or Blackford Hill,
and read them together. He read {p.105} faster than I, and had,
on this account, to wait a little at finishing every two pages,
before turning the leaf. The books we most delighted in were
romances of knight-errantry; the Castle of Otranto, Spenser,
Ariosto, and Boiardo were great favorites. We used to climb up
the rocks in search of places where we might sit sheltered from
the wind; and the more inaccessible they were, the better we
liked them. He was very expert at climbing. Sometimes we got into
places where we found it difficult to move either up or down, and
I recollect it being proposed, on several occasions, that I
should go for a ladder to see and extricate him; but I never had
any need really to do so, for he always managed somehow either to
get down or ascend to the top. The number of books we thus
devoured was very great. I forgot great part of what I read; but
my friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, remained,
to my surprise, master of it all, and could even weeks or months
afterwards repeat a whole page in which anything had particularly
struck him at the moment. After we had continued this practice of
reading for two years or more together, he proposed that we
should recite to each other alternately such adventures of
knight-errants as we could ourselves contrive; and we continued
to do so a long while. He found no difficulty in it, and used to
recite for half an hour or more at a time, while I seldom
continued half that space. The stories we told were, as Sir
Walter has said, interminable--for we were unwilling to have any
of our favorite knights killed. Our passion for romance led us to
learn Italian together; after a time we could both read it with
fluency, and we then copied such tales as we had met with in that
language, being a continued succession of battles and
enchantments. He began early to collect old ballads, and as my
mother could repeat a great many, he used to come and learn those
she could recite to him. He used to get all the copies of these
ballads he could, and select the best."
[Footnote 57: George, ninth Earl of Dalhousie, highly
distinguished in the military annals of his time, died on the
21st March, 1838, in his 68th year.]
These, {p.106} no doubt, were among the germs of the collection of
ballads in six little volumes, which, from the handwriting, had been
begun at this early period, and which is still preserved at
Abbotsford. And it appears that at least as early a date must be
ascribed to another collection of little humorous stories in prose,
the _Penny Chap-books_, as they are called, still in high favor among
the lower classes in Scotland, which stands on the same shelf. In a
letter of 1830[58] he states that he had bound up things of this kind
to the extent of several volumes, before he was ten years old.
[Footnote 58: See Strang's _Germany in 1831_, vol. i. p.
265.]
Although the Ashestiel Memoir mentions so very lightly his boyish
addiction to verse, and the rebuke which his vein received from the
apothecary's blue-buskined wife as having been followed by similar
treatment on the part of others, I am inclined to believe that while
thus devouring, along with his young friend, the stories of Italian
romance, he essayed, from time to time, to weave some of their
materials into rhyme;--nay, that he must have made at least one rather
serious effort of this kind, as early as the date of these rambles to
the Salisbury Crags. I have found among his mother's papers a copy of
verses, headed, "_Lines to Mr. Walter Scott--on reading his poem of
Guiscard and Matilda, inscribed to Miss Keith of Ravelston_." There is
no date; but I conceive the lines bear internal evidence of having
been written when he was very young--not, I should suppose, above
fourteen or fifteen at most. I think it also certain that the writer
was a woman; and have almost as little doubt that they came from the
pen of his old admirer, Mrs. Cockburn. They are as follows:--
"If such the accents of thy early youth
When playful fancy holds the place of truth;
If so divinely sweet thy numbers flow,
And thy young heart melts with such tender woe;
What {p.107} praise, what admiration shall be thine,
When sense mature with science shall combine
To raise thy genius, and thy taste refine!
"Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue
Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you;
Go, bid the seeds her hand hath sown arise,
By timely culture, to their native skies;
Go, and employ the poet's heavenly art,
Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.
Than other poets happier mayst thou prove,
More blest in friendship, fortunate in love,
Whilst Fame, who longs to make true merit known,
Impatient waits, to claim, thee as her own.
"Scorning the yoke of prejudice and pride,
Thy tender mind let truth and reason guide;
Let meek humility thy steps attend,
And firm integrity, youth's surest friend.
