XXXVIU 



A great living example of high and fervid intellect cannot but affect 

 the mind of youth. Such was Burns to him : Burns was often at Mr. 

 Richardson's house, a welcome guest, both whilst he lived in Nithsdale 

 and later in Dumfries, till his death in 1796. It happened that his 

 eldest son, Robert, a boy of great intellectual promise, and young Richard- 

 son, both of the same age, were entered at the grammar school on the 

 same day, and it is remembered that the Poet on that occasion said play- 

 fully, " I wonder which of the two will be the greatest man.'' It was 

 during his school-period that young Richardson first read the ' Faerie 

 Queene,' and it was of Burns that he borrowed the book. Half a century 

 later he was present at the National Festival held in honour of the Poet 

 in Edinburgh in 1859 ; and he then expressed the great pleasure he had 

 in his recollections of him, particularizing how on one of the Sunday even- 

 ings Burns, when at his father's house, called his attention to some of the 

 paraphrases in his Bible which he most admired, two of which he re- 

 quested the boy to get by heart and repeat to him : of these, one was for- 

 gotten, the other was the 66th, beginning " How bright these glorious 

 spirits shine." 



Early he gave proof of a quick and precocious mind. He could read 

 well, it is reported, at the age of four. He was then placed at a prepara- 

 tory school, and two years later at the grammar school, taught by Mr. 

 Gray, better known afterwards as a man of letters in Edinburgh, and one 

 of the Masters there of the High School. This was in 1793. In 1801, 

 when only fourteen, he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, where 

 thus early he began his Medical Studies, which were continued during two 

 years, and then, when only sixteen, he received the appointment of House 

 Surgeon in the Infirmary of his native town, the duties of which he per- 

 formed for nearly two years. He now returned to Edinburgh, and shortly 

 after passed an examination before the College of Surgeons and received 

 the diploma of Surgeon. In the following year, having just reached his 

 eighteenth year, he entered the Royal Navy as Assistant Surgeon. The 

 war at that time was raging in all its intensity, and promotion then rapidly 

 rewarded merit. In a year he was advanced to a Surgeoncy. This was after 

 he had been employed in a boat night attack, for which he had volunteered, 

 on a French brig of war in the Tagus. During the remainder of the war 

 his services were various — in the Baltic in the second expedition against 

 Copenhagen, on the western coast of Africa, in the Mediterranean, on the 

 western coast of Spain, in the North Sea, and again in the Baltic, on the 

 coast of America, on the Canadian Lakes ; and lastly, during the short 

 war with the United States in 1814, he was present, attached to a marine 

 battalion, at the taking of Cumberland Island and the town of St. Mary's 

 in Georgia. 



Shortly after the peace he retired on half-pay, and engaged in private 

 practice at Leith, where (in 1818) he married the second daughter of W. 

 Stiven, Esq., of that town. The leisure he had there, and the vicinity of 



