'How oft upon yon eminence our paceHas slackened to a pause, and we have borneThe ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,While admiration, feeding at the eye,And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.Thence with what pleasure have we just discernedThe distant plough slow-moving, and besideHis labouring team, that swerved not from the track,The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plainOf spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,Conducts the eye along his sinuous courseDelighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,That screen the huntsman's solitary hut;While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,The sloping land recedes into the clouds;Displaying, on its varied side, the graceOf hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bellsJust undulates upon the listening ear,Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote.'[23]
'How oft upon yon eminence our paceHas slackened to a pause, and we have borneThe ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,While admiration, feeding at the eye,And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.Thence with what pleasure have we just discernedThe distant plough slow-moving, and besideHis labouring team, that swerved not from the track,The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plainOf spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,Conducts the eye along his sinuous courseDelighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,That screen the huntsman's solitary hut;While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,The sloping land recedes into the clouds;Displaying, on its varied side, the graceOf hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bellsJust undulates upon the listening ear,Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote.'[23]
'How oft upon yon eminence our paceHas slackened to a pause, and we have borneThe ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,While admiration, feeding at the eye,And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.Thence with what pleasure have we just discernedThe distant plough slow-moving, and besideHis labouring team, that swerved not from the track,The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plainOf spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,Conducts the eye along his sinuous courseDelighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,That screen the huntsman's solitary hut;While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,The sloping land recedes into the clouds;Displaying, on its varied side, the graceOf hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bellsJust undulates upon the listening ear,Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote.'[23]
'How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned
The distant plough slow-moving, and beside
His labouring team, that swerved not from the track,
The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!
Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,
Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,
That screen the huntsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying, on its varied side, the grace
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear,
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote.'[23]
No scene could have been more thoroughly congenial to such a temperament as that of Cowper. He never wearied of the sights and sounds of that peaceful landscape. He watched its changes from hour to hour, from day to day, and from season to season. Every change awakened new joy in his breast, and gave fresh inspiration to his verse. And so year after year he lived in closest communion with nature. Well might he say that
'Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewedPlease daily, and whose novelty survivesLong knowledge and the scrutiny of years.'[24]
'Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewedPlease daily, and whose novelty survivesLong knowledge and the scrutiny of years.'[24]
'Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewedPlease daily, and whose novelty survivesLong knowledge and the scrutiny of years.'[24]
'Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed
Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.'[24]
Cowper's poetic vision was like his landscape, limited, though within its range it was searching and accurate. His timid nature shrank from what was rugged and wild. He found his consolation in
'Nature in her cultivated trimAnd dressed to his taste.'[25]
'Nature in her cultivated trimAnd dressed to his taste.'[25]
'Nature in her cultivated trimAnd dressed to his taste.'[25]
'Nature in her cultivated trim
And dressed to his taste.'[25]
But no one before him had revealed to men the infinite variety and beauty and charm to be seen by the contemplative eye even in these everyday surroundings. The calm of evening—
'With matron step slow moving, while the NightTreads on her sweeping train,'[26]
'With matron step slow moving, while the NightTreads on her sweeping train,'[26]
'With matron step slow moving, while the NightTreads on her sweeping train,'[26]
'With matron step slow moving, while the Night
Treads on her sweeping train,'[26]
or the river shining in the moonlight beneath the 'wearisome but needful length' of Olney bridge, or the creep of autumn over wood and field and weedy fallow, or the advent of winter and the shrouding of the valley under snow, or the coming of spring, when—
'The primrose ere her timePeeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,'[27]
'The primrose ere her timePeeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,'[27]
'The primrose ere her timePeeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,'[27]
'The primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,'[27]
—every mood of nature in this sequestered vale is painted with a vividness and skill that evoke our admiration, and with a sympathy and grace which win our heart. That quiet valley has thus become classic ground, for as long as English poetry is read, the affections of men will be drawn to the home of Cowper by the banks of the Ouse.
The other two lowland writers whom I have selected were contemporaries of Cowper, though Thomson died when Cowper was only seventeen years old. Indealing with their influence, we turn to the Scottish lowlands where they both were born, and from which came their poetic impulse.
A traveller, familiar with the low grounds of England, when he first enters the northern lowlands is at once impressed by their much more limited extent. He finds them to occupy comparatively restricted spaces between uplands and highlands, their largest expanse lying in the broad depression between the southern border of the Highland mountains and the great tract of high pastoral land in the southern counties. Another considerable area of them intervenes between these southern uplands and the flanks of the Cheviot Hills. A further contrast to the English type is to be seen in the broken character of the surface. There are no extensive level flats like those of the English midlands, nor any continuous bands of gentle ridge like those of the English downs. The ground is separated into detached districts by ranges of hills, which sometimes even become sufficiently high and broad to deserve the name of uplands. A third characteristic arises from the great diversity of geological structure, and especially the intercalation of abundant volcanic rocks among the other formations. As a consequence of this intermingling of hard and durable materials with others more easily abraded, the topography is diversified by endless crags and hills rising picturesquely out of the surrounding lower country, and often crowned with ancient castles or ruined peels.
Such a disposition of the elements of the landscape is accompanied with a much greater diversity in themantle of vegetation than is seen among the English lowlands. The surrounding uplands and hills, for the most part bare of trees, are clothed with pasture, save where they support a covering of heathy herbage or dark peat-moss. The lower grounds have in large measure been brought under cultivation, but still retain tracts of moorland, haunted by lapwing and curlew. Though the ancient natural wood has mostly disappeared, hard-wood trees are now abundant, while sombre plantations of fir give a northern character to the landscapes.
