written in fourteen months, a remarkable in- | Leghorn, in a cottage which his countryman stance of literary industry. Its success induced him to write a continuation of it to 1754. He next visited the Continent to seek consolation in travel for the loss of his only daughter, and on his return he published his "Travels through France and Italy," a work which was severely criticized by Sterne in his Sentimental Journey. "Yet be it said," remarks Sir Walter Scott, "without offence to the memory of the witty and elegant Sterne, it is more easy to assume in composition an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne's writings show much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was
'Like a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly.'" Declining health induced Smollett to make a second visit to Scotland, and on his return he endeavoured to obtain from government an appointment as consul at some Mediterranean port. Failing in this he set out early in 1770 with Mrs. Smollett for the Continent, whence he never returned. During his sojourn ncar
Dr. Armstrong the poet had engaged for him, he wrote his "Expedition of Humphrey Clinker," the most rich, varied, and agreeable of all his novels, which had just been committed to the public when he expired, October 21, 1771, at Monte Nuovo, near Leghorn, leaving his widow, the Narcissa of "Roderick Random," nearly destitute, in a foreign land. A monument was raised over his grave at Leghorn by his faithful friend Dr. Armstrong; and in 1774 a Tuscan column was erected to his memory by his cousin, Smollett of Bonhill, on the banks of the Leven, near the house in which he was born. So long as his odes to "Leven Water" and to "Independence" exist Smollett can never fail to be admired as a poet, nor can a feeling of regret be avoided that he did not devote more of his genius to poetic compositions. We cannot take leave of this distinguished Scotchman-distinguished as a historian, as a novelist, and as the author of lines which possess the masculine strength of Dryden-without alluding to a passage in his novel of "Peregrine Pickle," that passage so inexpressibly touching where the Jacobite exiles stand every morning on the coast of France to contemplate the blue hills of their native land, to which they are never to return!
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!
Thy sons, for valour long renowned,
Lie slaughtered on their native ground;
Thy hospitable roofs no more
Invite the stranger to the door;
In smoky ruins sunk they lie,
The monuments of cruelty.
The wretched owner sees afar
His all become the prey of war;
Bethinks him of his babes and wife,
Then smites his breast and curses life.
Thy swains are famished on the rocks,
Where once they fed their wanton flocks;
Thy ravished virgins shriek in vain;
Thy infants perish on the plain.
What boots it then in every clime,
Through the wide spreading waste of time,
Thy martial glory, crowned with praise,
Still shines with undiminished blaze?
Thy towering spirit now is broke,
Thy neck is bended to the yoke.
What foreign arms could never quell,
By civil rage and rancour fell.
The rural pipe and merry lay
No more shall cheer the happy day:
No social scenes of gay delight
Beguile the dreary winter night:
No strains but those of sorrow flow,
And nought is heard but sounds of woe,
While the pale phantoms of the slain
Glide nightly o'er the silent plain.
Oh! baneful cause, oh! fatal morn,
Accursed to ages yet unborn!
The sons against their father stood,
The parent shed his children's blood.
Yet, when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor's soul was not appeased;
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murdering steel!
The pious mother, doomed to death,
Forsaken wanders o'er the heath,
The bleak wind whistles round her head,
Her helpless orphans cry for bread;
Bereft of shelter, food, and friend,
She views the shades of night descend:
And stretched beneath the inclement skies,
Weeps o'er her tender babes, and dies.
While the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpaired remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country's fate
Within my filial breast shall beat;
And, spite of her insulting foe,
My sympathizing verse shall flow:
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!
Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye;
Thy steps I follow, with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky
Deep in the frozen regions of the North,
A goddess violated brought thee forth,
Immortal Liberty, whose look sublime
Hath bleached the tyrant's cheek in every vary.
ing clime.
What time the iron-hearted Gaul,
With frantic superstition for his guide,
Armed with the dagger and the pall,
The sons of Woden to the field defied;
The ruthless hag, by Weser's flood,
In Heaven's name urged the infernal blow;
And red the stream began to flow:
The vanquished were baptized with blood!
The Saxon prince in horror fled,
From altars stained with human gore,
And Liberty his routed legions led
In safety to the bleak Norwegian shore.
