Up the long avenue of aged oaks which led from the forest to the main entrance of the Chateau Metzengerstein, a steed, bearing an unbonneted and disordered rider, was seen leaping with an impetuosity which outstripped the very Demon of the Tempest, and extorted from every stupified beholder the ejaculation—"horrible!"
The career of the horseman was indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance—the convulsive struggle of his frame—gave evidence of superhuman exertion: but no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through in the intensity of terror. One instant, and the clattering of hoofs resounded sharply and shrilly above the roaring of the flames and the shrieking of the winds—another, and, clearing at a single plunge the gateway and the moat, the steed bounded far up the tottering stair-cases of the Palace, and, with its rider, disappeared amid the whirlwind of chaotic fire.
The fury of the tempest immediately died away, and a dead calm sullenly succeeded. A white flame still enveloped the building like a shroud, and, streaming far away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth a glare of preternatural light; while a cloud of smoke settled heavily over the battlements in the distinct collossal figure of—a horse.
[From a Philadelphia Journal.]A PRIZE POEM—BY A VIRGINIAN.
[From a Philadelphia Journal.]A PRIZE POEM—BY A VIRGINIAN.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
My task has been in part a task of selection. Many of the old Poets whose frequent beauties I have acknowledged, (at no time more than when occupied in the compilation of these papers,) have been passed over in silence. Herrick, the "honey-bee of letters"—Rare Drummond, hight "of Hawthornden"—Lovelace, whose Althea will live with Surry's Geraldine—and many other "names noble and bright" have met with bare mention. It cannot be expected then that I should rake up from the dung-hill of the day the Tennysons, the Montgomeries, the Blessingtons, etc. etc. with whose writings magazine readers are so conversant. These are "bad bardlings." But many will be passed by for whom I entertain much respect, and more love. Mrs. Norton, the elder Montgomery, Miss Landon, gentle and sad Grahame, are lights of no mean magnitude. But "in looking upon the moon the dimmer orbs are forgotten." I avail myself of this introductory paragraph to say, that this paper will be unlike those which have preceded it. Accurate research, and close examination into points of literary history, although necessary in treating of English Poetry in its earlier stages, are scarcely so in treating of the same subject in its later. The reason of this is evident. I shall therefore content myself with brief critical remarks, (toobrief, perhaps, to excite interest) and as a matter of less importance than in my former papers—with snatches of biography. This being the case, I fear that these papers will be thought trivial.
My last chapter ended with Pope. Passing over Swift and a few others, we come at once upon a worthy name.
I. James Thomson, the author of theSeasonsand other Poems of merit, was born in Roxburgshire, Scotland, in September, 1700. His father, a clergyman of small estate, died while the Poet was yet a boy; and, after a few years spent in obscurity, the son went to London as a literary adventurer. "By what gradation of indigence he became reduced to a Poet it would be vain to inquire." He did become "reduced to a Poet," however, and, after a season of want, he succeeded in selling his "Winter." Mr. Wheatley and Aaron Hill took active parts in his advancement, and Thomson was so blinded by gratitude for the kindness of the latter gentleman, that he flattered him without stint,—for which our poet no doubt underwent the repentance of Caliban on discovering the earthly quality of Stephano.
His "Winter" was dedicated to Sir Spencer Compton, afterwards Viscount Pevensey—and twenty guineas were the price of the compliment. This poem soon became popular; so much so, that he was induced to publish his "Summer"—after which, "Spring" and "Autumn" followed in the order in which I write them. In 1727 he wrote "Britannia," a satirical poem, and "Sophonisba," a tragedy.1Other plays followed, several of which were suppressed by the licenser. Then came "Liberty," an elaborate and heavy poem. Thomson, at this stage of his affairs, was without funds or patronage. The Prince of Wales, however, having reduced his own fortunes to a condition almost as desperate as the Poet's, either from sympathy or from a supposition that the patronage of literature would be one means of gaining popular favor, employed Mr. Lyttleton to enlist Thomson. Our Poet, when the Prince on his first introduction familiarly inquired into his affairs, answered that 'they were in a more poetical posture than formerly'—whereupon he was presented with a yearly pension of 100l. After this he produced Agamemnon, a tragedy—Edward and Eleonora, a tragedy—Alfred, a mask—and the tragedy of Tancred and Sigismunda. Mr. Lyttleton having come into office, appointed himsurveyor general of the Leeward Islands. The salary appertaining to this office was something more than 300l., and then it was that, unharassed by petty troubles, he finished his "Castle of Indolence."
