Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/97

Rh or the birthplace of some poet or warrior, all alike interested him. In pursuit of some such object he would often leave his work for days together. He was fortunately an excellent pedestrian, and could walk forty miles a-day with ease; for in those days the facilities of railway travelling did not exist. Kemp was an ardent admirer of our older poets. Chaucer, Sir David Lindsay, and Drummond, were his favourites; Burns he could almost repeat by heart; and he wrote occasional verses himself. Nor did he entirely neglect his musical powers. He was fond of the violin, and could bring out his favourite Scotch airs on that instrument with taste and feeling. Kemp, therefore, while following his humble calling, was recognized by his immediate friends as a man of genius; and, during the whole period of his residence in Edinburgh, he was on terms of closest intimacy with the family of his employer, with whom, on all festive occasions, he was a welcome guest.

Having learned, in this manner, all that Britain could teach him in the science of Gothic architecture, Mr. Kemp resolved to carry his researches into a more ample field. His design was to travel over Europe, inspecting its ancient remains of architecture, wherever they were to be found, and supporting himself, during his stay in the neighbourhood of each, by working at his ordinary trade. It was the spirit of the ancient builders, who roamed in companies from land to land, and whose footsteps a thousand years have not erased men who were content to merge their individual names into the band of which they were a part, and into the art which they so devotedly and disinterestedly loved ; and who cared not, if their works only survived to future ages, whether posterity should retain or throw aside the memory of those by whom such permanent sanctuaries for peace and contemplation were created in the midst of universal strife and havoc. It must have been such men as Kemp who were the leaders and master-spirits of such bands. In 1824 he commenced his tour, which extended from Boulogne to Abbeville, to Beauvais, and Paris, halting at each place for some weeks, and studying their architectural remains during every hour of leisure in his handicraft employment. In such a city as Paris his pecuniary difficulties might have been increased but for the demand of English workmen in France for mill machinery; and as Kemp was skilful in this department, he obtained full and profitable employment, so that he could confront the expenses of living in the capital, and study at leisure the details of Notre-Dame, and other less noted structures. After two years’ travel of this kind in England and France, Kemp, on returning to Edinburgh, commenced business as a joiner, but was unsuccessful—and could he well be otherwise, when his heart was neither in the wood-yard nor at the planing-board? His hand, indeed, was more conversant at this time with the pencil than with axe or saw; and he was busy in the study of drawing and perspective, in which he soon became a proficient without the aid of a master. Having been unsuccessful in business as a master-joiner, Kemp returned to his former station as journeyman, to which he added the employment of an architectural draughtsman; and such was now the superior beauty and correctness of his drawings, that they soon found purchasers. One of the commissions of this kind he received was from Mr. Burn, the eminent architect, by whom ho was employed to copy some of the working-drawings for the palace proposed to be built at Dalkeith, as the future mansion for the princely house of Buccleuch. Instead, however, of proceeding with the drawings, he set about modelling a section of the building in wood, and with such success, and so greatly to the satisfaction of the architect, Mr. Burn, that