Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 111

'Now, Muse, let's sing of _rats_!

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, slily overlooking the reader, found that the word had been originally 'mice,'

but had been changed to rats as more dignified.

Boswell goes on to record Johnson's opinion of Grainger. He said, 'He was an agreeable man, a man that would do any good that was in his power.' His translation of Tibullus was very well done, but 'The Sugar- cane, a Poem,' did not please him. 'What could he make of a Sugar-cane?

one might as well write "The Parsley-bed, a Poem," or "The Cabbage Garden, a Poem."' Boswell--'You must then _pickle_ your cabbage with the _sal Attic.u.m_.' Johnson--'One could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them, and one might thus shew how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms.' Cabbage, by the way, in a metaphorical sense, might furnish a very good subject for a literary _satire_.

Grainger died of the fever of the country in 1767. Bishop Percy corroborates Johnson's character of him as a man. He says, 'He was not only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues, being one of the most generous, friendly, benevolent men I ever knew.'

Grainger in some points reminds us of Dyer. Dyer staked his reputation on 'The Fleece;' but it is his lesser poem, 'Grongar Hill,' which preserves his name; that fine effusion has survived the laboured work.

And so Grainger's 'Solitude' has supplanted the stately 'Sugar-cane.'

The scenery of the West Indies had to wait till its real poet appeared in the author of 'Paul and Virginia.' Grainger was hardly able to cope with the strange and gorgeous contrasts it presents of cliffs and crags, like those of Iceland, with vegetation rich as that of the fairest parts of India, and of splendid suns.h.i.+ne, with tempests of such tremendous fury that, but for their brief continuance, no property could be secure, and no life could be safe.

The commencement of the 'Ode to Solitude' is fine, but the closing part becomes tedious. In the middle of the poem there is a tumult of personifications, some of them felicitous and others forced.

'Sage Reflection, bent with years,'

may pa.s.s, but 'Conscious Virtue, void of fears,'

is poor.

'Halcyon Peace on moss reclined,'

is a picture; 'Retrospect that scans the mind,'

is nothing; 'Health that snuffs the morning air,'

is a living image; but what sense is there in 'Full-eyed Truth, with bosom bare?'

and how poor his 'Laughter in loud peals that breaks,'

to Milton's 'Laughter, holding both his sides!'

The paragraph, however, commencing 'With you roses brighter bloom,'

and closing with 'The bournless macrocosm's thine,'

is very spirited, and, along with the opening lines, proves Grainger a poet.

ODE TO SOLITUDE.

O solitude, romantic maid!

Whether by nodding towers you tread, Or haunt the desert's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb, Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide, Or starting from your half-year's sleep From Hecla view the thawing deep, Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadmor's marble wastes survey, You, recluse, again I woo, And again your steps pursue.

Plumed Conceit himself surveying, Folly with her shadow playing, Purse-proud, elbowing Insolence, Bloated empiric, puffed Pretence, Noise that through a trumpet speaks, Laughter in loud peals that breaks, Intrusion with a fopling's face, Ignorant of time and place, Sparks of fire Dissension blowing, Ductile, court-bred Flattery, bowing, Restraint's stiff neck, Grimace's leer, Squint-eyed Censure's artful sneer, Ambition's buskins, steeped in blood, Fly thy presence, Solitude.

Sage Reflection, bent with years, Conscious Virtue, void of fears, m.u.f.fled Silence, wood-nymph shy, Meditation's piercing eye, Halcyon Peace on moss reclined, Retrospect that scans the mind, Rapt, earth-gazing Reverie, Blus.h.i.+ng, artless Modesty, Health that snuffs the morning air, Full-eyed Truth, with bosom bare, Inspiration, Nature's child, Seek the solitary wild.

You, with the tragic muse retired, The wise Euripides inspired, You taught the sadly-pleasing air That Athens saved from ruins bare.

You gave the Cean's tears to flow, And unlocked the springs of woe; You penned what exiled Naso thought, And poured the melancholy note.

