EARLY LIFE. 51 



published anonymous reviews without end, and he 

 also published, under the name of t( Busby," a 

 bitter attack upon the personal peculiarities of Dr 

 Adam. Every one felt unmitigated disgust at such 

 base and unprincipled proceedings, and the Rector, 

 like the Principal, gave the unworthy author the 

 mortification of leaving his assaults unanswered; nor 

 did he even make any allusions to these attacks, 

 though he occasionally expressed his regret at the 

 prohibition of his Grammar by the authority of the 

 town council. 



The moral inculcated by Gilbert Stuart's failure 

 has been noted. The lesson of temperance and regu- 

 larity of life is as remarkably taught by the Doctor's 

 personal conflict with one of the masters, Nicol, 

 already referred to as the boon companion of the great 

 lyric poet of Scotland. The temperate habits of our 

 times make it hardly possible that a poet should now- 

 adays attain eminence by bacchanalian songs, and 

 even that ideas should be introduced that owe their 

 point and force to drinking associations, as in the 

 most pathetic of lyrics, " Auld lang syne." Even of 

 professed drinking-songs there is this to be said, that 

 they rarely tend to promote intemperance, and are 

 for the most part only displays of wit and humour. 

 They are chiefly perhaps to be excused, if not de- 

 fended, in the same way that Voltaire pleaded in 

 extenuation, if not justification, of his " Pucelle," that 

 the most reprehensible passages, how offensive soever 

 to decency and morals, had no tendency to inflame 



