Bacon’s private character was generous and humane almost to a fault. His manners were exceedingly winning, and his method of drawing from all sorts of men the information belonging to their separate callings was wonderful. He was constitutionally timid, and was always in weak health. His person was slightly above the common height, his countenance most dignified, and intellectually commanding.
[Statue of Lord Bacon in St. Michael’s Church, St. Alban’s.]
Engraved by W. Holl.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
From a Bust by Chantrey.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight & Co. Ludgate Street.
SIR W. SCOTT.
Walter Scott was born in the Old Town of Edinburgh, April 15, 1771, in a house at the head of the College Wynd, which has been pulled down to make way for the new buildings of the University. His father was a writer to the signet, his grandfather a farmer resident in Roxburghshire, who traced his descent to the ancient Border family of Scott of Harden. His infancy gave no promise of the robust manhood which he attained: and in addition to general weakness of constitution, his right foot received an early injury, which rendered him lame through life. This delicacy of health induced his parents to send him, when almost an infant, to his grandfather’s farm at Sandyknow in Roxburghshire, adjoining the Border fortress called Smailholm Tower, in the heart of that romantic pastoral district whose scenery and legends he has rendered famous. [[5]]“His residence at this secluded spot, which after early boyhood was, we believe, occasionally renewed during the summer vacations of the High School and College, was undoubtedly fraught with many advantages, physical and mental. It was here that his feeble constitution was, by the aid of free air and exercise, gradually strengthened into robustness; and though he never got rid of his lameness, it was so far overcome as to be in after life rather a deformity than an inconvenience. It was here that his love of ballad lore and border story was fostered into a passion; and it was here doubtless, and at the house of one of his uncles, Mr. Thomas Scott, of Woolee, also a Roxburghshire farmer, that he early acquired that intimate acquaintance with the manners, character, and language of the Scottish peasantry, which he afterwards turned to such admirable account in his novels.”
[5]. This, and the other passages marked with inverted commas, except those taken from Scott’s Autobiography, are derived from a memoir of Sir Walter Scott published in the Penny Magazine, No. 37, and written by Scott’s countryman and acquaintance, the late Mr. Pringle.
In October, 1779, he entered the High School of Edinburgh, which he attended during four years. He there acquired the character of being “a remarkably active and dauntless boy, full of all manner of fun, and ready for all manner of mischief;” and so far from being timid or quiet on account of his lameness, that very defect, (as he himself remarked to be usually the case in similar circumstances with boys of enterprising disposition) prompted him to take the lead among all the stirring boys in the street where he lived, or the school which he attended. In Greek and Latin he made little progress, and obtained little credit for talent or industry from his masters; but he has invoked his surviving school-fellows, in the Introduction to the last edition of the Waverley Novels, “to bear witness that I had a distinguished character for talent as a tale-teller, at a time when the applause of my companions was the recompense for the disgraces and punishments which the future romance-writer incurred for being idle himself, and keeping others idle, during hours of the day that should have been employed upon our tasks.”