general theory of Romantic
poetry than either, was a slightly older man than two of the trio just
noticed; but he did not begin his poetical career (save by one volume of
translation) till some years after all of them had published. Walter
Scott was born in Edinburgh on the 15th of August 1771. His father, of
the same name as himself, was a Writer to the Signet; his mother was
Anne Rutherford, and the future poet and novelist had much excellent
Border blood in him, besides that of his direct ancestors the Scotts of
Harden. He was a very sickly child; and though he grew out of this he
was permanently lame. His early childhood was principally spent on the
Border itself, with a considerable interval at Bath; and he was duly
sent to the High School and University of Edinburgh, where, like a good
many other future men of letters, he was not extremely remarkable for
what is called scholarship. He was early imprisoned in his father's
office, where the state of relations between father and son is supposed
to be pretty accurately represented by the story of those between Alan
Fairford and his father in _Redgauntlet_; and, like Alan, he was called
to the bar. But even in the inferior branch of the profession he enjoyed
tolerable liberty of wandering about and sporting, besides sometimes
making expeditions on business into the Highlands and other
out-of-the-way parts of the country.

He thus acquired great knowledge of his fatherland; while (for he was,
if not exactly a scholar, the most omnivorous of readers) he was also
acquiring great knowledge of books. And it ought not to be omitted that
Edinburgh, in addition to the literary and professional society which
made it then and afterwards so famous, was still to no small extent the
headquarters of the Scotch nobility, and that Scott, long before his
books made him famous, was familiar with society of every rank. His
first love affair did not run smooth, and he seems never to have
entirely forgotten the object of it, who is identified (on somewhat more
solid grounds than in the case of other novelists) with more than one of
his heroines. But he consoled himself to a certain extent with a young
lady half French, half English, Miss Charlotte Carpenter or Charpentier,
whom he met at Gilsland and married at Carlisle on Christmas Eve 1797.
Scott was an active member of the yeomanry as well as a barrister, an
enthusiastic student of German as well as a sportsman; and the book of
translat