oth
background and foreground, having no more notion of the perspective of
genius than Chinese paper-stainers have of that of the atmosphere, and
producing in fact not descriptions but inventories.

The illness which he alludes to in his Memoir, as interrupting for a
considerable period his attendance on the Latin and Greek classes in
Edinburgh College, is spoken of more largely in one of his
prefaces.[62] It arose from the bursting of a blood-vessel in the
lower bowels; and I have heard him say that his uncle, Dr. Rutherford,
considered his recovery from it as little less than miraculous. His
sweet temper and calm courage were no doubt important elements of
safety. He submitted without a murmur to the severe discipline
prescribed by his affectionate physician, and found consolation in
poetry, romance, and the enthusiasm of young friendship. Day after day
John Irving relieved his mother and sister in their {p.112}
attendance upon him. The bed on which he lay was piled with a constant
succession of works of imagination, and sad realities were forgotten
amidst the brilliant day-dreams of genius drinking unwearied from the
eternal fountains of Spenser and Shakespeare. Chess was recommended as
a relief to these unintermitted, though desultory studies; and he
engaged eagerly in the game which had found favor with so many of his
Paladins. Mr. Irving remembers playing it with him hour after hour, in
very cold weather, when, the windows being kept open as a part of the
medical treatment, nothing but youthful nerves and spirit could have
persevered. But Scott did not pursue the science of chess after his
boyhood. He used to say that it was a shame to throw away upon
mastering a mere game, however ingenious, the time which would suffice
for the acquisition of a new language. "Surely," he said,
"chess-playing is a sad waste of brains."

[Footnote 62: See Preface to _Waverley_, 1829.]

His recovery was completed by another visit to Roxburghshire. Captain
Robert Scott, who had been so kind to the sickly infant at Bath,
finally retired about this time from his profession, and purchased the
elegant villa of Rosebank, on the Tweed, a little below Kelso. Here
Walter now took up his quarters, and here, during all the rest of his
youth, he found, whenever he chose, a second home, in many respects
more agreeable than his own. His uncle, as letters to be subsequently
quoted will show, had nothing of his father's coldness for pol