With Petrarch o'er Vaucluse you strayed, When death s.n.a.t.c.hed his long-loved maid; You taught the rocks her loss to mourn, Ye strewed with flowers her virgin urn.

And late in Hagley you were seen, With bloodshot eyes, and sombre mien, Hymen his yellow vestment tore, And Dirge a wreath of cypress wore.

But chief your own the solemn lay That wept Narcissa young and gay, Darkness clapped her sable wing, While you touched the mournful string, Anguish left the pathless wild, Grim-faced Melancholy smiled, Drowsy Midnight ceased to yawn, The starry host put back the dawn, Aside their harps even seraphs flung To hear thy sweet Complaint, O Young!

When all nature's hushed asleep, Nor Love nor Guilt their vigils keep, Soft you leave your caverned den, And wander o'er the works of men; But when Phosphor brings the dawn By her dappled coursers drawn, Again you to the wild retreat And the early huntsman meet, Where as you pensive pace along, You catch the distant shepherd's song, Or brush from herbs the pearly dew, Or the rising primrose view.

Devotion lends her heaven-plumed wings, You mount, and nature with you sings.

But when mid-day fervours glow, To upland airy shades you go, Where never sunburnt woodman came, Nor sportsman chased the timid game; And there beneath an oak reclined, With drowsy waterfalls behind, You sink to rest.

Till the tuneful bird of night From the neighbouring poplar's height Wake you with her solemn strain, And teach pleased Echo to complain.

With you roses brighter bloom, Sweeter every sweet perfume, Purer every fountain flows, Stronger every wilding grows.

Let those toil for gold who please, Or for fame renounce their ease.

What is fame? an empty bubble.

Gold? a transient s.h.i.+ning trouble.

Let them for their country bleed, What was Sidney's, Raleigh's meed?

Man's not worth a moment's pain, Base, ungrateful, fickle, vain.

Then let me, sequestered fair, To your sibyl grot repair; On yon hanging cliff it stands, Scooped by nature's salvage hands, Bosomed in the gloomy shade Of cypress not with age decayed.

Where the owl still-hooting sits, Where the bat incessant flits, There in loftier strains I'll sing Whence the changing seasons spring, Tell how storms deform the skies, Whence the waves subside and rise, Trace the comet's blazing tail, Weigh the planets in a scale; Bend, great G.o.d, before thy shrine, The bournless macrocosm's thine.

MICHAEL BRUCE.

We refer our readers to Dr Mackelvie's well-known and very able Life of poor Bruce, for his full story, and for the evidence on which his claim to the 'Cuckoo' is rested. Apart from external evidence, we think that poem more characteristic of Bruce's genius than of Logan's, and have therefore ranked it under Bruce's name.

Bruce was born on the 27th of March 1746, at Kinnesswood, parish of Portmoak, county of Kinross. His father was a weaver, and Michael was the fifth of a family of eight children.

Poor as his parents were, they were intelligent, religious, and most conscientious in the discharge of their duties to their children. In the summer months Michael was sent out to herd cattle; and one loves to imagine the young poet wrapt in his plaid, under a whin-bush, while the storm was blowing,--or gazing at the rainbow from the summit of a fence,--or admiring at Lochleven and its old ruined castle,--or weaving around the form of some little maiden, herding in a neighbouring field --some 'Jeanie Morrison'--one of those webs of romantic early love which are beautiful and evanescent as the gossamer, but how exquisitely relished while they last! Say not, with one of his biographers, that his 'education was r.e.t.a.r.ded by this employment;' he was receiving in these solitary fields a kind of education which no school and no college could furnish; nay, who knows but, as he saw the cuckoo winging her way from one deep woodland recess to another, or heard her dull, divine monotone coming from the heart of the forest, the germ of that exquisite strain, 'least in the kingdom' of the heaven of poetry in size, but immortal in its smallness, was sown in his mind? In winter he went to school, and profited there so much, that at fifteen (not a very early period, after all, for a Scotch student beginning his curriculum--in our day twelve was not an uncommon age) he was judged fit for going to college. And just in time a windfall came across the path of our poet, the mention of which may make many of our readers smile. This was a legacy which was left his father by a relative, amounting to 200 merks, or 11, 2s.6d.

