to his tastes, growing altogether irksome, he determined to relinquish it for a vocation which, if in some respects scarcely more desirable, afforded him ample means of gratifying his natural desire of becoming familiar with the topography of his native country.  He provided himself with a pack, as a pedlar, and in this capacity, in company with his brother-in-law, continued for three years to lead a wandering life.  His devotedness to verse-making had continued unabated from boyhood; he had written verses at the loom, and had become an enthusiastic votary of the muse during his peregrinations with his pack.  He was now in his twenty-third year; and with the buoyancy of ardent youth, he thought of offering to the public a volume of his poems by subscription.  In this attempt he was not successful; nor would any bookseller listen to proposals of publishing the lucubrations of an obscure pedlar.  In 1790, he at length contrived to print his poems at Paisley, on his own account, in the hope of being able to dispose of them along with his other wares.  But this attempt was not more successful than his original scheme, so that he was compelled to return to his father’s house at Lochwinnoch, and resume the obnoxious shuttle.  His aspirations for poetical distinction were not, however, subdued; he heard of the institution of the Forum, a debating society established in Edinburgh by some literary aspirants, and learning, in 1791, that an early subject of discussion was the comparative merits of Ramsay and Fergusson as Scottish poets, he prepared to take a share in the competition.  By doubling his hours of labour at the loom, he procured the means of defraying his travelling expenses; and, arriving in time for the debate in the Forum, he repeated a poem which he had prepared, entitled the “Laurel Disputed,” in which he gave the preference to Fergusson.  He remained several weeks in Edinburgh, and printed his poem.  To Dr Anderson’s “Bee” he contributed several poems, and a prose essay, entitled “The Solitary Philosopher.”  Finding no encouragement to settle in the metropolis, he once more returned to his father’s house in the west.  He now formed the acquaintance of Robert Burns, who testified his esteem for him both as a man and a poet.  In 1792, he published anonymously his popular ballad of “Watty and Meg,” which he had the satisfaction to find regarded as worthy of the Ayrshire Bard.

The star of the poet was now promising to be in the ascendant, but an untoward event ensued.  In the ardent enthusiasm of his temperament, he was induced to espouse in verse the cause of the Paisley hand-loom operatives in a dispute with their employers, and to satirise in strong invective a person of irreproachable reputation.  For this offence he was prosecuted before the sheriff, who sentenced him to be imprisoned for a few days, and publicly to burn his own poem in the front of the jail.  This satire is entitled “The Shark; or, Long Mills detected.”