ike him turned my eyes to behold madness
and folly, and like him, too, frequently shaken hands with their
intoxicating friendship.--After you have perused these pages, should
you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you,
that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of
conscience, arising from a suspicion that he was doing what he ought
not to do; a predicament he has more than once been in before.

I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which
the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at
Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the herald's office; and,
looking through that granary of honours, I there found almost every
name in the kingdom; but for me,

"My ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood."

POPE.

Gules, purpure, argent, &c., quite disowned me.

My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was
thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where, after many
years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large
quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for
most of my little pretensions to wisdom--I have met with few who
understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but
stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility,
are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor
man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was
gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of
Ayr. Had he continued in that station I must have marched off to be
one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his
dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children
under his own eye, till they could discern between good and evil; so,
with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a
small farm on his estate. At those years, I was by no means a
favourite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive
memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an
enthusiastic idiot[175] piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then
but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made
an excellent English, scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven
years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In
my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who
resi