the University, he became noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic
memory,--the rich stores of romantic material with which it was
loaded,--his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose,--his
delight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises,--his great enjoyment
of youthful "rows," so long as they did not divide the knot of friends to
which he belonged, and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set.
During his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slender
allowance with funds which he could devote to his favourite studies, was
to earn money by copying, and he tells us himself that he remembered
writing "120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest,"
fourteen or fifteen hours' very hard work at the very least,--expressly
for this purpose.

In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, at about the age of
sixteen, he had an attack of hæmorrhage, no recurrence of which took
place for some forty years, but which was then the beginning of the
end. During this illness silence was absolutely imposed upon him,--two
old ladies putting their fingers on their lips, whenever he offered
to speak. It was at this time that the lad began his study of the
scenic side of history, and especially of campaigns, which he
illustrated for himself by the arrangement of shells, seeds, and
pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies, in the manner
referred to (and referred to apparently in anticipation of a later
stage of his life than that he was then speaking of) in the passage
from the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_ which I have
already given. He also managed so to arrange the looking-glasses in
his room as to see the troops march out to exercise in the meadows, as
he lay in bed. His reading was almost all in the direction of military
exploit, or romance and mediæval legend and the later border songs of
his own country. He learned Italian and read Ariosto. Later he learned