his
time, received some instructions in music, which was then considered a
branch of ordinary education in Scotland; but the future poet, to use
a familiar expression, wanted "an ear." Throughout life he, however,
was highly susceptible of the delights of music, though his own
execution was confined to a single song, with which he attempted to
enliven the social board, but, it is stated, with such unmusical
oddity as to content his hearers with a single specimen of his vocal
talent. His early rambles around the "hills and holms of the border,"
is said to have kindled in Scott the love of painting landscapes, not
strictly in accordance with the rules of art, though certainly from
nature herself. Such attempts in art, by the way, are by no means
uncommon in the early lives of men of genius; and, they are to be
regarded, in many instances as their earliest appreciation of the
beauties of nature.

In 1783, Scott was placed at the University of Edinburgh, where his
studies were as irregular as at the High School: at the latter he is
said to have made his first attempt at versification in the
description of a thunderstorm in six lines, the recital of which
afforded his mother considerable pleasure and promise; and, on another
occasion, he is stated to have remarked, during a journey over a
sterile district of Scotland, in a day of drizzling rain, "It is only
nature weeping for the barrenness of her soil."

LOVE OF READING.

Scott's early love of reading is described to have been of
enthusiastic character, and to have been fostered by an accident at
this period of his life. He had just given over the amusements of
boyhood, and began to prepare himself for the serious business of
life, or the study of the law, when, to use his own words, "a long
illness threw him back on the kingdom of fiction, as it were by a
species of fatality." His autobiography of this period is extremely
interesting:--"My indisposition arose in part at least, from my having
broken a blood-vessel; and motion and speech were for a long time
pronounced positively dangerous. For several weeks I was confined
strictly to my bed, during which time I was not allowed to speak above
a whisper, to eat more than a spoonful or two of boiled rice, or to
have more covering than one thin counterpane. When the reader is
informed that I was at this time a growing youth, with the spirits,
appetite, and impatience of fifteen, and suffered, of course, greatly
under t