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A POET'S SKETCH-BOOK

WORKS BY ROBERT BUCHANAN.

Ballads of Life, Love, and Humour.
With a Frontispiece by ARTHUR
HUGHES. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.

Selected Poems of Robert Buchanan.
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A Poet's Sketch-Book. Selections
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CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W.

A

POET'S SKETCH-BOOI<

Selections from tfje Prose Writings

OF

ROBERT BUCHANAN

IP on !b n
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1883

[A II lights reserved]

7R

CONTENTS.

THE POET OR SEER : A DEFINITION

I. Vision, ...... i

II. Emotion, . . , . .11

III. Music, ...... 21

DAVID GRAY : A MEMOIR, . . . .31

LITERARY SKETCHES

Thomas Love Peacock : a Personal Reminiscence, . 93

The Good Genie of Fiction : Charles Dickens, . 119
Ossian, ...... 141

Two Poets : Heuie and de Musset, . . . 152

Victor Hugo, . . . . .157

Prose and Verse : a Stray Note, - . . 165

NATURE SKETCHES

The Highland Seasons, . . . .183

Lakes and Woods, . . . . .188

The Moors, . . . . . 190

The Shielings, ..... 192

Dunollie Castle, , . . . . 195

Rain and Rainbows. . . . .197

Drought in the Highlands, . 199

The Ascent of Cruachan, .... 201
A Day Afloat, . . . . 204

Canna and Skye, ..... 206
Celtic Superstition, ..... 208
Herring Fishers, . . . . .217

CONTENTS.

The Outer Hebrides, ..... 224

Hebridean Lagoons, ..... 228

The Lochan, . . . . . .231

Eagles and Ravens, ..... 232

Hawks and Owls, ..... 235

The Water-Ouzel, . ... 239

The Kingfisher, . ... 242

Hebridean Birds, . ... 244

Night in the Sea, ..... 247

Morning Glimpses : off Skye, . . . 249

A Sunset, ...... 252

The Birth of the Cuchullins, . . . . 255

Hart-o'-Corry, . . . . .259

Loch Corruisk, . . . . .261

Canna and its People, . . . .267

Eiradh of Canna, . , . . .-279

PREFATORY NOTE.

THIS volume of Prose Selections is intended as a com-
panion to the lately-published volume of selections
from the author's Poems. Special prominence has
been given in it, therefore, to personal and descriptive
matter, to the exclusion of mere criticism. It is, in fact,
what it is called, a Poet's Sketch-Book, and will be chiefly
interesting to those who take an interest in the author as
a writer of poems.

The prose tale with which the selection concludes
requires, perhaps, a word of special explanation. It is a
study in the manner of the Celtic genius, and is, to the
author's own thinking, far more completely a poem than
anything he has published in verse.

THE POET, OR SEER:

A DEFINITION

THE POET, OR SEER.

I. VISION.

HAT is the Poet, or Seer, as distinguished
from the philosopher, the man of science,
the politician, the tale-teller, and others
with whom he has many points in common ?
He is, indeed, a student as other students are, but he is
emphatically the student who sees, who feels, who sings.
The Poet, briefly described, is he whose existence con-
stitutes a new experience who sees life newly, assimil-
ates it emotionally, and contrives to utter it musically.
His qualities, therefore, are triune. His sight must be
individual, his reception of impressions must be emo-
tional, and his utterance must be musical. Deficiency
in any one of the three qualities is fatal to his claims
for office.

I. And first, as to the Glamour, the rarest and most
important of all gifts ; so rare, indeed, and so powerful,
that it occasionally creates, in very despite of nature, the

4 THE POET, OR SEER.

other poetic qualities. Yet that individual sight may
exist in a character essentially unpoetic, in a tempera-
ment purely intellectual, might be proven by reference to
more than one writer notably, to a leading novelist.
That proof, however, is immaterial. The point is, how
to detect this individual sight, this Glamour, how to
describe it, how, in fact, to find a criterion which will
prove this or that person to be or not to be a Seer.

The criterion is easily found and readily applied. We
find it in the special intensity, the daring reiteration, the
unwearisome tautology, of the utterance. The Seer is
so occupied with his vision, so devoted in the contempla-
tion of the new things which nature reserved for his
special seeing, that he can only describe over and over
again in numberless ways in infinite moods of grief,
ecstasy, awe the character of his sight. He has dis-
covered a new link, and his business is to trace it to its
uttermost consequences. He beholds the world as it
has been, but under a new colouring. While small men
are wandering up and down the world, proclaiming a
thousand discoveries, turning up countless moss-grown
truths, the Seer is standing still and wrapt, gazing at the
apparition, invisible to all eyes save his, holding his hand
upon his heart in the exquisite trouble of perfect percep-
tion. And behold ! in due time, his inspiration becomes
godlike, insomuch as the invisible relation is incorpor-
ated in actual types, takes shape and being, and breathes
and moves, and mingles in tangible glory into the ap-
proven culture of the world.

THE POET, OR SEER. 5

For, let it be noted, Nature is greedy of her truths,
and generally ordains that the perception of one link in
the chain of her relations is enough to make man great
and sacerdotal; only twice, in supreme moments, she
creates a Plato and a Shakespeare, proving the possibility,
twice in time, of a sight imperfect but demi-godlike.
"Life is a stream of awful passions, yet grandeur of
character is attainable if we dare the fatal fury of the
torrent." Thus said the Greek tragedians, but how
variously ! The hopelessness of the struggle, yet the
grandeur of struggling at all, is uttered by all three
each in his own fashion, In despite of madness, adul-
tery, murder, incest, in connection with all that is
horrible, in defiance of the very gods, GEdipus, Ajax,
Medea, Orestes, Antigone, agonize divinely, and, perish-
ing, attain the repose of antique sculpture. The same
undertone pervades all this antique music, but is never
so obtruded as to be wearisome. Never was the tyranny
of circumstance, the inexorable penalties enforced even
on the innocent when laws are broken, represented in
such wondrous forms. Under such penalties the inno-
cent may perish, but their reward is their very innocence.
Even when they lament aloud, when they exclaim against
the direness of their doom, these figures lose none of
their nobility. In the Philoctetes, the very cries of physi-
cal pain are dignified ; in the OEdipus, the bitterness of
the blind sufferer is noble ; in the Prometheus^ the shriek
of triumphant agony is sublime.

These three dramatists uttered the truth as they be-

6 THE POET, OR SEER.

held it ; nor do they interfere in any wise with higher
interpretations of the same conditions. They used the
light of their generation ; and the value of their revela-
tion lies in the sincerity and splendour of the contempo-
rary utterance. The same thing is not to be said again.
It was a cry heard early in time ; it is an echo haunting
the temple of extinct gods. But its truth to humanity
is eternal. We have the same agonies to this day, but
we regard them differently. All that can be said on the
heathen side has been said supremely.

While the dramatist depicts the fortunes and question-
ings of small groups and individuals, the epic poet
chronicles the history of the world. It is not every day
we can have an epic ; for only twice or thrice in time are
there materials for an epic. Homer is the historian of
the gods, and of the social life under Jove and his peers ;
through his page blows the fresh breeze of morning, the
white tents glimmer on Troy plain, horses neigh and
heroes buckle on armour, while aloft the heavens open,
showing the glittering gods on the snowy shoulder of
Olympus, Iris darting on the rainbow, whose lower end
reddens the grim features of Poseidon, driving his chariot
through the foam of the Trojan sea. The passion of the
Iliad is anger, the action, war ; in the Odyssey \ we have
the domestic side of the same life, the softer touches of
superstition, the milder influences of gods and goddesses,
heroes and their queens. But the life is the same in
both large, primitive, colossal absorbing all the social
and religious significance of a period.

THE POET, OR SEER. 7

What Homer is to the polytheism of the early Greeks,
the Old Testament is to the monotheism of the Hebrews.
It is the epic of that life the wilder, weirder, more
spiritual poem of a wilder, weirder, more spiritual period.
It is the utterance of many mouths, the poem of many
episodes, but the theme is unique, pre-eminent the
spirit of the one God, breathing on His chosen peoples,
and steadily moving on to fixed consummations fore-
shadowed in the Prophets. We have had no such
wondrous epic as this since, and can have none such
again. It is the poem of the one God, when yet He was
merely a voice in the thundercloud, a breath between the
coming and going of the winds.

Where else, in Virgil's time, subsisted the matter for
an epic ? To sing of ^Eneas and his fortunes was cer-
tainly patriotic, but the subject, at the best, was merely
local a contemporary, not an eternal, theme. The two
great forms of early European life had been phrased in
the two great early epics; and till Christ taught, the
time for the third great poem of masses had not come.
In point of fact, the third great poem has not yet been
written. The New Testament, of course, is didactic, not
poetic; and the Paradise Regained of Milton is purely
modern and academic.

The fourth European epic is the Divine Comedy of
Dante ; the fifth and last is the Paradise Lost of Milton.
It is scarcely necessary to describe in detail the character
of the vision in each of these cases. Dante saw Roman
Catholicism as no eye ever saw it before, watched it to

8 THE POET, OR SEER.

its uttermost results, made of it an image enduring by
the very intensity of its outlines, framed of it the epic
of the early church. Milton's perfect sight pictured,
under latter lights, the wonders of the primeval world.
The theme was old, but the light was new; and no man
had seen angels till Milton saw them, having been first
blinded, that his spiritual sight might be unimpeded.

Thus, all these men, Homer, the framers of the
biblical epos, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Dante,
Milton, were. poets by virtue of having seen some side
of truth as no others saw it. If some were greater than
others, their materials were perhaps greater. Not every
one is so situated in time as to see the subject of a new
epos, waiting to- be sung. But the Seer " shines in his
place, and is content." Even Goethe had his truth to
utter, and was so far a Seer. He was great in literature,
by virtue of his spiritual littleness. It needed such a
man to see Nature in the cold light of self-worship, to
betoken the futility of pure artistic striving. Yet
this, at the best, was negative teaching, and so far, in-
ferior.

But, it may be objected, these men surely expressed
more than one truth in their generation. In no wise, for
each had but one point of view ; there was no hovering,
no doubting ; their gaze was fixed as the gaze of stars.
The object is eternal, it is the point of view which
changes. Take Milton, for example ; the peculiarity ot
Milton as a Seer is the angelic spirituality of his sight,
its rejection of all but perfectly noble types for poetic

THE POET, OR SEER. 9

contemplation. It would seem that, from having once
walked with angels, he sees even common things in a
divine white light. He breathes the thin serene air of
the mountain-top. He seems calm and passionless ; his
heart beats in great glorified throbs, with no tremor ; his
speech is stately and crystal clear; he is for ever referring
man to his Maker ; for ever comparing our stature with
that of angels. Mark, further, that his spiritual creatures
are profoundly intellectual creatures, strangely subtle and
lofty reasoners. He holds pure intellect so divine a
thing that, in spite of himself, he makes the Devil his
hero. " The end of man," he says in effect, " is to con-
template God, and enjoy Him for ever." But he says
this in a way which is not final ; there may be truth
beyond Milton's truth, but one does not belie the other ;
this blind man saw as with the eye, and spake as with
the tongue, of angels.

Utterances such as these once attained, perceptions
so peculiar once welded into the culture of the world,
it behoves no man to re-utter them in the reiterative
spirit of their first discoverers. He who looks at life
exactly as Milion, or Chaucer, or Dante did, may be an
excellent being, but he is certainly too late to be a Seer.
Yet each new Seer is, of necessity, familiar with the dis-
coveries of his predecessors ; the white light of Milton's
purity chastens and solemnises Wordsworth's diction;
while the glow of Elizabethan colour tinges the pale
cheek of Keats the lover. The Seer is not the person
of Goethe's epigram,

io THE POET, OR SEER.

Ein Quidam sagt : " Ich bin von keiner Schule ;
Kein Meister lebt mit dem ich buhle ;
Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt,
Dass ich von Todten was gelernt. "
Das heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand
" Ich bin ein Narr auf eigne Hand ! "

Nay, as each great Poet sings, we again and again catch
tones struck by his predecessors Homer, ^Eschylus,
Dante, Job, Solomon, Milton, Goethe, and the rest,
but deeper, stronger, more permanent than all, we catch
the broken voice of the man himself, saying a mystic
thing that we have never heard before. The later we
come down in time, the frequenter are the echoes ; they
are the penalty the modern pays for his privileges.
^Eschylus and the rest echo Homer and the minstrels.
The Hebrew prophets, the heathen poets, the Italian
minstrels, Homer, Moses, Tasso, Dante, reverberate
in every page of Milton ; yet they only add volume to
the English voice. Shakespeare catches cries from all
the poetic voices of Europe, 1 daringly translating into
his own phraseology the visions of other and smaller
singers, and mellowing his blank verse by the study even
of contemporaries. In Chaucer's breezy song come
odours from the Greek JEgean, and whispers from
Tuscany and Provence. Aristophanes, again and again,
inspires the poetically humorous twinkle in the eyes of

1 Note how he spiritualises still further what is already spiritual
in the poetic prose of Plutarch ; as an example, compare with the
original passage in the Life of Antony the Speech of Enobaibus,
descriptive of Cleopatra in her barge.

THE POET, OR SEER. II

Moliere. But the plagiarism of such writers is kingly
plagiarism ; the poets ennoble the captives they take in
conquest ; refusing instruction from no voice, however
humble ; accepting the matter as divinely sent by nature,
but seldom imitating the tones of the medium which
transmits the matter.

