BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HEW SCOTT, D.D. xiii II. The story of his career can be told in few words. Hew Scott was an admirable illustration of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. Born at Haddington, 5th February 1791, he was the son of Robert Scott, an Excise officer (Scottice, gauger), who counted kin with Sir Walter's own sept of the romantic Border clan. His mother (her husband's second wife) was Catherine Dunbar, a native of Coldingham. Hew took to learn- ing early, " could conjugate amo in his tenth year," and was altogether a promising " lad o' pairts." Dr Lorimer of the First Charge of Hadding- ton encountered him deciphering Latin lines on an old tombstone there. " You'll be a minister yet," said the clergyman, and the words so rang in the boy's ears that he could not sleep. His father died about this time, leaving wife and family practically penniless. The opening of a little shop helped to keep the wolf from the door, and Hew was apprenticed to an ironmonger of the burgh. There is a tradition that he added stationery to his mother's slender stock, hawking that commodity from house to house in the evenings. At twenty we find him blossoming into a bookseller. 1 But the minister's prophecy was coming true. Ambition may have been fostered by the example of George Dunbar, who, from a disabled gardener's boy, found his way to the University, and was rising into fame as a Greek scholar. It is more than likely that Dunbar himself paved the way for his kinsman's entrance on a scholastic career. Hew Scott's name appears in the Edinburgh matriculation album for the first time in Session 1813-14, and for the last time in Session 1819-20. He followed a somewhat unsystematic but comprehensive course—giving attendance on the classes of Humanity, Logic, Greek, Natural Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Scots Law, Anatomy, Surgery, Chemistry, Practice of Medicine, Agriculture, Hebrew, and Divinity. "Had the war con- tinued," he said, " I would have been a doctor in the army instead of a minister of the Kirk." During two sessions he acted as assistant- librarian of the University, and for this service he was rewarded by a remission of the matriculation fee of half a sovereign. It is singular to find him graduating at Aberdeen in preference to Edinburgh. Aberdeen, it seems, was " a more frugal Senatus," and having applied to King's College, the degree of M.A. was conferred, 2nd December 1816, "in 1 The Foundliny, a tale, in verse, by Thomas Adams, Royal Artillery, Drivers. . . . Haddington : Printed for the Author by G. Miller, and sold by Hew Scott, bookseller (1811 ; 70 pp.).