No More Learning

I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which
the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at
Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the herald's office; and,
looking through that granary of honours, I there found almost every
name in the kingdom; but for me,

"My ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood. "

POPE.

Gules, purpure, argent, &c. , quite disowned me.

My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was
thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where, after many
years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large
quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for
most of my little pretensions to wisdom--I have met with few who
understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but
stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility,
are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor
man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was
gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of
Ayr. Had he continued in that station I must have marched off to be
one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his
dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children
under his own eye, till they could discern between good and evil; so,
with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a
small farm on his estate. At those years, I was by no means a
favourite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive
memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an
enthusiastic idiot[175] piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then
but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made
an excellent English, scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven
years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In
my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who
resided 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 sense of
the immense distance between them and their ragged playfellows. It
takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that
proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant
stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were,
perhaps, born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted
the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes
of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the
seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even
then, I could pick up some observations, and one, whose heart, I am
sure, not even the "Munny Begum" scenes have tainted, helped me to a
little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as
they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to
me a sore affliction; but I was soon called to more serious evils. My
father's generous master died!