There is no better sign of unfitness for the high poetic
ministry than a too tricksy delight in imitating other
voices^ however admirable. Racine caught the Greek
stateliness so well that he has scarcely an accent of his
own, save, of course, the mere general accentuation of
his people. In reading him, therefore, we have con-
stantly before our mind's eye the picture of a Frenchman
on the stage of the great amphitheatre; we see the
masks, the fixed lineaments expressive of single passions ;
and we hear the high-pitched soliloquies of Greece trans-
lated into a modern tongue. Racine, indeed, is better
reading than any translator of the tragedians, but he is
no Seer. On the other hand, Moliere was nearly as
much under influence as Racine, but the splendour of
his individual vision lifted him high into the ranks of
poetic teachers. He was an arrant thief, robbing the
playwrights of all countries without mercy, but the
roguish gleam of the thief's eyes is never lost under the
load of stolen raiment. We think of him, not of what
he is stealing ; the dress makes plainer, instead of hiding,
the natural peculiarities of the wearer.

There is, then, no danger in echoes, where they do
not drown the voice ; when they are too audible, that is

12 THE POET, OR SEER.

the case. The greatest artists utter old truths with all
the force of novelty; not in philosophy only, but in
poetry also, are the worn cries repeated over and over
again. These cries are common to all the race of Seers,
and may be described as the poetic " terminology."

According to the dignity of the revelation will be the^
rank of the Seer in the Temple. The epic poet is great,
because his matter is great in the first place, and because
he has not fallen below the level of his matter. The
dramatist is great by his truth to individual character
not his own, and his power of presenting that truth
while spiritualising into definite form and meaning some
vague situation in the sphere of actual or ideal life. The
lyric poet owes -his might to the personal character of
the emotion aroused by his vision. Then, there are
ranks within ranks. Not an eye in the throng, however,
but has some object of its , own, and some peculiar
sensitiveness to light, form, colour. To Milton, a pro-
spect of heavenly vistas, where stately figures walk and
cast no shade ; but to Pope (a seer, though low down
in the ranks) the pattern of tea-cups, and the peeping of
clocked stockings under farthingales. While the rouge
on the cheek of modern love betrays itself to the languid
yet keen eyes of Alfred de Musset, Robert Browning is
proclaiming the depths of tender beauty underlying
modern love and its rouge ; each is a Seer, and each is
true, only one sees a truth beyond the other's truth.
After Wordsworth has penetrated with solemn-sounding
footfall into the aisle of the Temple, David Gray follows,

THE POET, OR SEER. 13

and utters a faint cry of beautiful yearning as he dies
upon the threshold.

II. EMOTION.

The second essential peculiarity of the Poet is that of
emotional assimilation of impressions. Where intellect
coerces emotion, by however faint an effort, the result
is criticism of life, however exquisite. Where emotion
coerces intellect, the result is poetry.

It is not enough, observe, to see vividly. Sir Walter
Scott could see as vividly as Keats, but he was incap-
able of such emotion. Scott, indeed, is the greatest
modern writer who may unhesitatingly be described as
unpoetic. He was true both to human types and to
society. He was able to clothe the bare outline of
history with vivid form and colour. Writing at a time
when individualism was at its height in England, ere
Whig and Tory had merged into one vacuous nonentity,
he could not fail to shadow forth those higher aspirations
which are the exclusive property of individual men of
genius. Yet no man ever laboured to depict trifles' with
a more lofty devotion to general truth. There was no
finicism in the author of "Waverley." He depicted in
faithful aesthetic photography the manners and qualities
of ordinary or extraordinary men and women. He was
not always profound, nor always noble. But over all
his works lies the brilliant radiance of the artistic sym-
pathies, giving, to what might otherwise have been simply

I 4 THE POET, OR SEER.

a colourless likeness, the marvellous beauty of an ex-
quisite literary painting. Scott, however, was no poet.
His very success in prose fiction, as well as the failure of
his metrical productions, betokens his unpoetic nature.
He saw, but was not moved enough to sing. For there
is this marked difference between poetic and all other
utterance : it owes everything to concentration. Deep
emotion is invariably rapid in its manifestation, as we
may mark in the case of the ordinary cries of grief; and
the temperament of the poet is so intense, so keen, that
nought but concentrated utterance suffices him. On the
other hand, the true secret of novel-writing is the power
of expanding.

The apparence of pure coercive intellect varies, of
course, according to the nature of the singer. In Sappho
and Catullus, and all purely lyrical Seers, the intellectual
note is hardly heard at all; in Ovid and Chaucer, it is
heard faintly; in the subjective school of writers, such
as Shelley, it is painfully audible. But even in Shelley,
wheie he writes poetry, emotion prevails. "Queen Mab"
has justly been styled a pamphlet in verse, and the "Re-
volt of Islam " is only occasionally poetic.

It follows that we are, on the whole, more powerfully
moved by purely lyrical utterance than by utterances of
higher portent. Sappho troubles us more than Sophocles,
Keats more than Wordsworth. The personal cry, so
sharp, so rapid, so genuine, can never fail to find an echo
in our hearts. The manly exclamation of Burns,

THE POET, OR SEER. 15

For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair,
Or my puir heart is broken !

the fetid breath of Sappho, screaming,

Cold shiverings o'er me pass,

Chill sweats across me fly 1
I am greener than grass,

And breathless seem to die I

the passionate voice of Catullus,

Coeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia ilia,
Ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
Plus quam se, atque suos anavit omnes !

the tender lament of Spenser over Sidney, the scream of
Shelley, the warm sigh of Keats, all move deeply in the
region of melancholy and tears. But the happy calls
move us deliciously, although truly " our sweetest songs
are those that tell of saddest thought." The lighter
strains of Burns, the songs of Tannahill, some verses of
Horace, others of Ovid, the lyrics of Drayton and George
Wither, and many other glad poems which will occur
rapidly to every student, possess the lyrical light in great
intensity and sweetness.

But not only in poems professedly lyrical is this lyrical
light to be found ; it is noticeable in poetry of any form,
wherever there is extreme emotion, and may invariably
be looked for as the characteristic of the true singer.
CEdipus piteously exclaiming in his blindness,

TI yap edfi /*' opftv,

oro) y* OP&VTI p.n$ev r\v IdeTv y\v<i> ',

1 6 THE POET, OR SEEK.

Dante, in the great joy of his divinely beloved one,
feeling his pale studious lips and cheeks turn into rose-
leaves. 1 Samson Agonistes groaning,

dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse,

Without all hope of day.

Macbeth's last twilight murmur,

1 have lived long enough ; my way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have !

Cleopatra in the heyday of her bliss ; the Sad Shepherd,
chasing the footsteps of his love, and warbling in tune-
ful ecstasy,

Here she was wont to go ! and here ! and here !

Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow :

The world may find the spring by following her,

For other print her airy steps ne'er left ;

Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,

Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk ;

But like the soft west wind she shot along,

And where she went the flowers took thickest root,

As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.

And Bernardo Cenci, in the horror and anguish of that
last parting, screaming,

O life ! O world !
Cover me ! let me be no more ! To see

1 Purgatory, xxx.

THE POET, OR SEER. 17

That perfect mirror of pure innocence

Wherein I gazed and grew happy and good,

Shiver'd to dust ! To see thee, Beatrice,

Who made all lovely thou didst look upon

Thee, light of life, dead, dark ! While I say " sister "

To hear I have no sister ; and thou, mother,

Whose love was a bond to all our loves,

Dead ! the sweet bond broken !

These utterances, one and all, sad or glad, are essentially
lyrical, only differing from the first class of lyric utterances
in belonging to fictitious personages, not to the writer.
Romeo and Juliet swarms with lyrics ; every great play of
Shakespeare is more or less full of them. They betoken
the true dramatic force, and are less distinct in the lesser
dramatist. They are plentiful in Beaumont and Fletcher,
in Ford, in Webster ; less plentiful in Massinger ; scarcely
audible at all in Shirley and Ben Jonson. Where they
should appear in the bombastic tragedies of Dryden,
rhetoric and rhodomontade appear instead ; and to come
down to modern times, where shall we look for the lyrical
light in the pretentious tentatives of Sheridan Knowles and
Johanna Baillie ? If these tentatives sometimes rise to
dignity of movement, that is the most which can be said
of them. We have powerful emotional situations, and no
emotion.

It is here that all professed imitations of the classics fail.
They reproduce the repose so admirably, as in many cases
to send the reader to sleep. But we search in vain in
them for the representation of the great fires, the burning
passions of the originals. Insensibly, as has been

18 THE POET, OR SEER.

shrewdly remarked, we derive our notions of Greek
art from Greek sculpture, and forget that although calm
evolution was rendered necessary by the requirements of
the great amphitheatre, it was no calm life, no dainty
passion, no subdued woe that was thus evolved. The
lineaments of the actor's mask were fixed, but what sort
of expression did each mask wear? the glazed hope-
less stare of CEdipus, the white horror-stricken look of
Agamemnon, the stony glitter of the eyes of Clytem-
nestra, the horridly distorted glare of the Promethean
Furies, the sick, suffering, and ghastly pale features of
Philoctetes. Where was the calm here ? The movement
of the drama was simple and slow, yet there was no calm
in the heart of .the actors, each of whom must fit to his
mask a monotone the sneer of Ulysses, the blunted groan
of Cassandra, the fierce shriek of Orestes. The passion
and power have made these plays immortal ; not the slow
evolution, the necessity of the early stage. They are full
of the lyrical light.

But though lyrical emotion is the intensest of all written
forms of emotion, and must invariably be attained wherever
poetry interprets the keenest human feeling and passion,
there are forms of emotion wherein intellect is not coerced
so strongly. Two forms may be mentioned, and briefly
illustrated here emotional meditation and emotional
ratiocination. Either of these forms is of subtler and
more mixed quality than the purely lyrical form.

We have numberless examples of emotional meditation
in Wordsworth ; the thought is strong, solemn, unmis-

THE POET, OR SEER. 19

takably intellectual, but it is spiritualised withal by pro-
found feeling. Observe, as an example of this, the
following portion of the " Lines composed a few miles
above Tintern Abbey :"

sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee,

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again ;

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts,

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years. And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first

1 came among these hills ; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led ; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For Nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,

And their glad animal movements all gone by),
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms were then to me
An appetite ; a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts

20 THE POET, OR SEER.

Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,

Abundant recompense. For I have learned

To look on Nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

By the side of this exquisite passage, let me place
another by the same great reflective writer,

When, as becomes a man who would prepare
For such an arduous work, I through myself
Make rigorous inquisition, the report
Is often cheering ; for I neither seem
To lack that first great gift, the vital soul,
Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort
Of elements and agents, under-powers,
Subordinate helpers of the living mind.
Nor am I naked of external things,
Forms, images, nor numerous other aids
Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil,
And needful to build up a poet's praise.
Time, place, and manners do I seek, and these
Are found in plenteous store, but nowhere such
As may be singled out with steady choice ;
No little band of yet remembered names
Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope

THE POET, OR SEER. 21

To summon back from lonesome banishment,

And make them dwellers in the hearts of men

Now living, or to live in future years.

Sometimes the ambitious power of choice, mistaking

Proud spring-tide swellings for a regular sea,

Will settle on some British theme, some old

Romantic tale by Milton left unsung ;

More often turning to some gentle place

Within the groves of chivalry, I pipe

To shepherd swains, or seated, harp in hand,

Amid reposing knights, by a river side

Or fountain, listen to the grave reports

Of dire enchantments faced and overcome

By the strong mind, and tales of warlike feats,

Where spear encountered spear, and sword with sword

Fought, as if conscious of the blazonry

That the shield bore, so glorious was the strife,

Whence inspiration for a song that winds

Through ever-changing scenes of voting quest j

Wrongs to redress, harmonious tribute paid

To patient courage and unblemished truth,

To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable,

And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves.

There can be no mistaking the qualities of these two
passages. The first is poetry, the second is the merest
prose ; the emotion in the first extract so breathes on the
thought as to fill it with exquisite music and subtle
pleasure not to be coerced by meditation. Yet the mood
of both is a meditative mood. In the " Prelude," from
which the above extract is taken, and in the " Excursion,"
prose and poetry alternate most significantly. Where the
feeling is vivid and intense, the lines lose all that cum-
brousness and pamphletude which have blinded so

22 THE POET, OR SEER.

many readers to the real merits of these two composi-
tions.

All these moods, indeed, are but the consequence of
that first mood, wherein the Seer receives his impression.
If that first mood be too purely intellectual, if the Seer
be not stirred extremely in the process of assimilation,
there is a certainty that, in spite of clear vision, he will
produce prose, as Milton did occasionally, as Words-
worth did very often ; as Shakespeare seldom or never
does, and as Keats never did.

It is certain, then, that clear vision can exist indepen-
dently of emotion ; that, however, emotion is generally
dependent on clear vision ; and that, in short, he who
sees vividly will in most cases feel deeply, but not in all
cases.