There in a cave asleep she lay,
Lulled by the hoarse-resounding main,
When a bold savage passed that way,
Impelled by destiny, his name Disdain.
Of ample front the portly chief appeared:
The hunted bear supplied a shaggy vest;
The drifted snow hung on his yellow beard,
And his broad shoulders braved the furious blast.
He stopt, he gazed, his bosom glowed,
And deeply felt the impression of her charms;
He seized the advantage fate allowed,
And straight compressed her in his vigorous arms.
The curlew screamed, the Tritons blew
Their shells to celebrate the ravished rite;
Old Time exulted as he flew;
And Independence saw the light.
The light he saw in Albion's happy plains,
Where under cover of a flowering thorn,
While Philomel renewed her warbled strains,
The auspicious fruit of stolen embrace was born-
The mountain Dryads seized with joy
The smiling infant to their charge consigned;
The Doric Muse caressed the favourite boy;
The hermit Wisdom stored his opening mind.
As rolling years matured his age,
He flourished bold and sinewy as his sire;
While the mild passions in his breast assuage
The fiercer flames of his maternal fire.
Accomplished thus, he winged his way,
And zealous roved from pole to pole,
The rolls of right eternal to display,
And warm with patriot thought the aspiring soul.
On desert isles 'twas he that raised
Those spires that gild the Adriatic wave,
Where Tyranny beheld amazed
Fair Freedom's temple, where he marked her
He steeled the blunt Batavian's arms
To burst the Iberian's double chain;
And cities reared, and planted farms,
Won from the skirts of Neptune's wide domain.
He, with the generous rustics, sat
On Uri's rocks in close divan;
And winged that arrow sure as fate,
Which ascertained the sacred rights of man.
Arabia's scorching sands he crossed,
Where blasted Nature pants supine,
Conductor of her tribes adust,
To Freedom's adamantine shrine;
And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast!
He snatched from under fell Oppression's wing,
And taught amidst the dreary waste
The all-cheering hymns of Liberty to sing.
He virtue finds, like precious ore,
Diffused through every baser mould;
Even now he stands on Calvi's rocky shore,
And turns the dross of Corsica to gold:
He, guardian genius, taught my youth
Pomp's tinsel livery to despise;
My lips by him chastised to Truth,
Ne'er paid that homage which my heart denies.
Those sculptured halls my feet shall never tread,
Where varnished Vice and Vanity, combined
To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread,
And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind.
While Insolence his wrinkled front uprears,
And all the flowers of spurious Fancy blow;
And Title his ill-woven chaplet wears,
Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow:
Where ever-dimpling Falsehood, pert and vain,
Presents her cup of stale profession's froth;
And pale Disease, with all his bloated train,
Torments the sons of gluttony and sloth.
In Fortune's car behold that minion ride,
With either India's glittering spoils oppressed;
So moves the sumpter-mule in harnessed pride,
That bears the treasure which he cannot taste.
For him let venal bards disgrace the bay,
And hireling minstrels wake the tinkling string;
Her sensual snares let faithless Pleasure lay,
And jingling bells fantastic Folly ring:
Disquiet, Doubt, and Dread shall intervene;
And Nature, still to all her feelings just,
In vengeance hang a damp on every scene
Shook from the baleful pinions of Disgust.
Nature I'll court in her sequestered haunts,
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell;
Where the poised lark his evening ditty chants,
And Health and Peace and Contemplation dwell.
There, Study shall with Solitude recline,
And Friendship pledge me to his fellow-swains,
And Toil and Temperance sedately twine
The slender cord that fluttering life sustains:
And fearless Poverty shall guard the door,
And Taste unspoiled the frugal table spread,
And Industry supply the humble store,
And Sleep unbribed his dews refreshing shed;
White-mantled Innocence, ethereal sprite,
Shall chase far off the goblins of the night;
And Independence o'er the day preside,
Propitious power! my patron and my pride.
THY FATAL SHAFTS.
Thy fatal shafts unerring move;
I bow before thine altar, Love!
I feel thy soft resistless flame
Glide swift through all my vital frame!
For while I gaze my bosom glows,
My blood in tides impetuous flows;
Hope, fear, and joy alternate roll,
And floods of transport 'whelm my soul.
