It was my own chance to be almost in touch
with both these gentle, tuneful, and kindly humorists. Davidson was
a Borderer, born on the skirts of `stormy Ruberslaw,' in the country
of James Thomson, of Leyden, of the old Ballad minstrels. The son
of a Scottish peasant line of the old sort, honourable, refined,
devout, he was educated in Edinburgh for the ministry of the United
Presbyterian Church. Some beautiful verses of his appeared in the
St. Andrews University Magazine about 1863, at the time when I first
`saw myself in print' in the same periodical. Davidson's poem
delighted me: another of his, `Ariadne in Naxos,' appeared in the
Cornhill Magazine about the same time. Mr. Thackeray, who was then
editor, no doubt remembered Pen's prize poem on the same subject. I
did not succeed in learning anything about the author, did not know
that he lived within a drive of my own home. When next I heard of
him, it was in his biography. As a `Probationer,' or unplaced
minister, he, somehow, was not successful. A humorist, a poet, a
delightful companion, he never became `a placed minister.
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