[4] General Preface, p. ii.

This excellence in tale-telling drew Scott’s attention from graver studies; but it was an indication of genius which may be regarded as the corner-stone of his future fame.  This reminds us of Steele’s idea, that “a story-teller is born as well as a poet.”  Scott, about this time, received some instructions in music, which was then considered a branch of ordinary education in Scotland; but the future poet, to use a familiar expression, wanted “an ear.”  Throughout life he, however, was highly susceptible of the delights of music, though his own execution was confined to a single song, with which he attempted to enliven the social board, but, it is stated, with such unmusical oddity as to content his hearers with a single specimen of his vocal talent.  His early rambles around the “hills and holms of the border,” is said to have kindled in Scott the love of painting landscapes, not strictly in accordance with the rules of art, though certainly from nature herself.  Such attempts in art, by the way, are by no means uncommon in the early lives of men of genius; and, they are to be regarded, in many instances as their earliest appreciation of the beauties of nature.

In 1783, Scott was placed at the University of Edinburgh, where his studies were as irregular as at the High School:  at the latter he is said to have made his first attempt at versification in the description of a thunderstorm in six lines, the recital of which afforded his mother considerable pleasure and promise; and, on another occasion, he is stated to have remarked, during a journey over a sterile district of Scotland, in a day of drizzling rain, “It is only nature weeping for the barrenness of her soil.”

LOVE OF READING.

Scott’s early love of reading is described to have been of enthusiastic character, and to have been fostered by an accident at this period of his life.  He had just given over the amusements of boyhood, and began to prepare himself for the serious business of life, or the study of the law, when, to use his own words, “a long illness threw him back on the kingdom of fiction, as it were by a species of fatality.”  His autobiography of this period is extremely interesting:—­“My indisposition arose in part at least, from my having broken a blood-vessel; and motion and speech were for a long time pronounced positively dangerous.  For several weeks I was confined strictly to my bed, during which time I was not allowed to speak above a whisper, to eat more than a spoonful or two of boiled rice, or to have more covering than one thin counterpane.  When the reader is informed that I was at this time a growing youth, with the spirits, appetite, and impatience of fifteen, and suffered, of course, greatly under this severe regimen, which the repeated return of my disorder rendered indispensable, he will not be surprised that I was abandoned to my own discretion, so far as reading (my almost sole amusement) was concerned, and still less so, that I abused the indulgence which left my time so much at my own disposal.