Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/298

434 occasionally got from his library a reading of other works of the same kind. With these I used to retire into some of the concealed places on the banks of the Nith, and pass my leisure hours in reading, and occasionally tried my hand in writing rhymes myself. My business at this time consisted chiefly in driving stones, from a distance of two or three miles, to build bridges and sewers. This occupation gave me a further opportunity of perusing books, and although, from the desultory nature of my reading, I made no proficiency in any one thing, I acquired a sort of smattering knowledge of many, and a desire to learn more. From this period, indeed, I date the commencement of my literary pursuits.

"On my return home, the first use I made of the money I had saved was to purchase a copy of Bailey's Dictionary, and a copy of Burn's English grammar. With these I began to instruct myself in the principles of the English language, in the best way I could.

"At this time, my brother John, who had been in Glasgow for several years, following the business of a joiner and cabinet-maker, came home, with the design of beginning business for himself in the country. It was proposed that I should join him. This was very agreeable to me. I had, at that time, no vifc'vs of anything higher; and it accorded well with the first bent of my mind, which was strongly inclined to mechanics. If of late all my spare hours had been devoted to reading, at an earlier period they had been equally devoted to mechanics. When very young, I had erected a turning lath in my father's barn; had procured planes, chisels, and a variety of other implements, which I could use with no small degree of dexterity.

"For some time my mind was wholly occupied with my new trade. I acquired considerable knowledge and facility in constructing most of the different implements used in husbandry, and could also do a little as a cabinetmaker. But I soon began to feel less and less interest in my new employment. My business came to be a repetition of the same tiling, and lost all its charms of novelty and invention. The taste for reading, which I had brought from the south, though it had suffered some abatement, had not left me. I was occasionally poring over my dictionary and grammar, and other volumes that came in my way.

"At this time, a circumstance occurred which gave my mind an entirely new bent. My brother, while at Glasgow, had formed a very close intimacy with a student there. This young gentleman, during the vacation, came out to see my brother, and pass a few days in the country. From him I received marvellous accounts of what mighty things were to be learned, what wonders to be seen about a university; and I imbibed an unquenchable desire to follow his course."

Here his own account of himself closes, and what we have to add must of course be deficient in that interest which attaches itself to all personal memoirs that are written with frankness and sincerity. The newly-imbibed desire of an academical education, to which he alludes, was not transient in its character. To prepare himself for its accomplishment, he laid aside as much of his earnings as he could spare, and applied himself, in the intervals of manual occupation, to the Latin and Greek languages. It was not long ere he thus qualified himself for beginning his course at the university. In 1793, at the age of eighteen, he matriculated in the Glasgow college, under professor Richardson; and, from that period, went regularly through the successive classes in the university, up to the year 1797. During the summer recesses, he supported himself by teaching, at first as a private tutor; but latterly he took up a small public school in the village of Symington, in Ayrshire. It was his first