Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/326

462 and possessed a small property to which he succeeded by inheritance. He was an upright and intelligent man, but through a series of misfortunes became greatly reduced in circumstances in the latter part of his life.

The subject of this memoir received the earlier part of his education at the parish school of Dalmeny, then kept by a Mr Riddel, a respectable and successful teacher. At this seminary young Wilkie gave many proofs of a lively and rigorous fancy, and of that genius for poetry which afterwards distinguished him. Before he had passed his tenth year, he had written some little poetical sketches of considerable promise.

At the age of thirteen, he was sent to the university of Edinburgh. Here he also distinguished himself by the superiority of his talents, and in particular by the progress he made in classical acquirements, and in the study of theology. He had the good fortune, likewise, while attending college, to form intimacies with some of the most celebrated men of the last century. Amongst these were Dr Robertson, David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Home. Mr Mackenzie, in his life of the last mentioned individual, says that Wilkie's friends all spoke of him as "superior in genius to any man of his time, but rough and unpolished in his manners, and still less accommodating to the decorum of society in the ordinary habits of his life. Charles Townsend, a very competent judge of men," continues the biographer, "and who, both as a politician and a man of the world, was fond of judging them, said, after being introduced to Wilkie, and spending a day with him at Dr Carlyle's, that he had never met with a man who approached so near to the two extremes of a god nnd a brute as Dr Wilkie."

While prosecuting his studies at Edinburgh, Wilkie lost his father, who died in straitened circumstances, but left his son the stock and unexpired lease of a farm at Fishers' Tryste, a few miles south of the city, burdened, however, with the charge of maintaining his three sisters, who were otherwise wholly unprovided for; Wilkie, in consequence of this event, became a farmer; but, unwilling to trust entirely to that profession for his future subsistence, he con- tinued, while conducting the business of his farm, to prosecute his studies in divinity, and eventually was licensed as a preacher of the gospel, although some years elapsed before he obtained a church. Previously to his assumption of the gown, he had made himself an expert farmer, and so remarkable was he, in particular, for his successful culture of the potatoe, then but indifferently understood, that he obtained the facetious by-name of the potatoe minister. But, while he claimed and really possessed the merit of being a superior agriculturist to any of his neighbours, he always acknowledged that he was their inferior in the art of trafficking; and the manner in which he made this boast and acknowledged this inferiority was characteristic of the man; "I can raise crops," he would say, "better than any of my neighbours, but I am always cheated in the market."

While pursuing his farming occupations at Fishers' Tryste, which he did with the most laudable industry and perseverance, labouring much and frequently with his own hands, he did not neglect those studies which his classical education had placed within his reach. It was here, and while labouring with scythe and sickle, ploughing and harrowing, that he conceived, and, at intervals of leisure, in part wrote, his poem of "The Epigoniad;" the work which acquired him what celebrity he possesses.

Through the influence of Mr Lind, sheriff-substitute of Mid Lothian, who resided in his neighbourhood, and who knew of and appreciated his abilities, Mr Wilkie obtained the appointment of assistant and successor to Mr Guthrie, minister of Ratho. To this office he was ordained by the presbytery on the