But perhaps the feature in these Scottish lowlands which more particularly deserves notice here, is the contrast to be found between their streams and those of south-eastern England. Owing to the uneven forms and steeper slopes of the ground, the drainage runs off rapidly to the sea. The brooks are full of motion, as they tumble over waterfalls, plunge through rocky ravines, and sweep round the boulders that cumber their channels. They furnish, moreover, countless dells and dingles where the native copsewoods find their surest shelter. There the gorse and the sloe come earliest into bloom, and the wild flowers linger longest. There too the birds make their chief home. These strips of wild nature, winding through cultivated field or bare moor, from the hills to the sea, offer in summer scenes of perfect repose. But they furnish too, from time to time, pictures of tumult and uproar, when rain-clouds have burst upon the uplands, and the streams come down in heavy flood, pouring through the glens with a din that can be heard from far.
Brooks and rivers have always had a fascination forpoets. Their banks supply secluded spots for reverie and communion with nature. Under their shade and shelter, bird and blossom and flower are guarded from the blasts around, while the sparkle and murmur of their waters give a sense of life and companionship even in the depths of solitude. Constant familiarity with such a type of stream as that of the Scottish lowlands can hardly fail to strike the imagination in a different way from that which has attended the slow-creeping and silent brooks of the south-east of England. The Scottish poets, even in the earlier centuries, show traces of the influence of their more rugged surroundings; but not till the eighteenth century did this influence manifest itself in such a manner as to affect the general flow of English literature.
Of the two Scottish lowland poets whom we have now to notice, James Thomson was considerably the earlier. He was born in Roxburghshire in 1700, within hearing of the ripple of the Tweed, within sight of the Cheviot and Lammermuir Hills, and in a region famous in Border ballad and song. To the east the uplands of the Cheviot Hills rise as a blue ridge, high enough to come often within the clouds, to catch the first snows of autumn, and to keep them unmelted in northern rifts until the spring. From these long, bare undulating uplands a number of streams descend northwards into the Tweed, each having its own dale, with its own ridge of moors on either hand, and its meadows and cornfields along the bottom. The slope of the ground gives these descending waters such an impetus as sends them dashing over rocky channels, here and there cutting a scaur orravine, murmuring over gravelly bottoms, winding through flat haughs, and finally finding their way into the Tweed. The watercourses are thus in themselves full of variety and life, and their charms are enhanced by the alternation of meadow and field, coppice, ferny brake and woodland, through which they wander. Nor are occasional bolder features wanting to enliven these quiet valleys. Here and there knobs of volcanic material rise along the crests of the ridges into prominent hills, which are conspicuous landmarks all over the Border country. Since Thomson's day the plough has no doubt crept further up the hill sides; more wood has been planted and more ground has been enclosed. But there is still plenty of bare moor and peat-moss, and the pastoral character of the district yet remains. The traditions of Border warfare have grown fainter, but the ruined peel-towers still stand as picturesque relics of the old wild times. The climate, too, has not changed. The winter storms still send down the rivers in full flood, and bury the vales in deep snow; the spring whitens the meadows and hedgerows with flower and blossom, and the short summer gives way to an early autumn.
Such was the scenery that inspired the 'sweet poet of the year,' as Burns called him. Thomson came to London in 1725, when he was twenty-five years of age, and the following year he published hisWinter. The poem, though written at Barnet, took its inspiration from the Border. The verse was turgid, full of latinisms, and sadly lacking in the simplicity and directness which the subject required. Nevertheless these defects could not conceal the genuinepoetic gift of the writer, and the poem immediately became popular, for notwithstanding its artificial style, it took the reader at once into the sanctuaries of nature, from which the poetry of the previous hundred years had been exiled. It awakened a general interest in features of landscape never before described so fully or so well in English verse. It painted changes of the sky—tempest, rain-clouds and snow-storms, and it brought the gloom of a northern winter vividly before the imagination of dwellers in a more southerly clime.
Thomson told the world how in his youth,
'Nursed by careless solitude he livedAnd sang of nature with unceasing joy,'[28]
'Nursed by careless solitude he livedAnd sang of nature with unceasing joy,'[28]
'Nursed by careless solitude he livedAnd sang of nature with unceasing joy,'[28]
'Nursed by careless solitude he lived
And sang of nature with unceasing joy,'[28]
and how, with 'nature's volume broad displayed,' it was his sole delight to read therein, happy if it might be his good fortune,
'Catching inspiration thenceSome easy passage, raptured, to translate.'[29]
'Catching inspiration thenceSome easy passage, raptured, to translate.'[29]
'Catching inspiration thenceSome easy passage, raptured, to translate.'[29]
'Catching inspiration thence
Some easy passage, raptured, to translate.'[29]
He had been used in his early years to muse
'On rocks and hills and towers and wandering streams,'[30]
'On rocks and hills and towers and wandering streams,'[30]
'On rocks and hills and towers and wandering streams,'[30]
'On rocks and hills and towers and wandering streams,'[30]
and these now became the subjects of his song. Thomson, like his greater successor Burns, had from earliest boyhood been familiar with the burns and waters of his northern home. When he came to England he found but little entertainment in the landscapes around London, and longed for 'the living stream, the airy mountain, and the hanging rock.' He portrays with evident delight the changeful aspect of his native watercourses in the various seasons ofthe year. He knew well the 'deep morass' and 'shaking wilderness,' where many of them 'rise high among the hills,' and whence they assumed their 'mossy-tinctured' hue. He traces them as they 'roll o'er their rocky channel' until they at last lose themselves in 'the ample river' Tweed.[31]He describes them as they appear at sheep-washing time, and dwells on their delights for boys as bathing-places. But it is their wilder moods that live most vividly in his memory, when
'From the hillsO'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts,A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once.'[32]
'From the hillsO'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts,A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once.'[32]
'From the hillsO'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts,A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once.'[32]
'From the hills
O'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts,
A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once.'[32]
It is worthy of remark, however, that even though nature is his theme, the poet writes rather as an interested spectator than as an earnest votary. He reveals no passion for the landscapes he depicts. He never appears as if himself a portion of the scene, alive with sympathy in all the varying moods of nature. His verse has no flashes of inspiration, such as contact with storm and spate drew from Burns. It was already, however, a great achievement that Thomson broke through the conventionalities of the time, and led his countrymen once more to the green fields, the moors, and the woodlands.
