SCOTT 



255 



rnpted by a visit to Kelso, where he had the mis- 

 fortune to become intimate with the Ballantynes. 

 In Edinburgh the blind and venerable Dr Blacklock 

 instructed nis poetical taste, and he had his one 

 famous meeting with Burns. He left the High 

 School with a great knowledge of all that he had 

 not been taught, but at Edinburgh University he 

 did not improve his Latin, and, like St Augustine, 

 he declined to learn Greek. His account of the 

 studies of Waverley contains his regrets for wasted 

 time, and his autobiography expresses his grief 

 that he had turned away from Greek, ' considering 

 what that language is, and who they were who 

 employed it in their compositions.' Meantime his 

 lameness was never cured, though he could walk 

 thirty or forty miles in the day. His sweetness of 

 temper did not suffer, as Byron's did from an in- 

 firmity which after all was not so great as to prevent 

 Byron from bowling for Harrow. But Scott had 

 not, like Byron, to feel that, but for this one defect, 

 he would nave been a perfect model of beauty. 

 With red hair, an upper lip of unusual length, a brow 

 like a tower, and rugged Border features, he had 

 no temptation, as Hymn had, to vanity. Yet a 

 lady has left her evidence that 'young Walter 

 Scott was a comely creature.' About 1785-86 he 

 entered his father's 'office,' the weary 'office' 

 which, like some fabled monster, gapes for the 

 boys of Edinburgh. Here, at least, ne learned to 

 cover paper at such a pace as never man did, and 

 in a hand which could put some seven hundred 

 words on one side of a sheet of foolscap. He 

 studied Scots law sedulously, though his long fish- 

 ing and antiquarian rambles made his excellent 

 father (described in Redgauntlet) fear that he 

 would never be better than ' a gangrel scrape- 

 gut.' As a lawyer's clerk, superintending an 

 eviction, he first entered the Highlands, where he 

 already knew Invemahyle, of the '15 and the '45, 

 and many another veteran, whose legends appear 

 in his novels. In Edinburgh he won friendships 

 which only ended with life, and, in the heat of 

 youth, according to his own account, he was at 

 least sufficiently convivial. Of all his friends the 

 world best knows William Clerk of Eldin, the 

 original of Darsie Latimer in Redgauntlet. Even 

 now, it seems, the romance of his life had begun, 

 and he loved the lady whom he loved till the end. 

 ' This was the early and innocent affection to 

 which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Red- 

 gauntlet, but of the Lay of the Last Minstrel and 

 of Rokeby. In all of these works the heroine has 

 certain distinctive features, drawn from one and 

 the same haunting dream of his manly adolescence.' 

 In the autumn of 1796 that dream had gone 

 where dreams go, but it endured where dreams 

 endure, in the neart. On October 12, 1796, one 

 of his friends, who knew the story, wrote, ' " Men 

 have died and worms have eaten them, but not 

 for love." I hope sincerely that may be veri- 

 fied on this occasion.' Scott did not die, only 

 his heart, as his Journal records, was broken for 

 two years, then 'handsomely pieced,' 'but the 

 crack will remain till my dying day' (Journal, 

 December 18, 1825). 'Humana perpessi vumiu,' 

 he adds, in his Journal, towards the end of his 

 life. A short poem, The Violet, is almost the 

 only direct allusion to this affair in his works. 

 Not wholly unconnected with his hopes as a lover 

 wag his first publication, rhymed versions of ballads 

 by Burger (October 1796). The poems were 

 admired, but ' proved a dead loss.' The spring of 

 1797 was spent in yeomanry drill. In July Scott 

 made a tour into Tweeddale, and met David 

 Ritchie, the Black Dwarf. Thence he wandered 

 to Gi Island, where he first saw Miss Charlotte 

 Margaret Carpenter, a lady of French extraction, 

 but of English education. They soon became 



engaged, and were married at Carlisle on Christ- 

 mas Eve 1797. Though not a regular beauty, Mrs 

 Scott had large dark eyes, and an engaging air, 

 with plenty of gaiety and sense. Hogg describes 

 her as ' a brunette with raven hair and large dark 

 eyes, but, in my estimation, a perfect beauty.' 

 The marriage, founded on sincere affection, was 

 happy, though some of Scott's friends feared that 

 the successes which left him unharmed might turn 

 the head of Mrs Scott. 



Already (1792) Scott had made his first 

 raid into Liddesdale, and every year till 1798 he 

 repeated it, gathered legends, studied characters 

 like Dandie Dinmont, and ' was making himself,' as 

 Shortreed said. His country home was a cottage at 

 Lass wade, agreeably described by Mr R. P. Gillies 

 in his Recollections. Scott made M- G. Lewis's 

 acquaintance, wrote for a collection of Lewis's 

 Glenfinlas and the Eve of St John, and translated 

 Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen. At the end of 

 1799, after the death of his father, he was appointed 

 sheriff of Selkirkshire. In hunting for ballads he 

 made the acquaintance of Hogg, of Leyden, and of 

 his dear friend and occasional amanuensis, William 

 Laidlaw. In 1800 he suggested to James Ballan- 

 tyne that he should remove from Kelso to Edin- 

 burgh. At the same time he announced that he 

 would give Ballantyne the printing of The Border 

 Minstrelsy. The first two volumes appeared in 

 1802. In the autumn of that year, on Lady 

 Dalkeith's suggestion, he began what he meant for 

 a ballad. It became The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 

 the first, perhaps the test, of his long poems. It was 

 printed by liallantyne in Edinburgh. The founda- 

 tions of Scott's triumph and discomfiture were laid. 

 The Lay made him at once the most popular 

 author of the generation, and his share in the 

 Ballantyne printing business proved his ruin. From 

 the moment that he entered as the secret but 

 only moneyed partner into that business he was 

 never free from financial complications. For these, 

 and all the evil they wrought, it would be unjust 

 to lay all the blame either on the Ballantynes, on 

 Constable, or on Scott. Sir Walter was the last to 

 shirk his own share of the responsibility. Perhaps 

 an accountant can make sense of the controversy, in 

 three pamphlets, between Mr Lockhart and the 

 representatives of the Ballantynes (1838-39). To 

 an ordinary reader it seems clear that Scott hoped 

 to make money by the business of printing, and 

 that he also had ' a kindness like an elder brother's 

 love 'for the Ballantynes. It appears quite certain 

 that John Ballantyne, when he entered the firm 

 with no capital, complicated it by his ambition as 

 a publisher, and by a sanguine temper which would 

 not face nor state difficulties. On the other hand, 

 Scott had a century of literary inventions, editions 

 and the like, which were often started to benefit 

 poor working men of letters, but which nearly 

 always failed, except when he himself was the 

 editor. Thus the publishing business was over- 

 whelmed with unsaleable 'stock.' Both Ballan- 

 tynes were undeniably extravagant. John was 

 recklessly so. Scott himself bought land, always 

 at a price beyond its value, he bought curiosities, 

 his hospitality was more than princely, his gene- 

 rosity was unstinted ; he was the providence of 

 poor literary men, and the guardian genius of 

 his neighbourhood. Yet he has been too severely 

 blamed for profusion. Up to 1821 his purchases of 

 land had cost about 30,000, while his official income 

 (as Clerk of Session and Sheriff) had been 1600 a 

 year, 'and he had gained as an author 80,000.' 

 Abbotsford is not ' a wide domain 1 far from it and 

 the house was so far from being a palace that Mr 

 Hope-Scott found it necessary to build a large 

 additional wing thereto. The ruin came not so 

 much from personal extravagance as through 



