24 FAMOUS SCOTS 



of Joseph ; and even in the old six-volume edition of 

 Lintot the genius of Homer was early made manifest. 

 The Pilgritrfs Progress, evidently in some such form as 

 Macaulay has described, made for the cottage, fol- 

 lowed ; and, in course of time, the collection of books 

 which his father had left was eagerly devoured. Among 

 them were Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels both 

 never so familiar in Scotland to boys as they are in 

 England Cook's Voyages, John Howie of Lochgoin's 

 Worthies, the Voyages of Anson, Drake, Raleigh, 

 Dampier, and Byron, ' my grand-dad's narrative ' of 

 the poet. It was not till his tenth year that he became, 

 as he says, ' thoroughly a Scot,' and this was effected by 

 a perusal of Blind Harry's Wallace, that ' Bible of the 

 Scottish people,' as Lord Hailes has called it, following 

 or anticipating the remark by Wolf as to the similar 

 position of the Iliad and the Odyssey among the Greeks. 

 No one now need be informed about the influence that 

 quaint old work had produced in Burns, and through 

 him on the subsequent re-awakening of the national 

 spirit at the end of the eighteenth century. Barbour's 

 Bruce has remained the possession of the scholar and 

 the antiquary, while this work of the old minstrel, 

 literally ' sung by himself for small earnings and good 

 cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment,' as 

 Bentley had said of his great predecessor, has had an 

 abiding influence on literature, and on the national 

 character. * Up to Crummade (Cromarty) and through 

 the Northland ' had blind Harry, with a fine patriotism, 



