Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 132

SUSANNA BLAMIRE.

This lady was born at Cardew Hall, near Carlisle, and remained there from the date of her birth (1747) till she was twenty years of age, when she accompanied her sister--who had married Colonel Graham of Duchray, Perthshire--to Scotland, and continued there some years. She became enamoured of Scottish music and poetry, and thus qualified herself for writing such sweet lyrics as 'The Nabob,' and 'What ails this heart o'

mine?' On her return to c.u.mberland she wrote several pieces ill.u.s.trative of c.u.mbrian manners. She died unmarried in 1794. Her poetical pieces, some of which had been floating through the country in the form of popular songs, were collected by Mr Patrick Maxwell, and published in 1842. The two we have quoted rank with those of Lady Nairne in nature and pathos.

THE NABOB.

1 When silent time, wi' lightly foot, Had trod on thirty years, I sought again my native land Wi' mony hopes and fears.

Wha kens gin the dear friends I left May still continue mine?

Or gin I e'er again shall taste The joys I left langsyne?

2 As I drew near my ancient pile, My heart beat a' the way; Ilk place I pa.s.sed seemed yet to speak O' some dear former day; Those days that followed me afar, Those happy days o' mine, Whilk made me think the present joys A' naething to langsyne!

3 The ivied tower now met my eye, Where minstrels used to blaw; Nae friend stepped forth wi' open hand, Nae weel-kenned face I saw; Till Donald tottered to the door, Wham I left in his prime, And grat to see the lad return He bore about langsyne.

4 I ran to ilka dear friend's room, As if to find them there, I knew where ilk ane used to sit, And hang o'er mony a chair; Till soft remembrance throw a veil Across these een o' mine, I closed the door, and sobbed aloud, To think on auld langsyne!

5 Some pensy chiels, a new-sprung race, Wad next their welcome pay, Wha shuddered at my Gothic wa's, And wished my groves away.

'Cut, cut,' they cried, 'those aged elms, Lay low yon mournfu' pine.'

Na! na! our fathers' names grow there, Memorials o' langsyne.

6 To wean me frae these waefu' thoughts, They took me to the town; But sair on ilka weel-kenned face I missed the youthfu' bloom.

At b.a.l.l.s they pointed to a nymph Wham a' declared divine; But sure her mother's blushing cheeks Were fairer far langsyne!

7 In vain I sought in music's sound To find that magic art, Which oft in Scotland's ancient lays Has thrilled through a' my heart.

The sang had mony an artfu' turn; My ear confessed 'twas fine; But missed the simple melody I listened to langsyne.

8 Ye sons to comrades o' my youth, Forgie an auld man's spleen, Wha' midst your gayest scenes still mourns The days he ance has seen.

When time has pa.s.sed and seasons fled, Your hearts will feel like mine; And aye the sang will maist delight That minds ye o' langsyne!

WHAT AILS THIS HEART O' MINE?

1 What ails this heart o' mine?

What ails this watery ee?

What gars me a' turn pale as death When I tak leave o' thee?

When thou art far awa', Thou'lt dearer grow to me; But change o' place and change o' folk May gar thy fancy jee.

2 When I gae out at e'en, Or walk at morning air, Ilk rustling bush will seem to say I used to meet thee there.

Then I'll sit down and cry, And live aneath the tree, And when a leaf fa's i' my lap, I'll ca't a word frae thee.

3 I'll hie me to the bower That thou wi' roses tied, And where wi' mony a blushing bud I strove myself to hide.

I'll doat on ilka spot Where I ha'e been wi' thee; And ca' to mind some kindly word By ilka burn and tree.

JAMES MACPHERSON.

