When the Ettrick Shepherd was first heard of, he had indeed but just
learned to write, by copying the letters of a printed ballad, as he
lay watching his flock on the mountains; but thirty years or more have
passed since then, and his acquirements are now such, that the Royal
Society of Literature, in patronizing him, might be justly said to
honour a laborious and successful student, as well as a masculine and
fertile genius. We may take the liberty of adding, in this place, what
perhaps may not be known to the excellent managers of that excellent
institution, that a more worthy, modest, sober, and loyal man does not
exist in his majesty's dominions than this distinguished poet, whom some
of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in
print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling
in the license of tavern-suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he
may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude
as ever nursed the melancholy of a poetical temperament.--_Ibid._
* * * * *