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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
David in his last moments, as deserving of sympathy, as
universal in its appeal to human generosity ; and I felt a
yearning, moreover, to provide for the comfort of David's
mother, and for the education of David's brothers. Who
knew but that, among the latter, might be another bright
intellect, which a little schooling might save for the
world ? After puzzling myself for a plan, I at last
thought that I could attain all my wishes by publishing a
book to be entitled " Memorials of David Gray," and to
contain contributions from all the writers of eminence
whom I could enlist in the good cause. Such a thing
would sell, and might, moreover, be worth buying. The
DAVID GRAY. 89
fine natures were not slow in responding to the appeal,
and I mention some names, that they may gain honour.
Tennyson promised a poem ; Browning another ; George
Eliot agreed to contribute ; Dickens, because he was too
busy to write anything more, offered me an equivalent in
money. All seemed well, when one or two objections
were raised on the score of propriety ; and it was even
suggested, that, " It looked like begging for the father on
the strength of Gray's reputation." Confused and per-
plexed, I determined to refer the matter to one whose
good sense is as great as his heart, but (luckily for his
friends) a great deal harder. " Should I or should I not,
under the circumstances, go on with my scheme ? " His
answer being in the negative, the book was not gone on
with, and the matter dropped.
Meantime, the old man was getting worse. On the
2 yth April I received this letter :
"Merkland.
" DEAR MR. BUCHANAN,
"We hope this will find you and Mrs Buchanan in
good health. I am not getting any better. The cough
still continues. However, I rise every day a while, but it
is only to sit by the fire. Weather is so cold I cannot go
out, except sometimes I get out and walks round yard.
I am not looking for betterness. I have nothing particular
to say, only we thought you would be thinking us un-
grateful in not writing soon.
" I remain, yours ever,
"DAVID GRAY.
90 DAVID GRAY.
" I understand there is some movement with David's
stone* again."
On the Qth of May he wrote, " I have Dr. Stewart to
attend me. He called on Sunday and sounded me ; he
says I am a dying man, and dying fast. You cannot
imagine what a weak person I am ; I am nearly bedfast."
On the 1 6th May came the last lines I ever received from
him. They are almost illegible, and their purport pre-
vents me from printing- them here. A few days more, and
the old man was dead. His green grave lies in the
shadow of the obelisk which stands over his beloved son.
Father and child are side by side. A little' cloud, a
pathetic mystery, came between them in life, but that is all
over. The old handloom-weaver, who never wrote a verse,
unconsciously reached his son's stature some time ere he
passed away. The mysterious thing called "poetry,"
which operated such changes in his simple life, became all
clear at last in that final moment when the world's
meanings became transparent, and nothing is left but to
swoon back with closed eyes into the darkness, confiding
in God's mercy, content either to waken at His footstool,
or to rest painlessly for evermore.
* The monument, not then erected.
LITERARY SKETCHES.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE,
the neighbourhood of the picturesque
village of Chertsey, close to which the
Thames winds broad and clear between
deep green meadow-flats and quiet woods
still stand the ruins of Newark Abbey. Situated in a
lonely field, eight miles from the village, and near to the
Weybridge canal, they lie comparatively unknown and
little visited ; a mill murmurs close at hand, turned by
a small fall ; and all around stretch the level fields and
meadows of green Surrey. Here, at the beginning of the
present century, when these ruins stood as now, a young
man and maiden, betrothed to each other, were ac-
customed to meet and exchange their quiet vows ; and
here, half a century afterwards, a grey-haired old man of
seventy, beautiful in his age as the old Goethe, would
wander musing summer day after summer day. The
lovers had been parted ; the maiden had married and
94 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
died young, while the man had also married and become
the father of a household ; but that first Dream had never
been forgotten by one at least of the pair, and that surviv-
ing one was Thomas Love Peacock, known to general
English readers as the author of " Headlong Hall."
With a constancy and a tenderness which many mord
famous men would have done well to emulate, he clung
to the scene of his first and perhaps his only love : a love
innocent, like all true love ; and far preferable, to quote
his own words, to
"The waveless calm, the slumber of the dead,
which weighs on the minds of those who have never
loved, or never earnestly." Looking on the face of
Peacock in his old age, and knowing his secret, well
might one remember in emotion the beautiful words of
Scribe : " II faut avoir aime une fois en sa vie, non pour
le moment oil Ton aime, car on n'eprouve alors que de
tourmens, des regrets, de la jalousie ; mais peu a pen ces
tourmens-la deviennent des souvenirs, qui charment notre
arriere-saison. Et quand vous verrez la vieillesse douce,
facile, et tolerante, vous puissez dire comme Fontenelle
L? amour a passe par-la /"
Yes, Love had passed that way, and set on the old man
his gracious seal, which no other deity can counterfeit ; so
that, looking upon the old man's face, one read of gentle-
ness, high-mindedness, toleration, and perfect chivalry.
These may seem odd words to apply to one whom the
world knew rather as a retrograde philosopher and
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 95
satirical pessimist than a lover of human nature, as a
scholar rather than a poet, as a country gentleman of
the old school rather than a humanitarian of the new :
but they can be justified; and it may be questioned,
moreover, whether he had not learned of the eighteenth
century certain modest virtues which the nineteenth
century has incontinently forgotten. To children he was
gentleness itself, and all children loved him ; and there
could be no prettier sight in the world than the picture of
him, as I saw him first, and as in my mind's eye I see him
now, sitting one summer day, seated on his garden lawn
by the river, while a little maiden of sixteen rested on his
knees the great quarto Orlando Innamorato of Bojardo,
and, following with her finger the sun-lit lines, read soft
and low, corrected ever and anon by his kind voice, the
delicate Italian he loved so well. Who that looked at
him, then, could fail to perceive, to quote Lord Houghton's
words, " that he had gone through the world with happi-
ness and honour ? " But the secret of his beautiful be-
nignity lay deeper. " L'amour a passe* par-la !"
While a student in Scotland, I had known him as the
friend of Shelley, and had read his delightful works with
pleasure and profit ; until at last I was prompted to write
to him, expecting (I remember) to receive but a cold
response from one who, to judge him by his works, was
too much of a Timon to care for boys' homage. I was
agreeably disappointed. The answer came, not savage
like a rap on the knuckles, but cordial as a hand-shake.
Afterwards, when I was weary " climbing up the breaking
96 THOMAS LOVE PEA COCK.
wave " of London, I thought of my old friend, and deter-
mined to seek him out. Mainly with the wish to be near
him, I retreated to quiet Chertsey ; and thence past
Chertsey Bridge, through miles of green fields basking in
the summer sun, and through delightful lanes to Lower
Halliford, I went on pilgrimage, youth in my limbs,
reverence in my heart, a pipe in my mouth, and the tiny
Pickering edition of Catullus (a veritable "lepidum libel-
lum," but alas, far from "novum!") in my waistcoat
pocket. And there, at Lower Halliford, I found him as I
have described him, seated on his garden lawn in the sun,
with the door of his library open behind him, showing
such delicious vistas of shady shelves as would have
gladdened his own Dr. Opimian, and the little maiden,
reading from the book upon his knee. Gray-haired and
smiling sat the man of many memories, guiding the
utterances of one who was herself a pretty two-fold
link between the present and the past, being the grand-
daughter (on the paternal side) of Leigh Hunt, and also
the granddaughter (on the maternal side) of the Williams
who was drowned with Shelley. Could a youthful student's
eyes see any sight fairer ?
"And did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you ? . . .
. . . How strange it seems, and new I" 1
And this old man had spoken with Shelley, not once, but
a thousand times ; and had known well both Harriet
1 Robert Browning.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 97
Westhrook and Mary Godwin ; and had cracked jokes
with Hobhouse, and chaffed Proctor's latinity ; and had
seen, and actually criticised, Malibran ; and had bought
" the vasty version of a new system to perplex the sages," 1
when it first came out, in a bright, new, uncut quarto ;
and had dined with Jeremy Bentham ; and had smiled at
Disraeli, when, resplendently attired, he stood chatting in
Hookham's with the Countess of Blessington ; and had
been face to face with that bland Rhadamanthus, Chief-
Justice Eldon ; and was, in short, such a living chronicle
of things past and men dead as filled one's soul with de-
light and ever-varying wonder. " How strange it seemed,
and new !"
The portrait prefixed to the new edition of his works 2
conveys a very good idea of the man as I first saw him
a stately old gentleman with hair as white as snow, a keen
merry eye, and a characteristic chin. His dress was plain
black, with white neckcloth, and low shoes, and on his
head he wore a plaited straw hat. One glance at him was
enough to reveal his delightful character, that of his own
Dr. Opimian. "His tastes, in fact, were four: a good
library, a good dinner, a pleasant garden, and rural walks."
This was the man who, as a beautiful boy, had been
caught up and kissed by Queen Caroline ; who, when he
grew up to manhood, had been christened " Greeky
Peeky," on account of his acquirement in Greek ; and
who had been thus described, in a passage I have not
1 Byron's description of Wordsworth's Excursion.
2 Peacock's Works, 3 vols. (Bentley, 1875).
H
98 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
seen quoted before, by Shelley, in the " Letter to Maria
Gisborne."
" You will see P , with his mountain Fair 1
Turned into a Flamingo . ...
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him ; but you
Will see him and will like him, too, I hope,
And that snow-white Snowdonian antelope,
Matched with the cameo-leopard. His fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it ! "
Age had mellowed and subdued the " cameo-leopard,"
but the " fine wit," as I very speedily discovered, was as
keen as ever. His life had been passed in comparative
peace and retirement. He spoke French with the good
old-fashioned English accent, and he had never been to
Paris or up the Rhine ; Italy he knew not, nor cared to
know ; and much as he loved the sea, he had sailed it
little. His four tastes had kept him well anchored all his
life. In his youth he had had a fifth, the Italian Opera,
but the long modern performances, and the decadence of
the ballet, had alienated him. He had his "good
library," and it was a good one full of books it was a
luxury to handle, editions to make a scholar's mouth
water, bound completely in the old style in suits as tough
as George Fox's suit of leather. The "good dinner"
came daily. "He liked to dine well, and withal to
dine quickly, and to have quiet friends at his table, with
whom he could discuss questions which might afford
ample room for pleasant conversation, and none for acri-
1 Peacock's wife.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 99
monious dispute." 1 In the "pleasant garden" he was
sitting with the clear winding Thames below him and his
rowing-boat swinging at the garden steps. And the
"rural walks" lay all around him, on the quiet river side,
through the green woods of Esher, down the scented
lanes to Chertsey, by winding turns to Walton and Wey-
bridge scenes familiar to him since boyhood and
hallowed with the footprints of dead relatives and de-
parted friends. For the old man was, so to speak, alone
in the world his wife and best-loved daughters lay asleep
in Shepperton churchyard, his son was somewhere
abroad, and the cries of the children around him were
not those of his own family. His gifted daughter Rosa,
who died in her prime, was gone before, but another
daughter, not of the flesh, had risen in her place. Many
years before, when she was grieving sorely for the loss of
a little child, Margaret, his wife had noticed, on Halliford
Green, a little girl in its mother's arms, and seeing in it
a strange likeness to her own dead child, had coaxed it
into her own house, and dressed it in the dead babe's
clothes. Peacock returning from the India House, look-
ed in through the dining-room window, and seeing the
child within was almost stunned by its resemblance to
Margaret. This little girl, Mary Rosewell, had been
adopted by the Peacocks; and now, when all the rest
were dead, she remained a bright loving foster-daughter,
whose baptismal name of " Mary " had long ago been
sweetened into "May." I cannot describe her better
1 Gryll Grange.
loo THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
than in Peacock's own words when describing Miss Gryll:
" The atmosphere of quiet enjoyment in which she had
grown up seemed to have steeped her feelings in its own
tranquillity ; and still more, the affection which she felt
for her foster-father, and the conviction that her departure
from his house would be the severest blow that fate could
inflict on him, led her to postpone what she knew must
be an evil day for him, and might peradventure not be a
good one to her." She has never married, but she has
fulfilled her woman's mission perfectly, and the final years
of Peacock owed much of their tranquil sunshine to her
tender and pathetic care.
Knowing Peacock only from his books, I was not pre-
pared to find in him that delightful bonhomie which was
in reality his most personal characteristic, in old age at
least ; and when we became acquainted, and read and
talked together, I was as much astonished at the sweet-
ness of his disposition as amused and captivated by his
quaint erudition. In that green garden, in the lanes of
Halliford, on the bright river, in walks and talks such as
" brightened the sunshine," I learned to know him, and
although he was so much my senior he took pleasure (I
am glad to say) in my society, partly because I never
worried him with " acrimonious dispute," which he hated
above all things.
There was for the moment one dark cloud of mis-
understanding between us a cloud of smoke ; for, like
Hans Andersen's parson, 1 I "smoked a good deal of
1 At vcere eller ikke at vare.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 101
tobacco, and bad tobacco," and to Peacock tobacco was
poison. He forgave me, however, on one condition, that
I never smoked within five hundred yards of his house an
arrangement which, I am ashamed to say, I violated, for
well I remember, one night stealthily opening the bed-
room window in the house at Halliford, and " blowing a
cloud " out into the summer night. I am not sure that
much of his hate of tobacco did not arise from his morbid
dread of fire. He would never have any lucifer matches
in his house, save one or two which were jealously kept
in a tin box in the kitchen. Morning after morning he
arose with the sun, lit his own fire in the library, and read
till breakfast, laying in material for talk which flowed like
Hippocrene as crystal, and as learned ! His chief,
almost his only, correspondent was Lord Broughton, who
had been his friend through life. The two old gentlemen
interchanged letters and verses, and capped quotations,
and doubtless felt like two antediluvian mammoths left
stranded, and yet living, after the Deluge that Deluge
being typified to them by the submersion of Whig and
Tory in one wild wave of Progress, and the long career
of Lord Brougham as a sort of political Noah. The old
landmarks of society were obliterated. Lord Byron was
a dim memory, and the stage-coach was a dream. The
poetry of Nature had triumphed, and the poetry of Art
had died. Germany had a literature, and it was part of
polite education to know German, Beards were worn.
Rotten boroughs were no more. The Times, like a
colossal Podsnap, dominated journalism, but the Daily
102 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
Telegraph was stirring the souls of tradesmen to the sub-
'blime knowledge of Lempriere's Dictionary and Bonn's
" Index of Quotations." Special correspondents were
invented, competitive examination was consecrating medio-
crity, and a considerable number of Englishmen drank
bad champagne. What was left for an old scholar, but,
like the Hudibrastic Mirror of Knighthood,
" To cheer himself with ends of verse,
And saying of philosophers ! "
For the rest, the world was in a bad way j best keep
apart, and let it wag. -^tgov rbv olvov, Awpt ! Quaff a
cool cup in the green shade, and drink confusion to
Lord Michin Mallecho and the last Reform Bill !
It must be conceded at once that Peacock was no
friend to modern progress the cant of it, hoarsely roared
from the throats of journalistic Jews and political Merry
Andrews, had sickened him ; and he was not for one
moment prepared to admit that the world was one whit
wiser and happier than before the advent of the steam en-
gine. The pessimism which appears everywhere in his
books was the daily theme of his talk ; but to understand
it rightly we must remember it was purely satiric
that, in truth, Peacock abused human nature because he
loved it. Genial at heart as Thackeray, he delighted
to condemn man and society in the abstract. Hence
much of his writing must be read between the lines. In
the clever little sketch of Peacock, prefixed to the new
edition of the works, Lord Houghton errs to some ex-
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 103
tent in trying to construct Peacock out of his books. 1
The "unreasoning animosity" Lord Houghton speaks of
was purely ironic. For example, so far from having " an
indiscriminate repugnance to Scotland and to everything
Scotch," he was very fond of Scotchmen, having many
correspondents among them ; but he could not spare
them for all that, any more than Thackeray could spare
the Irish, whom he loved with all his heart. When,
in " Gryll Grange," he makes Dr, Opimian say of the
Americans : " I have no wish to expedite communication
with them. If we could apply the power of electric re-
pulsion to preserve us from ever hearing any more of
them, I should think we had for once derived a benefit
from science ! " he is merely, in a mood of what Lord
Houghton felicitously called "intellectual gaiety," in an
after-dinner mood, expressing a comic prejudice with no
deep root in reason. The animosity is Aristophanic. No
one reverenced Socrates more than his unmerciful
"chaffer," and no man knew the benefit of science better
than Peacock. He tried to shut out humanity, but he
felt for it very intensely. He could fain have resembled
the gods of Epicurus thinking, feeling nothing, as Cicero
1 "In the same spirit he clung to the old religious ideas that
haunted all early Roman history, and indeed went far into the
Empire, and thus he liked to read Livy, and did not like to read
Niebuhr" LORD HOUGHTON 's PREFACE. The words in italics
are put by Peacock into the mouth of a young lady in "Gryll
Grange, " and by no means express his own sentiments j indeed,
Niebuhr was regarded by him with the highest admiration, as having
almost unique intuition.
1 04 THOMA S LOVE PEA COCK.
expresses it, but "Mihi pulchre est," and ''Ego beatus
sum" but in reality, he felt for human suffering very
acutely. He would fain have had the world one vast
Maypole, with all humanity dancing round it, or one
mighty Christmas tree, with all humanity waiting to get a
prize from it. Every year, on May-day, he crowned
a little May-queen generally one of his grandchildren
as queen of the May, and all the little children of the
village flocked in to her with garlands, to be rewarded,
as the case might be, with a bright new penny or a silver
coin. He loved the old times for their old customs, and
he loved the old customs because they made men gentle
and children glad. "He had no fancy," he said, "for
living in an express train ; he liked to go quietly through
life, and to see all that lay in his way." His life, indeed,
might be described as one long rural walk, in company
with Dr. Opimian, occasionally diversified by a visit to
London, and a night at the Italian Opera. He belonged,
as Lord Houghton says, " to the eighteenth century," and
I may add that he had every one of its virtues without
one of its vices.
His literary tastes were very interesting ; although they,
too, belonged to the eighteenth century. His favour-
ite classical authors were Aristophanes and Cicero. His
knowledge of the latter was extraordinary ; there was
scarcely a passage of any force which he had not by
heart. As to Aristophanes, he simply revelled in that
quaint satire so akin to the keen writings of his own
modern Muse. At a time when he was reading Pick-
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 105
wick, and delighting in its extravagances, he cried
characteristically, with a delicious twinkle of his eye, at
dinner "Dickens is very comic, but not so comic as
Aristophanes!" His mind was not so much attracted by
the Greek tragedians, though of course he knew them
well, as by the comic writers and the satirists ; and, on
the whole, I fancy he preferred Euripides to Sophocles,
for the very reasons which make critics like him less.
His sympathies, indeed, were less with the grand, the
terrible, and the sublimely pathetic, than with the bril-
liant, the exquisite, and the delicately artistic. Comedy
fascinated him more than Tragedy awed him. Although
he was a profound student of the mystical hymns of Or-
pheus, he read them more as a scholar than as a mystic.
It must be admitted, moreover, that his mind was in
itself a terrible " thesaurus eroticus," and there was to
be found in it many a Petronian quibble and Catullian
double entendre not to be discovered in Rambach. To
the last he loved Petronius a writer who has never yet
received justice for his marvellous picture-painting and
delicate graces of diction, and who can be vindicated to
the moralist far more easily than Rabelais. Rabelais
he loved too, of course ; who does not ? Like Swift, he
preferred Plautus to Terence :
Despite what schoolmasters have taught us,
I have a great respect for Plautus,
And think our boys may gather there hence
More wit and wisdom than from Terence !
From these tastes of his in the classical direction, the
io6 THOMAS LOVE PEA COCK.
reader may readily guess what authors and what books
he selected from more modern fields. It will readily be
understood that he was partial to Moliere, to Voltaire's
satirical works, and to the dramatists of the Restoration ;
that he admired " Sir Roger de Coverley " and the
Spectator, and had by heart "Clever Tom Clinch " and
the other sardonic verses of Dean Swift ; and that he
did not care much for the poetic transcendentalism of
Coleridge. He esteemed the poetry of Milton, but far
preferred Milton's prose. At the time I knew him, he
could repeat by heart nearly the whole of Redi's " Bacchus
in Tuscany " a bibulous masterpiece which had been
admirably translated by Leigh Hunt. Of modern non-
poetical works,' I should say his three favourites were
Monboddo's "Ancient Metaphysics," Drummond's
" Academical Questions," and Home Tooke's " Diver-
sions of Purley ; " to which may be added, with a re-
servation, Harris's " Hermes." He was always very fond
of philosophic philology, and one of the last works of
his life was to issue to his private friends a new interpre-
tation of the Aelia Lcelia Crispis.
But the above brief catalogue of his favourites affords
no glimpse of his true attainment. In reality he had not
read so many books as many less masterly mon ; but his
peculiarity was that he had so read and re-read his
favourite ones that he had completely attained the in-
terior of them. Thoreau used to say that the Bible and
Hafiz were books enough for any one man's lifetime; and
certainly, a lifetime might be spent on the study of the
THOMAS LOVE PEA COCK. 107
Bible alone. Peacock had some dozen authors virtually
by heart, and thus, the polyglott of his delightful talk
was really surprising. He never forgave a false quantity;
Browning's Avatar, in " Waring," would have driven him
into a fever, and, in speaking of America, he never for-
got the fact that its most popular poet, at that time, had
committed the false Latin of " Excelsior." 1 His tastes in
poetry may be presumed ; but I ought to mention to his
honour that he was one of the few early lovers of Words-
worth, despite his personal dislike to the Lake School.
He was never, till the day of his death, quite en rapport
with Shelley's moonshine-genius ; he far preferred such a
solid, flesh and blood poet as Burns, and of Burns' poems
his favourite was " Tarn o' Shanter ; " and he had little
or no appreciation for John Keats. Indeed, he never
passed the portico of the green little Temple erected by
Keats to Diana, remembering with indignation the bar-
barous fancies consecrated therein ; for he could prove
by a hundred quotations that the sleep of Endymion was
eternal, whereas in the modern poem the Latmian shep-
herd is for ever capering up and down the earth and
ocean like the German chaser of shadows. 2 The ancient
1 Is it possible that Peacock himself is responsible for the trans-
lation in the verses to " Gryll Grange" of a passage from the
Metamorphoses of Apuleius ; wherein "fluctibus educata" is ren-
dered by "the educated in the waves," etc. There are several
errors in the new edition, not to speak of the many unaccentuated
Greek quotations.
2 For similar reasons, he was perpetually wroth with Byron. He
gives one frightful instance of incongruity in the notes to "Night-
i oS THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
conception, as briefly incorporated by Cicero in the
passion where Diana is described as watching for ever the
sleep of "her beloved Endymion," is certainly very lovely.
And here I may remark incidentally that the influence of
Peacock on the lurid genius of Shelley, though doubtless
chilling on occasion, was certainly beneficial and in the
interests of Art. He checked a thousand extravagances,
and helped to form Shelley's later and more massive style
as exemplified in such pieces as " Alastor, or the Spirit
of Solitude." Peacock suggested the title for this poem,
and was amused to the day of his death by the fact that
the public, and even the critics, persisted in assuming
Alastor to be the name of the hero of the poem, whereas
the Greek work 'AXao-rcop signifies an evil genius, and the
evil genius depicted in the poem is the Spirit of Solitude.
Nothing can be more gentle, more guarded, than
Peacock's printed account of Shelley. His private con-
versation on the subject was, of course, very different.
Two subjects he did not refer to in his articles may safely
be mentioned now Shelley's violent fits of passion, and
the difficulty Peacock found in keeping on friendly terms
mare Abbey." "In Manfred, the great Alastor, or KaKoy Aaifieoi',
of Greece is hailed king of tjie world by the Nemesis of Greece, in
concert with three of the Scandinavian Valkyrice, under the name of
the Destinies ; the astrological spirits of the alchemysts of the
middle ages ; an elemental witch, transplanted from Denmark "to
the Alps ; and a chorus of Dr. Faustus's devils, who came in at
the last act for a soul. It is difficult to conceive where this hetero-
geneous mythological company could have met originally, except at
a table d'hote, like the six kings in "Candide." "Nightmare
Abbey," p. 332, vol. i. of collected edition.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 109
with Mary Godwin. Many were the anecdotes he told
with a twinkling eye, of Shelley's comic outbursts. One
I particularly remember. When the two friends were
rowing one day on the Thames, as it was their constant
custom to do, they came into collision with a flat-
bottomed boat moored in the centre of the stream, in
which an old tradesman and his wife were contentedly
seated, bottom-fishing. Remonstrances and strong ex-
pressions from the " lady " ensued ; and, as the friends
pulled away from the scene of the encounter, Shelley
shrieked out, in his peculiarly unmusical voice, " There's
an old woman angling for unfortunate fishes, as the Devil
will angle for her soul in H ! " As to Mary Godwin, I
fancy Peacock never really liked her ; and this fact, of
course, must be weighed in estimating his opinions rela-
tive to her and her predecessors. On one occasion, at
least, he refused to enter Shelley's house while " she was
in it," and was only constrained to do so by an entreaty
from Mary herself. On the whole he is just, even
generous, to her memory; but he certainly preferred
Harriett, if only on the ground of her surpassing beauty.
It is well known that Peacock pourtrayed Shelley in
the "Scythrop" of "Nightmare Abbey," and it is pleasant
to remember that Shelley admitted the truth of the
portrait, and was amused by it. Specially pointed was
the passage wherein Scythrop, who loves two young
ladies at once, tells his distracted father that he will
commit suicide : There is no doubt that if Shelley could
have kept both Harriett and Mary he would have been
no THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
happy ; for he, more than most men, needed the triple
wifehood so amusingly described in " Realmah." Seri-
ously speaking, the picture of the man Shelley, as de-
picted by Peacock, directly in his " Memorials," and
indirectly in the novel, is far more loveable and fascinat-
ing than the " divine " characterless humanitarian whom
hero-worshippers love to paint.
I do not propose to attempt, on the present occasion,
any estimate of Peacock's novels, although I believe they
are entitled to a far higher place in literature than Lord
Houghton seems inclined to give them ; but they are full
of opinions which he expressed even more admirably in
conversation. His detestation of the literary class lasted
until the end. " The understanding of literary people,"
he affirmed, "is exalted, not so much by the love of
truth and virtue, as by arrogance and self-sufficiency ; and
there is, perhaps, less disinterestedness, less liberality,
less general benevolence, and more envy, hatred, and
uncharitableness among them, than among any other
description of men." In his young days he had cut and
slashed at his brethren, especially at the Lake Poets,
whom he appreciated very much notwithstanding. Lat-
terly he was wont to affirm, as in " Gryll Grange,"
that " Shakespeare never makes a flower blossom out of
season, and Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true
to nature in this and in all other respects" He hated
Moore as much as he loved Burns. " Moore's imagery,"
he makes Mr. MacBorrowdale say, " is all false. Here
is a highly applauded stanza :
THOMAS L VE PEA COCK. 1 1 1
" ' The night dew of heaven, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the sod where he sleeps ;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.'
But it will not bear analysis. The dew is the cause of
the verdure, but the tear is not the cause of the memory
the memory is the cause of the tear." I am sorry to
say he could never be persuaded to appreciate Tennyson.
Specially offensive to him was the laureate's picture of
Cleopatra as " a queen with swarthy cheeks and bold
black eyes, brow-bound with burning gold." "Thus," he
writes, " one of our most popular poets describes Cleo-
patra ; and one of our most popular artists has illustrated
the description by a portrait of a hideous grinning Ethiop.
.... Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy
Auletes and a lady of Pontus. The Ptolemies were
Greeks, and whoever will look at their genealogy, their
medals, and their coins, will see how carefully they kept
their pure Greek blood uncontaminated by African inter-
mixture. Think of this description and this picture
applied to one who, Dio says and all antiquity confirms
him was * the most superlatively beautiful of women,
splendid to see, and delightful to hear.' x For she was
eminently accomplished : she spoke many languages
with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as
her personal beauty. There is not a shadow of intel-
lectual expression in that horrible portrait." For the rest,
yvi/aiKa>i>. . . Aa^iTrpa re ISelv KOI a
ovara. DlO. xlii. 34.
ii2 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
the Cleopatra of Shakespeare delighted him, as having not
one feature in common with that other abominable
" Queen of Bembo."
He was a great believer in Greek painting, with its
total absence of perspective ; nevertheless, he abhorred
pre-Raphaelism, though it loves perspective as little as
the Greeks ! But in fact, he was generally inclined to
cry, with his own Gryllus, in "Aristophanes in London,"
" All the novelties I yet have seen,
Seem changes for the worse."
New schools of painting and poetry attracted him as little
as new science. One of his prejudices was amusing in
the extreme, and it is foreshadowed, like so many of his
latter peculiarities, in "Gryll Grange." Great as was his
knowledge of Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, which
Home Tooke calls "the usual bounds of a scholar's
acquisition," and considerable as was his interest in
Goethe and the Weimer circle, he disliked everything
German, and never attempted to learn that wonderful
language, which may be said to be the key to the
golden chamber of modern poetry and philosophy. Mr.
Falconer observes in " Gryll Grange," quoting a dictum
of Person's, that "Life is too short to learn German;
meaning, I apprehend, not that it is too difficult to be
acquired within the ordinary space of life, but that there
is nothing in it to compensate for the portion of life
bestowed in its acquirement, however little that may be ! "
He used to quote with a chuckle Porson's doggrel
THOMA S LOVE PEA COCK. 113
" The German's in Greek
Are sadly to seek ;
Save only Hermann,
And Hermann's a German ! "
It is strange that he was not curious in this direction, for
his literary appetite was unbounded. When we first met,
and when he was approaching his eightieth year, he was
studying Spanish, in order to read the Autos and other
masterpieces of Calderon. Conceive the literary vitality,
in an old man of that age, which would urge him on to
the study of a tongue almost new to him ! The task was
a comparatively easy one, of course, from his consummate
knowledge of other kindred tongues, but it still possessed
difficulties enough to daunt a less earnest lover of learn-
ing. His cry for more light, like that of the old Goethe,
was heard till the very last.
As I write of him, and look again upon the photograph
of his genial features, I am reminded, by a certain general
resemblance to the portraits of Thackeray, that the author
of "Vanity Fair" was one of his greatest admirers, and
wrote to him several pleasant letters, in one of which,
which I saw, he promised to pay a long visit to Lower
Halliford. I do not think the visit was ever paid ; but
it is pleasant to think of those two men in company, for
they possessed many characteristics in common. What
evenings there would have been in the old house at Halli-
ford if Thackeray had come ! What capping of quota-
tions, what mellow music of eighteenth century voices,
while these two kindred spirits drank their after-dinner
! r 4 THOMAS LOVE PEA COCK.
wine ! For Thackeray's heart was with the eighteenth
century too ; and either one or the other of these two
white-headed " old boys" would have been quite at home,
if suddenly translated back in time, and set down by
Temple Bar with the Dean of St. Patrick's, or with Pope
in his villa at Twickenham, or in a Whitefriars hostelry
with Dick Steele. On such an evening, when the old
heart was warm with wine, and after Thackeray, perhaps,
had trolled out to his host's delight, the ballad of " Little
Billee," or "Peg of Linavaddy," I can conceive the
author of " Gryil Grange " reciting, in that rich mellow
voice of his, his own lovely verses called, "Love and
Age : "
I played with you 'mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four ;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wandered hand in hand together ;
But that was sixty years ago.
You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
And still our early love was strong ;
Still with no care our days were laden,
They glided joyously along ;
And I did love you very dearly,
How dearly words want power to show ;
I thought your heart was touched as nearly!
But that was fifty years ago.
Then other lovers came around you,
Your beauty grew from year to year j
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 115
And many a splendid circle found you
The centre of its glittering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
On rank and wealth your hand bestow ;
Oh then I thought my heart was breaking,
But that was forty years ago.
And I lived on, to wed another :
No cause she gave me to repine ;
And when I heard you were a mother,
I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression.
