Robert Fergusson and Eighteenth-Century Scotland

·., I FERGUS"SON AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCOTLAND }AMEs A. Rox R OBERT FERGUSSON was born in Edinburgh on September 5, ~751. His father, William Fergusson, was a clerk; his mother' was Elizabeth Forbes, young~t daughter of John Forbes, gentleman, of Templeton, Kildrummy. By birth William Fergusson was his wife's soda~ equal, but, being a. younger son, he had to earn his 1i'ving, _.and ,was ,first bound apprentice to a merchant in Aberdeen. On the death of his master he went to Edinburgh with his wife, whom he had married about 1741, and his two young children. He there obtained employment as a: clerk with Mr. Robert Baillie, at the time the only haberdasher in Edinburgh. Fergusson senior was a douce man but he had .little push or ambition, and remained very poor all his days.. Robert first' attended a small private school which was conducted by a Mr. Philip in Niddry's \Nynd almost opposite Allan Ramsay's old bookshop) .and_, as Allan, did not die until 1758, 'his cheery dapper figure was no doubt fa'miliar to the young boy who was destined so soon to be his successor. . From M r:Philip'S1 Robert was sent to the High School where his first master was john .Gilchrist, whom Henry Mackenzie in his Reminiscentes and Anudote.s of Edinburgh describes as "a good-humoured man, with a good-deal of comedy about hjrn; liked by his class." The school curriculum was a stiff one) but Fergusson was an -apt pu,Pil and got a gqod cl~ss.ica:.I grounding_, although greatly ha'ndicapped by- ill health. Among his schoolfellows were such_ .later celebrities as Sir W11liam Fettes, the founder of Fettes College; Alex~nder Fraser Tytle~l afterwards Lord vVoodhouselee, the .histori~_n and publisher of the Memoirs of Lord Kames and many other works; James Boswell; an'd D.ugald Stewart, the metaphysician> who was to show. a helpful interest in Robert Burns. There were also boys of position like Neil Primrose, the third Earl of Rosebery; Lord Rosehill, the eldest son of the Earl of N orthesk; and Sir John Sinclait of Ul bster. None of them seems to have remembered Fergusson or to have made the slightest attempt to help him in his hour of sorrow and distress. After four years at theHigh School the future poet was "presented"· to a "D:Iortification," the Str-athmartine-Fergusson «bursary," w}lich had been founded by the parish minister of Strathmartine. for the "maintenance and educ.ation of. two poor children!} of his own surname at the Grammar School of Dundee.. Later, if the pupil showed an aptitude for study, the bursary would take him to St. Andrews. That" is why Fergusson, went to St. Andrews instead of to the. University of Edinburgh. He matriculated at St. Andrews in·February, 1765, being then in his' fifteenth year. His intention was to study for the rn'.inistry of the Church of Scotland. 179 • f 180 THE UNIVERSITY \)f TORONTO. QUARTERLY·St. Andrews, when Fergusson lived· there, was a town of ghost-haunted streets, mea~ ale-houses, and soraid poverty. Defoe had had agood word · to say for the '~Royal and Ancient Borough," but ten years or so after Fergusson left the University~ Robert Heron (who edited Thomsoh's · Seasons, conducted the London .Globe, and wrote a life of Burns) could refer sarcastically to the 250 ale-houses which seemed to be the main support of the. inhabitants. Chevalier Johnstone, who was the Young Pre~ender's a·ide in 1745 and who afterwards fought under Montcalm at Qu.ebec, gives· what A. B. Grosart terms a "vitriolic" description of Andrew Lang's first ··lo~e. ult was full of the accursed race of Calvinists, hypocrites who cover over their crimes with the veil of rdigion; fraudulent and dishonest in their ·deal1ngs; who carry their holy dissimulation so far as to ta~e off their bo'nnets to say grace when they_ take even a pinch of snuff; who have the name of God constantly in their mouths and hell in their hearts. No town ever so much deserved the fate of Sodom and Gommora...