afterwards, was of great use to him. Ovid did not much engage his attention, though he was well enough pleased with Deucalion's deluge, Phaeton, Cadmus, Acteon and his dogs; but it was easy to see, from the interest he took in Virgil's narrative, and the emphasis with which, of his own accord, he pronounced his verses, that he was wonderfully af fected with the harmony and other excellencies of that poet. He has told me since, that he then got by heart several entire books of the Eneid, and took great delight in repeating them when at leisure and alone and he often, about this time, spoke with peculiar complacency of that description of night, in the fourth book (v. 522) which he said he frequently recollected, in order to sooth his mind, when any troublesome thought occurred in the night to discompose him.

Drawing he was early accustomed to, and attained considerable proficiency in: but his other avocations, and his being subject to headachs, prevented his applying to it so much as to become a very great proficient. The theory of perspective was familiar to him. In ludicrous caricatura he had boundless invention.

Knowing that his constitution was very delicate, and finding him inclined to study rather too much than too little, I was careful, in the first part, and in

deed through the whole of his life, not only to caution him against immoderate study, by informing him of its dreadful consequences; but also to contrive for him such amusements as would decoy him from his books, strengthen his body, and engage his mind. With this view, as soon as he could handle a small musquet, I put him under the tuition of a sergeant, who taught him the military exercise. Not long after, I made him attend an expert fencing master, till he became very skilful in the management of the small sword. Archery, likewise, or shooting with the long bow, he practised for years, and with good success, reading Roger Ascham on the subject; and acquiring at the same time great dexterity in the use of the sling and to these antient exercises he added those of fishing and fowling. With fire-arms I did not trust him rashly; but he was to such a degree attentive and considerate, that before his fifteenth year I found him as worthy of that trust as any person could be. He laboured for several weeks in endea vouring to learn to swim, and had at that time a companion who was completely master of the art: but it appeared at last that the chilness of the seawater did him more harm than good.

The exercise to which he seemed to have the strongest disinclination was dancing. By my advice he attended a master of it for many months, and I believe made the usual progress; but, on leaving that

school, begged I would never desire him to dance : a favour which I readily granted. I know not whether he had adopted Cicero's opinion*, that no man dances who is not either drunk or mad: but he told me, that to his habits of thinking and feeling it was extremely incongruous, being in most particulars too finical, and in every particular too ostentatious.

of seven

He left off fowling, when about the age teen; in his papers of that time I find hints of his being not quite satisfied of its lawfulness. Fishing, however, he did not discontinue; he made indeed a study of it, or at least of Isaac Walton's very ingenious and intertaining book on that subject: for he thought there could be no sin in doing what was practised, or countenanced, by the first teachers of Christianity. Those sorts of it he never engaged in, which give great pain, or protract the sufferings of the poor animal. In all the little manufactures of the angler he was completely skilled; as well as in all the arts of the fowler, even to the training of a setting dog. This, with many other trifling particulars (as some would think them) I mention, that the reader may see, it was not my purpose to force him, by too rapid a progress, from childhood into premature manhood; which I have seen attempted by well.meaning parents, but never with desirable success: I

* Pro Murena.

wished him to prepare himself, in early youth, by little and little, for acting the part of a man; but, in the meantime, not to forget that he was a boy.

At the age of thirteen, having passed through the forms of the grammar school, giving the utmost satisfaction to all his masters, he was entered a student in Marischal college. The first, or Greek, class, as it is called, he attended two years; as I was anxious that he should be a proficient in that noble language, which is every where too much neglected: so that, as a student of languages, mathematicks, and philosophy, he attended college five years: a year more than is usually thought necessary in Scotland, or at least in the university of Marischal college, to qualify one for the first academical degree, of Master of Arts. He studied Greek under Mr. Professor Stuart; Natural and Civil History under Dr. Skene; Natural Philosophy under Mr. Professor Copland; Mathematicks, under Dr. Hamilton; Chemistry, under Dr. French; and Moral Philosophy, Logick, and Rhetorick, undèr my care. In all the sciences, his proficiency was so great, that the fondest and most ambitious parent could not have wished it greater; and his whole behaviour, at school and college, was. not only irreproachable, but exemplary. He was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts in April 1786.

About this time, the botanical and other writings of Linnæus caught his attention, and he studied them with great assiduity and delight; being much assisted in that study by his and my learned friends Dr. Campbell, Principal of Marischal college, and Dr. Laing, minister of the church-of-England congregation at Peterhead. Theology also he studied under the care of Dr. Campbell and Dr. Gerard. But this was not the commencement of his theological pursuits; for from his early youth he had studied the Holy Scriptures, which he justly thought to contain the only infallible system of Christian faith. When he went from home, if he meant to be absent a few weeks or days, he took with him a pocket Bible and the Greek New Testament: and among his papers find a little book of Remarks on the Hebrew grammar; from which it appears he had made progress in that language:

I

On the fourth of June one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven, his Majesty, upon the recommendation of the university of Marischal college, was pleased to appoint him Assistant professor of Moral Philosophy and Logick. His age was then not quite nineteen; but to the gentlemen of the university his character was so well known, that they most readily, as well as unanimously, concurred in the recom→ mendation. It may be thought, that I chose for him his way of life; and indeed I did so: but not