partiality for him. Mr James Inverarity, a nephew of the poet, had the curiosity to ask one of them if he recollected Robert Fergusson. "Bob Fergusson" exclaimed the man; "that I do! Many a time I've put him to the door—ah, he was a tricky callant; but," he added, "a fine laddie for a' that." He seemed to feel great pleasure in the recollection of so lively and so amiable a boy.
While at college, the young poet used to put in practice a frolic which marks the singular vivacity of his character. Whenever he received a remittance from his friends at Edinburgh, he hung out the money in a little bag attached by a string to the end of a pole fixed in his window; and there he would let it dangle for a whole day in the wind. He is supposed to have done this partly from puerile exultation in the possession of his wealth, and partly by way of making a bravado in the eyes of his companions; among whom, no doubt, the slenderness of their funds and the failure of supplies, would be frequent subjects of raillery.
His talents of mimicry were great, and his sportive humour was ever too exuberant, and sometimes led him to overstep the bounds of justifiable indulgence. "An instance of this," says Mr Tennant, in the Edinburgh Literary Journal, (No. 164,) " was communicated to me by the late Rev. Dr James Brown, his fellow-student at St Andrews, who was also a poet,[1] and who, from kindred delights and sympathies, enjoyed much of Fergusson's society. On the afternoon of a college-holiday, they took a walk together into the country, and, after perambulating many farms, and tripping with fraternal glee over field and hillock, they at last, being desirous of a little rest, bethought themselves of calling at a small farm house, or pendicle, as it is named, on the king's muirs of Denino. They approached the house, and were kindly invited to a seat by the rustic and honest-hearted family. A frank and unceremonious conversation immediately took place, in the course of which, it was discovered, that a young person, a member of the family, was lying ill of fever. The playful Fergusson instantly took it into his head, to profess himself a medical practitioner; he started to his feet, begged to be shown to the sick-bed ; approached, and felt the pulse of the patient; assumed a serious air; put the usual pathological interrogatories; and pronounced his opinion with a pomp and dignity worthy of a true doctor of physic. In short, he personated his assumed character so perfectly, that his friend Brown, though somewhat vexed, was confounded into silent admiration of his dexterity. On leaving the house, however, Mr Brown expostulated with him on the indefensibility of practising so boldly on the simplicity of an unsuspecting family, and of misleading their conceptions as to the cure of the distemper, by a stratagem, on which, however witty, neither of them could congratulate themselves."
The impulse of the moment seems to have been at all times irresistible with Fergusson, without any dread or consideration of the consequences which his levity might produce. His voice being good, he was requested, oftener than was agreeable to him, to officiate as precentor at prayers. His wicked wit suggested a method of getting rid of the distasteful employment, which he did not scruple to put in practice, though there was great danger that it would incense the heads of the college against him. It is customary in the Scottish churches for persons who are considered to be in a dangerous state of illness, to request the prayers of the congregation, which it is the duty of the precentor publicly to intimate. One morning, when Fergusson occupied the desk, he rose up, and, with the solemnity of tone usual upon such occasions, pronounced, "Remember
- ↑ Dr Brown, who was for thirty years rector of a considerable parish in the neighbourhood of London, was the author of a poem called 'Britain Preserved,' written about 1793, in reference to, and commendation of, Mr Pitt's plan of policy, then adopted."
