Scott's Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott

Walter Scott, the ninth of a family of twelve children, was born at Edinburgh in August, 1771. His first consciousness of existence dated from the time when he was sent, a lame, delicate child, to Sandyknowe, the residence of his paternal grandfather. Here he “was often carried out and laid down beside the old shepherd among the crags or rocks round which he fed his sheep.” If Scott’s genius was late in flowering, who can say that the budding did not begin in that early, close companionship with the Highland country which he was to reproduce so vividly in his verse and fiction?
With strength increased by open-air life, although still slightly lame, we find him later a sturdy, active, not over-studious boy at school at Edinburgh and Kelso, and at fifteen beginning in his father’s office the legal studies which he continued at the university.
Referring to the time after leaving the high school, when he made the acquaintance of Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” Percy’s “Reliques,” and the best works of English fiction, Scott says, “To this period I can trace distinctly the awakening of that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never deserted me. From this time [Pg 6] the love of natural beauty, more especially when combined with ancient ruins or remains of our fathers’ piety or splendor, became within me an insatiable passion, which, if circumstances had permitted, I would willingly have gratified by traveling half over the globe.”