uential of north-country booksellers,
with disinterested kindness in my behalf. The late Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder, too, resident at that time at his seat of Relugas in Moray, lent
me, unsolicited, his influence; and, distinguished by his fine taste and
literary ability, he ventured to pledge both in my favour. I also
received much kindness from the late Miss Dunbar of Boath--a literary
lady of the high type of the last age, and acquainted in the best
literary circles, who, now late in life, admitted amid her select
friends one friend more, and cheered me with many a kind letter, and
invited my frequent visits to her hospitable mansion. If, in my course
as a working man, I never incurred pecuniary obligation, and never spent
a shilling for which I had not previously laboured, it was certainly not
from want of opportunity afforded me. Miss Dunbar meant what she said,
and oftener than once did she press her purse on my acceptance. I
received much kindness, too, from the late Principal Baird. The
venerable Principal, when on one of his Highland journeys--benevolently
undertaken in behalf of an educational scheme of the General Assembly,
in the service of which he travelled, after he was turned of seventy,
more than eight thousand miles--had perused my Verses and Letters; and,
expressing a strong desire to know their author, my friend the editor of
the _Courier_ despatched one of his apprentices to Cromarty, to say that
he thought the opportunity of meeting with such a man ought not to be
neglected. I accordingly went up to Inverness, and had an interview with
Dr. Baird. I had known him previously by name as one of the
correspondents of Burns, and the editor of the best edition of the poems
of Michael Bruce; and, though aware at the time that his estimate of
what I had done was by much too high, I yet felt flattered by his
notice. He urged me to quit the north for Edinburgh. The capital
furnished, he said, the proper field for a literary man in Scotland.
What between the employment furnished by the newspapers and the
magazines, he was sure I would effect a lodgment, and work my way up;
and until I gave the thing a fair trial, I would, of course, come and
live with him. I felt sincerely grateful for his kindness, but declined
the invitation. I did think it possible, that in some subordinate
capacity--as a concocter of paragraphs, or an abridger of Parliamentary
debates, or even as a writer of occasional articles--I might find mor