connection
between his literary and his personal history and character. There
have been few authors in whose career this connection was more
strongly apparent than in Sir Walter Scott; his life is, to a great
extent, identified with his writings, and this appears to be the
source of that feeling of truth and reality which is forced upon us
while perusing his fictions. He was born at Edinburgh, August 15,
1771. His father was one of that respectable class of attorneys
called, in Scotland, writers to the signet, and was the original from
whom his son subsequently drew the character of Mr. Saunders Fairford,
in "Redgauntlet." His mother was a lady of taste and imagination. An
accidental lameness and a delicate constitution procured for Walter a
more than ordinary portion of maternal care, and the influence of his
mother's instructions was strongly impressed on his character. In
early childhood he was sent for change of air to the country seat of
his maternal grandfather, where he first developed his extraordinary
powers of memory by learning the traditionary legends of border
heroism and chivalry, which used to be recited at the fireside on a
winter's evening. His early taste for the romantic was a little
checked when he returned to Edinburgh, in his eighth year, for his
father was rather a strict adherent to forms, and looked upon poetry
and fiction as very questionable indulgences. The discovery of a copy
of Shakespeare, and an odd volume of Percy's "Relics," enabled him to
resume his favorite pursuits, though the hours he devoted to them were
stolen from sleep. He was sent at an early age to the high-school of
Edinburgh, but was not particularly distinguished in the regular
course of study. His companions, however, soon discovered his
antiquarian tastes, and his passionate love for old tales of chivalry
and old chronicles scarcely less romantic; he became noted, too, for
reciting stories of his own invention, in which he introduced a
superabundance of the marvels of ancient superstition, with a
plentiful seasoning of knight-errantry. He even pursued his favorite
subject into the continental languages, and by his own exertions
enabled himself to peruse the works of Ariosto and Cervantes in their
original form.

After a brief residence at the university he was indented as an
apprentice to his father in 1786. Though the daily routine of drudgery
in an attorney's office must have been painful to a young man of
ardent ima