Cockburn, was the
natural result of his lifelong "rebellion against external
circumstances." He might now with very slender exertion have been the
_dux_ of his form; but if there was more difficulty, there was also
more to whet his ambition, in the attempt to overcome the
disadvantages of his physical misfortune, and in spite of them assert
equality with the best of his compeers on the ground which they
considered as the true arena of honor. He told me, in walking through
these same _yards_ forty years afterwards, that he had scarcely made
his first appearance there, before some dispute arising, his opponent
remarked that "there was no use to hargle-bargle with a cripple;" upon
which he replied, that if he might fight _mounted_, he would try his
hand with any one of his inches. "An elder boy," said he, "who had
perhaps been chuckling over our friend Roderick {p.084} Random when
his mother supposed him to be in full cry after Pyrrhus or Porus,
suggested that the two little tinklers might be lashed front to front
upon a deal board--and--'O gran bonta de' cavalier antichi'--the
proposal being forthwith agreed to, I received my first bloody nose in
an attitude which would have entitled me, in the blessed days of
personal cognizances, to assume that of a _lioncel seiant gules_. My
pugilistic trophies here," he continued, "were all the results of such
_sittings in banco_." Considering his utter ignorance of fear, the
strength of his chest and upper limbs, and that the scientific part of
pugilism never flourished in Scotland, I dare say these trophies were
not few.

The mettle of the High School boys, however, was principally displayed
elsewhere than in their own _yards_; and Sir Walter has furnished us
with ample indications of the delight with which he found himself at
length capable of rivalling others in such achievements as required
the exertion of active locomotive powers. Speaking of some scene of
his infancy in one of his latest tales, he says--"Every step of the
way after I have passed through the green already mentioned" (probably
the _Meadows_ behind George's Square) "has for me something of an
early remembrance. There is the stile at which I can recollect a cross
child's-maid upbraiding me with my infirmity as she lifted me coarsely
and carelessly over the flinty steps which my brothers traversed with
shout and bound. I remember the _suppressed bitterness_ of the moment,
and, conscious of my own infirmity, the env