So when we were in Kirkcudbright, while brother John was sitting in with locals at the local and I was downing G & Ts.. I had the book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, shoved in my face by a man way drunker than I. So my lovely daughter put it in my Christmas presents and now I am reading it (and thinking about our tyrant leader as I do.) Its all humanist and enlightened in my living room. 1696. The Act for Setting Schools- The aftermath. Herman: Robert Burn’s father was a poor farmer from Alloway in south-western Scotland, who taught his son to make a living by handling a plow. But, he also saw to it that young Robert received an education worthy of any English gentleman, including studying Latin and French. For the future poet, it opened up an incredible new world. ‘Though I cost the schoolmaster some thrashings,’ Burns remembered later, ‘I made an excellent scholar.’ The first books he read were a biography of Hannibal and the Life of William Wallace, lent to him by the local blacksmith. ‘The story of Wallace poured Scottish prejudice in my veins,’ Burns recalled, ‘which will boil there till the flood gates of life shut in eternal rest.’ By the time he was sixteen, Burns the budding Ayrshire plowman had made his way through generous portions of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Addison’s Spectator series, and the Scottish poet Allen Ramsay, along with Jeremy Taylor on theology, Jethro Tull on agriculture, Robert Boyle’s lectures on chemistry, John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, several volumes in geography and history, and the French Enlightenment philosopher Fenelon’s Telemaque in the original.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 01:55:30 +0000
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