oy of good talents, therefore, placed even for
a time among his inferiors, especially if they be also his elders,
learns to participate in their pursuits and objects of ambition, which
are usually very distinct from the acquisition of learning; and it
will be well if he does not also imitate them in that indifference
which is contented with bustling over a lesson so as to avoid
punishment, without affecting superiority or aiming at reward. It was
probably owing to this circumstance that, although at a more advanced
period of life I have enjoyed considerable facility in acquiring
languages, I did not make any great figure at the High School--or, at
least, any exertions which I made were desultory and little to be
depended on.

[Footnote 28: [Lord Cockburn, in his _Life of Jeffrey_,
quotes with approval Scott's commendation of Mr. Fraser, and
adds, that this teacher had the singular good fortune to turn
out from three successive classes Walter Scott, Francis
Jeffrey, and Henry Brougham.]]

Our class contained some very excellent scholars. The first _Dux_ was
James Buchan, who retained his honored place, almost without a day's
interval, all the while we were at the High School. He was afterwards
at the head of the medical staff in Egypt, and in exposing himself to
the plague infection, by attending the hospitals there, {p.024}
displayed the same well-regulated and gentle, yet determined,
perseverance which placed him most worthily at the head of his
schoolfellows, while many lads of livelier parts and dispositions held
an inferior station. The next best scholars (_sed longo intervallo_)
were my friend David Douglas, the heir and _eleve_ of the celebrated
Adam Smith, and James Hope, now a Writer to the Signet, both since
well known and distinguished in their departments of the law. As for
myself, I glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to the
other, and commonly disgusted my kind master as much by negligence and
frivolity, as I occasionally pleased him by flashes of intellect and
talent. Among my companions my good-nature and a flow of ready
imagination rendered me very popular. Boys are uncommonly just in
their feelings, and at least equally generous. My lameness, and the
efforts which I made to supply that disadvantage, by making up in
address what I wanted in activity, engaged the latter principle in my
favor; and in the winter play hours, when hard exercise was
i