GENIUS AND SUICIDE. 363 



Scotland, on the 10th of October, 1802. Like Chatterton, he had 

 little patience with the schools. He would play truant in order to 

 enjoy a book in freedom on the hill or by the sea, and his old 

 schoolmaster feared that he would become a dunce. Curious to 

 state, when it became necessary for him to decide upon a trade, 

 he chose that of stone-mason so that he might be unemployed in 

 the winter frosts, and thus have opportunity to read and write. 



For fifteen years he worked in the quarry during the pleasant 

 days of summer, and spent the hours of winter prosecuting the 

 object of his ambition — the writing of good English. His clear, 

 choice diction caused the Edinburgh Review to ask, "Where 

 could this man have acquired his style ? '" little thinking that the 

 greater part of his life had been spent in the quarry and hewing- 

 shed. 



His work attracted so much attention that in 1840 he was 

 called to the editorial chair of The Witness, a semi-weekly paper 

 published in Edinburgh for the purpose of securing spiritual in- 

 dependence. Unremitting labor resulted, and the night follow- 

 ing the completion of his greatest work, The Testimony of the 

 Rocks, he yielded to the strain to which his overworked brain 

 had been subjected and sent a bullet through his heart. 



Another similar case is that of Robert Tannahill, a Paisley 

 weaver, who was one of the most popular successors of Burns in 

 song-writing. He was born in 1774, apprenticed to his father's 

 trade when twelve years of age, and composed his songs as his 

 shuttle went to and fro. He apparently had a single love affair, 

 which occasioned the composition of the popular song, " Jessie, 

 the Flower of Dunblane." He was shy, sensitive, and awkward, 

 and therefore uncomfortable except in the presence of his humble 

 friends. His monotonous existence was broken only by occa- 

 sional trips to Glasgow, and the one memorable day in all his life 

 was when James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, paid him a visit. 

 The meeting was prolonged into the night, and the parting was 

 painful and pathetic. Tannahill, grasping the hand of his poet- 

 brother, said, while tears suffused his eyes : " Farewell ! We 

 shall never meet again." His words were prophetic, for shortly 

 afterward his body was found stark and stiff in a pool near his 

 house. 



To come down to more recent times, we have but to recall the 

 melancholy end of Richard Realf, an English peasant, born in 

 Framfield, Sussex County, June 14, 1834. I can not better give 

 the story of his life than by quoting freely from a letter written 

 to Rossiter Johnson in 1875, who was at work upon a short biog- 

 raphy of the poet for the Little Classic Series. In this letter he 

 says : " I never received any education in my boyhood, except for 

 a year or two at the little village school. We were a large family 