Now we come to one who, with all his faults, was not only a real, but a great poet. The events of his life need not detain us long. He was born at Kingussie, Inverness-shire, in 1738, and educated at Aberdeen. At twenty he published a very juvenile production in verse, called 'The Highlandman: a Heroic Poem, in six cantos.' He taught for some time the school of Ruthven, near his native place, and became afterwards tutor in the family of Graham of Balgowan. While attending a scion of this family--afterwards Lord Lynedoch--at Moffat Wells, Macpherson became acquainted with Home, the author of 'Douglas,' and shewed to him some fragments of Gaelic poetry, translated by himself. Home was delighted with these specimens, and the consequence was, that our poet, under the patronage of Home, Blair, Adam Fergusson, and Dr Carlyle, (the once famous 'Jupiter Carlyle,' minister of Inveresk--called 'Jupiter' because he used to sit to sculptors for their statues of 'Father Jove,' and declared by Sir Walter Scott to have been the 'grandest demiG.o.d he ever saw,') published, in a small volume of sixty pages, his 'Fragments of Ancient Poetry, translated from the Gaelic or Erse language.' This _brochure_ became popular, and Macpherson was provided with a purse to go to the Highlands to collect additional pieces. The result was, in 1762, 'Fingal: an Epic Poem;' and, in the next year, 'Temora,' another epic poem. Their sale was prodigious, and the effect not equalled till, twenty-four years later, the poems of Burns appeared. He realised 1200 by these productions. In 1764 he accompanied Governor Johnston to Pensacola as his secretary, but quarrelled with him, and returned to London. Here he became a professional pamphleteer, always taking the ministerial side, and diversifying these labours by publishing a translation of Homer, in the style of his Ossian, which, as Coleridge says of another production, was 'd.a.m.ned unanimously.' Our readers are familiar with his row with Dr Johnson, who, when threatened with personal chastis.e.m.e.nt for his obstinate and fierce incredulity in the matter of Ossian, thus wrote the author:--

'To Mr JAMES MACPHERSON.

'I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do the best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall not be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.

'What would you have me to retract? I thought your book an imposture. I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which I dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer, 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.

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

Nothing daunted by this, and a hundred other similar rebuffs; Macpherson, like Mallett before him, but with twenty times his abilities, pursued his peculiar course. He was appointed agent for the Nabob of Arcot, and became M.P. for Carnelford. In this way he speedily acc.u.mulated a handsome fortune, and in 1789, while still a youngish man, he retired to his native parish, where he bought the estate of Raitts, and founded a splendid villa, called Belleville, where, in ease and affluence, he spent his remaining days. Surviving Johnson, his ablest opponent, by twelve years, he died on the 17th of February 1796, in the full view of Ossian's country. One of his daughters became his heir, and another was the first wife of Sir David Brewster. Macpherson in his will ordered that his body should be buried in Westminster Abbey, and left a sum of money to erect a monument to him near Belleville. He lies, accordingly, in Poets' Corner, and a marble obelisk to his memory may be seen near Kingussie, in the centre of some trees.

There is nothing new that is true, or true that is new, to be said about the questions connected with Ossian's Poems. That Macpherson is the sole author is a theory now as generally abandoned as the other, which held that he was simply a free translator of the old bard. To the real fragments of Ossian, which he found in the Highlands, he acted very much as he did to the ancient property of Raitts, in his own native parish.

This he purchased in its crude state, and beautified into a mountain paradise. He changed, however, its name into Belleville, and it had been better if he had behaved in a similar way with the poems, and published them as, with some little groundwork from another, the veritable writings of James Macpherson, Esq. The ablest opponent of his living reputation was, as we said, Johnson; and the ablest enemy of his posthumous fame has been Macaulay. We are at a loss to understand _his_ animosity to the author of Ossian. Were the Macphersons and Macaulays ever at feud, and did the historian lose his great-great-grandmother in some onslaught made on the Hebrides by the progenitors of the pseudo-Ossian? Macpherson as a man we respect not, and we are persuaded that the greater part of Ossian's Poems can be traced no further than his teeming brain. Nor are we careful to defend his poetry from the common charges of monotony, affectation, and fustian. But we deem Macaulay grossly unjust in his treatment of Macpherson's genius and its results, and can fortify our judgment by that of Sir Walter Scott and Professor Wilson, two men as far superior to the historian in knowledge of the Highlands and of Highland song, and in genuine poetic taste, as they were confessedly in original imagination. The former says, 'Macpherson was certainly a man of high talents, and his poetic powers are honourable to his country.' Wilson, in an admirable paper in _Blackwood_ for November 1839, while admitting many faults in Ossian, eloquently proclaims the presence in his strains of much of the purest, most pathetic, and most sublime poetry, instancing the 'Address to the Sun' as equal to anything in Homer or Milton. Both these great writers have paid Macpherson a higher compliment still,--they have imitated him, and the speeches of Allan Macaulay (a far greater genius than his namesake), Ra.n.a.ld MacEagh, and Elspeth MacTavish, in the 'Waverley Novels,' and such, articles by Christopher North as 'Cottages,'

