"Dear land, thy bonny braes, thy dales, Each haunted by its myriad streams, o'erhung But to my parched mouth's roof cleave my tongue, And this oft-pausing heart forget to throb, If, Scotland, thee and thine, I e'er forget." It is a curious example of the changes that increased communication and constant intercourse have made, to realise that Grahame's foreign land was no farther off than the English side of the Tweed. He was one of the friends whom Thomas Campbell made in the period of his early glory in Edinburgh, and the following little sketch gives some idea of the gentle and pious poet:— "So small a part of James's value lay in his poetry, that I feel it difficult to express my sentiments about it. . . . One of the most endearing circumstances which I remember of Grahame was his singing. I shall never forget one summer evening that we agreed to sit up all night, and go together to Arthur's Seat to see the sun rise. We sat accordingly all night in his delightful parlour-the seat of so many happy remembrances. We then went out, and saw a beautiful sunrise. I returned home with him, for I was living in his house at the time. He was unreserved in all his devoutest feelings before me; and from the beauty of the morning scenery, and the recent death of his sister, our conversation took a serious turn. As I retired to my own bed, I overheard his devotions-not his prayer, but a hymn which he sang, and with a power and inspiration beyond himself and beyond anything else. At that time he was a strong-voiced The remembrance of his large and commanding-looking man. expressive features when he climbed the hill, and of his organlike voice in praising God, is yet fresh and ever pleasing in my mind." This gentle pair, full of religion and devotion, their heads running over with verse and poetic musings, as they climbed in that dreamy dimness which was neither night nor dawn, the rugged ways where solitude lies sacred and still as if in the heart of the mountains, might have seen from the heights the luminous window where the plotters of the Edinburgh Review were arranging their onslaught upon the world, a scene as different as it is possible to conceive. And it was not long after that the Noctes Ambrosiana, in full swing of free poetry and criticism, began to awaken all the echoes. Wilson's tavern parlour, whether real or imaginary, has as genuine an existence as Edinburgh itself; and though all that eloquence and mirth, and pathos, and delightful madness of inspired talk has fallen a little out of hearing nowadays, it was in its time as authentic a scene as any club in the three kingdoms, and far more entertaining and brilliant than any of them. To these voices old Edinburgh laughed and listened with an uproar of mirth and applause, while Scott poured forth the great romances which kept all Europe breathless, and little Jeffrey sat in precise yet lively state, cutting and carving the reputations of all the poets, and dealing his strokes about like lightning. Another great and characteristic figure, the prophet and Seer whom we have so recently lost, Thomas Carlyle, though but for a moment associated with this scene, had begun to be known, though but vaguely, through the early mists. In all the corners there was twittering of smaller singers, simple yet tuneful-such as linger with the larks about the dewy fields, and take pleasure in their song without getting more credit for it than their little prototype; and in the pulpit there had risen a blear-eyed and rugged orator, with heavy features and a broad Fife accent, Thomas Chalmers, who was the greatest preacher of his day. At no time has Edinburgh come to such a climax of genius and fame. THOMAS CAMPBELL, born 1771; died 1844. Lyrics in Morning Chronicle, 1800-1802. Theodric, etc., 1824. Pilgrim of Glencoe, 1842. Annals of Great Britain. Life of Mrs. Siddons. Life of Petrarch. Edited the New Monthly Magazine in which the late CHAPTER V. LONDON: THE LOWER CIRCLE" THE COCKNEY SCHOOL." A LITTLE before the beginning of the outburst of literary life in Edinburgh, which has been the subject of our recent chapters, a curious and characteristic circle, or series of circles, existed in London, quite distinct from the higher level of life and letters on which Canning and his polite associates flourished. This lower region possessed many peculiarities of the old Grub Street existence. It was poor; its life was full of literary schemes and compilations of all kinds, Specimens," "Selections," "Epitomes of History," "Annual Registers," and many more-which along with such poor scraps as were then required in the shape of magazine articles, answered the purpose securing daily bread to a large body of writers to whom literature had become a trade; while ever and anon a poem, more or less ambitious, a drama, a philosophical essay, would burst forth from the obscurity to show how among these poor literary hacks, labouring hard in their vocation, there was some genius and much ambition, and that desire to do something worth remembering, or being remembered by, which gives a generous inspiration often to of the merest scribbler. The most remarkable and individual figure among them was that of William Godwin, whose works, both of philosophy and imagination, if such a sombre and subtle study of motive and impulse as Caleb Williams can be called by the latter name, have taken a permanent place in literature. So much can scarcely be said for Holcroft, whose novels have dropped out of recollection altogether, though one or two of his dramas, notably the Road to Ruin, still hold the stage; or Hazlitt, most of whose essays and criticisms, though often brilliant, have fallen into that limbo which, alas! is the natural place even of the ablest commentaries upon other men's works and lives. One of the most curious particulars in the life of these London coteries of the poorer kind is the quiet commonplace bourgeois existence which they carried on obscurely in out-of-the-way streets in all the usual subjection to law and social order, notwithstanding that the principles they maintained were wild enough, as they thought themselves, and as many people thought, to upset all the foundations of society and blow the British Empire out of its secure place in the protecting seas. Some of them were tried for high treason, no less, in those hot and exciting French Revolution days. They were considered dangerous to their country and to religion, and to everything that the ordinary mass holds sacred; yet, nevertheless, lived very quiet, humdrum, citizen lives, guilty of little more than an occasional indulgence in what is euphemistically called "wine," and fighting very hardly for existence in the lower levels of literary |