My falt'ring tongue attempts in vain In soothing murmurs to complain; My tongue some secret magic ties, My murmurs sink in broken sighs! Condemn'd to nurse eternal care, And ever drop the silent tear, Unheard I mourn, unknown I sigh, Unfriended live, unpitied die!
When the rough North forgets to howl,
And ocean's billows cease to roll;
When Lybian sands are bound in frost,
And cold to Nova Zembla's lost;
When heavenly bodies cease to move,—
My blue-eyed Anne I'll cease to love.
No more shall flowers the meads adorn,
Nor sweetness deck the rosy thorn,
Nor swelling buds proclaim the spring,
Nor parching heats the Dog-star bring,
Nor laughing lilies paint the grove,—
When blue-eyed Anne I'll cease to love.
No more shall joy in hope be found,
Nor pleasures dance their frolic round,
Nor love's light god inhabit earth,
Nor beauty give the passion birth,
Nor heat to summer-sunshine cleave,-
When blue-eyed Nanny I'll deceive.
When rolling seasons cease to change,
Inconstancy forgets to range;
When lavish May no more shall bloom,
Nor gardens yield a rich perfume;
When nature from her sphere shall start,-
I'll tear my Nanny from my heart.
WHEN SAPPHO TUN'D THE RAPTUR'D STRAIN.
When Sappho tun'd the raptur'd strain,
The list'ning wretch forgot his pain;
With art divine the lyre she strung,
Like thee she play'd, like thee she sung.
For while she struck the quivering wire,
The eager breast was all on fire;
And when she join'd the vocal lay,
The captive soul was charm'd away!
But had she added still to these,
Thy softer, chaster power to please,
Thy beauteous air of sprightly youth,
Thy native smiles of artless truth;
She ne'er had pined beneath disdain,
She ne'er had play'd and sung in vain;
Despair her soul had ne'er possess'd
To dash on rocks the tender breast.
On Leven's banks, while free to rove,
And tune the rural pipe to love,
I envied not the happiest swain
That ever trod the Arcadian plain.
Pure stream, in whose transparent wave
My youthful limbs I wont to lave;
No torrents stain thy limpid source,
No rocks impede thy dimpling course,
That sweetly warbles o'er its bed,
With white, round, polished pebbles spread;
While, lightly poised, the scaly brood
In myriads cleave thy crystal flood;
The springing trout in speckled pride;
The salmon, monarch of the tide;
The ruthless pike, intent on war;
The silver eel and mottled par.
Devolving from thy parent lake
A charming maze thy waters make,
By bowers of birch, and groves of pine,
And edges flowered with eglantine.
Still on thy banks so gaily green,
May numerous flocks and herds be seen;
And lasses chanting o'er the pail,
And shepherds piping in the dale;
And ancient faith that knows no guile,
And industry embrowned with toil;
And hearts resolved, and hands prepared,
The blessings they enjoy to guard!
SIR GILBERT ELLIOT, third baronet of Minto, was born in Roxburghshire in the year 1722. He was the eldest son of the Sir Gilbert who, Lord Woodhouselee says, "was taught the German flute in France, and was the first to introduce that instrument into Scotland in 1725;" and grandson of the first baronet, a Lord of Session, known by the title of Lord Minto. Our poet was educated for the Scottish bar, and in 1763 was made treasurer of the navy. Three years afterwards he succeeded his father, the second baronet, in the title and estates, and subsequently obtained the reversion of the office of keeper of the signet in Scotland. He was a man of considerable political and literary ability, and was distinguished as a speaker in parliament, as well as highly accomplished and sagacious in parliamentary business. He died at Marseilles in 1777. Some lines which he wrote on the occasion of his father's death are curiously applicable to his own:
"His mind refined and strong, no sense impaired,
Nor feeling of humanity, nor taste
Of social life; so e'en his latest hour
In sweet domestic cheerfulness was passed;
Sublimely calm his ripened spirit fled.
His family surrounding, and his friends;
A wife and daughter closed his eyes: on them
Was turned his latest gaze: and o'er his grave
Their father's grave-his sons the green turf spread."
