English Lands Letters and Kings Part 15

Sterne covered better his deficiencies of money and of soul. Who could have put more or truer feeling into the story of the poor ill lieutenant of the inn, whom Corporal Trim (at Uncle Toby's instance) had gone to see, and of whom he makes report? And uncle Toby says he will fetch him home and set him afoot in his regiment.

"Never," says Trim, "can he march."

"But he _shall_ march," says uncle Toby.

"He will die in his tracks," says Trim.

"He shall _not_ die," says Toby, with an oath--which oath, says Sterne, the recording angel washed away, so soon as it was uttered. The Rev.

Laurence Sterne, it is to be feared, counted too largely upon the swash of such tender recording angels. Only a host of them, with best lachrymal equipment, could float away poor Sterne's misdeeds!

We touched upon the sad life and fate of the marvellous boy, Chatterton--not a great poet, but with an exuberant poetic glow within him which gave new brightness to old Romanticism, and {221} which kindled in after days many a fancy into flame--up and down the pages of later and bolder poets. Were his forgeries perhaps instigated by the Ossianic mystification?

_Macpherson and other Scots._

[Sidenote: James Macpherson.]

I do not know if you have ever encountered the poems of Ossian. They are out of fashion now; I doubt if fragments even get into the school-books; but some of my readers may remember in a corner of the art-gallery of Yale University a painting, with two life-size figures in it, by Colonel John Trumbull--a limp and bleeding, and somewhat dainty warrior, leaning upon the shoulder of a flax-haired maiden; with a little strain from Ossian's Fingal, in the placard below, to tell the story. The mighty Lamderg (who is the warrior) died: and Gelchossa (the flax-haired young woman) "mourned three days beside her love. The hunters found her dead." The picture is, I suspect, almost the only permanent mark in America of the amazing popularity which once belonged to the strange, weird, monotonous, gloomy, {222} thin poems of Ossian.

There are descriptions of mountain crags in them, and of splintered pines, of thunder blasts and of ocean h.o.a.r; and there are crags again, and bleeding warriors, and flax-haired women; harps, moonlight, broken clouds, and crags again: I cite a few fragments:

"The oaks of the mountains fall; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds and laughest at the storm.

... "Rise, moon, from behind thy clouds! Stars of the night arise, lead me, some light, to the place where my love rests from the chase alone--his bow near him unstrung; his dogs panting around him. The stream and the wind roar aloud, I hear not the voice of my love."

[Sidenote: Poems of Ossian.]

And yet these poetic flights, which, it would seem might be made up from collective but injudicious use of the Songs of Solomon and the mental exaltations which come from over-indulgence in tea drinking, or other strong waters, were borne, on a swift gale of plaudits in the latter half of the last century all over Europe. Professors of Literature (such as Dr. Hugh Blair) wrote {223} treatises upon their fire and grace; such men as Goethe and Schiller were fast admirers; Napoleon was said to be bewildered by their beauty. Of course they had French translation; and there were versions in German, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, and Latin. The Abbe Cesarotti, besides writing a dissertation in favor of the authenticity of the Gaelic poems, gave an Italian version (the favorite one of Napoleon) which in parts has a rounded play of vocables that makes one forget all poverty of invention. Thus when Ossian says,

"Thy side that is white as the foam of the troubled sea, when dark winds pour it on rocky Cuthon----" it is rounded by the Italian into this pretty bit of mellifluence:--

"Il tuo fianco ch' e candido come la spuma del turbato mare, Quando gli oscuri venti lo spingono contro la mormorante Roccia di Cutone----"[1]

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And who, pray, was this Macpherson[2] of the Ossian poems, and what was his claim? He was a Scotch school-master; born somewhere in the upper valley of the Spey, beyond the Grampians and in the heart of the Highlands. He had been at Aberdeen University awhile, and again at Edinboro'; but took no degree at either. He wrote and printed some poor verse when twenty; followed it up with some fragments of old Gaelic song, which commanded wide attention; and in 1762 published that poem of Fingal--professedly by Ossian, an old Gaelic bard; and this made him famous. The measure and range were new, and there was a torrent of flame and thunder and love and fury running through it which captivated: he went up to London--was appointed to go with Governor Johnston to Florida,[3] in America; remained there at Pensacola, a year or more; but quarrelled with his chief (he had rare apt.i.tude for quarrelling) and came back in 1766. Some English {225} historical work followed; but with little success or profit. Yet he was a canny Scotchman, and so laid his plans that he became agent for some rich nabob of India (from those pickings winning a great fortune eventually); entered Parliament in 1780; had a country house at Putney, where he entertained lavishly; and at last built a great show place in the Highlands, near to his birth-place--which one may see to-day--with an obelisk to his memory, looking down on the valley of the Spey; and not so far away from the old coach-road, that pa.s.ses through Killiecrankie, from Blair Athol to Inverness, but the coachman can show it--as he did to me--with his whip.

