McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 32

LIII. LOCHIEL'S WARNING. (211)

Thomas Campbell, 1777-1844, was a descendant of the famous clan of Campbells, in Kirnan, Scotland, and was born at Glasgow. At the age of thirteen he entered the university in that city, from which he graduated with distinction, especially as a Greek scholar; his translations of Greek tragedy were considered without parallel in the history of the university.

During the first year after graduation, he wrote several poems of minor importance. He then removed to Edinburgh and adopted literature as his profession; here his "Pleasures of Hope" was published in 1799, and achieved immediate success. He traveled extensively on the continent, and during his absence wrote "Lochiel's Warning," "Hohenlinden," and other minor poems. In 1809 he published "Gertrude of Wyoming;" from 1820 to 1830 he edited the "New Monthly Magazine." In 1826 he was chosen lord rector of the University of Glasgow, to which office he was twice reelected. He was active in founding the University of London. During the last years of his life he produced but little of note. He died at Boulogne, in France.

During most of his life he was in straitened pecuniary circ.u.mstances, and ill-health and family afflictions cast a melancholy over his later years.

His poems were written with much care, and are uniformly smooth and musical.

Seer. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!

For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight, And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.

They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown; Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!

Proud c.u.mberland prances, insulting the slain, And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.

But hark! through the fast-flas.h.i.+ng lightning of war, What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?

'T is thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await Like a love-lighted watch fire all night at the gate.

A steed comes at morning,--no rider is there, But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.

Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!

Oh, weep! but thy tears can not number the dead: For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,-- Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.

Loch. Go preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!

Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear, Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight, This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

Seer. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?

Proud bird of the mountain thy plume shall be torn!

Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth From his home in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?

Lo! the death shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode Companionless, bearing destruction abroad; But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!

Ah! home let him speed, for the spoiler is nigh.

Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?

'T is the fire shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven From his eyrie that beacons the darkness of heaven, O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might, Whose banners arise on the battlements' height, Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn; Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!

For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood, And a wild mother scream o'er her famis.h.i.+ng brood.

Loch. False wizard, avaunt! I have marshaled my clan, Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!

They are true to the last of their blood and their breath, And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.

Then welcome be c.u.mberland's steed to the shock!

Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!

But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause, When Albin her claymore indignantly draws; When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd, Clanronald the dauntless, and Moray the proud, All plaided and plumed in their tartan array--

Seer. --Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day!

For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal, But man can not cover what G.o.d would reveal: 'T is the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before.

I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.

Lo! anointed by heaven with the vials of wrath, Behold where he flies on his desolate path!

Now, in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight: Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!

'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors; Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.

But where is the ironbound prisoner? Where?

For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.

Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn, Like a limb from his country, cast bleeding and torn?

Ah no! for a darker departure is near; The war drum is m.u.f.fled, and black is the bier; His death bell is tolling; O mercy, dispel Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell!

Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs, And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.

Accursed be the f.a.gots that blaze at his feet, Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat, With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale--

Loch. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale: For never shall Albin a destiny meet So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.

Though my peris.h.i.+ng ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten sh.o.r.e, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field and his feet to the foe!

And leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to heaven from the deathbed of fame.

NOTES.--Lochiel was a brave and influential Highland chieftain. He espoused the cause of Charles Stuart, called the Pretender, who claimed the British throne. In the preceding piece, he is supposed to be marching with the warriors of his clan to join Charles's army. On his way he is met by a Seer, who having, according to the popular superst.i.tion, the gift of second-sight, or prophecy, forewarns him of the disastrous event of the enterprise, and exhorts him to return home and avoid the destruction which certainly awaits him, and which afterward fell upon him at the battle of Culloden, in 1746. In this battle the Highlanders were commanded by Charles in person, and the English by the Duke of c.u.mberland. The Highlanders wore completely routed, and the Pretender's rebellion brought to a close. He himself shortly afterward made a narrow escape by water from the west of Scotland; hence the reference to the fugitive king.

Albin is the poetic name of Scotland, more particularly the Highlands. The ironbound prisoner refers to Lochiel.

LIV. ON HAPPINESS OF TEMPER. (215)

Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774. This eccentric son of genius was an Irishman; his father was a poor curate. Goldsmith received his education at several preparatory schools, at Trinity College, Dublin, at Edinburgh, and at Leyden. He was indolent and unruly as a student, often in disgrace with his teachers; but his generosity, recklessness, and love of athletic sports made him a favorite with his fellow-students. He spent some time in wandering over the continent, often in poverty and want. In 1756 he returned to England, and soon took up his abode in London. Here he made the acquaintance and friends.h.i.+p of several notable men, among whom were Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. "The Traveler" was published in 1764, and was soon followed by the "Vicar of Wakefield." He wrote in nearly all departments of literature, and always with purity, grace, and fluency. His fame as a poet is secured by the "Traveler" and the "Deserted Village;" as a dramatist, by "She Stoops to Conquer;" as a satirist, by the "Citizen of the World;" and as a novelist by the "Vicar of Wakefield." In his later years his writings were the source of a large income, but his gambling, careless generosity, and reckless extravagance always kept him in financial difficulty, and he died heavily in debt. His monument is in Westminster Abbey.

