Born 1771.—Died 1832.—George III.—George IV.—William IV.

One of the most extraordinary literary men on record. He was born in Edinburgh, and intended for the law, and practised for a short time in Edinburgh; but his literary genius asserted itself too strongly to allow of any other pursuit. His Border Minstrelsy was succeeded by longer poems—the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the Lady of the Lake, Lord of the Isles, Marmion, and others; and these again by a succession of novels, all differing in their rich abundance of character and incident, and all possessing a charm which few other works of fiction can even now present. He bought a property called Abbotsford, on the Tweed, and having fallen into difficulties through the failure of one of his publishers, he ruined his health by excessive work to pay his debts. Scott is often called, from the enchantment of his genius, “The Wizard of the North.”