under the roof of his paternal grandfather at Sandy-Knowe, a few miles distant from the capital, Here his days were passed in the open fields, "with no other fellowship," as he says, "than that of the sheep and lambs;" and here, in the lap of Nature,
"Meet nurse for a poetic child,"
his infant vision was greeted with those rude, romantic scenes which his own verses have since hallowed for the pilgrims from every clime. In the long evenings, his imagination, as he grew older, was warmed by traditionary legends of border heroism and adventure, repeated by the aged relative, who had herself witnessed the last gleams of border chivalry. His memory was one of the first powers of his mind which exhibited an extraordinary development. One of the longest of these old ballads, in particular, stuck so close to it, and he repeated it with such stentorian vociferation, as to draw from the minister of a neighbouring kirk the testy exclamation, "One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is,"
On his removal to Edinburgh, in his eighth year, he was subjected to different influences. His worthy father was a severe martinet in all the forms of his profession, and, it may be added, of his religion, which he contrived to make somewhat burdensome to his more volatile son. The tutor was still more strict in his religious sentiments, and the lightest literary diversion in which either of them indulged was such as could be gleaned from the time-honoured folios of Archbishop Spottiswoode or worthy
