SCHOOL-BOY DAYS.
It is understood that, at the ‘evening fire’ of Sandyknow, Sir Walter learned much of that Border lore which he afterwards wrought up in his fictions. To what extent his residence there retarded his progress in school instruction, is not discovered. After being at Sandyknow, he was, for the sake of the mineral waters, sent, in his fourth year, to Bath, where he attended a dame’s school, and received his first lessons in reading. Returning to Edinburgh, he made some advances in the rudiments of learning at a private school kept by a Mr Leechman in Hamilton’s Entry, Bristo Street [now a small, decayed building, with a tiled roof, occupied by a working blacksmith]. This was his first school in Edinburgh. It is almost certain that his attendance at school was rendered irregular by his delicate health. He entered Fraser’s class at the High School in thethird year—that is tosay, when that master had carried his class through one half of the ordinary curriculum of the school; wherefore it is clear that any earlier instruction he could have received must have been in some inferior institution, and very probably communicated in a hurried and imperfect manner. It is at the commencement of the school year in October 1779 that his name first appears in the school register: he must have then been eight years of age, which, it may be remarked, is an unusually early period for a boy to enter the third year of his classical course. What is further remarkable, his elder brother attended the same class. It is therefore to be suspected that his educational interests were sacrificed, in some measure, to the circumstances of the school, which were at that period in such an unhappy arrangement as to teachers, that parents often precipitated their children into a class for which they were unfitted, in order to escape a teacher whom they deemed unqualified for his duties, and secure the instructions of one who bore a superior character.
Although Mr Luke Fraser was one of the severest flagellators even of theold school, he enjoyed the reputation of being a sound scholar, so far as scholarship was required for his duties, and also that of a most conscientious and painstaking teacher. He first caused his scholars to get by heart Ruddiman’sRudiments, and as soon as they were thoroughly grounded in the declensions, the Vocabulary of the same great grammarian was put into their hands, and a small number of words prescribed to be repeated every morning. They then read in succession theColloquiesof Corderius, four or five lives of CorneliusNepos, and the first four books of Cæsar’sCommentaries. Ere this course was perfected, the greater part of Ruddiman’sGrammatica Minora, in Latin, was got by heart. Select passages from Ovid’sMetamorphoses, theBucolicsand the firstÆneidof Virgil, concluded the fourth year; after which the boys were turned over to the rector, by whom they were instructed for two years more; making the course in all six years. It must also be understood, that every one of the three masters besides Mr Fraser pursued the same system, bringing forward a class from the first elements to the state in which it was fitted for the attention of the rector; after which he returned once more to take up a new set of boys in the first class—and so forth for one lustrum after another, so long as he was connected with the school. If any teacher could have brought a boy over such a difficulty as that which attended the commencement of Sir Walter’s career at the High School, it would have been Mr Fraser; for few of his profession at that time were more anxious to explain away every obstruction in the path of his pupils, or took so much pains to ascertain that they were carrying the understandings of the boys along with them through all the successive stages. Apparently, however, neither the care of the master nor the inborn genius of the pupil availed much in this case, for it is said that the twenty-fifth place was no uncommon situation in the class for the future author of the Waverley Novels.
After two years of instruction, commenced under these unfavourable circumstances, Sir Walter, in October 1781, entered the rector’s class, then taught by Dr Alexander Adam, the author of many excellent elementary books, and one of the most meritorious andmost eminent teachers that Scotland has ever produced. The authors read by Dr Adam’s class at this period, and probably during the whole of his career, were Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and Terence; but it was not in reading and translating alone that an education under this eminent man consisted. Adam, who was an indefatigable student, as the number and excellence of his works testify, was a complete contrast to Mr Fraser. The latter hardly ever introduced a single remark but what was intended to illustrate theletterof the author; whereas Dr Adam commented at great length upon whatever occurred in the course of reading in the class, whether it related to antiquities, customs, and manners, or to history. He was of so communicative a disposition, that whatever knowledge he had acquired in his private studies, he took the first opportunity of imparting to his class, paying little regard whether it was above the comprehension of the greater number of his scholars or not. He abounded in pleasant anecdote; and while he never neglected the proper business of his class, it is certain that he inspired a far higher love of knowledge and of literary history into the minds of his pupils than any other teacher of his day. At the same time, he displayed a benevolence of character which won the hearts of his pupils, and nothing ever gave him so much pleasure as to hear of their success in after-life. To this venerable person, Sir Walter was always ready to acknowledge his obligations, and it is not improbable that much of his literary character was moulded on that of Dr Adam.
