them. When he
began to rally me about my limited knowledge of the world, I knew that
some excursion was in contemplation. We, on one occasion, rode down the
Clyde, finding out, so far as we might, all things, both natural and
artificial, worthy of being seen; and when at Greenock, he was anxious
that we should have gone into the Highlands, but I resisted; for
although not so much as a shade of the expenses was allowed to fall on
me, I felt only the more ashamed of the extent of them.

"I had become acquainted with a number of people whom I delighted to
visit occasionally; one family in particular, who lived amid the beauty
of 'the wild glen sae green.' The song now widely known by this name I
wrote for a member of this delightful family, who at that time herded
one of the _hirsels_ of his father's flocks on 'the heathy hill.' With
the greater number of persons in the district possessing literary tastes
I became more or less intimate. The schoolmasters I found friendly and
obliging; one of these, in particular (now holding a higher office in
the same locality), I often visited. His high poetic taste convinced me
more and more of the value of mental culture, and tended to subdue me
from those more rugged modes of expression in which I took a pride in
conveying my conceptions. With this interesting friend I sometimes took
excursions into rural regions more or less remote, and once we journeyed
to the south, when I had the pleasure of introducing him to the Ettrick
Shepherd. But of my acquaintances, I valued few more than my modest and
poetic friend, the late James Brown of Symington.[2] Though humble in
station, he was high in virtuous worth. His mind, imbued with and
regulated by sound religious and moral principle, was as ingenious and
powerful as his heart was 'leal, warm, and kind.'

"Entering the University of Edinburgh, I took for the first session the
Greek and Latin classes. Attending them regularly, I performed the
incumbent exercises much after the manner that others did--only, as I
have always understood it to be a rare thing with the late Mr Dunbar,
the Greek Professor, to give much praise to anything in the shape of
poetry, I may mention that marked merit was ascribed to me in his class
for a poetical translation of one of the odes of Anacreon. I had laid
the translation on his desk, in an anonymous state, one day before the
assembling of the class. He read it and praised it, expressing at the
same time his