So peace and honor all thy hours shall bless,
And conscious rectitude each joy increase;
A nobler meed be thine than empty praise--
Heaven shall approve thy life, and Keith thy lays."[59]
[Footnote 59: [Miss Fleming, in her contribution to Dr. John
Brown's memorial of her sister Marjorie, says that these
verses were written by her aunt, Mrs. Keir, after meeting the
boy poet at Ravelston. Another aunt was the wife of Scott's
kinsman, Mr. William Keith of Corstorphine Hill, and it was
at her house, 1, North Charlotte Street, that Sir Walter came
to know familiarly her delightful little niece, during her
long visits to Edinburgh. These ladies and Mrs. Fleming were
the daughters of Dr. James Rae.--See _Marjorie Fleming_.]]
At the period to which I refer these verses, Scott's parents still
continued to have some expectations of curing his lameness, and Mr.
Irving remembers to have often assisted in applying the electrical
apparatus, on which for a considerable time they principally rested
their hopes. There is an allusion to these experiments in Scott's
autobiographical fragment, but I have found a fuller notice on the
margin of his copy of the Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches, and
Longevity, as Captain Grose chose to entitle an amusing collection of
quack advertisements.
"The celebrated Dr. Graham," says the annotator, "was an empiric of
some genius and great assurance. In fact, {p.108} he had a dash of
madness in his composition. He had a fine electrical apparatus, and
used it with skill. I myself, amongst others, was subjected to a
course of electricity under his charge. I remember seeing the old Earl
of Hopetoun seated in a large armchair, and hung round with a collar,
and a belt of magnets, like an Indian chief. After this, growing quite
wild, Graham set up his _Temple of Health_, and lectured on _the
Celestial Bed_. He attempted a course of these lectures at Edinburgh,
and as the Magistrates refused to let him do so, he libelled them in a
series of advertisements, the flights of which were infinitely more
absurd and exalted than those which Grose has collected. In one tirade
(long in my possession), he declared that 'he looked down upon them'
(the Magistrates) 'as the sun in his meridian glory looks down on the
poor, feeble, stinking glimmer of an expiring farthing candle, or as
G--himself, in the plenitude of his omnipotence, may regard the
insolent bouncings of a few refractory maggots in a rotten cheese.'
Graham was a good-looking man; he used to come to the Greyfriars'
Church in a suit of white and silver, with a chapeau-bras, and his
hair marvellously dressed into a sort of double toupee, which divided
upon his head like the two tops of Parnassus. Mrs. Macaulay, the
historianess, married his brother. Lady Hamilton is said to have first
enacted his Goddess of Health, being at this time a _fille de joie_ of
great celebrity.[60] The Temple of Health dwindled into a sort of
obscene _hell_, or gambling house. In a quarrel which took place
there, a poor young man was run into the bowels with a red-hot poker,
of which injury he died. The mob vented their fury on the house, and
the Magistrates, somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. A
quantity of glass and crystal trumpery, the remains of the splendid
apparatus, was sold on the South Bridge for next to nothing. Graham's
next {p.109} receipt was the _earth-bath_, with which he wrought
some cures; but that also failing, he was, I believe, literally
starved to death."
[Footnote 60: Lord Nelson's connection with this lady will
preserve her celebrity. In Kay's _Edinburgh Portraits_ the
reader will find more about Dr. Graham.]
Graham's earth-bath, too, was, I understand, tried upon Scott, but his
was not one of the cases, if any such there were, in which it worked a
cure. He, however, improved about this time greatly in his general
health and strength, and Mr. Irving, in accordance with the statement
in the Memoir, assures me that while attending the early classes at
the College the young friends extended their walks, so as to visit in
succession all the old castles within eight or ten miles of Edinburgh.
"Sir Walter," he says, "was specially fond of Rosslyn. We frequently
walked thither before breakfast--after breakfasting there, walked all
down the river side to Lasswade--and thence home to town before
dinner. He used generally to rest one hand upon my shoulder when we
walked together, and leaned with the other on a stout stick."
The love of picturesque scenery, and especially of feudal castles,
with which the vicinity of Edinburgh is plentifully garnished, awoke,
as the Memoir tells us, the desire of being able to use the pencil.
Mr. Irving says--"I attended one summer a class of drawing along with
him, but although both fond of it, we found it took up so much time
that we gave this up before we had made much progress." In one of his
later diaries, Scott himself gives the following more particular
account of this matter:--
"I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a little Jew
animalcule--a smouch called Burrell--a clever, sensible creature
though. But I could make no progress either in painting or drawing.
