d continually, even in serious conversation,
jesting most wittily." "Rough-hewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham,
in his "Compleat Gentleman," speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in
old age, "in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring for a
better outside than a rugge-gown girt close about him: yet his inside and
conceipt in poesie was most rich, and his sweetness and facilitie in
verse most excellent." A typical Lowland Scot, as I said just now, he
seems to have absorbed all the best culture which France could afford
him, without losing the strength, honesty, and humour which he inherited
from his Stirlingshire kindred.

The story of his life is easily traced. When an old man, he himself
wrote down the main events of it, at the request of his friends; and his
sketch has been filled out by commentators, if not always favourable, at
least erudite. Born in 1506, at the Moss, in Killearn--where an obelisk
to his memory, so one reads, has been erected in this century--of a
family "rather ancient than rich," his father dead in the prime of
manhood, his grandfather a spendthrift, he and his seven brothers and
sisters were brought up by a widowed mother, Agnes Heriot--of whom one
wishes to know more; for the rule that great sons have great mothers
probably holds good in her case. George gave signs, while at the village
school, of future scholarship; and when he was only fourteen, his uncle
James sent him to the University of Paris. Those were hard times; and
the youths, or rather boys, who meant to become scholars, had a cruel
life of it, cast desperately out on the wide world to beg and starve,
either into self-restraint and success, or into ruin of body and soul.
And a cruel life George had. Within two years he was down in a severe
illness, his uncle dead, his supplies stopped; and the boy of sixteen got
home, he does not tell how. Then he tried soldiering; and was with
Albany's French Auxiliaries at the ineffectual attack on Wark Castle.
Marching back through deep snow, he got a fresh illness, which kept him
in bed all winter. Then he and his brother were sent to St. Andrews,
where he got his B.A. at nineteen. The next summer he went to France
once more; and "fell," he says, "into the flames of the Lutheran sect,
which was then spreading far and wide." Two years of penury followed;
and then three years of school-mastering in the College of St. Barbe,
which he has immortalised--at least, for the f