Woolee, also a Roxburghshire farmer, that he early acquired that intimate acquaintance with the manners, character, and language of the Scottish peasantry, which he afterwards turned to such admirable account in his novels.” Footnote 5: This, and the other passages marked with inverted commas, except those taken from Scott’s Autobiography, are derived from a memoir of Sir Walter Scott published in the Penny Magazine, No. 37, and written by Scott’s countryman and acquaintance, the late Mr. Pringle. In October, 1779, he entered the High School of Edinburgh, which he attended during four years. He there acquired the character of being “a remarkably active and dauntless boy, full of all manner of fun, and ready for all manner of mischief;” and so far from being timid or quiet on account of his lameness, that very defect, (as he himself remarked to be usually the case in similar circumstances with boys of enterprising disposition) prompted him to take the lead among all the stirring boys in the street where he lived, or the school which he attended. In Greek and Latin he made little progress, and obtained little credit for talent or industry from his masters; but he has invoked his surviving school-fellows, in the Introduction to the last edition of the Waverley Novels, “to bear witness that I had a distinguished character for talent as a tale-teller, at a time when the applause of my companions was the recompense for the disgraces and punishments which the future romance-writer incurred for being idle himself, and keeping others idle, during hours of the day that should have been employed upon our tasks.”