Nature denied me the correctness of eye and neatness of hand. Yet I
was very desirous to be a draughtsman at least--and labored harder to
attain that point than at any other in my recollection to which I did
not make some approaches. Burrell was {p.110} not useless to me
altogether neither. He was a Prussian, and I got from him many a long
story of the battles of Frederick, in whose armies his father had been
a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember his picturesque account of
seeing a party of the _black hussars_ bringing in some forage carts
which they had taken from a body of the Cossacks, whom he described as
lying on the top of the carts of hay mortally wounded, and, like the
dying gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through the
straw."
A year or two later Scott renewed his attempt. "I afterwards," he
says, "took lessons from Walker, whom we used to call _Blue Beard_. He
was one of the most conceited persons in the world, but a good
teacher; one of the ugliest countenances he had that need be
exhibited--enough, as we say, to _spean weans_. The man was always
extremely precise in the quality of everything about him; his dress,
accommodations, and everything else. He became insolvent, poor man,
and, for some reason or other, I attended the meeting of those
concerned in his affairs. Instead of ordinary accommodations for
writing, each of the persons present was equipped with a large sheet
of drawing-paper and a swan's quill. It was mournfully ridiculous
enough. Skirving made an admirable likeness of Walker; not a single
scar or mark of the small-pox, which seamed his countenance, but the
too accurate brother of the brush had faithfully laid it down in
longitude and latitude. Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons)
rather than let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the sale of
his effects. I did learn myself to take some vile views from nature.
When Will Clerk and I lived very much together, I used sometimes to
make them under his instruction. He to whom, as to all his family, art
is a familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland dog would at
a greyhound which showed fear of the water."[61]
[Footnote 61: [See _Journal_, vol. i. pp. 137-139.]]
Notwithstanding {p.111} all that Scott says about the total failure
of his attempts in the art of the pencil, I presume few will doubt
that they proved very useful to him afterwards; from them it is
natural to suppose he caught the habit of analyzing, with some
approach at least to accuracy, the scenes over which his eye might
have continued to wander with the vague sense of delight. I may add
that a longer and more successful practice of the crayon might, I
cannot but think, have proved the reverse of serviceable to him as a
future painter with the pen. He might have contracted the habit of
copying from pictures rather than from nature itself; and we should
thus have lost that which constitutes the very highest charm in his
delineations of scenery, namely, that the effect is produced by the
selection of a few striking features, arranged with a light,
unconscious grace, neither too much nor too little--equally remote
from the barren generalizations of a former age, and the dull, servile
fidelity with which so many inferior writers of our time fill in both
background and foreground, having no more notion of the perspective of
genius than Chinese paper-stainers have of that of the atmosphere, and
producing in fact not descriptions but inventories.
The illness which he alludes to in his Memoir, as interrupting for a
considerable period his attendance on the Latin and Greek classes in
Edinburgh College, is spoken of more largely in one of his
prefaces.[62] It arose from the bursting of a blood-vessel in the
lower bowels; and I have heard him say that his uncle, Dr. Rutherford,
considered his recovery from it as little less than miraculous. His
sweet temper and calm courage were no doubt important elements of
safety. He submitted without a murmur to the severe discipline
prescribed by his affectionate physician, and found consolation in
poetry, romance, and the enthusiasm of young friendship. Day after day
John Irving relieved his mother and sister in their {p.112}
attendance upon him. The bed on which he lay was piled with a constant
succession of works of imagination, and sad realities were forgotten
amidst the brilliant day-dreams of genius drinking unwearied from the
eternal fountains of Spenser and Shakespeare. Chess was recommended as
a relief to these unintermitted, though desultory studies; and he
engaged eagerly in the game which had found favor with so many of his
Paladins. Mr. Irving remembers playing it with him hour after hour, in
very cold weather, when, the windows being kept open as a part of the
medical treatment, nothing but youthful nerves and spirit could have
persevered. But Scott did not pursue the science of chess after his
boyhood. He used to say that it was a shame to throw away upon
mastering a mere game, however ingenious, the time which would suffice
for the acquisition of a new language. "Surely," he said,
"chess-playing is a sad waste of brains."
[Footnote 62: See Preface to _Waverley_, 1829.]