Made up a pleasant Christmas row :
My joy in them was past expression,
But that was thirty years ago.
You grew a matron plump and comely,
You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze ;
My earthly lot was far more homely ;
But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glistened
Around the hearthstone's wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christened,-*
But that ivas twenty years ago.
Time passed. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire grey ;
One pet of four years old I've carried
Among the wild -flowered meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her baskets ample measure,
And that is not ten years ago.
But though first love's impassioned blindness
Has passed away in colder light,
ii6 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
I still have thought of you with kindness
And shall do, till our last good-night.
The ever-rolling silent hours
Will bring a time we shall not know,
When our young days of gathering flowers
Will be a hundred years ago.
And we know that this was the very sort of music to fill
the great guest's eyes with tears, though it spoke only,
like his more sad prose muse, of " Vanity, Vanity ! "
Thackeray touched the same note repeatedly it was a
habitual one with him but he never touched it more
delicately, or with a truer pathos. A little longer, and
both were at rest, the veteran worn out with years, and
the great good, man struck down in the prime of his
powers.
Ignorant of the world as it is, circumscribed in his
vision like all students of books, narrowed to the know-
ledge of a good library and a few green walks, thus
Thomas Peacock passed away. He lived to see the
curious theories which he developed so wonderfully in
" Melincourt," and to many of which he was indebted to
Lord Monboddo, assuming an importance in the history
of science which fairly startled him. The generalisations
made by quidnuncs from Darwin's facts, and which,
rather than Darwin's own teaching, constitute " Darwin-
ism," were sufficiently portentous to fill an eighteenth
century satirist with comic wonder. What Peacock's
own views were as to the origin and destiny of Man, I
cannot tell : on such subjects he was reticent ; but his
sympathies were with the antique world, and I daresay
THOMAS LOVE PEA COCK. 1 1 7
he would not have discountenanced a proposal once
entertained by Mr. Ruskin, to revive the worship of
Diana. At any rate, he was quite pagan enough to
astonish conventional people. Miss Nichols, in her
excellent and thoroughly sympathetic little sketch of her
grandfather, prefixed to the collected works, tells a
striking anecdote illustrative of his pleasant paganism.
Shortly before his death, a fire broke out in the roof of
his bed-room, and he was taken to the library, which lay
at the other end of the house. "At one time it was
feared the fire was gaining ground, and that it would be
needful to move him into one of the houses of the
neighbourhood, but he refused to move. The curate,
who came kindly to beg my grandfather to take shelter
in his house, received rather a rough and startling re-
ception, for in answer to the invitation, my grandfather
exclaimed with great warmth and energy, 'By the im-
mortal gods, I will not move ! ' "
Smile as we may at the formality and pedantry of the
eighteenth century, there were giants in those days ; and
Peacock resembled them in intellectual stature. His
books will live, if only for their touches of quaint erudi-
tion ; but they abound in delicious little pictures, such
as that of Mr. Falconer and his seven Vestal attendants
in " Gryll Grange," or those of Coleridge and Shelley in
" Nightmare Abbey." Sir Oran Haut-ton is perfect, a
masterpiece of characterisation, and as for Dr. Opimian,
he is as sure of immortality as " my Uncle Toby " himself.
But the true glory of Peacock was his delicious personal-
1 18 THOMAS LOVE PEA COCK.
ity. To have known and spoken with such a man, is in
itself part of a liberal education. I shall not soon forget
that we sipped "Falernian" together, though the
" Falernian " was no stronger than May RosewelFs cow-
slip-wine. Circumstances called me back to Scotland,
and during the short period preceding his decease we
did not meet. Only a few days before his death he
dreamed of his " dear Fanny," the maiden who had been
his first love, and for weeks together she came to him in
his sleep, gently smiling. Thus the Immortal Ones, call
them by what names we may, were good to him until the
very end ; and while that first and last dream was bright
within him, he sank to rest. Let us fancy that, though
life parted him from his first love, in death they were not
divided ; nor shall be, even when
The ever-rolling silent hours
Have brought a time they do not know,
When their young days of gathering flowers
\Vill be a hundred years ago 1
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
CHARLES DICKENS.
jf HERE was once a good Genie, with a bright
eye and a magic hand, who, being born out
of his due time and place, and falling not
upon fairy ways, but into the very heart of
this great city of London wherein we write, walked on
the solid earth in the nineteenth century in a most spirit-
like and delightful dream. He was such a quaint fellow,
with so delicious a twist in his vision, that where you and
I (and the wise critics) see straight as an arrow, he saw
everything queer and crooked ; but this, you must know,
was a terrible defect in the good Genie, a tremendous
weakness, for how can you expect a person to behold
things as they are whose eyes are so wrong in his head
that they won't even make out a straight mathematical
line.
To the good Genie's gaze everything in this rush of
life grew queer and confused. The streets were droll,
120 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
and the twisted windows, winked at each other. The
Water had a voice, crying, " Come down ! come down ! "
and the Wind and Rain became absolute human entities,
with ways of conducting themselves strange beyond ex-
pression. Where you see a clock, he saw a face and heard
the beating of a heart. The very pump at Aldgate bev
came humanised, and held out its handle like a hand for
the good Genie to shake. Amphion was nothing to him.
To make the gouty oaks dance hornpipes, and the whole
forest go country-dancing, was indeed something, but how
much greater was the feat of animating stone houses,
great dirty rivers, toppling chimneys, staring shop win-
dows, and the laundress's wheezy mangle ! Pronounce
as we may on the wisdom of the Genie's conduct, no one
doubts that the world was different before he came : the
same world, doubtless, but a duller, more expressionless
world; and perhaps, on the whole, the people in it
especially the poor, struggling people wanted one great
happiness which a wise and tender Providence meant to
send.
The Genie came and looked, and after looking for a
long time, began to speak and print ; and so magical was
his voice, that a crowd gathered round him, and listened
breathlessly to every word ; and so potent was the charm,
that gradually all the crowd began to see everything as
the charmer did (in other words, as the wise critics say,
to squint in the same manner), and to smile in the same
odd, delighted, bewildered fashion. Never did pale faces
brighten more wonderfully ! never did eyes that had seen
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 121
straight so very long, and so very, very sadly, brighten up
so amazingly at discovering that, absolutely, everything
was crooked ! It was a quaint world, after all, quaint in
both laughter and tears, odd over the cradle, comic over
the grave, rainbowed by laughter and sorrow in one
glorious Iris, melting into a thousand beautiful hues.
" My name," said the good Genie, " is Charles Dickens,
and I have come to make you all but especially the poor
and lowly brighter and happier." Then, smiling merrily,
he waved his hands, and one by one, along the twisted
streets, among the grinning windows and the human
pumps, quaint figures began to walk, while a low voice
told stories of Human Fairyland, with its ghosts, its
ogres, its elves, its good and bad spirits, its fun and frolic,
oft culminating in veritable harlequinade, and its dim,
dew-like glimmerings of pathos. There was no need any
longer for grown-up children to sigh and wish for the dear
old stories of the nursery. What was Puss in Boots to
Mr. Pickwick in his gaiters ? What was Tom Thumb,
with all its oddities, to poor Tom Pinch playing on his
organ all alone up in the loft ? A new and sweeter Cin-
derella arose in Little Nell ; a brighter and dearer little
Jack Homer eating his Christmas pie was found when
Oliver Twist appeared and " asked for more."
It was certainly enchanting the earth with a vengeance,
when all life became thus marvellously transformed. In
the first place, the world was divided j just as old Fairy-
land had been divided, into good and bad fairies, into
beautiful Elves and awful Ogres, and everybody was either
122 THE GOOD GEN:E OF FICTION.
very loving or very spiteful. There were no composite
creatures, such as many of our human tale-tellers like to
describe. Then there was generally a sort of Good Little
Boy who played the part of hero, and who ultimately got
married to a Good Little Girl, who played the part of
heroine.
In the course of their wanderings through human fairy-
land, the hero and heroine met all sorts of strange char-
acters queer-looking Fairies, like the Brothers Cheeryble,
or Mr. Toots, or David Copperfield's aunt, or Mr. Dick,
or the convict Magwitch; out-and-out Ogres, ready to
devour the innocent, and without a grain of goodness in
them, like Mr. Quilp, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Fagin the Jew,
Carker with his white teeth, Rogue Riderhood, and
Lawyer Tulkinghorn ; comical Will-o'-the-\visps, or moral
Impostors, flabby of limb and sleek of visage, called by
such -names as Stiggins, Chadband, Snawley, Pecksniff,
Bounderby, and Uriah Keep. Strange people, forsooth,
in a strange country. Wise critics said that the country
was not the world at all, but simply Topsy-turvyland ;
and indeed there might have seemed some little doubt
about the matter, if every now and again, in the world we
are speaking of, there had not appeared a group of poor
people with such real laughter and tears that their
humanity was indisputable. Scarcely had we lost sight
for a moment of the Demon Quilp, when whom should
we meet but Codlin and Short sitting mending their
wooden figures in the churchyard ? and not many miles
off was Mrs. Jarley, every scrap on whose bones was real
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 123
human flesh ; the Peggotty group living in their upturned
boat on the sea-shore, while little Em'ly watches the in-
coming tide erasing her tiny footprint on the sand ; the
Dorrit family, surrounding the sadly comic figure of the
Father of the Marshalsea ; good Mrs. Richards and her
husband the Stoker, struggling through thorny paths of
adversity with never a grumble ; Trotty Veck sniffing the
delicious fumes of the tripe a good fairy is bringing to
him ; and Tiny Tim waving his spoon, and crying, " God
bless us all ! " in the midst of the smiling Cratchit family
on Christmas Day.
This was more puzzling still to find " real life " and
" fairy life " blended together most fantastically. It was
like that delightful tale of George M 'Donald's, where you
never can tell truth from fancy, and where you see the
country in fairyland is just like the real country, with
cottages [and cooking going on inside], and roads, and
flower-gardens, and finger-posts, yet everything haunted
most mysteriously by supernatural creatures. But let the
country described by the good Genie be ever so like the
earth, and the poor folk moving in it ever so like life,
there was never any end to the enchantment. On the
slightest provocation trees and shrubs would talk and
dance, intoxicated public-houses hiccup, clocks talk in
measured tones, tombstones chatter their teeth, lamp-
posts reel idiotically, all inanimate nature assume animate
qualities. The better the real people were, and the
poorer, the more they were haunted by delightful Fays.
The Cricket talked on the hearth, and the Kettle sang in
124 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
human words. The plates on the dresser grinned and
gleamed, when the Pudding rolled out of its smoking
cloth, saying perspiringly, " Here we are again ! " Talk
about Furniture and Food being soulless things ! The
good Genie knew better. Whenever he went into a
mean and niggardly house, he saw the poor devils of
chairs and tables attenuated and wretched, the lean time-
piece with its heart thumping through its wretched ribs,
the fireplace shivering with a red nose, and the chimney-
glass grim and gaunt. Whenever he entered the house
of a good person, with a loving, generous heart, he saw
the difference jolly fat chairs, if only of common wood,
tables as warm as a toast, and mirrors that gave him a
wink of good-humoured greeting. It was all enchant-
ment, due perhaps in a great measure to the strange twist
in the vision with which the good Genie was born.
Thus far, perhaps, in a sort of semi-transparent allegory,
have we indicated the truth as regards the wonderful
genius who has so lately left us. Mighty as was the
charm of Dickens, there have been from the beginning a
certain select few who have never felt it. Again and
again has the great Genie been approached by some
dapper dilettante of the superfine sort, and been informed
that his manner was wrong altogether, not being by any
means the manner of Aristophanes, or Swift, or Sterne,
or Fielding, or Smollett, or Scott. This man has called
him, with some contempt, a " caricaturist." That man
has described his method of portrayal as " sentimental. "
M'Stingo prefers the humour of Gait. The gelid, heart-
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 125
searching critic prefers Miss Austen. Even young ladies
have been known to take refuge in Thackeray. All this
time, perhaps, the real truth as regards Charles Dickens
has been missed or perverted. He was not a satirist,
in the sense that Aristophanes was a satirist. He was not
a comic analyst, like Sterne ; nor an intellectual force,
like Swift ; nor a sharp, police-magistrate sort of humour-
ist, like Fielding ; nor a practical-joke-playing tomboy, like
Smollett. He was none of these things. Quite as little
was he a dashing romancist or fanciful historian, like
Walter Scott. Scott found the Past ready made to his
hand, fascinating and fair. Dickens simply enchanted
the Present. He was the creator of Human Fairyland.
He was a magician, to be bound by none of your
commonplace laws and regular notions : as well try to
put Incubus in a glass case, and make Robin Good-
fellow the monkey of a street hurdy-gurdy. He came to
put Jane Austen and M. Balzac to rout, and to turn
London into Queer Country.
One never forgets how Aladdin, when he got possession
of the ring, and rubbing the tears out of his eyes, acci-
dentally rubbed the ring too, discovered all in a moment
his power over spirits and things unseen. Much in the
same way did Dickens discover his gift. It was an acci-
dental rub, as it were, when he was crying sadly, that
brought the brilliant help. But in his case, unlike that
of Aladdin, the power grew with using. The first few
figures summoned up in the " Sketches " were clever
enough, but vague and absurdly thin, mere shadows of
126 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
what was coming. But suddenly, one morning, descended
like Mercury the angel Pickwick beaming through his
spectacles ; and the man-child revelled in laughter, utterly
abandoning himself to the madest mood. He was not as
yet quite spell-bound by his own magic, and was merely
full of the fun. The tricksy Spirit of Metaphor, which
he compelled to such untiring service afterwards, scarcely
got beyond such an image as this, in the vulgarising style
of "Tom Jones:" "That punctual servant-of-all-work, the
sun, had just risen and begun to strike a light." But the
book was full of quiddity, rich in secret unction. It was
in a sadder mood, with the recollections of his hard boyish
sufferings still too fresh upon him, that he wrote " Oliver
Twist." This book, with all its faults, shows what its
writer might have been, if he had not chosen rather to be
a great magician. Putting aside altogether the artificial
love story with which it is interblended, and which is the
merest padding, there is scarcely a character in this fiction
which is not rigidly drawn from the life, and that without
the faintest attempt to secure quiddity at the expense of
verisimilitude. The character of Nancy, the figures of
Fagin and his pupils, the conduct of Sykes after the
murder, are all studies in the hardest realistic manner,
with not one flash of glamour. Even the Dodger is more
life-like than delightful. There are touches in it of mar-
vellous cunning, strokes of superb insight, bits of descrip-
tion unmatched out of the writer's own works ; but the
lyric identity (if we may apply the phrase to one who,
although he wrote in prose, was specifically a poet) had yet
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 127
to be achieved. The charm was not all spoken. The
child-like mood was not yet quite fixed.
Not at the " Oliver Twist" stage of genius could he have
written thus of a foggy November day : " Smoke lowering
down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with
flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes gone
into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the
sun ; " or thus about shop-windows on the same occasion :
" Shops lighted two hours before their time as the gas
seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look;"
or thus of a sleeping country town, where "nothing seemed
to be going on but the clocks, and they had such drowsy
faces, such heavy lazy hands, and such cracked voices, and
they surely must have been too slow." Still less could he
have pictured the wonderful figure of little Nell surrounded
by oddities animate and inanimate, and moving through
them to a sweet sleep and an early grave. Still less could
he have written such an entire description as that of the
Court of Chancery in "Bleak House," where the fog of the
weather penetrates the whole intellectual and moral atmos-
phere, and renders all phantasmic and ludicrously strange.
Yet all these things are seen and felt as a child might have
seen and felt them are just like the v/orld little Dombey
or little Nell might have described, if they had wandered
as far, and been able to put their impressions upon
paper.
It is not to be lost sight of, as being a most significant
and striking fact, that Dickens is greatest when most
personal and lyrical, and that he is most lyrical when he
128 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
puts himself in a child's place, and sees with a child's
eyes. In the centre of his best stories sits a little human
figure, dreaming, watching life as it might watch the faces
in the fire. Little Oliver Twist, little David Copperfield,
little Dombey, little Pip (in "Great Expectations"), wander
in their turn through Queer Land, wander and wonder ;
and life to them is quaint as a toy-shop and as endless as
a show. And where Dickens does not place a veritable
child as the centre of his story, as in " Little Dorrit " or
" Bleak House," he employs instead a soft, wax-like,
feminine, child-like nature, like Amy Dorrit or Esther
Summerson, which may be supposed to bear the same
sort of relation to the world as children of smaller growth,
and to feel the world with the same intensity. In any
case, in any of his best passages, whether humorous or
pathetic, emotion precedes reflection, as it does in the case
of a child or of a great lyric poet. The first flash is
seized; the picture, whether human or inanimate, is taken
instantaneously and steeped in the feeling of the instant.
Thus, when Carker first appears upon the scene in " Dom-
bey and Son," the author, with a quick infantine per-
ception, first notices " two unbroken lines of glistening
teeth, whose regularity and whiteness were quite distress-
ing," and in another moment perceives that in the same
person's smile there is t( something like the snarl of the
cat." With any other author but the present this first im-
pression would possibly fade : but with him, as with a
child, it grows and enlarges, till the white teeth of Carker
absolutely haunt the reader, and in Carker's very look and
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 129
gesture is seen a feline resemblance. The feeling never
disappears for a moment. " Mr. Carker reclined against
the mantelpiece. In whose sly look and watchful manner;
in whose false mouth, stretched but not laughing; in
whose spotless cravat and very whiskers ; even in whose
silent passing of his left hand over his white linen and his
smooth face: there was something desparately cat-like."
And the further the book proceeds the more is the feline
metaphor pursued, so that when Carker is planning the
downfall of Edith Dombey we all feel to be watching, with
intense interest, a cat in the act to spring. " He seemed
to purr, he was so glad. And in some sort Mr Carker, in
his fancy, basked upon a hearth too. Coiled up snugly
at certain feet, he was ready for a spring, or for a tear or
for a scratch, or for a velvet touch, as the humour seized
him. Was there any bird in a cage that came in for a
share of his regards ? " Nay, so unmistakable is his nature
that it even provokes Diogenes the dog ; for " as he picks
his way so softly past the house, glancing up at the
windows, and trying to make out the pensive face behind
the curtain looking at the children opposite, the rough
head of Diogenes came clambering up close by it, and the
dog, regardless of all soothing, barks and howls, as if he
would tear him limb from limb. Well spoken Di ! " adds
the author ; " so near your mistress ! Another and
another, with your head up, your eyes flashing, and youi
vexed mouth ringing for want of him. Another, as he
picks his way along. You have a good scent, Di, cats,
boys, cats!"
130 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
Note here the positive enchantment which this lyrical
feeling casts over every subject with which it deals. There
can be no mistake about it we are in Fairyland ; and
every object we perceive, animate or inanimate, is
quickened into strange life. Wherever the good person
goes all good things are in league with him, help him, and
struggle for him ; trees, flowers, houses, bottles of wine,
dishes of meat, rejoice with him, and enter into him, and
mingle identities with him. He, literally " brightening the
sunshine," fills the place where he moves with Fairies and
attendant spirits. Read, as an illustration of this, the
account of Tom Pinch's drive in " Martin Chuzzlewit."
But wherever the bad person goes, on the other hand,
only ugly things' sympathise. He darkens the day ; his
baleful look transforms every fair thing into an ogre. The
door-knockers grin grimly, the door hinges creak with
diabolical laughter. There is not a grain of good in him,
not a gleam of hope for him. He is, in fact, scarcely a
human being, but an abstraction, representing Selfishness,
Malice, Envy, Sham-piety, Hate ; moral ugliness of some
sort represented invariably by physical ugliness of another
sort. He, of course, invariably gets beaten in the long
run. This is all as it ought to be in a fairy tale.
The pleasantest creatures in this pleasant dream of life,
seen by our good Genie with the heart of a child, are
(undoubtedly) the Fools. Dickens loved these forms of
helplessness, and he has created the brightest that ever
were imagined Micawber, Toots, Twemlow, Mrs. Nickle-
by, Traddles, Kit Nubbles, Dora Spenlow, the gushing
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION-. 131
Flora, 1 and many others whose names will occur to every
reader. They are perhaps truer to nature than is generally
conceded. The critical criterion finds them silly, and the
pathos wasted over them somewhat maudlin. The public
loves them, and feels the better for them ; for, however
wrong in the head, they are all right at heart indeed,
with our good Genie, a strong head and a tender heart
seldom go together, which is a pity. There can be no
doubt that the creator of these creatures was violently
irrational, had an intense distaste for hard facts, and an
equally intense love for sentimental chuckle-heads.
The heart, the heart, if that beats right,
Be sure the brain thinks true.
It may be observed, in deprecation, that Dickens' good
people, and especially his Fools, too often wear their
hearts " upon their sleeves," and give vent to the disagree-
able " gush " so characteristic of his falsetto pathetic
passages, such as the well-known scene between Dr. and
Mrs. Strong in " David Copperfield :"
" Annie, my pure heart ! " said the doctor, " my dear girl ! "
" A little more ! a very few words more ! I used to think there
were so many whom you might have married, who would not have
brought such charge and trouble on you, and who would have made
your home a worthier home. I used to be afraid that I had better
have remained your pupil, and almost your child. I used to fear
1 Not the least interesting portion of Mr. Forster's life is the part
showing us that Dora and Flora are photographs from the life, taken
at different periods from the same person, and that this person was
regarded by Dickens himself at one time just as Copperfield regarded
Dora, and at a later period just as Clennam regarded Mrs F. !
I 3 2 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
that I was so unsuited to your learning and wisdom. If all this
made me shrink within myseli (as indeed it did), when I had that
to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much, and hoped that
you might one day honour me."
"That day has shone this long time, Annie," said the doctor,
"and can have but one long night, my dear."
"Another word ! I afterwards meant steadfastly meant, and
purposed to myself to bear the whole weight of knowing the un-
worthiness of one to whom you had been so good. And now a last
word, dearest and best of friends ! The cause of the late change in
you, which I have seen with so much pain and sorrow, and have
sometimes referred to my old apprehension at other times to
lingering suppositions nearer to the truth has been made clear to-
night ; and by an accident. I have also come to know, to-night, the
full measure of your noble trust in me, even under that mistake. I
do not hope that any love and duty I may render in return will ever
make me worthy of your priceless confidence ; but with all this
knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear face,
revered as a father's, loved as a husband's, sacred to me in my child-
hood as a friend's, and solemnly declare that in my lightest thought
I had never wronged you ; never wavered in the love and the fidelity
I owe you ! "
She had her arms round the doctor's neck, and he leant his head
down over her, mingling his gray hair with her dark brown tresses.
" Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband ! Never cast me out !
Do not think or speak of disparity between us, for there is none,
except in all my many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have
known this better, as I have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take
me to your heart, my husband, for my love was founded on a rock,
and it endures!" (David Copperfield, chap, xlv., pp. 402, 403,
Charles Dickens' Edition.)
There is, of course, far too much of this sort of thing
in Dickens' pictures, but it does not go beyond bad draw-
ing. His conception of the pathetic circumstances is al-
ways psychologically right, only he ha* too little experi-
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 133
ence not to make it theatrical. A child might think such
a scene, on or off the stage, very affecting. And why
does it only repel grown-up people ? For the very
reason that it is childishly and absurdly candid, that the
speakers in it lack the loving reticence of full-grown
natures, that it is full of " words, words, words," from
which proud and affectionate men and women shrink.
Our good Genie's pets were far too fond, children-like, of
pouring out their own emotions ; they lacked the adult
reserve. This is a fault they share with many contem-
porary creations, such as Browning's " Balaustion," whose
O so glad
To tell you the adventure !
and general guttural liquidity of expression, is quite as
bad in itself (and far worse in its place) as anything in
Dickens.
Even more precious than the Fools are, in our eyes,
the Impostors. What a gallery ; alike, yet how different !
Pecksniff, Pumblechook, Turveydrop, Casby, Bounderby,
Stiggins, Chadband, Snawley, the Father of the Marshal-
sea ! Although a brief inspection of these gentlemen
shows them all to belong to the same family, each in turn
comes upon us with pristine freshness. They are
infinitely ridiculous and quite Elf-like in their moral
flabbiness.
And this brings us to one point upon which we would
willingly dwell for some time, did space permit us. A
great humorist like our good Genie, is the very sweetener
134 THE GOOD GENIE OF F1CTIOK.
and preserver of the earth, is the most beneficent Angel
that walks abroad ; for it is a most cunning and delight-
ful law of mental perception, that as soon as any figure
presents itself to us in a funny light, hate for that figure
is impossible. If you have any enemy, and if any pecu-
liarity of his makes you smile or laugh, be sure that you
and he are closer united than you know. Humour and
love are twin brothers, one beautiful as Eros, the other
queer as Incubus, but both made of the very same
materials ; and therefore, to call a man a great humorist
is simply to call him the most loving and lovable type of
humanity that we are permitted to study and enjoy.
And this, all the world feels, was Charles Dickens. It
would be hard indeed to over-estimate what this good
Genie has done for human nature, simply by pointing out
what is odd in it. Here come Hypocrisy, Guile, Envy,
Self-conceit ; you are ready to spring upon and rend
them j yet when the charm is spoken, you burst out
laughing. What comical figures ! You couldn't think
of hurting them ! Your heart begins to swell with sneak-
ing kindness. Poor devils, they were made thus ; and
they are so absurd ! Fortunately for humanity, this
comical perception has grown with the growth of the
world. Mystic touches of it in Aristophanes sweetened
the Athenian mind when philosophy and the dramatic
muse were souring and curdling, and at the mad laughter
of Rabelais the cloud-pavilion of monasticism parted to
let the merry sky peep through. But the deep human
mirth of the popular heart was as yet scarcely heard.
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 135
Shakespeare's humour, even more than Chaucer's, is of the
very essence of divine quiddity.
Between Shakespeare and Dickens, only one humorist
of the truly divine sort rose, fluted magically for a
moment, and passed away, leaving the Primrose family
as his legacy to posterity. Swift's humour was of the
earth, earthy ; Gay's was shrill and wicked ; Fielding's
was judicial, with flashes of heavenlike promise ; Smol-
lett's was cumbrous and not spiritualising ; Sterne's was a
mockery and a lie (shades of Uncle Toby and Widow
Wadman, forgive us, but it is true !); and not to cata-
logue till the reader is breathless Scott's was feudal,
with all the feudal limitations, in spite of his magnificent
scope and depth. Entirely without hesitation we affirm
that there is more true humour, and consequently more
helpful love, in the pages of Dickens than in all the
writers we have mentioned put together; and that, in
quality -, the humour of Dickens is richer, if less harmoni-
ous, than that of Aristophanes ; truer and more human
than that of Rabelais, Swift, or Sterne ; more distinctively
unctuous than even that of Chaucer, in some respects the
finest humorist of all ; a head and shoulders over
Thackeray's, because Thackeray's satire was radically un-
poetic ; certainly inferior to that of Shakespeare only, and
inferior to his in only one respect that of humorous
pathos. It is needless to say that in the last-named quality
Shakespeare towers supreme, almost solitary. FalstafFs
death-bed scene 1 is, taken relatively to the preceding life,
1 See King Henry V. t act ii. scene 3.
136 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
and history, and rich unction of Sir John, the most won-
derful blending of comic humour and divine tenderness
to be found in any book infinite in its suggestion,
tremendous in its quaint truth, penetrating to the very
depths of life, while never disturbing the first strange
smile on the spectator's face. Yes ; and therefore over-
flowing with unutterable love.
The humour of our good Genie seems, when we begin
to analyse it, a very simple matter merely the knack, as
we have before said, of seeing crooked of posing every
figure into oddity. A tone, a gesture, a look, the merest
trait, is sufficient j nay, so all-sufficient does the trait be-
come that it absorbs the entire individuality ; so that Mr.
Toots becomes a Chuckle, Mr. Turveydrop incarnate De-
portment, Uriah Keep a Cringe ; so that Newman Noggs
cracks his finger-knuckles, and Carker shows his teeth,
whenever they appear ; so that Traddles is to our mem-
ory a Forelock for ever sticking bolt upright, and Rigaud
(in " Little Dorrit ") an incarnate Hook-Nose and Mous-
tache eternally meeting each other. Enter Dr. Blumber :
" The Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress
the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of
march; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he
gravely turned upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep
towards the left ; and when he put out his left foot, he
turned in the same manner towards the right. So that
he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as
though he were saying, 'Can anybody have the good-
ness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 137
am uninformed ? ' " Enter Mr. Flintwinch : " His neck
was so twisted, that the knotted ends of his white cravat
actually dangled under one ear ; his natural acerbity and
energy always contending with a second nature of habitual
repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look ;
and altogether he had a weird appearance of having
hanged himself at one time or other, and of having gone
about ever since, halter and all, exactly as some timely
hand had cut him down." This first impression never
fades or changes as long as we see the figure in question.
Akin to this perception of Oddity, and allied with it, is
the perception of the Incongruous. Never did the brain
of human creature see stranger resemblances, funnier
coincidences, more side-splitting discrepancies. This
man was for all the world like (what should he say ?) a
Pump, the more so as his feelings generally ran to water.
That man was a Spider, such a comical Spider " horny-
skinned, two-legged, money-getting, who spun webs to
catch unwary flies, and retired into holes until they were
entrapped." Yonder trips the immaculate Pecksniff,
"carolling as he goes, so sweetly and with so much inno-
cence, that he only wanted feathers and wings to be a
Bird."
The summer weather in his bosom was reflected in the breast of
nature. Through deep green vistas, where the boughs arched over-
head, and showed the sunlight flashing in the beautiful perspective ;
through dewy fern, from which the startled hares leaped up, and
fled at his approach ; by mantled pools, and fallen trees, and down
in hollow places, rustling among last year's leaves, whose scent
woke memory of the past, the placid Pecksniff strolled. By
138 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
meadow gates and hedges fragrant with wild roses ; and by thatch-
roofed cottages, whose inmates humbly bowed before him as a man
both good and wise ; the worthy Pecksniff walked in tranquil medi-
tation. The bee passed onward, humming of the work he had to
do ; the idle gnats, for ever going round and round in one contract-
ing and expanding ring, yet always going on as fast as he, danced
merrily before him ; the colour of the long grass came and went, as
if the light clouds made it timid as they floated through the distant
air. The birds, so many Pecksniff consciences, sang gaily upon
every branch ; and Mr. Pecksniff paid his homage to the day by
enumerating all his projects as he walked along. Martin Chuzzle-
tvit, p. 302.
Here, as elsewhere, the whole power lies in the incon-
gruity of the whole comparison, in the reader's perfect
knowledge that Pecksniff is a Humbug and an Impostor,
and that there is nothing bird-like or innocent in his
nature. The vein once struck, there was nothing to
hinder our good Genie from working it for ever. His
pa-th swarmed with oddities and incongruities ; Wagner-
like he mixed these elements together, and produced the
Homunculus, Laughter. And just as the perception of
oddity and incongruity varies in men, varies the enjoy-
ment of Dickens. Quiddity for quiddity the reader
must give as well as receive ; and if the faculty is not in
him, he will turn away contemptuously. A weasel look-
ing out of a hole is enough to convulse some people with
laughter ; they see a dozen odd resemblances. Other
people, again, walk through all this Topsyturvyland with
scarcely a smile. Life in all its phases, great and small,
seems perfectly congruous and ship-shape ; much too
serious a matter for any levity.
THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION. 139
But it is time we were drawing these stray remarks to
a close, or we may be betrayed into actual criticism a
barbarity we should wish to avoid. Truly has it been
said, that the only true critic of a work is he who enjoys
it ; and for our part, our enjoyment shall suffice for criti-
cism. The Fairy Tale of Human Life, as seen first and
last by the good Genie of Fiction, seems to us far too
delightful to find fault with- -just yet. A hundred years
hence, perhaps, we shall have it assorted on its proper
shelf in the temple of Fame. We know well enough (as,
indeed, who does not know ?) that it contains much sham
pathos, atrocious bits of psychological bungling, a little
fine writing and a thimbleful of twaddle ; we know
(quite as well as the critical know) that it is peopled, not
quite by human beings, but by Ogres, Monsters, Giants,
Elves, Phantoms, Fairies, Demons, and Will-o'-the-Wisps ;
we know, in a word, that it has all the attractions as well
as all the limitations of a Story told by a Child. For that
diviner oddity, which revels in the Incongruity of the
very Universe itself, which penetrates to the spheres and
makes the very Angel of Death share in the wonderful
laughter, we must go elsewhere say to Jean Paul. Of
the Satire, which illuminates the inside of Life and re-
veals the secret beating of the heart, which unmasks the
Beautiful and anatomises the Ugly, Thackeray is a
greater master ; and his tears, when they do flow, are
truer tears. But for mere magic, for simple delightful-
ness commend us to our good Genie. He came, when
most needed, to tell the whole story of life anew, and more
140 THE GOOD GENIE OF FICTION.
funnily than ever ; and it seems to us that his childlike
method has brightened all life, and transformed this
awful London of ours with its startling facts and awful
daily phenomena into a gigantic Castle of Dreams. And
now, alas ! the magician's hand is cold in death. What
a liberal hand that was, what a great heart guided it, few-
knew better than the writer of this paper.
But he is fled
Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams, ah ! he is fled !
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said in the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty earth,
From sea 'and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low of joyous orison,
Lifts still its solemn voice ^ but he is fled
He can no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to him
Been purest ministers, who are, alas !
Now he is not ! x
Now, all in good time, we get the story of his life ; and
let us hesitate a little, and know the truth better, ere we
sit in judgment. Against all that can be said in slander,
let our gratitude be the shield. Against all that may
have been erring in the Man (few, nevertheless, to our
thinking, have erred so little), let us set the mighty ser-
vices of the Writer. He was the greatest work-a-day
Humorist that ever lived. He was the most beneficent
Good Genie that ever wielded a pen.
Shelley's "Alastor."
OSSIAN.
LAVEN stands alone, separated from the
chain of Cuchullins proper, and with the
arms of the Red Hills encircling him and
offering tribute. It is seldom he deigns to
put aside his crown of mist, but on this golden day he is
nnkinged. " The sunbeam pours its light stream before
him ; his hair meets the wind of his hills, his face is
settled from war, the calm dew of the morning lies on
the hill of roses, for the sun is faint on his side, and the
lake is settled and blue in the vale."
It is thus, as we gaze, that the thin sound of the voice
of Cona breaks in upon our meditations ; " O bard ! I
hear thy voice : it is pleasant as the gale of the spring
that sighs on the hunter's ear, when he wakens from
dreams of joy, and has heard the music of the spirits of
the hill." In the dreamy wanderings of our mind we had
almost forgotten Ossian, the true spirit of the mystic
142 OSSIAA r .
scene. Oh ! ye ghosts of the lonely Cromla ! Ye souls
of chiefs that are no more ! ye are " like a beam that has
shone, like a mist that has fled away." "The sons of
song are gone to rest." But one voice remains, strange
and sad, " like a blast that roars loudly on a sea-sur-
rounded rock, after the winds are laid."
What the Cuchullins are to all other British mountains
Ossian is to all other British bards. He abides in his
place, neither greater nor less, challenging comparison
with no one, solitary, sad, wrapt in eternal twilight. Just
in the same way as Glen Sligachan repelled Alexander
Smith, the song of Ossian tires and wearies Brown and
Robinson : fashionable once, it is now in disrepute ; by
Byron, Goethe, -and Napoleon cherished as a solemn in-
spiration, and lately pooh-poohed as conventional and
artificial by the Saturday Reviewer, it abides forgotten,
like Blaven, till such time as humorous critics may care
to patronise it again. It keeps its place, though, as surely
as Scuir-na-Gillean and Blaven keep theirs. It is based
on the rock, and will endure. Meantime, let us for once
exclaim with Mr. Arnold, " Woody Morven, and echoing
Lora, and Selma with its silent halls we all owe them a
debt of gratitude ; and when we are unjust enough to
forget it, may the Muse forget us ! " 1
As to the question of authenticity, that need not be
introduced at this time of day. Gibbon's sneer and
Johnson's abuse prove nothing. In this, as in all matters,
Gibbon was a sceptic, as worthy to be heard on Ossian as
1 " On the Study of Celtic Literature. " By Matthew Arnold.
OSSIAA 7 . 143
Voltire on Shakespeare, or Gigadibs on Walt Whitman.
In this, as in everything else, Johnson was a bully, a dear,
lovable, shortsighted bully, as fit to listen to Fingal as to
paint the scenery of the Cuchullins. The philological
battle still rages ; but few of those competent to judge now
doubt that Macpherson did receive Gaelic MSS., that
the originals of his translations were really found in the
Highlands that, in a word, Macpherson's Ossian is a
bona-fide attempt to render into English a traditionary
poetic literature similar in origin and history to the Ho-
meric poems. Truly has it been said that " Ossian drew
into himself every lyrical runnel, augmented himself in
every way, drained centuries of their songs : and living
an oral and gipsy life, handed down from generation to
generation without being committed to writing, and hav-
ing their outlines determinately fixed, these songs become
vested in a multitude, every reciter having more or less to
do to them. For centuries the floating legendary material
was reshaped, added to, and altered by the changing
spirit and emotion of the Celt." What remains to us is a
set of titanic fragments, which, like the scattered boulders
and blocs perches of Glen Sligachan, show where a mighty
antique landscape once existed. The translation of
Macpherson, made as it was by a scholar familiar with
modern literature, has numberless touches showing that
the chisel has been used to polish the original granite,
but it is on the whole a marvellous bit of workmanship,
strong, free, subtle, full of genius better than any Eng-
lish translation of the Iliad, nearer to the true antique
144 OSS JAN.
than Chapman's, or Pope's, or Derby's, or Blackie's ver-
sions of the Greek. In this translation, retranslated,
Goethe read it ; and Napoleon ; and each stole some-
thing from it, if only a phrase. Veritably, at first sight,
it has a barbarous look. The prose breathes heavily, in
a series of gasps, each gasp a sentence. The sound is tp
a degree monotonous, like the voice of the wind ; it rises
and falls, that is all, breaks occasionally into a shriek,
dies sometimes into a sob ; but it is always a wind-like
voice. Yet just as hour after hour we have sat by the
fireside, hearkening to the wind itself, feeling the sadness
of Nature creep into the soul and subdue it, so have we
sat listening to the sad "sound of the voice of Cona."
It is a wind, a wind passing among mountains. Only a
sound, yet the soul follows it out into the darkness where
it blows the beard from the thistle on the ruin, where it
mists the pictures in the moonlight mere, where it meets
the shadows shivering in the desolate corry, where it dies
away with a divine whisper on the fringe of the mystic
sea. A wind only, but a voice crying, " I have seen the
walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had
resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is
heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed
from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook
there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind.
The fox looked out from the windows ; the rank grass of
the wall waved round his head." It is an eerie wail out
of the solitude. We are blown hither and thither on it,
through the mists of Morven, over the livid Cuchullins,
OS SI AN. 145
through the terror of tempest, the dewy dimness of dawn
where the heroes are fighting, where a thousand shields
clang where rises the smoke of the ruined home, the
moan of the desolate children where the dead bleed,
and " the hawks of heaven come from all their winds to
feed on the foes of Auner " where the sea rolls far dis-
tant, and the white foam is like the sails of ships where
the narrow house looks pleasant in the waste, and " the
gray stone of the dead." But ever and anon we pause
listening, and know that we are hearkening to a sound
only, to the lonely cry of the wind.
After all, it is unfair to call this monotonousness a
demerit. Ossian's poems have much more in common
with the Theogony than the Iliad and Odyssey. Ulysses
and Thersites were comparatively modern products of the
Greek Epos. In the Ossianic period humanity dwelt in
the twilight which precedes the dawn of culture. The
heroes are not only colossal, but shadowy dim in a dim
light figures vaguer than any in the Eddas ; you see the
gleam of their eyes, the flash of their swords, you hear the
solemn sound of their voices ; but they never laugh, and
if they uplift a festal cup, it is with solemn arm sweep
and hushed speech. The landscape where they move is
this landscape of Glen Sligachan, with a frequent glimpse
of woodier Morven, and a far-off glimmer of the western
sea; all this shadowy, for the "morning is gray on
Cromla," or the " pale light of the night is sad." " I sit
by the mossy fountain ; on the top of the hill of wind.
One tree is rustling above me. Dark waves roll over the
146 OSSIAN.
heath. The lake is troubled below. The deer descend
from the hill. It is mid-day, but all is silent." This is a
day picture, but there is little sunlight. It is in this
atmosphere that some readers expect variety. They
weary of the wind, and the gray stone on the waste, and
the shadows of heroes. O for one gleam of humour, of
the quick spirit of life ! they cry. As well might they
look for Falstaff in the Iliad, or for Browning's Broad
Church Pope in Shakespeare ! Blaven and his brethren
are not mirth-breeding ; nor is Ossian. Here in the
waste, and there in the book, humanity fades far off;
though coming from both, we drink with fresher breath
the strong salt air of the free waves of the world.
In these days of metre-mongers, in these days when
poetry is a tinkling cymbal or a pretty picture, when Art
has got hold of her sister Muse and bedaubed her with
unnatural colour, we might well expect the public to be
indifferent to Ossian. Not the least objection to the
Gael, in the eyes of library-readers, is the peculiar gasp-
ing prose in which the translation is written : and it is an
objection ; yet it affords scope for passages of wonderful
melody, just as does the prose of Plato, or of Shake-
speare, 1 or. the semi-Biblical line of Walt Whitman.
"Before the left side of the car is seen the snorting
horse ! The thin-maned, high-headed strong-hoofed,
fleet-bounding son of the hill ; his name is Dusronnal,
1 Take Hamlet's speech about himself (commencing "I have of
late, but wherefore I know not," &c.) as an example of what
Coleridge calls "tjie wonderfulness of prose."
OSSIAN. 147
among the stormy sons of the sword." Such a passage
is prose as fully acceptable as a more literal translation,
broken up into lines like the original :
*' By the other side of the chariot
Is the arch-necked, snorting,
Narrow-maned, high-mettled, strong-hoofed,
Swift-footed, wide-nostril'd steed of the mountains ;
Dusrongeal is the name of the horse."
Music in our own day having run to tune, in poetry as in
everything else, we eschew unrhymed metres and poetical
prose; yet it is as legitimate to call Beethoven a barbarian
as to abuse Ossian and Whitman for their want of
melody. And as to the charge that Ossian lacks humour,
where in our other British poetry is humour so rife that
we imperatively demand it from the Gael ? Where is
Milton's humour ? or Shelley's ? Where in contemporary
poetry is there a grain of the divine salt of life, such as
makes Chaucer prince of tale-tellers, and gladdens the
academic period of rare Ben, and makes Falstaff loveable,
and Bardolph's red nose delicious, and preserves the
slovenly-scribbled " Beggar's Opera " for all time 1 In
sober truth, humour and worldly wisdom, and all we
biases moderns mean by variety, were scarcely created in
the Ossianic period. Why, they are rare enough in the
lonely Hebrides even now. Now, in the nineteenth
century, the Celtic islander smiles as little as old Fingal
or Cuthullin. His laugh is grim and deep ; he is too far
back in time to laugh lovingly. His loving mood is
148 OSSIAN.
earnest, tearful, almost painful, sometimes full of a dim
brightness, but never exuberant and joyful.
Yet we moderns, who love hoary old Jack for his sins,
and stand tearfully at his bed of death, 1 and like all fat
men and sinners better for his sake, we to whom life is
the quaintest and drollest of all plays as well as the
deepest and divinest of all mysteries, may listen very pro-
fitably, ever and anon, to the monotonous wail of Cona,
may pass a brooding hour in the twilight shadow of this
eerie poetry. The influence of Ossian upon us is quite
specific : not religious at all ; not merely ghostly ; but
solemn and sad and beautiful ; with just enough life to
preserve a thread of human interest ; with too little life
to awaken us from the mood of brooding mystic feeling
produced by the lonely landscape, and the dim dawn,
and the changeful moon. Ossian dreams not of a
Supreme Being, has no religious feelings, but he believes
1 Host. " Nay, sure, he's not in hell : he's in Arthur's bosom,
if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end,
and went away, an it had been any christom child; 'a parted
even just between twelve and one, e'en at turning o' the tide ;
for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with
flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but
one way ; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of
green fields. * How now, Sir John ? ' quoth I : ' what, man ! be of
good cheer. So 'a cried out ' God, God, God ! ' three or four
times : now I, to comfort him, bid him, 'a should not think of God ;
I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts
yet. So, 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet : I put my hand
into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone;
then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as
cold as any stone." Henry F., ii. 3.
OSSIAW. 149
in gracious spirits " fair as the ghost of the hill, when it
moves in a sunbeam at noon, over the silence of Morven."
If there is no humour in his poems, there is a great deal
of exquisitely human tenderness. Nothing can be more
touching in its way than the death of Fellan : " Ossian,
lay me in that hollow rock. Raise no stone above me,
lest one should ask about my fame. I am fallen in the
first of my fields, fallen without renown." Perfect in its
way, too, is the imagery in the lament of Malvina over
the death of Oscar : " I was a lovely tree in thy presence,
Oscar ! with all my branches round me. But thy breath
came like a blast from the desert and laid my green head
low. The spring returned with its shcwers, but no leaf
of mine arose."
Sweetest and tenderest of all Ossian's songs, the song
which fills the soul here in the gorges of Glen Sligachan,
is "Berrathon," the "last sound of the voice of Cona."
It is a wind indeed, strange and tender, deep and true.
All the strife is hushed now, Malvina the beautiful is
dead, and the old bard, knowing that his hour is drawing
nigh, murmurs over a fair legend of the past. " Such
were my deeds, son of Appin, when the arm of my youth
was young. But I am alone at Lutha. My voice is like
the last sound of the wind, when it forsakes the woods.
But Ossian shall not be long alone ; he sees the mist
that shall receive his ghost ; he beholds the mist that
shall form his robe when he appears on his hills. The
sons of feeble men shall behold me and admire the
stature of the chiefs of old. They shall creep to their
150 OSS FAN".
caves. . . . Lead, son of Appin, lead the aged to his
woods. The winds begin to rise ; the dark wave of the
lake resounds. . . . Bring me the harp, son of Appin.
Another song shall arise. My soul shall depart in the
sound. . . . Bear the mournful sound away to Fingal's
airy hall ; bear it to Fingal's hall, that he may hear the
voice of his son. . . . The blast of north opens thy gates.
king ! I behold thee sitting on mist, dimly gleaming in
all thine arms. Thy form now is not the terror of the
valiant. It is like a watery cloud, when we see the stars
behind it with their weeping eyes. Thy shield is the
aged moon : thy sword a vapour half kindled with fire.
Dim and feeble is the chief who travelled in brightness
before. ... I hear the voice of Fingal. Long has it
been absent from mine ear ! ' Come, Ossian, come
away !' he says. . . . ' Come, Ossian, come away!' he
says. ' Come, fly with thy fathers on clouds.' I come,
1 come, thou king of men. The life of Ossian fails. I
begin to vanish on Cona. My steps are not seen in
Selma. Beside the stone of Mora I shall fall asleep.
The winds whistling in my gray hair shall not awaken
me. . . . Another race shall arise." If this be not a
veritable voice, then poesy is dumb indeed. The desolate
cry of Lear is not more real.
Read these poems to-day on Glen Sligachan, or on the
slopes of Blaven. Is not the solemn grayness every-
where? Is there a touch, a tint, of the quiet land-
scape lost? Not that Ossian described Nature; that
was left for the modern. He contrives, however, while
OSS2AW. 151
using the simplest imagery, while never pausing to
transcribe, to conjure up before us the very spirit of such
scenes as this. Mere description, however powerful, is of
little avail and painting is not much better. Ossian's
verse resembles Loch Corruisk more closely than Turner's
picture, powerful and suggestive as that picture is.
TWO POETS.
N a quiet set of chambers in the Avenue
Matignon, No. 3, Paris, there lingered for
eight long years a quaint figure, paralysed
to his chair and watching, with an eye where
love and jealousy blended, the figure of his wife sewing
at his side, while an old negress moved about in house-
hold duties. This man spent most of his time in com-
position, using alternatively the French and the German
tongues. He had few friends and not many visitors.
His life was lonely, his heart was sad, and he uttered shrill
laughter. Though tender and affectionate beyond mea-
sure (witness his treatment of his mother, " the old woman
at the Damenthor ") he loved to gibe at all subjects, from
the majesty of God to the littleness of man. His name
was known through all the length of Germany as the greatest
poet after Goethe. His wild, sweet poems were house-
hold words. He had sung the wonderful song of the
7 WO POETS. 153
"Lorelei," and the delightful ballad of the daughters of
King Duncan :
Mem Knecht ! steh' auf und sattle schnell,
Und wirf dich auf dein Ross,
Und jage rasch, durch Wald und Feld,
Nach Konig Duncan's Schloss !
He was the author of the most dreadfully realistic poem
of modern times, the fragment entitled " Ratcliffe,"
where we have the terrible meeting of two who "loved
"Man sagte mir, Sie haben sich vermahlt ? "
" Ach ja ! " sprach sie gleichgiiltig laut und lachend,
"Hab' einen Stock von Holz, der iiberzogen
Mit Leder 1st, Gemahl sich nennt ; doch Holz
1st Holz ! " Und klanglos widrig lachle sie, 6<r. x
He had (not to speak of his other achievements) been the
German lyrical poet of his generation. On February 1 7,
1856, he died, and the only persons of note who attended
his funeral were Mignet, Gautier, and Alexander Dumas.
This man was Heinrich Heine, author of the " Buch der
Lieder " and the " Romanzero."
At the same period there was moving in the heart of
1 " They tell me thou art married? ''
" Ah, yes I" she said, indifferently, and laughing,
" A wooden stick I have, with leather cover 'd,
And called a Husband ! Still, wood is but wood 1"
And here she broke to hollow, empty laughter, &c.
We know few poems more powerfully affecting the imagination, by
more terribly simple means, than this piece of bitter psychology.
154 TWO POETS.
Paris another poet, who was to France what Heine was to
Germany, and perhaps something more. In verses of the
most delicate fragrance he had chronicled the lives and
aspirations, the ennui and despair, of the inhabitants of
the most cultured and debased city under the sun. He
had exhausted life too early, like most Frenchmen. His
fellow-beings had listened with him, in the theatre, to
Malibran, and sighingly exclaimed in his words that, in this
world,
Rien n'est bon que d'aimer, n'est vrai que de souflfrir !
They had listened delightedly to the talk of his two seedy
dilettantes, who exchange notes together inside the cabaret,
and finally disappear in a fashion worthy of Montague
Tig i in his adversity :
DUPONT.
Les liqueurs me font mat. Je n'aime que la biere.
Qu'as-tu sur toi ?
DURAND.
Trois sous.
DUPONT.
Entrons au cabaret.
DURAND.
Apr6s vous !
DUPONT.
Apr&s vous !
DURAND.
Apres vous, s'il vous plait ! '
1 Poesies nottvelles, p. 116.
TWO POETS. 155
They have beaten time to his delicious song of " Mimi
Pinson : "
Mimi Pinson est unc blonde,
Une blonde que Ton connait ;
Elle n'a qu'une robe au monde,
Landerirette !
Et qu'un bonnet !
They had seen him, as his own Rolla, enter the Rue des
Moulins, where his little mistress will greet him with a
kiss. Poor little thing ! her body is bought and sold ; and
yet, see ! she is lying in sweet and innocent sleep :
Est-ce sur de la neige, ou sur une statue,
Que cette lampe d'or, dans 1'ombre suspendue,
Fait onduler 1'azur de ce rideau tremblant ?
Non, la neige est plus pale, et le marbre est moins blanc,
C'est un enfant qui dort. Sur ses levres ouvertes
Voltige par instants un faible et doux soupir,
Un soupir plus leger que ceux des algues vertes
Quand, le soir, sur les mers voltige le zephyr,
Et que, sentant fl6chir ses ailes embaumes
Sous les baisers ardents de ses fleurs bien-aimees,
II boit sur ses bras nus les perles des roseaux.
C'est un enfant qui dort sous ces epais rideaux,
Un enfant de quinze ans, presque une jeune femme.
Rien n'est encor form6 dans cet etre charmant.
Le petit cherubim qui veille sur ton ame
Doute s'il est son frere ou s'il est son amant.
Ses longs cheveux e*pars la couvrent tout entiere.
La croix de son collierre pose dans sa main,
Comme pour t^moigner qu'elle a fait sa priere,
Et qu'elle va la faire en s'gveillant demain.
Elle dort, regardez : quel front noble et candide !
Partout, comme un lait pur sur une onde limpide,
Le ciel sur la beaut6 repandit la pudeur.
156 7 WO POETS.
Elle dort toute nue et la main sur son coeur.
N'est-ce pas que la nuit la rende encor plus belle ?
Que ces molles clart^s palpitent autour d'elle,
Comme si, malgr6 lui, le sombre Esprit du soir
Sentait sur ce beau corps fre'mir son manteau noir ?
This poet was Alfred de Musset, and those who loved
his strange voice, issuing from the lupanar, soon found it
fade away. He died in the height of life and power.
Whenever we think of him, we think of his own story
imitated from Boccaccio. 1 Like Pascal in that story, he
was revelling in all the delights of sensual love when, from
the flowery couch where he sat with his mistress, he un-
aware plucked a flower, and held it between his lips as he
talked ; and alas ! the poisonous belladonna crept into his
veins, and he fell a corpse, with the words of love on his
poor trembling lips.
1 Simone.
HUGO IN 1872.
ANY a long year has now elapsed since the
advent of the Romantic School filled the
aged Goethe with horror, causing him to
predict for modern Art a chaotic career and
a miserable termination ; and gray now are the beards
of the students who flocked in cloaks and slouch hats to
applaud the first performance of "Hernani" at the
national theatre. Since those merry days a new genera-
tion has arisen, and more than one mighty land-mark has
been swept away. Goethe is dead ; so are dozens of
minor kings not to speak of Louis Philippe.
The sin of December has been committed and expiated ;
the man of Sedan has been arraigned before the bar of the
world, and received as sentence the contempt and exe-
cration of all humanity ; and meantime, the exile of
Guernsey, after a period of fretful probation, has gone
back to the bosom of his beloved France. Political
changes have been fast and furious. Not less fast and
furious have been the literary revolutions. The poor
158 HUGO IN 1872.
bewildered spectator, be his proclivities political or
literary, has been hurried along so rapidly that he has
scarcely had time to get breath. There lies France, a
mighty Ruin. Beyond rises Deutschthumm, a portentous
Shadow, at which the veteran of Weimar would have
shivered. Here comes Victor Hugo, with his new poem. 1
And Chaos, such as Goethe predicted, is every way ful-
filled !
How great we hold Victor Hugo to be in reference to
his own time we need not say ; veritably, perhaps, there
is no nobler name on the whole roll of contemporary
creators ; but we surely express a very natural and a very
common sentiment when we say that every fresh approach
of this prodigy is bewildering to the intellect. We have
had so frequently during the last generation the spectacle
of reckless trading in high departments in politics more
particularly; we have beheld so constantly the collapse of
governmental windbags and social balloons of the Haus-
mann sort ; we have stood by helpless so often while the
mad Masters of the world played their wild and fantastic
tricks before high heaven, and moved sardonically from
one bloody baptism to another ; we have seen so much
evil come of empty words and vain professions, and
moral bunkum generally that we may be pardoned,
perhaps, for regarding with a certain alarm that sort of
literature which, with all its wonderful genius, may fairly
be described as reckless also reckless and blind to all
artistic consequences.
1 "L'Annee Terrible."
HUGO IN 1872. 159
"Worts ! worts ! worts !" said Sir Hugh Evans ; and
here, in all the latest efflorescence of what was once the
Romantic, and may now fairly be called the Chaotic,
School, we have Words innumerable brilliant and musical,
doubtless, but wild and aimless ; every sentence with a
cracker in its tail, till we get utterly indifferent to
crackers ; image piled on image, epithet on epithet,
phrase choking phrase ; here a catherine-wheel of ecstasy,
there a rocket of fierce appeal ; a blaze of colour every-
where, all the hues of the prism (except the perfect pro-
duct of all, which is pure white light) ; the whole forming
a dazzling, hissing, spluttering Firework of human speech.
" How very fine !" we exclaim ; " there's a rocket for you !
look at these raining silver lights ! Ah, this is something
like an exhibition !" But after it is all over, and the
sceptical ones point out to us the wretched darkened
canvas framework where the last sparks are lingering and
the last smuts falling, we are angry at our own enthusiasm,
and feel like men who have been befooled. After all,
we reflect, the place is only Cremorne ; the object merely
the amusement of a crowd of gaping pleasure-seekers
who pay so much a head. It has been a vulgar enter-
tainment at the best ; and we try to forget it, looking up,
as the smoke clears, at the silent stars. This mood, how-
ever, is still more unfair than the other. Truly enough,
we have been present at fireworks, but on a scale of tre-
mendous genius. A great master has been condescend-
ing for our amusement, and has actually worked wonders
with his materials.
160 HUGO IN 1872.
Nor is this all. When a poet like Victor Hugo, yield
ing to the daimonic influence of his own spirit, produces
for us in public all the wild resources of his fearless art,
he cannot fail to awaken in us forces which slumber at
the touch of any other living man. We may resent the
emotion as a weakness, but the emotion exists : we are
lifted by it as on the wings of the wind, and driven
" darkly fearfully afar." The scenery of the spectacle
may be tawdry, but it is outlined with a mighty hand ;
the lights may be only wretched rushlights, but what a
strange lurid gleam they shed over the rude and gigantic
towers and battlements of the scene ! It is magnificent,
although it is not nature ; it is full of infinite suggestion,
though it is not art. The power is unbounded ; the only
question that remains being, " Is the power squandered ?
Much, doubtless, is squandered ; and it is this persistent
waste which, corresponding as it does to French waste
generally, fills one with suspicion and alarm. Reckless
writing has its delights, like reckless trading, like reckless
fighting and swaggering ; but will it not lead to the same
end as these others ? Concentrated and reserved for
specific efforts, instead of being frivolously spent in every
direction, the same genius who limned Jean Valjean and
Fantine might yet rise to his due place and glory as the
^Eschylus of his generation.
After all, it is doubtful if ^schylus, doomed to live in
these latter days, would have kept his head. Even as
it was, he " let go " tremendously, and was far, very far,
from being a steady-brained bard ; his vision repeatedly
HUGO IN 1872. 161
overmastering him, and his utterance becoming thick and
confused with portentous weight of matter. His lot was
easy, however, compared with that of the modern who.
has aspired to perform ^Eschylean functions in the nine-
teenth century, by chronicling in tremendous poetic
cipher the ravings and sufferings of our Titan ; and it is,,
therefore an open question whether Victor Hugo is not a
greater than even ^schylus, in so far as he has grappled
with, and to some extent triumphed over, difficulties to
all intents and purposes insuperable.
We, for our part, find more to move our homage in
Jean Valjean than in the Prometheus. We hold that one
figure, rudely as it is drawn, to be in some respects the
very noblest conception of this generation ; and we would
look on at fireworks for ever, if once or twice such a face
as Jean's shone out with its heaven-like promise. Gilliatt,
too, is noble in the Promethean direction; and so is
Quasimodo. Indeed, we know not where to look, out of
^Eschylus, for figures conceived on the same scale, so
typical, so colossal ; looming upon us from a stage of
mighty amplitude, with a grand Greek background of
mountain and sky. They have the Greek freedom and
the Greek limitations. Jean Valjean, just as surely as
Prometheus, wears the mask, and is elevated on the
cothurnus ; whence at once his extraordinary stature and
his one fixed expression of changeless and monotonous
pain.
Would one choose rather the mobile human face and
the free motion of men on a small stage, he must enter
M
ift2 HUGO IN 1872.
the Globe Theatre and hear the wonderful acting of the
English players ; but with Victor Hugo, as with the
father of Athenian drama, we are limited to one mood
and weaned by one high-pitched chant. Even if this
were perfectly done, it would grow wearisome ; but being
far from perfectly done, being at once wearisome and
chaotic, it depresses as often as it elevates, and makes us
long for a breezier music and a fresher, kindlier move-
ment of face and limb. Nor can Victor Hugo's greatest
admirers deny the fact that he deliberately overclouds his
conceptions with verbiage, and blurs what was originally
a noble outline by subsequent attempts at elaboration.
Our first glimpse of his figures moves us most ; our
further examination of them is fraught with pain ; and
not till we have closed our eyes to contemplate the im-
pression left upon the mind, do we again feel how greatly
the figures were originally conceived. This writer
triumphs invariably by sheer force of primary pictorial
vision; triumphs generally in defiance of his own in-
capacity to paint exquisitely. Reckless (as we have ex-
pressed it) of all literary consequences, he produces works
which are at once miracles of imagination and marvels of
bad taste. Directly we have got the outline of his
picture, all further study of it is unsatisfactory : we must
fill in the tints for ourselves. Compare the "Prome-
theus " of ^schylus with " Les Miserables " of Victor
Hugo and perceive the difference between power con-
centrated and power recklessly drivelled away. The
whole episode of Jean Valjean could have been com-
HUGO IN 1872. 163
pressed into a tragedy, and, given in such quintessence,
would have been an unmixed pleasure to all time. As it
is, we doubt whether posterity will do justice to a pro-
duction so shapeless, so interminable; and this is the
more irritating, as it contains in dilution more colossal
imagery than anything we have had in Europe since the
" Divine Comedy."
Viewed simply for what he is, Hugo is very great ; but
viewed for what he might have been he is persistently
disappointing. With every fresh year of his life he has
grown two-fold in power of conception and power of
windiness ; until we now recognise in him a god of the
elements indeed, but one with more affinity to Boreas than
to Apollo. It was doubtless in an unlucky moment that
he first freed himself from rhythmic fetters. His was just
the sort of genius that needed to be bound and drilled.
Let loose on the mighty fields of prose, he knows no limit
to his wanderings, and he follows his jerky fancies from
one sentence to another, like a snipe-shooter floundering,
popping, and perspiring in an Irish marsh. He will go
epigram-hunting through a whole series of chapters, at the
most critical point of his narrative. A single word (take
" Waterloo " in a certain part of " Les Miserables ") is
Will-o'-the-wisp enough to keep him rushing through
the dark till the reader faints for very weariness.
If Goethe was, as Novalis described him to be, the
Evangelist of Economy, Victor Hugo is assuredly the
Evangelist of Waste. A prodigy of less supreme energy
would have collapsed long ago under such tremendous
164 HUGO IN 1872.
exertions ; but he, just when we expect to see him sink
altogether, springs from the solid earth with fresh vigour.
Genius, he has told us in " William Shakespeare," is not
circumscribed. Exaggeration, moreover, is the glory of
genius. " Cela c'est 1'Inconnu ! Cela c'est 1'Infini ! Si
Cortieille avait cela, il serait 1'egal d'Eschyle. Si Milton-
avait cela, il serait 1'egal d'Homere. Si Moliere avait cela,
il serait 1'egal de Shakspeare."
We have here, in a nutshell, the Apotheosis of literary
Waste ; but it would not be difficult to show that none of
Hugo's typical sublimities Homer, Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Juvenal, Percival, St. John, St. Paul, Tacitus, Dante,
Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare exhausted their ener-
gies in the fashion peculiar to the author of " L'Homme.
qui Rit." The truth is, Hugo attempts to elevate into a
system the recklessness which, in his own case, is sheer
matter of temperament. His mind is for ever pitched in
too high a tone of excitement : febrile symptoms, with
him, characterise the normal intellectual condition. He
is always high-strung, with or without provocation, evincing
that excited French power of superficial passion, whether
his themes be the wrongs of poor humanity or the loss of
a hat-box at a railway station. A cynical foreigner would
accuse him of attitudinising. He spouts and strides.