Let me mention one more notable case in point. I
mean Crabbe, the writer to whom modern writers are
fondest of alluding, and whom, to judge From their
blunders concerning him, they appear to have been least
fond of reading. A careful study of his works has re-
vealed to me abundant knowledge of life, considerable
sympathy, little or no insight, and no emotion. The
poems are photographs, not pictures. There is no
spiritualisation, none of that fine selective instinct which
invariably accompanies deep artistic feeling. There is
too constant a consciousness of the " reader," too painful
an attempt to gain force by means of vivid details. Now,
these are not the poetic characteristique. The poet
derives his force from the vividness of the feeling awakened

THE POET, OR SEER. 23

by his subject or by his meditation ; he does not betray
himself by clumsy efforts to gain attention. A thought
a touch a gleam of colour often suffice for him.
Whereas Crabbe betrays his purely intellectual attitude
at every step. He describes every cranny of a cottage,
every gable, every crack in the wall, every kitchen utensil,
when his story concerns the soul of the inmate. He
pieces out a churchyard like so much grocery, into so
many lives and graves. There is no glamour in his eyes
when he looks on death ; he is noting the bedroom
furniture and the dirty sheets. There is no weird music
in his ears when he stands in a churchyard; he is re-
cording the quality of the coffin-wood, sliding off into an
account of the history of the parish beadle, and observing
whose sheep they are that browse inside the stone wall of
the holy place,

III. MUSIC.

I am now led directly to the discussion of the third
poetic gift, that of music ; for metrical speech is the
most concentrated of all speech, and proportions itself to
the quality of the poetic emotion. The most powerful
form of emotion is lyrical emotion, and the sweetest music
is lyrical music.

Poetic vision culminates in sweet sound, always in-
adequate, perhaps, to represent the whole of sight, but
interpenetrating through the medium of emotion with the
entire mystery of life. Nothing, indeed, so distinguishes

24 THE POET, OR SEER.

the variety of Seers as their melody. It is the soul's per-
feet speech. A break in the harmony not seldom betrays
a dizziness of the eyes, an inactivity of the heart. A false
note betrays the false maestro. A cold or forced expres-
sion indicates insincerity.

This music, this last wondrous gift, carries with it ijs
own significance and wisdom ; it has a wondrous glamour
of its own, like the dim light that is in falling snow.
What exquisite sound is this, where the thought and
the emotion die away into a murmur like the wash of a
summer sea ?

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird !

No hungry generations tread thee down ;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown.
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears among the alien corn ;

The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faeiy lands forlorn.

Or this, so perfect in its fleeting rapture :

Sound of vernal showers,

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and sweet, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine :
I have never heard

Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a rapture so divine !

THE POE7\ OR SEER. 25

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Or these lines from the " Willow, Willow," of Alfred de

Mu'sset :

Mes chers amis, quand je mourrai,

Plantez un saule au cimetiere.

J'aime son feuillage eplore,

La paleur m'en est douce et ch&re,

Et son ombre sera legere

A la terre ou je dormirai.

I might fill pages with such quotations.

The examples just given are examples of purely lyrical
music, from its personal nature, the most concentrated
of all music. For the sake of contrast, now, let me turn
to the least concentrated form of all, as it is represented
in particular writers.

At a first view, it would seem that epic poetry is most
apt to be unmelodious, on account of the diffuse character
of its materials as generally conceived. But this is an
error ct priori. The materials are not diffuse they are
only large and various ; and the music is emotional and
concentrated, though not to the extent noticeable in less
dignified forms of writing. Like dramatic poetry, it is
all-embracing, and includes in its compass all elements,
from lyrical feeling to emotional meditation. The state-
liness and constancy of its movement do not preclude
the sharp lyrical cry or the deep meditative pause,

26 THE POET, OR SEER.

Homer is the most various of singers. His successors
are less various, precisely because they are less great.
Again and again in the sharp solemn progress of Dante
through Hell are we startled by bursts of wilder melody.
Even in " Paradise Lost " there are some occasions when
the deep organ bass changes into a scream.

This is but saying what has been already said of lyrical
emotion. In brief, lyrical emotion and lyrical music as
its expression intersect all great poetry, whatever its
nature ; and the reason need not be further explained.
Lyric music is the ideal speech of intense personal feel-
ing and that is why the exquisite music of Greek tragedy
is not confined to the choruses.

But just as all emotion is not markedly personal, all
music is not lyrical. No music is so exquisite, so pro-
foundly interesting to men ; but there are more complex
kinds of expression, sounds more variegated and diffuse.
Take the following passage from the " Paradise Lost " of
Milton :

For now, and since first break of dawn, the Fiend,

Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come,

And on his quest, where likeliest he might find

The only two of mankind, but in them

The whole included race, his purpos'd prey.

In bower and field he sought where any kind

Of grove or garden plot more pleasant lay,

Their tendence or plantation for delight ;

By fountain or by shady rivulet

lie sought them both, but wish'd his hap might fin 1

Eve separate ; he wish'd but not with hope

Of what so seldom chanc'd, when to his wish,

THE POET, OR SEER. 27

Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,
Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood.
Half 'spy X so thick the roses blushing round
About her glowed, oft stooping to support
Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay
Carnation, purple, azure, or specKd with gold,
Hung drooping, unsustained ; them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, tho' fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.
Nearer he drew, and many a walk travers'd
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine or palm,
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen
Among thick-woven arborets and flowers
Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve :
Spot more delicious than those gardens feign'd,
Or of reviv'd Adonis, or renown 'd
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son,
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.

* * * * *

So spake the enemy of mankind, enclos'd
In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve
Address'd his way, not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear.
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold* a surging maize, his head
Crested aloft, and curbunde his eyes ;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant ; pleasing was his shape
And lovely ; never since of serpent kind
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria chang'd
Hermione and Cadmus, or the God
In Epidaurus ; nor to which transform'd
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen
He with Olympias, this with her who bore

28 THE POET, OR SEER.

Scipio the height of Rome. With tract oblique
At first, as one who sought access, but fear'd
To interrupt, side-long he works his way :
As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought
Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind
Veers oft, as oft so steers and shifts her sail :
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,
To lure her eye ; she, busied, heard the sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as us'd
To such disport before her through the field,
From every beast, more duteous at her call
Than at Circean call the herd disguis'd.
He bolder now, uncall'd before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring : oft he bow'd
His turret crest, and sleek enamel'd neck,
Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod.

In these exquisite passages of pure description, the music
perfectly represents the subdued emotion of the artist ;
there is no excitement, but vivid presentment ; and we
hear the very movement of the snake in the involution
and picturesqueness of the lines. I cannot do better
than place by the side of the above a passage from the
same great poet, which seems to me especially false and
inharmonious. It is very brief :

The Most High

Eternal Father, from his secret cloud,
Amidst in thunder utter'd thus his voice :
Assembled angels, and ye powers retnrn'd
From unsuccessful charge, be not dismay'd,
Nor troubled at these tidings from the earth,
"Which your sincerest care could not prevent,
Foretold so lately what would come to pass,

THE POET, OR SEER. 29

When first this Tempter cross'd the gulf from Hell.

I told ye then he should prevail and speed

On his bad errand, man should be seduc'd

And flatter'd out of all, believing lies

Against his Maker ; no decree of mine

Concurring to necessitate his fall,

Or touch with lightest moment of impulse

His free will, to her own inclining left

In even scale. But fall'n he is, and now

What rests but that the mortal sentence pass

On his transgression, death denounc'd that day ?

Which he presumes already vain and void,

Because not yet inflicted, as he fear'd,

By some immediate stroke ; but soon shall find

Forbearance no acquittance ere day end,

Justice shall not return as bounty scorn'd.

But whom send I to judge them ? whom but thee

Vicegerent Son ? to thee I have transferr'd .

All judgment, whether in Heaven, or Earth, or Hell.

Easy it may be seen that I intend

Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee

Man's friend, his mediator, his design'd

Both ransome and redeemer voluntary,

And destin'd man himself to judge men fall'n.

Where is the thunder here ? Where is the solemn music?
Instead of awe-inspiring sound, we have bald and turgid
prose, pieced out clumsily into ten-syllable lines, every
one of which limps like Vulcan. And why ? Precisely
because Milton had no spiritual glamour of the Highest,
such as he had of Satan, for example, felt no real emo-
tion in recording His utterances, not even the cold
meditative emotion which just redeems many other parts
of " Paradise Lost " from sheer prose. He was forcing
his mind to hear a voice, attempting to represent the

30 THE POET, OR SEER.

utterance of a personality ungrasped by his imagina-
tion.

Mere rhetorical music is the least poetic of all, although
sometimes it has an exceeding charm, as in Virgil's famous
lines on Marcellus, and much of the poetry of rhetorical
periods in England.

Akin to such rhetorical music is the melody of the
French school of writers, singers who mar expression by
too elaborate effort, by habitual verbosity, and by fatal
fluency of sound. Melody, indeed, as represented in
our true singers, may be divided into three kinds, just
as the singers themselves may be divided into three
classes, the simple, the ornate, and the grotesque. The
first kind is the sweetest and best ; we find it in the great
lyrists, from Sappho to Burns. Wherever Shelley sings
perfectly, as in the "Ode to the Skylark," his music loses
all its insincerities and affectations. Ornate and grotesque
music have common faults, the first sacrifices the emo-
tion and meaning by thinning and straining them too
carefully ; the second loses in portent what it gains in
mannerism; and both, therefore, betray that dangerous
intellectual self-consciousness which is a barrier to the
production of true poetry. A thing cannot be uttered too
briefly and simply if it is to reach the soul. Music that
conceals, instead of expressing, thought, music that is
nothing but sweet sounds and luscious alliterations, is not
poetry. We have the sweet sounds everywhere, in fact :
in the wash of the sea, in the rustle of leaves, in the song
of birds, in the murmur of happy living things. The

THE POET, OR SEER. 31

world is full of them, its heart aches with them ; they are
mystical and they are homeless. It is the offices of poetry
not barely to imitate them, but to link them with the
Soul, and by so doing to use them as symbols of definite
form and meaning. They issue from the soul's voice with
a new wonder in their tones, and are then ready to
be used as man's perfect language and speech to God.

I need delay little more on this branch of poetic power,
which, indeed, contains matter for a whole volume. It
is clear that there is no poetry without music, but that
music varies extremely, according to the quality and in-
tensity of the emotion. It may safely be affirmed that no
subject is unfit for poetic treatment which can be spiritu-
alised to this uttermost form of harmonious and natural
numbers. So closely is melody woven in with and repre-
sentative of emotion and of sight, that it has been called
the characteristique of the true Seer. But let us never
lose sight of the fact that music is representative, and
valuable, not for the sole sake of its own sweetness, not for
the sole sake of the emotion it represents, but mainly and
clearly valuable for the sake of the poetic thought and vision
which it brings to completion. There may be melodious
sound without meaning, fine versification without thought;
but the most exquisite melody and versification are those
which convey the most exquisite forms of poetic vision.

DAVID GRAY:

A MEMOIR

DAVID GRAY:

A MEMOIR.

,ITUATED in a by-road, about a mile from
the small town of Kirkintilloch, and eight
miles from the city of Glasgow, stands a
cottage one storey high, roofed with slate,
and surrounded by a little kitchen-garden. A white-
washed lobby, leading from the front to the back-door,
divides this cottage into two sections ; to the right, is an
office fitted up as a hand-loom weaver's workshop ; to the
left is a kitchen paved with stone, and opening into a tiny
carpeted bedroom.

In the workshop, a father, daughter, and sons worked
all day at the loom. In the kitchen, a handsome cheery
Scottish matron busied herself like a thrifty housewife,
and brought the rest of the family about her at meals.
All day long the soft hum of the loom was heard in the
workshop ; but when night came, mysterious doors were
thrown open, and the family retired to sleep in extra-
ordinary mural recesses.

36 DAVID GRAY.

In this humble home, David Gray, a hand-loom weaver,
resided for upwards of twenty years, and managed to
rear a family of eight children five boys and three girls.
His eldest son, David, author of " The Luggie and other
Poems," is the hero of the present true history.

David was born on the 2Qth of January, 1838. He
alone, of all the little household, was destined to receive
a decent education. From early childhood, the dark-
eyed little fellow was noted for his wit and cleverness ;
and it was the dream of his father's life that he should
become a scholar. At the parish-school of Kirkintilloch
he learned to read, write, and cast up accounts, and was,
moreover, instructed in the Latin rudiments. Partly
through the hard struggles of his parents, and partly
through his own severe labours as a pupil-teacher and
private tutor, he was afterwards enabled to attend the
classes at the Glasgow University. In common with
other rough country lads, who live up dark alleys, subsist
chiefly on oatmeal and butter forwarded from home, and
eventually distinguish themselves in the class-room, he
had to fight his way onward amid poverty and privation ;
but in his brave pursuit of knowledge nothing daunted
him. It had been settled at home that he should be-
come a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. Un-
fortunately, however, he had no love for the pulpit.
Early in life he had begun to hanker after the delights of
poetical composition. He had devoured the poets from
Chaucer to Wordsworth. The yearnings thus awakened
in him had begun to express themselves in many wild

DAVID GRAY 37

fragments contributions, for the most part, to the poet's
corner of a local newspaper "The Glasgow Citizen."

