SCOTTISH POETS.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1832.)

POETRY, which though not dead, has long been sleeping in Scotland, was restored to waking life by THOMSON. His genius was national; and so, too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and passionate; and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its power lay in the heart. The Castle of Indolence is distinguished by purer taste, and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that poem is but the vision of a dream. The Seasons are glorious realities; and the charm of the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its truth. But what mean we by saying that the Seasons are a national subjećt?-do we assert that they are solely Scottish? That would be too bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, to the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set in Scottish heavens; his "deep-fermenting tempests, are brewed in grim evening" Scottish skies; Scottish is his thunder of cloud and cataract; his "vapours, and snows, and storms," are Scottish; and, strange as the assertion would have sounded in the ears of Samuel Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their sugh, and their roar; nor less their stillness, more awful amidst the vast multitude of steady stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of his native land was in his heart when he cried in the solitude

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Hail, kindred glooms! congenial horrors, hail!"

The genius of HOME was national-and so, too, was the subject of his first and greatest song-Douglas. He had

studied the old ballads. Their simplicities were sweet to him as wallflowers on ruins. On the story of Gill Morice, who was an earl's son, he founded, 'tis said, his tragedy, which surely no Scottish eyes ever witnessed without tears. Are not these most Scottish lines?—

"Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom
Accords with my soul's sadness!"

And these even more intensely so,—

"Red came the river down, and loud and oft
The angry spirit of the waters shrieked!”

The Scottish tragedian in an evil hour crossed the Tweed, riding on horseback all the way to London. His genius got Anglified, took a consumption, and perished in the prime of life. But on seeing the Siddons in Lady Randolph, and hearing her low, deep, wild, wobegone voice exclaim, "My beautiful! my brave!" "the aged harper's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again lighted up for a moment with the fires of genius-say rather for a moment bedewed with the tears of sensibility, reawakened from decay and dotage.

The genius of BEATTIE was national, and so was the subject of his greatest son-The Minstrel. For what is its design? He tells us, to trace the progress of a poetical genius born in a rude age, from the first dawning of reason and fancy, till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel; that is, as an intinerant poet and musician,- -a character which, according to the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred.

"There lived in gothic days, as legends tell,

A shepherd swain, a man of low degree;
Whose sires perchance in fairyland might dwell,
Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady;

But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie;
A nation famed for song and beauty's charms;
Zealous yet modest; innocent though free;
Patient of toil, serene amid alarms;
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.

"The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made,
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock:
The sickle, scythe, or plough, he never swayed:
An honest heart was almost all his stock;
His drink the living waters from the rock;
The milky dams supplied his board, and lent
Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock;

And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent,

Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they

went!"

Did patriotism ever inspire genius with sentiment more Scottish than that? Did imagination ever create scenery more Scottish? Manners, morals, life? not the following stanzas?

Never.

"Lo! where the stripling rapt in wonder roves
Beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine;
And sees, on high, amidst the encircling groves
From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine:
While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join,
And echo swells the chorus to the skies!"

Beattie pours

What!

there like a man who had been at the Linn of Dee. He wore a wig, it is true; but at times, when the fit was on him, he wrote like the unshorn Apollo. The genius of GRAHAME was national, and so too was the subject of his first and best poem-the Sabbath.

"How still the morning of the hallowed day!"

is a line that could have been uttered only by a holy Scottish heart. For we alone know what is indeed Sabbath silence an earnest of everlasting rest. To our hearts, the very birds of Scotland sing holily on that day. A sacred smile is on the dewy flowers. The lilies look whiter in their loveliness; the blush-rose reddens in the sun with a diviner dye; and with a more celestial scent the hoary hawthorn sweetens the wilderness. Sorely disturbed of yore, over the glens and hills of Scotland, was the day of peace!

"O, the great goodness of the saints of old!"

the Covenanters. Listen to the Sabbath-bard.

"With them each day was holy; but that morn
On which the angel said, See where the Lord
Was laid, joyous arose; to die that day

Was bliss. Long ere the dawn by devious ways,
O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought
The upland muirs where rivers, there but brooks,
Depart to different seas. Fast by such brooks

A little glen is sometimes scooped, a plat

With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem
Amid the heathery wild, that all around
Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these,
Thy persecuted children; Scotia, foiled
A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws:
There, leaning on his spear, (one of the array
Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose
On England's banner, and had powerless struck
The infatuate monarch, and his wavering host!)
The lyart veteran heard the word of God
By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured
In gentle stream: then rose the song, the loud
Acclaim of praise. The wheeling plover ceased
Her plaint; the solitary place was glad;
And on the distant cairn the watcher's ear
Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note.
But years more gloomy followed; and no more
The assembled people dared, in face of day,
To worship God, or even at the dead

Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce,
And thunder-peals compelled the men of blood
To couch within their dens; then dauntlessly
The scatter'd few would meet, in some deep dell
By rocks o'ercanopied, to hear the voice,
Their faithful pastor's voice: he by the gleam
Of sheeted lightning oped the sacred book,
And words of comfort spake: over their souls
His accents soothing came, as to her young
The heathfowl's plumes, when, at the close of eve,
She gathers in, mournful, her brood dispersed
By murderous sport, and o'er the remnant spreads
Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast
They cherished cower amid the purple bloom."

The genius of SIR WALTER SCOTT, it will not be denied, is pretty national, and so are the subjects of all his noblest works, be they poems, or novels and romances by the author of Waverley. Up to the era of Sir Walter, living

people had some vague, general, indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places, "mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that difficultly distinguished and very debateable district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts. Some in woodmen's dresses-most in warrior's mail-green archers leapt forth with yew-bows and quivers-and giants stalked shaking spears. The gray chronicler smiled; and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chival rous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then for the first time knew the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres-not they indeed-nor phantoms of the brain-but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;-base-born cottage-churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high-born lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir Walter is, that he has harried all Scotland. Never was there such a freebooter. He harries all men's cattle-kills themselves off hand, and makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with their islands distinct by midnight as by midday; wide woods glow gloriously in the gloom; and by the stormy splendour, you even see ships, with all sail set, far at sea. His themes in prose or numerous verse, are still "knights and lords and mighty earls," and their lady-loves-chiefly Scottish-of kings that fought for fame or freedom-of fatal Flodden and bright Bannockburn of the DELIVERER. If that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtæus not sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, then, be cognomen'd by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the north-we shall continue to call him plain, simple, immortal Sir Walter.

We are confining our affection at present, you perceive, to those great or good poets, to whom, from the nature of their genius and its subjects, we are induced to apply, with all propriety of speech, the delightful and endearing term, Scottish. Our enlightened neighbours, the