1Now only remembered from a rough parody on one of its verses. The play had excited high expectation, and was well received; but when the actor came to repeat—"O, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O," a voice from the audience chimed in—"O, Jemmie Thomson, Jemmie Thomson, O," which for a time was a mouth-verse throughout the city.
To this Poem I will confine myself in treating hurriedly of the writings of Thomson. His Seasons are too well known to call for comment—and his other works are (perhaps deservedly) out of the public recollection. The "Castle of Indolence" then, is a renewal of Spenser's best pictures—a renewal not only in its dreamy voluptuousness of character, but in its stanzaic peculiarities. It has been said that no other writers ever succeeded in acquiring the peculiar flow of Milton's blank verse, or the singular play of Spenser's old time rhythm. This is true with an exception. One half of the Castle of Indolence, if a little more antiquated, might be inserted among the cantos of the Faery Queene without detection. And this I hold to be no slight compliment to the later poet.
The Castle of Indolence was the work in which the idle Thomson gave words to his individual mood. A sluggard, he had a sluggard's visions. His visions of nature were of nature lulled into quietude. His landscapes sleep under quiet skies—his winds come from "the land of Drowsy Head." He reared shadowy battlements, and planted "sleep-soothing groves," under which lay
"Idlesse in her dreaming mood."
"Idlesse in her dreaming mood."
And in such pictures the Poet rejoiced. But with this drowsy enchantment he mingled all the freshness of that age which, from its far distance in the past, takes upon itself the hue of far clouds—becoming in the eyes of men an age of gold. The freshness of which I speak is of the patriarchal age—
And this freshness retrieves the swooning and too sickly tone of a poem, all in all, inimitable.
If, reader, you wish an hour of forgetfulness, go to some quiet hollow, in the pleasant summer time, and after working thought and heart into the mood which can
"Pour all the Arabian heaven upon our nights,"
"Pour all the Arabian heaven upon our nights,"
hum such sleep-begetting verses as these:
Such soporific verses are of more worth than all the narcotics ever squeezed from the pores of the poppy. They sound like the trickle of rain from the eaves, or like the hum of bees about a tulip-tree in early summer.
Thomson died in August 1748, and was buried in the church of Richmond.
He is said to have been above the middle stature; somewhat corpulent; of a stupid look and repulsive appearance; taciturn in strange company, but sociable among his intimate friends; fixed in his attachments, and fervid in his benevolence. But he was too fat to be active; and often failed to bestow as well as obtain a favor through mere indolence. We have already seen that he wrote one poem on this vice; and reflecting upon its effects in his own affairs, he is said to have designed an eastern tale 'of the man who loved to be in distress.'
He has a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey.
II. The father of Edward Young was chaplain to William and Mary, and afterwards to Queen Anne—the latter of whom, when Princess royal, stood godmother to the Poet. Young, early in life, lost his father, and having fallen in with the wild Duke of Wharton, went with him to Ireland, where he remained long enough to acquire many of that young nobleman's dissipated habits. The impressions however of his childhood still had influence upon him, and in his worst hours he defended the Christian belief against the atheistical Tindall, and his cavilling companions.
In the least religious years of his life, he wrote a poem called "The Last Day." Indeed his mind was at all times rather dark and visionary. It is told of him that "while a mere boy, at Oxford, he would close his windows at mid-day, and compose by lamp light,"—with a skull upon his table.