Up to this point there was nothing extraordinary in the
career or character of David Gray. Taken at his best, he
was an average specimen of the persevering young
Scottish student. But his soul contained wells of
emotion which had not yet been stirred to their depths.
When, at fourteen years of age, he began to study in
Glasgow, it was his custom to go home every Saturday
night in order to pass the Sunday with his parents.
These Sundays at home were chiefly occupied with
rambles in the neighbourhood of Kirkintilloch ; wander-
ings on the sylvan banks of the Luggie, the beloved
little river which flowed close to his father's door. On
Luggieside awakened one day the dream which developed
all the hidden beauty of his character, and eventually
kindled all the faculties of his intellect. Had he been
asked to explain the nature of this dream, David would
have answered vaguely enough, but he would have said
something to the following effect: "I'm thinking none of
us are quite contented ; there's a climbing impulse to
heaven in us all that won't let us rest for a moment.
Just now I would be happy if I knew a little more. I'd
give ten years of life to see Rome, and Florence, and
Venice, and the grand places of old ; and to feel that I
wasn't a burden on the old folks. I'll be a great man
yet ! and the old home, the Luggie and Gartshore wood,
shall be famous for my sake." He could only measure
his ambition by the love he bore his home. "I was born,

3 DAVID GRAY.

bred, and cared for here, and my folk are buried here. I
know every nook and dell for miles around, and they are all
dear to me. My own mother and father dwell here, and
in my own wee room " (the tiny carpeted bedroom above
alluded to) " I first learned to read poetry. I love my
home, and it is for my home's sake that I love fame."

Nor is that home and its surroundings unworthy of
such love. Tiny and unpretending as is Luggie stream,
upon its banks lie many nooks of beauty, bowery glimpses
of woodland, shady solitudes, places of nestling green
here and there. Not far off stretch the Campsie fells,
with dusky nooks between, where the waterfall and the
cascade make a silver pleasure in the heart of shadow ;
and beyond, there are dreamy glimpses of the misty blue
mountains themselves. Away to the south-west, lies Glas-
gow in a smoke, most hideous of cities, wherein the very
clangour of church-bells is associated with abominations.
Into the heart of that city David was to be slowly drawn,
a subject of fascination only death could dispel, the
desire to make deathless music, and the dream of moving
therewith the mysterious heart of man.

At twenty-one years of age, when this dream was strong
within him, David was a tall young man, slightly but
firmly built, and with a stoop at the shoulders. His head
was small, fringed with black curly hair. Want of can-
dour was not his fault, though he seldom looked one in
the face ; his eyes, however, were large and dark, full of
intelligence and humour, harmonising well with the long
thin nose and nervous lips. The great black eyes and

DAVID GRAY. 39

woman's mouth betrayed the creature of impulse ; one
whose reasoning faculties were small, but whose tempera-
ment was like red-hot coal. He sympathised with much
that was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and with much
that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. He carried
sympathy to the highest pitch of enthusiasm ; he shed
tears over the memories of Keats and Burns, and he was
corybantic in his execution of a Scotch "reel." A fine
phrase filled him with the rapture of a lover. He admired
extremes from Rabelais to Tom Sayers. Thirsting for
human sympathy, which lured him in the semblance of
notoriety, he perpetrated all sorts of extravagancies,
innocent enough in themselves, but calculated to blind
him to the very first principles of art. Yet this enthusi-
asm, as I have suggested, was his safeguard in at least one
respect. Though he believed himself to be a genius, he
loved the parental roof of the hand-loom weaver.

And what thought the weaver and his wife of this
wonderful son of theirs ? They were proud of him,
proud in a silent undemonstrative fashion ; for among the
Scottish poor concealment of the emotions is held a vir-
tue. During his weekly visits home, David was not over-
whelmed with caresses ; but he was the subject of con-
versation night after night, when the old couple talked in
bed. Between him and his father there had arisen a
strange barrier of reserve. They seldom exchanged with
each other more than a passing word ; but to one friend's
bosom David would often confide the love and tender-
ness he bore for his over-worked, upright parent. When

40 DAVID GRAY.

the boy first began to write verses the old man affected
perfect contempt and indifference, but his eyes gloated in
secret over the poet's-corners of the Glasgow newspapers.
The poor weaver, though an uneducated man, had a pro-
found respect for education and cultivation in others.
He felt his heart bound with hope and joy when strangers
praised the boy, but he hid the tenderness of his pride
under a cold indifference. Although proud of David's
talent for writing verses, he was afraid to encourage a
pursuit which practical common sense assured him was
mere trifling. At a later date he might have spoken out,
had not his tongue been frozen by the belie, that advice
from him would be held in no esteem by his better edu-
cated and more* gifted son. Thus, the more David's
indications of cleverness and scholarship increased, the
more afraid was the old man to express his gratification
and give his advice. Equally touching was the point of
view taken by David's mother, whose cry was, " The kirk,
the free kirk, and nothing but the kirk ! " She neither
appreciated nor underrated the abilities of her boy, but
her proudest wish was that he should become a real live
minister, with home and " haudin' " of his own. To see
David, " our David," in a pulpit, preaching the Gos-
pel out of a big book, and dwelling in a good house to the
end of his days !

But meantime the boy was swiftly undermining all such
cherished plans. He had saturated his heart and mind
with the intoxicating wines of poesy, drunken deep of
such syrups as only very strong heads indeed can carry

DAVID GRAY. 41

calmly. He differed from older and harder poets in this
only, that he had not the trick of disguising his vanity,
knew not how to ape humanity. The poor lad was moved,
maddened by the strange divine light in his eyes, and he
cried aloud : " The beauty of the cloudland I have
visited ! the ideal love of my soul ! " Thus he expressed
himself, much to the amusement of his hearers. " Soli-
tude," he exclaimed on another occasion, " and an utter
want of all physical exercise, are working deplorable
ravages in my nervous system ; the crows'-feet are
blackening about my eyes, and I cannot think to face the
sunlight. When I ponder over my own inability to move
the world, to move one heart in it, no wonder that my
face gathers blackness. Tennyson beautifully and (so far)
truly says, that the face is ' the form and colour of the
mind and life/ If you saw me ! " His verses written at
that period, although abounding with echoes of his two
pet poets, show great intensity and the sweetness of per-
fect feeling. Some of the lyrics in his volume, printed
among the Poems Named and without Names, belong to
this period. His productions, however, were for the most
part close reproductions of the manner of Keats ; and so
conscious was he of this fact, that in one of these pieces
he expressly styled himself, " a foster son of Keats, the
dreamily divine." Wordsworth he did not not reproduce
so much until a later and a purer period. One of these
unpublished pieces I shall quote here, to show that
David, even at the crude assimilate period, showed
'brains" and vision noticeable in a youth of twenty.

42 DAVID GRAY.

EMPEDOCLES.

" He who to be deem'd
A god, leap'd fondly into /Etna flames,
Empedocles. " MILTON.

How, in the crystal smooth and azure sky,
Droop the clear, living sapphires, tremulous
And inextinguishably beautiful !
How the calm irridescence of their soft
Ethereal fire contrasts with the wild flame
Rising from this doomed mountain like the noise
Of ocean whirlwinds through the murky air !
Alone, alone ! yearning, ambitious ever !
Hope's agony ! 0, ye immortal gods !
Regally sphered in your keen-silvered orbs,
Eternal,. where fled that authentic fire,
Stolen by Prometheus ere the pregnant clouds
Rose from the sea, full of the deluge ! Where
Art thou, white lady of the morning ; white
Aurora, charioted by the fair Hours
Through amethystine mists weeping soft dews
Upon the meadow, as Apollo heaves
His constellation through the liquid dawn?
Give me Tithonus' gift, thou orient
Undying Beauty ! and my love shall be
Cherubic worship, and my star shall walk
The plains of heaven, thy punctual harbinger !
with thy ancient power prolong nay days
For ever j tear this flesh-thick cursed life
Enlinking me to this foul earth, the home
Of cold mortality, this nether hell !

Rise, mighty conflagrations ! and scarce wild
These crowding shadows ! Far on the dun sea
Pale mariners behold thce y and the sails
Shine purpled by thy %lai e, and the s/ow oars
Drop ruby ) and the trembling human icitls

DAVID GRAY. 43

Wonder affrighted as their pitchy barks,
Guided by Syrian pilots, ripple by
Hailing for craggy Calpe ; O, ye frail
Weak human souls, I, lone Empedocles,
Stand here unshivered as a steadfast god,
Scorning thy puny destinies.

I float

To cloud-enrobed Olympus on the wings
Of a rich dream, swift as the light of stars,
Swifter than Zophiel or Mercury
Upon his throne of adamantine gold.
Jove sits superior, while the deities
Tread delicate the smooth cerulean floors.
Hebe (with twin breasts, like twin roes that feed
Among the lilies), in her taper hand
Bears the bright goblet, rough with gems and gold,
Filled with ambrosia to the lipping brim.
O, love and beauty and immortal life !
O, light divine, ethereal effluence
Of purity ! O, fragrancy of air,
Spikenard and calamus, cassia and balm,
With all the frankincense that ever fumed
From temple censers swung from pictured roofs,
Float warmly through the corridors of heaven.

Hiss ! moan ! shriek ! wreath thy livid serpentine
Volutions, O ye earth-born flames ! and flout
The silent skies with strange fire, like a dawn
Rubific, terrible, a lurid glare !
Olympus shrinks beside thee ! I, alone,
Like deity ignipotent, behold
Thy playful whirls and thy weird melody
Here undismayed. O gods ! shall I go near
And in the molten horror headlong plunge
Deathward, and that serene immortal life
Discover ? Shriek your hellish discord out
Into the smoky firmament ! Down roll

44 DAVID GRAY.

Your fat bituminous torrents to the sea,
Hot hissing ! Far away in element
Untroubled rise the crystal battlements
Of the celestial mansion, where to be
Is my ambition ; and O far away
From this dull earth in azure atmospheres
My star shall pant its silvery lustre, bright
With sempiternal radiance, voyaging
On blissful errands the pure marble air.

O, dominations and life-yielding powers,

Listen my yearning prayer : To be of ye

Of thy grand hierarchy and old race

Plenipotent, I do a deed that dares

The draff of men to equal. You have given

Immortal life to common human men

Who common deeds achieved ; nay, even for love

Some goddesses voluptuous have raised

Weak whiners from this curst sublunar world,

Pillowed them on snow bosoms in the bowers

Of Paradise ! And shall Empedocles,

Who from the perilous grim edge of life

Leaps sheer into the liquid fire and meets

Death like a lover, not be sphered and made

A virtue ministrant ? All you soft orbs

By pure intelligences piloted,

Incomprehensibly their glories show

Approving. O ye sparkle-moving fires

Of heaven, now silently above the flare

Of this red mountain shining, which of you

Shall be my home ? Into whose stellar glow

Shall I arrive, bringing delight and life

And spiritual motion and dim fame ?

Hiss, fiery serpents ! Your sweet breathings warin

My face as I approach ye. Flap wild wings,

Ye dragons ! flaming round this mouth of hell,

To me the mouth of heaven.

DAVID GRAY. 45

The influence of Keats soon decayed, and calmer in-
fluences supervened. He began a play on the Shakes-
perian model. This ambitious effort, however, was soon
relinquished for a dearer, sweeter task, the composition
of a pastoral poem descriptive of the scenery surrounding
his home. This subject, first suggested to him by a friend
who guessed his real power, grew upon him with won-
drous force, till the lines welled into perfect speech
through very deepness of passion. His whole soul was
occupied. The pictures that had troubled his childhood,
the running river, the thymy Campsie fells, were now to
be again before his spirit ; and all the human sweetness
and trouble, the beloved faces, the familiar human figures,
added to the soft music of a flowing river and the distant
hum of looms from cottage doors. The result was the
poem entitled "The Luggie," which gives its name to the
posthumous volume, and which, though it lacked the last
humanising touches of the poet, remains unique in con-
temporary literature.

But even while his heart was full of this exquisite
utterance, this babble of green fields and silver waters,
the influence of cities was growing more and more upcn
him, and poesy was no more the quite perfect joy thit
had made his boyhood happy. It was not enough to sing
now ; the thirst for applause was deepening ; and it is
not therefore extraordinary that even his fresh and truth-
ful pastoral shows here and there the hectic flush of self-
consciousness, the dissatisfied glance in the direction of
the public. The natural result of this was occasional

46 DAVID GRAY.

merry-making, and grog-drinking, and beating the big
city during the dark hours. There was high poetic plea-
sure in singing songs among artizans in familiar public-
houses, flirting with an occasional milliner, and singing
her charms in broad Scotch, even occasionally coming
to fisticuffs in obscure places, possibly owing to a hot dis-
cussion on the character of that demon of religious Scotch
artizans, the poet Shelley. I do not hesitate the least in
mentioning these matters, because Gray has been too
frequently represented as a morbid, unwholesome young
gentleman, without natural weaknesses a kind of
aqueous Henry Kirke White, branded faintly with ambi-
tion. He was nothing of the kind. He was a young
man, as other young men are foolish and wild in his
season, though never gross or disreputable. The very
excess of his sensitiveness led him into outbreaks against
convention. While pouring out the sweetness of his
nature in " The Luggie," he could turn aside again and
again, and relieve his excitement by such doggerel as this,
addressed to a companion,

Let olden Homer, hoary,

Sing of wondrous deeds of glory,

In that ever-burning story,

Bold and bright, friend Bob !
Our theme be Pleasure, careless,
In all stirring frolics fearless,
In the vineyard, reckless, peerless,

Heroes dight, friend Bob !

Be it noted, however, that there was in Gray's nature a

DAVID GRAY. 47

strange and exquisite femininity, a perfed feminine
purity and sweetness. Indeed, till the mysterj of sex be
medically explained, I shall ever believe that nature
originally meant David Gray for a female ; for besides the
strangely sensitive lips and eyes, he had a woman's shape,
narrow shoulders, lissome limbs, and extraordinary
breadth across the hips.