There were those who questioned from the beginning whether the Ossianic poems did really come from the Gaelic;--Dr. Johnson among them, whose contemptuous doubts infuriated the Macpherson to such a degree that he challenged the doughty Doctor. Johnson replied in what may be called forcible speech:--

"Mr. James Macpherson, I received your foolish and impudent letter. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. What {226} would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture still. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer,[4] are not so formidable: and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard--not to what you shall _say_, but to what you shall _prove_.

You may print this if you will."

Dr. Johnson carried a big oaken cudgel with him, when he travelled in Scotland. Hume, on the other hand, was, with Scotch patriotism, inclined to accept at first, Macpherson's story of authenticity:[5] but even he says of this author, with whom he came into altercation--"I have scarce ever known a man more perverse and unamiable." The Highland Society investigated the matter, and reported that while there was no trace of a complete poem in Gaelic corresponding {227} to Macpherson's verse, there were s.n.a.t.c.hes of Highland song and ballads which supported his allegations. The question is not even yet fully settled, and is hardly worth the settlement. Macpherson's own obstinacies and petulancies put unnumbered difficulties in the way; he resented any denial of Gaelic origin for his verse; he resented any denial of his capacity to sing better than the Gael; he promised to show Highland originals, and always made occasions for delay; withal he was as touchy as a bad child, and as virulent as a fish-woman. Nothing satisfied him; one of those men whose steak is always too much done--or too little;--the sermon always too short or too long. He might have been the "Stout Gentleman" of _Bracebridge Hall_: for he was a big man, and always wore wax-topped boots. Old Mrs. Grant too--who must have been a neighbor of his, when she lived at Laggan--says that he had habits (with theories about social proprieties) which "excluded him from decent society." Mrs. Grant was, however "verra" correct, and a stickler for the minor, as well as the major virtues.

Macpherson left inheritors of his name, and of {228} his estates in that upper valley of the Spey; and a daughter of his became the wife of Sir David Brewster, the eminent scientist. He was buried "by special request" in Westminster Abbey; he had been always covetous of such public testimonials to his consequence. Yet if his book of Ossianic poems was ten-fold better than it is, it would hardly give an enduring, or a brilliant gloss to the memory of James Macpherson.

But whatever may be said for the Gaelic, it is certain that Scotticisms were in those days winning their place in song and in tale. Since the day, in the first quarter of the century (1725), when Allan Ramsay had sent out from his book shop in Edinboro', his rustic eclogue of the _Gentle Shepherd_, a love had been ripening and growing for those Scottish strains which were to find their last and unsurpa.s.sable expression by and by, in the glow and pa.s.sion of Burns.

Meantime there were hundreds along the Teviot, and the Esk, and by Ettrickdale, who rolled under their tongues delightedly the Scottish bubbles of song, which broke--now from a bookseller, now from a schoolmaster, now from a Jacobite, {229} and now from a "stickit"

minister.[6] I will give you one taste of this Scotticism of the borders, were it only to clear your thought of the gloom and crags of Ossian. It is usually attributed to Halket, a Jacobite school-master, not so well known as Ramsay or Robert Ferguson:--

[Sidenote: Logie O'Buchan.]

"O Logie o' Buchan, O Logie the laird, They ha'e ta'en awa' Jamie, that delved in the yard, Wha played on the pipe, and the viol sae sma', They ha'e ta'en awa' Jamie, the flower o' them a'.

"Tho' Sandy has ousen, has gear and has kye, A house and a hadden, and siller forbye; Yet I'd tak' my ain lad, wi' his staff in his hand, Before I'd ha'e him, wi' the houses and land.

"My Daddie looks sulky, my Minnie looks sour, They frown upon Jamie because he is poor; Tho' I lo'e them as weel as a daughter should do They're nae half sa dear to me, Jamie, as you.

"I sit on my creepie, I spin at my wheel And think on the laddie that lo'ed me sae weel, He had but ae saxpence, he brak it in twa And gied me the hauf o't, when he ga'd awa'."

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Yet the poet, from whom we quote, died only three years before Burns was born; but I think we can see from the graces of this modest schoolmaster singer, that taste and accomplishment were both ripening in those north lat.i.tudes for the times and the man, in which and in whom, such poetry as that of Burns should be possible.

