FERGUSSON, ROBERT (1750-1774), Scottish poet, son of Sir William Fergusson, was born in Edinburgh. He was edu cated at Dundee Grammar school and St. Andrew's and became a copying clerk in a lawyer's office in Edinburgh. In 1771 he began to contribute poems to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine. He was a member of the Cape Club, celebrated in his poem "Auld Reekie," the members of which used to meet at a tavern in Craig's Close. He was severely injured in the head by a fall, and died at Darien House asylum on Oct. 16, 1774. His poems were col lected a year before his death, and are interesting for their in fluence on Burns, whose "Holy Fair,;' for instance, is modelled on Fergusson's "Leith Races." Burns himself put up the memorial stone on Fergusson's grave in 1787.
See D. Irving, Lives of the Scottish Poets (1804) ; R. Chambers, Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1835) ; The Poems of Robert Fergusson, with a sketch of the author's life by Robert Aitken (1916) ; The Poetical Works of Robert Fergusson, with a biographical introduction by R. Ford (Paisley, 1917) .