f the Session.' But if Scott had quoted, would he have altered
the spelling? The Grassmarket story, moreover, exactly corresponds to
his words, 'as a gudewife would whomle a bowie.']

CHAPTER II

EARLY LITERARY WORK

It is pretty universally known, and must have been perceived even from
the foregoing summary, that Scott was by no means a very precocious
writer. He takes rank, indeed, neither with those who, according to a
famous phrase, 'break out threescore thousand strong' in youth; nor with
those who begin original composition betimes, and by degrees arrive at
excellence; nor yet with those who do not display any aptitude for
letters till late in life. His class--a fourth, which, at least as
regards the greater names of literature, is perhaps the smallest of
all--comprises those who may almost be said to drift into literary work
and literary fame, whose first production is not merely tentative and
unoriginal, but, so to speak, accidental, who do not discover their real
faculty for literary work till after a pretty long course of casual
literary play.

Part of this was no doubt due to the fact--vouched for sufficiently, and
sufficiently probable, though not, so far as I know, resting on any
distinct and firsthand documentary evidence--that Walter Scott the elder
had, even more than his _eidolon_ the elder Fairford, that horror of
literary employment on the part of his son which was for generations a
tradition among persons of business, and which is perhaps not quite
extinct yet. For this opposition, as is well known, rather stimulates
than checks, even in dutiful offspring, the noble rage. It was due
partly, perhaps, to a metaphysical cause--the fact that until Scott was
well past his twentieth year, the wind of the spirit was not yet
blowing, that the new poetical and literary day had not yet dawned; and
partly to a more commonplace reason or set of reasons. About 1790
literary work was extremely badly paid;[11] and, even if it had been paid
better, Scott had no particular need of money. Till his marriage he
lived at home, spent his holidays with friends, or on tours where the
expenses were little or nothing, and obtained sufficient pocket-money,
first by copying while he was still apprenticed to his father, then by
his fees when he was called. He could, as he showed later, spend money
royally when he had it or thought he had it; but he was a man of no
extravagant tastes of the ordinary kind, and Edinburg