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Some Account of the Life and Works of Sir Walter Scott
Some Account of the Life and Works of Sir Walter Scott Author:Allan Cunningham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: two years old, he received a fall out of the arms of a careless nurse, which injured his right foot, and rendered him lame for life : this accident did not other... more »wise affect his health. He was, as I have heen informed by a lady who chanced to live near him, a remarkably active and dauntless boy ; full of all manner of fun, and ready for all manner of mischief. He calls himself, in one of his introductions to Marmion, A self-willed imp; a grandame's child. And I have heard it averred, that the circumstance of his lame foot prompted him to take the lead among all the stirring boys in the street where he lived, or the school which he attended. He desired, perhaps, to show them, that there was a spirit which could triumph over all impediments. He was taught the rudiments of knowledge by his mother, and was placed afterwards under Dr. Adam, of the High School: no one, however, has recorded any anecdote of his early talents. Adam considered him rather dull than otherwise; but Hugh Blair, it is said, at one of the examinations, foretold his future eminence. I have not heard this confirmed by anything like good authority ; the author of the ' Belles Lettres' was not reckoned so very discerning. The remark of Burns is better authenticated ; the poet, while at Professor Ferguson's one day, was struck by some lines attached to a print of a soldier dying in the snow, and inquired who was the author; none of the old or the learned spoke, when the future author of Marmion answered, " They are by Langhorne." Burns fixed his large bright eyes on the boy, and striding up to him, said, " It is no common course of reading, which has taught you this. This lad," said he to the company," will be heard of yet." Of his acquirements at school, I can say little: I never heard scholars praise his learn...« less