Not content with being recognised as ^Eschylus, he at
times affects the graces of La Fontaine. His humour,
nevertheless, is very grim. Nor is his satire much better.
His true mood is Ercles' mood your true nineteenth
century heroic.
PROSE AND VERSE:
A STRAY NOTE.
'HE "music of the future is at last slowly ap-
proaching its apotheosis ; since "Lohengrin"
has signally triumphed in Italy, and the
South is opening its ears to the subtle secrets
of the Teutonic Muse. The outcome of Wagner's con-
summate art is a war against mere melody and tintina-
bulation, such as have for many long years delighted the
ears of both gods and groundlings. Is it too bold, then,
to anticipate for future " Poetry " some such similar
triumph ? Freed from the fetters of pedantry on the one
hand, and escaping the contagion of mere jingle on the
other, may not Poetry yet arise to an intellectual dignity
parallel to the dignity of the highest music and philosophy ?
It may seem at a first glance over sanguine to hope so
much, at the very period when countless Peter Pipers of
Verse have overrun literature so thoroughly, robbing
poetry of all its cunning, and "picking their pecks of
166 PROSE AND VERSE.
pepper " to the delight of a literary Music Hall ; but, in
good truth, when disease has come to a crisis so enormous,
we have good reason to hope for amendment.
A surfeit of breakdowns and nigger melodies, or of
Offenbach and Herve', or of " Lays " and " Rondels," is
certain. to lead to a reaction all in good time. A vulgar
taste, of course, will always cling to vulgarity, preferring
m all honesty the melody of Gounod to the symphony of
Beethoven, and the tricksy shallow verse of a piece like
Poe's ' Bells ' to the subtly interwoven harmony of a poem
like Matthew Arnold's "Strayed Reveller." True art,
however, must triumph in the end. Sooner or later, when
the Wagner of poetry arises, he will find the world ready
to understand him ; and we shall witness some such
effect as Coleridge predicted a crowd, previously familiar
with Verse only, vibrating in wonder and delight to the
charm of oratio solula^ or loosened speech.
Already, in a few words, we have sketched out a sub-
ject for some future aesthetic philosopher or philosophic
historian. A sketch of the past history of poetry, in
England alone, would be sufficiently startling ; and surely
a most tremendous indictment might be drawn thence
against Rhyme. Glance back over the works of British
bards, from Chaucer downwards ; study the delitia
Poetarum Anglicorum. What delightful scraps of mel-
ody ! what glorious bursts of song ! Here is Chaucer,
wearing indeed with perfect grace his metrical dress;
for it sits well upon him, and becomes his hoar antiquity,
and we would not for the world see him clad in the
PROSE AND VERSE. 167
freedom of prose. Here is Spenser ; and Verse becomes
him well, fitly modulating the faery tale he has to tell.
Here are Gower, Lydgate, Dunbar, Surrey, Gascoigne,
Daniel, Drayton, and many others ; each full of dainty
devices ; none strong enough to stand without a rhyme -
prop on each side of him. Of all sorts of poetry, except
the very best, these gentlemen give us samples ; and their
works are delightful reading. As mere metrists, cunning
masters of the trick of verse, Gascoigne and Dunbar are
acknowledged masters. Take the following verses from
the " Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins : "
Then Ire came in with sturt and strife,
His hand was aye upon his knife,
He brandeist like a beir ;
Boasters, braggarts, and bargainers,
After him passit in pairs,
All boden in feir of weir . . .
Next in the dance followed Envy,
Fill'd full of feid and felony,
Hid malice and despite.
For privy hatred that traitor trembled,
Him follow'd many freik dissembled,
With fenyit wordis white ;
And flatterers unto men's faces,
And back-biters in secret places,
To lie that had delight,
With rowmaris of false leasings ;
Alas that courts of noble kings
Of them can ne'er be quite !
This, allowing for the lapse of years, still reads like
"Peter Piper" at his best; easy, alliterative, pleasant, rf
neither deep nor cunning. For this sort of thing, and
1 68 PROSE AND VERSE.
for many higher sorts of things, Rhyme was admirably
adapted, and is still admirably adapted. When, however,
a larger music and a more loosened speech was wanted,
Rhyme went overboard directly.
On the stage even, Rhyme did very well, as long as
the matter was in the Ralph Royster Doyster vein ; but
a larger soul begot a larger form, and the blank verse of
Gorboduc was an experiment in the direction of loosened
speech. How free this speech became, how by turns
loose and noble, how subtle and flexible it grew, in the
hands of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, all men know;
and rare must have been the delight of listeners whose
ears had been satiated so long with mere alliteration and.
jingle. The language of Shakespeare, indeed, must be
accepted as the nearest existing approach to the highest
and freest poetical language. Here and there rhymed
dialogue was used, when the theme was rhythmic and
not too profound; as in the pretty love scenes of A
Midsummer Nights Dream and the bantering, punning
chat of Lovers Labour's Lost. True song sparkled up in
its place like a fountain. But the level dialogue for the
most part was loosened speech. Observe the following
speech of Prospero, usually printed in lines each beginn-
ing with a capital :
This King of Naples, being an enemy to me inveterate, hearkens
my brother's suit ; which was, that he, in lieu of the premises, of
homage and I know not how much tribute, should presently ex-
tirpate me and mine out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan,
with all the honours, on my brother. Whereon, a treacherous army
levied, one midnight fated to the purpose did Antonio open the
PROSE AND VERSE. 169
gates of Milan ; and, in the dead of darkness, the ministers for the
purpose hurried thence me and thy crying self !
Tempest, act i., scene 2.
Any poet since Shakespeare would doubtless have modu-
lated this speech more exquisitely, laying special stress
on the five accented syllables of each line. Shakespeare,
however, was too true a musician. He knew when to
use careless dialogue like the above, and when to break
in with subtle modulation ; and he knew, moreover, how
the loose prose of the one threw out the music of the
other. He knew well how to inflate his lines with the
measured oratory of an offended king :
The hope and expectation of thy time
Is ruin'd ; and the soul of eveiy man
Prophetically cloth forethink thy fall.
Had /so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackney'd in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap to vulgar company ;
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession ;
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark, nor likelihood.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir,
But, like a comet, I was wonder'd at ;
That men would tell their children, This is he!
Others would say, Where? which is Bollingbroke? &c.
Henry IV. , Part I. , act iii. , scene 2.
In the hands of our great Master, indeed, blank verse
becomes almost exhaustless in its powers of expression ;
but nevertheless, prose is held in reserve, not merely as
the fitting colloquial form of the "humorous" scenes, but
170 PROSE AND VERSE.
as the appropriate loosened utterance of strong emotion.
The very highest matter of all, indeed, is sometimes de-
livered in prose, as its most appropriate medium. Take
the wonderful set of prose dialogues in the second act of
" Hamlet," and notably that exquisitely musical speech
of the Prince, beginning, "I have of late, but wherefore
I know not, lost all my mirth." Turn, also, to Act V. of
the same play, where the " mad matter " between Hamlet
and the Gravediggers, so full of solemn significance and
sound, is prose once more. The noble tragedy of
"Lear," again, owes much of its weird power to the
frequent use of broken speech. And is the following
any the less powerful or passionate because it goes to its
own music, instead of following any prescribed form ?
1 am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh ? If you poison us, do we not die ?
and if you wrong us, shall we net revenge?
Merchant of Venice, act iii. , scene I.
It would be tedious to prolong illustrations from an
author with whom everybody is supposed to be familiar.
Enough to say that the careful student of Shakespeare
will find his most common magic to lie in the frequent
use, secret or open, of the oratio soluta. And what holds
of him, holds in more or less measure of his contempora-
ries of Jonson, Marston, Webster, Massinger, Beaumont
and Fletcher, Greene, Peele, and the rest ; just as it holds
PROSE AND VERSE. i7i
of the immediate predecessor of Shakespeare, whose
"mighty line" led the way for the full Elizabethan choir
of voices. Then, as now, society had been surfeited with
tedious jingle; and only waited for genius to set it free.
It is difficult to say in what respect the following scene
differs from first-class prose ; although we have occa-
sionally an orthodox blank verse line, the bulk of the
passage is free and unencumbered ; yet its weird imagi-
native melody could scarcely be surpassed.
Duch. Is he mad, too?
Servant. Pray question him ; 111 leave you.
Bos. I am come to make thy tomb.
Duch. Ha ! my tomb ?
Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my death-bed
Gasping for breath. Dost thou perceive me such ?
Bos. Yes.
Duch. Who am I ? am not I thy duchess ?
Bos. That makes thy sleep so broken :
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
But looked to near have neither heat nor light.
Duch. Thou art very plain.
Bos. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living,
I am a tomb-maker.
Duch. And thou hast come to make my tomb?
Bos. Yes!
Duch. Let me be a little merry :
Of what stuff wilt thou make it ?
Bos. Nay, resolve me first : of what fashion ?
Duch. Why do we grow phantastical on our death-bed ?
Do we affect fashion in the grave ?
Bos. Most ambitioubly. Princes' images on the tombs
Do not lie as they were wont, seeming to pray
Up to heaven ; but with their hands under their cheeks,
As if they died of the toothache ! They are not carved
172 PROSE AND VERSE.
With their eyes fixed upon the stars ; but as
Their minds were wholly bent upon the world>
The self-same way they seem to turn their faces.
Duck. Let me know fully, therefore, the effect
Of this thy dismal preparation !
This talk fit for a charnel.
Bos. Now I shall (a coffin, cords> and a bell).
Here is a present from your princely brothers ;
And may it arrive welcome, for it brings
Last benefit, last sorrow. x
He who will carefully examine the works of our great
dramatists, will find everywhere an equal freedom ;
rhythm depending on the emotion of the situation and
the quality of the speakers, rather than on any fixed laws
of verse.
If we turn, on the other hand, to dramatists and poets
of less genius if we open the works of Waller, Cowley,
Marvell, Dryden, and even of Milton, we shall find much
exquisite music, but little perhaps of that wondrous cun-
ning familiar to us in Shakespeare and the greatest of his
contemporaries. Shallow matter, as in Waller ; ingenious
learned matter, as in Cowley; dainty matter, as in
Andrew Marvell ; artificial matter, as in Dryden ; and
puritan matter, as in Milton, were all admirably fitted
for rhyme J or some other formal sort of Verse. Rhyme,
indeed, may be said, while hampering the strong, to
1 "The Duchess of Malfy," act iv. sc. 2. The above extract is
much condensed. The reader who would fully feel the force of our
allusion, cannot do better than study Webster's great tragedy as a
whole. It utterly discards all metrical rules, and abounds in won-
derful music.
PROSE AND VERSE. 173
strengthen and fortify the weak. But, of the men we
have just named, the only genius approaching the first
class was Milton ; and so no language can be too great
to celebrate the praises of his singing.
Passage after passage, however, might be cited from
his great work, where, like Moliere's "Bourgeois Gen til
homme," he talks prose without knowing it ; and, to our
thinking, his sublimest feats of pure music are to be
found in that drama 1 where he permits himself, in the
ancient manner, the free use of loosened cadence.
Milton, however, great as he is, is a great formalist, sit-
ting " stately at the harpsichord." A genius of equal
earnestness, and of almost equal strength we mean
Jeremy Taylor wrote entirely in prose ; and it has been
well observed by a good critic that " in any one of his
prose folios there is more fine fancy and original imagery
more brilliant conceptions and glowing expressions
more new figures and new applications of old figures
more, in short, of the body and soul of poetry, than in
all the odes and epics that have since been produced in
Europe." Nor should we have omitted to mention, in
glancing at the Elizabethan drama, that the prose of
Bacon is as poetical, as lofty, and in a certain sense as
musical, as the more formal " poetry " of the best of his
contemporaries.
Very true, exclaims the reader, but what are we driving
at ? Would we condemn verse altogether as a form of-
speech, and abolish rhyme from literature for ever?
1 "Samson Agonistes."
174 PROSE AND VERSE.
Certainly not ! We would merely suggest the dangers
of Verse, and the limitations of Rhyme, and briefly show
how the highest Poetry of all answers to no fixed scho-
lastic rules, but embraces, or ought to embrace, all the
resources both of Verse generally and of what is usually,
for want of a better name, entitled Prose. On this, as on
many points, tradition confuses us. The word " Poet "
means something more than a singer of songs or weaver
of rhymes. What are we to say to a literary classifica-
tion which calls " Absalom and Achitophel " a poem, and
denies the title to " The Pilgrim's Progress ; " which in-
cludes " Cato " and the " Rape of the Lock " under the
poetical head, and excludes Sidney's " Arcadia " and the
" Vicar of Wakefield ; " which extends to Cowper, Chat-
terton, Gray, Keats, and Campbell the laurel it indig-
nantly denies to Swedenborg, Addison (who created Sir
Roger de Coverley !), Burke, Dickens, and Richter ; and
which has for so long delayed the placing of Walter
Scott's novels in their due niche just below the plays of
Shakespeare ?
Instead of being the spontaneous speech of inspired men
in musical moods, Verse has become a " form of liter-
ature," binding so-called " poets " as strictly as bonds of
brass and iron ; and the effort of most of our strong men
has been to free their limbs as much as possible, by work-
ing in the most flexible chain of all, that of blank verse.
If the reader will take the trouble to compare the early
verse of Tennyson with his later works, wherein he has
found it necessary to shake his soul free of its overmodu-
AND VERSE. 175
lated formalism, he will understand what we mean. If,
just after a perusal of even " Guinevere" and "Lucretius,"
he will read Whitman's "Centenarian's Story" or Cole-
ridge's " Wandering of Cain," his feeling of the " wonder-
fulness of prose " will be much strengthened. That feeling
may thereupon be deepened to conviction by taking up
and reading any modern poet immediately before a
perusal of the authorised English version of the " Book
of Job," " Ecclesiastes," or the wonderful "Psalms of
David."
It is really strange that Wordsworth just hit the truth,
in the masterly preface to his " Lyrical Ballads." " It
maybe safely affirmed," he says, "that there neither is,
nor can be, any essential difference between the language
of prose and metrical composition. . . . Much confusion
has been introduced into criticism by this contradistinc-
tion of Poetry and Prose, instead of the more philoso-
phical one of Poetry and Matter of Fact, or Science.
The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre ; nor is this
in truth a strict antithesis, because lines and passages of
metre so naturally occur in writing prose that it would
be scarcely possible to avoid them, even were it desir-
able." Theoretically in the right, this great poet was
often practically in the wrong ; using rhythmic speech
habitually for non-rhythmic moods, and leaving us no
example of glorious loosened speech, combining all the
effects of pure diction and of metre. After generations
of " Pope"-ridden poets, the Wordsworthian language
was " loosened " indeed ; but it sounds now sufficiently
176 PROSE AND VERSE.
formal and pedantic. His only contemporaries of equal
greatness we mean of course Scott and Byron were
sufficiently encumbered by verse. Scott soon threw off
his fetters, and rose to the feet of Shakespeare. Byron
never had the courage to abandon them altogether ; but
he played fine pranks with them in " Don Juan," and, had
he lived, would have pitched them over entirely. On the
other hand, the fine genius of Shelley and the wan genius
of Keats worked with perfect freedom in the form of
verse : first, because they neither of them possessed
much humour or human unction ; second, because their
subjects "were vague, unsubstantial, and often (as in the
"Cenci") grossly morbid ; and third, because they were
both of them overshadowed by false models, involving a
very retrograde criterion of poetic beauty. Writers of
the third or perhaps of the fourth rank, they occupy their
places, masters of metric beauty, often deep and subtle,
never very light or strong. Once more, what shall we
say to a literary classification which grants Shelley the
name of " poet " and denies it to Jean Paul ; and which
(since poetry is admittedly the highest literary form of
all, and worthy of the highest honour) sets a falsetto
singer like John Keats high over the head of a consum-
mate artist like George Sand ?
We have had it retorted, by those who disagreed with
Wordsworth's theory, that its reductio ad absurdum was
to be found in Wordsworth's own " Excursion j " that
" poem " being full of the most veritable prose that was
ever penned by man. Very good. Take a passage :
PROSE AND VERSE. 177
Ah, gentle sir! slight, if you will, the means, but spate to slight
the end, of those who did, by system, rank as the prime object of a
wise man's aim security from shock of accident, release from fear ;
and cherished peaceful days for their own sakes, as mutual life's
chief good and only reasonable felicity. What motive drew, what
impulse, I would ask through a long course of later ages, drove
the hermit to his cell in forest wide ; or what detained him, till his
closing eyes took their last farewell of the sun and stars, fast an-
chored in the desert ? Excursion, Book III.
This is not only prose, but indifferent prose ; poor, collo-
quial, ununctional ; and no amount of modulation could
make it poetry. Contrast with it another passage, of
great and familiar beauty :
I have seen a curious child, who dwelt upon a tract of inland
ground, applying to his ear the convolutions of a smooth-lipped
shell, to which, in silence hushed, his very soul listened intently.
His countenance soon brightened with joy ; for from within were
heard murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed mysterious union
with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself is to the
ear of Faith. And there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth
impart authentic tidings of invisible things, of ebb and. flow, and
ever-during power, and central peace subsisting at the heart of
endless agita'tion. Excursion, Book IV.
Prose again, but how magnificent ! poetical imagery
worthy of Jeremy Taylor ; but losing nothing by being
printed naturally. The conclusion of the whole matter,
so far as it affects the " Excursion," is that the work,
while essentially fine in substance, suffers from an
unnatural form. Read as it stands, it is rather prosy
poetry. Written properly, it would have been admitted
universally as a surpassing poe-m in prose ; although ^t
contains a great deal which, whither printed as prose or
178 PROSE AND VERSE.
verse, would be unanimously accepted as commonplace
and unpoetic.
Our store of acknowledged poetry is very precious ;
but it might be easily doubled, were we suffered to select
from our prose writers from Plato, from Boccaccio, from
Pascal, from Rousseau, from Jean Paul, from Novalis,
from George Sand, from Charles Dickens, from Nathaniel
Hawthorne the magnificent nuggets of pure poetic ore
in which these writers abound. Read Boccaccio's story
of Isabella and the Pot of Basil, or Dickens' description
of a sea-storm in " David Copperfield," or Hawthorne's
picture of Phoebe Pyncheon's bed-chamber, and confess
that, if these things be not poetry, poetry was never
written. If you still doubt that the rhythmic form is
essential to the highest poetic matter, read that wondrous
dream of the World without a Father at the end of Jean
Paul's "Siebenkas," and then peruse Heine's description
of the fading away of the Hellenic gods before the
thorn-crowned coming of Christ. What these prose frag-
ments lose in neatness of form, they gain in mystery and
glamour.
Illustrations so crowd upon us as we write, that they
threaten to swell this little paper out of all moderate
limits. We must conclude ; and what shall be our con-
clusion? This. A truly good Poet is not he who
wearies us with eternally jingling numbers ; is not Pope,
is not Poe, is not even Keats. It is he who is master of
all speech, and uses all speech fitly ; able, like Shake-
speare, to chop the prosiest of prose with Polonius and
PROSE AXD VEKSE. 179
the Clowns, as well as to sing the sweetest of songs with
Ariel and the outlaws "under the greenwood tree." It is
not Hawthorne, because his exquisite speech never once
rose to pure song ; it is Dickens, because (as could be
easily shown, had we space) he was a great master of
melody as well as a great workaday humorist. It is not
Thackeray, because he never reached that subtle modula-
tion which comes of imaginative creation ; and it is not
Shelley, because he was essentially a singer, and many of
the profoundest and delightfullest things absolutely refuse
to be sung. It is Shakespeare par excellence, and it is
Goethe par hasard. Historically speaking, however, it
may be observed that the greatest Poets have not been
those men who have used Verse habitually and neces-
sarily ; and if we glance over the names of living men of
genius, we shall perhaps not count those most poetic who
call their productions openly " poems." Meanwhile, we
wait on for the Miracle-worker who never comes the
Poet We fail as yet to catch the tones of his voice; but
we have no hesitation in deciding that his first proof of
ministry will be dissatisfaction with the limitations of Verse
as at present written.
NATURE SKETCHES.
THE HIGHLAND SEASONS.
S the year passes there is always something
new to attract one who loves Nature.
When the winds of March have blown
themselves faint, and the April heaven has
ceased weeping, there comes a rich sunny day, and all at
once the cuckoo is heard telling his name to all the hills.
Never was such a place for cuckoos in the world. The
cry comes from every tuft of wood, from every hillside,
from every projecting crag. The bird himself, so far
from courting retirement, flutters across your path at every
step, attended invariably by half a dozen excited small
birds ; alighting a few yards off, crouches down for a
moment between his slate-coloured wings; and finally,
rising again, crosses your path with his sovereign cry
" O blithe new-comer, I have heard,
I hear thee, and rejoice !"
Then, as if at a given signal, the trout leaps a foot into
1 84 THE HIGHLAND SEASONS.
the air from the glassy loch, the buds of the water-lily float
to the surface, the lambs bleat from the green and
heathery slopes ; the rooks caw from the distant rookery ;
the cock grouse screams from the distant hill-top ; and
the blackthorn begins to blossom over the nut-brown
pools of the burn. Pleasant days follow, days of high
white clouds and fresh winds whose wings are full of warm
dew. Wherever you wander over the hills, you see the
lambs leaping, and again and again it is your lot to
rescue a poor little one from the deep pool, or steep ditch,
which he has vainly sought to leap in following his
mother. If you are a sportsman, you rejoice, for there
is not a hawk to be seen anywhere, and the weasel and
foumart have not yet begun to promenade the mountains.
About this time more rain falls, preliminary to a burst of
fine summer weather, and innumerable glow-worms light
their lamps in the marshes. At last, the golden days
come, and all things are busy with their young. Fre-
quently, in the midsummer, there is drought for weeks
together. Day after day the sky is cloudless and blue ;
the mountain lake sinks lower and lower, till it seems
about to dry up entirely ; the mountain brooks dwindle
to mere silver threads for the water-ousel to fly by, and
the young game often die for lack of water ; while afar
off, with every red vein distinct in the burning light, with-
out a drop of vapour to moisten his scorching crags,
stands Ben Cruachan. By this time the hills are assum-
ing their glory : the mysterious bracken has shot up all
in a night, to cover them with a green carpet between
THE HIGHLAND SEASONS. 185
the knolls of heather, the lichen is pencilling the crags
with most delicate silver, purple, and gold, and in all the
valleys there are stretches of light yellow corn and deep
green patches of foliage. The corn-crake has come, and
his cry fills the Talleys. Walking on the edge of the
corn-field, you put up the partridges fourteen cheepers
the size of a thrush, and the old pair to lead them. From
the edge of the peat-bog the old cock grouse rises, and if
you are sharp you may see the young following the old
hen through the deep heather close by. The snipe
drums in the marsh. The hawk, having brought out his
young among the crags of Kerrera, is hovering still as
stone over the edge of the hill. Then perchance, just at
the end of July, there is a gale from the south, blowing
for two days black as Erebus with cloud and rain ; then
going up into the north-west and blowing for one day
with little or no rain ; and dying away at last with a cold
puff from the north. All at once, as it were, the sharp
sound of firing is echoed from hill to hill ; and on every
mountain you see the sportsman climbing, with his dog
ranging above and before him, the keeper following, and
the gillie lagging far behind. It is the twelfth of August.
Thenceforth, for two months at least, there are broiling
days, interspersed with storms and showers, and the firing
continues more or less from dawn to sunset.
Day after day, as the autumn advances, the tint of the
hills is getting deeper and richer, and by October, when
the beech leaf yellows and the oak leaf reddens, the dim
purples and deep greens of the heather are perfect Of
1 86 THE HIGHLAND SEASONS.
all seasons in Lome the late autumn is perhaps the most
beautiful. The sea has a deeper hue, the sky a mellower
light. There are long days of northerly wind, when every
crag looks perfect, wrought in gray and gold and silvered
with moss, when the high clouds turn luminous at the
edges, when a thin film of hoar-frost gleams over the grass
and heather, when the light burns rosy and faint over all
the hills, from Morven to Cruachan, for hours before the
sun goes down. Out of the ditch at the roadside flaps
the mallard, as you pass in the gloaming, and, standing
by the side of the small mountain loch, you see the flock
of teal rise, wheel thrice, and settle. The hills are desolate,
for the sheep are being smeared. There is a feeling oi
frost in the air, and Ben Cruachan has a crown of snow.
When dead of winter comes, how wondrous look the
hills in their white robes ! The round red ball of the sun
looks through the frosty steam. The far- off firth gleams
strange and ghostly, with a sense of mysterious distance.
The mountain loch is a sheet of blue, on which you may
disport in perfect solitude from morn to night, with the
hills white on all sides, save where the broken snow shows
the red-rusted leaves of the withered bracken. A deathly
stillness and a death-like beauty reign everywhere, and
few living things are discernible, save the hare plunging
heavily out of her form in the snow, or the rabbit scuttling
off in a snowy spray, or the small birds piping disconsolate
on the trees and dykes. Then Peter, the tame rook,
brings three or four of his wild relations to the back door
of the White House, and they stand aloof with their
THS HIGHLAND SEASONS. 187
heads cocked on one side, while he explains their
position, and suggests that they, being hard-working rooks
who never stooped to beg when a living could be got in
the fields, well deserve to be assisted. Then comes the
thaw. As the sun rises, the sunny sides of the hills are
seen marked with great black stains and winding veins,
and there is a sound in the air as of many waters. The
mountain brook leaps, swollen, over the still clinging ice,
the loch rises a foot above its still frozen crust, and a
damp steam rises into the air. The wind goes round into
the west, great vapours blow over from the Atlantic, and
there are violent storms.
LAKES AND WOODS.
WHEREVER one wanders, on hill or in valley,
there is something to fascinate and delight.
Those moorland lochs, for example! Those
deep pure pools of dew distilled from the
very heart of the mountains changing as the season
changes lying blue as steel in the bright clear light, or
turning to rich mellow brown in the times of flood. On
all of them the water-lily blows, creeping up magically
from the under-world, and covering the whole surface
with white, green, and gold its broad and well-oiled
leaves floating dry in delicious softness in the summer
sun, and its milk-white cups opening wider and wider,
while the dragon-fly settles and sucks honey from their
golden hearts. How exquisitely the hills are mirrored,
the images only a shade darker than the heights above !
Perhaps there is a faint breeze blowing, leaving here and
there large flakes of glassy calm, which it refuses to touch
for some mysterious reason, and the edges of which
LAKES AND WOODS. 189
just where wind and gleam meet calm the colour of
golden fringe. Often in midsummer, however, the loch
almost dries up in its bed ; and innumerable flies verit-
able gad-flies with stings make the brink of the water
unpleasant, and chase one over the hills. In such
weather, there is nothing for it but to make off to the fir-
woods, and there to dream away the summer's day, with
the bell-shaped flowers around you in one gleaming
sheet
" Blue as a little patch of fallen sky,"
and the primroses fringing the tree-roots with pallid
beauty that whitens in the shadow. The wood is
delicious ; not too dark and cold, but fresh and scented,
with open spaces of green sward and level sunshine.
The fir predominates, dark and enduring in its loveliness;
but there are dwarf oaks, too, with twisted limbs and thick
branches, and the mountain ash is there with its in-
numerable beads of crimson coral, and the fluttering
aspen, and the birch, whose stem is pencilled with
threads of frosty silver, and the thorns snowed over with
delicate blossoms.
THE MOOR.
iHE great glory of Lome is the open Moor,
where the heather blows from one end of
the year to the other. There is something
sea-like in the moor, with its long free
stretch for miles and miles, its great rolling hills, its lovely
solitude, broken only by the cry of sheep and the scream
of birds. Lakes and water-lilies are to be found far
south. There are richer woods in Kent than any in the
Highlands. But the moors of the western coast of Scot-
land stand alone, and the moors of Lome are finest of all.
Nowhere in the world, perhaps, does nature present a
scene of greater beauty than that you may behold, with
the smell of thyme about your feet, and the mountain bee
humming in your ears, from any of the sea-commanding
heights of Lome. Turn which way you will, the glorious
moors stretch before you; wave after wave of purple
heather, broken only by the white farm with its golden
fields, and the mountain loch high up among the hills ;
THE MOOR. 191
while the arms of the sea steal winding, now visible, now
invisible, on every side, and the far-off Firth, with its
gleaming sail, stretches from the white lighthouse of
Lismore far south to Isla and its purple caves. Then the
clouds ! White and high, they drift overhead,
" Slow traversing the blue ethereal field,"
and you can watch their shadows moving on the moor for
miles and miles, just as if it were the sea ! Nor is the
scene barren of such little touches as make English land-
scape sweet. There are bees humming everywhere, and
skylarks singing, and the blackbird whistling wherever
there is a bush, .and the swift wren darting in and out of
the stone dykes, like a swift-winged insect. There are
flowers too little unobtrusive things, flowers of the
heath primroses, tormentil, bog-asphodel, and many
others. But nothing is purchased at the expense of free-
dom. All is fresh and free as the sea. After familiarity
with the moor you turn from the macadamised road with
disgust, and will not even visit the woods till the fear of a
sun-stroke compels you. Did we compare the moor to
the sea ? Yes ; but you yourself are like an inhabitant
thereof; not a mere sailor on the surface, but a real
haunter of the deep. What hours of indolence in the
deep heather, so long as the golden weather lasts 1
THE SHIELINGS.
'HEREVER you wander over the moors, you
will see piteous little glimpses of former
cultivation the furrow marks which have
existed for generations. Wherever there is a
bit of likely ground on the hillside, be sure that it has "been
ploughed, or rather dug with the spade. Standing on any
one of the great heights, you see on every side of you the
green slopes marked with the old ridges ; and you
remember that Lome in former days was. a thickly popu-
lated district. We have heard it stated, and even by so
high an authority as the Duke of Argyll, that these marks
do not necessarily indicate a higher degree of prosperity
than exists in the same district at present. We are not so
sure of that. Nor may the husbandry have been so rude ;
since the spade must have gone deep to leave its traces
so long ; and busy hands can do much even to supply the
want of irrigation. Attached to some of the existing
crofts, which work entirely by hand labour and till the
THE SHIELINGS. 193
most unlikely ground, we have seen some of the best bits
of crop in the district. Be that as it may, the fact remains
that once upon a time these hills of heather swarmed with
crofts, and were covered with little fields of grain.
Remote, too, among the hills, in the most lonely situa-
tions, distant by long stretches of bog and moorland from
any habitation, you will find here and there, if you wander
so far, a Ruin in the midst of green slopes and heathery
bournes. This is the ruin of the old Shieling, which in
former days so resounded with mirth and song.
" O sad is the shieling,
Gone are its joys ! "
as Robb Dunn sings in the Gaelic. Hither, ere sheep-
farming was invented, came the household of the peasant
in the summer time, with sheep and cattle ; and here,
while the men returned to look after matters at home, the
women and young people abode for weeks, tending the
young lambs and kids, watching the milch cow, and making
butter and cheese that were rich with the succulent juices
of the surrounding herbage. Then the milk-pan foamed,
the distaff went, the children leapt for joy with the lambs ;
and in the evening the girls tried charms, and learned love-
songs, and listened to the tales of their elders, with dreamy
eyes. Better still, there was real love-making to be had ;
for some of the men remained, generally unmarried ones,
and others came and went ; and somehow in those long
summer nights, it was pleasant to sit out in the flood of
moonlight, and whisper, and perhaps kiss, while the lambs
io 4 THE SHIELINGS.
bleated from the pens, and the silent hills slept shadowy
in the mystic light. No wonder that Gaelic literature
abounds in "shieling songs," and that most of these are
ditties of love ! The shieling was rudely built, as a mere
temporary residence, but it was snug enough when the
peat bog was handy. In the wilds of the Long Island it,.
i s still used in the old manner, and the Wanderer has many
a time crept into it for shelter when shooting wild-fowl.