As a scholar, nevertheless, the subject of this memoir never became remarkable for proficiency. There is his own authority for saying, that, even in the exercise ofmetrical translation, he fell far short of some of his companions; although others preserve a somewhat different recollection, and state that this was a department in which he always manifested a superiority. It is, however, unquestionable, that in his exercises he was remarkable, to no inconsiderable extent, for blundering and incorrectness; his mind apparently not possessing that aptitude for mastering small details, in which so much of scholarship, in its earliest stages, consists.
Regarding his school-days, we may introduce an extract from an original letter on the subject. ‘The following lines were written by Walter Scott when he was between ten and eleven years of age, and while he was attending the High School, Edinburgh. His master there had spoken of him as a remarkably stupid boy, and his mother with grief acknowledged that they spoke truly. She saw him one morning, in the midst of a tremendous thunder-storm, standing still in the street, and looking at the sky. She called to him repeatedly, but he remained looking upwards without taking the least notice of her. When he returned into the house, she was very much displeased with him: “Mother,” he said, “I could tell you the reason why I stood still, and why I looked at the sky, if you would only give me a pencil.” She gave him one, and, in less than five minutes, he laid a bit of paper on her lap, with these words written on it:
“Loud o’er my head what awful thunders roll,What vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole,It is thy voice, my God, that bids them fly,Thy voice directs them through the vaulted sky;Then let the good thy mighty power revere,Let hardened sinners thy just judgments fear.”
“Loud o’er my head what awful thunders roll,What vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole,It is thy voice, my God, that bids them fly,Thy voice directs them through the vaulted sky;Then let the good thy mighty power revere,Let hardened sinners thy just judgments fear.”
“Loud o’er my head what awful thunders roll,What vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole,It is thy voice, my God, that bids them fly,Thy voice directs them through the vaulted sky;Then let the good thy mighty power revere,Let hardened sinners thy just judgments fear.”
“Loud o’er my head what awful thunders roll,
What vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole,
It is thy voice, my God, that bids them fly,
Thy voice directs them through the vaulted sky;
Then let the good thy mighty power revere,
Let hardened sinners thy just judgments fear.”
The old lady repeated them to me herself, and the tears were in her eyes: for I really believe, simple as they are, that she values these lines, being the first effusion of her son’s genius, more than any later beauties which have so charmed all the world besides.’
Before quitting the High School, he, along with his brothers, received the advantages of some tutorial training under a Mr Mitchell, who afterwards became a minister connected with the Scotch Church. Previous to entering the university of Edinburgh, young Walter spent some time with his aunt at Kelso. Here, in order that he might be kept up in his classical studies, he attended the grammar-school, at that time under the rectorship of Mr Lancelot Whale, a worthy man and good scholar, who possessed traits of character not unlike some of those which have been depicted in Dominie Sampson. It was while thus residing for a short time at Kelso, about 1783, that Sir Walter made the acquaintance of James Ballantyne, then a schoolboy of his own age, with kindred literary tastes.
Sir Walter’s education being irregular from bad health, he did not distinguish himself as a scholar, yet often surprised his instructors by the miscellaneous knowledge which he possessed, and now and then was acknowledged to display a sense of the beauties of the Latin authors such as is seldom seen in boys. In the rough amusements which went on out of school, his spirit enabled him to take a leading share, notwithstanding his lameness. He would help to man the Cowgate Port in a snow-ball match, and pass the Kittle Nine Steps on the Castle Rock with the best of them. In the winter evenings, when out-of-door exercise was not attractive, he would gather his companions round him at the fireside,and entertain them with stories, real and imaginary, of which he seemed to have an endless store. Unluckily, his classical studies, neglected as they comparatively were, experienced an interruption from bad health, just as he was beginning to acquire some sense of their value.
