is five sons English and
Latin, writing, book-keeping, with a tincture of mathematics, and that I
instructed his daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of any fee or
honorarium received from him on account of these my labours, except the
compotations aforesaid. Nevertheless this compensation suited my humour
well, since it is a hard sentence to bid a dry throat wait till
quarter-day.

But, truly, were I to speak my simple conceit and belief, I think my
Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual requisition of
a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was wont to take in my
conversation, which, though solid and edifying in the main, was, like a
well-built palace, decorated with facetious narratives and devices,
tending much to the enhancement and ornament thereof. And so pleased was
my Landlord of the Wallace in his replies during such colloquies, that
there was no district in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar, and, as it were,
distinctive custom therein practised, but was discussed betwixt us;
insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was worth a bottle
of ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a few travellers,
from distant parts, as well as from the remote districts of our kingdom,
were wont to mingle in the conversation, and to tell news that had been
gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in this our own.
Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes with a
young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated
for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license of presbytery, his voice
opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden
tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy,
whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the
example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but
formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding
whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid
him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution
prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the
celebrated Dr. John Donne:

Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age
Turn ballad rhyme.

I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a flowing
a