Early in his teens David had made the acquaintance of
a young man of Glasgow, with whom his fortunes were
destined to be intimately woven. That young man was
myself. We spent year after year in intimate com-
munion, varying the monotony of our existence by read-
ing books together, plotting great works, writing extra-
vagant letters to men of eminence, and wandering about
the country on vagrant freaks. Whole nights and days
were often passed in seclusion, in reading the great
thinkers, and pondering on their lives. Full of thoughts
too deep for utterance, dreaming, David would walk at a
swift pace through the crowded streets, with face bent
down, and eyes fixed on the ground, taking no heed of
the human beings passing to and fro. Then he would
come to me crying, " I have had a dream," and would
forthwith tell of visionary pictures which had haunted him
in his solitary walk. This " dreaming," as he called it,
consumed the greater portion of his hours of leisure.

Towards the end of the year 1859, David became
convinced that he could no longer idle away the hours of
his youth. His work as student and as pupil teacher
was ended, and he must seek some means of subsis

48 DAVID GRAY.

tence. He imagined, too, that his poor parents threw
dull looks on the beggar of their bounty. Having
abandoned all thoughts of entering into the Church, for
which neither his taste nor his opinions fitted him, what
should he do in order to earn his daily bread ? His first
thought was to turn schoolmaster ; but no ! the notion
was an odious one. He next endeavoured, without
success, to procure himself a situation on one of the
Glasgow newspapers. Meantime, while drifting from
project to project he maintained a voluminous corres-
pondence, in the hope of persuading some eminent man
to read his poem of "The Luggie."

Unfortunately, the persons to whom he wrote were too
busy to pay much attention to the solicitations of an
entire stranger. Repeated disappointments only in-
creased his self-assertion ; the less chance there seemed
of an improvement in his position, and the less strangers
seemed to recognise his genius, the more dogged grew
his conviction that he was destined to be a great poet.
His letters were full of this conviction. To one entire
stranger he wrote : "I am a poet ; let that be under-
stood distinctly." Again : " I tell you that, if I live, my
name and fame shall be second to few of any age, and to
none of my own. I speak this because I feel power."
Again : " I am so accustomed to compare my own
mental progress with that of such men as Shakespeare,
Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the dream of my life will
not be fulfilled, if my fame equ^al not, at least, that of the
latter of these three !" This was extraordinary language,

DAVID GRAY. 49

and it is not surprising that little heed was paid to it.
Let some explanation be given here. No man could be
more humble, reverent-minded, self-doubting, than David
was in reality. Indeed, he was constitutionally timid of
his own abilities, and he was personally diffident. In his
letters only he absolutely endeavoured to wrest from his
correspondents some recognition of his claim to help and
sympathy. The moment sympathy came, no matter how
coldly it might be expressed, he was all humility and
gratitude. In this spirit, after one of his wildest flights
of self-assertion, he wrote: "When I read Thomson, I
despair." Again: " Being bare of all recommendations,
I lied with my own conscience, deeming that if I called
myself a great man you were bound to believe me."
Again : " If you saw me you would wonder if the quiet,
bashful, boyish-looking fellow before you was the author
of all yon blood and thunder." In a lengthy corres-
pondence with Mr. Sydney Dobell, who is also known as
a writer of verse, David wrote wildly and boldly enough ;
but he was quite ready to plead guilty to silliness when
the fits were over. But the grip of cities was on him,
and he was far too conscious of outsiders. How sad and
pitiable sounds the following ! " Mark !" he cried, " it is
not what I have done, or can now do, but what I feel
myself able and born to do, that makes me so selfishly
stupid. Your sentence, thrown back to me for recon-
sideration, would certainly seem strange to any one but
myself; but the thought that I had so written to you
only made me the more resolute in my actions, and the

SO DA VI D GRA Y.

wilder in my visions. What if I sent the same sentence
back to you again, with the quiet stern answer, that it is
my intention to be the ' first poet of my own age,' and
second only to a very few of any age. Would you think
me ' mad,' ' drunk,' or an * idiot,' or my ' self-confidence'
one of the ' saddest paroxysms ?' When my biography
falls to be written, will not this same self-confidence be
one of the most striking features of my intellectual de-
velopment? Might not a poet of twenty feel great
things ? In all the stories of mental warfare that I have
ever read, that mind which became of celestial clearness
and godlike power did nothing for twenty years but feel?
The hand-loom weaver's son raving about his " bio-
graphy !" The youth that could babble so deliciously
of green fields, looking forward to the day when he would
be anatomised by the small critic and chronicled by the
chroniclers of small beer ! It was not in this mood that
he wrote his sweetest lines. The world was already too
much with him.

Here, if anywhere in his career, I see signs which con-
sole me for his bitter suffering and too early death ; signs
that, had he lived, his fate might have been an even
sadder one. Saint Beuve says, as quoted by Alfred de
Musset :

II existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des homines,
Un poete mort jeune a qui 1'homme survit !

A dead young poet whom the man survives ! and
dead through that very poison which David was beginning

DAVID GRAY. 51

to taste. I dare not aver that such would have been the
result ; I dare not say that David's poetic instinct was
too weak to survive the danger. But the danger existed
clear, sparkling, deathly. Had David been hurried
away to teach schools among the hills, buried among
associations pure and green as those that surrounded his
youth and childhood, the poetic instinct might have sur-
vived and achieved wondrous results. But he went
southward, he imbibed an atmosphere entirely unfitted
for his soul at that period ; and perhaps, after all, the
gods loved him and knew best.

For all at once there flashed upon David and myself
the notion of going to London, and taking the literary
fortress by storm. Again and again we talked the
project over, and again and again we hesitated. In the
spring of 1860, we both found ourselves without an
anchorage ; each found it necessary to do something for
daily bread. For some little time the London scheme
had been in abeyance; but, on the 3rd of May,
1860, David came to me, his lips firmly compressed, his
eyes full of fire, saying, " Bob, I'm off to London."
"Have you funds?" I asked. "Enough for one, not
enough for two," was the reply. " If you can get the
money anyhow, we'll go together." On parting, we
arranged to meet on the evening of the 5th of May, in
time to catch the five o'clock train. Unfortunately,
however, we neglected to specify which of the two
Glasgow stations was intended. At the hour appointed,
David left Glasgow, by one line of railway, in the belief

$2 DA FID GRAY.

that I had been unable to join him, but determined to
try the venture alone. With the same belief and deter-
mination, I left at the same hour by the other line of
railway. We arrived in different parts of London at
about the same time. Had we left Glasgow in company,
or had we met immediately after our arrival in London,
the story of David's life might not have been so brief and
sorrowful.

Though the month was May, the weather was dark,
damp, cloudy. On arriving in the metropolis, David
wandered about for hours, carpet-bag in hand. The
magnitude of the place overwhelmed him ; he was lost
in that great ocean of life. He thought about Johnson
and Savage, and ' how they wandered through London
with pockets more empty than his own ; but already he
longed to be back in the little carpeted bedroom in the
weaver's cottage. How lonely it seemed ! Among all
that mist of human faces there was not one to smile in
welcome ; and how was he to make his trembling voice
heard above the roar and tumult of those streets The
very policemen seemed to look suspiciously at the stranger.
To his sensitively Scottish ear the language spoken
seemed quite strange and foreign ; it had a painful,
homeless sound about it that sank nervously on the
heart-strings. As he wandered about the streets he
glanced into coffee-shop after coffee-shop, seeing " beds "
ticketed in each fly-blown window. His pocket contained
a sovereign and a few shillings, but he would need every
penny. Would not a bed be useless extravagance? he

DAVID GRAY. 53

asked himself. Certainly. Where, then, should he pass
the night? In Hyde Park! He had heard so much
about this part of London that the name was quite
familiar to him. Yes, he would pass the night in the
park. Such a proceeding would save money, and be
exceedingly romantic; it would be just the right sort of
beginning for a poet's struggle in London ! So he strolled
into the great park, and wandered about its purlieus till
morning. In remarking upon this foolish conduct, one
must reflect that David was strong, heartsome, full of
healthy youth. It was a frequent boast of his that he
scarcely ever had a day's illness. Whether or not his fatal
complaint was caught during this his first night in London
is uncertain, but some few days afterwards David wrote
thus to his father: " By-the-bye, I have had the worst
cold I ever had in my life. I cannot get it away properly,
but I feel a great deal better to-day." Alas ! violent cold
had settled down upon his lungs, and insidious death was
already slowly approaching him. So little conscious was
he of his danger, however, that I find him writing to a
friend: " What brought me here? God knows, for I
don't. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. . . .
People don't seem to understand me ... Westminster
Abbey ; I was there all day yesterday. If I live I shall
be buried there so help me God ! A completely
defined consciousness of great poetical genius is my only
antidote against utter despair and despicable failure."

I suppose his purposes in coming to Babylon were
about as definite as my own had been, although he had

54 DAVID GRAY.

the advantage of being qualified as a pupil teacher. We
tossed ourselves on the great waters as two youths who
wished to learn to swim, and trusted that by diligent
kicking we might escape drowning. There was the
prospect of getting into a newspaper office. Again,
there was the prospect of selling a few verses. Thirdly,
if everything failed, there was the prospect of getting into
one of the theatres as supernumeraries.* Beyond all this,
there was of course the dim prospect that London would
at once, and with acclamations, welcome the advent of
true genius, albeit with seedy garments and a Scotch
accent. It doubtless never occurred to either that besides
mere " consciousness " of power, some other things were
necessary for a literary struggle in London special
knowledge, capability of interesting oneself in trifles, and
the pen of a ready writer. What were David's qualifi-
cations for a fight in which hundreds miserably fail year
after year? Considerable knowledge of Greek, Latin,
and French, great miscellaneous reading, a clerkly
handwriting, and a bold purpose. Slender qualifications,
doubtless, but while life lasted there was hope.

We did not meet until upwards of a week after our
arrival in London, though each had soon been apprised
of the other's presence in the city. Finally we came
together. David's first impulse was to describe his
lodgings, situated in a by-street in the Borough. " A
cold, cheerless bed-room, Bob ; nothing but a blanket to

* Each of the friends, indeed, unknown to each other, actually
applied for such a situation ; and one succeeded.

DAVID GRAY. 55

cover me. For God's sake get me out of it ! " We were
walking side by side in the neighbourhood of the New
Cut, looking about us with curious puzzled eyes, and now
and then drawing each other's attention to sundry objects
of interest. " Have you been well ? " I inquired. " First-
rate," answered David, looking as merry as possible.
Nor did he show any indications whatever of illness ; he
seemed hopeful, energetic, full of health and spirits ; his
sole desire was to change his lodging. It was not with-
out qualms that he surveyed the dingy, smoky neighbour-
hood where I resided. The sun was shedding dismal
crimson light on the chimney-pots, and the twilight was
slowly thickening. We climbed up three flights of stairs
to my bedroom ; dingy as it was, this apartment seemed,
in David's eyes, quite a palatial sanctum ; and it was
arranged that we should take up our residence together.
As speedily as possible I procured David's little stock of
luggage ; then, settled face to face as in old times, we
made very merry.

My first idea, on questioning David about his prospects,
was that my friend had had the best of luck. You see,
the picture drawn on either side was a golden one ; but
the brightness soon melted away. It turned out that
David, on arriving in London, had sought out certain
gentlemen whom he had formerly favoured with his cor-
respondence, among others Mr. Richard Monckton
Milnes, now Lord Houghton. Though not a little
astonished at the appearance of the boy-poet, Mr. Milnes
had received him kindly, assisted him to the best of his

56 DAVID GRAY.

power, and made some work for him in the shape of
manuscript-copying. The same gentleman had also used
his influence with literary people, to very little purpose,
however. The real truth turned out to be that David
was disappointed and low-spirited. " It's weary work,
Bob ; they don't understand me ; I wish I was back in
Glasgow." It was now that David told me all about that
first day and night in London, and now he had already
begun a poem about " Hyde Park ; " how Mr. Milnes
had been good to him, had said that he was " a poet,"
but had insisted on his going back to Scotland and be-
coming a minister. David did not at all like the notion
of returning home. He thought he had every chance of
making his way 'in London. About this time he was
bitterly disappointed by the rejection of "The Luggie "
by Mr. Thackeray, to whom Mr. Milnes had sent it, with
a recommendation that it should be inserted in the
" Cornhill Magazine."

Lord Houghton briefly and vividly describes his inter-
course with the young poet in London. He had written
to Gray strongly urging him not to make the hazardous
experiment of a literary life, but to aim after a profes-
sional independence. "A few weeks afterwards," he
writes, " I was told that a young man wished to see me,
and when he came into the room I at once saw that it
could be no other than the young Scotch Poet. It was
a light, well-built, but somewhat stooping figure, with a
countenance that at once brought strongly to my recol-
lection a cast of the face of Shelley in his youth, which I

DAVID GRAY. 57

had seen at Mr. Leigh Hunt's. There was the same
full brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy
mouth. He told me at once that he had come to Lon-
don, in consequence of my letter, as from the tone of it
he was sure I should befriend him. I was dismayed at
this unexpected result of my advice, and could do no
more than press him to return home as soon as possible.
I painted as darkly as I could the chances and difficulties
of a literary struggle in the crowded competition of this
great city, and how strong a swimmer it required to be
not to sink in such a sea of tumultuous life. ' No, he
would not return.' I determined in my own mind that
he should do so before I myself left town for the country,
but at the same time I believed that he might derive
advantage from a short personal experience of hard
realities. He had confidence in his own powers, a simple
certainty of his own worth, which I saw would keep him
in good heart and preserve him from base temptations.
He refused to take money, saying he had enough to go
on with ; but I gave him some light literary work, for
which he was very grateful. When he came to me again,
I went over some of his verse with him, and I shall not
forget the passionate gratification he showed when I told
him that, in my judgment, he was an undeniable poet.
After this admission he was ready to submit to my criti-
cism or correction, though he was sadly depressed at the
rejection of one of his poems, over which he had evi-
dently spent much labour and care, by the editor of a
distinguished popular periodical, to whom I had sent it

58 DAVID GRAY.

with a hearty recommendation. His, indeed, was not a
spirit to be seriously injured by a temporary disappoint-
ment ; but when he fell ill so sogn afterwards, one had
something of the feeling of regret that the notorious
review of Keats inspires in connection with the premature
loss of the author of t Endymion.' It was only a few
weeks after his arrival in London, that the poor boy came
to my house apparently under the influence of violent
fever. He said he had caught cold in the wet weather,
having been insufficiently protected by clothing ; but had
delayed coming to me for fear of giving me unnecessary
trouble. I at once sent him back to his lodgings, which
were sufficiently comfortable, and put him under good
medical superintendence. It soon became apparent that
pulmonary disease had set in, but there were good hopes
of arresting its progress. I visited him often, and every
time with increasing interest. He had somehow found
out that his lungs were affected, and the image of the
destiny of Keats was ever before him."

