48 ALEXANDER Wir^ON : POET-NATURAEIST, 



quality is a sad one. Encouraged by the reputa- 

 tion of the good Duchess of Buccleugh he mixes in 

 the gaiety of the Dalkeith Fair with the hope of get- 

 ting her patronage, only to be rewarded by a 

 "soul-piercing" answer, "I don't want any of these 

 things." 



His trip, spent partly in soliciting subscriptions 

 to his poems, was unsatisfactory enough, but not 

 half so disappointing as the one he took to deliver 

 the books, for too many refused at last to take 

 the book they had signed their names for; even 

 an old fellow, who agreed to take one if Wilson 

 would sacrifice half the price with him "at the 

 shrine of Bacchus," pleaded that "poverty had 

 frozen up his pockets." 



The first edition of his poems came out in the 

 autumn of 1790 and bore on its title page, "Poems 

 by Alexander Wilson, Paisley, Printed by John Neil- 

 son for the Author," but he wrote in November that 

 after using every scheme he could invent, no one 

 seemed disposed to encourage him and he was un- 

 able even to pay his friend Neilson for the few 

 copies that he had sold. 



In the following year he says in a letter, "All 

 the stories you have read of garretts, tatters, un- 

 merciful duns, lank hunger and poetical hunger 

 are all sadly realized in me," and once more he 

 turns for salvation to the hated but profitable 

 loom, finding still some pleasure in his verses, and 

 in an occasional debate at the Pantheon in Edin- 

 burgh, where his speeches in verse were "crowned 

 with the most unbounded applause." 



Among his friends of these years were h\s com- 



