Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/31



was born at Glasgow on the thirteenth day of October, 1797. He was the third son of William Motherwell, a native of Stirlingshire, who settled in that city about the year 1792 where he followed the business of an ironmonger, His mother's name was Elizabeth Barnet, the daughter of William Barnet, a respectable farmer in the parish of Auchterarder, in Perthshire, who, at her father's death, inherited a little fortune of two thousand pounds. Early in the present century his father removed with his family to Edinburgh where his son was placed under the charge of Mr William Lennie, an eminent teacher of English in that city, and the author of several useful and popular school-books; and it was while attending this school that the boy met 'Jeanie Morrison,' a mild and bashful girl whose name he afterwards immortalised, and of whose gentle nature