SOURCE: "Robert Fergusson," in Scottish Poetry: Drum-mond of Hawthornden to Fergusson, James Maclehose & Sons, 1911, pp. 157-93.

In the following excerpt, Douglas discusses the artistic temperament evidenced by Fergusson's life and poetry.

It was in 1771, at the age of twenty, that [Fergusson] contributed his English Pastorals: "Morning," "Noon," and "Night," to an Edinburgh Weekly Magazine, conducted by a son of that Dr. Ruddiman who had been one of Allan Ramsay's first patrons. These pastorals, deft and pretty though they be, are obviously the work of a writer who as yet has nothing to say. But his apprenticeship to poetry was brief. Next year he published "The Daft Days," a Christmas poem, in the Doric; which he proceeded to follow up regularly with similar contributions. Fergusson had now found himself; and ere long was hailed as the true successor to Ramsay, who had died fourteen years before. But this recognition...