"Dear Burns, thou brother of my heart Most anxiously I wish to know, With thee of late how matters go; How keeps thy much-loved Jean her health? And how thy darling infants thrive?" Although the poems of Blacklock are not remarkable for strong sentiment or imaginative power, yet he was a fluent versifier. He also wrote several treatises on religious subjects, and an article on blindness for the Encyclopædia Britannica. He died in 1791. Dr. T. G. Smollett, already mentioned in a preceding section, occasionally tried his hand at poetry as well as history and fiction. He was born in Dalquharn House, Dumbartonshire, in 1721, and educated at the Grammar School of Dumbarton, and the University of Glasgow. He served his apprenticeship with a medical practitioner in Glasgow, and, before he was twenty, proceeded to London to seek his fortune. But it is beyond my scope to narrate his chequered career. He produced no long poems, but he was the author of a number of short pieces of some merit, such as his "Ode to Independence," "Ode to Leven Water," and the "Tears of Scotland." The latter was written soon after the battle of Culloden, and refers to the cruelties committed by the English forces in the Highlands. It is a touching and powerful piece, and extends to seven stanzas. There is both fire and real pathos in it, as these lines show :— "Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn ! The wretched owner sees afar Thy swans are famished on the rocks, Oh! baneful cause, oh! fatal morn, She views the shades of night descend: While the warm blood bedews my veins, And, spite of her insulting foe, My sympathising verse shall flow: 5I was in the coffee-house with Smollett when the news of the battle of Culloden arrived, and when London all over was in a perfect uproar of joy. About 9 o'clock I wished to go home to Lyon's, in New Bond Street. I asked Smollett if he was ready to go, as he lived at Mayfair; he said he was, and would conduct me. The mob were so riotous, and the squibs so numerous and incessant, that we were glad to go into a narrow entry to put our wigs in our pockets, and to take our broadswords from our belts and walk with them in our hands, as everybody then wore swords; and after warning me not to speak a word, lest the mob should discover my country and become insolent, For, John Bull,' says he, 'is as haughty and valiant to-night as he was abject and cowardly on the black Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby.' . . . When I saw Smollett again, he showed me the manuscript of his 'Tears of Scotland,' which was published not long after, and had such a run of approbation. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite, but he had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported cruelties that were said to be exercised after the battle of Culloden."—Autobiography of the Rev. Alex. Carlyle, p. 190. Dr. Robert Anderson, the biographer of the British poets, wrote a life of Smollett. John Home, the author of The Tragedy of Douglas, was born in Leith in 1722. He was educated for the Church, and succeeded Blair as minister of Athelstaneford. In the end of the year 1756 Douglas was first acted in Edinburgh, and proved a complete success, as it held the stage for many nights, and was attended by all the literary notabilities and some of the judges. The citizens were greatly elated that a Scotsman had written a first-rate tragedy, and that its merit was first submitted to their judgment; though there were a few opposers, who pretended to superior taste in literature, and endeavoured to cry down the performance in pamphlets and ballads, while one section of the clergy were unanimous against it. But The Tragedy of Douglas maintained its hold on the stage for more than fifty years, and still ranks amongst the better class of the productions of the modern English drama. A party of the clergy, and especially Home's own presbytery, raised a clamour, and were preparing a prosecution against him, when he resigned his charge, and withdrew from the Church. Lord Bute, however, rewarded Home with the sinecure office of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere; and when George III. ascended the throne he received a pension of £300 per annum. He wrote several other tragedies which were soon forgotten; yet, with an income of about £600 a year, he lived in easy and happy circumstances. In the later years of his life, he wrote a History of the Rising of 1745, published in 1802; it is not, however, of much historical value. He survived all the literary associates and companions of his youth, and having attained the great age of eighty-six, died in 1808. William Falconer, the son of a barber, was born at Edinburgh in 1732. He went early to sea, and before he was eighteen years of age, had attained the rank of second mate in the Britannia, which, when trading between Venice and Alexandria, was wrecked off Cape Colonna. Falconer and other two men alone escaped. It was his experiences on this occasion which formed the subject of his poem, "The Shipwreck." This poem appeared in 1762, and was very successful. In 1764 a second