16
INTRODUCTION.
the conversation, and to tell news that had been gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in this our own.
Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes, with a young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated in our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the licence of presbytery, his voice opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compound-