In the successive poems which when placed together made theSeasons, published in 1730, Thomson continued to draw on his recollections of the Scottish Border for the descriptions of landscape that form so fundamental a part of his theme. It is interesting to note that even after he had been five years in the southof England, and must have seen in that time much variety of weather and many different watercourses, it is still from the north that he draws his sketches. When, for instance, he tells how in autumn,
'Red from the hills, innumerable streamsTumultuous roar,'[33]
'Red from the hills, innumerable streamsTumultuous roar,'[33]
'Red from the hills, innumerable streamsTumultuous roar,'[33]
'Red from the hills, innumerable streams
Tumultuous roar,'[33]
the colour of his torrents betrays their Scottish origin. He was thinking of the spates in his native streams which sweep across tracts of Old Red Sandstone, and come down almost brick-red in hue. There are no red rocks, and therefore no red brooks in Middlesex and the surrounding districts.
But before the completion of theSeasonsthe influence of English lowland scenery had begun to impress itself on Thomson's imagination. The softer and ampler landscape of fruitful plains, with its richer agriculture and fuller population, its farms, villages, and country houses, filled his mind with a new pleasure. Some trace of this widened experience may be seen in the additions successively made to the earlier poems, such as the picture of Hagley Park introduced into the poem onSpring. But it was in his last effusion,The Castle of Indolence, that this English influence gained entire sway, and the Scottish memories faded into the background. Here we find ourselves amid the typical landscapes of the south of England—landscapes, however, so transfused by poetic genius as to acquire an individuality of their own. We are led into 'a lowly dale fast by a river's side'; we wander through 'sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawnsbetween'; we see 'glittering streamlets' in a sunny glade'; we skirt a 'sable, silent, solemn forest'; and pass a 'wood of blackening pines,' which runs up the hills on either side, and see the famous castle 'close hid amid embowering trees,' that make a kind of chequered day and night. The landscape, we are told, 'inspires perfect ease'—a quality which must now have become indispensable to the 'bard, more fat than bard beseems.' Thomson, with his adoption of English scenery, had also polished his style and rid himself of much of his turgidity and latinism. He had changed his theme, too, and had chosen one more in consonance with the prevailing vogue. But to the end he had an eye for the charms of the free open face of nature. For the share he took in bringing back into our literature the recognition of these charms, he will ever hold an honourable place in the history of letters.
It was from another and somewhat dissimilar part of the Scottish lowlands that a far more powerful impulse than that of Thomson was given by the genius of Burns to the progress of the literary revolution of the eighteenth century. The landscapes of Ayrshire, where Burns was born and spent most of his life, though akin in their main aspects to those of Roxburghshire, present nevertheless certain well-marked differences in topography which were not without their influence on the muse that inspiredTam o' ShanterandHalloween.
The lowlands familiar to Burns throughout most of his life form a wide and undulating plain, surrounded on three sides by ranges of upland, and on the fourth by the open Firth of Clyde. The heights along thesouthern side belong to the long and broad chain of uplands which stretches from Portpatrick to Saint Abb's Head. Rising sometimes to more than 2,500 feet above the sea, they stretch as a wide pastoral country, much of which is still covered with 'muirs and mosses many.' These high grounds catch the clouds and mists from the Atlantic, and receive such a copious rainfall as to feed many large streams which cross the lowlands to the sea. The number and size of these streams form a notable feature in the scenery, and the different geological formations through which they flow have contributed to give much variety to their channels. Here they may be seen flowing in a narrow glen, there opening into a wider strath, or creeping sullenly in a narrow chasm between precipitous walls of naked stone, or dashing merrily over rock and boulder beneath overarching trees, or sweeping in wide curves through open meadows or dense woods, and finally carrying their burden of mossy water into the blue firth.
These streams, with their endless changes of aspect, their variations from season to season, their play of sunshine and shadow, their wild flowers and their birds, had a strong hold on the affections of Robert Burns. His best inspiration came to him from them. As he tells us himself:
'The Muse, na Poet ever fand her,Till by himsel he learn'd to wanderAdown some trottin' burn's meander,An' no think lang;O sweet to stray, an' pensive ponderA heart-felt sang.'[34]
'The Muse, na Poet ever fand her,Till by himsel he learn'd to wanderAdown some trottin' burn's meander,An' no think lang;O sweet to stray, an' pensive ponderA heart-felt sang.'[34]
'The Muse, na Poet ever fand her,Till by himsel he learn'd to wanderAdown some trottin' burn's meander,An' no think lang;O sweet to stray, an' pensive ponderA heart-felt sang.'[34]
'The Muse, na Poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel he learn'd to wander
Adown some trottin' burn's meander,
An' no think lang;
O sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder
A heart-felt sang.'[34]
In the poem from which these lines are quoted, after alluding to the poetic fame of other streams, while those of his own county remained unsung, the poet declares his resolve to atone for this neglect:
'We'll gar our streams and burnies shineUp wi' the best.We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells,Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells,Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.'
'We'll gar our streams and burnies shineUp wi' the best.We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells,Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells,Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.'
'We'll gar our streams and burnies shineUp wi' the best.We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells,Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells,Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.'
'We'll gar our streams and burnies shine
Up wi' the best.
We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells,
Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells,
Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.'
Amply did he fulfil his promise. There is not a river, hardly even a tributary, within his reach, that has not been made famous in his lyrics. In the first bloom of opening manhood it was the Ayr and the Doon that gave him inspiration, and when broken in health and spirits, and with an early grave opening before him, it was by the banks of the Nith that his last poetic impulse arose.