It has been seen that Mr. Milnes was the first to per-
ceive that the young adventurer was seriously ill. After
a hurried call on his patron one day in May. David re-
joined me in the near neighbourhood. "Milnes says
I'm to go home and keep warm, and he'll send his own
doctor to me." This was done. The doctor came,
examined David's chest, said very little, and went away,
leaving strict orders that the invalid should keep within
doors and take great care of himself. Neither David
nor I liked the expression of the doctor's face at all.

DAVID GRAY. 59

It soon became evident that David's illness was of a
most serious character. Pulmonary disease had set in,
medicine, blistering, all the remedies employed in the
early stages of his complaint, seemed of little avail. Just
then David read the " Life of John Keats," a book which
impressed him with a nervous fear of impending dissolu-
tion. He began to be filled with conceits droller than
any he had imagined in health. "If I were to meet
Keats in heaven," he said one day, " I wonder if I should
know his face from his pictures ? " Most frequently his
talk was of labour uncompleted, hope deferred ; and he
began to pant for free country air. " If I die," he said on
a certain occasion, " I shall have one consolation, Milnes
will write an introduction to the poems." At another
time, with tears in his eyes, he repeated Burns's epitaph.
Now and then, too, he had his fits of frolic and humour,
and would laugh and joke over his unfortunate position.
It cannot be said that Mr. Milnes and his friends were at
all lukewarm about the case of their young friend ; on the
contrary, they gave him every practical assistance. Mr.
Milnes himself, full of the most delicate sympathy,
trudged to and fro between his own house and the in-
valid's lodging ; his pockets laden with jelly and beef-tea,
and his tongue tipped with kindly comfort. Had circum-
stances permitted, he would have taken the invalid into
his own house. Unfortunately, however, David was com-
pelled to remain, in company with me, in a chamber which
seemed to have been constructed peculiarly for the pur-
pose of making the occupants as uncomfortable as pos-

60 DAVID GRAY.

sible. There were draughts everywhere : through the
chinks of the door, through the windows, down the
chimney, and up through the flooring. When the wind
blew, the whole tenement seemed on the point of crum-
bling to atoms; when the rain fell, the walls exuded
moisture ; when the sun shone, the sunshine only served
to increase the characteristic dinginess of the furniture.
Occasional visitors, however, could not be fully aware of
these inconveniences. It was in the night-time, and in
bad weather, that they were chiefly felt ; and it required
a few days' experience to test the superlative discomfort
of what David (in a letter written afterwards) styled " the
dear old ghastly bankrupt garret." His stay in these
quarters was destined to be brief. Gradually, the invalid
grew homesick. Nothing would content him but a speedy
return to Scotland. He was carefully sent off by train,
and arrived safely in his little cottage-home far north.
Here all was unchanged as ever. The beloved river was
flowing through the same fields, and the same familiar
faces were coming and going on its banks ; but the whole
meaning of the pastoral pageant had changed, and the
colour of all was deepening towards the final sadness.

Great, meanwhile, had been the commotion in the
handloom weaver's cottage, after the receipt of this bulle-
tin : " I start off to-night at five o'clock by the Edinburgh
and Glasgow Railway, right on to London, in good health
and spirits." A great cry arose in the household. He
was fairly " daft ; " he was throwing away all his chances
in the world; the verse-writing had turned his head.

DAVID GRAY. 61

Father and mother mourned together. The former,
though incompetent to judge literary merit of any kind,
perceived that David was hot-headed, only half-educated,
and was going to a place where thousands of people were
starving daily. But the suspense was not to last long,
The darling son, the secret hope and pride, came back to
the old people, sick to death. All rebuke died away be-
fore the pale sad face and the feeble tottering body ; and
David was welcomed to the cottage hearth with silent
prayers.

It was now placed beyond a doubt that the disease was
one of mortal danger ; yet David, surrounded again by his
old cares, busied himself with many bright and delusive
dreams of ultimate recovery. Pictures of a pleasant
dreamy convalescence in a foreign clime floated before
him morn and night, and the fairest and dearest of the
dreams was Italy. Previous to his departure for London
he had conceived a wild scheme for visiting Florence,
and throwing himself on the poetical sympathy of Robert
Browning. He had even thought of enlisting in the
English Garibaldian corps, and by that means gaining his
cherished wish. " How about Italy ? " he wrote to me,
after returning home. " Do you still entertain its delu-
sive notions ? Pour out your soul before me ; I am as a
child." All at once a new dream burst upon him. A
local doctor insisted that the invalid should be removed to
a milder climate, and recommended Natal. In a letter
full of coaxing tenderness, David besought me, for the
sake of old days, to accompany him thither. I answered

62 DAVID GRAY.

indecisively, but immediately made all endeavours to grant
my friend's wish. Meantime I received the following :

"Merkland, Kirkintilloch,

" loth November, 1860.

" EVER DEAR BOB,

" Your letter causes me some uneasiness; not but that your
numerous objections are numerous and vital enough,
but they convey the sad and firm intelligence that you
cannot come with me. It is absolutely impossible for you
to raise a sum sufficient ! Now you know it is not
necessary that I should go to Natal ; nay, I have, in very
fear, given up the thoughts of it; but we or I could go
to Italy or Jamaica this latter, as I learn, being the more
preferable. Nor has there been any f crisis ' come, as you
say. I would cause you much trouble (forgive me for
hinting this), but I believe we could be happy as in the

dear old times. Dr. (whose address I don't know)

supposes that I shall be able to work (?) when I reach a
more genial climate ; and if that should prove the result,
why, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But
the matter of money bothers me. What I wrote to you
was all hypothetical, i.e. things have been carried so far,
but I have not heard whether or no the subscription had
been gone on with. And, supposing for one instant the
utterly preposterous supposition that I had money to carry
us both, then comes the second objection your dear
mother ! I am not so far gone, though I fear far enough,
to ignore that blessed feeling. But if it were for your

DAVID GRAY. 63

good ? Before God, if I thought it would in any way
harm your health (that cannot be) or your hopes, I would
never have mooted the proposal. On the contrary, I
feel from my heart it would benefit you ; and how much
would it not benefit me? But I am baking without flour.
The cash is not in my hand, and I fear never will be;
the amount I would require is not so easily gathered.

" Dobell 1 is again laid up. He is at the Isle of Wight,
at some establishment called the Victoria Baths. I am
told that his friends deem his life in constant danger. He
asks for your address. I shall send it only to-day ; wait
until you hear what he has got to say. He would prefer
me to go to Brompton Hospital. I would go anywhere
for a change. If I don't get money somehow or somewhere
I shall die of ennui. A weary desire for change, life, ex-
citement of every, any kind, possesses me, and without
you what am I ? There is no other person in the world
whom I could spend a week with, and thoroughly enjoy
it. Oh, how I desire to smoke a cigar, and have a pint
and a chat with you.

" By the way, how are you getting on ? Have you lots
to do ? and well paid for it ? Or is life a lottery with

1 Sydney Dobell, author of "Balder," "The Roman," &c.
This gentleman's kindness to David, whom he never saw, is beyond
all praise. Nor was the invalid ungrateful. "Poor, kind, half-
immortal spirit here below," wrote David, alluding to Dobell, "shall
I know thee when we meet new-born into eternal existence ? . . .
Dear friend Bob, did you ever know a nobler? I cannot get him
out of my mind. I would write to him daily would it not pest
him. '

64 DAVID GRAY.

you ? and the tea-caddy a vacuum ? and a snare ? and
a nightmare ? Do you dream yet, on your old rickety
sofa in the dear old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66 ?
Write to yours eternally,

"DAVID GRAY."

/

The proposal to go abroad was soon abandoned, partly
because the invalid began to evince a nervous home-sick-
ness, and chiefly because it was impossible to raise a
sufficient sum of money. Yet be it never said that this
youth was denied the extremest loving sympathy and care.
As I look back on those days it is to me a glad wonder
that so many tender faces, many of them quite strange,
clustered round his sick bed. When it is reflected
that he was known only as a poor Scotch lad, that even
his extraordinary lyric faculty was as yet only half-guessed,
if guessed at all, the kindness of the world through his
trouble is extraordinary. Milnes, Dobell, DobelPs lady-
friends at Hampstead, never tired in devising plans for
the salvation of the poor consumptive invalid, goodness
which sprang from the instincts of the heart itself, and not
from that intellectual benevolence which invests in kind
deeds with a view to a bonus from the Almighty.

The best and tenderest of people, however, cannot
always agree ; and in this case there was too much dis-
cussion and delay. Some recommended a long sea-
voyage ; one doctor recommended Brompton Hospital ;
Milnes suggested Torquay in Devonshire. Meantime,
Gray, for the most part ignorant of the discussions that

DAVID GRAY. 65

were taking place, besought his friends on all hands to
come to his assistance. Late in November he addressed
the editor of a local newspaper with whom he was
personally acquainted and who had taken interest in his
affairs :

" I write you in a certain commotion of mind, and may
speak wrongly. But I write to you because I know that
it will take much to offend you when no offence is meant ;
and when the probable offence will proceed from youthful
heat and frantic foolishness. It may be impertinent to
address you, of whom I know so little, and yet so much ;
but the severe circumstances seem to justify it.

" The medical verdict pronounced upon me is certain
and rapid death if I remain at Merkland. This is awful
enough, even to a brave man. But there is a chance of
escape ; as a drowning man grasps at a straw I strive for
it. Good, kind, true Dobell writes me this morning the
plans for my welfare which he has put in progress, and
which most certainly meet my wishes. They are as
follows : Go immediately, and as a guest to the house of
Dr. Lane, in the salubrious town of Richmond ; thence,
when the difficult matter of admission is overcome, to the
celebrated Brompton Hospital for chest diseases ; and in
the Spring to Italy. Of course, all this presupposes the
conjectural problem that I will slowly recover. 'Con-
summation devoutly to be wished ! ' Now, you think, or
say, what prevents you from taking advantage of all these
plans ? At once, and without any squeamishness, money
for an outfit. I did not like to ask Dobell, nor do I ask

66 DAVID GRAY.

you ; but hearing a ' subscription ' had been spoken of, I
urge it with all my weak force. I am not in want of an
immense sum, but say 12 or ^15. This would con-
duce to my safety, as far as human means could do so.
If you can aid me in getting this sum, the obligation to a
sinking fellow-creature will be as indelible in his heart as
the moral law.

" I hope you will not misunderstand me. My bare-
faced request may be summed thus : If your influence set
the affair a-going quietly and quickly, the thing is done,
and I am off. Surely I am worth ^15 ; and for God's
sake overlook the strangeness and the freedom and the
utter impertinence of this communication. I would be
off for Richmond in two days, had I the money, and
sitting here thinking of the fearful probabilities makes me
half-mad."

It was soon found necessary to act with decision. A
residence in Kirkintilloch throughout the winter was, on
all accounts, to be avoided. A lady, therefore, subscribed
to the Brompton Hospital for chest complaints for the
express purpose of procuring David admission.

One bleak wintry day, not long after the receipt of the
above letter, I was gazing out of my lofty lodging-window
when a startling vision presented itself in the shape of
David himself, seated with quite a gay look in an open
Hansom cab. In a minute we were side by side, and one
of my first impulses was to rebuke David for the folly of
exposing himself during such weather in such a vehicle.
This folly, however, was on a parallel with David's general

DAVID GRAY. 67

habits of thought. Sometimes, indeed, the poor boy
became unusually thoughtful, as when, during his illness,
he wrote thus to me : " Are you remembering that you
will need clothes ? These are things you take no concern
about, and so you may be seedy without knowing it. By
all means hoard a few pounds if you can (I require none)
for any emergency like this. Brush your excellent top-
coat ; it is the best and warmest I ever had on my back.
Mind, you have to pay ready money for a new coat. A
seedy man will not get on if he requires, like you, to call
personally on his employers."

