Page:The Monastery, Volume 1 - Scott (1820).djvu/13

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INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE.
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for Captain Grose, an excellent antiquary, though, like yourself, somewhat too apt to treat with levity his own pursuits:

'Tis said he was a soldier bred,And one wad rather fa'an than fled;But now he has quit the spurtle blade,And dog-skin wallet,And ta'en the—antiquarian trade,I think they call it.

I never could conceive what influenced me, when a boy, in the choice of a profession. Military zeal and ardour it was not, which made me stand out for a commission in the Scots Fuzileers, when my tutors and curators wished to bind me apprentice to old David Stiles, Clerk to his Majesty's Signet. I say, military zeal it was not; for I was no fighting boy in my own person, and cared not a penny to read the history of the heroes who turned the world upside down in former ages. As for courage, I had, as I have since discovered, just as much of it as served my turn, and not one grain of surplus. I soon found out, indeed, that in ac-

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