The Norwegian saeter is precisely the same as the Scottish
shieling, and still, as every traveller knows, flourishes in
all its glory.
We are no melancholy mourner of the past, rather a
sanguine believer in progress and the future ; but alas !
whenever we look on the lonely ruins among the hills,
we feel inclined to sing a Dirge. The " Big Bed in the
Wilderness," as the Gaelic bard named the saeter and
pasture, is empty now, empty and silent, and the children
that shouted in it are buried in all quarters of the earth ;
ay and many had reason to curse the cruelty of man ere
they died, for they were driven forth across the waters
from all that they loved. Some lived on, to see the
change darker and darker, and then were carried on
handyspokes, in the old Scottish fashion, to the grave.
Many a long summer day could we spend in meditation
over the places where they sleep.
DUNOLLIE CASTLE.
|HE ruins of Dunollie Castle stand on the very
point of the promontory to the north-west of
Oban, and form one of the finest fore-
grounds possible for all the scenery of the
Firth. There is no old castle in Scotland quite so beauti-
fully situated. On days of glassy calm, every feature of
it is mirrored in the sea, with browns and grays that
ravish the artistic eye. There is not too much of it left :
just a wall or two, lichen-covered and finely broken. Seen
from a distance, it is always a perfect piece of colour, in
fit keeping with the dim and doubtful sky ; but in late
autumn, when the woods of the promontory have all their
glory fir-trees of deep black green, intermixed with russet
and golden birches Dunoliie is something to watch for
hours and wonder at. The day is dark, but a strong
silvern light is in the air, a light in which all the blue
shadows deepen, while far off in the west, over green
Kerrera, is one long streak of faint violet, above which
196 DUNOLLIE CASTLE.
gather strongly defined clouds in a brooding slate-coloured
mass. On such a day and such days are numberless in
the Highland autumn the silvern light strikes strong on
Dunollie, bringing out every line and tint of the noble
ruin, while the sea beneath, with the merest shadow of
the cold faint wind upon it, shifts its tints like a sword-,
blade in the light, from soft steel-gray to deep slumbrous
blue. It only wants Morven in the background, dimly
purple with dark plum-coloured stains, and the swathes of
white mist folded round the high peaks, to complete the
perfect picture.
RAIN AND RAINBOWS.
HE visitor to the west coast of Scotland is
doubtless often disappointed by the absence
of bright colours and brilliant contrasts, such
as he has been accustomed to in Italy and
in Switerzland, and he goes away too often with a male-
diction on the mist and the rain, and an under-murmur of
contempt for Scottish scenery, such as poor Montalembert
sadly expressed in his life of the Saint of lona. But
what many chance visitors despise, becomes to the living
resident a constant source of joy. Those infinitely varied
grays those melting, melodious, dimmest of browns
those silvery gleams through the fine neutral tint of cloud !
One gets to like strong sunlight least ; it dwarfs the
mountains so, and destroys the beautiful distance. Dark,
dreamy days, with the clouds clear and high and the wind
hushed ; or wild days with the dark heavens blowing past
like the rush of a sea, and the shadows driving like mad things
over the long grass and the marshy pool ; or sad days of
I 9 8 RAIN AND RAINBOWS.
rain, with dim pathetic glimpses of the white and weeping
orb ; or nights of the round moon, when the air throbs
with strange electric light, and the hill is mirrored dark as
ebony in the glittering sheet of the loch ; or nights of the
Aurora and the lunar rainbow : on days and nights like
those is the Land of Lome beheld in its glory. Even,
during those superb sunsets, for which its coasts are famed
sunsets of fire divine, with all the tints of the prism
only west and east kindle to great brightness ; while the
landscape between reflects the glorious light dimly and
gently, interposing mists and vapours, with dreamy
shadows of the hills. These bright moments are ex-
ceptional ; yet is it quite fair to say so when, a dozen
times during the rainy day, the heart of the grayness
bursts open, and the Rainbow issues forth in complete
semicircle, glittering in glorious evanescence, with its
dim ghost fluttering faintly above it on the dark heaven :
" My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky ! "
The Iris comes and goes, and is, indeed, like the sunlight,
" a glorious birth " wherever it appears ; but for rainbows
of all degrees of beauty, from the superb arch of delicately
defined hues that spans a complete landscape for minutes
together, to the delicate dying thing that flutters for a
moment on the skirt of the storm-cloud and dies to the
sudden sob of the rain, I know no corner of the earth to
equal Lome and the adjacent Isles.
DROUGHT IN THE HIGHLANDS.
E have not had a drop of rain for a fortnight.
The days have been bright and short, and
the nights starry and bright, with frequent
flashes of the Aurora. It is the gloaming of
the year
' ' To russet brown
The heather fadeth. On the treeless hill,
O'er-rusted with the red decaying bracken,
The sheep crawl slow."
This is the brooding hush that precedes the stormy
wintry season, and all is inexpressibly beautiful. The
wind blows chill and keen from the north, breaking the
steel-gray waters of the Firth into crisp-white waves ; and
though it is late afternoon, the western sky hangs dark
and chill over the mountains of Mull, while the east is
softly bright, with clouds tinted to a faint crimson.
There is no brightness on any of the hills save to the
east, where, suffused with a roseate flush, stands Ben
200 DROUGHT IN THE HIGHLAND?.
Cruachan, surrounded by those lesser heights, beautifully
christened the " Shepherds of Loch Etive," a space of
daffodil sky just above him and them, and then, a mile
higher, like a dome, one magnificent rose-coloured cloud.
Thus much it is possible to describe, but not so the
strange vividness of the green tints everywhere, and the
overpowering sense of height and distance. Though
every fissure and cranny of Cruachan seems distinct in
the red light, the whole mountain seems great, dreamy,
and glorified. Walking on one of the neighbouring hills
the Wanderer seems lifted far up into the air, into a still
world, where the heart beats wildly and the eyes grow
dizzy looking downward on the mother-planet.
In autumn, and even in winter, stillness like this, dead
brooding calm, sometimes steals over Lome for weeks
together, and all the colours deepen and brighten ; but at
such times as at all others, the finest effects are those of
the rain-cloud and the vapour, and no overpowering sense
of sunlight comes to trouble the vision.
THE ASCENT OF CRUACHAN.
OLLOWING the road along the Pass of Awe,
you reach Tyanuilt, whence the ascent of
Ben Cruachan is tolerably easy. Mountain
climbing is always glorious, be the view ob-
tained at the highest point ever so unsatisfactory ; for do
not pictures arise at every step, beautiful exceedingly,
even if no more complex than a silver-lichened boulder
half buried in purple heather and resting against the light
blue mountain air ; or a mountain pool fringed with
golden mosses and green cresses, with blue sky in it and
a small white cloud like a lamb ; or a rowan tree with
berries red as coral, sheltering the mossy bank where the
robin sits in his nest? He who climbs Cruachan will see
not only these small things, but he will behold a series of
rag-pictures of unapproachable magnificence corriess,
red and rugged, in the dark fissures of which snow lingers
even as late as June, pyramids and minarets of granite,
202 THE ASCENT OF CRUACHAN.
glistering in the sunshine through the moisture of their
own dew, stained by rain and light into darkly beautiful
hues, and speckled by innumerable shadows from the
passing clouds. There is a certain danger in roaming
among the precipices near the summit, as the hill is sub-
ject to sudden mists, sometimes so dense that the pedes-
trian can scarcely see a foot before him \ but in summer
time, when the heights are clear as amber for days
together, the peril is not worth calculating. On a fine
clear day, the view from the summit which is a veritable
red ridge or cone, not a flat table-land like that of some
mountains is very peculiar. It can scarcely be called
picturesque, for there is no power in the eye to fix on any
one picture ; and on the other hand, to liken it to a map
of many colours would be conveying a false impression.
The effect is more that of a map than of a picture, and
more like the sea than either. The spectator loses the
delicate aesthetic sense, and feels his whole vision
swallowed up in immensity. The mighty waters of Awe
brood sheer below him, under the dark abysses of the
hill, with the islands like dark spots upon the surface.
Away to the eastward rise peaks innumerable, mountain
beyond mountain, from the moor of Rannoch to Ben
Lomond, some dark as night with shadow, others dim as
dawn from sheer distance, all floating limitless against a
pink horizon and brooded over by a heaven of most
delicate blue, fading away into miraculous tints, and filling
the spirit with intensest awe ; while in the west is visible
the great ocean, stretching arms of shining sheen into the
THE ASCENT OF CRUACHAN. 203
wildly broken coast, brightening around the isles that
sleep upon its breast Tiree, Coll, Rum, Canna, Skye,
and fading into the long vaporous line where the setting
sun sinks into the underworld. Turn where it may, the
eye is satisfied, overcharged. Such another panorama of
lake, mountain, and ocean is not to be found in the High-
lands. As for Lome, you may now behold it indeed,
gleaming with estuaries and lakes : Loch Linnhe, the
Bay of Oban, and the mighty Firth as far south as Jura,
and, northward over the moors, a divine glimpse of the
head of Loch Etive, blue and dreamy as a maiden's eyes.
The head swims, the eyes dazzle. Are you a god, that
you should survey these wonders in such supremacy ?
Look which way you will, you behold immensity,
measureless ranges of mountains, measureless tracts of
inland water, the measureless ocean, lighted here and
there by humanity in the shape of some passing sail
smaller to view than a sea-bird's wing. For some little
time at least the spectator feels that spiritual exaltation
which excludes perfect human perception; he yields to a
wave of awful emotion, and bows before it as before God.
He can be aesthetic again when he once more descends
to the valleys.
A DAY AFLOAT.
)T was a good day, and a long one. The wind
came and went, shifting between west and
west-by-south, often failing altogether ; and
the rain fell, more or less, constantly. We
made slow work of it, though we carried our gaff-topsail,
and though now and then we got a squall which shook
and buried the boat. By three in the afternoon we were
only off the mouth of Loch Aline, fifteen miles from our
starting-place, floating on the slack tide, and hardly mak-
ing an inch of way. But, nevertheless, it was a day to be
remembered. Never did the Wanderer feast his vision on
finer effects of vapour and cloud ; never did he see the
hills possessed with such mystic power and meaning.
The " grays" were everywhere, of all depths, from the
dark slumberous gray of the unbroken cloud-mass on the
hill-top to the silvery gray of the innumerable spears of
the rain ; and there were bits of brown, too, when the
light broke out, which would have gladdened the inmost
A DAY AFLOAT. 205
soul of a painter. One little picture, all in a sort of
neutral tint, abides in his memory as he writes. It was
formed by the dark silhouette of Ardtornish Castle and
promontory, with the winter sky rent above it; and
a flood of white light behind it just reaching the stretch of
sea at the extremity of the point, and turning it to the
colour of glistening white-lead. That was all ; and the
words convey little or nothing of what I saw. But the
effect was ethereal in the extreme, finer by far than that of
any moonlight
CANNA AND SKYE.
ANNA never looked more beautiful than that
day her cliffs were wreathed into wondrous
forms and tinctured with deep ocean-dyes,
and the slopes above were rich and mellow
in the light. Beyond her, was Rum, always the same, a
dark beauty with a gentle heart. But what most fasci-
nated the eye was the southern coast of Skye, lying on the
starboard bow as we were beating northward. The Isle
of Mist 1 was clear on that occasion, not a vapour lingering
on the heights, and although it must be admitted that
much of its strange and eerie beauty was lost, still we had
a certain gentle loveliness to supply its place. Could that
be Skye, the deep coast full of rich warm under-shadow,
the softly-tinted hills, " nakedly visible without a cloud,"
sleeping against the " dim sweet harebell-colour " of the
heavens? Where was the thunder-cloud, the weeping
T This name is purely Scandinavian Sky signifying "cloud;"
whence, too, our o\*n word " sky," the under, or vapour, heaven.
CANNA AND SKYE. 207
shadows of the cirrus, the white flashes of cataracts through
the black smoke of rain on the mountain-side? Were
those the Cuchullins the ashen-gray heights turning
to solid amber at the peaks, with the dry seams of torrents
softening in the sunlight to golden shades? Why, Blaven,
with its hooked forehead, would have been bare as Prim-
rose Hill, save for one slight white wreath of vapour, that,
glittering with the hues of the prism, floated gently away
to die in the delicate blue. Dark were the headlands, yet
warmly dark, projecting into the sparkling sea and casting
summer shades. Skye was indeed transformed, yet its
beauty still remained spiritual, still it kept the faint feeling
of the glamour. It looked like witch-beauty, wondrous
and unreal. You felt that an instant might change it,
and so it might and did. Ere we had sailed many miles
away, Skye was clouded over with a misty woe, her face
was black and wild, she sobbed in the midst of the dark-
ness with the voice of falling rain and moaning winds.
CELTIC SUPERSTITION:
A YARN AFLOAT.
BEGAN talking to the steersman about super-
stition. It was a fine eerie situation for a talk
on that subject, and the still summer night
with the deep dreary murmur of the sea,
powerfully stimulated the imagination.
"I say, Hamish," said the Wanderer, abruptly, "do
you believe in ghosts ? "
Hamish puffed his pipe leisurely for some time before
replying.
"I'm of the opinion," he replied at last, beginning
with the expression habitual to him " I'm of the opin-
ion that there's strange things in the world. I never saw
a ghost, and I don't expect to see one. If the Scripture
says true I mean the Scripture, no' the ministers there
has been ghosts seen before my time, and there may be
some seen now. The folk used to say there was a Ben-
shee in Skipness Castle a Ben-shee with white hair and
CELTIC SUPERSTITION. 209
a mutch like an old wife and my father saw it with his
own een before he died. They're curious people over
in Barra, and they believe stranger things than that."
"In witchcraft, perhaps ? "
"There's more than them believes in witchcraft.
When I was a young man on board the Petrel (she's one
of Middleton's fish-boats, and is over at Howth now) the
winds were that wild, there seemed sma' chance of win-
ning name before the new year. Weel, the skipper was a
Skye man, and had great faith in an auld wife who lived
alone up on the hillside ; and without speaking a word
to any o' us, he went up to bid wi' her for a fair wind.
He crossed her hand wi' siller, and she told him to bury
a live cat wi' its head to the airt wanted, and then to
steal a spoon from some house, and get awa'. He buried
the cat, and he stole the spoon. It's curious, but sure
as ye live, the wind changed that night into the north-
west, and never shifted till the Petrel was in Tobermory."
" Once let me be the hero of an affair like that," cried
the Wanderer, " and I'll believe in the devil for ever after.
But it was a queer process."
" The ways o' God are droll," returned Shaw seriously.
" Some say that in old times the witches made a cause-
way o' whales from Rhu Hunish to Dunvegan Head.
There are auld wives o'er yonder yet who hae the name
of going out wi' the Deil every night in the shape o' blue
hares, and I kenned a man who thought he shot one wi'
a siller button. I dinna believe all I hear, but I dinna
just disbelieve, either. Ye've heard o' the Evil Eye ? "
210 CELTIC SUPERSTITION.
" Certainly."
" When we were in Canna, I noticed a fine cow and
calf standing by a house near the kirkyard, and I said to
the wife as I passed (she was syning her pails at the door),
1 Yen's a bonnie bit calf ye hae with the auld cow.' ' Ay,'
says she, ' but I hope ye didna look at them o'er keen''
meaning, ye ken, that maybe I had the Evil Eye. I
laughed and told her that was a thing ne'er belong't to
me nor mine. That minds me of an auld wife near Loch
Boisdale, who had a terrible bad name for killing kye and
doing mischief on com. She was gleed, 1 and had black
hair. One day, when the folk were in kirk, she reached
o'er her hand to a bairn that was lying beside her, and
touched its cheek wi' her finger. Weel, that moment
the bairn (it was a lassie, and had red hair) began greet-
ing and turning its head from side to side like folk in
fever. It kept on sae for days. But at last anither
woman, who saw what was wrang, recommended eight
poultices o' kyedung (one every night) from the innermost
kye i' the byre. They gied her the poultices, and the
lassie got weel."
"That was as strange a remedy as the buried cat,"
observed the Wanderer; "but I did not know such
people possessed the power of casting the trouble on
human beings."
Hamish puffed his pipe, and looked quietly at the sky.
It was some minutes before he spoke again.
" There was a witch family," he said at last, " in Loch
1 She squinted.
CELTIC SUPERSTITION. 211
Carron, where I was born and reared. They lived their
lane 1 close to the sea. There were three o' them the
mither, a son, and a daughter. The mither had great
lumps all o'er her arms, and sae had the daughter ; but
the son was a clean-hided lad, and he was the cleverest.
Folk said he had the power o' healing the sick, but only
in ae way, by transferring the disease to him that brought
the message seeking help. Once, I mind, a man was
sent till him on horseback, bidding him come and heal
a fisher who was up on the hill and like to dee. The
warlock mounted his pony, and said to the man, " Draw
back a bit, and let me ride before ye." The man,
kenning nae better, let him pass, and followed ahint.
They had to pass through a glen, and in the middle o'
the glen an auld wife was standing at her door. When
she saw the messenger riding ahint the warlock, she
screeched out to him as loud as she could cry " Ride,
ride, and reach the sick lad first, or ye're a dead man."
At that the warlock looked black as thunder, and
galloped his pony ; but the messenger being better
mounted, o'ertook him fast, and got first to the sick
man's bedside. In the night the sick man died. Ye
see, the warlock had nae power o' shifting the complaint
but on him that brought the message, and no on him if
the warlock didna reach the house before the messenger."
Here the Viking emerged with the whisky-bottle, and
Hamish Shaw wet his lips. We were gliding gently
along now, and the hills of Uist were still dimly visible.
1 7 heir lane alone.
2i2 CELTIC SUPERSTITION;
The deep roll of the sea would have been disagreeable,
perhaps, to the uninitiated, but we were hardened. While
the Viking sat by, gazing gloomily into the darkness, the
Wanderer pursued his chat with Shaw, or, rather, incited
the latter to further soliloquies.
11 Do you know, Hamish," he said, slyly, " it seems to*
me very queer that Providence should suffer such pranks
to be played, and should entrust that marvellous power
to such wretched hands. Come, now, do you actually
fancy these things have happened ? "
But Hamish Shaw was not the man to commit himself.
He was a philosopher.
" I'm of the opinion," he replied, " that it would be
wrong to be o'er positive. Providence does as queer
things, whiles, 1 as either man or woman. There was a
strange cry, like the whistle of a bird, heard every night
close to the cottage before Wattie Macleod's smack was
lost on St. John's Point, and Wattie and his son drowned;
then it stoppit. Whiles it comes like a sheep crying,
whiles like the sound o' pipes. I heard it mysel' when
my brither Angus died. He had been awa' o'er the
country, and his horse had fallen and kicket him on the
navel. But before we heard a word about it, the wife
and I were on the road to Angus' house, and were coming
near the burn that parted his house from mine. It was
night, and bright moonlight. The wife was heavy at the
time, and suddenly she grippit me by the arm and whis-
pered, "Wheesht! do you hear?" I listened, and at
1 At times.
CELTIC SUPERSTITION. 21 ?
first heard nothing. "Wheesht, again!" says she; and
then I heard it plain like the low blowing o' the bag-
pipes, slowly and sadly, wi' nae tune. " O, Hamish,"
said the wife, " who, can it be ? " I said naething, but I
felt my back all cold, and a sharp thread running through
my heart. It followed us along as far as Angus' door,
and then it went awa'. Angus was sitting by the fire ;
they had just brought him hame, and he told us o' the
fall and the kick. He was pale, but didna think much
was wrang wi' him, and talked quite cheerful and loud.
The wife was sick and frighted, and they gave her a
dram ; they thought it was her trouble, for her time was
near, but she was thinking o' the sign. Though we
knew fine that Angus wouldna live, we didna dare to
speak o' what we had heard. Going hame that nicht,
we heard it again, and in a week he was lying in his
grave."
The darkness, the hushed breathing of the sea, the
sough of the wind through the rigging, greatly deepened
the effect of this tale ; and the Viking listened intently,
as if he expected every moment to hear a similar sound
presaging his own doom. Hamish Shaw showed no
emotion. He told his tale as mere matter-of-fact, with
no elocutionary effects, and kept his eye to windward all
the time, literally looking out for squalls.
" For God's sake," cried the Viking, " choose some
other subject of conversation. We are in bad enough
plight already, and don't want any more horrors."
"What! afraid of ghosts?"
214 CELTIC SUPERSTITION.
" No, dash it !" returned the Viking ; " but but as
sure as I live, there's storm in yon sky !"
The look of the sky to windward was certainly not im-
proving ; it was becoming smoked over with thick mist.
Though we were now only a few miles off the Uist coast,
the loom of the land was scarcely visible ; the vapours' 1
peculiar to such coasts seemed rising and gradually wrap-
ping everything in their folds. Still, as far as we could
make out from the stars, there was no carry in the sky.
" I'll no' say," observed Hamish, taking in everything
at a glance " I'll no' say but there may be wind ere
morning ; but it will be wind off the shore, and we hae the
hills for shelter."
" But the squalls ! the squalls !" cried the Viking.
" The land is no' so high that ye need to be scared.
Leave you the vessel to me, and I'll take her through it
snug. But we may as weel hae the third reef in the
mainsail, and mak' things ready in case o' need."
This was soon done. The mainsail was reefed, and
the small jib substituted for the large one ; and after a
glance at the compass, Hamish again sat quiet at the
helm.
"Barra," he said, renewing our late subject of talk,
"is a great place for superstition, and sae is Uist. The
folk are like weans, simple and kindly. There is a Ben-
shee weel-known at the head o' Loch Eynort, and anither
haunts one o' the auld castles o' the great Macneil o'
Barra. I hae heard, too, that whiles big snakes, wi'
manes like horses, come up into the fresh-water lakes and
CELTIC SUPERSTITION. 215
lie in wait to devour the flesh o* man. In a fresh-water loch
at the Harris, there was a big beast like a bull, that came
up ae day and ate half the body o' a lad when he was
bathing. They tried to drain the loch to get at the beast,
but there was o'er muckle water. Then they baited a
great hook wi' the half o' a sheep, but the beast was o'er
wise to bite. Lord, it was a droll fishing ! They're a
curious people. But do ye no' think, if the sea and the
lochs were drainit dry, there would be all manner o'
strange animals that nae man kens the name o' ? There's
a kind o' water-world nae man kens what it's like for
the drown'd canna see, and if they could see, they
couldna speak. Ay !" he added, suddenly changing the
current of his thoughts, " ay ! the wind's rising, and we're
no' far off the shore, for I can smell the land."
By what keenness of sense Hamish managed to " smell
the land " we had no time just then to inquire, for all
our wits were employed in looking after the safety of the
Tern. She was bowling along under three-reefed main-
sail and stormjib, and was getting just about as much as
she could bear. With the rail under to the cockpit, the
water lapping heavily against the cooming, and ever and
anon splashing right over in the cockpit itself, she made
her way fast through the rising sea. In vain we strained
our eyes to discern the shore
"The blinding mist came down and hid the land
As far as eye could see !"
All at once the foggy vapours peculiar to the country
216 CELTIC SUPERSTITION.
had steeped everything in darkness ; we could guess from
the helm where the land lay, but how near it was we
were at a loss to tell. What with the whistling wind, the
darkness, the surging sea, we felt quite bewildered and
amazed.
The Wanderer looked at his watch, and it was pa^t
midnight. Even if the fog cleared off, it would not be
safe to take Loch Boisdale without good light, and there
was nothing for it but to beat about till sunrise. This
was a prospect not at all comfortable, for we might even
then be in the neighbourhood of dangerous rocks, and
if the wind rose any higher, we should be compelled to
run before the wind, God knew whither. Meantime, it
was determined to stand off a little to the open, in dread
of coming to over-close quarters with the shore.
PI ERRING FISHERS.
BUSY sight indeed is Loch Boisdale or
Stornoway in the herring season. Smacks,
open boats, skiffs, wherries, make the
narrow waters shady ; not a creek, how-
ever small, but holds some boat in shelter. A fleet,
indeed ! the Lochleven boat from the east coast, with
its three masts and three huge lugsails ; the Newhaven
boat with its two lugsails; the Isle of Man "jigger;"
the beautiful Guernsey runner, handsome as a racing
yacht, and powerful as a revenue-cutter ; besides all the
numberless fry of less noticeable vessels, from the fat
west-country smack with its comfortable fittings down to
the miserable Arran wherry. 1 Swarms of seagulls float
1 The Arran wherry, now nearly extinct, is a wretched-looking
thing without a bowsprit, but with two strong masts. Across the fore-
mast is a bulkhead, and there is a small locker for blankets and bread.
In the open space between bulkhead and locker birch tops are
thickly strewn for a bed, and for covering there is a huge woollen
waterproof blanket ready to be stretched out on spars. Close to the
218 HERRING FISHERS.
everywhere, and the loch is so oily with the fishy deposit
that it requires a strong wind to ruffle its surface.
Everywhere on the shore and hill-sides, and on the
numberless islands, rises the smoke of camps. Busy
swarms surround the curing-houses and the inn, while the
beach is strewn with fishermen lying at length, and
dreaming till work-time. In the afternoon, the fleet
slowly begins to disappear, melting away out into the
ocean, not to re-emerge till long after the grey of the
next dawn.
Did you ever go out for a night with the herring
fishers ? If you can endure cold and wet, you would en-
joy the thing hugely, especially if you have a boating
mind. Imagine yourself on board a west-country smack,
running from Boisdale Harbour with the rest of the fleet.
It is afternoon, and there is a nice fresh breeze from the
south-west. You crouch in the stern by the side of the
helmsman, and survey all around you with the interest of
a novice. Six splendid fellows, in various picturesque
attitudes, lounge about the great, broad, open hold, and
another is down in the forecastle boiling coffee. If you
were not there, half of these would be taking their sleep
down below. It seems a lazy business, so far j but wait !
By sunset the smack has run fifteen miles up the coast,
and is going seven or eight miles east of Ru Hunish
lighthouse ; many of the fleet still keep her company,
mast lies a huge stone, and thereon a stove. The cable is of
heather rope, the anchor wooden, and the stock a stone* Rude and
ill-found as these boats are, they face weather before which any
ordinary yachtsman would quail,
HERRING FISHERS. 219
steering thick as shadows in the summer twilight. How
the gulls gather yonder ! That dull plash ahead of the
boat was caused by the plunge of a solan goose. That
the herrings are hereabout, and in no small numbers, you
might be sure, even without that bright phosphorescent
light which travels in patches on the water to leeward.
Now is the time to see the lounging crew dart into sudden
activity. The boat's head is brought up to the wind, and
the sails are lowered in an instant. 1 One man grips the
helm, another seizes the back rope of the net, a third the
" skunk " or body, a fourth is placed to see the buoys
clear and heave them out, the rest attend forward, keep-
ing a sharp look-out for other nets, ready, in case the
boat should run too fast, to steady her by dropping the
anchor a few fathoms into the sea. When all the nets are
out, the boat is brought bow on to the net, the " swing "
(as they call the rope attached to the net) secured to the
smack's "bits," and all hands then lower the mast as
quickly as possible. The mast lowered, secured, and
made all clear for hoisting at a moment's notice, and the
candle lantern set up in the iron stand made for the
purpose of holding it, the crew leave one look-out on
deck, with instructions to call them up at a fixed hour,
and turn in below for a nap in their clothes : unless it
so happens that your brilliant conversation, seasoned with
a few bottles of whisky, should tempt them to steal a
1 There is fashion everywhere. An east-country boat always
shoots across the wind, of course carrying some sail ; while a west
country boat shoots before the wind, with bare poles.
220 HERRING FISHERS.
few more hours from the summer night. Day breaks,
and every man is on deck. All hands are busy at work,
taking the net in over the bow, two supporting the body,
the rest hauling the back rope, save one who draws the
net into the hold, and another who arranges it from side
to side in the hold to keep the vessel even. Tweet !
tweet ! that thin cheeping sound, resembling the razor-
like call of the bat, is made by the dying herrings at the
bottom of the boat. The sea to leeward, the smack's
hold, the hands and arms of the men, are gleaming like
silver. As many of the fish as possible are shaken loose
during the process of hauling in, but the rest are left in
the net until the smack gets to shore. Three or four
hours pass away in this wet and tiresome work. At last,
however, the nets are all drawn in, the mast is hoisted,
the sail set, and while the cook (there being always one
man having this branch of work in his department)
plunges below to prepare breakfast, the boat makes for
Loch Boisdale. Everywhere on the water, see the fishing-
boats making for the same bourne, blessing their luck or
cursing their misfortune, just as the event of the night
may have been. All sail is set if possible, and it is a
wild race to the market. Even when the anchorage is
reached, the work is not quite finished : for the fish has
to be measured out in " cran " baskets, 1 and delivered at
the curing station. By the time that the crew have got
their morning dram, have arranged the nets snugly in the
1 A cran holds rather more than a herring barrel, and the average
value of a cran measure of herrings is about one pound sterling.
HERRING FISHERS. 221
stern, and have had some herrings for dinner, it is time
to be off again to the harvest field. Half the crew turn
in for sleep, while the other half hoist sail and conduct
the vessel out to sea.
Huge, indeed, are the swarms that inhabit Boisdale,
afloat or ashore, during this harvest ; but, partly because
each man has business on hand, and partly because there
is plenty of sea-room, there are few breaches of the peace.
On Saturday night the public-house is crowded, and now
and then the dull roar ceases for a moment as some
obstreperous member is shut out summarily into the
dark. Besides the regular fishermen and people em-
ployed at the curing stations, there are the herring-gutters
women of all ages, many of whom follow singly the
fortunes of the fishers from place to place. Their
business is to gut and salt the fish, which they do with
wonderful dexterity and skill.
Hideous, indeed, looks a group of these women
defiled from head to foot with herring garbage, and
laughing and talking volubly, while gulls innumerable
float above them and fill the air with their discordant
screams. But look at them when their work is over,
and they are changed indeed. Always cleanly, and
generally smartly dressed, they parade the roads and
wharf. Numbers of them are old and ill-favoured, but
you will see among them many a blooming cheek and
beautiful eye. Their occupation is a profitable one,
especially if they be skilful ; for they are paid according
to the amount of work they do.
222 HERRING FISHERS.
It is the custom of most of the east-country fishers to
bring over their own women one to every boat, sleeping
among the men, and generally related to one or more of
the crew. We have met many of these girls, some of
them very pretty, and could vouch for their perfect purity.
Besides their value as cooks, they can gut herrings and
mend nets ; but their chief recommendation in the eyes
of the canny fishermen is that they are kith and kin,
while the natives are strangers "no' be trusted." The
east-country fisherman, on his arrival, invariably encamps
on shore, and the girl or woman " keeps the house " for
the whole crew.
For the fisherman of the east coast likes to be com-
fortable. He is at once the most daring and the most
careful. He will face such dangers on the sea as would
appal most men, while at the same time he is as cautious
as a woman in providing against cold and ague. How
he manages to move in his clothes is matter for marvel,
for he is packed like a patient after the cold-water
process. Only try to clothe yourself in all the following
articles of attire : pair of socks, pair of stockings over
them half up the leg, to be covered by the long fishing-
boots ; on the trunk, a thick flannel, covered with an
oilskin vest ; after that, a common jacket and vest ; on
the top of these, an oilskin coat ; next, a mighty muffler
to wind round the neck and bury the chin and mouth ;
and last of all, the sou'-wester ! This is the usual costume
of an east-country fisherman, and he not only breathes
and lives in it, but manages his boat on the whole better
HERRING FISHERS. 223
than any of his rivals on the water. He drags himself
along on land awkwardly enough ; and on board, instead
of rising to walk, he rolls, as it were, from one part of the
boat to the other. He is altogether a more calculating
dog than the west-country man, more eager for gain,
colder and more reticent in all his dealings with human
kind
THE OUTER HEBRIDES.
