His father was sheriff-clerk of Selkirkshire. Andrew taught himself to read when four years old, and a taste for fairy tales and the novels of Sir Walter Scott that he acquired as a boy remained with him throughout his life. He entered Edinburgh Academy in 1854 and there discovered a new world of reading: Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Alexander Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, George Gordon, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This imaginative occupation often distracted Lang from his academic studies, and he particularly resented the loss of time required by the study of Greek. However, when he was introduced to Homer's
Iliad he was struck by the beauty of the poetry and became a devoted student of Homer thereafter. At about the same time he discovered the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The musical quality, the metrical felicity, and especially the nostalgia for a lost world of romance in Tennyson's poetry touched a responsive chord in Lang.
In 1861 he entered the University of St. Andrews and resided at St. Leonard's Hall. Although he remained at St. Andrews only two years, he had the happiest memories of his student life there, for he found students with interests similar to his own.
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