Writers of every age have endeavored to show that pleasure is in us, and not in the objects offered for our amus.e.m.e.nt. If the soul be happily disposed, everything becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name. Every occurrence pa.s.ses in review, like the figures of a procession; some may be awkward, others ill-dressed, but none but a fool is on that account enraged with the master of ceremonies.

I remember to have once seen a slave, in a fortification in Flanders, who appeared no way touched with his situation. He was maimed, deformed, and chained; obliged to toil from the appearance of day till nightfall, and condemned to this for life; yet, with all these circ.u.mstances of apparent wretchedness, he sang, would have danced, but that he wanted a leg, and appeared the merriest, happiest man of all the garrison. What a practical philosopher was here! A happy const.i.tution supplied philosophy, and though seemingly dest.i.tute of wisdom he was really wise. No reading or study had contributed to disenchant the fairyland around him. Everything furnished him with an opportunity of mirth; and though some thought him, from his insensibility, a fool, he was such an idiot as philosophers should wish to imitate.

They who, like that slave, can place themselves all that side of the world in which everything appears in a pleasant light, will find something in every occurrence to excite their good humor. The most calamitous events, either to themselves or others, can bring no new affliction; the world is to them a theater, in which only comedies are acted. All the bustle of heroism, or the aspirations of ambition, seem only to heighten the absurdity of the scene, and make the humor more poignant. They feel, in short, as little anguish at their own distress, or the complaints of others, as the undertaker, though dressed in black, feels sorrow at a funeral. Of all the men I ever read of, the famous Cardinal de Retz possessed this happiness in the highest degree. When fortune wore her angriest look, and he fell into the power of Cardinal Mazarin, his most deadly enemy, (being confined a close prisoner in the castle of Valenciennes,) he never attempted to support his distress by wisdom or philosophy, for he pretended to neither. He only laughed at himself' and his persecutor, and seemed infinitely pleased at his new situation. In this mansion of distress, though denied all amus.e.m.e.nts, and even the conveniences of life, and entirely cut off from all intercourse with his friends, he still retained his good humor, laughed at the little spite of his enemies, and carried the jest so far as to write the life of his jailer.

All that the wisdom of the proud can teach, is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortunes. The Cardinal's example will teach us to be good- humored in circ.u.mstances of the highest affliction. It matters not whether our good humor be construed by others into insensibility or idiotism,--it is happiness to ourselves; and none but a fool could measure his satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.

The happiest fellow I ever knew, was of the number of those good-natured creatures that are said to do no harm to anybody but themselves. Whenever he fell into any misery, he called it "seeing life," If his head was broken by a chairman, or his pocket picked by a sharper, he comforted himself by imitating the Hibernian dialect of the one, or the more fas.h.i.+onable cant of the other. Nothing came amiss to him. His inattention to money matters had concerned his father to such a degree that all intercession of friends was fruitless. The old gentleman was on his deathbed. The whole family (and d.i.c.k among the number) gathered around him.

"I leave my second son, Andrew," said the expiring miser, "my whole estate, and desire him to be frugal." Andrew, in a sorrowful tone (as is usual on such occasions), prayed heaven to prolong his life and health to enjoy it himself. "I recommend Simon, my third son, to the care of his elder brother, and leave him, besides, four thousand pounds." "Ah, father!" cried Simon (in great affliction, to be sure), "may heaven give you life and health to enjoy it yourself!" At last, turning to poor d.i.c.k: "As for you, you have always been a sad dog; you'll never come to good; you'll never be rich; I leave you a s.h.i.+lling to buy a halter." "Ah, father!" cries d.i.c.k, without any emotion, "may heaven give you life and health to enjoy it yourself!"

NOTES.--Cardinal de Retz, Jean Francois Paul de Gondi (b. 1614, d. 1679), was leader of the revolt against Jules Mazarin (b. 1602, d. 1661), the prime minister of France during the minority of Louis XIV. This led to a war which lasted four or five years. After peace had been concluded, and Louis XIV. established on the throne, Mazarin was reinstated in power, and Cardinal de Retz was imprisoned.

Flanders, formerly part of the Netherlands, is now included in Belgium, Holland and France.

LV. THE FORTUNE TELLER. (218)

Henry Mackenzie, 1745-1831, was born in Edinburgh, educated at the university there, and died in the same city. He was an attorney by profession, and was the a.s.sociate of many famous literary men residing at that time in Edinburgh. His fame as a writer rests chiefly on two novels, "The Man of Feeling" and "The Man of the World;" both were published before the author was forty years old.

Harley sat down on a large stone by the wayside, to take a pebble from his shoe, when he saw, at some distance, a beggar approaching him. He had on a loose sort of coat, mended with different-colored rags, among which the blue and russet were predominant. He had a short, knotty stick in his hand, and on the top of it was stuck a ram's horn; he wore no shoes, and his stockings had entirely lost that part of them which would have covered his feet and ankles; in his face, however, was the plump appearance of good humor; he walked a good, round pace, and a crook-legged dog trotted at his heels.

"Our delicacies," said Harley to himself, "are fantastic; they are not in nature! That beggar walks over the sharpest of these stones barefooted, whilst I have lost the most delightful dream in the world from the smallest of them happening to get into my shoe." The beggar had by this time come up, and, pulling off a piece of a hat, asked charity of Harley.

The dog began to beg, too. It was impossible to resist both; and, in truth, the want of shoes and stockings had made both unnecessary, for Harley had destined sixpence for him before.