"_Inquisitive_ wants to know." As he grew up into boyhood, surrounded by
objects to which tradition had assigned her marvellous stories, they
sank silently but indelibly into his mind. In his immediate vicinity
were Haigh Hall and Mab's Cross, the scenes of Lady Mabel's sufferings
and penance--the subject of one of his earliest tales. Almost within
sight of the windows lay the fine range of hills of which Rivington Pike
is a spur. In after-life he recalled with pleasure the many sports in
that district which were the haunts of his early days, and the scenes of
the legends he afterwards embodied. While yet a child he regularly took
the organ in a chapel at Wigan during the Sunday service. He also early
excelled in drawing, and after he had commenced the avocations of a
banker the use of the pencil was a favourite recreation. His first prose
composition, at the age of fifteen years, took a prize in a periodical
for the best essay on a prescribed subject, by young persons under a
specified age. Thus encouraged, poetry, essay, tale, were all tried, and
with success. In his eighteenth or nineteenth year he received a silver
snuff-box, inscribed, "The gift of the Philosophic Society, Wigan, to
their esteemed lecturer and worthy member."

Mr Roby first appeared before the public as a poet; publishing in 1815,
"Sir Bertram, a poem in six cantos." Another poem quickly followed,
entitled "Lorenzo, a tale of Redemption." In 1816, he married Ann, the
youngest daughter of James and Dorothy Bealey, of Derrikens, near
Blackburn, by whom he had nine children, three of whom died in their
infancy. His next publication was "The Duke of Mantua," a tragedy, which
appeared in 1823, passed through three or four editions in a short time,
and after being long out of print, was included in the posthumous volume
of _Legendary Remains_. In the summer of that year he made an excursion
in Scotland, visiting "the bonnie braes o' Yarrow" in company with James
Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. The literary leisure of the next six years