had lasted
throughout life." There is a story of his having been forgotten one
day among the knolls when a thunderstorm came on; and his aunt,
suddenly recollecting his situation, and running out to bring him
home, is said to have found him lying on his back, clapping his hands
at the lightning, and crying out, "Bonny! bonny!" at every flash.

I find the following marginal note on his copy of Allan Ramsay's
Tea-Table Miscellany (edition 1724): "This book belonged to my
grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught Hardiknute by
heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I
ever learnt--the last I shall ever forget." According to Tibby Hunter,
he was not particularly fond of his book, embracing every pretext for
joining his friend the Cow-bailie out of doors; but "Miss Jenny was a
grand hand at keeping him to the bit, and by degrees he came to read
brawly."[44] An early acquaintance of a higher class, Mrs. Duncan, the
wife of the present excellent minister of Mertoun, informs me, that
though she was younger than Sir Walter, she has a dim remembrance of
the interior of Sandy-Knowe--"Old Mrs. Scott sitting, with her
spinning-wheel, at one side of the fire, in a _clean clean_ parlor;
the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his elbow-chair opposite; and
the little boy lying on the carpet, at the old man's feet, listening
to the Bible, or whatever good book Miss Jenny was reading to
them."[45]

[Footnote 44: This old woman still possesses "the _banes_"
(bones)--that is to say, the boards--of a Psalm-book, which
Master Walter gave her at Sandy-Knowe. "He chose it," she
says, "of a very large print, that I might be able to read it
when I was _very auld--forty year auld_; but the bairns
pulled the leaves out langsyne."]

[Footnote 45: [In writing of his little grandson's earliest
lessons, Scott recalls these days in a letter to Lockhart
(March 3, 1826):--

"I rejoice to hear of Johnnie's grand flip towards
instruction. I hope Mrs. Mactavish, whom I like not the
worse, you may be sure, for her name, will be mild in her
rule, and let him listen to reading a good deal without
cramming the alphabet and grammar down the poor child's
throat. I cannot at this moment tell how or when I learned to
read, but it was by fits and snatches, as one aunt or another