Literary by-paths in old England . as of far-reaching importance;he confessed to Dr. Moore that it was duringthe time he lived on that farm that his storywas most eventful. There, indeed, now fromthe worthy Murdoch, now from the lips ofhis remarkable father, and anon at the par-ish school of Dalrymple, he acquired most ofthe knowledge which teachers can impart, andthere, too, he experienced the cheerless gloomof a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave. One incident of the Mount Oliphant days re-vealed the deep tenderness of the poets happened that Murdoch, the old teacher
Literary by-paths in old England . as of far-reaching importance;he confessed to Dr. Moore that it was duringthe time he lived on that farm that his storywas most eventful. There, indeed, now fromthe worthy Murdoch, now from the lips ofhis remarkable father, and anon at the par-ish school of Dalrymple, he acquired most ofthe knowledge which teachers can impart, andthere, too, he experienced the cheerless gloomof a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave. One incident of the Mount Oliphant days re-vealed the deep tenderness of the poets happened that Murdoch, the old teacher ofRobert and Gilbert, visited the farm one nightto take farewell of his friends ere leaving foranother part of the country, and brought withhim a copy of Titus Andronicus as a parting 183 LITERARY BY-PATHS present to his pupils. When the days work wasdone, and the family gathered together, Murdochbegan to read the play aloud. He had got tothe fifth scene of the second act, where Laviniaappears with her hands cut off and her tongue. Mount Oliphavt cut out, but when he reached the taunting wordsof Chiron, Go home, call for sweet water, washthy hands, the entire family besought him, withtears, to cease reading. The father remarked thatif they would not hear the end of the tragedy itwould be useless to leave the book, whereuponRobert at once struck in with the threat thatif it were left he would burn it! 184 IN OLD ENGLAND It was not without good cause that the poetcomplained of the hermit-like existence that fellto his lot on this farm. Gilbert says : Nothingcould be more retired than our general mannerof living at Mount Oliphant ; we rarely sawanybody but the members of our own were no boys of our own age or nearit in the neighbourhood/ This was not alto-gether a disadvantage. Burns was thus drivenin upon himself, and to the study of such booksas the family possessed or could borrow. Butit was a hard life he lived at Mount had to labour in the fields to a
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