Not lingering upon his many minor works—works now of no interest to the reader—we will pass on to his three greater ones—"Revenge," a tragedy—the "Night Thoughts"—and "Love of Fame," a series of satirical poems. Of the first it will be unnecessary to say more than that it still keeps possession of the stage. Of the "Night Thoughts," Blair and Johnson have both spoken in high terms. These, say they, are great poems, abounding with "rich and fervid thought expressed in a manner seldom turgid—often noble." And with this very brief notice, mindful of the long path before me, I will content myself and proceed to his satires. These, it strikes me, perhaps singularly, are our poet's best works. Swift has said of them that they should have been either "more merry or more severe," and the sententious brevity of this criticism has made it a popular one. Boileau sacrificed Tasso to an antithesis; wits suffer an epigrammatic point to outweigh real merit. We must make allowance therefore for the Dean's professional indifference to truth of criticism. Young's satires were much labored. They show it,—arsNONcelat artem;but this in satire is hardly a fault. We distrust the severity which we believe born of the hour's anger: we say the poet will repent of this hollow and unmerited invective when cool. But when a work bears about it the mark of labor, we hold it to be the offspring of a judicious and settled hatred of all that it castigates. Such a work oftenest has truth upon its face. This exposure of the laboring hand, then, is a merit in the satires before us. Of their epigrammaticsententiousness, the reader may judge from a distich or two which I mean now to select from an indifferent page. Speaking of noblemen:
These are perhaps too frigid and naked. They have the cold insulation of the blocks in Mosaic. This in satire may be called "the being meritorious to a fault."
Young was something of an improvisatore, and almost the prettiest thing that I remember is a little sketch of a garden-scene during his courtship. One of the ladies referred to was Elizabeth, daughter of Lee, Earl of Litchfield; she afterwards became his wife.
"Sometime before his marriage, the poet walking in his garden at Welwyn, with his lady and another, a servant brought him word that a great person wished to speak with him. 'Tell him,' said the doctor, 'I am too happily engaged to change my situation.' The ladies insisted he should go, as his visitor was a man of rank, his patron and his friend; and as persuasion had no effect on him, they took him, one by the right hand, the other by the left, and led him to the garden gate. He then laid his hand upon his heart, and in the expressive manner for which he was so remarkable, uttered the following lines:
Passages occurred between our Poet and Voltaire while the latter was in England, and in these his powers of improvisation stood him in good stead. I will not quote instances.
Dr. Young has been reckoned an example of primeval piety, but gloom was mingled with it. When at his house in the country, he spent many hours among the tombs of his own churchyard. I have noticed his mode of study while at Oxford. These peculiarities betokened gloominess of temper, in spite of his occasional fondness for hunting and the bowling-green. "His wit was" more crushing than "poignant"—his poetic faculties were rather strong than beautiful.—Indeed his works often display a dark, stern roughness. In a word, he was a writer of a vast and sombre imagination—full of metaphor—rather metaphysical—sometimes obscure, and this rather from idea than expression; for his diction (as that of most great writers is,) was simple and healthy. He had the force of the later Pollock, without his extravagance—the melancholy of Kirke White, without his proneness to inane complaint; and in a word, possessed many merits with few failings.
Edward Young died in April, 1765, aged eighty-four years, and was buried beside his wife under the altarpiece of the church at Welwyn.
III. William Shenstone, of the Leasowes, in Hales Owen, a detached portion of Shropshire, was born in November, 1714. In early youth he manifested a great fondness for books—a fondness which increased upon him with years.
Shenstone did not write from necessity; and until summoned by the death, in 1745, of Mr. Dolman—a gentleman who appears to have beenin loco parentis—to the management of his own estate, he lived "a restless life, flying to places of fashionable resort, and from one to another of these."
Four years before the death of Mr. Dolman, he had published two poems—The Judgment of Hercules, and The Schoolmistress—the latter of considerable merit. After retiring to his estate in Hales Owen, he wrote his elegies, odes, ballads, levities, &c. &c, the first of which have, more than any thing else, gained him his renown as a poet.
Shenstone passed many years of his life in embellishing his grounds at the Leasowes. Improving on the admirable lessons of Lord Bacon, he formed an Utopia at the foot of the Wrekin, and "became famous even on the continent for his taste in gardening." But with Shenstone as a gardener I have nothing to do. Of his poems, the Schoolmistress is the most amiable and natural. We find the simplicity of this combined with a querulous tenderness in his elegies. I scarcely know of any thing in the elegiac order so pretty and touching as the little poem in which he refers to the murder of Kenelm the Saxon boy, by a sister who had been his nurse, and who had doted on him—until an ambitious yearning after the crown of Mercia, and the words of a paramour, made her, while hunting among the Clent hills, "do murder on him"—on him whom an old chronicler has quaintly yet touchingly styled "the sunnye hayred brotherr of her hearte."