edition was issued, enlarged by 6 Autobiography of the Rev. Alex. Carlyle, pp. 310-325. Richard Gall, while working as a painter in Edinburgh, wrote several songs which became popular. One entitled, "My only Jo and Dearie O," and another, "Farewell to Ayrshire," has often been printed as a composition of Burns. Gall was born in 1776, and died in 1800. nine hundred new lines; and a third was published in 1769, with two hundred lines added to the poem, and many alterations of the text. But his literary activity was closed by an untimely death. In 1769 he sailed on board a vessel bound for India, which reached the Cape of Good Hope in December, but was never after heard of. Since Falconer's death, several editions of his poem has been published. Although "The Shipwreck" is very unequal, it has the merit of being exceedingly animated and interesting. As he wrote of what he actually saw and felt, the poem has the characteristic attraction of truth and reality. A great stir was raised in literary circles in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh, by the publication of Macpherson's translation of Ossian's poems. James Macpherson was born at Kingussie, in Invernessshire, in 1738. He was intended for the Church, and was educated at the University of Aberdeen. In 1760 he published a small volume entitled Fragments of Ancient Poetry Translated from the Gaelic, which attracted much attention. His friends encouraged him to make a tour in the Highlands to collect other pieces. As the result of his journey, he published, in 1762, Fingal, an ancient epic poem, in six books; and in 1763, Temora, another epic poem in eight books. The sale of these poems was great, and it is reported that Macpherson realised a sum of £1200 from them. His patrons, Mr. Home, Dr. Blair, Dr. Alexander Carlyle, and others, were much pleased and rejoiced. But many doubted, and some disbelieved that the poems were genuine; and then a vehement controversy arose on the subject of their authenticity, which raged long. Meanwhile, Macpherson fixed his residence in London, and became a popular pamphleteer in support of the Government of the day; and finally he entered parliament as the representative of the Borough of Camelford. Having realised a large fortune, in 1789 he purchased the estate of Raitts, in his native parish, built upon it a fine residence, in the style of an Italian villa, in which he died on the 17th of February, 1796. In accordance with his own explicit directions his remains were interred in Westminster Abbey, while a monument was erected to his memory on his own estate, which may be seen by the roadside near Kingussie. That Macpherson was gifted with remarkable abilities, his career amply demonstrates; but considering his extreme vanity, his veracity is a totally different question. There is no doubt that he col lected a certain quantity of the traditional pieces of verse and fragments of ancient Gaelic poetry, which was then current among the Celtic people of the Highlands. The only question is, how much Macpherson himself added to complete the poems which he published. When the circumstances connected with the subject are fairly weighed, the question is not a very difficult one; and the obvious conclusion is, that he drew from his own imaginative and elaborative faculties all that was needed to give the poems the completed and finished form in which they appeared in his published translations. The original material of these poems was probably not very bulky, and perhaps more than the half of the two published epic poems, should be assigned to the genius of Macpherson. Dr. James Beattie, already mentioned, was a poet as well as a writer and teacher of moral philosophy. In 1760, he published a collection of his poems, with some translations, which was reprinted in 1766, without the translations. The first part of his Minstrel appeared in 1771, the second in 1774. The volume met with a flattering reception, while honours flowed in on the author. He visited London, and was admitted to its brilliant circles; he also had an interview with the king and queen, and received a pension of £200 per annum; while the University of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. Beattie's fame now chiefly rests on The Minstrel, which is a didactic poem, in the Spenserian stanza, intended to "trace the progress of a poétical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel." The poem, though left unfinished, is well worked out so far as it goes, and there are many fine passages in it. He had good descriptive powers, and the command of appropriate and expressive language, but he was deficient in grasp and range of thought. The following lines describing a morning landscape is a fair specimen of his poetry: "Even now his eyes with smiles of rapture glow, As on he wanders through the scenes of morn, Where the fresh flowers in living lustre blow, Where thousand pearls the dewy lawns adorn, A thousand notes of joy in every breeze are borne. But who the melodies of morn can tell? The wild brook babbling down the mountain side; The pipe of early shepherd dim descried |