"So the foundations of his mind were laid."
"For many a tale Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourish'd Imagination in her growth, And gave the mind that apprehensive power By which she is made quick to recognise The moral properties and scope of things."
But in the Manse there were books--and he read
"Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied, The life and death of martyrs, who sustain'd, With will inflexible, those fearful pangs, Triumphantly display'd in records left Of persecution and the Covenant."
Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you used to ride to the races on a pony, by the side of your sire the Squire, this boy was your equal in knowledge, though you had a private tutor all to yourself, and were then a promising lad, as indeed you are now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had small Latin, and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages may be learned--trust us--by slow degrees--by the mind rejoicing in the consciousness of its growing faculties--during leisure hours from other studies--as they were by the Atholl adolescent. A Scholar--in your sense of the word--he might not be called, even when he had reached his seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and Virgil; nor of English poetry had he read much--the less the better for such a mind--at that age, and in that condition--for
"Accumulated feelings press'd his heart With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd By nature, by the turbulence subdued Of his own mind, by mystery and hope, And the first virgin passion of a soul Communing with the glorious Universe."
But he had read Poetry--ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read at the same age--and
"Among the hills He gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song, The divine Milton."
"By Nature, that did never yet betray The heart that loved her,"
the youth was "greater than he knew;" yet that there was something great in, as well as about him, he felt--
"Thus daily thirsting in that lonesome life,"
for some diviner communication than had yet been vouchsafed to him by the Giver and Inspirer of his restless Being.
"In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, And every moral feeling of his soul Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content The keen, the wholesome air of poverty, And drinking from the well of homely life."