judging of the character of others was shown, too, even as a school-boy; and once it led him to take an advantage which caused him many compunctions in after-life, whenever he recalled his skilful puerile tactics.  On one occasion—­I tell the story as he himself rehearsed it to Samuel Rogers, almost at the end of his life, after his attack of apoplexy, and just before leaving England for Italy in the hopeless quest of health—­he had long desired to get above a schoolfellow in his class, who defied all his efforts, till Scott noticed that whenever a question was asked of his rival, the lad’s fingers grasped a particular button on his waistcoat, while his mind went in search of the answer.  Scott accordingly anticipated that if he could remove this button, the boy would be thrown out, and so it proved.  The button was cut off, and the next time the lad was questioned, his fingers being unable to find the button, and his eyes going in perplexed search after his fingers, he stood confounded, and Scott mastered by strategy the place which he could not gain by mere industry.  “Often in after-life,” said Scott, in narrating the manoeuvre to Rogers, “has the sight of him smote me as I passed by him; and often have I resolved to make him some reparation, but it ended in good resolutions.  Though I never renewed my acquaintance with him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh.  Poor fellow!  I believe he is dead; he took early to drinking."[4]

Scott’s school reputation was one of irregular ability; he “glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to the other,” and received more praise for his interpretation of the spirit of his authors than for his knowledge of their language.  Out of school his fame stood higher.  He extemporized innumerable stories to which his school-fellows delighted to listen; and, in spite of his lameness, he was always in the thick of the “bickers,” or street fights with the boys of the town, and renowned for his boldness in climbing the “kittle nine stanes” which are “projected high in air from the precipitous black granite of the Castle-rock.”  At home he was much bullied by his elder brother Robert, a lively lad, not without some powers of verse-making, who went into the navy, then in an unlucky moment passed into the merchant service of the East India Company, and so lost the chance of distinguishing himself in the great naval campaigns of Nelson.  Perhaps Scott would have been all the better for a sister a little closer to him than Anne—­sickly and fanciful—­appears ever to have been.  The masculine side of life appears to predominate a little too much in his school and college days, and he had such vast energy, vitality, and pride, that his life at this time would have borne a little taming under the influence of a sister thoroughly congenial to him.  In relation to his studies he was wilful, though not perhaps perverse.  He steadily declined, for instance, to learn Greek, though