ALEXANDER WILSON. 
XIX 
“ Ralph the pedlar ” 
bore a curious pack, 
With trinkets fill’d, and had a ready knack 
At coining rhyme. 
In this itinerant life he for some time persevered, alive both to 
the beauties of the country he travelled through, and the repulses 
he often met with when displaying his wares. His attention was 
attracted by every thing of worth, and he would often leave his tract 
to visit some place of antiquity, or the former residences of his 
favourite authors and poets. He visited, also, every churchyard 
which lay in his way, transcribing those epitaphs which struck his 
fancy, and had thus collected above three hundred, many of them 
highly curious ; but, with his desultory writings, these have been 
long since lost. From several of the poems written about this time, 
during the unoccupied hours of this journey, in which many of the 
incidents that befel him are described, we learn that he began to 
feel the life of a pedlar was not all ease and comfort, and that many 
petty annoyances, besides cold, fatigue, and hunger, awaited him. 
In an “ Epistle from Falkland to Mr A C he designates 
himself a 
Lonely pedlar, 
Beneath a load of silk and sorrows bent ; f 
and, in another, compares his former more comfortable bed with 
his ensconcement in a barn, where 
The dark damp walls — the roof, scarce cover’d o’er — 
The wind, wild whistling through the cold barn door, \ 
were too real to allow room for playful fancies or delicious reveries. 
Somewhat disgusted, he returned again to Paisley, and com- 
menced the publication of his poems, which had now accumulated 
to a considerable stock, and which he fondly thought would 
* Alexander Clark. 
f His lonely way a meagre pedlar took, 
Deep were his frequent sighs, careless his pace, 
And oft the tear stole down his cheerless face, 
* Beneath a load of silk and sorrows bent. 
1st Edit. p. 96. 
\ Morning , 1st Edit. p. L 
