PROFESSION.
About his sixteenth year, Sir Walter’s health experienced a sudden but most decisive change for the better. Though his lameness remained the same, his bodybecame tall and robust, and he was thus enabled to apply himself with the necessary degree of energy to his studies for the bar. At the same time that he attended the Lectures of Professor Dick on Civil Law in the college, he performed the duties of a writer’s apprentice under his father; that being the most approved method by which a barrister could acquire a technical knowledge of his profession, though it has never been uniformly practised.
Respect for his parents and for the common duties of life, was always a strong feeling in Scott; he therefore applied himself without a murmur to the desk in his father’s office, though he acknowledges that the recess beneath was generally stuffed with his favourite books, from which, at intervals, he would ‘snatch a fearful joy.’ He even made his diligence in copying law-papers a means of gratifying his intellectual passions, often writing an unusual quantity, that with the result he might purchase some book or object of virtù which he wished to possess. It should be mentioned that the little room assigned to him on the kitchen-floor of his father’s house in George Square was already made a kind of museum by his taste for curiosities, especially those of an antiquarian nature. He never was heard to grudge the years he had spent in his father’s painstaking business; on the contrary, he recollected them with pleasure, for it was always a matter of pride with him to be a man of business as well as a man of letters. The discipline of the office gave him a number of little technical habits, which he never afterwards lost. He was, for instance, much of a formalist in the folding and disposal of papers. The writer of this narrative recollects folding a paper in a wrong fashion in his presence,when he instantly undid it, and shewed, with a school-masterlike nicety, but with great good-humour, the proper way to perform this little piece of business.
While advancing to manhood, and during its first few years, Scott, besides keeping up his desultory system of reading, attended the meetings of a literary society composed of such youths as himself. A selection of these and of his early schoolfellows, became his ordinary companions. Amongst them was William Clerk, son of Mr Clerk of Eldin, and afterwards a distinguished member of the Scottish bar. It was the pleasure of this group of young men to take frequent rambles in the country, visiting any ancient castle or other remarkable object within their reach. Scott, notwithstanding his limp, walked as stoutly, and sustained fatigue as well, as any of them. Sometimes they would, according to the general habits of those days, resort to taverns for oysters and punch. Scott entered into such indulgences without losing self-control; but he lived to think this ill-spent time. As to other follies equally besetting to youth, it is admitted by all his early friends that he was in a singular degree pure and blameless. His genial good-humour made him a favourite with his young friends, and they could not deny his possessing much out-of-the-way knowledge; yet it does not appear that they saw in him any intellectual superiority, or reason to expect the brilliant destiny which awaited him. The tendency of all testimony from those who knew him at this time is rather to set him down as one from whom nothing extraordinary was to be looked for in mature manhood.
We can easily see the grounds of this opinion. Scott had not been a good scholar. He shewed none of thepeculiarities of the young sonneteer, for poetry was not yet developed in his nature. Any advantage he possessed over others of his own standing lay in a kind of learning which seemed useless. It is not, then, surprising that he ranked only with ordinary youths, or perhaps a little below them. It is asserted, however, by James Ballantyne, that there was a certain firmness of understanding in Scott, which enabled him to acquire an ascendency over some of his companions; giving him the power of allaying their quarrels by a few words, and disposing them to submit to him on many other occasions. Still, this must have looked like a quality of the common world, and especially unconnected with literary genius.
When Scott’s apprenticeship expired, the father was willing to introduce him at once into a business which would have yielded a tolerable income; but the youth, stirred by ambition, preferred advancing to the bar, for which his service in a writer’s office was the reverse of a disqualification. Having therefore passed through the usual studies, he was admitted of the Faculty of Advocates, July 1792. This is a profession in which a young man usually spends a few years to little purpose, unless peculiar advantages in the way of patronage help him on. Scott does not appear to have done more for some sessions than pass creditably enough through certain routine duties which his father and others imposed upon him, and for which only moderate remuneration was made. He wanted the ready fluent address which is required for pleading, and his knowledge of law was not such as to attract business to him as a consulting counsel. While lingering out the first few idle years of professional life, he studiedthe German language and some of its modern writers. He also continued the same kind of antiquarian reading for which he had already become remarkable.
Amongst other things giving a character to his mind, were certain annual journeys he made into the pastoral district of Liddesdale, where the castles of the old Border chiefs, and the legends of their exploits, were still rife. On these occasions, he was accompanied by an intelligent friend, Mr Robert Shortreed, long after sheriff-substitute at Jedburgh. No inns, and hardly any roads, were then in Liddesdale. The farmers were a simple race, knowing nothing of the outward world. So much was this the case, that one honest fellow, at whose house the travellers alighted to spend a night, was actually frightened at the idea of meeting an Edinburgh advocate. Willie o’ Milburn, as this hero was called, at length took a careful survey of Scott round a corner of the stable, and getting somewhat reassured from the sight, said to Mr Shortreed: ‘Weel, de’il ha’e me if I’s be a bit feared for him now; he’s just a chield like ourselves, I think.’ On these excursions, Scott took down from old people anecdotes of the old rough times, and copies of the ballads in which the adventures of the Elliots and Armstrongs were recorded. Thus were laid the foundations of the collection which became in time theMinstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The friendship of Mr Edmonstone of Newton led him, in like manner, to visit those districts of Stirlingshire and lower Perthshire where he afterwards localised hisLady of the Lake. There he learned much of the more recent rough times of the Highlands, and even conversed with one gentleman who had had to do with Rob Roy. These things constituted the realeducation of Scott’s mind, as far as his character as a literary man is concerned.