ALEXANDER WILSON. XXIX 



voked at this award ; for he considered that he had the true 

 majority. Cumming was only first by seventeen votes ; and his 

 friends shrewdly suspected these were obtained by presenting forty 

 tickets to the ladies, which, although only sixpence each, was a 

 mode of canvassing beyond the humbler means of our author, who, 

 even had he possessed them, would have spurned the idea of such 

 corruption.* 



We have now reached the only period in the history of our author's 

 career, which is tarnished by the performance of actions discredit- 

 able to him, and totally at variance with his real disposition, and 

 the whole tenor of his former and after life. Entirely discouraged 

 with the ill success of all his undertakings, and his habits of 

 application being little improved during the unsettled life he had 

 for some time led, he found still greater difficulty in applying to 

 any sedate occupation. Though he perceived the necessity of this 

 course, and had expressed his wishes to various friends for some 

 regular employment, more suited to his taste than that which he 

 had hitherto professed, his unsteadiness would not permit him to 

 follow up those better resolves. He was recommended to qualify 

 himself for a clerk to some mercantile establishment. A letter 

 from Mr Gavin, Commercial Academy, Paisley, to whom he applied 

 for instruction in some of the branches necessary for his occupation, 

 will best show the state of his mind at this time : — ''Wilson came 

 to my school, and requested that he might be taught some branches 

 of arithmetic, in which he was deficient, in order, he said, to qualify 

 him to become a clerk to some merchant or manufacturer. I cheer- 

 fully undertook to teach him all I knew, and he sat down at a desk, 

 apparently in good earnest. Before to-morrow, another thought 

 had struck him, — he never returned to school." t He tried it again, 

 while on a journey, at Callander, but with no better success. He 

 records the circumstance himself in a letter to Mr Brodie : — " Having 

 agreed with the town schoolmaster," he says, " I accordingly went, 

 purchased a slate, and set seriously about it. Two days elapsed ; 

 I persevered; but the third day gave it up." Thus, a mind, too 

 roving for a respectable and stable business, led him into the society 



* The poem delivered by Picken, and the " Laurel Disputed," were published 

 together in a shilling pamphlet, 

 t Letters of Senex, p. 42. 



