SOURCE: "Two 'Heads Weel Pang'd Wi' Lear': Robert Fergusson, Samuel Johnson, and St. Andrews," in Scottish Literary Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, December, 1984, pp. 25-35.

In the following excerpt, McKenzie discusses Fergusson's satirical verse epistle, "To the Principal and Professors of the University of St Andrews on their Superb Treat to Samuel Johnson," in which Fergusson expressed his resentment of English influence over Scottish literature.

On August 19th, 1773 the eight Professors at the University of St Andrews entertained two distinguished visitors with what one of the visitors later called 'a very good dinner' and the other described as 'all the elegance of lettered hospitality'. Two weeks later the lively and mildly nationalistic Weekly Magazine published a poem, ["To the Principal and Professors of the University of St Andrews on Their Superb Treat to Samuel Johnson," by Robert Fergusson], in which a recent, and somewhat less distinguished, St Andrews graduate [Fergusson...