The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prose Marmion, by Sara D. Jenkins
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Title: The Prose Marmion
A Tale of the Scottish Border
Author: Sara D. Jenkins
Release Date: January 22, 2004 [EBook #10778]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE PROSE MARMION
A TALE OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER
ADAPTED FROM
SCOTT'S "MARMION"
BY
SARA D. JENKINS
ITHACA, N.Y.
_Author of the Prose "Lady of the Lake," etc._
1903
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT. (Bust.)]
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT. (From painting by _Wm. Nicholson_.)]
INTRODUCTION.
Sir Walter Scott, poet and novelist, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland,
five years before the Declaration of Independence in America. Unlike
most little Scotch boys, he was not sturdy and robust, and in his second
year, a lameness appeared that never entirely left him. Being frail and
delicate, he received the most tender care from parents and
grandparents. Five consecutive years of his life, from the age of three
to the age of eight, were spent on his grandfather's farm at Sandyknow.
At the end of this period, he returned to Edinburgh greatly improved in
health, and soon after, entered the high school, where he remained four
years. A course at the university followed the high school, but Scott
never gained distinction as a scholar. He loved romances, old plays,
travels, and poetry too well, ever to become distinguished in
philosophy, mathematics, or the dry study of dead languages.
In his early years, he had formed a taste for ballad literature, which
very significantly influenced, if it did not wholly determine, the
character of his writings. The historical incidents upon which the
ballads were founded, their traditional legends, affected him
profoundly, and he wished to become at once a poet of chivalry, a writer
of romance. His father, however, had other plans for his son, and the
lad was made a lawyer's apprentice in the father's office. Continuing,
as recreation, his reading, he gave six years to the study of law, being
admitted to the bar when only twenty-one. F
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