WALTER SCOTT.

SIR WALTER SCOTT was born on the 15th of August, 1771; and is the eldest son of Walter Scott, Esq. writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. His mother was the daughter of David Rutherford, Esq. who was a very able and popular practitioner of the same profession. His mother was author of several poems, possessing some merit, and was intimate with Burns, Blacklock, and Allan Ramsay. Her poetry, if it did not gain a wreath for herself, certainly had a considerable share in procuring one for her son, by eliciting and cherishing the germ of poetry which existed in his bosom. This lady died in 1789, equally esteemed and respected for her talents, her accomplishments, and her virtues.

There are some verses extant (certainly none of the very best that ever were penned), written by a Walter Scott, Esq. an ancestor of the subject of this memoir, eulogizing the ancestry of the family. It is no wonder, then, that with these examples before him, young

Walter should have discovered an early propensity to poetry, and to which his having been born lame, and consequently incapacitated from the general amusements of youth, probably conduced in no small degree. Dr. Adam of the High School of Edinburgh, was his first tutor; and the celebrated Professor Stewart, at the university of that city, completed his education.

After Mr Scott had served a clerkship to a writer of the Signet, he was, on the 11th of July, 1792, regularly called to the bar; and through the interest of the Buccleugh family, to whom he was related, after being appointed Deputy Sheriff of Selkirkshire, obtained the situation of one of the principal Clerks of the Session in Scotland, in March, 1806. In 1798 he married Miss Carpenter, by whom he has a family of four children.

The late Mr Pitt intended to confer on Mr Scott the valuable appointment of Clerk of the Sessions; but his death by dissolving the then administration before the warrant had passed the Seals, annulled all that had been done, as well as all that had been intended. But, fortunately for Mr Scott, the new administration consisted of such men as the late Mr Fox,

Sheridan, and the present Lord Erskine, Earl Grey, and the Marquis of Lansdown, and many others attached to literature and philosophy, and in a manner that did them infinite honour, they voluntarily presented their poetical opponent with the place which had been intended for him.

Mr Scott's genius, like that of many of his celebrated and eminently talented cotemporaries, was not precocious. He did not, in his boyhood, discover any peculiar trait of natural ability; and probably had it not been for his mother's attachment to poetry, which drove him to literature and the muses, it is more than probable that the advocacy of legal causes at the Scottish bar would have been the summit of Mr Scott's ambition.

The first productions of Mr Scott were 'The Chace,' and 'William and Mary,' ballads from the German, but published without his name. 'Goetz of Berlenchingen,' a tragedy of considerable power, appeared in 1799, translated from the German of Goethe, by W. Scott, Esq.; and at nearly the same period he contributed the two romantic and interesting ballads, called The Roe of St John,' and Glenfinless,' to Lewis's Tales of Wonder.

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work had the honour of being indebted for some of its sweetest pieces, to the talents of the late Dr Leyden.

'The minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' appeared in 1802, and was the first proof Mr Scott gave of his having acquired sufficient confidence to present a work of considerable consequence to the notice of the world. He was not disappointed; it was read with universal interest, and received unanimous approbation. The publication of many of the pieces thus redeemed from the oblivious stream of Lethe, displayed a greater love for antiquity than the beauties of poetry; as several are rough and inharmonious; yet all possess a peculiar charm, arising from their associations, and from their accurate elucidation of a most interesting portion of Scottish border history.

The studies of Mr Scott at this period were entirely antiquarian. He lived and breathed only among the knights, the heroes, the monks and robbers of olden time; the feats of chivalry, and the rough heroism of northern warfare and border feuds, were the scenes on which his soul delighted to dwell. He drank deeply of the stream of history as it darkly flowed over the middle ages, and his spirit seemed

for a time to be imbued with the mysteries, the superstitions, and the romantic valour which characterized the then chieftains of the north countrie.

'Sir Tristram' appeared in 1804, as one of the first remembrances of the ancient minstrels by our author, resulting from the prosecution of those studies.

In 1805 appeared 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' one of Mr Scott's most splendid, rich and original poems; and certainly one of the first and most successful attempts made by modern bards to revive the old English character and style of poetry, and decorate it with the refined beauties of the present state of our language. The manners, the pursuits, the vices and the virtues of the ancient chivalry of Scotland, are admirably delineated; the characters and the description of the scenery are richly and vividly presented to the view.

'Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field,' which was first published in 1808, was the next favoured production of Mr Scott's, a work of intense interest, blending most successfully the old ballad style with the beauties of modern poetry.

'The Lady of the Lake,' which first appear