"The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn, and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow, And softer flame,

But thoughtless follies laid him low, And stain'd his name!"

WALTER SCOTT

"THE great magician," "the wizard of the North' -the two names so frequently given to Scott-call to mind immediately his power of conjuring with the song and story of the past. No picture of him is complete, however, until he is shown as the great-hearted laird of Abbotsford. Among his contemporaries he was frequently surpassed in poetry; he clearly excelled only in his novels. But as a man of a big, warm heart he had no rival, scarcely a second. He always contrived to find the best side of friend or enemy; he knew how to forget injuries; his heart and his purse went together to the poor; his dependents, his family, his friends, even strangers who always found the hospitable doors of Abbotsford open to them-returned him affection as if it were his unquestionable right. Even many creditors, in the hour of his trial, joined the ranks of his loving admirers. So great, indeed, was the power of love in the man that generations of Scotchmen have looked to him with undoubting, filial affection; and to that great family have long since been added thousands and tens of thousands wherever English is spoken or read.

No man fills up quite so completely as Scott the whole period of Romanticism. Besides his work as a lawyer, he attained excellence and renown as an antiquarian, a poet, an essayist, a historian, and a novelist. In studying his life it will be found convenient, though his humor may often demand digressive anecdote, to divide it into three periods; that of his youth, education,

and poetry (1771-1814); that of his novels (18141826); and that of his noble struggle to pay off an enormous debt (1826–1832).

Walter Scott, the son of Walter Scott, a writer to the signet (or attorney at law), and Anne Rutherford, daughter of a professor in the University of Edinburgh, was born in the Scotch capital, in a house at the head of the College Wynd, on August 15, 1771. He was one of twelve children; but there was always a high mortality among the Scotts, and only five of the children lived to maturity. "My birth," Scott says, "was neither distinguished nor sordid;" but "it was esteemed gentle." One of the ancestors of whom he was proudest was Walter Scott of Harden, commonly called Auld Wat, "whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty." Descent from him and "his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow," Scott adds, was "no bad genealogy for a Border Minstrel."

Scott says he was "an uncommonly healthy child” at first, but when he was eighteen months old a severe fever so affected his right leg that he was lame for life. For remedy he was sent to his grandfather's place at Sandy-Knowe-Smailholme Grange, near "Tweed's fair flood." There he improved so rapidly that he was soon able to ride a Shetland pony over the moors. His lameness, indeed, did not long prevent his walking or his developing into a very robust, active man. The greatest gain from Sandy-Knowe, however, was the boy's early interest in Border story and song. His memory for some things was not remarkable, but in the matter of ballads to hear was to remember. He tells how his vigorous recitation of "Hardicanute" quite silenced a visiting clergyman, who asserted that one