In his relation to Nature there was this great difference between Burns and his literary contemporaries and immediate predecessors, that whereas even the best of them wrote rather as pleased spectators of the country, with all its infinite variety of form and colour, of life and sound, of calm and storm, he sang as one into whose very inmost heart the power of these things had entered. For the first time in English literature the burning ardour of a passionate soul went out in tumultuous joy towards Nature. The hills and woods, the streams and dells were to Burns not merely enjoyable scenes to be visited and described. They became part of his very being. In their changeful aspects he found the counterpart of his own variable moods; they ministered to his joys,they soothed his sorrows. They yielded him a companionship that never palled, a sympathy that never failed. They kindled his poetic ardour, and became themselves the subjects of his song. He loved them with all the overpowering intensity of his affectionate nature, and his feelings found vent in an exuberance of appreciation which had never before been heard in verse.
Among the natural objects which exerted this potent sway over the poetry of Burns, the streams of Ayrshire and Nithsdale ever held a foremost place. Their banks were his favourite haunt for reverie. They were familiar to him under every change of sky and season, from firth to fell. Each feature in their seaward course was noted by his quick eye, and treasured in his loving memory. Their union of ruggedness and verdure, of sombre woods and open haughs, of dark cliff and bright meadow, of brawling current and stealthy flow, furnished that variety which captivated his fancy, and found such fitting transposition to his verse. His descriptions and allusions, however, are never laboured and prominent; they are dashed off with the careless ease of a master-artist, whose main theme is the portrayal of human feeling. Even when the banks and braes have been the immediate source of his inspiration, Burns quickly passes from them into the world of emotion to which he makes them subservient.
So numerous and descriptive are his allusions to them that a luminous account of the characteristics of the Carrick brooks and rivers might easily be compiled from Burns' poems. At one moment wefind him appealing to them for sympathy in his grief:
'Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens,Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glensWi' toddlin' din,Or foaming, strang, wi' hasty stens,Frae linn to linn.'[35]
'Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens,Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glensWi' toddlin' din,Or foaming, strang, wi' hasty stens,Frae linn to linn.'[35]
'Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens,Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glensWi' toddlin' din,Or foaming, strang, wi' hasty stens,Frae linn to linn.'[35]
'Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens,
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens
Wi' toddlin' din,
Or foaming, strang, wi' hasty stens,
Frae linn to linn.'[35]
The same appeal forms the burden of his song on theBanks and braes o' bonnie Doon. He leads us where
'In gowany glens the burnie strays,Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,Wi' hawthorns gray.'[36]
'In gowany glens the burnie strays,Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,Wi' hawthorns gray.'[36]
'In gowany glens the burnie strays,Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,Wi' hawthorns gray.'[36]
'In gowany glens the burnie strays,
Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,
Wi' hawthorns gray.'[36]
He pictures the stream after a rain-storm, when
'Tumbling brown, the burn comes downAnd roars frae bank to brae;'[37]
'Tumbling brown, the burn comes downAnd roars frae bank to brae;'[37]
'Tumbling brown, the burn comes downAnd roars frae bank to brae;'[37]
'Tumbling brown, the burn comes down
And roars frae bank to brae;'[37]
or when the breath of the Atlantic has swept over the wintry hills and the
'Burns wi' snawy wreeths up-chokedWild-eddying swirl,Or through the mining outlet bockedDown-headlong hurl.'[38]
'Burns wi' snawy wreeths up-chokedWild-eddying swirl,Or through the mining outlet bockedDown-headlong hurl.'[38]
'Burns wi' snawy wreeths up-chokedWild-eddying swirl,Or through the mining outlet bockedDown-headlong hurl.'[38]
'Burns wi' snawy wreeths up-choked
Wild-eddying swirl,
Or through the mining outlet bocked
Down-headlong hurl.'[38]
But nowhere does his delight in these features of his native landscape find more exuberant expression than in hisHalloween, when he interrupts his narrative of Leezie's misadventure to give a graphic picture of one of his brooks in the calm moonlight of an autumn evening.
'Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,As thro' the glen it wimpl't;Whyles round a rocky scaur it straysWhyles in a wiel it dimpl't;'Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays,Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle;Whyles cookit underneath the braes,Below the spreading hazelUnseen that night.'
'Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,As thro' the glen it wimpl't;Whyles round a rocky scaur it straysWhyles in a wiel it dimpl't;'Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays,Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle;Whyles cookit underneath the braes,Below the spreading hazelUnseen that night.'
'Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,As thro' the glen it wimpl't;Whyles round a rocky scaur it straysWhyles in a wiel it dimpl't;'Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays,Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle;Whyles cookit underneath the braes,Below the spreading hazelUnseen that night.'
'Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As thro' the glen it wimpl't;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't;
'Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays,
Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel
Unseen that night.'
Born near the river Ayr, and having spent his boyhood and youth in its valley, Burns had ever a special affection for that stream, along whose banks he had composed some of his finest poems. When his enforced emigration to America was settled, and his trunk on its way to the ship, he wrote a parting song in the burden of which the banks of Ayr are made to stand for his native country as a whole:
'The bursting tears my heart declare,Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr.'[39]
'The bursting tears my heart declare,Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr.'[39]
'The bursting tears my heart declare,Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr.'[39]
'The bursting tears my heart declare,
Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr.'[39]
When the respite came, and he found himself famous and in Edinburgh, the Address which he wrote to the Scottish capital contrasted his reception there with what had gone before, and again his heart was by his beloved river:
'From marking wildly-scattered flowers,As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,I shelter in thy honour'd shade.'
'From marking wildly-scattered flowers,As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,I shelter in thy honour'd shade.'
'From marking wildly-scattered flowers,As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,I shelter in thy honour'd shade.'
'From marking wildly-scattered flowers,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,
I shelter in thy honour'd shade.'
