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ner in which he and his pupil, at a future period, commenced and carried on their French studies. When Robert Burns was about thirteen years of age, Murdoch had been appointed parish schoolmaster of Ayr, upon which, as we have already mentioned, Burns was sent for a few weeks to attend his school. "He was now with me," says Murdoch, "day and night, in school, at all meals, and in all my walks. At the end of one week I told him that, as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, &c., I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation, that, when he should meet with the name of a French town, ship, officer, or the like, in the newspapers, he might be able to pronounce it something like a French word. Robert was glad to hear this proposal, and immediately we attacked the French with great courage. Now there was little else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the conjugation of verbs, &c. When walking together, and even at meals, I was constantly telling him the names of different objects, as they presented themselves, in French; so that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we began to read a little of the 'Adventures of Telemachus,' in Fenelon's own words."

Another week, however, was hardly over, when the young student was obliged to leave school for the labours of the harvest. "I did not, however," says Murdoch, "lose sight of him, but was a frequent visitant at his father's house when I had my half-holyday; and very often went, accompanied by one or two persons more intelligent than myself, that good William Burns might enjoy a mental feast. Then the labouring oar was shifted to some

other hand.

The father and the son sat down with us, when we enjoyed a conversation wherein solid reasoning, sensible remark, and a moderate seasoning of jocularity, were so nicely blended as to render it palatable to all parties. Robert had a hundred questions to ask me about the French, &c. ; and the father, who had always rational information in view, had still some question to propose to my more learned friends upon moral or natural philosophy, or some such interesting subject." It is delightful to contemplate such scenes of humble life as these, showing us, as they do, what the desire of intellectual cultivation may accomplish in any circumstances, and with how much genuine happiness it will irradiate the gloom even of the severest poverty.

We shall not pursue farther the history of Robert Burns. All know his sudden blaze of popularity; the misfortunes and errors of his short life; and the immortality which he has won by his genius. It is plain, from the details that we have given, that, even had he never been a poet, he would have grown up to be no common man. Whatever he owed to nature, it was to his admirable father, and his own zealous exertions, that he was indebted at least for that education of his powers, and that storing of his mind with knowledge, which in so great a degree contributed to make him what he afterward became. It is an error to regard either Burns or Shakspeare as simply a poet of Nature's making. If learning be taken to include knowledge in general, instead of being restricted merely to an acquaintance with the ancient languages, it may be rather said that they were both learned poets, as, indeed, every great poet must be. Their minds, that of Shakspeare especially, were full of multifarious knowledge, which was the fruit both of vigilant observation and extensive reading, and was perpetually entering into, and in some degree regulating,

the spirit or form of their poetry. The wonder in the case of each was, not that he produced poetical compositions of transcendent excellence without any acquaintance with literature, but that he acquired his literary knowledge in the face of difficulties which would have discouraged most men from making the attempt to gain it. Such minds, too, learn a great deal from a few books, deriving both information and rules of taste from the writers they peruse, with a rapidity and felicity of apprehension which people of inferior endowments cannot com prehend.

CHAPTER XIII.

Devotion to Knowledge in extreme Poverty. Bullinger; Musculus; Postellus; Adrian VI.; Perrier; Claude Lorraine ; Salvator Rosa; Marmontel; Hoche; Lagrange; Dr. Johnson; Dr. Parr; Spagnoletto; Palissy; Le Jay; Castell; Davies; Tytler; William Davy.-In Exile and Imprisonment. Ovid; Boethius; Buchanan; Tasso; Smart; Maggi; Le Maistre; Lorenzini; Prynne; Raleigh.

IN attempting to illustrate such a subject as the triumphs of the love of knowledge, and to set forth the exceeding might of that passion, the delight with which the indulgence of it is fraught, and the obstacles of all sorts in the way of its gratification which it has so often overcome, the materials which present themselves are so abundant and so various, that the chief difficulty in using them is which to choose. The examples we have already cited may be considered sufficient to show how perfectly practicable it is to unite the pursuit of literature with that of any description of business or professional occupation. We shall now, therefore, proceed to notice

some aspirants after knowledge who have had other difficulties to struggle with than those arising from either the seducing excitements or engrossing cares and toils of active life.

Anecdotes illustrating the devotion with which knowledge has been pursued under the pressure of severe penury, or other forms of worldly misfortune, are evidences, not of any calamities to which literature has a peculiar tendency to expose its votaries, but rather of the power with which it arms them to conquer and rise superior to calamities. Students, and authors, and men of genius, have had their share of adversity with others; but few others enjoy their peculiar advantages, if not for warding off, at least for bearing up against it. The man who is most to be pitied under misfortune is he whose whole happiness or misery hangs on outward circumstances. The scholar has sources of enjoyment within himself of which no severity of fortune can altogether deprive him. Hence, a man who is truly in love with philosophy, will often think but lightly of sufferings and privations which would to another be almost intolerable. If his body be in want, his mind has store of riches.

The learned theologian, HENRY BULLINGER, one of the distinguished names of the Reformation, supported himself at school for several years by his alents as a street musician. His contemporary and fellow-labourer in the same cause, WOLFGANG MUSCULUS, had commenced his career as a scholar in a similar manner, having for some time sung ballads through the country, and begged his way from door to door, in order to obtain a pittance wherewith to put himself to school; he was at length charitably received into a convent of Benedictine monks, who, greatly to his delight, offered to educate him and admit him of their order. Musculus was afterward, on embracing the tenets of the Lutherans, reduced to such distress, that he was obliged to send

his wife to service, and to bind himself apprentice to a weaver of Strasburg, who no sooner discovered his heretical opinions than he turned him out of doors. He had then no other resource but to offer himself as a common labourer, to assist in repairing the fortifications of the city. Yet even in this situation he employed every moment he could spare in study; and applied himself, in particular, with so much ardour to the Hebrew language, that he placed himself eventually at the head of the scholars by whom that branch of learning was cultivated in his time.

Another great orientalist of that age, and in many respects one of the most extraordinary characters of any age, WILLIAM POSTELLUS, was, when merely a boy, so fond of reading, that he would often, it is related, while engaged with his book, forget to take his meals. Having set out from his native village in Normandy on the road to Paris, in the expectation of finding means to pursue his studies in that capital, he was attacked, in the course of his journey, by robbers, who took from him all the little he had in the world, and used him, besides, so barbarously, that his vexation and the wounds he had received together obliged him to take refuge in a hospital, where he lay for two years before his health was restored. On his recovery he bent his steps once more towards Paris; being at the time, however, in such a state of destitution that he had no way of obtaining wherewithal to buy himself a coat, except by offering his services as a reaper, to assist in cutting down the crop which then happened to be ready for the sickle. Having arrived at Paris, he thought himself fortunate in being received as a domestic into the college of St. Barbe, not doubting that even this situation would afford him, in some degree, those opportunities of improvement which he so ardently longed for. Accordingly, having contrived to get possession of a Greek and a He

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