Sir Gilbert's eldest son, for some time Governor-general of India, was raised to the peerage by the title of the Earl of Minto; and his sister, Miss Jane Elliot, was the authoress of the old set of "The Flowers of the Forest." His philosophical correspondence with David Hume is quoted with commendation by Dugald Stewart in his Philosophy of the Human Mind, and in his "Dissertation" prefixed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He was the author of the following lines on the death of Colonel James Gardiner, and of what Sir Walter Scott calls "the beautiful pastoral song" beginning—
"My sheep I neglected, I lost my sheep-hook " "The song," says a critic, "which has given the name of Sir Gilbert Elliot a place among our lyric poets is one of great beauty; and the sheep-hook and the fresh garlands are forgotten
Cliffs doubling on their echoes borne
The terrors of the robber's horn,
Cliffs which for many a later year
The warbling Doric reed shall hear,
When some sad swain shall teach the grove
Ambition is no cure for love.'
in the strain of natural sorrow produced by neglected moments and unrequited love. It is one of the last and the best efforts of the pastoral muse. I know not whether to account it good fortune or design which made the name of the heroine sound so like that of the family residence; but I am willing to believe in the prophetic strain which makes the cliffsite lyrics, and enjoy the credit of such compoecho, for many a later year, the song of 'My Sheep I neglected.'
'On Minto crags the moonbeams glint,
Where Barnhill hew'd his bed of flint,
Who flung his outlaw'd limbs to rest
Where falcons hang their giddy nest,
'Mid cliffs from whence his eagle eye
For many a league his prey could spy;
As if it had not been enough for Sir Gilbert
Elliot and his sister to write two of our favour-
sitions, by special grace and good fortune they
have also each obtained a separate and lasting
compliment in verse-the first in the 'Lay of
the Last Minstrel,' and the latter in 'Mar-
mion :'
'One of those flowers whom plaintive lay
In Scotland mourns as 'wede away.'"
My sheep I neglected, I lost my sheep-hook,
And all the gay haunts of my youth I forsook;
No more for Amynta fresh garlands I wove;
For ambition, I said, would soon cure me of
love.
Oh! what had my youth with ambition to do?
Why left I Amynta? why broke I my vow?
Oh! give me my sheep, and my sheep-hook
restore,
And I'll wander from love and Amynta no
Through regions remote in vain do I rove,
And bid the wide ocean secure me from love!
O fool! to imagine that aught could subdue
A love so well-founded, a passion so true!
Alas! 'tis too late at thy fate to repine;
Poor shepherd, Amynta can never be thine;
Thy tears are all fruitless, thy wishes are vain,
The moments neglected return not again.
TWAS AT THE HOUR OF DARK
MIDNIGHT.2
'Twas at the hour of dark midnight, Before the first cock's crowing,
1 First published in Yair's Charmer, issued at Edinburgh in 1749; it afterwards appeared in Herd's and other collections, and is written to the tune of an old air called "My Apron Dearie," which is to be found in Johnson's Museum and Thomson's Select Melodies.-ED.
When westland winds shook Stirling's tow'rs,
With hollow murmurs blowing;
When Fanny fair, all woe-begone,
Sad on her bed was lying,
And from the ruin'd tow'rs she heard
The boding screech-owl crying.
"O dismal night!" she said, and wept,
"O night presaging sorrow:
O dismal night!" she said, and wept,
"But more I dread to-morrow.
For now the bloody hour draws nigh,
Each host to Preston bending;
At morn shall sons their fathers slay,
With deadly hate contending.
"Even in the visions of the night
I saw fell death wide sweeping;
And all the matrons of the land
And all the virgins weeping."
And now she heard the massy gates
Harsh on their hinges turning;
And now through all the castle heard
The woeful voice of mourning.
Aghast she started from her bed,
The fatal tidings dreading;
"O speak," she cried, "my father's slain!
I see, I see him bleeding!"
"A pale corpse on the sullen shore,
At morn, fair maid, I left him;
Even at the threshold of his gate
The foe of life bereft him.
2 Colonel Gardiner, the hero of this song, one of the very few which are extant not on the Stuart side, was killed at the battle of Prestonpans in 1745. He was cut down by a Highlander armed with a scythe-blade, after his soldiers had basely deserted him.-ED.
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