THE WEEK'S GREAT DAY

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 8

THE WEEK'S GREAT DAY

SEPTEMBER 21.—DEATH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. (Copyrighted.) Ninety-seven years ago, 011 September 21. 1532, Sir Walter Scott, the most famous poet, novelist and biographer of his day. and one of the great outstanding figures in the annals of English literature, died f.-i the age of sixty-one. He was born in the city of Edinburgh on August 15, 1771, and he passed his early childhood on his grandfather's farm in Roxburghshire, where he was sent to recuperate from a severe feye r > which left him with a permanent lameness. While there he became imbued with the passion for the romantic legends of his country which was destined to exercisd such a powerful influence on his work in later life. He was educated at the high school and the University in Edinburgh, and at the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to his father, who was a Writer to the Signet. Soon afterwards he commenced to study for the Bar, to which he was called in 1792. 'Although he worked hard as a lawver, Scott's f-deal was not to establish an extensive practice but to make his legal training and experience Ihe means of securing him an official appointment, which would provide him with an assured income and give him ample leisure to indulge his long-cherished ambition to eiigage in literary work. He achieved his purpose in 1799, for in that year he was appointed a deputysheriff with a yearly salary of £300, and with but little work to do to earn it, while seven years later he secured a second post as Clerk of the Sessions, which increased his official income to £1000 a year. In 1795 he. had commenced his literary career with the publication of some translated German ballads, but it was not until 1806 that he produced his first great original work "The Lay of the Last Minstrel/' which established him as a poet of the first rank. In the same year he commenced to write "Waverley," but the unfavourable criticism of a friend resulted in the manuscript being laid aside for nearly nine years., so that the first of his long series of brilliant novels did not make its appearance until ISI4. The amount of writing which Scott accomplished was really marvellous, both in quality and quantity, and it "seems almost incredible that one man could have produced such a vast number of poems, novels, biographies, histories and miscellaneous works. The enormous strain at leiigth j affected his health, and in ISI7 he was stricken j down by the first of the seizures which darkened j the last' fifteen years of his life. During a commercial crisis in IS2O the publish- ! ing and printing firms in which Scott was finan- j cialiy interested became bankrupt, and lie, at the asre of -fifty-five, and with failing health, found himself involved in liabilities amounting to £130.000. Notwithstanding the crushing magnitude of this disaster, which was accentuated by the. death of his wife, whom he had married in 1795, he set himself the herculean task of working off his debts, with the result that within the space of the first two years lie earned £40,000 for the benefit of his creditors. He continued his gallant struggle until IS3O, in which year his overworked brain gave way and he suffered several paralytic seizures. During tempornrv rallies ?n the following year he produced two more novels, but he was a doomed man, and finally he was taken to the Mediterranean for 'jhahiie arid rest, tin Government placing a frigate it his disposal for the journey. He, however, lined for his own beloved home, to which he •etiinied in July, 1532, and it was there that he iied two months later.