And lastly, when the shadows were beginning to gather around him at Ellisland, his thoughts would go back to the same scene. In one of his latest and most pathetic songs we find once more a reminiscence of his associations with the river of his youth:
'Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shoreO'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green;The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene.The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,The birds sang love on every spray,Till too, too soon, the glowing west,Proclaim'd the speed of winged day.'[40]
'Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shoreO'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green;The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene.The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,The birds sang love on every spray,Till too, too soon, the glowing west,Proclaim'd the speed of winged day.'[40]
'Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shoreO'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green;The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene.
'Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shore
O'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green;
The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,
Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene.
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,The birds sang love on every spray,Till too, too soon, the glowing west,Proclaim'd the speed of winged day.'[40]
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,
The birds sang love on every spray,
Till too, too soon, the glowing west,
Proclaim'd the speed of winged day.'[40]
When Burns moved from Ayrshire to Nithsdale, he found at his new home another valley and another river that could minister to his inspiration. The Nith took the place of the Ayr. But it could not wholly fill that place, for its landscape is less ample, the hills come closer down upon the valley, while the river, in its lower course, curves from side to side in a wide alluvial plain, without the variety that marks the lower part of the Ayr. We seem to recognise the influence of these differences in the allusions in the songs.
The landscapes of Burns are marked by some curious limitations. Though he was born within sight of the picturesque mountain group of Arran, it does not come within his poetic outlook.[41]Though the 'craggy ocean pyramid' of the Clyde rose so stupendously from the firth in front of him, he makes no use of it further than to tell how 'Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig.' Its distant grandeur does not seem to have struck his imagination. Indeed, if we examine his treatment of scenery, we may observe that it is the nearer detail that appeals to him. His pictures are exquisite foregrounds with seldom any distinct distance. But perhaps more remarkable still is the small place which the sea takes in the poetry of Burns.We must bear in mind that he was born and spent his boyhood within sight and hearing of the open Firth of Clyde. The dash of the breakers along the sandy beach behind his father's 'clay biggin' must have been one of the most familiar sounds to his young ears. Yet the allusions to the sea in his poems betray little trace of this association. They are in large measure introduced to mark the wide distance between separated friends.
It must be remembered, however, that his life, after he began to write, was passed inland, where the wide firth could only be seen from the rising ground at a distance of several miles. Yet Burns has left testimony that his imagination had not been insensible to the life and movement of the ocean. One of the most effective touches in his picture of the night scene in theBrigs of Ayris given in the reference to the neighbouring sea—
'The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen-sounding roar,Through the still night dashed hoarse along the shore';
'The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen-sounding roar,Through the still night dashed hoarse along the shore';
'The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen-sounding roar,Through the still night dashed hoarse along the shore';
'The tide-swollen Firth, wi' sullen-sounding roar,
Through the still night dashed hoarse along the shore';
and when his native Muse gives him her benediction she tells how she had watched his passionate love of Nature:
'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,Delighted with the dashing roar;Or when the North his fleecy storeDrove thro' the sky;I saw grim Nature's visage hoarStrike thy young eye.'[42]
'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,Delighted with the dashing roar;Or when the North his fleecy storeDrove thro' the sky;I saw grim Nature's visage hoarStrike thy young eye.'[42]
'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,Delighted with the dashing roar;Or when the North his fleecy storeDrove thro' the sky;I saw grim Nature's visage hoarStrike thy young eye.'[42]
'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
Or when the North his fleecy store
Drove thro' the sky;
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar
Strike thy young eye.'[42]
II. TheUplandsof the British Isles consist of undulating plains or plateaux which lie from 1000 tomore than 2000 feet above the sea. Seen from a distance, they look like ranges of hill or mountain, but without that variety of peak and crest which a true mountain outline would present. Though they may rise steeply out of the lower grounds, we have only to climb to their summit to find ourselves at the edge of a wide rolling platform, which may stretch for leagues without ever rising into any sharp prominence, or departing from the same monotony of moorland. Yet if we attempt to cross this seemingly continuous tableland, we find our progress barred by many valleys which, deep sunk beneath the general level, divide the plateau into separate blocks or ridges.
The surface of these uplands is for the most part treeless and even bushless. Where not covered with peat-moss, it is clothed with bent or with heather, kept short and green by periodical burning in the springtime. Herds of cattle and flocks of sheep wander over the pastures, but, save the stone fences, there is little other visible trace of human occupation. It is in the little hollows that lead down into the main valleys, and in these valleys themselves, that trees make their appearance, first in scattered saplings of birch, alder or mountain-ash, and then in thicker copsewoods or in artificial plantations of fir and larch. In these sheltered depressions, the farms and villages of the region have been planted, and cultivation has been slowly pushed upward on the slopes of the fells. Thus the larger part of the area of the uplands is uninhabited, the population being restricted to the more or less sheltered 'hopes,' hollows, dales, and valleys.
This type of scenery presents many local varieties,according to the geological structure of the ground. Where the rocks have been but little disturbed, the sides of the valleys display a succession of parallel bars of stone with intervening grassy slopes, such as may be seen among the moors of the East Riding, or in the dales of the Pennine Chain. Where, on the other hand, the rocks have been much compressed and pushed over each other by powerful movements of the terrestrial crust, their erosion has given rise to no regular topography, but they decay into rounded forms covered with heath and herbage, or breaking here and there into rocky scarps, as in Wales and southern Scotland.
Of the British uplands, the only district that claims notice here in connection with our literature is that of the wide Border country of England and Scotland. It stretches through the moorlands of Northumberland and Cumberland into the range of the Cheviots on the one hand, and on the other into the great tract of high ground, which extends through the Lammermuir and other groups of fells from the North Sea to the Solway Firth. For many centuries this region has been pre-eminently pastoral. The natural forest, which in old times clothed much of its surface, has almost wholly disappeared before modern agriculture, and the plough has in successive generations crept higher up the slopes from the meadows of the dales. But there can be little doubt that though roads and railways have done much to open up these solitudes, the natural features remain essentially unchanged.
It was among these uplands that the Border ballads had their birth. We may therefore pause for a fewmoments to inquire what trace may still be discernible of the influence of the landscape upon the tales of war and love, of feud and raid and rescue, which have made that Border-land famous in our literature.
