Burns Amongst his Family, p.84.

[Anecdotes of Burns Contents]

BURNS delighted to be beside his family. Mr. Gray, one of the teachers in the Academy, Dumfries, says:- “He spent many a delightful hour in directing the studies of his eldest son, a boy of uncommon talents. I have frequently found him explaining to this youth, then not more than nine years of age, the English poets from Shakespeare to Gray; or storing his mind with examples of heroic virtue, as they live in the pages of our most celebrated English historian. I would ask any person of common candour, if employments like these are consistent with habitual drunkenness.”