To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;
’Tis my delight, alone, in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.”
If one were asked what four lines of his poetry best convey the feeling of the whole, the reply must be that these are to be found in his “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,”—lines written about “the good Lord Clifford.”
“Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,—
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
[5.] Walter Scott (1771-1832), poet and novelist, the son of a Scotch attorney (called in Edinburgh a W.S. or Writer to H.M.’s Signet), was born there in the year 1771. He was educated at the High School, and then at the College—now called the University—of Edinburgh. In 1792 he was called to the Scottish Bar, or became an “advocate.” During his boyhood, he had had several illnesses, one of which left him lame for life. Through those long periods of sickness and of convalescence, he read Percy’s ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry,’ and almost all the romances, old plays, and epic poems that have been published in the English language. This gave his mind and imagination a set which they never lost all through life.
[6.] His first publications were translations of German poems. In the year 1805, however, an original poem, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, appeared; and Scott became at one bound the foremost poet of the day. Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, and other poems, followed with great rapidity. But, in 1814, Scott took it into his head that his poetical vein was worked out; the star of Byron was rising upon the literary horizon; and he now gave himself up to novel-writing. His first novel, Waverley, appeared anonymously in 1814. Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, and others, quickly followed; and, though the secret of the authorship was well kept both by printer and publisher, Walter Scott was generally believed to be the writer of these works, and he was frequently spoken of as “the Great Unknown.” He was made a baronet by George IV. in 1820.