It would, nevertheless, be difficult to say whether Scott was the worse or the better of the interruptions he experienced in school learning. He lost a certain kind of knowledge, it is true, but he gained another. The vacant time at his disposal he gave to general reading. History, travels, poetry, and prose fiction he devoured without discrimination, unless it were that he preferred imaginative literature to every other; and of all imaginative writers, was fondest of such as Spenser, whose knights and ladies, and dragons and giants, he was never tired of contemplating. Any passage of a favourite poet which pleased him particularly was sure to remain on his memory, and thus he was able to astonish his friends with his poetical recitations. At the same time, he admits that solidly useful matters had a poor chance of being remembered. His sober-minded parents and other friends regarded these acquirements without pride or satisfaction; they marvelled at the thirst for reading and the powers of memory, but thought it all to little good purpose, and only excused it in consideration of the infirm health of the young prodigy. Scott himself lived to lament the indifference he shewed to that regular mental discipline which is to be acquired at school. He says in his autobiography: ‘It is with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of study which I neglected in my youth; through every part of my literary career, I havefelt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance; and I would at this moment give half the reputation I have had the good-fortune to acquire, if by doing so I could rest the remaining part upon a solid foundation of learning and science.’
It is the tradition of the family—and the fact is countenanced by this propensity to tales of chivalric adventure—that Sir Walter wished at this period of his life to become a soldier. The illness, however, which had beset his early years rendered this wish bootless, even although his parents had been inclined to gratify it. His malady had had the effect of contracting his right leg, so that he could hardly walk erect, even with the toes of that foot upon the ground. It has been related by a member of his family that, on this being represented to him as an insuperable obstacle to his entering the army, he left the room in an agony of mortified feeling, and was found some time afterwards suspended by the wrists from his bedroom window, somewhat after the manner of the unfortunate Knight of the Rueful Countenance, when beguiled by the treacherous Maritornes at the inn. On being asked the cause of this strange proceeding, he said he wished to prove to them that, however unfitted by his limbs for the profession of a soldier, he was at least strong enough in the arms. He had actually remained in that uneasy and trying posture for upwards of an hour.
His parents made many efforts to cure his lameness. Edinburgh at this time boasted of an ingenious mechanist in leather, the first person who extended the use of that commodity beyond ordinary purposes; on which account there is an elaborate memoir of him in Dodsley’sAnnual Registerfor 1793. His name was Gavin Wilson, and,being something of a humorist, he exhibited a sign-board intended to burlesque the vanity of his brother-tradesmen—his profession being thus indicated: ‘Leather leg-maker,notto his Majesty.’ Honest Gavin, on the application of his parents, did all he could for Sir Walter, but in vain.
An attempt was made about the same time to give him instructions in music, which used to be a branch of ordinary education in Scotland. His preceptor was Mr Alexander Campbell, then organist of an Episcopal chapel in Edinburgh, but known in later life as the editor ofAlbyn’s Anthology, and author of various other publications. Mr Campbell’s efforts were entirely in vain: he had to abandon his pupil in a short time, with the declaration, that he was totally deficient in that indispensable requisite to a musical education—anear. It may appear strange, that he who wrote so many musical verses, should have wanted this natural gift; but there are other cases to shew that a perception of metrical quantities does not depend on any such peculiarity. Dr Johnson is a splendid instance. Throughout life, Sir Walter, however capable of enjoying music, was incapable of producing two notes consecutively that were either in tune or in time. He used to be pressed, however, at an annual agricultural dinner, to contribute his proper quota to the cantations of the evening; on which occasions he would break forth with the song ofTarry Woo, in a strain of unmusical vehemence, which never failed, on the same principle as Dick Tinto’s ill-painted sign, to put the company into good-humour.