With this munificent sum in his pocket, Bruce was sent to study at Edinburgh College. Here he became distinguished by his attainments, and particularly his taste and poetic powers; and here, too, he became acquainted with John Logan, afterwards his biographer. After spending three sessions at college, supported by his parents and other friends, he returned to the country, and taught a school at Gairney Bridge (a place famous for the first meeting of the first presbytery of the Seceders) for 11 of salary. Thence he removed to Foresthill, near Alloa, where a damp school-room, poverty, and hard labour in teaching, united to injure his health and depress his spirits. At Foresthill he wrote his poem 'Lochleven,' which discovers no small descriptive power.

Consumption began now to make its appearance, and he returned to the cottage of his parents, where he wrote his 'Elegy on Spring,' in which he refers with dignified pathos to his approaching dissolution. On the 5th of July 1767, this remarkable youth died, aged twenty-one years and three months. His Bible was found on his pillow, marked at the words, Jer. xxii. 10, 'Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.'

Lord Craig wrote some time afterwards an affecting paper in the _Mirror_, recording the fate, and commending the genius of Bruce. John Logan, in 1770, published his poems. In the year 1807, the kind-hearted Princ.i.p.al Baird published an edition of the poems for the behoof of Bruce's mother, then an aged widow. And in 1837, Dr William Mackelvie, Balgedie, Kinross- s.h.i.+re, published what may be considered the standard Life of this poet, along with a complete edition of his Works.

It is impossible from so small a segment of a circle as Bruce's life describes, to infer with any certainty the whole. So far as we can judge from the fragments left, his power was rather in the beautiful, than in the sublime or in the strong. The lines on Spring, from the words 'Now spring returns' to the close, form a continuous stream of pensive loveliness. How sweetly he sings in the shadow of death! Nor let us too severely blame his allusion to the old Pagan mythology, in the words--

'I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe, I see the muddy wave, the dreary sh.o.r.e;'

remembering that he was still a mere student, and not recovered from that fine intoxication in which cla.s.sical literature drenches a young imaginative soul, and that at last we find him 'resting in the hopes of an eternal day.' 'Lochleven' is the spent echo of the 'Seasons,' although, as we said before, its descriptions possess considerable merit. His 'Last Day' is more ambitious than successful. If we grant the 'Cuckoo' to be his, as we are inclined decidedly to do, it is a sure t.i.tle to fame, being one of the sweetest little poems in any language. Shakspeare would have been proud of the verse--

'Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.'

Bruce has not, however, it has always appeared to us, caught so well as Wordsworth the differentia of the cuckoo,--its invisible, shadowy, s.h.i.+fting, supernatural character--heard, but seldom seen--its note so limited and almost unearthly:--

'O Cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, Or but a _wandering voice_?'

How fine this conception of a separated voice--'The viewless spirit of a _lonely_ sound,' plaining in the woods as if seeking for some incarnation it cannot find, and saddening the spring groves by a note so contradictory to the genius of the season. In reference to the note of the cuckoo we find the following remarks among the fragments from the commonplace-book of Dr Thomas Brown, printed by Dr Welsh:--'The name of the cuckoo has generally been considered as a very pure instance of imitative harmony.

But in giving that name, we have most unjustly defrauded the poor bird of a portion of its very small variety of sound. The second syllable is not a mere echo of the first; it is the sound reversed, like the reading of a sotadic line; and to preserve the strictness of the imitation we should give it the name of Ook-koo.' _This_ is the prose of the cuckoo after its poetry.

TO THE CUCKOO.

1 Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!

The messenger of spring!

Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome sing.

2 Soon as the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year?

3 Delightful visitant! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet, From birds among the bowers.