SCOTT, Thomas (1705-75). An English hymn writer, son of an Independent minister of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. He began preaching when a young man and afterwards held various appointments in Norfolk and Suffolk. Best known of his hymns are "Happy the Meek" and "Hasten, Sinner, to be Wise." Consult his Lyric Poems, Devotional and Moral (1773). He also turned into English verse The Table of Cebes (1754) and The Book of Job (1771). His sister, Elizabeth Scott (1708?-76), likewise wrote many hymns, several of which are still used. To her belongs "All hail. Incarnate God."
SCOTT, Thomas (1747-1821). An English Bible commentator. He was born at Braytoft, Lincolnshire, and spent the early years of his life as a grazier. In 1773 he was ordained priest and became curate in Buckinghamshire; he succeeded John Newton, curate of Olney, in 1781; was chaplain to the Lock hospital in 1785; and rector of Aston Sandford in 1803. Among his publications are: The Force of Truth (1770); The Articles of the Synod of Dort, translated (1818); and his commentary on the Bible (1788-92), which had immense circulation and influence in its day. His collected works appeared in 10 volumes (1823-25), and his Letters and Papers (1824), edited by his son, who also wrote his Life (1822), including in it a valuable autobiographical fragment.
SCOTT, Thomas Alexander (1824-81). An American railroad manager, born at Loudon, Pa. Entering the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1851, he was rapidly promoted, and in 1859 became vice-president. In 1801 he was appointed by President Lincoln Assistant Secretary of War,in which capacity he rendered invaluable services by reorganizing the entire system of transportation. Returning to the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he inaugurated the policy of securing control of Western railway lines for operation in connection with the Pennsylvania system. He was president at different times of various railroad lines, and from 1874 until a short time before his death was president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
SCOTT, Sir Walter (1771-1832). A famous British novelist and poet. He was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 1771, of an old border family; the Scotts of Harden, an offshoot from the House of Buccleuch. Although he grew to be healthy, as a child Scott was sickly; but he grew to be very tall, with bright eyes, a sturdy chest, and powerful arms, and he was thought good-looking. His childhood was passed for the most part at Sandy Knowe, the farm of his grandfather, in Roxburghshire. His early familiarity with the ballads and legends then floating over all that part of the country probably did more than any other influence to determine the sphere of his future literary activity. Between 1778 and 1783 he attended the high school of Edinburgh, where, despite occasional flashes of talent, he shone considerably more as a bold, high-spirited boy, with an odd turn for story-telling, than as a student. In 1783 he began attending the University of Edinburgh, where he continued about two years, it would seem, not greatly to his advantage. Afterwards, at the height of his fame, he was wont to speak with deep regret of his neglect of early opportunities. But, though leaving college scantily furnished with the knowledge formally taught there, he had been hiving up, in his own way, stores of valuable though unassorted information. From his earliest childhood onward he was an insatiable reader; and of what he either read or observed he seems to have forgotten almost nothing. He was a fairly good Latinist; of Greek he knew nothing, but he acquired a serviceable knowledge of French, Italian, Spanish, and German.
In music he showed no talent. In 1786 he was articled apprentice to his father; in 1788 he began to study for the bar, to which he was called in 1792. In his profession he had fair success, and in 1797 he married Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, the daughter of a French refugee, named Jean Charpentier. Toward the end of 1799, through the interest of his friends Lord Melville and the Duke of Buccleuch, he was made sheriff depute of Selkirkshire, an appointment which brought him £300 a year, with not very much to do for it. Meantime, in a tentative and intermittent way, his leisure had been occupied with literature, which more and more distinctly announced itself as the main business of his life. Excepting a disputation on being called to the bar, his first publication, a translation of Bürger's ballads Lenore and The Wild Huntsman, was issued in 1796. In 1799 appeared his translation of Goethe's drama of Götz von Berlichingen; and at this time he was writing for Monk Lewis the fine ballads, Glenfinlas, the Eve of Saint John, and the Grey Brother. In 1802 Scott published the first two volumes of his Border Minstrelsy, which were followed in 1803 by a third and final one. This work, the fruit of those 'raids'—as he called them—over the border counties, in which he had been wont to spend his vacations, won for him at once prominence among the literary men of the time. In 1804 he issued an edition of the old poem Sir Tristram, admirably edited and elucidated by valuable dissertations. Meantime, The Lay of the Last Minstrel had been in progress, and on its publication in 1805 Scott found himself the most popular poet of the day. During the next ten years, besides a mass of miscellaneous work, the most important items of which were elaborate editions of Dryden (1808) and of Swift (1814). including in each case a memoir, he gave to the world the poems Marmion (1808); The Lady of the Lake (1810); The Vision of Don Roderick (1811); Rokeby (1813); The Bridal of Triermain (1813); and The Lord of the Isles (1815). The enthusiasm with which the earlier of these works were received somewhat abated as the series proceeded. The charm of novelty was no longer felt, and the poetry had deteriorated. Moreover, in the bold outburst of Byron, with his deeper vein of sentiment and concentrated energy of passion, a formidable rival had appeared. All this Scott distinctly noted, and after what he felt as the comparative failure of The Lord of the Isles in 1815. he published, with the trivial exception of the anonymous Harold the Dauntless (1817), no more poetry. But already in Waverley. or 'Tis Sixty Years Since, which appeared without his name in 1814, he had achieved the first of a new series of triumphs. Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary (1816), Old Mortality, The Black Dwarf (1817, really 1816), Rob Roy (1818), and The Heart of Midlothian (1818) rapidly followed. The remainder of the famous group known as the Waverley novels form the most
