"Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts,
Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-knee'd, sharp-elbow'd, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghastly shanks,—forms which, once seen,
Could never be forgotten."
I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life,—the art of holding converse with books; and was transferred to the grammar school of the parish, at which there attended at the time about a hundred and twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more, much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the counting, seeing that it consisted only of lassies.
One morning, having the master's English rendering of the day's task well fixed in my memory, and no book of amusement to read, I began gossiping with my nearest class-fellow, a very tall boy, who ultimately shot up into a lad of six feet four, and who on most occasions sat beside me, as lowest in the form save one. I told him about the tall Wallace and his exploits; and so effectually succeeded in awakening his curiosity, that I had to communicate to him, from beginning to end, every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel.
My story-telling vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found, no stopping in my course. I had to tell all the stories I had ever heard or read. The demand on the part of my class-fellows was great and urgent; and, setting myself to try my ability of original production, I began to dole out to them long extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abounding in trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho. And finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably succeeded in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous amount, or in laying open gold mines, and then passed a luxurious old age, like that of Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in the midst of confectionery and fruits.
With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort of favorite with the master; and when at the general English lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground common to us, on which the others had not entered. "That, sir," he has said, after the class had just perused, in the school collection, a "Tatler" or "Spectator,"—"that, sir, is a good paper; it's an Addison"; or, "That's one of Steele's, sir"; and on finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes, which I had headed "Poem on Peace," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which served as a pointer, in one hand, and the copy-book brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began his criticism. "That's bad grammar, sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's an ill-spelled word; and there's another; and you have not at all attended to the punctuation; but the general sense of the piece is good,—very good, indeed, sir." And then he added, with a grim smile, "Care, sir, is, I dare say, as you remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more of it on your spelling and your grammar."
WALTER SCOTT,
POET, HISTORIAN, AND NOVELIST OF SCOTLAND.