"Two or three years ago, Jemmy Russel put a very pleasant trick on an English physician, one Dr. Roebuck, who was travelling in this country. Russel carried him out one day on horseback to see the outlets of the town, and purposely led him by Wilkie's farm. He saw the bard at a small distance, sowing his corn, with a sheet about him, all besmeared with dirt and sweat, with a coat and visage entirely proportioned to his occupation. Russel says to his companion, 'Here is a fellow, a peasant, with whom I have some business: let us call him.' He made a sign, and Wilkie came to them: some questions were asked him with regard to the season, to his farm and husbandry, which he readily answered; but soon took an opportunity of digressing to the Greek poets, and enlarging on that branch of literature. Dr. Roebuck, who had scarce understood his rustic English, or rather his broad Scotch, immediately comprehended him, for his Greek was admirable; and on leaving him, he could not forbear expressing the highest admiration to Russel, that a clown, a rustic, a mere hind, such as he saw this fellow was, should be possessed of so much erudition. 'Is it usual,' says he, 'for your peasants in Scotland to read the Greek poets?'--'O Yes,' replies Russel, very coolly, 'we have long winter evenings; and in what can they employ themselves better, than in reading the Greek poets?' Roebuck left the country in a full persuasion that there are at least a dozen farmers in every parish who read Homer, Hesiod, and Sophocles, every winter-evening, to their families; and, if ever he writes an account of his travels, it is likely he will not omit so curious a circumstance.
"Wilkie is now a settled minister at Ratho, within four miles of the town.[27:1] He possesses about £80 or £90 a-year, which he esteems exorbitant riches. Formerly, when he had only £20, as helper, he said that he could not conceive what article, either of human convenience or pleasure he was deficient in, nor what any man could mean by desiring more money. He possesses several branches of erudition, besides the Greek poetry; and, particularly, is a very profound geometrician, a science commonly very incompatible with the lively imagination of a poet. He has even made some new discoveries in that science; and he told me, that, when a young man, he threw cross and pile, whether he should devote himself chiefly to mathematics or to poetry, and fears that rather he crossed the bent of his genius in taking to the latter. Yet this man, who has composed the second epic poem in our language! understands so little of orthography, that, regularly through the whole poem, he spelled the word yield in this manner, 'ealde;' and I had great difficulty to convince him of his mistake.