There was, too, another growth in those days in that northern capital of Great Britain; Dr. Robertson had written his History of America and his History of Charles V. Adam Smith (the friend of Hume) was busy on his _Wealth of Nations_ (published during the year in which Hume died).

Hugh Blair, the eloquent doctor, was delivering his lectures on rhetoric. Henry Mackenzie, the amiable Dean of the Edinboro' literati, was writing his _Man of Feeling_ and his _Julia de Roubigne_,--books of great reputation in the early part of this century, but with graces in them that were only imitative, and sentiment that was dismally affected and over-wrought; and there was Lord Kames, the _Gentleman Farmer_, with a fine great house in the Canongate, who wrote on criticism, with acuteness and taste. You will not read any of the {231} books of these last-named people; 't were unfair to ask you to do so; but they were preparing the way for that literary development which will find expression before many years in the columns of the _Edinburgh Review_ (established at the beginning of this century), and in the border minstrelsy of Scott.

_George Crabbe._

[Sidenote: Crabbe.]

We step back into England now, to find two poets whose princ.i.p.al work belonged to the closing years of the last century; and with echoes, fresh and strong, trailing over into the beginning of this. Neither their work nor their lives belonged to the noises or to the atmosphere of London. City sounds do not press into their verse; but instead are the sounds of sea-waves or of winds on woods, or of church bells, or of the clink and murmur of the lives of cottagers. The first I name to you of these two is George Crabbe[7]--a name that {232} may sound strangely, being almost unknown and unconsidered now; yet fifty years ago there was not a reading-book in any of the schools, nor an alb.u.m full of elegant selections, which was not open for the story of Ph[oe]be Dawson, or a glimpse of the n.o.ble peasant, Isaac Ashford. But all that is gone:[8]

"I see no more those white locks thinly spread Round the bald polish of that honored head; No more that awful glance on playful wight Compelled to knee and tremble at the sight, To fold his fingers all in dread the while Till Mister Ashford softened to a smile."

This gives the manner and strain of Crabbe; it is Pope, but it is Pope muddied and rusticated; {233} Pope in cow-skin shoes, instead of Pope in prunella.

Crabbe was born in the little sh.o.r.e town of Aldborough--looking straight out upon the North Sea; and the rhythmic beat of those waves so stamped itself on his boyish brain, that it came out afterward--when he could manage language, in which he had great gift--very clear and very real; there's nothing better, all up and down his rural tales, than his fashion of putting waves into his rhythmic measures--as you shall see:--

"Upon the billows rising--all the deep Is restless change: the waves so swelled and steep, Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells.

Curled as they come, they strike with furious force, And then, renewing, take their grating course, Raking the rounded flints, which ages past Rolled by their rage, and shall to ages last.

In sh.o.r.e, their pa.s.sage tribes of sea-gulls urge, And drop for prey within the sweeping surge, Oft in the rough opposing blast they fly Far back, then turn and all their force apply, While to the storm they give their weak complaining cry, Or clap the sleek white pinion on the breast, And in the restless ocean dip for rest."

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Fashions of poets and of poetry may go by, but such scenes on those North Sea sh.o.r.es will never go by. Crabbe was son of a customs' man, of small, turbulent character, and the boy had starveling education; he picked up so much as qualified him at length for surgeon (or doctor, as we say) in that small sh.o.r.e town, but gained little: so, threw all behind him--a girl he loved, and a town he did not love--and with three guineas in his pocket, and a few ma.n.u.script poems, set off for London.

He was there, indeed, in the very times we have talked of; when wits met at the Turk's Head, when Fox thundered in Parliament, when Sterne was just dead; but who should care for this stout young fellow from the sh.o.r.e? One man--one only, does care; it is the warm Irish-hearted Edmund Burke, who being appealed to and having read the verses which the adventurer brought to his notice, befriends him, takes him to his house, makes him know old Dr. Johnson; and his first book is launched and talked of under their patronage. Then this great friend Burke conspires religiously with the Bishop of Norwich to plant the poet in the Church. Why not? He has some Latin; he {235} means well, and can write a sermon. So we find him returned to that wild North Sea sh.o.r.e with a little church to feed, and the church people, in their turn, to feed him. But the arrangement does not run smoothly; those verses of his, unlike most rural verse, have shown all the darker colors of peasant life; if full of sympathy, they were full of bitter, homely truth. The muck, the mire, the griefs, the crimes, the unthrift, the desolation, have given sombre tint to his village pictures; perhaps those sh.o.r.e people resent it; perhaps he is incapable of the cheeriness which should brighten charity; at any rate he goes away under private preferment to a private chaplaincy at Belvoir Castle, the seat of the Duke of Rutland.