, enchanted towers,
giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent
seeds of Poesy; 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 suspicious places; and though nobody can be more
sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of
philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."

His private reading also contained much that must have stimulated his
imagination and broadened his interests. It began with a _Life of
Hannibal_, and Hamilton's modernized version of the _History of Sir
William Wallace_, which last, he says, with the touch of flamboyancy
that often recurs in his style, "poured a Scottish prejudice in my
veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut
in eternal rest." By the time he was eighteen he had, in addition to
books already mentioned, become acquainted with Shakespeare, Pope
(including the translation of Homer), Thomson, Shenstone, Allan
Ramsay, and a _Select Collection of Songs, Scotch and English_; with
the _Spectator_, the _Pantheon_, Locke's _Essay on the Human
Understanding_, Sterne, and Henry Mackenzie. To these must be added
some books on farming and gardening, a good deal of theology, and, of
course, the Bible.

The pursuing of intellectual interests such as are implied in this
list is the more significant when we remember that it was carried on
in the scanty leisure of a life of labor so severe that it all but
broke the poet's health, and probably left permanent marks on his
physique. Yet he had energy left for still other avocations. It was
when he was no more than fifteen that he first experienced the twin
passions that came to dominate his life, love and song. The girl who
was the occasion was his partner in the harvest field, Nelly
Kilpatrick; the song he addressed to her is the following:

HANDSOME NELL

O, once I lov'd a bonnie lass,
Aye, and I love her still,
And whilst that virtue warms my breast
I'll love my handsome Nell.

As bonnie lasses I hae seen,
And mony full as braw, [fine]
But for a modest gracefu' mien
The like I never saw.

A bonnie lass, I will confess,
Is pleasant to the e'e, [eye]
But without some better qualities
She's no a lass for me.

But Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet,
And what i