ght foot, and render him lame for life:
"This accident did not otherwise affect his health; he was, as I have
been informed by a lady who chanced to live near him, a remarkably
active and dauntless boy, full of all manner of fun, and ready for all
manner of mischief. He calls himself, in one of his introductions to
_Marmion_--

A self-willed imp; a grondame's child;

and I have heard it averred, that the circumstance of his lame foot
prompted him to take the lead among all the stirring boys in the
street where he lived, or the school which he attended: he desired,
perhaps, to show them, that there was a spirit which could triumph
over all impediments."[3] If this statement be correct, it is a
somewhat remarkable coincidence with the circumstance of Lord Byron's
lameness; though, happily, the influence of the accident on the
temperament of Scott is not traceable beyond his early years.

[3] Life of Sir Walter Scott; in the Athenaeum, No. 258.

Sir Walter was subsequently removed from Edinburgh, for the
improvement of his health, to the farm-house of Sandyknowe, then
inhabited by his paternal grandfather, and situated in the loveliest
part of the Vale of Tweed. In the neighbourhood, upon a considerable
eminence, stands Smailholm Tower, a Border fort which the future poet
enshrined in his admirable ballad, _The Eve of St. John_. The romantic
influence of the scenery of the whole district is told with much
vigour and sweetness in the introduction to the third canto of
_Marmion_.

EDUCATION.

Little is known of the schooldom of Scott, that denotes anything like
precocious talent. It is, however better ascertained that his early
rambles amidst the Tweed scenery retarded his educational pursuits. He
received the rudiments of knowledge under the home tuition of his
mother; next attended an ordinary school at Edinburgh, and was then
placed at the High School, his name first appearing in the school
register in the year 1779. His masters, Mr. Luke Fraser, and Dr. Adam,
were erudite and pains-taking teachers; but, to borrow a phrase from
Montaigne, they could neither lodge it with him, nor make him espouse
it, and Chambers illustratively relates, "apparently, 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."
Perhaps the only anecdote of any