David had come to London in order to go either to
Brompton or to Torquay, the hospital at which last-
named place was thrown open to him by Mr. Milnes.
Perceiving his dislike for the Temperance Hotel, to
which he had been conducted, I consented that he
should stay in the "ghastly bankrupt garret," until he
should depart to one or other of the hospitals. It was
finally arranged that he should accept a temporary in-
vitation to a hydropathic establishment at Sudbrook
Park, Richmond. Thither I at once conveyed him.
Meanwhile, his prospects were diligently canvassed by
his numerous friends. His own feelings at this time
were well expressed in a letter home : " I am dreadfully
afraid of Brompton ; living among sallow, dolorous, dying
consumptives is enough to kill me. Here I am as com-
fortable as can be : a fire in my room all day, plenty of
meat, and good society, nobody so ill as myself ; but
there, perhaps, hundreds far worse (the hospital holds

68 DAVID GRAY.

218 in all stages of the disease; ninety of them died last
report) dying beside me, perhaps, it frightens me."

About the same time he sent me the following, con-
taining more particulars :

" Sudbrook Park, Richmond, '
Surrey.

" MY DEAR BOB,

" Your anxiety will be allayed by learning that I am little
worse. The severe hours of this establishment have not
killed me. At 8 o'clock in the morning a man comes
into my bedroom with a pail of cold water, and I must
rise and get myself soused. This sousing takes place
three times a day, and I'm not dead yet. To-day I told
the bathman that I was utterly unable to bear it, and re-
fused to undress. The doctor will hear of it ; that's the
very thing I want. The society here is most pleasant.
No patient so bad as myself. No wonder your father
wished to go to the water cure for a month or two ; it is
the most pleasant, refreshing thing in the world. But I
am really too weak to bear it. Robert Chambers is here ;
Mrs. Crowe, the authoress ; Lord Brougham's son-in-law ;
and at dinner and tea the literary tittle-tattle is the most
wonderful you ever heard. They seem to know every-
thing about everybody but Tennyson. Major

(who has a beautiful daughter here) was crowned with a
laurel-wreath for some burlesque verses he had made and
read, last night. Of course you know what I am among
them a pale cadaverous young person, who sits in dark

DAVID GRAY. 69

corners, and is for the most part silent ; with a horrible
fear of being pounced upon by a cultivated unmarried
lady, and talked to.

" Seriously, I am not better. When the novelty of my
situation is gone, won't the old days at Oakfield Terrace
seem pleasant ? Why didn't they last for ever ?

" Yours ever,

" DAVID GRAY."

All at once David began, with a delicacy peculiar to
him, to consider himself an unwarrantable intruder at
Sudbrook Park. In the face of all persuasion, therefore,
he joined me in London, whence he shortly afterwards
departed for Torquay.

He left me in good spirits, full of pleasant anticipations
of Devonshire scenery. But the second day after his
departure, he addressed to me a wild epistle, dated from
one of the Torquay hotels. He had arrived safe and
sound, he said, and had been kindly received by a friend
of Mr. Milnes. He had at first been delighted with the
town, and everything in it. He had gone to the hospital,
had been received by "a nurse of death" (as he
phrased it), and had been inducted into the privileges of
the place ; but on seeing his fellow-patients, some in the
last stages of disease, he had fainted away. On coming
to himself he obtained an interview with the matron.
To his request for a private apartment, she had answered
that to favour him in that way would be to break written
rules, and that he must content himself with the common

70 DAVID GRAY.

privileges of the establishment. On leaving the matron,
he had furtively stolen from the place, and made his way
through the night to the hotel. From the hotel he
addressed the following terrible letter to his parents :

"Torquay, January 6, 1861.

"DEAR PARENTS,

" I am coming home home-sick. I cannot stay from home
any longer. What's the good of me being so far from
home, and sick and ill ? I don't know whether I'll be
able to come back sleeping none at night crying out
for my mother, and her so far away. Oh God, I wish I
were home never to leave it more ! Tell everybody that
I'm coming back no better worse, worse. What's
about climate about frost or snow or cold weather when
one is at home ? I wish I had never left it.

" But how am I to get back without money, and my
expenses for the journey newly paid yesterday? I came
here yesterday scarcely able to walk. O how I wish
I saw my father's face shall I ever see it? I have
no money, and I want to get home, home, home !
What shall I do, O God? Father, I shall steal to see
you again, because I did not use you rightly my
conduct to you all the time I was at home makes me
miserable, miserable, miserable ! Will you forgive me ?
do I ask that ? forgiven, forgiven, forgiven ! If I can't
get money to pay for my box, I shall leave box and
everything behind. I shall try and be at home by
Saturday, January i2th. Mind the day if I am not

DAVID GRAY. 71

home God knows where I shall be. I have come
through things that would make your heart ache for me
things which I shall never tell to anybody but you,
and you shall keep them secret as the grave. Get my
own little room ready, quick, quick ; have it all tidy and
clean and cosy against my home-coming. I wish to die
there, and nobody shall nurse me, except my own dear
mother, ever, ever again. O home, home, home !

" I will try and write again, but mind the day. Per-
haps my father will come into Glasgow, if I can tell him
beforehand how, when, and where I shall be. I shall try
all I can to let him know.

"Mind and tell everybody that I am coming back,
because I wish to be back, and cannot stay away. Tell
everybody ; but I shall come back in the dark, because
I am so utterly unhappy. No more, no more. Mind
the day.

" Yours,

" D. G.

" Don't answer not even think of answering." 1

1 While lingering at Torquay, however, his mood became calmer,
and he was able to relieve his overladen mind in the composition of
these lines deeply interesting, apart from their poetic merit.

HOME SICK.

Lines 'written at Torquay, January, 1861.

Come to me, O my Mother ! corne to me,

Thine own son slowly dying far away !

Thro' the moist ways of the wide ocean, blown

72 DAVID GRAY.

Before I had time to comprehend the state of affairs,
there came a second letter, stating that David was on the
point of starting for London. " Every ring at the hotel
bell makes me tremble, fancying they are coming to take
me away by force. Had you seen the nurse ! Oh ! that
I were back again at home mother ! mother ! mother ! "
A few hours after I had read these lines in miserable
fear, arrived Gray himself, pale, anxious, and trembling.
He flung himself into my arms with a smile of sad relief.
" Thank God ! " he cried ; " that's over, and I am here !"
Then his cry was for home ; he would die if he remained
longer adrift ; he must depart at once. I persuaded him

By great invisible winds, come stately ships

To this calm bay for quiet anchorage ;

They come, they rest awhile, they go away,

But, O my Mother, never comest thou !

The snow is round thy dwelling, the white snow,

That cold soft revelation pure as light,

And the pine-spire is mystically fringed,

Laced with encrusted silver. Here ah me !

The winter is decrepit, underborn,

A leper with no power but his disease.

Why am I from thee, Mother, far from thee ?

Far from the frost enchantment, and the woods

Jewelled from bough to bough ? Oh home, my home !

O river in the valley of my home,

With mazy-winding motion intricate,

Twisting thy deathless music underneath

The polished ice-work must I nevermore

Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch

Thy beauty changing with the changeful day,

Thy beauty constant to the constant change ?

M. S,

DAVID GRAY. 73

to wait for a few days, and in the meantime saw some of
his influential friends. The skill and regimen of a
medical establishment being necessary to him at this
stage, it was naturally concluded that he should go to
Brompton ; but David, in a high state of nervous excite-
ment, scouted the idea. Disease had sapped the founda-
tions of the once strong spirit. He was now bent on
returning to the north, and wrote more calmly to his
parents from my lodgings :

" London, Thursday.
" MY VERY DEAR PARENTS,

" Having arrived in London last night, my friends have
seized on me again, and wish me to go to Brompton.
But what I saw at Torquay was enough, and I will corne
home, though it should freeze me to death. You must
not take literally what I wrote you in my last. I had
just ran away from Torquay hospital, and didn't know
what to do or where to go. But you see I have got to
London, and surely by some means or other I shall get
home. I am really home-sick. They all tell me my life
is not worth a farthing candle if I go to Scotland in this
weather, but what about that ? I wish I could tell my
father when to come to Glasgow, but I can't. If I start
to-morrow I shall be in Glasgow very late, and what am
I to do if I have no cash ? If he comes into Glasgow by
the twelve train on Saturday, I may, if possible, see him
at the train, but I would not like to say positively. Surely
I'll get home somehow. I don't sleep any at night now

74 DAVID GRAY.

for coughing and sweating I am afraid to go to bed.
Strongly hoping to be with you soon.

" Yours ever,

" DAVID GRAY."

" Home home home ! " was his hourly cry. To
resist these frantic appeals would have been to hasten
the end of all. In the midst of winter, I saw him into
the train at Euston Square. A day afterwards, David
was in the bosom of his father's household, never more
to pass thence alive. Not long after his arrival at home,
he repented his rash flight. " I am not at all contented
with my position. I acted like a fool ; but if the hospital
were the sine qua non again, my conduct would be the
same." Further, " I lament my own foolish conduct, but
what was that quotation about impellunt in Acheron ? It
was all nervous impulsion. However, I despair not, and,
least of all, my dear fellow, to those whom I have de-
serted wrongfully."

Ere long, poor David made up his mind that he must
die ; and this feeling urged him to write something which
would keep his memory green for ever. " I am working
away at my old poem, Bob ; leavening it throughout with
the pure beautiful theology of Kingsley." A little later:
" By-the-bye, I have about 600 lines of my poem written,
but the manual labour is so weakening that I do not go
on." Nor was this all. In the very shadow of the
grave, he began and finished a series of sonnets on the
subject of his own disease and impending death. This

DAVID GRAY. 75

increased literary energy was not, as many people im-
agined, a sign of increased physical strength ; it was
merely the last flash upon the blackening brand. Gradu-
ally, but surely, life was ebbing away from the young
poet.

In March, 1861, I formed the plan of visiting Scotland
in the spring, and wrote to David accordingly. His
delight at the prospect of a fresh meeting perhaps a
farewell one was as great as mine. He wrote me the
following, and burst out into song : a

"Merkland, March 12, 1861.
" MY DEAR BOB,

" I am very glad to be able to write you to-day. Rest
assured to find a change in your old friend when you

1 I subjoin the poem, not only as lovely in itself, but as the last
sad poetic memorial of our love and union. I find it in his printed
volume, among the sonnets entitled, "In the Shadows :"
Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes
Its delicate April green, and loud and clear
Thro' the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms,
The thrush's song enchants the captive ear ;
Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling,
Stirring the still perfume that shakes around ;
Now that doves mourn, and, from the distance calling,
The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound
Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried !
But leave all books ; for what with converse high,
Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide
On smoothly, as a river floweth by,
Or as on stately pinion, through the gray
Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way !

76 DAVID GRAY.

come down in April. And do, old fellow, let it be the
end of April, when the evenings are cool and fresh, and
these east-winds have howled themselves to rest. When
I think of what a fair worshipful season is before you, I
advise you to remove to a little room at Hampstead,
where I only wish too, too much to be with you. Don't
forget to come north since you have spoken about it ; it
has made me very happy. My health is no better, not
having been out of my room since I wrote, and for some
time before. The weather here is so bitterly cold and
unfavourable, that I have not walked 100 yards for three
weeks. I trust your revivifying presence will electrify my
weary relaxed limbs and enervated system. The mind,
you know, has a' great effect on the body. Accept the
wholesome common place. . . . By-the-way, how about
Dobell ? Did your mind of itself, or even against itself,
recognise through the clothes a man a poet? Young
speaks well :

/ never bowed but to superior worth,
Nor ever Jailed in my allegiance there.

Has he the modesty and make-himself-at-home manner
of Milnes ? " The remainder of this letter is unfortunately
lost.

In April, I saw him for the last time, and heard him
speak words which showed the abandonment of hope.
" I am dying," said David, leaning back in his arm-chair
in the little carpeted bedroom ; " I am dying, and I've
only two things to regret : that my poem is not published,

DAVID GRAY. 77

and that I have not seen Italy." In the endeavour to in-
spire hope I spoke of the happy past, and of the happy
days yet to be. David only shook his head with a sad
smile. " It is the old dream only a dream, Bob but I
am content." He spoke of all his friends with tenderness,
and of his parents with intense and touching love. Then
it was "farewell ! " "After all our dreams of the future,"
he said, " I must leave you to fight alone ; but shall there
be no more ( cakes and ale ' because I die ? " I returned
to London ; and ere long heard that David was eagerly
attempting to get " The Luggie " published. Delay after
delay occurred. " If my book be not immediately gone
on with, I fear I may never see it. Disease presses closely
on me. . . . The merit of my MSS. is very little mere
hints of better things crude notions harshly languaged ;
but that must be overlooked. They are left not to the
world (wild thought !), but as the simple, possible, sad,
only legacy I can leave to those who have loved and love
me." To a dear friend and fellow poet, William Freeland,
then sub-editor of the Glasgow Citizen, he wrote at this time:
" I feel more acutely the approach of that mystic dissolu-
tion of existence. The body is unable to perform its
functions, and like rusty machinery creaks painfully to the
final crash. . . . About my poem, it troubles me like
an ever present demon. Some day I'll burn all that I
have ever TV Bitten, yet no ! They are all that remain of
me as a living soul. Milnes offers ^5 towards its publica-
tion. I shall have it ready by Saturday first." And to
Freeland, who visited him every week, and cheered his

78 DAVID GRAY.

latter moments with a true poet's converse, he wrote out
a wild dedication, ending in these words ; " Before I enter
that nebulous uncertain land of shadowy notions and
tremulous wonderings standing on the threshold of the
sun and looking back, I cry thee, O beloved ! a last fare-
well, lingeringly, passionately, without tears." At this
period I received the following :

"Merkland, N. S., Sunday Evening.

