John Leyden was born on the 8th September 1775, at Denholm, a hamlet in the parish of Cavers, Roxburghshire. His ancestors, for several generations, were farmers, but his father followed the humble occupation of a shepherd. Of four brothers and two sisters, John was the eldest. About a year after his birth, his father removed to Henlawshiel, a solitary cottage,[94] about three miles from Denholm, on the margin of the heath stretching down from the "stormy Ruberslaw." He received the rudiments of knowledge from his paternal grandmother; and discovering a remarkable aptitude for learning, his father determined to afford him the advantages of a liberal education. He was sent to the parish school of Kirkton, and afterwards placed under the tutorship of a Cameronian clergyman, in Denholm, reputed as a classical scholar. In 1790, he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he soon acquired distinction for his classical attainments and devotedness to general learning. His last session of college attendance was spent at St Andrews, where he became a tutor. By the Presbytery of St Andrews, in May 1798, he was licensed as a probationer of the Scottish Church. On obtaining his licence, he returned to the capital, where his reputation as a scholar had secured him many friends. He now accepted the editorship of the _Scots Magazine_, to which he had formerly been a contributor, and otherwise employed himself in literary pursuits. In 1799, he published, in a duodecimo volume, "An Historical and Philosophical Sketch of the Discoveries and Settlements of the Europeans in Northern and Central Africa, at the Close of the Eighteenth Century." "The Complaynt of Scotland," a curious political treatise of the sixteenth century, next appeared under his editorial care, with an ingenious introduction, and notes. In 1801, he contributed the ballad of "The Elf-king," to Lewis' "Tales of Wonder;" and, about the same period, wrote several ballads for the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." The dissertation on "Fairy Superstition," in the second volume of the latter work, slightly altered by Scott, proceeded from his pen. In 1802, he edited a small volume, entitled, "Scottish Descriptive Poems," consisting of a new edition of Wilson's "Clyde," and a reprint of "Albania,"--a curious poem, in blank verse, by an anonymous writer of the beginning of the eighteenth century.