Count, therefore, thus:—
| Youth, twenty-five years | 1771–1796. |
| Labour-time, thirty years | 1796–1826. |
| Death-time, seven years | 1825–1832. |
The great period of mid-life is again divided exactly in the midst by the change of temper which made him accurate instead of fantastic in delineation, and therefore habitually write in prose rather than verse. The ‘Lady of the Lake’ is his last poem, (1810). ‘Rokeby,’ (1812) is a versified novel; the ‘Lord of the Isles’ is not so much. The steady legal and historical work of 1810–1814, issuing in the ‘Essay on Scottish Judicature,’ and the ‘Life of Swift,’ with preparation for his long-cherished purpose of an edition and ‘Life of Pope,’[4] (“the true deacon of the craft,” as Scott often called him,) confirmed, while they restrained and chastised, his imaginative power; and ‘Waverley,’ (begun in 1805) was completed in 1814. The apparently unproductive year of accurate study, 1811, divides the thirty years of mid-life in the precise centre, giving fifteen to song, and fifteen to history.
You may be surprised at my speaking of the novels as history. But Scott’s final estimate of his own work, given in 1830, is a perfectly sincere and perfectly just one; (received, of course, with the allowance I have warned you always to make for his manner of reserve in expressing deep feelings). “He replied[5] that in what he had done for Scotland as a writer, he was no more entitled to the merit which had been ascribed to him than the servant who scours the brasses to the credit of having made them; that he had perhaps been a good housemaid to Scotland, and given the country a ‘rubbing up;’ and in so doing might have deserved some praise for assiduity, and that was all.” Distinguish, however, yourselves, and remember that Scott always tacitly distinguishes, between the industry which deserves praise, and the love which disdains it. You do not praise Old Mortality for his love to his people; you praise him for his patience over a bit of moss in a troublesome corner. Scott is the Old Mortality, not of tables of stone, but of the fleshly tables of the heart.
We address ourselves to-day, then, to begin the analysis of the influences upon him during the first period of twenty-five years, during which he built and filled the treasure-house of his own heart. But this time of youth I must again map out in minor detail, that we may grasp it clearly.
1. From birth to three years old. In Edinburgh, a sickly child; permanent lameness contracted, 1771–1774.
2. Three years old to four. Recovers health at Sandy-Knowe. The dawn of conscious life, 1774–1775.
3. Four years old to five. At Bath, with his aunt, passing through London on the way to it. Learns to read, and much besides, 1775–1776.
4. Five years old to eight. At Sandy-Knowe. Pastoral life in its perfectness forming his character: (an important though short interval at Prestonpans begins his interest in sea-shore), 1776–1779.
5. Eight years old to twelve. School life, under the Rector Adams, at High School of Edinburgh, with his aunt Janet to receive him at Kelso, 1779–1783.