"DEAR, DEAR BOB,

" By all means and instantly, ' move in this matter ' of
my book. Do you really and without any dream-work,
think it could be gone about immediately ? If not soon I
fear I shall never behold it. The doctors give me no hope,
and with the yellowing of the leaf ' changes ' likewise * the
countenance ' of your friend. Freeland is in possession
of the MSS., but before I send them (I love them in so
great temerity) I would like to see, and, if at all possible,
revise them. Meanwhile, act and write. Above all, Bob,
give me (and my father) no hope unless on sound founda-
tion. Better that the rekindled desire should die than
languish, bringing misery. I cannot sufficiently impress
on you how important this ' book,' is to me : with what
ignoble trembling I anticipate its appearance : how I shall
bless you should you succeed.

" Do not tempt me with your kindness. The family
have almost got over the strait, only my father being out
of work. It is indeed, a ' golden treasury ' you have sent
me. Many thanks. My only want is new interesting

DAVID GRAY. 79

books. I shall return it soon when I get Smith. Do
not, like a good fellow, disappoint an old friend by for-
getting to send that work. With what interest (thinking
on my own probable volume) shall I examine the print,
&c. / am sure, sure to return it.

" When you complain of physical discomfort I believe.
What is the matter ? Your letters now are a mere pro-
voking adumbration of your condition. I know posi-
tively nothing of you, but that you are mentally and
bodily depressed, aixd that you will never forget Gray.
In God's name let us keep together the short time
remaining.

" You tell me nothing ; write sooner too. Recollect I
have no other pleasure. How is your mother ? and all ?
Are your editorial duties oppressive ? Is life full of hope
and bright faith, yet t yet ? Tell me, Bob, and tell me
quickly.

" What a fair, sad, beautiful dream is Italy ! Do you
still entertain its delusive motions? Pour your soul
before me ; I am as a child.

"Yours for ever,

" DAVID GRAY."

Still later, in an even sweeter spirit, he wrote to an old
schoolmate, Arthur Sutherland, with whom he had
dreamed many a boyish dream, when they were pupil
teachers together at the Normal School :

"As my time narrows to a completion, you grow
dearer. I think of you daily with quiet tears. I think

&> DAVID GRAY.

of the happy, happy days we might have spent together
at Maryburgh ; but the vision darkens. My crown is laid
in the dust for ever. Nameless too ! God, how that
troubles me ! Had I but written one immortal poem,
what a glorious consolation ! But this shall be my
epitaph if I have a gravestone at all,

'Twas not a life,
'Twas but a piece of childhood thrown away.

O dear, dear Sutherland ! I wish I could spend two
healthy months with you ; we would make an effort, and
do something great. But slowly, insidiously, and I fear
fatally, consumption is doing its work, until I shall be
only a fair odorous memory (for I have great faith in
your affection for me) to you a sad tale for your old age.

Whom the gods love die young.

Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I was not
ripe, do you think I would be gathered ?

" Work for fame for my sake, dear Sutherland. Who
knows but in spiritual being I may send sweet dreams to
you to advise, comfort, and command ! who knows ?
At all events, when I am mooly, may you be fresh as the
dawn.

" Yours till death, and I trust hereafter too,

" DAVID GRAY."

At last, chiefly through the agency of the unweary-
ing Dobcll, the poem was placed in the hands of the
printer. On the 2nd of December, 1861, a specimen-

DAVID GRAY. 81

page was sent to the author. David, with the shadow of
death even then dark upon him, gazed long and linger-
ingly at the printed page. All the mysterious past the
boyish yearnings, the flash of anticipated fame, the black
surroundings of the great city flitted across his vision
like a dream. It was " good news," he said. The next
day the complete silence passed over the weaver's
household, for David Gray was no more. Thus, on
the 3rd of December, 1861, in the twenty-fourth year of
his age, he passed tranquilly away, almost his last words
being, " God has love, and I have faith." The following
epitaph, written out carefully a few months before his
decease, was found among his papers :

MY EPITAPH.

Below lies one whose name was traced in sand

He died, not knowing what it was to live ;

Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood

And maiden thought electrified his soul :

Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose.

Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh

In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God,

In other kingdom of a sweeter air ;

In Eden every flower is blown. Amen.

DAVID GRAY.
Sept. 27, 1 86 1.

Draw a veil over the woe that day in the weaver's
cottage, the wild breedings over the beloved face, white
in the sweetness of rest after pain. A few days later, the
beloved dust was shut for ever from the light, and carried
a short journey in ancient Scottish fashion, on hand-

82 DAVID GRAY.

spokes, to the Auld Aisle Burial-Ground, a dull and
lonely square upon an eminence, bounden by a stone
wall, and deep with the "uncut hair of graves." Here,
in happier seasons, had David often mused; for here
slept dust of kindred, and hither in his sight the thin
black line of rude mourners often wended with new
burdens. Very early, too, he blended the place with his
poetic dreams, and spoke of it in a sonnet not to be found
in his little printed volume :

OLD AISLE.

Aisle of the dead ! your lonely bell-less tower
Seems like a soul-less body, whence rebounds

No tones ear-sweetening, as if 'twere to embower
The Sabbath tresses with its soothing sounds.

In pity, crumbling aisle, thou lookest o'er

Your former sainted worshippers, whose bones
Lie mouldering 'neath these nettle-girded stones,

Or 'neath yon rank grave weeds ! Now from afar

Is seen the sacred heavenward spire, which seems
An intercessor for the mounds below :

And doth it not speak eloquent in dreams ?
In dreams of aged pastors who did go

Up to the hallowed mount with homely tread :

While there, old men and simple maids and youths
Throng lovingly to hear the sacred truths

In gentle stream poured forth. But he is dead ;
And in this hill of sighs he rests unknown,
As that wild flower that by his grave hath blown.

Standing on this eminence, one can gaze round upon
the scenes which it is no exaggeration to say David has
immortalized in song, the Luggie flowing, the green
woods of Gartshore, the smoke curling from the little

DAVID GRAY. 83

hamlet of Merkland, and the faint blue misty distance of
the Campsie Fells. The place though a lonely is a
gentle and happy one, fit for a poet's rest ; and there,
while he was sleeping sound, a quiet company gathered
ere long to uncover a monument inscribed with his name.
The dying voice had been heard. Over the grave now
stands a plain obelisk, publicly subscribed for, and in-
scribed with this epitaph, written by Lord Hough ton :

THIS MONUMENT OF

AFFECTION", ADMIRATION, AND REGRET,
IS ERECTED TO

DAVID GRAY,

THE POET OF MERKLAND,
BY FRIENDS FAR AND NEAR,

DESIROUS THAT HIS GRAVE SHOULD BE REMEMBERED
AMID THE SCENES OF HIS RARE GENIUS

AND EARLY DEATH,
AND BY THE LUGGIE NOW NUMBERED WITH THE STREAMS

ILLUSTRIOUS IN SCOTTISH SONG,
BORN, 2QTH JANUARY, 1838 ; DIED, 3RD DECEMBER, l86l.

Here all is said that should be said ; yet perhaps the
poet's own sweet epitaph, evidently prepared with a view
to such a use, would have been more graceful and ap-
propriate.

" Whom the gods love die young," is no mere pagan
consolation ; it has a tenderness for all forms of faith,
and even when philosophically translated, as by Words-
worth, who said sweetly that "the good die first," it still
possesses balm for hearts that ache over the departed.

84 DAVID GRAY.

That the young soul passes away in its strength, in its
prismatic dawn, with many powers undeveloped, yet no
power wasted, is the beauty and the pity of the thought,
the inference of the apotheosis. The impulse has been
upward, and the gods have consecrated the endeavour.
The thought hovers over the death-beds of Keats and
Robert Nicoll; it is repeated even by weary old men
over those poets' graves. No hope has been disappointed,
no eye has seen the strong wing grow feeble and falter
earthward, and the possibility of a future beyond our see-
ing is boundless as the aspiration of the spirit which
escaped us. " Whom the gods love die young," said the
Athenians ; and " bless the ancient Greeks for that
comfort," wrote David, with the thin, tremulous, con-
sumption-wasted hand. Beautiful, pathetically beautiful,
is the halo surrounding the head of a young poet as he
dies. We scarcely mourn him, our souls are so stirred
towards the eternal. But what comfort may abide when,
from the frame that still breathes, poesy arises like an ex-
halation, and the man lives on. In life as well as in
death there is a Plutonian house of exiles, and they
abandon all hope who enter therein ; and that man
inhabits the same. How often does this horror en-
counter us in our daily paths ? The change is rapid and
imperceptible. Without hope, without peace, without
one glimpse of the glory the young find in their own as-
pirations, the doomed one buffets and groans in the dark.
Which of the gods may he call to his aid ? None ; for
he believes in none. Better for him, a thousand times

DAVID GRAY. 8$

better, that he slept unknown in the shadow of the
village where he was born. The strong hard scholar, the
energetic literary man of business has a shield against the
demons of disappointment, but men like David have no
such shield. Picture the dark weary struggle for bread
which must have been his lot had he lived. He had not
the power to write to order, to sell his wits for money.
He sleeps in peace. He has taken his unchanged belief
in things beautiful to the very fountain-head of all beauty,
and will never know the weary strife, the poignant heart-
ache of the unsuccessful endeavourers.

The book of poems written, and the writer laid quietly
down in the auld aisle burying ground, had David Gray
wholly done with earth ? No ; for he worked from the
grave on one who loved him with a love transcending
that of women. In the weaver's cottage at Merkland sub-
sisted tender sorrow and affectionate remembrance ; but
something more. The shadow lay in the cottage ; a light
had departed which would never again be seen on sea or
land ; and David Gray, the handloom-weaver, the father
of the poet, felt that the meaning had departed out of his
simple life. There was a great mystery. The world
called his darling son a poet, and he hardly knew what
a poet was ; all he did know was that the coming of this
prodigy had given a new complexion to all the facts of
existence. There was a dream-life, it appeared, beyond
the work in the fields and the loom. His son, whom he
had thought mad at first, was crowned and honoured for
the very things which his parents had thought useless.

86 DAVID GRAY.

Around him, vague, incomprehensible, floated a new
atmosphere, which clever people called poetry; and he
began to feel that it was beautiful the more so, that is
was so new and wondrous. The fountains of his nature
were stirred. He sat and smoked before the fire o' nights,
and found himself dreaming too ! He was conscious,
now, that the glory of his days was beyond that grave in
the kirkyard. He was like one that walks in a mist, his
eyes full of tears. But he said little of his griefs, little,
that is to say, in the way of direct complaint. "We feel
very weary now David has gone ! " was all the plaint I
knew him to utter ; he grieved so silently, wondered so
speechlessly. -The new life, brief and fatal, made him
wise. With the eager sensitiveness of the poet himself
he read the various criticisms on David's book; and so
subtle was the change in him, that, though he was utterly
unlearned and had hitherto had no insight whatever into
the nature of poetry, he knew by instinct whether the
critics were right or wrong, and felt their suggestions to
the very roots of his being.

With this old man, in whom I recognised a greatness
and sweetness of soul that has broadened my view oi
God's humblest creatures ever since, I kept up a corre-
spondence at first for David's sake, but latterly for my
correspondent's own sake. His letters, brief and simple
as they were, grew fraught with delicate and delicious
meaning ; I could see how he marvelled at the mysteri-
ous light he understood not, yet how fearlessly he kept
his soul stirred towards the eternal silence where his son

DAVID GRAY. 87

was lying. " We feel very weary now David has gone S"
Ah, how weary! The long years of toil told their tale
now j the thread was snapt, and labour was no longer a
perfect end to the soul and satisfaction to the body.
The little carpeted bedroom was a prayer-place now.
The Luggie flowing, the green woods, the thy my hills,
had become haunted ; a voice unheard by other dwellers
in the valley was calling, calling, and a hand was beckon-
ing ; and tired, more tired, dazzled, more dazzled, grew
the old weaver. The very names of familiar scenes were
now a strange trouble ; for were not these names echoing
in David's songs? Merkland, "the summer woods of
dear Gartshire," the "fairy glen of Wooilee," Criftin,
"with his host of gloomy pine-trees," all had their
ghostly voices. Strange rhymes mingled with the hum-
ming of the loom. Mysterious " poetry," which he had
once scorned as an idle thing, deepened and deepened
in its fascination for him. All he saw and heard meant
something strange in rhyme. He was drawn along by
music, and he could not rest.

Beside him dwelt the mother. Her face was quite
calm. She had wept bitterly, but her heart now was with
other sons and daughters. David was with God, and the
minister said that God was good that was quite enough.
None of the new light had troubled her eyes. She knew
that her beloved had made a " heap o' rhyme," that was
all. A good loving lad had gone to rest, but there
were still bairns left, bless God !

But the old man lingered on, with hunger in his heart,

88 DAVID GRAY.

wonder in his soul. This could not last for ever. In the
winter of 1864, he warned me that he was growing ill ; and
although he attributed his illness to cold, his letters
showed me the truth. There was some physical malady,
but the aggravating cause was mental. It was my duty,
however, to do all that could be done humanly to save
him ; and the first thing to do was to see that he had
those comforts which sick men need. I placed his case
before Lord Houghton ; but generous as that man is,
all men are not so generous. " It is exceedingly difficult
to get people to assist a man of genius himself," wrote
Lord Houghton, gloomily; "they won't assist his rela-
tions." Lord Houghton, however, personally assisted
him, and was joined by a kind colleague, Mr. Baillie
Cochrane.

I felt then, and I feel now, that the condition of the old
man was even more deeply affecting than the condition of