IS must be a strange soul who, wandering over
these hillocks and gazing westward and sea-
ward in calm weather, is not greatly awed and
moved. There is no pretence of effect, no
tremendousness, no obtrusive sign of power. The sea is
glassy smooth, the long swell does not break at all, until,
reaching the smooth sand, it fades softly with deep
monotonous moan. Here and there, sometimes close to
land, sometimes far out seaward, a horrid reef slips its
black back through the liquid blue, or a single rock
emerges, toothlike, thinly edged with foam. Southward
loom the desolate heights of Barra, with crags and rocks
beneath, and although there is no wind, the ocean breaks
there with one broad and frightful flash of white. The
sea-sound in the air is faint and solemn ; it does not cease
at all. But what deepens most the strangeness of the
scene, and weighs most sadly on the mind, is the pale sick
colour of the sands. Even on the green heights the wind
THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 22$
and rain have washed out great hollows, wherein the
powdered shells are drifted like snow. You are solemnised
as if you were walking on the great bed of the ocean, with
the serene depths darkening above you. You are ages
back in time, alone with the great forces antecedent to
man ; but humanity comes back upon you creepingly, as
you think of wanderers out upon that endless waste, and
search the dim sea-line in vain for a sail.
Calm like this is even more powerful than the storm.
Under that stillness you are afraid of something nature,
death, immortality, God. But at the rising of the winds
rises the savage within you : the blood flows, the heart
throbs, the eyes are pinched close, the mouth shut tight.
You can resist now as mortal things resist Lifted up
into the whirl of things, life is all ; the stillness nature,
death, God is nought.
Terrific, nevertheless, is the scene on these coasts when
the storm wind rises,
" Blowing the trumpet of Euroclydon."
Westward above the dark sea-line, rise the purple-black
clouds, driving with a tremendous scurry eastward, while
fresh vapours rise swiftly to fill .up the rainy gaps they
leave behind them. As if at one word of command, the
waters rise and roar, their white crests, towering heaven-
ward, glimmering against the driving mist. Lightning,
flashing out of the sky, shows the long line of breakers on
the flat sand, the reefs beyond, the foamy tumult around
the rocks southward. Thunder crashes afar, and the
Q
226 THE OUTER HEBRIDES.
earth reverberates. So mighty is the wind at times that
no man can stand erect before it; houses are thrown down,
boats lifted up and driven about like faggots. The
cormorants, ranged in rows along their solitary cliffs, eye
the wild waters in silence, starving for lack of fish, and
even the nimble seagull beats about screaming, unable to
make way against the storm.
These are the winter gales, the terror alike of husband-
men and fishers. The west wind begins to blow in
October, and gradually increases in strength, till all the
terrors of the tempest are achieved. Hailstorms, rain-
storms, snowstorms alternate, with the terrific wind
trumpeting between ; though the salt sea-breath is so
potent, even in severe seasons, that the lagoons seldom
freeze, and the snow will not lie. The wild wandering
birds the hooper, the bean-goose, the gray-lag, all the
tribes of ducks gather together on the marshes, sure of
food here, though the rest of the north be frozen. The
great Arctic seal sits on Haskier and sails through the
Sound of Harris. Above the wildest winds are heard the
screams of birds.
Go in December to the Sound of Harris, and on some
stormy day gaze on the wild scene around you ; the
whirling waters, sown everywhere with isles and rocks :
here the tide foaming round and round in an eddy power-
ful enough to drag along the largest ship there a huge
patch of seaweed staining the waves and betraying the
lurking reef below. In the distance loom the hills of
Harris, blue-white with snow, and hidden ever and anon
THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 227
in flying mist. Watch the terrors of the great Sound the
countless reefs and rocks, the eddies, the furious wind-
swept waters, and pray for the strange seamen whose fate
it may be to drive helpless thither.
HEBRIDEAN LAGOONS.
[TANDING on Kenneth Hill, a rocky eleva-
tion on the north side of Loch Boisdale,
and looking westward on a summer day,
one has a fine glimpse of Boisdale and its
lagoons, stretching right over to the edge of the Western
Ocean, five miles distant. The inn and harbour, with
the fishing-boats therein, make a fine foreground, and
thence the numerous ocean fjords, branching this way
and that like the stems of seaweeds, stretch glistening
westward into the land. A little inland, a number of
huts cluster, like beavers' houses, on the site of a white
highway; and along the highway peasant men and
women, mounted or afoot, come wandering down to the
port. Far as the eye can see the land is quite flat and
low, scarcely a hillock breaking the dead level until the
rise of a row of low sandhills on the very edge of the
distant sea. The number of fjords and lagoons, large
and small, is almost inconceivable ; there is water every-
HEBRIDEAN LAGOONS. 229
where, still and stagnant to the eye, and so constant
is its presence that the mind can scarcely banish the
fancy that this land is some floating, half-substantial mass,
torn up in all places to show the sea below. The high-
way meanders through the marshes until it is quite lost
on the other side of the island, where all grows greener
and brighter, the signs of cultivation more noticeable, the
human habitations more numerous. Far away, on the
long black line of the marshes, peeps a spire, and the
white church gleams below, with school-house and hovels
clustering at its feet.
A prospect neither magnificent nor beautiful, yet surely
full of fascination ; its loneliness, its piteous human
touches, its very dreariness, win without wooing the soul.
And if more be wanted, wait for the rain some thin
cold "smurr" from the south, which will clothe the
scene with gray mist, shut out the distant sea, and brood-
ing over the desolate lagoons, draw from them pale and
beautiful rainbows, which come and go, dissolve and
grow, swift as the colours in a kaleidoscope, touching
the dreariest snatches of water and waste with all the
wonders of the prism. Or if you be a fair-weather
voyager, afraid of wetting your skin, wait for the sunset.
It will not be such a sunset as you have been accustomed
to on English uplands or among high mountains, but
something sullener, stranger, and more sad. From a
long deep bar of cloud, on the far-off ocean horizon, the
sun will gleam round and red, hanging as if moveless,
scarcely tinting the deep watery shadow of the sea, but
230 H EB RIDE AN LA GOONS.
turning every lagoon to blood. There will be a stillness
as if Nature held her breath. You will have no sense of
pleasure or wonder only hushed expectation, as if some-
thing were going to happen ; but if you are a saga-reader,
you will remember the death of Balder, and mutter the
rune. Such sunsets, alike yet ever different, we saw, and'
they are not to be forgotten. Then most deeply did the
soul feel itself in the true land of the glamour, shut out
wholly from the fantasies of mere fairyland or the
grandeurs of mere spectacle. The clouds may shape
themselves into the lurid outlines of the old gods, crying,
Suinken i Gruus er
Midgards stad !
the mist on the 'margins of the pools may become the
gigantic witch-wife, spinning out lives on her bloody dis-
taff, and croaking a prophecy; but gentler things may
not intrude, and the happy sense of healthy life dies
utterly away.
THE LOCH AN.
gloaming.
LEASANT it is, after such an hour, to wander
across the bogs and marshes, and come
down on the margin of a little lake, while
the homeward passing cattle low in the
You are now in fairyland. With young buds
yellow, and flowers as white as snow, floating freely
among the floating leaves, the water-lilies gather, and
catch the dusky silver of the moon. The little dab-chick
cries, and you see her sailing, a black speck, close to
shore, and splashing the pool to silver where she dives.
The sky clears and the still spaces between the lilies
glisten with stars, whose broken rays shimmer like hoar-
frost and touch with crystal the edges of leaves and
flowers. You are a child at once, and think of Oberon.
EAGLES AND RAVENS,
EW have ever killed an eagle in its full pride
of strength and flight. It is the sickly, half-
starved, feeble bird that inadvertently
crosses the shepherd's gun, and yields a
lean and unwholesome body to the stuffer's arts. Such
an one we saw low down on the crags of Ben Evai,
passing with a great heavy beat of the wing from rock to
rock, now hovering for an instant over some object among
the heather, then rising painfully and drifting along on
the wind. We had no gun with us that day, or we think
that, by cautiously stalking among the heights, we might
have made the bird our own; and, indeed, our hearts
were sad for the great bird, with that fierce hunger tear-
ing at his heart, while, doubtless, the yellow eyes burnt
terribly through the gathering films of death. Out of the
hollow crags gathered six ravens, rushing with hoarse
shrieks at the fallen king, and turning away with horrible
yells whenever he turned towards them with sharp talon
EAGLES AND RAVENS. 233
and opened beak ; attracted by the noise, flocked from all
the surrounding pastures the hideous hooded crows, with
their sick gray coats and sable heads, cawing like devils ;
and these, too, rushed at the eagle, to be beaten back by
one wave of the wrathful wings. It was a sad scene
power eclipsed on the very throne of its glory, taunted and
abused by carrion.
" Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,"
yet preserving the mournful shadow of its dignity and
kingly glory. Every movement of the eagle was still
kingly, nor did he deign to utter a sound ; while the
crows and ravens were detestable in every gesture, mean,
grovelling, and unwieldy, and their cruel cries made the
echoes hideous. Round the shoulder of the hill floated
the king, with the imps of darkness at his back. We fear
his day of death, so nigh at hand, was to be very sad.
Better that the passing shepherd should put a bullet
through his heart and carry him away to deck some gentle-
man's hall, than that he should fall spent yonder, insulted
at his last gasp, torn at by the fiends, seeing the leering
raven whet his beak for slaughter, and the corby perched
close by, eager to pick out the golden and beautiful eyes.
" By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood ;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes."
We were not loath to see him go. It would have re-
234 EAGLES AND RAVENS.
quired a hard heart to take advantage of him, in the last
forlorn moments of his reign.
Just as he passed away, there started out from the side
of a rock a ghastly apparition, glaring" at us with a face
covered with blood, and looking as if it meant murder.
It was only a sheep, and for the moment it amazed us,
for it seemed like the ghost of a sheep, horrid and for-
bidding. Alas ! though it glared in our direction, it
could not see ; its poor gentle eyes had just been
destroyed, the red blood from them was coursing down
its cheeks ; and it was staggering, drunken with the pain.
It was the victim of the hoody or the raven, ever on the
watch for the unwary, ready in a moment to dart down
on the sleeping lamb or the rolling sheep, and make a
meal of its eyes ; then, with devilish chuckle, to track the
blind and tottering victim hither and thither, as it feels
its feeble way among the heights, until, standing on the
edge of some high rock, it can be startled, with a wild
beat of wings and a hoarse shriek, right down the fatal
precipice to the rocks beneath ; and there the murderer,
while a dozen others of his kind gather around him in
carnival, croaks out a discordant grace, and plunges his
reeking beak into the victim's heart.
HAWKS AND OWLS.
EXT in rank to the Golden Eagle stands the
Erne, a pluckier and altogether a fiercer
bird, resembling in character one of those
fierce Highland caterans, who were wont to
flock in the neighbourhood of its haunts. In spite of the
brutal butchery of keepers and collectors, this noble bird,
unlike the other, still abounds, breeding in all the head-
lands, of Skye, on the breast of one of Macleod's Maidens
in the wild Scuir, of Eigg, in Scalpa, North Uist, Shiant
Isles, Benbecula, and in Lewis and Harris. He is an
unclean feeder, seldom slaughtering his own food, but
seeking everywhere for garbage dead sheep, stranded
fish, or a salmon out of the neck of which the otter has
taken its own tasty bite. His eyrie is generally among
the most inaccessible crags, but he has been known to
rear the mighty fabric in a tree, in the midst of some
lonely island. Macgillivray found a Sea Eagle's nest in
an island in a Hebridean lake, in a mound of rock "not
236 HA WKS AND WLS.
higher than could have been reached with a fishing-rod "
He varies greatly in size, " some specimens measuring only
six feet from tip to tip of the wings, while others are at
least one half more." He is pugnacious as a Cock-robin,
and as vulgar as a Vulture, but he can be tamed, and in
his tame state becomes an interesting pet. The finest
extant specimen is in the Stornoway collection of Sir James
Matheson ; it was killed in the island of Lewis, and is of
gigantic size, and very light in colour.
Many other rapacious birds frequent the Hebrides
from the Osprey down to the Kestrel, or Wind-hover ;
but the most interesting of all, perhaps, is the Peregrine
Falcon, so lovely in form and plumage, and so elegant of
flight. The Peregrine breeds in all the outer islands, on
the outlying rocks of Haskair, and even in St. Kilda. He
is a murderous fellow, killing far more than he can eat,
for the sheer sake of killing, twisting off the head of a snipe
or a ptarmigan as unconcernedly as a waiter draws a
bottle of beer ! When he resides near the sea, he makes
sad havoc among the Puffins and Guillemots. Next to
him, in point of beauty, is his swift little kinsman, the
Merlin, pluckiest of all the hawks, and deftest in the hunt.
Game to the bone is the Soog, as he is called by the
Celts, and will tackle a quarry out of all proportion to his
strength. Snipes and Golden Plovers are his favourite
feeding, and he will beat the marshes and sea-sands
as carefully as an old pointer beats the turnips in Sep-
tember.
While the Eagle and Hawks hunt by day, the Owls
HAWKS AND OWLS. 237
prowl by night. These latter birds are not numerous in
the Hebrides, the short-eared Owl being the most common,
but we have here and there seen the tawny Owl hovering
on the skirts of the plantations, oftentimes enough put up
awkwardly by the dogs when beating cover, and likely to
share a sudden fate at the hands of some bungler, unless
protected by the sympathetic " It's only an Old Wife-
poor thing ! " of some friendly keeper. The last Owl we
saw was last night, beating the margin of Loch Bee for
mice, with that curious limp flap of its downy wing, and
occasionally resting as still as stone on the overhanging cone
of a damp boulder, in just the same attitude in which we
had not long before seen one of his kinsmen resting on
Robert Browning's shoulder, in the very heart of London.
As to the White Owl, the true Cailleach, or Old Woman,
she seems to have taken some deathly offence at our
islands, for though there is a ruin on every headland, sorry
a one of them all will she inhabit. Her ghastly presence
would indeed become the gloaming hour, when the moon
is shining on the ruined belfry of Icolmkill ; but not even
there, where the Spirit of the sea-loving Saint still walks
o' nights, is her weird cry heard, or her ghostly flight
beheld.
Not a whit of her tuwhoo !
Her to woo to her tuwhit !
We have sought her in vain in lona, in Dunstaffnage, in
Rodel, and in many kindred places, chiefly desolate
graveyards ; finding in her stead, amor" 3 ; the tombs, only
238 HAWKS AND OWLS.
the little Clacharan, 1 in his white necktie, cluck-clucking as
monotously as a death-watch, and conducting eternally,
on his own account, a kind of lonely spirit-rapping, in
the most appropriate place. Among the same desolate
homes of the dead, we have also found (as Dr. Gray seems
to have found) the Sea-gulls coming to rest for the night,
stealing through the twilight with a slow flight, which
might be mistaken, at the first glance, for that of the
Cailleach herself.
1 Celtic name of the Stone-chat (Saxicola Rubicola).
THE WATER-OUZEL.
| HAT the Stone-chat is to graveyards, the
Dipper is to lonely burns. He has many
names in the Isles, Lon m'sge, Gobha dubh
nan Allt, &c. but none so sweet as the
name familiar to every Saxon ear, that of Water-Ouzel.
Who has not encountered the little fellow, with his light
eye and white breast, dipping backwards and forwards as
he sits on a stone amid the tiny pools and freshets, and
rising swiftly to follow with swift but exact flight the wind-
ings and twistings of the stream ? and who that has ever
so met him, has failed to see in his company his faithful
and inseparable little mate ? He likes the waterfall and
the brawling linn, as well as the dark pools amid the green
and mossy heath ; and he is to be found building from
head to foot of every mountain that can boast a burn,
however tiny and unpretending. The young are born
with the cry of water in their ears ; often the nest where
they lie and cheep is within a few feet of a torrent, the
240 THE WATER-OUZEL.
voice of which is a roaring thunder ; and close at hand,
amid the spray, the little father-ouzels sit on a mossy stone,
and sing aloud.
What pleasures have great princes? &c.,
they seem to be crying, in the very words of the old
song. To search for water-shells and eat the toothsome
larvae of the water-beetle, and to have the whole of a
mountain brook for kingdom, what royal lot can com-
pare with this ?
Whiles thro' a linn the burnie plays,
Whiles thro' a glen it wimples,
Whiles bickering thro' the golden haze
With flickering dauncing dazzle,
Whiles cookin' underneath the braes
Beneath the flowing hazel ! x
To the eye of the little feathered king and queen, the
bubbling waters are a world miraculously tinted and sweet
with summer sound. The life of the twain is full of calm
joy. So at least thinks the angler, as he crouches under
the bank from the shower, and sees the cool drops splash-
ing like countless pearls round the Ouzel's mossy throne
in the midst of the pool. We hear for the first time, on
the authority of Dr. Gray, that the Ouzel has been pro-
scribed and decimated in many Highland parishes, be-
cause, forsooth, he is supposed to interfere with the rights
of human fishermen ! In former times, whoever slew one
1 The lover of Burns must forgive blunders, as I quote from
memory.
THE WATER OUZEL. 24 \
of these lovely birds received as his reward the privilege
of fishing in the close season ; and a reward of sixpence a
head is this day given for the " Water Craw " in some
parts of Sutherlandshire. To such a pass come mortal
ignorance and greed ! ignorance, here quite unaware that
the Ouzel never touches the spawn of fish at all; and
greed, unwilling to grant to a bird so gentle and so beauti-
ful even a share of the prodigal gifts of nature.
THE KINGFISHER.
AR more persecuted than the Bird of the
Burn is that other frequenter of inland
waters, the Kingfisher: so lovely that every
cruel hand is raised against his life ; so rare,
through such slaughter, that one may now search long
and far without ever perceiving the azure gleam of its
wing. Its head is not unlike that of a Heron, on a
diminutive scale ; and its attitude, as it sits motionless
for hours together, on some bough overhanging the
stream, is heron-like in its steadfastness and patience.
Unsocial and solitary, it deposits its pink-white eggs and
rears its young in a hole in the green bank. Flashing
past, it seems like a winged emerald; in repose, its
colour is ruddy brown. Seen in any light, k is a thing
of perfect beauty, not to be spared from the precious
things of the student of nature. To these Outer Heb-
rides, it never comes ; but it has been found in the island
of Skye. The dark, shrubless banks of these streams do
THE KINGFISHER. 243
not attract it ; and, moreover, for so sportsmanlike and
indefatigable a bird, the fishing is bad. It loves a stream
shaded with alders and dwarf willows, and affects, too,
spots well-warmed by the sun. When the buds of the
water-lilies blow, and the well-oiled leaves float around
them, when the dragon-fly poises in the leaves and gleams
brilliantly, when the sun shines golden overhead and, be-
low in the pool, you see the shadows of the motionless
trout on the bright stones then, creeping near, warily,
look for the Kingfisher. There he sits, on a green branch
near the mouth of his dwelling, arrayed as Solomon never
was in all his glory, and shadowed by the willow tree,
That grows aslant the brook,
And shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
The sun creeps behind a cloud for a moment ; a tiny
trout splashes, leaving a circle that widens and fades.
What was that, the flash of an emerald or the gleam of
some passing insect ? 'Tvvas the King of Fishers darting
down to seize his tiny prey ; but so swiftly is he back
again to his point of vantage, that he scarcely seems to
have stirred at all.
HEBRIDEAN BIRDS.
HAT picture next appears? In a lonely
lochan, glossy black, and with never reed
or flower to relieve its sadness, under a
dark sky seamed with silvern streaks, there
rises a rocky isle, and close to the isle swims the Learga,
or Black-throated Diver, troubling the brooding silence
with his weird cry Deoch! deoch! thdn loch a traogbadh f 1
Sunset on Loch Scavaig, the ocean glassy-still, and the
Coolins rising lurid in the red light streaming over the
western ocean, while the Solan drops like a bullet to his
prey, and
The cormorant flaps o'er a sleek ocean-floor
Of tremulous mother-of-pearl,
Twilight on the slopes of the mountains of Mull, and the
evening star glimmering over the dark edge of the fir-
wood, while the ghost-moths begin to issue from their
green hiding-places, and the Night gar, looming on the
1 "Drink ! drink ! the lake is nearly dried up."
HEBRIDEAN BIRDS. 24$
summit of a tree, utters his monotonous call. A spring
morning, with broken clouds and a rainbow, gleaming on
the isles of Loch Awe, and cuckoos multitudinous as
leaves in Vallambrosa telling their name to all the hills.
The prospects are endless, the cries confusing as the
chorus of birds in Aristophanes :
Toro, toro, toro, toro, toro, toro, toro, toro, toro,
Kickabau, kickabau,
Toro, toro, toro, toro, tobrix !
With these for guides, one may wander further and see
stranger scenes than ever came under the eyes of the
Nephelococcygians ; but, indeed, modern culture scarcely
knows even their names, and the spots where they dwell
scarcely attract even the passing tourist. Wonderful
indeed is modern ignorance, only to be paralleled by
modern fatuity. Few men know the difference between
the Birch and the Hornbeam, the Curlew and the
Whimbrel. Modern authors, poets particularly, write as
if they had been brought up in a dungeon or a hothouse,
never breathing the fresh air or beholding plants and
birds in a state of nature. " It is a fool's life, as they
will find when they get to the end of it, if not before."
The pursuit of false comforts, the desire of vain ac-
complishments, the sucking of social lollipops, these are
modern vanities. We were speaking the other day with
one of the best educated men in England, a party finished
to the finger-tips, great in philosophy, and " in Pindar
and poets unrivalled." He had never seen an eagle or
a red deer ; he could neither shoot, fish, nor swim ; he
246 HEBRIDEAN BIRDS.
was sea-sick whenever he left dry land ; he believed the
"sheets" of a boat to be her "sails;" he knew (as
Browning expresses it) the " Latin word for Parsley," but
he had never even heard of " white " heather. For this
being, his University had done all it could, and had
turned him out in the world about as ignorant as a parrot
and as helpless, for all manly intents and purposes, as a'
new-born baby.
NIGHT IN THE SEA.
ARLY in the afternoon we passed Dunvegan,
Head, and then Vaternish Point ; but by this
time the breeze had grown very faint indeed,
and when we were in the middle of the great
mouth of Loch Snizort, the wind ceased altogether. For
hours we rolled about on a most uncomfortable sea, till
the sun sank far away across the Minch, touching with
red light the hazy outline of the Long Island. Then, all
in a moment as it were, the eyes of heaven opened, very
dim and feeble, and the night if night it could be called
came down with a chilly sprinkle of invisible dew.
All round the yacht the sea burnt, flashed, and murmured,
lit up by innumerable lights. Wherever a wave broke,
there was a phosphorescent gleam. The punt astern
floated in a patch as bright as moonlight ; and every time
the counter of the yacht struck the water the latter
emitted a flash like sheet-lightning. The whole sea was
alive with millions of miraculous creatures, each with a
248 NIGHT IN THE SEA.
tiny light to pilot him about the abysses. Here and
there the Medusa moved luminous, devouring the minute
creatures that swarmed around it, terrible in its way as the
Poulp that Victor Hugo has caricatured so immortally f
and other creatures of volition, to us nameless, passed,
mysteriously ; while ever and anon a shoal of tiny sethe
would dart to the surface and hover in millions around the
yacht. Though there was no moon, the waters and the
sky seemed full of moonlight. The silence was profound,
only broken by a dull heavy sound at intervals whales
blowing off the headland of Dunvegan.
Midnight ; and no breeze came. The sky to the north
unfolded like a flower blossoming, and the northern lights
flitted up from the horizon, flashing like quicksilver, and
filling the sight with a peculiar thrill of mesmeric sensa-
tion. Lights gleaming on t-he ocean, the eyes of heaven
glittering, the aurora flashing and fading with all these
the sense seemed overburthened. Now and then, as if
the pageant were incomplete, a star shot from its sphere,
gleamed, and disappeared.
1 "Les Travailleurs de la Her."
MORNING GLIMPSES: OFF SKYE.
HEN day broke, red and sombre, we were off
Hunish Point, and saw on every side of
us the basaltic columns of the coast flaming
in the morning light, and behind us, in a
dark hollow of a bay, the ruins of Duntulm Castle, gray
and forlorn. The coast views here were beyond ex-
pression magnificent. Tinted red with dawn, the fan-
tastic cliffs formed themselves into shapes of the wildest
beauty, rain-stained and purpled with shadow, and re-
lieved at intervals by slopes of emerald, where the sheep
crawled. The sea through which we ran was a vivid
green, broken into thin lines of foam, and full of in-
numerable Medusae drifting southward with the tide.
Leaving the green sheep-covered island of Trody on our
left, we slipt past Aird Point, and sped swift as a fish
along the coast, until we reached the two small islands
off the northern point of Loch Staffin so named, like
the island of Staffa, on account of its columnar ridges of
250 MORNING GLIMPSES: OFF SKYE.
coast. Here we beheld a sight which seemed the glorious
fabric of a vision : a range of small heights sloping from
the deep green sea, every height crowned with a columnar
cliff of basalt, and each rising over each, higher and
higher, till they ended in a cluster of towering columns,
minarets, and spires, over which hovered wreaths of deli-
cate mist, suffused with the pink light from the east. We
were looking on the spiral pillars of the Quirang. In a
few minutes the vision had faded ; for the yacht was
flying faster and faster, assisted a little too much by a
savage puff from off the Quirang's great cliffs ; but other
forms of beauty arose before us as we went. The whole
coast from Aird point to Portree forms a panorama of
cliff-scenery quite unmatched in Scotland. Layers of
limestone dip into the sea, which washes them into
horizontal forms, resembling gigantic slabs of white
and gray masonry, rising sometimes stair above stair,
water-stained, and hung with many-coloured weed ; and
on these slabs stand the dark cliffs and spiral columns :
towering into the air like the fretwork of some Gothic
temple, roofless to the sky ; clustered sometimes together
in black masses of eternal shadow ; torn open here and
there to show glimpses of shining lawns sown in the
heart of the stone, or flashes of torrents rushing in silver
veins through the darkness ; crowned in some places by
a green patch, on which the goat feed small as mice ; and
twisting frequently into towers of most fantastical device,
that lie dark and spectral against the gray background of
the air. To our left we could now behold the island of
MORNING GLIMPSES: OFF SKY E. 251
Rona, and the northern end of Raasay. All our faculties,
however, were soon engaged in contemplating the Storr,
the highest part of the northern ridge of Skye, terminating
in a mighty insulated rock or monolith which points
solitary to heaven, two thousand three hundred feet
above the sea, while at its base rock and crag have been
torn into the wildest forms by the teeth of earthquake,
and a great torrent leaps foaming into the sound. As we
shot past, a dense white vapour enveloped the lower part
of the Storr, and towers, pyramids, turrets, monoliths
were shooting out above it like a supernatural city in
the cloud i.
A SUNSE7.
HAT with the slight wind, and the weary
beating down the Sound, we did not sight
Sconser Lodge, which lies just at the mouth
of Loch Sligachan, until the sunset. By
this time the clouds had somewhat cleared away about
Glamaig, and glorious shafts of luminous silver were
working wondrous chemistry among the dark mists.
We put about close to Raasay House, a fine dwelling in
the midst of well cultivated land, and feasted our eyes
with the fantastic forms and colours of the Skye cliffs to
the westward, grouped together in the strange wild
illumination of a cloudy sunset : domes, pinnacles, spires,
rising with dark outlines against the west, and flitting
from shade to light, from light to shade, as the mist
cleared away or darkened against the sinking sun ; with
vivid patches between of dark brown rocks and of green
grass washed to glistening emerald by recent rain. It
was a scene of strange beauty Nature mimicking with
A SUNSET. 253
unnatural perfection the mighty works of men, colouring
all with the wildest hues of the imagination, and revealing
beyond at intervals, glimpses of other domes, pinnacles,
and spires, flaming duskly in the sunset, and crumbling
down, like the ruins of a burning city, one by one. What
came into the mind just then was not Wordsworth's
sonnet on a similar cloudy pageant, but those wonderful
stanzas of a wonderful poem' by the same great poet on
the eclipse of the sun in 1820 :
" Awe-stricken she beholds the array
That guards the temple night and day ;
Angels she sees, that might from heaven have flown,
And virgin saints, who not in vain
Have striven by purity to gain
The beatific crown
" Sees long-drawn files, concentric rings,
Each narrowing above each ; the wings,
The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips,
The starry zone of sovereign height
All steeped in the portentous light !
All suffering dim eclipse ! "
It is difficult to tell why these lines should have arisen in
our mind at that moment; for no stronger reason,
perhaps, than that which caused the figures themselves
to rise before Wordsworth by the side of Lugano. He
had once seen the Cathedral at Milan, and when the
eclipse came, he could not help following it thither in
imagination. These faint associations are the strangest
things in life, and the sweetest things in song. Por-
tentous light ! dim eclipse ! These were the only words
254 A SUNSET.
truly applicable to the scene we were gazing upon at that
moment ; and those few words were the chain of the
association the magical charm linking sense and soul
bringing Milan to Skye, filling the sunset picture with
the wings, uplifted palms, and silent lips of angels and
virgin saints
" All steeped in the portentous light ;
All suffering dim eclipse !"
THE BIRTH OF THE CUCHULLINS:
A RETROSPECT.
E have no patience with those imaginative
people who are so far fascinated by trans-
cendental meteors as to class Geology in
the prose sisterhood of Algebra and Mathe-
matics. The typical geologist, indeed, whom we meet
prowling, hammer in hand, in the darknesss of Glen
Sannox, or rock-tapping on the sea-shore in the society
of elderly virgins, or examining Agassiz' atlas through
blue spectacles on board the Highland steamboat this
typical being, we repeat, is frequently duller company than
the Free Church minister or the dominie ; but he is a mere
fumbler about the footprints of the fair science, with never
the courage to look straight into those beautiful blind eyes
of hers and discover that she has a soul. By what name
shall we call her, if not by the divine name of Mnemosyne
the sphinx-like spirit that broods and remembers : a
soul, a divinity, brooding blind in the solitude, and feeling
256 THE BIRTH OF THE CUCHULLINS.
with her fingers the raised letters of the stone book, which
she holds in her lap, and wherein God has written the
veritable " Legend of the World ? " A prose science ?
say rather a sublime Muse ! Why, her throne is made of
the mountains of the earth, and her speech is the earth-
slip and the volcano, and her taper is the lightning, and
her forehead touches a coronal of stars. Only the fool
misapprehends her and blasphemes. Whoso looks into
her face with reverend eyes is appalled by the light of God
there, and sinks to his knees, crying, " I would seek unto
God, and unto God would I commit my cause, who doeth
great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without
number."
In sober words, without fine writing or rapture, it must
be said that the Cuchullins cannot long be contemplated
apart from their geology. Turn your eyes again for a
moment on Scuir-na-Gillean ! Note those sombre hues,
those terrific shadows, that jagged outline traced as with a
frenzied finger along the sky. It is a gentle autumn morn-
ing, and the film of white cloud resting on yonder top-
most peak, is moveless as the ghost of the moon in an
April heaven. There is no sound save the melancholy
murmur of water. A strange awe steals over you as you
gaze ; the soul broods in its own twilight. Then, as the
first feeling of almost animal perception fails, the mind
awakens from its torpor, and with it comes a sudden
illumination, Along these serrated peaks runs a fiery
tongue of flame, the abysses blacken, the air is filled with
a deep groan, and a thunder-cloud, driving past in a great
THE BIRTH OF THE CUCHULL1NS. 257
wind, clutches at the mountain, and clinging there, belches
flame, and beats the darkness into fire with wings of iron.
From a rent above, the drifting stars gaze, like affrighted ;
yes, dim as corpse-lights. In a moment, this wonder
passes : the sudden tension of the mind fails, and with it
the phantasm, and you are again in the torpid conditio^
gazing dreamily at the jagged outline of the Titan, dark
and silent in the brightness of the autumn morning.
