for which he is himself partly responsible, by his deprecatory allusions to lack of scholarship, and which is partly due to Lockhart’s more conventional prejudices.
His own statement is that he returned to Edinburgh from Prestonpans sometime after his seventh birthday (August 1778) and that he accompanied his brothers to the Edinburgh High School before the end of that year, where he was put into the second class, and found himself rather behind his class-mates, both in age and studies. Previously, he and his brothers had received home lessons in Latin from a private tutor. The possible interval for this private tuition appears short, and the suggestion occurs again that he might have had a period of home life during the earlier winter, but, in any event, his systematic education commenced before he was at an advanced age. But we must not overlook two facts if we are to assess his own and Lockhart’s references justly. Education at that period meant primarily a knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages and literatures. If you had received that teaching you were educated: if you hadn’t you weren’t. Also, it was customary to commence this education at a very early age. The age (we might almost say the childhood) of his brother Robert when he became a midshipman in Rodney’s navy is illuminating. Rodney himself had entered the navy when he was twelve. It is true that midshipmen of that age were expected to continue their studies—more or less—when they were not commanding a boat’s crew, or carrying powder up from the magazine. More or less—and in times of active service less rather than more. It is evident that if you wished to make sure of acquiring the classical languages it was the safest way to commence young.
The conventional definition of education might have been worse, but lacked breadth. Walter Scott gained a good knowledge of Latin, and several other languages, but he never learned Greek. That was regrettable, as all ignorance is. But to obtain a correct perspective we must recognise that if he had learnt more Greek he must have learnt less of something else. The human mind cannot be occupied with two things at once. He was of an immense intellectual industry. His mind worked best on subjects which interested it most, as is the common experience. He had an extraordinary memory. He reached a prodigious scholarship. It was his gain and ours that it was not entirely on conventional lines. Lockhart appears to recognise this possibility in one luminous sentence. “As may be said, I believe, with perfect truth of every really great man, Scott was self-educated in every branch of knowledge which he ever turned to account in the works of his genius.” The crowding superlatives of this sentence are an example of Lockhart’s style at its worst, and its over-statement approaches nonsense, but it shows that he saw the truth for a moment, though (as often) he lacked the self-confidence and independence of mind that would have enabled him to do justice to his own perceptions. Lockhart constantly overestimates the influence of environment, and overvalues the conventional standards of the moment. Conversely, for all his admirable compilation of details, he fails to appreciate, though he sometimes mentions, the independence and force which may often be obscured by the tolerant breadth of Scott’s emotional and intellectual sympathies.
Anyway, if we accept Scott’s own memory, at the age of seven-and-a-half he was in the second class of the Edinburgh High School, studying Latin with about eighty other children, most of whom were rather older, and knew more. The boys were not seated alphabetically, but were arranged according to their real or estimated ability, and he found himself near the foot of the class with some dull-witted seniors. He accepted this position and companionship very cheerfully. His mind was full of many things beside the study of Latin. It was occupied with romantic imaginations, and the intoxicating music of words. The fascination of the art which weds emotion and imagination to verbal melody caused him to love the reciting aloud of the poetry which he memorised so readily. But he had learned already that this might arouse derision in minds incapable of its appreciation, and he would prefer to recite in solitude, being sensitive to ridicule at this time, as children are.
That he did not advance more rapidly in the study of a dead language was owing to no lack of parental effort. His father supplemented the High School teaching of his sons by engaging a tutor, a Mr. James Mitchell, who assisted them in the preparation of their home tasks, and taught writing and arithmetic also. He had been the minister of a sea-port kirk, and had quarrelled with his congregation on the question of whether their fishing-boats should set sail on the Sabbath. They thought it brought them luck, and he thought that damnation would be more likely to follow. Rather than surrender his opinion, he resigned his living. Scott says drily that “the calibre of this young man’s understanding may be judged of by this anecdote”. But the stubborn honesty of his character may have seemed a more important recommendation to the elder Walter, who may also have agreed with him upon the theological aspects of the point on which he wrecked his worldly prospects. For though, in other ways, the household at George’s Square seems to have been driven on a light rein, and with wisdom as well as love, the Sabbath observance was a strict rule, strictly enforced; “and in the end” Scott gave his deliberate tolerant judgement in after years, “it did none of us any good.”
But even Mr. James Mitchell was able to contribute something more than a teaching of arithmetic, and the hearing of lessons in Latin and French. He was a student of the early history of the Church of Scotland, and Walter discovered that knowledge, and took the toll that he extracted from the mental stores of all with whom he came in contact during these early days.
And so life went on for the next three years, during which he developed physically in a manner which enabled him to engage in many active exercises, in spite of the difficulty of a lameness which was now recognised as permanent. And the spirit in which he strove to overcome this physical handicap united with that which caused him to be quicker to help a companion’s task than to excel in his own, to win him a general popularity among his school companions. The experiences of his boyhood contrast with those of many poets of more morbid or egotistic moods during this period of life, and, characteristically, looking back, he attributed his popularity to the natural nobility of the nature of the youthful male. “Boys,” he reflected, “are uncommonly just in their feelings, and at least equally generous.” It is not a proposition to which Shelley would have given a ready assent. It may be doubted whether the idea would have occurred without qualification to Byron, Coleridge, or Wordsworth. Yet it may have at least as much truth as would be contained in a meaner judgement. He offered the courage and generosity of his own nature, and he found ready response.
He gained a reputation also among his companions in those early years for the skill with which he could narrate his ‘inexhaustible’ tales, and there was emulation among them for the privilege of sitting nearest to him at the winter fireside on such occasions....
At the age of ten, he was promoted to the class over which the head of the school, Dr. Adam, himself presided. Dr. Adam may have magnified his office, and his own importance. Watching the careers of the many boys who passed through his class, he may have been disposed to attribute their successes too much to his own exertions, and their failures to an excessive measure of original sin. But it was a fault of zeal, if fault it can be called, and the after-records of his scholars were a legitimate source of pride. He recognised the ability of a sometimes-indolent sometimes-inattentive boy, and succeeded in making him realise that knowledge was worth a disciplined effort to win. During the next two years, Walter gained a proficiency in the construing of the Latin classics which took him into the higher form of the two over which Dr. Adam presided. For the first time, he felt the confidence of scholastic ability, and a new pride of proficiency in studies which he had previously regarded as a boring interference with the independent activities of his own imaginations.
For the first time, also, he owed and recognised a clear debt to the deliberate influence of another mind. Not that he had previously gained nothing from others. But when he had plundered such stores as he considered worth the carrying away from the memories and imaginations of Janet Scott, and Barbara Haliburton, of his mother, Anne Rutherford, and of a score of others, he had done it of his own free will, as a corsair will empty hulls. But he allowed Dr. Adam to lay a hand on his mind’s helm, and to deflect its course. The importance of this was not that he learnt more Latin, though there was gain in that, but that he was induced to discipline his mind, which he found difficult to his life’s end. As is frequent with those of strong imagination, he could not easily concentrate on a set task. His mind was not idle, but of a prodigious activity. It had a restless waywardness which hated harness. Dr. Adam succeeded in convincing