TT, MICHAEL, a sage with the reputation of a wizard, who lived
about the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, of whose
art as a magician many legends are related.

SCOTT, THOMAS, commentator, born in Lincolnshire; became rector of
Aston Sandford, Bucks; was a Calvinist in theology, author of the "Force
of Truth" and "Essays on Religion," the work by which he is best known
being his "Commentary on the Bible," a scholarly exposition (1747-1821).

SCOTT, SIR WALTER, the great romancer, born in Edinburgh, through
both father and mother of Scottish Border blood; his father, a lawyer, a
man "who passed from the cradle to the grave without making an enemy or
losing a friend," his mother a little kindly woman, full of most vivid
memories, awakening an interest in him to which he owed much; was a
healthy child, but from teething and other causes lost the use of his
right limb when 18 months old, which determined, to a marked extent, the
course of his life; spent many of the months of his childhood in the
country, where he acquired that affection for all natural objects which
never left him, and a kindliness of soul which all the lower animals that
approached him were quick to recognise; he was from the first home-bred,
and to realise the like around his own person was his fondest dream, and
if he failed, as it chanced he did, his vexation was due not to the
material loss it involved, but to the blight it shed on his home life and
the disaster on his domestic relationships; his school training yielded
results of the smallest account to his general education, and a writer of
books himself, he owed less to book-knowledge than his own shrewd
observation; he proceeded from the school (the High School, it was) at 15
to his father's office and classes at the University, and at both he
continued to develop his own bent more than the study of law or learning;
at his sixteenth year the bursting of a blood-vessel prostrated him in
bed and enforced a period of perfect stillness, but during this time he
was able to prosecute sundry quiet studies, and laid up in his memory
great stores of knowledge, for his mind was of that healthy quality which
assimilated all that was congenial to it and let all that did not concern
it slip idly through, achieving thereby his greatest victory, that of
becoming an altogether _whole_ man. Professionally he was a lawyer, and a
good lawyer, but the duties of his profession were not his chief