Again Mnemosyne waves her hand, and again the mind
flashes into picture.
You have now a glimpse of the ninth circle of the
Inferno. Surrounded by the region of the Cold Clime,
girt round on every side by unearthly forms of ice and
rock, you see below you vales of frozen water, and un-
fathomable deeps blue as the overhanging heaven. Where
fire once raved snow now broods. Dome, pyramid, and
pinnacle tower around with walls and crags of glittering
ice. Winds contend silently, and heap the snow with
rapid breath. Here and there gleams the vaporous light-
ning, innocent as the aurora. The glaciers slip, and ever
change. And down through the heart of all this desola-
tion, past the very spot where you stand, filling the
gigantic hollow of Glen Sligachan, welling onward with
one deep murmur, carrying with it mighty rocks and
blasted pine trees, rolls a majestic river, here burnished
black as" ebony in the rush of its own speed, there foamins
over broken boulders and tottering crags, and everywhere
gathering into its troubled bosom the drifting glacier and
the melting snow.
258 THE BIRTH OF 7 HE CUCHULLINS.
The Wanderer at least saw all this plain enough as he
passed along the weary glen in the rear of his party ; and
the fanciful retrospect, instead of dulling the scene, lends
it a solemn consecration. Poor indeed would be the songs
of all the Muses, compared with the tale of Mnemosyne,
if- she could only be brought to utter half she knows.
HART-0-CORRY.
AUSE here, where your path is the dry bed of
a torrent, and look yonder to the north-east.
Between two hills opens the great gorge of
Hart-o'-Corry, which is closed in again far
away by a wall of livid stone. 'Tis broad day here,
but gray twilight yonder. In the hollow of the corry
broods a dense vapour, and above it, down the deep
green fissures of the hypersthene, trickle streams like
threads of hoary silver, frozen motionless by distance ;
while higher, far above the rayless abyss, the sky
is serene and hyacinthine blue. That black speck
over the topmost peak, that little mark scarce bigger than
the dot of an / is an eagle \ it hovers for many minutes
motionless, and then melts imperceptibly away. From
the side of Hart-o Corry, Scuir-na-Gillean shoots up its
rugged columns ; and close to the mouth of the corry,
the sharply-defined sweep of the deep green hypersthene,
overlying the pale yellow felspar, has an effect of rare
260 HART a CORRY.
beauty. Turning now, and looking up the Glen towards
Camasunary, you behold Ben Blaven closing in the view,
and towering into the sky from precipice to precipice, its
ashen gray flanks corroding everywhere into veins of
mineral green, until it cuts the ether with a sharp hooked
forehead of solid stone.
LOCH CORRUISK.
ORRUISK, or the Corry of the Water, is a
wild gorge, oval in shape, about three miles
long and a mile broad, in the centre of which
a sheet of water stretches for about two
miles, surrounded on every side by rocky precipices totally
without vegetation, and towering in one sheer plane of
livid rock, until they mingle with the wildly picturesque
and jagged outlines of the topmost peak of the Cuchullins.
Directly on entering its sombre darkness, the student is
inevitably reminded of the awful region of Malebolge :
"Luogo e in Inferno detto Malebolge
Tutto di pietra e di color ferrigno,
Come la cerchia, che d'intorno '1 volge."
The Mere is black as jet, its waters only broken and
brightened by four small grassy islands, on the edges of
the largest of which that summer day the black-backed
gulls were sitting, with the feathery gleam of their sha-
dows faintly breaking the glassy blackness below them.
262 LOCH CORRUISK.
These islands form the only bit of vegetable green in all
the lonely prospect. Close to the shores of the loch, and
at the foot of the crags, there are dark-brown stretches of
heath ; but the heights above them are leafless as the
columns of a cathedral.
Coming abruptly on the shores of this loneliest of lakes,
the Wanderer had passed instantaneously from sunlight to
twilight, from brightness to mystery, from the gladsome stir
of the day to a silence unbroken by the movement of any
created thing. Every feature of the scene was familiar to
him he had seen it in all weathers, under all aspects
yet his spirit was possessed as completely, as awe-stricken,
as solemnised, as when he came thither out of the world's
stir for the first time. The brooding desolation is there
for ever. There was no sign to show that it had ever been
broken by a human foot since his last visit. He left it in
twilight, and in twilight he found it. Since he had de-
parted, scarce a sunbeam had broken the darkness of the
dead Mere ; so close do the mountain pinnacles tower on
all sides, that only when the sun is sheer above can the
twilight be broken ; and when it is borne in mind that the
Cuchullins are the chosen lairs of all the winds, that the
hollows are the dark breeding-places of all the monsters
of storm, that scarce a day passes over them without mist
and tears, one ceases to wonder at the unbroken darkness.
A great cathedral is solemn, solemner still is such an island
fis Haskeir when it sleeps silent amid the rainy grief of
a dead still sea, but Corruisk is beyond all expression
solemnest of all. Perpetual twilight, perfect silence,
LOCH COKRUISK. 263
terribly brooding desolation. Though there are a thou-
sand voices on all sides the voices of winds, of wild
waters, of shifting crags they die away here into a heart-
beat. See! down the torn cheeks of all those precipices
tear head-long torrents white in foam, and each is crying,
though you cannot hear it. Only one low murmur, deeper
than silence, fills the dead air. The black water laps
silently on the dark claystone shingle of the shore. The
cloud passes silently, far away over the melancholy peaks.
Streams innumerable come from all directions to pour
themselves into the abyss ; and enormous fragments of
stone lie everywhere, as if freshly fallen from the precipices,
while many of these gigantic boulders, as MacCulloch
observes, are " poised in such a manner on the very edges
of the precipitous rocks on which they have fallen, as to
render it difficult to imagine how they could have rested
in such places, though the presence of snow at the time
of their fall may perhaps explain this difficulty." These
indeed, are the true blocs perches, marking the course of the
glacier which once invaded these wilds. " The interval
between the borders of the lake and the side of Garsven
is strewed with them ; the whole, of whatever size, lying
on the surface in a state of uniform freshness and integrity,
unattended by a single plant or atom of soil, as if they
had all but recently fallen in a single shower." The mode
in which they lie is no less remarkable. The bottom of
the valley is covered with rocky eminences, of which the
summits are not only bare, but often very narrow, while
their declivities are always steep, and often perpendicular.
264 LOCH CORRUISK.
Upon these rocks the fragments lie just as on the more
level ground. One, weighing about one hundred tons,
has become a rocking-stone ; another, of not less than fifty,
stands on the narrow edge of a rock a hundred feet higher
than that ground which must have first met it in the
descent.
" Mighty rocks,
Which have from unimaginable years
Sustained themselves with terror and with toil
Over a gulf, and with the agony
With which they cling seem slowly coming down ;
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour
Clings to the mass of life ; yet, clinging, lean ;
And leaning, make more dark the dread abyss
In which they fear to fall. " x
Strangely beautiful as is the scene, it is a ruin. The
vast fragments are the remains of a magnificent temple
rising into pinnacles and minarets of ice, glittering with
all the colours of the prism. Here the silent-footed
glacier slipped, and the snow shifted under the footsteps
of the wind, and there perhaps, where the lonely lake
lies, glittered a cold sheet of hyacinthine blue ; and no
gray rain-cloud brooded on the temple's dome only
delicate spirits of the vapour, drinking soft radiance from
the light of sun and star. Around this temple crawled
the elk and bear, and swift-footed mountain deer.
Summer after summer it abode in beauty, not stable like
temples built by hands, but ever changing, full of the
low murmur of its change, the melancholy sound of its
1 Shelley's "Cenci."
LOCH CORRUISK. 265
own shifting walls and domes. Then more than once
Fire swept out of the abyss, and clung like a snake about
the temple, while Earthquake, like a chained monster,
groaned below ; wild elements came from all the winds
to overthrow it ; wall after wall fell, fragment after frag-
ment was dashed down. The fairy fretwork of snow
melted, the fair carvings of ice were obliterated, pinnacle
and minaret dissolved in the sun, like the baseless frag-
ment of a vision. Dark twilight settled on the ruin, and
Melancholy marked it for her own. The walls of livid
rock remain, gray from the volcano, and torn into rugged
rents, casting perpetual darkness downward, where the
water bubbling up from unseen abysses has spread itself
into a mirror. All ruins are sad, but this is sad utterly.
All ruins are beautiful, but this is beautiful beyond
expression. The solemn Spirit of Death comes more or
less to all ruins, whenever the meditative mind conjures
and wishes ; but here it abides, at once overshadowing
whosoever approaches by the still sense of doom. " Thus
saith the Lord God, Behold, O Mount Seir, I am against
thee, and I will make thee most desolate. When the
whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate." The
fiat has also been spoken here. The place has been
solemnised to desolation.
In deep unutterable awe does the human visitant ex-
plore with timid eye the mighty crags above him, the
layers of volcanic stone, until he finds himself fascinated
by the strange outlines of the peaks where they touch
the sky, and detecting fancied resemblances to things
266 LOCH CORRUISK.
that live. Yonder crouches, black and distinct against
the light, a maned beast, like a lion, watching; its eyes
invisible, but fixed doubtless on yours. Higher still is a
dimmer outline, as of some huge bird, winged like the
griffin. These two resemblances infect the whole scene
instantaneously. There are shapes everywhere in the
peaks, in the gorges, by the torrents living shapes, or
phantoms, frozen still to listen, or to watch ; and horrify-
ing you with their deathly silence. Your heart leaps as
if something were going to happen ; and you feel if the
stillness were suddenly broken, and these shapes were to.
spring into motion, you would shriek and faint.
How dark and fathomless look the abysses yonder, at
the head of the loch ! A wild scarf of mist is folding
itself round the peaks (betokening surely that the clear
still weather will not remain much longer unbroken), and
faint gray light travels along the wildly indented wall
beneath. It is not two miles to the base of the crags,
yet the distance seems interminable ; and shadows, shift-
ing and deepening, weary the eye with mysterious and
dimly-reflected vistas.
CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE.
ANNA is the child of the great waters, and
such children, lonely and terrible as is their
portion, seldom lack loveliness often their
only dower. From the edge of the lapping
water to the peak of the highest crag, it is clothed with
ocean gifts and signs of power. Its strange under-caves
and rocks are coloured with rainbow hues, drawn from
glorious-featured weeds ; overhead its cliffs of basalt rise
shadowy, ledge after ledge darkened by innumerable little
wings ; and high over all grow soft greenswards, knolls of
thyme and heather, where sheep bleat and whence the
herd boy crawls over to look into the raven's nest. On a
still summer day, when the long Atlantic swell is crystal
smooth, Canna looks supremely gentle on her image in
the tide, and out of her hollow under-caves comes the low
weird whisper of a voice ; the sunlight glimmers on peaks
and sea, the beautiful shadow quivers below, broken here
and there by drifting weeds, and the bleating sheep on the
268 CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE.
high swards soften the stillness. But when the winds
come in over the deep, the beauty changes it darkens,
it flashes from softness into power. The huge waters boil
at the foot of the crags, and the peaks are caught in mist ;
and the air, full of a great roar, gathers around Canna's
troubled face. Climb the crags, and the horrid rocks to
westward, jutting out here and there like shark's teeth,
spit the lurid white foam back in the glistening eyes of the
sea. Slip down to the water's edge, and amid the deafen-
ing roar the spray rises far above you in a hissing shower.
The whole island seems quivering through and through.
The waters gather on all sides, with only one long glassy
gleam to leeward. No place in the world could seem
fuller of supernatural voices, more powerful, or more
utterly alone.
It is our fortune to see the island in all its moods ; for
we are in no haste to depart. Days of deep calm alternate
with days of the wildest storm there is constant change.
Everywhere in the interior of the island there are sweet
pastoral glimpses. On a summer afternoon, while we are
wandering in the road near the shore, we see the cattle
beginning to flock from the pastures, headed by two gentle
bulls, and gathering round the dairy house, where, in
" short gowns," white as snow, the two head dairymaids sit
on their stools. The kine low softly, as the milk is drawn
from the swelling udder, and now and then a calf, desperate
with thirst, makes a plunge at his mother and drinks eagerly
with closed eyes till he is driven away. Men and children
gather around, looking on idly. As we pass by, the dairy-
CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE. ^ 269
maid offers us a royal drink of fresh warm milk, and with
that taste in our lips we loiter away. Now we are among
fields, and we might be in England so sweet is the scent
of hay. Yonder the calm sea glimmers, and one by one
the stars are opening like forget-me-nots, with dewdrops
of light for reflections in the water below. Can this be
Canna? Can this be the solitary child of the ocean?
Hark ! That is the corn-crake crying in the corn the
sound we have heard so often in the southern fields !
When there is little or no sea, it is delightful to pull in
the punt round the precipitous shores, and come upon the
lonely haunts of the ocean birds. There is one great cliff,
with a hugh rock rising out of the water before it, which
is the favourite breeding haunt of the puffins, and while
swarms of these little creatures, with their bright parrot-
like bills and plump white breasts, flit thick as locusts in
the air, legions darken the waters underneath, and rows
on rows sit brooding over their young on the dizziest
edges of the cliff itself. The noise of wings is ceaseless,
there is constant coming and going, and so tame are the
birds that one might almost seize them, either on the
\vater or in the air, with the outstretched hand. Discharge
a gun into the air, and, as the hollow echoes roar upward
and inward to the very hearts of the caves, it will suddenly
seem as if the tremendous crags were loosening to fall,
but the dull dangerous sound you hear is only the rush of
wings. A rock farther northward is possessed entirely by
gulls, chiefly the smaller species ; thousands sit still and
fearless, whitening the summit like snow, but many hover
270 CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE.
with discordant scream over the passing boat, and seem
trying with the wild beat of their wings to scare the
intruders away. Close in shore, at the mouth of a deep
dark cave, cormorants are to be found, great black
" scarts," their mates and the young, preening their
glistening plumage leisurely, or stretching out their snake-
like necks to peer with fishy eyes this way and that. They
are not very tame here, and should you present a gun, will
soon flounder into the sea and disappear ; but at times,
when they have gorged themselves with fish, so awkward
are they with their wings, and so muddled are their wits,
that one might run right abreast of them, and knock them
over with an oar.
Everywhere' below, above, on all sides, there is nothing
but life birds innumerable, brooding over their eggs or
fishing for the young. Here and there, a little fluff of
down just launched out into the great world paddles
about bewildered, and dives away from the boat's bow
with a faint troubled cry. On the outer rocks gulls and
guillemots, puffins on the crags, and cormorants on the
ledges of the caves. The poor reflective human being
brought into the sound of such a life, gets quite scared
and dazed. The air, the rocks ; the waters are all astir.
The face turns for relief upward, where the blue sky
meets the summit of the crags. Even yonder, on the
very ledge, a black speck sits and croaks; and still
farther upward, dwarfed by distance to the size of a
sparrow-hawk, hovers a black eagle, fronting the sun.
There is something awe-inspiring, on a dead calm day,
CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE 271
in the low hushed wash of the great swell that for ever
sets in from the ocean ; slow, slow, it comes, with the
regular beat of a pulse, rising its height, without break-
ing, against the cliff it mirrors in its polished breast, and
then dying down beneath with a murmuring moan.
What power is there ! what dreadful, fatal ebbing and
flowing ! No fmger can stop that under-swell, no breath
can come between that and its course; it has rolled
since time began, the same, neither more nor less,
whether the weather be still or wild, and it will keep
on when we are all dead. Bah ! that is hypochondria.
But look ! what is that floating yonder, on the glassy
water ?
" O is it fish, or weed, or floating hair,
O' drowned maiden's hair ? "
No ; but it tells us clear a tale. Those planks formed
lately the sides of a ship, and on that old mattress with
the straw washing out of the rents, some weary sailor
pillowed his head not many hours ago. Where is the
ship now? Where is the sailor? Oh, if a magician's
wand could strike these waters, and open them up to our
view, what a sight should we see ! the slimy hulls of
ships long submerged ; the just sunken fish-boat, with
ghastly faces twisted among the nets ; the skeleton sus-
pended in the huge under-grass and monstrous weeds,
the black shapes, the fleshless faces looming green in the
dripping foam and watery dew ! Yet how gently the
swell comes rolling, and how pleasant look the depths,
272 CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE.
this summer day, as if death were not, as if there could
be neither storm nor wreck at sea.
More hypochondria, perhaps. Why the calm sea
should invariably make us melancholy we cannot tell, but
it does so, in spite of all our efforts to be gay. Walt
Whitman used to sport in the great waters as happily as
a porpoise or a seal, without any dread, with vigorous
animal delight ; and we, too, can enjoy a glorious swim
in the sun, if there is just a little wind, and the sea
sparkles and freshens full of life. But to swim in a dead
calm is dreadful to a sensitive man. Something mes-
meric grips and weakens him. If the water be deep, he
feels dizzy, as if he were suspended far up in the air.
We are harping on delicate mental chords, and forget-
ting Canna ; yet we have been musing in such a mood as
Canna must inevitably awaken in all who feel the world.
She is so lonely, so beautiful ; and the seas around her
are so full of sounds and sights that seize the soul. There
is nothing mean, or squalid, or miserable about Canna;
but she is melancholy and subdued, she seems, like a
Scandinavian Havfru, to sit her with hand to her ear
earnestly listening to the sea.
That, too, is what first strikes one in the Canna people,
their melancholy look, not grief-worn, not sorrowful,
not passionate, but simply melancholy and subdued. We
cannot believe they are unhappy beyond the lot of other
people who live by labour, and it is quite certain that, in
worldly circumstances, they are much more comfortable
than the Highland poor are generally. Nature, however,
CANA'A AND ITS PEOPLE. 273
with her wondrous secret influences, has subdued their
lives, toned their thoughts, to the spirit of the island
where they dwell. This is more particularly the case with
the women. Poor human souls, with that dark, searching
look in the eyes, those feeble flutterings of the lips !
They speak sad and low, as if somebody were sleeping
close by. When they step forward and ask you to walk
into the dwelling, you think (being new to their ways)
that some one has just died. All at once, and inevitably,
you hear the leaden wash of the sea, and you seem to be
walking on a grave.
" A ghostly people !" exclaims the reader ; " keep me
from Canna !" That is an error. The people do seem
ghostly at first, their looks do sadden and depress ; but
the feeling soon wears away, when you find how much
quiet happiness, how much warmth of heart, may under-
lie the melancholy air. When they know you a little,
ever so little, they brighten, not into anything demon-
strative, not into sunniness, but into a silvern kind of
beauty, which we can only compare to moonlight. A
veil is quietly lifted, and you see the soul's face ; and
then you know that these folk are melancholy, not for
sorrow's sake, but just as moonlight is melancholy, just
as the wash of water is melancholy, because that is the
natural expression of their lives. They are capable of a
still, heart-suffering tenderness, very touching to behold.
We visit many of their houses, and hold many of their
hands. Kindly, gentle, open-handed as melting charity,
we find them all ; the poorest of them as hospitable as
274 CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE.
the proudest chieftain of their race. There is a gift
everywhere for the stranger, and a blessing to follow,
for they know that after all he is bound for the same
bourne.
Theirs is a quiet life, a still passage from birth to the
grave ; still, untroubled, save for the never-silent voices
of the waves. The women work very hard, both indoors
and afield. Some of the men go away herring-fishing in
the season, but the majority find employment either on
the island or the circumjacent waters. We cannot credit
the men with great energy of character; they do not
seem industrious. An active man could not lounge as
they lounge, with that total abandonment of every nerve
and muscle. They will lie in little groups for hours
looking at the sea, and biting stalks of grass not seem-
ing to talk, save when one makes a kind of grunting
observation, and stretches out his limbs a little farther.
Some one comes and says, " There are plenty of herring
over in Loch Scavaig a Skye boat got a great haul last
night." Perhaps the loungers go off to try their luck, but
very likely they say, " Wait till to-morrow it may be all
untrue ;" and in all probability, before they get over to the
fishing ground, the herrings have disappeared.
Yet they can work, too, and with a will, when they are
fairly set on to work. They can't speculate, they can't
search for profit ; the shrewd man outwits them at every
turn. They keep poor but keeping poor, they keep
good. Their worst fault is their dreaminess ; but surely
as there is light in heaven, if there be blame here, God is
CAN A' A AND ITS PEOPLE. 275
to blame here, who gave them dreamy souls ! For our
part, keep us from the man who could be born in Canna,
live on and on with that ocean murmur around him, and
elude dreaminess and a melancholy like theirs !
" Bah !" cries a good soul from a city ; " they are lazy,
like the Irish, like Jamaica niggers ; they are behind the
age ; let them die !" You are quite right, my good soul ;
and if it will be any comfort to you to hear it, they, and
such as they, are dying fast. They can't keep up with
you ; you are too clever, too great. You, we have no
doubt, could live at Canna, and establish a manufactory
there for getting the sea turned into salt for export. You
wouldn't dream not you ! Ere long these poor High-
landers will die out, and with them may die out gentle-
ness, hospitality, charity, and a few other lazy habits of
the race.
In a pensive mood, with a prayer on our lips for the
future of a noble race destined to perish locally, we
wander across the island till we come to the little grave-
yaid where the people of Canna go to sleep. It is a
desolate spot, commanding a distant view of the Western
Ocean. A rude stone wall, with a clumsy gate, surrounds
a small square, so wild, so like the stone-covered hill-
side all round, that we should not guess its use without
being guided by the fine stone-mausoleum in the midst.
That is the last home of the Lairds of Canna and'their
kin; it is quite modern and respectable. Around,
covered knee-deep with grass, are the graves of the
islanders, with no other memorial stones than simple
276 CANNA AND ITS PEOPLE.
pieces of rock, large and small, brought from the sea-
shore and placed as foot-stones and headstones. Rugged
as water tossing in the wind is the old kirk-yard, and the
graves of the dead therein are as the waves of the sea,
In a place apart lies the wooden bier, with handspokes
on which they carry the cold men and women hither; and
by its side a sight indeed to dim the eyes is another
smaller bier, smaller and lighter, used for little children.
Well, there is not such a long way between parents and
offspring ; the old here are children too, silly in worldly
matters, loving, sensitive, credulous of strange tales. They
are coming hither, faster and faster ; bier after bier,
shadow after shadow. It is the tradesman's day now, the
day of progress, the day of civilisation, the day of shops ;
but high as may be your respect for the commercial glory
of the nation, stand for a moment in imagination among
these graves, listen to one tale out of many that might be
told of those who sleep below, and join me in a prayer for
the poor islanders whom they are carrying, here and in a
thousand other kirkyards, to the rest that is without
knowledge and the sleep that is without dream.
EIRADH OF CANNA.
EIRADH OF CANNA. 1
A TALE.
' She was a woman of a steadfast mind,
Tender and deep in her excess of love ;
Not speaking much, pleased rather with the joy
Of her own thoughts.
WORDSWORTH'S " Excursion. "
,HERE was a man named Ian Macraonail,
who lived at Canna in the sea. In the days
of his prosperity God sent him issue, five
lads and a lass. Now Ian had great joy
in his five sons, for they grew up to be fine young men,
straight-limbed, clean-skinned, clever with their hands ;
and in the girl he had not joy, but pain, for she was a
sickly child and walked lame through a trouble in the spine.
Her name was Eiradh, and she was born to many
thoughts.
When she was born she cried ; nor did she cease crying
1 This tale, or poem in prose, is supposed to be told by a native of
the Highlands in the Highland tongue.
280 EIRADH OF CANNA.
after long days ; and folk seeing that she was so sickly a
child, thought that she would die soon. Yet Eiradh did
not die, but cried on. so that the house was never quiet,
and the neighbours, when they heard the sound in the
night, said, "That is Ian Macraonail's bairn; the Lord has
not yet taken her away." When she was three years old
she lay in the cradle still, and could not run upon her feet :
and then foul sores came out upon her head after they
burst she had sound sleeps, and her trouble passed away.
The mother's heart was glad to see the little one grow
stiller and brighter every day, and try to prattle like other
children at the hearth ; and she nursed her with care,
slowly teaching her to move upon her feet. Afterwards
they taught her how to use a little crutch of wood which Ian
himself cut in the long winter nights when he was at home.
Ian Macraonail was a just man, and his house was a
well-doing house, but Eiradh saw little of her father's face.
In the summer season he was far away chasing the herring
on the great sea, and even on the stormy winter days he
was fishing cod and ling with a mate on the shores of
Skye and Mull. When he came home he was wet
and sleepy, and all the children had to keep very
still. Then Eiradh would sit in a corner of the hearth
and see his dark face in the peat smoke. If he took
her upon his knee she felt afraid and cried ; so that
the father said, " The child is stupid, take her away."
But when he took her young brother upon his knee, the
boy laughed and played with his beard.
For all that the mother held Eiradh dear above all her
EIRADH OF CANNA. 281
other children, because she was sickly, and had given ner
so much care.
Ian had built the house with his own hands, and it
looked right out upon the sea. All the day and night the
water cried at the door. Sometimes it was low and still
and glistening ; and it was pleasant then to sit out on the
sand and throw stones into the smooth and glassy tide.
But oftenest it was wild and loud, shrieking out as if it were
living, dashing in the seaweed and planks of ships, and
seeming to say, " Come out here, come out here, that 1
may eat you up alive ! " All the long night it cried on,
while the wind tore at the roof of the house, and would
have carried it far away if the straw ropes and heavy
stones had not been there to hold it down.
Then Eiradh would hide her head under the blankets
and think of her father upon the sea.
The water cried at the door. When Eiradh's eldest
brother grew up into a strong youth, he went away with
his father upon the sea. He stayed away so long that
his face grew strange. When he came home he was
sleepy and tired, like his father, and said little to his
sister and brothers ; but one day he brought Eiradh home
a little round-eyed owl, like a little old woman in a tufted
wig. Eiradh was proud that day. When the calliach
opened its mouth and roared for food, she laughed and
clapped her hands ; and she made the bird a nest in an
old basket, and fed it with her own hands. She loved
her great brother very much after that, and was happy
when he came home.
282 'EIRADH OF CANNA.
The water cried at the door. One day Eiradh's second
brother joined his father and brother upon the sea, and
ever after that was sleepy and tired like the others when
he came home. The mother said to Eiradh, " That is
always the way; boys must work for their bread." But
Eiradh thought to herself, " It is the sea calling them
away. I shall soon not have a brother left in the house. "
The water cried at the door till all Eiradh's five
brothers went away. Then it was very lonely in the
dwelling, and the days and nights were long and dull.
When the fishers came home, their faces were all strange
to her, and they seemed great rough men, while she was
only a little sickly child. But they were kind. They
told her wild stories about the sea and the people they
had seen, and laughed out loud and merry at the wonder
in her great staring eyes. They told her of the great
whales and the sea-snakes that have manes like a horse
and teeth like a saw ; and how the old witch of Barra
smoked her pipe over her pot and sold the fishermen
winds.
One night when Eiradh was twelve years of age, she
sat with her mother over the fire, waiting for her father
and brothers to come home in the skiff from Mull. It
was a rainy night, late in the year. Now, the mother
had been ailing for many days with a heaviness and pain
about the heart, and she said to Eiradh : " I feel sick,
and I will lie down upon the bed to rest a little." Eiradh
kept very still that her mother might sleep, and the pot,
with the supper in it, bubbled, the rain 'went sphsh-sphsh
EIRADH OF CANNA. 283
at the door, till Eiradh fell to sleep herself. She woke
up with a loud cry, and looking round her saw her father
and brothers in the room. The steam was coming thick
like smoke from their clothes, their faces were white, and
they were talking to one another. She called to them
not to make a noise because mother was asleep ; but her
father said, in a sharp voice, " Take the girl away she
is better out of the house." Then a neighbour woman
stepped forward, out of the shadow of the door, and said,
" she shall go with me." When the woman took her by
the hand and led her to the other house through the
rain, she was so frightened she could not say a word.
The woman led her in, and bade her seat herself beside
the fire, where a man sat smoking his pipe and mending
his nets. Then Eiradh heard her whisper in his ear, as
she passed him, "This is lame Eiradh with the red
hair her mother has just died."
It seemed to Eiradh that the ground was suddenly
drawn from under her feet, and she was walking high up in
the air, and all around her were voices crying : " Eiradh !
Eiradh with the red hair ! your mother has just died."
When that passed away, a sharp thread was drawn
through her heart, and she could scarcely cry for pain ;
but when the tears came they did her good, washing the
pang away. But it was like a dream.
It was like a dream, too, the day when the woman
took her by the hand and led her back to the house.
The sea was loud that day loud and dark and it
seemed to be saying, with its great voice : " Eiradh !
284 EIRADH OF CANNA.
Eiradh ! your mother has just died." The home was
clean and still ; father was sitting on a bench beside
the fire in his best clothes, looking very white. When
she went in he drew her to him and kissed her on the
forehead, and she sobbed sore. The woman said,
"Come, Eiradh;" and led her aside. Something was
lying on the bed all white, and there was a smell like
fresh-bleached linen in the air; then the woman lifted
up a kerchief, and Eiradh saw her mother's face dressed
in a clean cap, and the grey hair brushed down smooth
and neat. Eiradh's tears stopped, and she was afraid
it looked so cold. The woman said : " Would you like
to kiss her, Eiradh, before they take her away?" but
Eiradh drew her breath tight, and cried to be taken out
of the house.
That night she slept in the neighbour's house, and the
next day her mother was taken to the graveyard on the
hill. Eiradh did not see them take her away ; but in the
afternoon she went home and found the house empty.
It was clean and bright. The peat fire was blazing on
the floor, and there were bottles and glasses on the press
in the corner. By-and-by her father and brothers came
in, all dressed in their best clothes, and with red eyes ;
and many fishermen neighbours stood at the door to
take the parting glass, and went away quite merry to
their homes. But the priest came and sat down by the
fire with her father and brothers, and patted Eiradh on
the head, telling her not to cry any more, because her
mother was happy with God. She went and sat on the
EIRADH OF CANNA. 285
ground in a corner, looking at them through her tears.
Her father was lighting his pipe, and she heard him say,
" She was a good wife to me ; " and the priest answered,
" She was a good wife and a good mother ; she has gone
to a better place." Eiradh wondered very much to see
them so quiet and hard.
With that, the days of Eiradh's loneliness began. She
had no mother now to talk to her in the long nights
when her father and brothers were away upon the sea ;
but she used to go to the neighbour-woman's house and
sleep among the children. Oftener than ever before,
she loved to sit by the water and listen, playing alone ;
so that her playmates used to say, " Eiradh is a stupid
girl, and likes to sit by herself." One day she went to
the graveyard on the hill and searched about for the
place where her mother was laid. The grass was long
and green, and there were great weeds everywhere ; but
there was one place where the earth had been newly
turned, and blades of young grass were beginning to
creep through the clay. She felt sure that her mother
must be sleeping there. So she sat down on the grave
and began to knit. It was a clear bright day, the sheep
were crying on the hills, and the sea far off was like a
glass ; and it was strange to think her mother was lying
down there, so near to her, with her face up to the sky.
Eiradh began wondering how deep she was lying and
whether she was still dressed in white. Her thoughts
made her afraid, and she looked all around her. Though
it was daytime, she could not bear to stay any longer,
286 EIRADH OF CANNA.
for she had heard about ghosts. As she walked home
on her crutch, she looked round her very often, fancying
she heard some one at her back.
Though Eiradh Nicraonail was a sickly girl, she was
clever and quick, and she soon began to take a pleasure
in the house. The neighbour-woman helped about the
place and taught Eiradh many things how to cook,
how to make cakes of oatmeal on the brander, and how
to wash clothes. She was so quick and willing, and
longed so much to please her father and brothers, that
they said, " Eiradh is as good as a woman in a house,
though she is so young." Then Eiradh brightened full
of pride, and ever after that kept the home clean and
pleasant, and forgot her griefs.
