SKETCH OF ALEXANDER WILSON. 401 



writing was called excellent, and his language was simple and 

 idiomatic. The taste for reading, which he early developed, 

 largely made up for his scanty schooling. At one time he was 

 sent to be a herd on a farm called Bakerfield, not far from Pais- 

 ley, where he remained probably not more than a single sum- 

 mer. It is said that " he was a very careless herd, letting the 

 kye transgress on the corn, being very often busied with some 

 book." 



In his thirteenth year he was bound apprentice as a weaver, 

 for three years, to his brother-in-law, William Duncan. Having 

 served out his time in 1782, he continued a weaver " by constraint, 

 not willingly," for four years, living part of the time under his 

 father's roof in Paisley and in Lochwinnoch, and finally with his 

 brother-in-law at Queensferry. His taste was for outdoor life, 

 and he had inherited a feeble constitution from his mother, so 

 that the loom was irksome to him both mentally and physically. 

 During this period young Wilson began to contribute verses to 

 the local newspapers. His best piece, however, " Watty and Meg," 

 was published in 1792, as a penny chap-book, without his name, 

 and was ascribed to Robert Burns. The latter, who lived not far 

 away, and was but six years older, 'strengthened the compliment 

 by avowing that he should have been glad to be its author. Wil- 

 son's descriptive pieces are interesting, from the evidence they 

 give of his natural fondness for the woods and fields. 



After a while Duncan decided to " travel " as a peddler through 

 the eastern districts of Scotland, and invited Alexander to accom- 

 pany him. Accordingly, the two abandoned the loom and entered 

 upon their new occupation. The Scotch peddler of that time was 

 generally a man of shrewdness and common sense, probably re- 

 sembling the best type of our own departed Yankee peddler, and 

 was generally respected by the common people, but often sus- 

 pected and despised by the wealthier. This occupation, although 

 it delivered Wilson from the confinement of the weaving-room, 

 was not all sunshine. It involved trials and rebuffs, which to a 

 man, as Grosart * calls him, " of sensitive, strangely refined if also 

 in elements as strangely coarsened temperament," must have been 

 hardly borne. His " Journal as a Pedlar," several poems bearing 

 on his experiences of the road, and his earlier letters, give a real- 

 izing sense of the lights and shadows of this kind of life. In ad- 

 dition to his trading, he solicited subscriptions for a volume of 

 poems, which he published in 1790. 



In a short time he dropped the pack and returned to his hated 

 trade of weaving. Being in ill-health and sorely oppressed by 

 poverty, he was at this period much given to despondency. Yet he 



* " The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson," edited, with Memorial Intro- 

 duction, Essay, etc., by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, two vols., Paisley, 1876. 

 vol. xxxyi. 26 



