ABSTRACT
Religious inclinations fired George Campbell's ambition to train as a minister, and in order to earn a sum sufficient to pay his college fees, he regularly worked well into the night. Assisted by the Revd Dr Mackinlay of Kilmarnock, he set up as a village schoolmaster, which enabled him to find time to prepare for the press the poems that he had composed while shoemaking. Religious inclinations fired Campbell's ambition to train as a minister, and in order to earn a sum sufficient to pay his college fees, he regularly worked well into the night. Paterson conjectures that the poems were published to further Campbell's aim of going to college, but are nonetheless notable for their 'plain good sense, a shrewdness of observation, and a chasteness of expression', even if their author displays too rarely 'the fervency of a Poet'.
