eoyiiood. 11 



as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face 

 girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till 

 Muckle-mou'd Meg, -who, like most other Scottish females, * 

 things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the blowing 

 up of a rock." 



If we would see him, at a farther stage of boyhood, engaged in 

 still more exciting and boisterous sport, we would need to go back 

 into the melee of the "Snowball Bicker of Pedmount,"* a quiet 

 Homeric episode, to which it is impossible to do justice by an ex- 

 tract. Those who care, in short, to obtain as complete a picture of 

 that boyish life as it is possible now to have, will find it for them- 

 selves in the pages of the Recreations, few of which are without 

 some tender and graphic reminiscences of his early days. They 

 are not, of course, to be always taken as literal descriptions of 

 things that happened exactly as there painted ; for, as he himself 

 acutelv observes, crivincrthe rationale of such reminiscence: — ''You 

 must know that, unless it be accompanied with imagination, memory 

 - 'Id and lifeless. . . . All minds, even the dullest, remember the 

 days of their youth ; but all cannot bring back the indescribable 

 brightness of that blessed season. They who would know what 

 they once were, must not merely recollect, but they must imagine 

 the hills and valleys, if any such there were, in which their child- 

 hood played. ... To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must 

 imagine his own nature. He must collect from many vanished 

 hours the power of his untamed heart, and he must, perhaps, trans- 

 fuse also something of his own maturer mind into these dreams of 

 his former being, thus linking the past with the present by a con- 

 tinuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken.'* That 

 my father, in these pictures of his youth, did transfuse something 

 of his maturer mind into the vision is manifest enough, and therein 

 lies their peculiar charm and beauty. But of the general fidelity of 

 the impression they convey there can be no doubt. As regards in 

 particular that surpassing excellence in all physical sports which 

 might sometimes appear to be the exaggeration of poetic fancy, 

 there is sufficient testimony from contemporaries. Thus a school- 

 fellow of his writes : " There were other boys five or six years his 

 senior ; but in all games, in running, in jumping, in hockey, he was 

 the first and fastest ; and he could run faster, and walk longer than 



* W rix 