His recovery was completed by another visit to Roxburghshire. Captain
Robert Scott, who had been so kind to the sickly infant at Bath,
finally retired about this time from his profession, and purchased the
elegant villa of Rosebank, on the Tweed, a little below Kelso. Here
Walter now took up his quarters, and here, during all the rest of his
youth, he found, whenever he chose, a second home, in many respects
more agreeable than his own. His uncle, as letters to be subsequently
quoted will show, had nothing of his father's coldness for polite
letters, but entered into all his favorite pursuits with keen
sympathy, and was consulted, from this time forth, upon all his
juvenile essays, both in prose and verse.
He does not seem to have resumed attendance at College during the
session of 1785-86; so that the Latin and Greek classes, with that of
Logic, were the only ones he had passed through previous to the
signing of his indentures as an apprentice to his father. The Memoir
mentions the ethical course of Dugald Stewart, as if he had {p.113}
gone immediately from the logical professor (Mr. Bruce) to that
eminent lecturer; but he, in fact, attended Mr. Stewart four years
afterwards, when beginning to consider himself as finally destined for
the Bar.
I shall only add to what he sets down on the subject of his early
academical studies, that in this, as in almost every case, he appears
to have underrated his own attainments. He had, indeed, no pretensions
to the name of an extensive, far less of an accurate, Latin scholar;
but he could read, I believe, any Latin author, of any age, so as to
catch without difficulty his meaning; and although his favorite Latin
poet, as well as historian, in later days, was Buchanan, he had
preserved, or subsequently acquired, a strong relish for some others
of more ancient date. I may mention, in particular, Lucan and
Claudian. Of Greek, he does not exaggerate in saying that he had
forgotten even the alphabet; for he was puzzled with the words [Greek:
aoidos] and [Greek: poiêtês], which he had occasion to introduce, from
some authority on his table, into his Introduction to Popular Poetry,
written in April, 1830; and happening to be in the house with him at
the time, he sent for me to insert them for him in his MS. Mr. Irving
has informed us of the early period at which he enjoyed the real Tasso
and Ariosto. I presume he had at least as soon as this enabled himself
to read Gil Blas in the original; and, in all probability, we may
refer to the same time of his life, or one not much later, his
acquisition of as much Spanish as served for the Guerras Civiles de
Granada, Lazarillo de Tormes, and, above all, Don Quixote. He read all
these languages in after-life with about the same facility. I never
but once heard him attempt to speak any of them, and that was when
some of the courtiers of Charles X. came to Abbotsford, soon after
that unfortunate prince took up his residence for the second time at
Holyrood-house. Finding that one or two of these gentlemen could speak
no English at all, he made some efforts to amuse them in their own
language after {p.114} the champagne had been passing briskly round
the table; and I was amused next morning with the expression of one of
the party, who, alluding to the sort of reading in which Sir Walter
seemed to have chiefly occupied himself, said, "Mon Dieu! comme il
estropiait, entre deux vins, le Français du bon sire de Joinville!" Of
all these tongues, as of German somewhat later, he acquired as much as
was needful for his own purposes, of which a critical study of any
foreign language made at no time any part. In them he sought for
incidents, and he found images; but for the treasures of diction he
was content to dig on British soil. He had all he wanted in the old
wells of "English undefiled," and the still living, though fast
shrinking, waters of that sister idiom which had not always, as he
flattered himself, deserved the name of a dialect.
As may be said, I believe, with perfect truth of every really great
man, Scott was self-educated in every branch of knowledge which he
ever turned to account in the works of his genius--and he has himself
told us that his real studies were those lonely and desultory ones of
which he has given a copy in the third chapter of Waverley, where the
hero is represented as "driving through the sea of books, like a
vessel without pilot or rudder;" that is to say, obeying nothing but
the strong breath of native inclination:--"He had read, and stored in
a memory of uncommon tenacity, much curious, though ill-arranged and
miscellaneous information. In English literature, he was master of
Shakespeare and Milton, of our earlier dramatic authors, of many
picturesque and interesting passages from our old historical
chronicles, and was particularly well acquainted with Spenser,
Drayton, and other poets, who have exercised themselves on romantic
fiction,--_of all themes the most fascinating to a youthful
imagination, before the passions have roused themselves, and demand
poetry of a more sentimental description_." I need not repeat his
enumeration of other favorites, Pulci, the {p.115} Decameron,
Froissart, Brantôme, Delanoue, and the chivalrous and romantic lore of
Spain. I have quoted a passage so well known, only for the sake of the
striking circumstance by which it marks the very early date of these
multifarious studies.