Shenstone was a poet of refined tastes. His fancy was polished, and he had trained himself well in the art of expression—if expression can be called an art. Like his brother poets, he worshipped at the shrine of love—often mingling the myrtle with the cypress. His Delia was no creature of the imagination. And like the Althea of Lovelace—like the nameless bringer of "wilde unrest" to Shakspeare—like her who was as a long-toothed viper at the heart of poor Lope de Vega; in fine, without multiplying "likes," Delia, if we are to judge from the poet's tone and life, did not love where she was best loved. Alas! when was woman as the rose which the nightingale serenades? When opened she her heart to song? Dante sung to Beatrice—Tasso made the name of Leonora D'Este famous on earth—Petrarch spun his heart into melody, and immortalized his Laura—Wyatt rhymed to Anne Boleyn. And how ended their wooings? Some worse—none better than that of Shenstone.
The letters of our author were thought by himself his best writings. Those to his friend Mr. Whistler, which he wrote with most care, were (to the poet's bitter regret) destroyed by Whistler's brother, "a Goth of a fellow."
William Shenstone died in February, 1763.
He is said to have been a man above the middle stature; somewhat clumsy in his appearance; careless in his dress, "as in every thing else but his grounds and his hair," which latter he adjusted in a particularmanner in defiance of fashion; kind to his domestics; generous to strangers; slow to take offence, and slow to forgive it.
His tomb is in the churchyard of Hales Owen.
IV. "Thomas Gray, eminent for a few poems that he has left, was born in London in 1716, and died in 1771. He was perhaps the most learned man in Europe, equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science. A new arrangement of his poems, with notes and additions, was made and printed in 8vo. in 1799."
V. I pass over several great names, and come to one whose life was too short for the attainment of the fame to which nature gave him a title. Thomas Chatterton, "the marvellous boy," realized the fable of the nightingale, and sang with his breast against a thorn; but he grew weary of the world at eighteen, and removed himself from it. And we can hardly wonder that he should have done so, when we remember the sad end to which his boyish dreamings came among the garrets and filthy alleys of London. To fall at once from the high atmosphere, whither a poet's early longings draw him as with a golden chain—to find one's castles in air tumbling about one's ears—to feel the veins ache for want of a little bread—to be driven by that ache to the very cellars and stews of literature—to rake from some foul corner wherewithal to support life—are enough to break a spirit stouter even than that of Chatterton. It did break his spirit, and subvert the pure principles with which he began life. What stronger proof do we need of this, than that most amusing yet villainous instance of his calculating powers, in which he feels "thirteen shillings and sixpence worth of joy at the Lord Mayor's death?" A charity student in Bristol; an apprentice sleeping up in an attic with a foot-boy—"the marvellous youth" had dreams, and adventured to London in search of their fulfilment. Here he published a volume of poems purporting to be the remains of "one Rowley." These were full of crabbed spelling and black-letter phrases, and had so much the appearance of genuine antiquity, that the world was long divided upon the question of their origin. These poems are certainly known at the present day to have been forgeries by Chatterton. He wrote many other poems, chiefly characterized by a reckless and fiery tone of feeling—by a restless yearning after "a something to fill the void of a hurt spirit withal"—and by a dark melancholy, only at rare times lighted up by a gleam of his wild heart's yet wilder hopes. In London he entered upon the field of politics, and soon became a caterer for a party newspaper. Then followed the grinding meanness of booksellers and editors; and maddened by the consciousness that his genius was poured out only as water on the dust—that the exertions which he had trusted would make him great among men, did not suffice to clothe him and allay hunger,—maddened with the knowledge of these sad truths, are we to marvel that poor Chatterton should "have done his own death?"