'Hints for the Holidays,' and a 'Glance at Selby's Ornithology,' are all coloured by familiarity and fellow-feeling with Ossian's style. Best of all, the Highlanders as a nation have accepted Ossian as their bard; he is as much the poet of Morven as Burns of Coila, and it is as hopeless to dislodge the one from the Highland as the other from the Lowland heart.

The true way to learn to appreciate Ossian's poetry is not to hurry, as Macaulay seems to have done, in a steamer from Glasgow to Oban, and thence to Ballachulish, and thence through Glencoe, (mistaking a fine lake for a 'sullen pool' on his way, and ignoring altogether its peculiar features of grandeur,) and thence to Inverness or Edinburgh; but it is to live for years--as Macpherson did while writing Ossian, and Wilson also did to some extent--under the shadow of the mountains,--to wander through lonely moors amidst drenching mists and rains,--to hold trysts with thunder-storms on the summit of savage hills,--to bathe after nightfall in dreary tarns,--to lie over the ledge and dip one's fingers in the spray of cataracts,--to plough a solitary path into the heart of forests, and to sleep and dream for hours amidst their sunless glades,--to meet on twilight hills the apparition of the winter moon rising over snowy wastes,--to descend by her ghastly light precipices where the eagles are sleeping,--and, returning home, to be haunted by night-visions of mightier mountains, wilder desolations, and giddier descents;--experience somewhat like this is necessary to form a true 'Child of the Mist,' and to give the full capacity for sharing in or appreciating the shadowy, solitary, pensive, and magnificent spirit which tabernacles in Ossian's poetry.

Never, at least, can we forget how, in our boyhood, while feeling, but quite unable to express, the emotions which were suggested by the bold shapes of mountains resting against the stars, mirrored from below in lakes and wild torrents, and quaking sometimes in concert with the quaking couch of the half-slumbering earthquake, the poems of Ossian served to give our thoughts an expression which they could not otherwise have found--how they at once strengthened and consolidated enthusiasm, and are now regarded with feelings which, wreathed around earliest memories and the strongest fibres of the heart, no criticism can ever weaken or destroy.

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

I feel the sun, O Malvina!--leave me to my rest. Perhaps they may come to my dreams; I think I hear a feeble voice!

The beam of heaven delights to shine on the grave of Carthon: I feel it warm around.

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light?

Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven, but thou art for ever 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. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth!

Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.

DESOLATION OF BALCLUTHA.

I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate.

The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows; the rank gra.s.s of the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song of mourning, O bards! over the land of strangers. They have but fallen before us: for one day we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day: yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield. And let the blast of the desert come! we shall be renowned in our day! The mark of my arm shall be in battle; my name in the song of bards. Raise the song, send round the sh.e.l.l: let joy be heard in my hall.

When thou, sun of heaven, shalt fail! if thou shalt fail, thou mighty light! if thy brightness is but for a season, like Fingal, our fame shall survive thy beams. Such was the song of Fingal in the day of his joy.

FINGAL AND THE SPIRIT OF LODA.

Night came down on the sea; Roma's bay received the ship. A rock bends along the coast with all its echoing wood. On the top is the circle of Loda, the mossy stone of power! A narrow plain spreads beneath, covered with gra.s.s and aged trees, which the midnight winds, in their wrath, had torn from the s.h.a.ggy rock. The blue course of a stream is there!

the lonely blast of ocean pursues the thistle's beard. The flame of three oaks arose: the feast is spread around: but the soul of the king is sad, for Carric-thura's chief distressed.

The wan, cold moon, rose in the east; sleep descended on the youths! Their blue helmets glitter to the beam; the fading fire decays. But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill, to behold the flame of Sarno's tower.

The flame was dim and distant, the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, on its wings was the spirit of Loda. He came to his place in his terrors, and shook his dusky spear. His eyes appear like flames in his dark face; his voice is like distant thunder. Fingal advanced his spear in night, and raised his voice on high.