"You know he is a farmer's son, in the neighbourhood of this town, where there are a great number of pigeon-houses. The farmers are very much infested with the pigeons, and Wilkie's father planted him often as a scarecrow (an office for which he is well qualified) in the midst of his fields of wheat. It was in this situation that he confessed he first conceived the design of his epic poem, and even executed part of it. He carried out his Homer with him, together with a table, and pen and ink, and a great rusty gun. He composed and wrote two or three lines, till a flock of pigeons settled in the field, then rose up, ran towards them, and fired at them; returned again to his former station, and added a rhyme or two more, till he met with a fresh interruption. "Two or three years ago, Jemmy Russel put a very pleasant trick on an English physician, one Dr. Roebuck, who was travelling in this country. Russel carried him out one day on horseback to see the outlets of the town, and purposely led him by Wilkie's farm. He saw the bard at a small distance, sowing his corn, with a sheet about him, all besmeared with dirt and sweat, with a coat and visage entirely proportioned to his occupation. Russel says to his companion, 'Here is a fellow, a peasant, with whom I have some business: let us call him.' He made a sign, and Wilkie came to them: some questions were asked him with regard to the season, to his farm and husbandry, which he readily answered; but soon took an opportunity of digressing to the Greek poets, and enlarging on that branch of literature. Dr. Roebuck, who had scarce understood his rustic English, or rather his broad Scotch, immediately comprehended him, for his Greek was admirable; and on leaving him, he could not forbear expressing the highest admiration to Russel, that a clown, a rustic, a mere hind, such as he saw this fellow was, should be possessed of so much erudition. 'Is it usual,' says he, 'for your peasants in Scotland to read the Greek poets?'--'O Yes,' replies Russel, very coolly, 'we have long winter evenings; and in what can they employ themselves better, than in reading the Greek poets?' Roebuck left the country in a full persuasion that there are at least a dozen farmers in every parish who read Homer, Hesiod, and Sophocles, every winter-evening, to their families; and, if ever he writes an account of his travels, it is likely he will not omit so curious a circumstance.