At the outset it is desirable to realise the all-important character of the valleys in the human history of the uplands. From time immemorial, these strips of more sheltered and cultivable ground, lying much below the general level of the moorlands, have been to a large extent cut off from each other by high tracts of fell and peat-moss. Each of them took its name from the stream which, rising far up among the moors, and gathering tributary rivulets from glens on either side, winds down the strip of haugh along the valley-bottom. For generations past the people have looked on their native stream with an affectionate regard.[43]It has been the bond of union that has linked the natives of each dale in one family or brotherhood. The valley itself may vary its scenery as it passes across different parts of the upland, here narrowing into a glen, there widening into a strath; its slopes may change their aspect, now clothed in bent or purple heather, now waving with bracken or birken copsewood, now striped with fields of tillage, but the clear river that dashes merrily onward through these diversities of scene unites them all into one continuous dale.
The isolation imposed on the separate communities by this topography of the ground inured them to habits of self-dependence. It gave them a coherence that served them in good stead for attack or defence in the old days of Border forays. Each stream not only gave its name to the whole valley which it traversed, but to the human population that dwelt by its banks. It was called a 'Water,' such as Leader Water, Allan Water, Jed Water, and many more, and this word 'water' came to be synonymous with the able-bodied inhabitants of the dale. When, for instance, old Buccleuch gave his orders for the ride to rescue Jamie Telfer's cattle, carried off by English thieves, he bade his men
'Gar warn the water, braid and wide,Gar warn it sune and hastilie.'
'Gar warn the water, braid and wide,Gar warn it sune and hastilie.'
'Gar warn the water, braid and wide,Gar warn it sune and hastilie.'
'Gar warn the water, braid and wide,
Gar warn it sune and hastilie.'
The marauding propensities of one of these communities would sometimes be condensed into the name of their valley, as where Dick o' the Cow complains that
'Liddesdale's been i' my house last night,And they hae taen my three kye frae me.'
'Liddesdale's been i' my house last night,And they hae taen my three kye frae me.'
'Liddesdale's been i' my house last night,And they hae taen my three kye frae me.'
'Liddesdale's been i' my house last night,
And they hae taen my three kye frae me.'
The ballads are so full of human incident as to leave little room even for a background of landscape, but some of the features of the scenery are here and there graphically indicated by a line or even a word. 'The bent sae brown' of the higher ground gives place to 'heathery hill and birken shaw,' with here and there a 'bush of broom' or 'buss o' ling' where the dun deer couches in the glade. We are led to where
'The hills are high on ilka sideAn' the bought i' the lirk o' the hill.'
'The hills are high on ilka sideAn' the bought i' the lirk o' the hill.'
'The hills are high on ilka sideAn' the bought i' the lirk o' the hill.'
'The hills are high on ilka side
An' the bought i' the lirk o' the hill.'
We are made to see that the 'morning sun is on the dew,' to feel 'the cauler breeze frae off the fells,' and to note here and there 'the gryming of a new-fa'n snaw.' When the king led his army through Caddon ford, in pursuit of the outlaw Murray, and came in sight of Ettrick forest, the ballad tells how
'They saw the darke Forest them before,They thought it awsome for to see.'
'They saw the darke Forest them before,They thought it awsome for to see.'
'They saw the darke Forest them before,They thought it awsome for to see.'
'They saw the darke Forest them before,
They thought it awsome for to see.'
But perhaps the natural feature most frequently alluded to in the tales of foray is the flooding of the rivers. In those days bridges were few throughout the Border, and thus a heavy downfall of rain might completely sever all communication between the two sides of a dale. To plunge into these swollen torrents was sometimes the only escape from pursuit, and required fully as much courage and nerve as to stay and face the approaching foe. In the famous ride to Carlisle for the rescue of Kinmont Willie, the party found when they came to the Eden that
'The water was great and meikle of spate.'
'The water was great and meikle of spate.'
'The water was great and meikle of spate.'
'The water was great and meikle of spate.'
But they dashed into it, losing neither man nor horse, but encountering still worse weather on the English side—
'The wind began fu' loud to blaw;But 'twas wind and weet and fire and sleetWhen they came beneath the castle wa'.'
'The wind began fu' loud to blaw;But 'twas wind and weet and fire and sleetWhen they came beneath the castle wa'.'
'The wind began fu' loud to blaw;But 'twas wind and weet and fire and sleetWhen they came beneath the castle wa'.'
'The wind began fu' loud to blaw;
But 'twas wind and weet and fire and sleet
When they came beneath the castle wa'.'
On their return with their rescued comrade to the river, they saw that it 'flowed frae bank to brim,' but nothing daunted, they plunged into the flood andsafely swam across. Their pursuers, however, gave up the chase at sight of the rushing torrent:
'All sore astonish'd stood Lord ScroopeHe stood as still as rock of stane;He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,When through the water they had gane."He is either himsell a devil frae hell,Or else his mother a witch maun be;I wadna hae ridden that wan waterFor a' the gowd in Christentie."'
'All sore astonish'd stood Lord ScroopeHe stood as still as rock of stane;He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,When through the water they had gane."He is either himsell a devil frae hell,Or else his mother a witch maun be;I wadna hae ridden that wan waterFor a' the gowd in Christentie."'
'All sore astonish'd stood Lord ScroopeHe stood as still as rock of stane;He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,When through the water they had gane."He is either himsell a devil frae hell,Or else his mother a witch maun be;I wadna hae ridden that wan waterFor a' the gowd in Christentie."'
'All sore astonish'd stood Lord Scroope
He stood as still as rock of stane;
He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,
When through the water they had gane.
"He is either himsell a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch maun be;
I wadna hae ridden that wan water
For a' the gowd in Christentie."'
