ded in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and
superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the
country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies,
brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles,
dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers,
dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of
poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this
hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look out in
suspicions places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am
in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake
off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect
taking pleasure in, was The Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's
beginning, "How are thy servants blest, O Lord!" I particularly
remember one half-stanza which was music to my boyish ear--

"For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave--"

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my
school-books. The first two books I ever read in private, and which
gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were The
Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal
gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up
and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall
enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish
prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the
flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.

Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad,
and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays,
between sermons, at funerals, &c., used a few years afterwards to
puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a
hue and cry of heresy against me, which has not ceased to this hour.

My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage to me. My social disposition,
when not checked by some modifications of spirited pride, was like our
catechism definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed
several connexions with other younkers, who possessed superior
advantages; the youngling actors who were busy in the rehearsal of
parts, in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life,
where, alas! I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not
commonly at this green age, that our young gentry have a just se