than a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the house to be
fed by him--even in gallops on very rough ground. He became very early
a declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy Knute, he shouted it
forth with such pertinacious enthusiasm that the clergyman of his
grandfather's parish complained that he "might as well speak in a
cannon's mouth as where that child was." At six years of age Mrs.
Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius of a boy, she
ever saw. "He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made
him read on: it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose
with the storm. 'There's the mast gone,' says he; 'crash it goes; they
will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me, 'That is too
melancholy,' says he; 'I had better read you something more amusing.'"
And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "she
was a _virtuoso_ like himself." "Dear Walter," says Aunt Jenny, "what
is a _virtuoso_?" "Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will
know everything." This last scene took place in his father's house in
Edinburgh; but Scott's life at Sandy-Knowe, including even the old
minister, Dr. Duncan, who so bitterly complained of the boy's
ballad-spouting, is painted for us, as everybody knows, in the picture
of his infancy given in the introduction to the third canto of
_Marmion_:--

"It was a barren scene and wild,
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled:
But ever and anon between
Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;
And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruin'd wall.