But even in the midst of the rough warfare of these olden days, there was often a thread of tender affection and romance woven by the ballad-singers into their tales. The vale of the river Yarrow has been more specially consecrated by these tragic songs, and the 'dowie howms o' Yarrow' have come to be identified with all that is most pathetic in the minstrelsy of the Border. From the time of the early ballads a succession of minor poets had sung of this vale, until the pathos of its history was fully revealed to the whole world by Scott and Wordsworth.
It may be readily granted that the fascination of Yarrow has mainly sprung from the recollection of the human incidents which have been transacted there, and which have been enshrined in so much touching verse. But these tragic associations will not, I think, of themselves wholly account for this fascination, nor for the sad tone of the poetry. There seems to me to be a source of peculiarly impressive power in the scenery of the valley itself, and that to this source not a little of the glamour of Yarrow is to be attributed. Nowhere throughout the wholerange of the uplands are their characteristic aspects more perfectly displayed. Down the centre of the dale runs the strip of level green haugh, through which the stream meanders from side to side across banks of shingle, with a murmuring cadence that is borne down on the wind like a low plaintive wail. On either hand, the smooth green slopes rise into the rounded summits of the fells, mottled here with sheets of bracken and there with folds of heather. The declivities are indented by little side-valleys, each leading a clear rivulet between grassy banks to the main stream. Nowhere do any rugged features mar the gentle undulations of the ground. The outer world seems to lie far beyond the high hills that enclose and shelter the quiet valley. There is a deep silence over the scene, broken now and then by the melancholy scream of the curlew or the mournful note of the plover. The mind, amid such surroundings, easily glides from the present into reverie amidst the past. The ruined peel seems to whisper tales of 'old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago.' The greener grass around some mouldering stones points to hamlets long since forsaken and forgotten. The scattered birks and alders recall the 'fair forest' that once clothed the valley with 'many a seemly tree,' and when in these tracts, now sacred only to sheep, there were
'Hart and hynd, and dae and rae,And of a' wild beasts great plentie.'
'Hart and hynd, and dae and rae,And of a' wild beasts great plentie.'
'Hart and hynd, and dae and rae,And of a' wild beasts great plentie.'
'Hart and hynd, and dae and rae,
And of a' wild beasts great plentie.'
There is a natural expectation in the mind that scenery which has made for itself so notable a placein the history of English poetry should present, when first seen, some special charm of attractive beauty. And doubtless many have shared the disappointment so well expressed by Wordsworth and by Washington Irving, who nevertheless had the advantage of being shown over the Border country by its great minstrel himself. But with the instinct of a true poet, Wordsworth soon recovered from his first surprise, and divined the inner spirit of the landscape. Nowhere has that spirit been more felicitously expressed than in his second poem on Yarrow. Contrasting his first anticipation with what he found to be the reality, he addressed the vale:
'Thou, that didst appear so fairTo fond imagination,Dost rival in the light of dayHer delicate creation:Meek loveliness is round thee spread,A softness still and holy;The grace of forest charms decayedAnd pastoral melancholy.'
'Thou, that didst appear so fairTo fond imagination,Dost rival in the light of dayHer delicate creation:Meek loveliness is round thee spread,A softness still and holy;The grace of forest charms decayedAnd pastoral melancholy.'
'Thou, that didst appear so fairTo fond imagination,Dost rival in the light of dayHer delicate creation:Meek loveliness is round thee spread,A softness still and holy;The grace of forest charms decayedAnd pastoral melancholy.'
'Thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation:
Meek loveliness is round thee spread,
A softness still and holy;
The grace of forest charms decayed
And pastoral melancholy.'
On the influence of the upland scenery of southern Scotland upon the genius of Scott I must not enter. He spent his boyhood within sight of these hills, he made them his chief home throughout life, and when, shattered in health and fortunes, he returned from Italy, it was among these hills, and in hearing of the murmur of the Tweed, that he wished to die. No one can read the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' or 'Marmion,' without coming under the spell of the Border scenery. Among the descriptive sketches of landscape in the Waverley Novels, none are more lovingly and graphically painted than those where Scottdrew from the vivid recollections of his journeys among the dales and moors of the Southern Uplands.
III. For the purposes of our present inquiry, I would class together asHighlandsall the higher, more rugged, and mountainous ground, which differs on the whole from the uplands, not only in its greater elevation, but in the more irregular rocky forms of its surface, the narrower crests of its ridges, and the more peaked shapes of its summits. The geological structure of these tracts of country is generally so complicated that it gives rise to much greater variety of outline than is to be found in either of the other types of scenery. Each kind of rock yields to the weather in its own characteristic way, and as the rainfall is heavier and the slopes are steeper there than elsewhere, the influence of the weather upon the topography is more especially prominent.
In the northern parts of Wales where a group of ancient volcanic rocks has been laid bare by the stupendous denudation of the surface, a small tract of truly highland scenery has been carved out in Cader Idris, Arenig, Snowdon, and the surrounding heights in Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire. Another isolated area of volcanic hills forms the picturesque district of the Lakes. But it is in Scotland that this type is displayed on the largest scale and in the most varied diversity. The Scottish Highlands are built up of the most ancient rocks of the British Islands, and possess a geological structure of extraordinary complexity. They include a vast variety of materials which, rising to the highest elevations in the country, and exposed tothe severest climate, have impressed their individual characters upon the landscapes. Thus, in the north-west, where the simplest grouping of rocks is to be seen, masses of horizontal dark-red sandstone have been carved into the huge pyramids that form so singular a feature in the scenery of Ross and Sutherland (p. 71). In the central and south-western counties, gleaming white cones show where the quartzites rise to the surface. In the eastern Grampians, high craggy moors, encircled with stupendous corries and precipices, mark the sites of the bosses of granite. Among the Western Isles, dark splintered crests and pinnacles point out the position of the gabbros. Perhaps the most rugged ground is to be seen among the mica-schists, which combine a wonderful array of pointed peak and notched ridge, with tumultuous masses of craggy declivity.