Chatterton was not unlike Byron. The morbid misanthropy hanging unfixedly about the former—fully developed in the latter—was in both but a retort upon their fellows. Both had hearts which only detraction or cold neglect could harden into a hatred of humanity. Both threw out venom against their enemies. But whence came this venom? The affections of both were at one time as pure as the sap of the fabled honey-tree. It was only by a fermentation produced by the hot atmosphere of hostility or cruel slight, that the sap, once blander than honey, became a bitter poison.
Chatterton was like Byron too in many other respects,—in his hunger after immortality—in his alternations of excess and abstinence—in his self-consciousness of genius—and in the most dark and deistic views of death. Need I, after all that I have said of his ambition, his struggles, and his most reckless tone of writing, say that Chatterton's was a fiery and determined spirit? "His affections were subordinate to the sterner leanings of the brain. He had the stout soul and the tender heart of the old-time troubabour; but his heart was less tender than his soul was stout."
Chatterton could never have been happy. The presence of ambition—that brain-ache—would have made him miserable, had he lived beyond the green season of youth even to its gratification. But why do I say that he could have never been happy? There are surely more kinds of happiness than the one quiet kind of which Darby and Joan are a fit instance. Is therenota thunder-storm kind? The mysterious joy which we see thrown from the heart to the face in the picture of "Byron on the sea-shore," is surely a species of happiness. Chatterton, with hope to support him, might have been happy in the darkest struggles of a dark career. With hope to support him! But "that was the misery." Despair came to him and he died, (not out of his boyhood) with no thought of future renown—with no thought but of present obscurity and present wretchedness.
But although he committed suicide with "no thought of future renown," he had scarcely been buried in a shell in the burying-ground of Shoe-lane Workhouse, before "honors began to gather about his memory." The famous Tyrwhitt published his poems, with a preface, introduction and glossary; a few years after, a very splendid edition was published by Dr. Mills, Dean of Exeter, with a dissertation and commentary; more lately, Southey, the best biographer of the age, has collected his works and written his life—and incidental tributes, without number, have been offered by great names at the pauper-shrine of "the boy of Bristol." There are some verses of his minstrel's song in "Ella," which may be considered as a personal elegy.
I have little or no more to say of Thomas Chatterton; I have already said too much. But the heart rules the head when we look upon the wretched career—least wretched in its wretched end—of one fitted for the loftiest achievements. A rocket with "the wide sky" before it—the blaze and the flight of his genius was scarcely beyond the fogs that lie near earth. It fell, blackened, and scorched, and lightless, to the dust. Had "the marvellous boy" feared death more than he had been taught to fear life, the rocket would have been in "the wide sky," not in the dust—the wonder of men, not their pity.
Thomas Chatterton died in 1770, aged seventeen years and nine months.
VI. From the days of old Thomas the Rhymer the barren glens and bleak hills of Scotland have been holy earth. An essence strong and mystic, an invisible presence, a something undefined, but powerful, hangs above and rests upon them. "The mantle ofhistoric poetryis upon her soil!" and the floating and fragmentary images on this mantle—in their influence, like those upon the Arras tapestry in the haunted chamber of Monkbarns—fashion the dreams of one looking upon it rarely. The dreamer dreams of Wallace wight, and of the deeds of the Bruce—of Douglas "tender and true," and of the hardy feats of the moss troopers, whose homes were from Inck Colm to the Solway.
But the mantle of a milder poesy is too upon the Scottish valleys and hills! Shepherds have tuned the pipe to love among the hollows of Ettrick Wood—on the levels beside Yarrow—down by the shores of Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch Leven and Loch —— Apollo knows what! A poet has sat on Eildon hill, and forgotten the hand of Michael the conjurer in a vision of love. Move where you may you will see the marks of these. Their songs ring in your ears, as the voices of the musical doves of the Bahamas haunt him who visits their pebbly islets. I have now to speak of one who wound these two mantles together:—mingling the spirit ofmartial frolic2with the softer one of Eros.
2There is a dash of merryrattlingsomenessin the old Scottish spirit—that spirit which carried the Kerr and the Scott into the cattle lands South of the Tweed—rendering it a spirit rather ofmartial frolicthan of chivalry.
