Page:History of Jock Haxton.pdf/3



JOCK HAXTON.

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TOWARDS the middle of last century; there lived, at no great distance from us, in a neighbouring county, an eccentric fellow of the name of HAXTON. Many amusing anecdotes are told of him; and few perhaps, in the district in which he lived, were oftener, to use a common phrase, in the mouth of the country. It is difficult now to form a correct estimate of his character, but, so far as we have been able to discover, he had displayed many of the eccentricities of genius, and not little of its power. His imagination was fertile, his elocution easy and unaffected, and his ideas always wild, and not unfrequently original. He posses- sed the power of mimickry to an extent but rarely paralleled, and his memory, when compared with that of other ordinary men, seemed absolutely perfect. With such fac- ulties, Jock Haxton was obviously no ord- inary character, and under proper training might, it is possible, have been raised to eminence. But nature had not been equally