In the eastern Grampians, the mountains include broad tracts of undulating moorland, which, though lying along the summits of the chain, are level enough to be capable of conversion into racecourses. These hills are separated from the sea by a tract of lowland, and lie thus entirely inland. On the west side of the Highlands, however, the ground between the straths and glens mounts upward into narrow ridges, not infrequently sharpened into knife-edged crests, while the whole aspect of the landscape is rugged, rocky, and bare. Land and sea appear there to be inextricably intermingled. Islands, peninsulas, and promontories are penetrated or surrounded by sounds and sea-lochs, in such a curious way that even in what might be thought to be the very heart of the country, the tides ofthe Atlantic are found to ebb and flow into remote and solitary glens. The mountains plunge abruptly into the salt water, and for the most part only along the valley-bottoms are little strips of level land to be seen.
As a consequence of this intricate interlacing of land and sea, the warm, damp breezes from the Atlantic furnish abundance of mist, cloud, and rain to the western Highlands. Thus to the wildness of rugged mountains and stormy firths, there is added a marvellous range of atmospheric effect. Nowhere in Britain can such an union be beheld of picturesque mountain-form and of clear and vivid colour. Nowhere is the grandeur of a winter storm more impressive than when a south-westerly gale drives the breakers against the headlands, howls up the glens, and fills every gully with a foaming torrent.
The scenery of the western Highlands of Scotland was first brought prominently before the world by the publication in the year 1760 of what purported to beFragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands. The success of this volume encouraged the translator, James Macpherson, to prepare a much larger collection which he combined into an epic poem and published in 1762, under the name ofFingall. A second epic,Temora, appeared during the following year. Keen discussion arose as to the authenticity of these poems. They were by one group of writers upheld as a priceless contribution to literature, recovered by the skill and labour of one man from the lips of the peasantry, and from faded manuscripts that handed down the traditions of a long vanished past. By another class of disputants they were branded as impudent forgeriespalmed off upon the credulity of the world by Macpherson himself.
Into this unhappy and still unsettled controversy I have no intention of entering. For my present purpose it is not necessary to decide whether the so-called poems of Ossian were genuine ancient Celtic productions or were entirely fabricated after the middle of last century, though I think we may safely steer a middle course between the extreme views that have been put forward on either side. Few persons now believe that Macpherson'sEpicsever existed as such among the Highlanders. But, on the other hand, it is generally admitted that he really did find a number of Ossianic fragments and that he strung these together no doubt with copious connecting material of his own. How much was genuine and old, and how much spurious and modern, has never yet been satisfactorily determined. But in estimating the influence of Macpherson'sOssianon literature, we have no need to consider the age of the poems. None of these were known to the world at large until 1760, and we have therefore only to concern ourselves with their history from that year onwards.
Those who have engaged in the controversy have almost wholly entered it from the literary or antiquarian side. I prefer to approach it from the side of the scenery and topography of the West Highlands, and to inquire how far the Ossianic landscape was a true representation of nature, whether there was anything in it new to our literature, and whether it exerted any lasting effect on the attitude of society towards the type of scenery which it depicted.
Macpherson had previously published some English verse of little merit and which attracted no notice. But the appearance of his Ossianic translations at once made him famous. ThePoems of Ossiannot only became popular in this country, but were translated into the more important languages of the Continent.
In studying the landscape of Macpherson'sOssianwe soon learn that it belongs unmistakably to Western Argyleshire. Its union of mountain, glen, and sea removes it at once from the interior to the coast. Even if it had been more or less inaccurately drawn, its prominence and consistency all through the poems would have been remarkable in the productions of a lad of four-and-twenty, who had spent his youth in the inland region of Badenoch, where the scenery is of another kind. But when we discover that the endless allusions to topographical features are faithful delineations, which give the very spirit and essence of the scenery, we feel sure that whether they were written in the eighteenth century or in the third, they display a poetic genius of no mean order.
The grandeur and gloom of the Highland mountains, the spectral mists that sweep round the crags, the roar of the torrents, the gleam of sunlight on moor and lake, the wail of the breeze among the cairns of the dead, the unspeakable sadness that seems to brood over the landscape whether the sky be clear or clouded—these features of West Highland scenery were first revealed by Macpherson to the modern world. This revelation quickened the change of feeling, already begun, in regard to the prevailing horror ofmountain scenery. It brought before men's eyes some of the fascination of the mountain-world, more especially in regard to the atmospheric effects that play so large a part in its landscape. It showed the titanic forces of storm and tempest in full activity. And yet there ran through all the poems a vein of infinite melancholy. The pathos of life manifested itself everywhere, now in the tenderness of unavailing devotion, now in the courage of hopeless despair.
Ossianfascinated some of the greatest men of the time. These Celtic poems, in the words of Matthew Arnold, passed 'like a flood of lava through Europe.' In the deliberate judgement of this acute critic, they revealed 'the very soul of the Celtic genius, and have the proud distinction of having brought this soul of the Celtic genius into contact with the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it.'[44]There can at least be no doubt that they gave a new and powerful impulse to the appreciation of the wilder aspects of nature, and did much to prepare the way for that love of mountain-scenery which has been one of the characteristic developments of the nineteenth century. It is not that in Ossian Highland landscape was deliberately described, but it formed a continually visible and changing background. The prevalent character of the whole range of scenery in the region, and the general impression made by it on the eye and mind, were so vividly conveyed that no one familiar with the country can fail to recognise how faithfully the innermost soul of the West Highlands is rendered.
Never before or since have the endless changes of sky and atmosphere been more powerfully portrayed. In the tempestuous climate of the west of Scotland these changes succeed each other with a rapidity and energy such as the dweller on the southern lowlands can hardly realise. They are faithfully, if somewhat monotonously, reflected inOssian. All through the poems the air seems ever astir around us. Sometimes it is only a gently-breathing zephyr which