Most readers are familiar with the life as well as poetry of Robert Burns. The son of a gardener—brought up to "the plough, scythe and reap-hook"—his mind took upon itself the sturdy simplicity of his occupation. Scarcely a moderate English scholar, unversed in "lore of books," he won himself a place as an author among the greatest men of his time. Burns, like Scott, was much indebted to the nursery tales of his childhood for his success in after life. The oak springs from an acorn—and an old crone's vagaries had a great share in making our ploughman a poet. "She had," he tells us in his brief autobiography, "the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kedyers, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery."
The earliest composition that he read with pleasure was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning
"How are thy servants blest, O Lord."
"How are thy servants blest, O Lord."
These he met with in Mason's English Collection, one of his school-books. He next read the Life of Hannibal, which taught him to strut after the recruiting drum and bagpipe; and the Life of Wallace, which made "his veins boil with a Scottish prejudice." From fourteen to sixteen he lived after a most wretched fashion—toiling at the plough, and oppressed by poverty.
At sixteen he fell in love, and his own description of the affair is so characteristic that I will quote it. "In my sixteenth autumn, my partner (in the harvest field) was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. She was abonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointments, gin-horn prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be first of human joys—our dearest blessing here below. How she caught the contagion I cannot tell. Yet medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly—and it was her favorite reel which I attempted giving an imbodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin: but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a country laird's son on one of his father's maids with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he—for excepting he could shear sheep and cast peats, his father living in the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months my highest enjoyment."
His nineteenth summer was spent on a smuggling coast, where he learned "mensuration, surveying, dialling," &c. and improved in his knowledge of love and whiskey-drinking. "Yet early ingrained piety and virtue kept him for several years afterward rather within the line of innocence," notwithstanding thatVive l'Amour et Vive la Bagatellewas his sole principle of action.
Harassed at length by pecuniary difficulties, and driven to the border of despair, Burns determined on running off to Jamaica to avoid "the horrors of a jail." Before putting this resolve into execution, he published a small edition of his poems by subscription. He cleared by this 20l. and gained some reputation. This sum came very seasonably, as without it he would have been compelled to indent himself for want of money to pay his passage. He had taken his place in a ship about to sail from the Clyde, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock, by "opening new prospects tohis poetic ambition," overthrew his runaway schemes, and led him to Edinburgh. There the Earl of Glencairn became his patron. His after life is well known.
Burns died in July 1796, and was buried with much state in the southern church yard of Dumfries.
The great misfortune of our poet's life was to want an aim. Without this, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark, a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm made him shun solitude. Add to these incentives to social life, a reputation for bookish knowledge, (comparatively) a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought something like the rudiments of good sense, and it will seem no great wonder that "he was ever one in each companie where jollity and pleasaunce were held in esteeme."
Burns was full of a seeming independence of spirit. He breaks out into the most fiery expressions of contempt for the rich and the great. But we recognize in these rather the man of genius than the man of real independence. If in his real feelings he had been independent of the rich and the great, they might have gone their way and he would have gone his, we should have heard nothing of his scorn and disdain. These were dictated, not as they professed to be, by a spirit of independence, but by that which, wherever it exists, comes in abatement of independence—by pride.3
3"A keen desire of aggrandizement in the eyes of others, a sensitive apprehension of humiliation in their eyes are the constituents of pride."
Scotland has had an Allan Ramsay to revive the pastoral visions of Colin Clout—an earlier Drummond to transmit to posterity thefresh philosophyof the olden time—a Leyden to haunt the "far east countries" with the pleasant traditions of Teviotdale—an Allan Cunningham to embody the spirit of the ancient Scottish romaunt in the sturdiest language of our own day—a Hogg to fill the Ettrick valleys with the echoes of his "trueful song"—a Scott to restore to the hills of Moffat and to the banks of the Annan the lance and the eye-haunting plume—a Scott to restore knight and monk, to castle and abbey, from the Skye to Melrose—a Scott to tell of old-time woes by Gallawater and by Yarrow—but Robert Burns has no master among these. The "Robin of Ayr had the richest song of them all."