Little Walter’s father was a kindly Scots lawyer, but he came of a good old Border family, “A hardy race who never shrunk from war."* Among his forbears had been wild moss-troopers and cattle-reivers, lairds of their own lands, as powerful as kings in their own countryside.  There were stories enough of their bold and daring deeds to fill many books, so that we feel that Walter had been born into a heritage of Romance.

Leyden.

Walter was a strong, healthy child, but when he was about eighteen months old he had an illness which left him lame in his right leg.  Everything was done that could be done to restore the lost power, and although it was partly regained, Scott walked with a limp to the end of his days.  Meanwhile he had a by no means unhappy childhood.  He spent a great deal of time at the farm belonging to his grandfather.  Little Wat was a winsome laddie, and the whole household loved him.  On fine days he was carried out and laid down among the crags and rocks, beside an old shepherd who tended his sheep and little Walter too, telling him strange tales the while—­

    “Of forayers, who, with headlong force,
    Down from that strength had spurr’d their horse,

    Their southern rapine to renew,
    Far in the distant Cheviots blue,
    And, home returning, fill’d the hall
    With revel, wassel-rout, and brawl."*

    Marmion.

At other times Walter listened to the stories of his grandmother, hearing all about the wild doings of his forbears, or the brave deeds of Bruce and Wallace.  He was taken to the seaside, to Bath, and to London, and at length, grown into a sturdy little boy, though still lame, he went back to his father’s house in Edinburgh.  Here he says he soon felt the change from being a single indulged brat, to becoming the member of a large family.

He now went to school, but did not show himself to be very clever.  He was not a dunce, but an “incorrigibly idle imp,” and in spite of his lameness he was better at games than at lessons.  In some ways, owing to his idleness, he was behind his fellows, on the other hand he had read far more than they.  And now he read everything he could, in season and out of season.  Pope’s Homer, Shakespeare, Ossian, and especially Spenser were among his favorites.  Then one happy day he came upon a volume of Percy’s Reliques.  All one summer day he read and read, forgetting the world, forgetting even to be hungry.  After that he was for ever entertaining his schoolfellows with scraps of tragic ballads, and as soon as he could scrape enough money together, he bought a copy of the book for himself.

So the years passed, Walter left school, went to Edinburgh University, and began to study law.  It was at this time, as a boy of sixteen, that for the first and only time he met Robert Burns, who had just come to Edinburgh, and was delighted at receiving a kind word and look from the poet.  He still found time to read a great deal, to ride, and to take long, rambling walks, for, in spite of his limp, he was a great walker and could go twenty or thirty miles.  Indeed he used to tramp the countryside so far and so long that his father would say he feared his son was born to be nothing better than a wandering peddler.