Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/286

550 same capacity in Anstruther. While thus exalted upon the high tripod of a counting-house, or haggling with borrel discontented farmers upon the price of aits and barley an admirable specimen of the "pursuit of knowledge under difficulties" he was making, by his unaided efforts, and in his moments of leisure, such acquirements as the halls of Oxford or Cambridge would have been proud to have enshrined. Language after language yielded before his onset, whether dead or living, whether barbarous or refined, whether eastern, western, northern, or southern. One startling proof of this desperate indomitable perseverance, as well as peculiar aptitude in acquiring a tongue, was, that in a very few weeks after studying the Gaelic, reckoned the most impracticable of all living languages, he was able to read the whole of the Highland New Testament with ease and fluency.

While William Tennant was thus laudably occupied, a more than ordinary portion of the cares of life interposed to annoy him. The business of a corn-factor, in which his brother was engaged in Anstruther, was unsuccessful, and became involved in such pecuniary responsibilities, that the principal found it advisable to make a hasty retreat, leaving poor William, his substitute, to answer in his stead. This the latter did, not only by enduring incarceration, as if he had been the real debtor, but a large amount of obloquy to boot, from those who went in search of the assets of the business, but could not find them. After the innocent scape-goat had sustained his unmerited share of reproach and imprisonment, he was set free, upon which he retired to his father's humble dwelling. He was soon to emerge into the world in a new character. To his remarkable powers of application and abstraction, by which he was enabled to acquire so many languages, he added the higher qualities of taste and imagination, so that the study of poetry and the occupation of verse making had been alternated with his graver pursuits. He now set himself in earnest to attempt authorship as a poet, and the result was " Anster Fair," not only the first, but the best of all the productions he has given to the world. Its chances of fame were at first extremely precarious, for it appeared in 1811 in a humble unpretending form, and from the obscure press of an Anstruther publisher. It was thus accessible to few except the peasants and shopkeepers of Fife, who had no fitting relish for such poetical caviare; so that, after languishing a year un-noticed it might have passed into oblivion, but for one of those simple accidents that sometimes arrest a work of merit in full transit, and restore it to its proper place. Lord Woodhouselee, the accomplished scholar and critic, having seen the little volume, perused it and to read it, was to admire and appreciate. Anxious to know who the author was for the poem was published anonymously and to make his merits known to the world, he applied to Mr. Cockburn, the Anstruther publisher, for information, in the following letter:

",—I have lately read, with a very high degree of pleasure, a small poetical performance, which, I observe, bears your name as publisher on the title-page. The author of Anster Fair' cannot long remain concealed. It contains, in my opinion, unequivocal marks of strong original genius, a vein of humour of an uncommon cast, united with a talent for natural description of the most vivid and characteristic species, and, above all, a true feeling of the sublime forming altogether one of the most pleasing and singular combinations of the different powers of poetry that I have ever met with. Unless the author has very strong reasons for concealing his name, I must own that I should be much gratified by being informed of it." ."