There was a man in Canna, a little old man with a
club foot, who got his living in many ways, for he could
make shoes and knew how to mend nets, and besides,
he was a learned man, having been taught at a school in
the south. Some of the children used to go to him in
the evenings, and he taught them how to read ; but he
was so sharp and cross that sometimes he would have
nothing to say to them though they came. Now and
then, Eiradh went over to him, and he was gentler with
her than with the rest, because she had a trouble of the
body like himself. He learned her her letters, and after-
wards, with a wooden trunk for a desk, made her try to
write. Often, too, he came over to her in the house,
and smoked his pipe while she knitted ; but if her father
or any of her brothers came in, he gave them sharp an-
EIRADH OF CANNA. 287
swers and soon went away, while they laughed and said,
" It is a pity that his learning does not make him more
free." He was a strange old man, and believed in ghosts
and witches. Eiradh liked to sit and listen to his tales.
He told her how the bagpipes played far off when any
one was going to die. He told her of a young man in
Skye, who could cause diseases by the power of the evil
eye, and of a woman in Barra, who used to change into
a hare every night and run up to the top of the moun-
tains to meet a spirit in black by the side of a fire made
out of the coffins of those who died in sin. He had
seen every loophole in Skipness Castle full of cats' heads,
with red eyes, and every head was the head of a witch.
He believed in dreams, and thought that the dead rose
every night and walked together by the side of the sea.
Often in the dark evenings, when Eiradh was sitting at
his knee, he would take his pipe out of his mouth and
tell her to listen ; if she listened very hard in the pauses
of the wind, she would hear something like a voice cry-
ing, and he told her that it was the spirit of the poor
lady who died in the tower, walking up and down, moan-
ing and wringing its "hands.
As Eiradh grew older she had so much to do in the
house that she thought of these things less than before.
But when she sat by herself knitting, and the day's work
was over, voices came about her that belonged to another
land, and she grew so used to them that their presence
seemed company to her, and she was not afraid. By the
time that she was seventeen years of age God's strength
288 E1RADH OF CANNA.
had come upon her, and she could walk about without
her crutch. She had red hair, her face was white and
well-favoured, and her eyes were the colour of the green
sea.
One night, when her father and brothers were sleeping
with her in the house, Eiradh Nicraonail had a dream.
She thought she was standing by the sea, and it was full
of moonlight and the shadows of the stars. While she
stood looking and listening there came up out of the sea
a black beast like a seal, followed by five young ones,
and they floated about in the light of the moon with
their black heads up listening to a sound from far away
like the music of a harp. All at once the wind rose and
the sea grew rough and white, and the lift was quite dark.
In a little time the distant music grew louder and the
wind died away. Then Eiradh saw the beast floating
about alone in the white moonlight and bleating like a
sheep when robbed of its lamb ; and at last it gave a
great cry and stretched itself out stiff and dead, with its
speckled belly shining uppermost and the herring-syle
playing round it like flashes of silver light. With that
she awoke, and it was dark night ; the wind was crying
softly outside, and she could hear her father and brothers
breathing heavy in their sleep.
The next day, when her father and brothers sat mend-
ing their nets at the door she told them her dream.
They only laughed, and said it was folly put into her
head by the old man who taught her to read. But she
saw that they looked at one another, and were not well
EIRADH OF CANNA. 289
pleased. All that day the dream troubled her at her
work, and whenever she heard the sheep bleat from the
hill-side she felt faint. The next night she said a long
prayer for her father and brothers, and slept sound. The
dream did not come again, and in a few days the trouble
of it wore away. But when the news came that they
were catching herring in Loch Scavaig, and the fisherman
and his sons began preparing their boat to sail over and
try their chance, all Eiradh's fears came back upon her
twentyfold. It was changeful weather early in the year ;
there were strong winds and a great sea.
The day before the boat went away Ian had the rheu-
matic trouble so sore in his bones that he could not rise
out of his bed ; and he was still so sick next day that he
told the young men to go away alone, for fear of missing
the good fishing. They went off with a light heart four
strong men and a tall lad.
Ian Macraonail never saw his sons any more. Three
days afterwards news was brought that the boat had laid
over and filled in a squall, and that every one on board
had been drowned in the sea.
Then Eiradh knew that her strange dream had partly
come true, but that more was to come true yet. The
water cried at the door. Ian sat like a frozen man in the
house, and when Eiradh looked at him her tears ceased
she felt afraid. He scarcely said a word, and did not
cry, but he paid no heed to his meat. He looked like
the man on the hill-side when the voice of God came out
of the burning bush.
u
29 3 EIRADH OF CANNA.
Again and again Eiradh cried " Father ! " and looked
into his face, but he held up his hand each time to warn
her away. A thread ran through her heart at this, for
she had always known he loved her brothers best, and
now he did not seem to remember her at all. She went
outside the home, and looked at the crying water, and
hated it for all it had done. Her heart was sad for her
five brothers who were dead, but it was saddest of all for
her father who was alive.
The priest came, and prayed for the dead. Ian prayed
too, with a cold heart. Afterwards the priest took him
by the hand, looking into his eyes, and said, " Ian, you
have suffered sore, but those the Lord loves are born to
many troubles." Ian looked down, and answered in a
low voice, "That is true ; I have nothing left now to live
for." But the priest said, "You have Eiradh, your
daughter; she is a good girl." Ian made no answer, but
sat down and smoked his pipe. Eiradh went out of the
house, and cried to herself.
Now, that day Ian Macraonail put on his best black
gear and the black hat with the broad crape band. The
Hack clothes made him look whiter. He took his staff,
and went up over the hill on to the cliffs, over the place
where the black eagle builds, and stood close to the
edge, looking over at Loch Scavaig, where the lads were
drowned. While he stood there a shepherd that knew
him came by, and seeing him look so wild, fancied that
he meant to take the short road to the kirkyard. So the
man touched him on the shoulder, saying, " He sleeps ill
EIRADH OF CANNA. 291
that rocks himself to sleep we are in God's hands, and
must bide His time." Ian knew what the shepherd
meant, and shook his head. " I have been a well-doing
man," he said, " and mine has been a well-doing house.
I have drunk a bitter cup, but the Lord forbid that I
should do the sin you think of." So the shepherd made
the sign of the blessed cross, and went away.
After that Ian wore his black gear every day, and every
day he went up on the high cliffs to walk, He ate his
meat quite hearty, and he was gentle with Eiradh in the
house ; but he stared all around him Ijke a man at the
helm in a thick mist, and listened as the man at the helm
listens in the mist for the wind that is coming. It was
plain that he took little heart in his dwelling, or in the
good money he had saved. One day he said, " When 1
go again to the herring-fishing, I must pay wages to
strangers I cannot trust, and things will not go well."
The day after that, at the mouth of lateness they found
him leaning against a stone, close over the place where
the black eagle builds ; and his heart was turned to lead,
and his blood was water, and there were no pictures in
his eyes.
Now Eiradh Nicraonail was alone in the whole world
II.
When Ian was in the narrow house where the fire is
cold and the grass grows at the door, Eiradh sold the
boats and the nets, and all but the house she lived in ;
292 E1RADH OF CANNA.
and when she counted the good money, she found there
was enough to keep her from hunger for a little time.
In these days she had little heart to work in the house
and in the fields, and every time she thought of those
who were lying under the hill she felt a salt stone rise in
her throat. In the long nights, when she was alone,
voices came out of the sea, and eyes looked at her, she
heard the wind calling, and the ghost of the lady crying
up in the tower, and she thought of all the strange
things the old man had told her when she was small.
Often her heart w,as so troubled that she had to run away
to the neighbours and sit among them for company. She
often said, " I would rather be far away than here, for it
is a dull place;" and she planned to take service on
some farm across the water.
The women bade her wait and look out for a man, but
Eiradh said, " The man is not born that would earn
meat for me." She was dull and down-looking in these
days, speaking little, but her bodily trouble was all gone,
and she was clean-limbed and had a soft face. More
than one lad looked her way, and would have come
courting to her house at night, but she barred the door
and would let no man in. One night, when a fisher lad
got in, and came laughing to her bedside, he was sore
afraid at the look of her face and the words of her
mouth, though she only cried, " Go away this night, for
the love of my father and mother. I am sick and heavy
with sleep."
These were decent and well-doing lads, shepherds
EIRADH OF CANNA. 2 gi
earning good wages, but Eiradh had a face to frighten
them away.
The winter after Ian Macraonail died, Calum Eachern,
the tailor, came north to Canna. The folk had been
waiting for him since long, and there was much work to
De done so that Calum was busy morning and night in
one house or another ; but though he had been busier,
his tongue could never have kept still. Every night
people gathered in the place where he worked, and those
were merry times. He was like a full kist, never empty ;
his tales were never done. He had the story of the king
of Lochlan's daughter, and how Fionn killed the great
bird of the red beak, and many more beside. He loved
best to tell about the men of peace, with their green
houses under the hillside, and about the changeling
bairns that play the fairy pipes in the time of sleep, and
about the ladies with green gowns, that sit in the magic
wells and tempt the herdboys with silver rings. He had
that many riddles they were like the limpets on the sea-
shore. He knew old songs, and he had the gift of mak-
ing rhymes himself to his own tune. So the coming of
Calum Eachern was like the playing of pipes at a wedding
on a summer day.
Calum was little, narrow in the shoulders, and short in
the legs. His face was like a china cup for neatness.
He had a little turned-up nose, and white teeth, and he
shaved his beard clean every day. He had little twink-
ling eyes like a fox's, and when he talked to you he
cocked his head on one side, like a sparrow on a dyke.
294 EIRADH OF CANNA.
One night, he was at work in a neighbour's house, and
Eiradh went in with the rest. Calum sat on his board,
and some were looking on and listening to his talk.
When Eiradh went in, he put his head on one side and
looked at her, and said in a rhyme
" What did tlie fox say?
Huch ! huch ! huch ! cried the fox ;
Cold are my bones this day
I have leant my skin to cover the head
Of the girl with the red hair."
All the folk laughed, and Eiradh laughed too. Then
she sat down on the floor by the fire, and hearkened with
her cheek on her hand. Calum Eachern was like a bee
in the time of hpney. He stitched, and sang, and told
tales about the men of peace, and the land where jewels
grew as thick as chuckie-stones, and gold is as plenty as
the sand of the sea. Whenever Eiradh looked up, he
nad his head on one side, and his eyes were laughing at
her. By-and-by he nodded and said :
" What did the sea-gull say?
Kriki ! kriki ! cried the sea-gull ;
Hard it is to hatch my eggs this day
I have lent my white breast
To the girl with the red hair."
Then he nodded again and said :
" What did the heron say?
Kray ! kray ! said the heron ;
Poor is my fishing in the loch to-daj
I have lent my long straight leg
To the girl with the red hair.
EIRADH OF CANNA. 295
With that, he flung down his shears, and laughed till
the tears were in his eyes. Eiradh felt angry and
ashamed, and went away.
But for all that, she was not ill pleased. Listening to
Calum Eachern had been like sitting out of doors on a
bright sunny day. It made her heart light. All the
night long she thought of his talk. She had never heard
tales like those before all about brightness and a pleasant
place. When she went to sleep, she dreamed she was in
an enchanted castle all made of silver mines and precious
stones, and that Calum Eachern was showing her a
fountain full of gold fish, and the fountain seemed to fall
in rhyme. All at once, Calum laughed so loud that the
castle was broken into a thousand pieces, and when she
woke up it was bright day.
The day after that who should come into the house
but Calum Eachern. " A blessing on this house ! " said
he, and sat down beside the fire. Eiradh was putting the
potatoes in the big pot, and Calum pointed at the pot
and said :
" Totoman, totoman,
Little black man,
Three feet under
And bonnet of wood ! "
Eiradh laughed at the riddle. Then Calum, seeing she
was pleased, began to talk and sing, putting his held on
one side and laughing. All at once he said, looking
quite serious, " It's not much company you will be having
here, Eiradh Nicraonail."
296 EIRADH OF CANNA.
" That's true enough," said Eiradh.
" It's a dull house that is without the cry of bairns, I'm
thinking."
"And that's true too," said Eiradh.
" Then why don't you take a man ? " said he, looking
at her very sharp.
Eiradh gave her head a toss, and lifted up the lid of
the pot to look in.
" Your cheek is like a rose for redness," said Calum.
" Are ye ashamed to answer ? "
At that, Eiradh lifted up her head and looked him
straight in the face.
"The man is not born that I heed a straw," said
she.
Calum laughed out loud to hear her say that, and a
little after he went away.
Eiradh did not know whether she was pleased or angry,
and all that night she had little sleep. She did not like
to be laughed at, and yet she could not be rightly angry
with such a merry fellow as Calum. It seemed strange to
her that he should come to the house at all.
It seemed stranger, the next night, when Calum came
in again, and sat down by the fire.
" How does the Lord use you this night, F/iradh
Nicraonail ? "
"The Lord is good," answered Eiradh.
" Can you read print ? " he said, smiling.
"Ay," answered Eiradh, "print and writing too."
"And that's a comfort," said Calum. "But I've
EIRADH OF CANNA. 297
brought you somebody to sit with ye by the fire in the
long nights."
"And what's he like?" asked Eiradh, thinking that
Calum meant himself.
" He's not over fine to look at, but he's mighty learned.
He's a little old man with a leather skin, and his name
written on his face, and the marks o' thumbs all over his
inside."
" And where is he this night ? "
" This is him, and here he is, and many a merry thing
he'll teach you, if you attend to his talking," said Calum ;
and he gave her a little book in the Gaelic, very old and
covered with black print ; and soon after that he went
away.
When he was gone, Eiradh sat down by the fire and
turned over the leaves of the book that he had given her,
and it seemed like the voice of Calum talking in her ear.
There were stories about the fairies and the men of peace,
and shieling songs of the south country, and riddles for
the fireside in the south country on Halloween. Eiradh
read till she was tired, and some of the stories made her
laugh afterwards as she sat by the fireside with her cheek
on her hand. She could not help thinking that it would
be fine to live in the south country, where there was corn
growing everywhere, and gardens full of flowers, and no
sea.
After that Calum Eachern came often to the house
and Eiradh did not tell him to stay away. Some of the
/oik said, "Calum Eachern has a bad name," and bade
298 EIRADPI OF CANNA.
Eiradll beware, because he had a false tongue. Eiradh
laughed and said, " I fear the tongue of no man." Every
night she read the printed book, till she knew it from
the first page to the last, and when she was alone she
would sing bits of the songs to Calum Eachern's tunes.
Sometimes she would stand on the sea-shore, and look
out across the water, and wonder what like was the
country on the other side of the Rhu. In those days
she was sick of Canna, and thought to herself, " If I was
living in the south country, I should not be afraid of
them that are dead;" and she remembered Calum's
words, " It's not much company you will be having here,
Eiradh Nicraonail."
One night there was a boat from Tyree in the harbour,
and when Calum came in late Eiradh knew that he had
been drinking with the Tyree men. His face was red,
and his breath smelt strong of the drink. He tried hard
to get his will of her that night, but Eiradh was a well-
doing girl and pushed him out of the house. She was
angry and fit to cry, thinking of the words, "Calum
Eachern has a bad name." That night she had a dream.
She thought she has walking by the side of the sea on a
light night, and she had a bairn in her arms, and she was
giving it the breast. As she walked she could hear the
ghost of the lady crying in the tower. Then she felt the
babe she carried as heavy as lead, and it spoke with a
man's voice, and had white teeth ; and when she looked
at its face, it was Calum's face laughing, all cocked on
one side. With that she woke.
EIRADH Of CANNA. 299
When she saw Calum next, he hung down his head,
and looked so strange and sad that she could not help
laughing as she passed by. Then he ran after, and she
turned on him full of anger. But Calum had a smooth
tongue, and she soon forgot her anger listening to one of
his tales. She liked him best of all that day, for he was
quiet and serious, and never laughed once. Eiradh
thought to herself, "The man is no worse than other
men, and drink will change a wise man into a fool."
Calum never tried to wrong her again, but one night
he spoke out plain and asked her to marry him, and go
home with him in a Canna boat to the south. It was a
long while ere Eiradh answered a word. She sat with
her cheek on her hand looking at the fire, and thinking of
the night her mother died, and of her father and brothers
that were drowned, and of the voices that came to her
out of the sea. It was a rough night, and the wind blew
sharp from the east, and she could hear the water at the
door. Then she looked at Calum, and he had a bright
smile, and held out his hand. But she only said, " Go
away this night," and he went away without a word. All
night long she thought of his words, " It's a dull house
without the cry of bairns," and she remembered the days
when her mother used to nurse her, and her father cut
her the crutch of wood with his own hands. Next morn-
.fig the sea was still, and the light was the colour of gold
on the land beyond the Rhu. That day the folk seemed
sharp and cold, and more than one mocked her with the
name of Calum ; so that she said to herself, " They shall
300 EIRADH OF CANNA.
not mock me without a cause ; " and when Calum came
to her the next night, she said she would be his good
wife.
Soon after that Calum Eachern and Eiradh Nicraonail
were married by the priest from Skye ; and the day they
married they went on board a Canna smack that -was
sailing south. An old man from Tyree was at the helm,
and she sat on her kist close to him. Calum sat up by the
mast with the men, who were all Canna lads, and as they
all talked together Calum whispered something and
laughed, and all the lads looked at her and laughed too.
Calum was full of drink. He had a bottle of whisky in
the breast of his coat, and as the boat sailed out of the
bay he waved it to the folk on shore, and laughed like a
wild man.
Now Eiradh felt sadder and sadder as she saw Canna
growing farther and farther away ; for she thought of her
father and mother, and of the graveyard on the hill. The
more she thought, the more she felt the tears in her eyes
and the stone in her throat. Going round the Rhu she
had the sea-sickness, and thought she was going to die.
Though she had dwelt beside the sea so many years, she
had never sailed on the water in a boat.
III.
Where Calum Eachern lived, the folk had strange
ways, and many of them had both the Gaelic and the
English. Their houses were whitewashed and roofed
EIRADH Of CAJMA. 301
with slate, and there was a long street with shops full of
all things that man could wish, and there was a house for
the sale of drink. The roads were broad and smooth as
your hand, and on the sides of the hills were fields of
com and potatoes. The sea was twenty miles away, but
there was a burn, on the banks of which the women used
to tread their clothes. Eiradh thought to herself, " It is
not as fine a country as Calum said."
Calum's house was the poorest house there, It had
two rooms, and in the front room Calum worked ; the
back room was a kitchen with a bed in the wall. Eiradh
had brought with her some of the furniture from her
father's house, and plenty of woollen woof made by her
mother's own hands; and she soon made the place
pleasant and clean. They had not been home a day
when the laird came in for the back rent that was due,
and Eiradh paid the money out of her own store. She
had the money in a stocking inside her kist, and some
of it was in copper and silver, but there were pound
notes quite ragged and old with being kept so many
years.
Jt would take me a long winter's night to tell all that
Eiradh thought in those days. She was like one in a
dream. She felt it strange to see so many people coming
arid going in and out of the shops and houses, and the
crowds on market days, and the great heap of sheep and
cattle The folk were civil and fair-spoken, but most of
tK<: men drank at the public house. There was a man
next door who would get mad- drunk every night he had
302 EIRADH OF CANNA.
the money, and it was a sad sight to see his wife's face
cut and bruised and the bairns at her side crying for lack
of food. Many of the men were weavers, and walked
lame as Eiradh used to do, and had pale sickly faces,
black under the eyes. The Gaelic they had was a differ-
ent Gaelic from that the folk had in Canna, and some-
times Eiradh could not understand it at all.
Now, it was not long ere Eiradh found that Calum had
a bad name in the place for drinking ; and besides he had
beguiled a servant lass the year before under the promise
of marriage. Eiradh thought of the night when he had
come drunk to the house, but she said nothing to Calum.
She would sit and watch him for hours, and wonder she
had thought him so bright and free ; for she soon saw he
was a double man, with a side for his home and another
for strangers ; and the first side was as dull as the second
was bright. He never raised his hand to her in those days,
and was sober ; but he would sit with a silent tongue, and
sometimes give her a strange look. Eiradh thought to
herself "Calum is like the south country, and looks
brightest to them that are farthest away."
A year after they had come to the south country,
Calum turned his front room into a shop, and made
Eiradh look after it while he was at work. The goods
were bought with her own good money, and were tea,
sugar, tobacco, and meal. The first month, Eiradh got
all her money back. It was pleasant to sit there and sell,
and know that she made a profit on each thing she sold ;
and Calum was light and merry, when he saw that his
EIRADH OF CANNA. 303
idea had turned out well. Eiradh's health was not so good
in those days, and she had no children.
. After that came days of trouble, for Calum grew worse
and worse. He would take the money that Eiradh had
earned, and spend it in the public-house ; and when he
came home in drink, he raised his hand to her more than
once. Then Eiradh thought to herself, " My father did
not love me, but he never struck me a blow ; there is not
a man in Canna who would lift his hand to a woman."
After that she took no pleasure in trade, but would sit
\vith a sick face and a silent tongue, thinking of Canna in
the sea. Calum liked her the less because she did not
complain. One day he told her that he did not marry her
for herself, but for the money she had saved; and this was
a sore thing to say to her ; but though the tears made her
blind, she only looked at him, and did not answer a word.
There was some of the money left in her kist, but she
never cared to look at it after what Calum had said.
After the day he married Eiradh, Calum had never left
his home to work through the country as he once did.
But one night late in the year he said he must go south on
business, and in the morning he went away. Eiradh
never saw him again tfn this side the narrow house, He
went straight to the big city of Glasgow, and there he met
the lass he had beguiled the year he married Eiradh, and
the two sailed over the seas to Canada. The news came
quick to Eiradh by the mouth of one who saw them on
the quay.
One would need the tongue of a witch to tell all
304 EIRADH OF CANNA.
Eiradh's thoughts in those days. The first news seemed
like the roar of the sea the time her brothers died, and the
words stopped in her ears like the crying of the water day
and night. She felt ashamed to show herself in the street,
and she could not bear the comfort of the good wives ; for
they all said, " Calum had ever a bad name," and she
remembered how the folk in Canna had used the same
words. She would sit with her apron over her face, and
greet 1 for hours with no noise. It seemed dreadful to be
there in the south country, without friend or kindred, and
the folk having a different Gaelic from her own. She felt
eick and stupid, just like herself when she would cry night
and day from the cradle, without strength to run upon her
feet. She thought to herself, " I may cry till my heart
breaks now, but no one heeds ;" and the thought brought
up the picture of her mother lying in the bed all white,
and made her cry the more. Now in those days voices
came about her that belonged to another land, and the
faces of her father and mother went past her like the
white breaking of a wave on the beach in the night. She
had dreams whenever she slept, and in every one of her
dreams she heard the sough of the sea.
But Eiradh Eachern was a well-doing lass, and had
been bred to face trouble when it came. Her first
thought was this : " I will go back to Canna in the sea,
and work for my bread in the fields." But when she
looked in the kist, she found that Calum had been there
and taken away all the good money out of the stocking,
1 Weep.
EIRADH OF CANNA. 305
and a picture besides of the Virgin Mary, set round with
yellow gold and precious stones the colour of blood.
Now, this grieved Eiradh most. She did not heed the
money so much, but the picture had belonged to her
mother, and she would not have parted with it for hundreds
of pounds. She felt a sharp thread run through her heart
and she was sick for pain.
It is a wonder how much trouble a strong man or
woman in good health can bear when it comes. Eiradh
thought to herself at first, " I shall die," but she did not
die. The Lord was not willing that she should be taken
away then. He spared her, as he had spared her in her
sickness when a bairn at the breast.
One day a neighbour came in and said, " Will you not
keep open the shop the same as before ? You have
always paid for your goods, and those that sent them will
not press for payment at first." Now, Eiradh had never
thought of that, and her heart lightened. That same day
she got the schoolmaster to write a letter, in the English,
to the big city, asking goods. The next week the goods
came.
Then Eiradh thought, " God has not forgotten me,"
and worked hard to put all in order as before. Many folk
came and bought from her, out of kindness at first, but
aiterwards because they said she was a just woman, and
gave full value for their money. All this gladdened her
heart. She said, " God helps those that are fallen," and
every penny that she earned seemed to have the blessing
of God.
x
306 EIRADH OF CANNA.
In those times she would lock up the house when the
day was done, and walk by herself along the side of the
burn ; for the sound of the water seemed like old times ;
and when the moon came out on the green fields, they
looked for all the world like smooth water. Voices from
another land came to her, and spirits passed before .her
eyes; so that she often thought to herself, " I wonder how
Canna looks this night, and whether it is storm or calm ?"
I might talk till the summer came, and not tell you
half of the many thoughts Eiradh had in the south
country. She loved to sit by herself, as when she was a
child ; and the folk thought her a dull woman with a white
face. The women said, " Calum Eachern's wife has the
greed of money strong in her heart, but she is a just-
dealing woman." It was true that Eiradh found pleasure
in trade, and would not sell to those who did not come
to buy money in hand. Every piece she saved she put
in the stocking in the old kist, and every week she counted
it out in her lap.
So the time passed, and sometimes Eiradh could hardly
call up right the memory of Calum's face. It seemed like
a dream. These were the days of her prosperity, and
every week she saved something, and every second Sabbath
she saw the priest. Now, the folk in those parts had a
religion of their own, and did not believe in the Virgin
Mary or the Pope of Rome. Some of them were worse
than that, and did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
All the children had the English as well as the Gaelic ;
and the preachings were in the English, and the English
EIRADH OF CANNA. 307
was taught in the school. But all the time she lived in the
south Eiradh could not speak a word of that tongue. It
seemed to her like the chirping of birds, with little
meaning and a heap of sound.
All the years Eiradh sat in the shop, the Lord drew
silver threads in her hair, and made lines like pencil-
marks over her face j and when she was thirty-five years
of age her sight failed her, and she had to wear glasses.
She had little sickness, but she stooped in the shoulders,
and had a dry cough. In those days she did not go out
of the house at night, but sat over the fire reading the
book Calum had given her long years before. The leaves
of the book were all black and torn, and many of the pages
were gone. Every time she looked at it she thought of
old times. She had little pleasure in the tales and riddles
of the south country all about brightness and a pleasant
place ; for she thought to herself, "The tales are all lies,
and the south country looks brightest far off, and the folk
do not believe in the Virgin Mary or the saints." For
all that she liked to look at the old book ; and to let
her thoughts go back of their own accord, like the flowing
of water in a burn. Best of all, she loved to count the
bright money into her lap, and think how the neighbours
praised her as a just-dealing woman who throve well.
IV
The years went past Eiradh Eachern like the waves
breaking on the shore, and the days were as like each
other as the waves breaking, and she couM not count
308 EIRADH OF CANNA.
them at all. She was like the young man that went to
sleep on the Island of Peace, and had a dream of watching
the fairy people, and when he woke he was old and frail
upon his feet. Eiradh was fifty years of age when she
counted the money in her kist for the last time, and found
that she had put by a hundred and twenty pounds in good
money. That night she sat with the heap of money in
her lap, and the salt tears running down her cheeks, and
her bottom-lip quivering like the withered leaf on the
bough of a tree.
Now all these years Eiradh had one thought, and it was
this : " Before I die I will go back to Canna in the sea."
Every day of her life she fancied she saw the picture of
the green cliffs covered with goats and sheep, and the
black scarts sitting on the weedy rocks in a row, and the
sea rising and falling like the soft breasts of a woman in
sound sleep. Every night of her life she had a dream of
her father's house by the shore, and the water crying at
the door. It seemed ever calm weather to her thoughts,
and the sea was kinder and sweeter than when she was a
child. Eiradh often thought to herself, " The water took
away my five brothers, and close to the water my father
and mother closed their eyes ; " and the more she thought
of them sleeping the less she was afraid.
So when she had saved one hundred and twenty pounds
in good money, she felt that she could abide no longer in
the south country. The more she tried to stay a little
longer,, the more voices from another land came to her,
saying, " Eiradh, Eiradh ! go back to Canna in the sea."
EJRADH OF CANNA. 309
At last she had a dream ; and she thpught she was lying
in her sowe 1 in a dark land, waiting to be laid in the earth.
All at once she felt herself rocking up and down, and
heard the sound of the sea crying, and when she put out
her hand at the side it was dripping wet. Then Eiradh
knew that she was drifting in a boat, and the boat was a
coffin with the lid off, and though there was a strong wind
she floated on the waves like a cork. All night long she
floated and never saw land ; only a light shining far, far
off, over the dark water. When she woke up, she was sore
troubled, and said to herself, c ' It is my wraith that I saw,
and unless I haste I may never see my home again."
After that she never rested till she had sold the trade of
her shop in the south country, and all she kept to herself
was the old kist full of her clothes and the money she had
saved. But she made a pouch of leather with her own
hands, and put the money in it, and fastened the pouch
to her waist underneath her clothes, and the only thing in
the pouch beside the money was the old book in the
Gaelic Calum had given her when she was a young
woman.
I have told you that the place was twenty miles from
the sea. One day she put her kist in a cart that was
going that way, and the day after she took the road. It
was a fine morning, early in the year. When she got to
the top of the hill, and saw the place below her where she
had lived so long, all asleep and still, with the smoke
going straight up out of the houses, and not a soul in the
Shroud. 1
3 io EIRADH OF CANNA.
street, it seemed lijte a dream. As she went on, the
country was strange, but it looked finer and bonnier than
any country she had ever seen. Now, her heart was so
light that day that she could walk like a strong man.
The sun came out and the birds sang, and the land was
green, and wherever she went the sheep cried. Eiradh
thought to herself, " My dream was true after all, and the
south country is a pleasant place."
For all that she was wearying to see Canna in the sea,
and wondering if it was the same all those years. She
counted on her fingers the names of the folk she knew,
and wondered how many were dead. Every one of them
seemed like a friend. She was keen to hear her own
Gaelic again after so many years in a foreign land.
She walked twelve miles that day, and slept at a farm
by the road at night. The next day she saw the sea.
It was good weather, and the sea was covered with
fishing-boats and ships. She could hear the sough of the
water a long way off, and it seemed like old times. There
was a bit village on the shore, full of fisher folk, and the
houses minded her of those where she was born. There
were skiffs drawn up on the shore, and nets put out to
dry, and the air was full of the smell of fish.
She slept in the house of a fisher-woman that night, and
the next day a fishing-boat took her out to catch the big
steamboat to Tobermory. It was the first time that
Eiradh had seen a boat like that, and it seemed to her like a
great beast panting and groaning, and swimming through
the water with its fins and tail. It was full of the smell of
EIRADII OF CANNA. 311
fish, and the decks were covered with herring-barrels, and
where there were no herring-barrels there were cattle and
sheep. In one part of the boat there was a long box like
a coffin, covered over with a piece of tarpaulin to keep it
dry ; and one of the sailors told Eiradh that it held the
dead body of an old man from Skye, who had died on the
Firth o' Clyde, and was being carried home to be with his
kindred at home. Eiradh said, " It is a sad thing to be
buried far away from kindred ; " and she thought to her*
self, " If I had died in the south country, there would
have been no kin or friend to carry me to Canna in the
sea."
Neither wind nor tide could keep the big steamboat
back; so wonderful are the works of the hand of man, when
God is willing. Late at night Eiradh landed at Tober-
mory in Mull, but the moon was bright, and she saw that
the bay was full of fishing-boats at anchor. Eiradh
wondered to herself if any of the boats were from Canna.
She got a lodging in the inn that night, and the next
morning she went down to the shore. There were heaps
of fishermen on the beach, and many of them passed her
the sign of the day, but none of them seemed to have her
own Gaelic. Then Eiradh said, " Is there a Canna boat
in the bay?" and they said "Ay," and pointed out a
big smack with her sails up, and a great patch on the
mainsail. The skipper of the smack was on shore, and
his name was Alastair. He was a big black-whiskered
man, with large silly eyes like a seal's. Eiradh minded
him well, though he was a laddie when she left, and went
3 I2 EIRADH OF CANNA.
up and called him by his name, but he stared at her and
shook his head. Then Eiradh said, "Do you mind
Eiradh Nicraonail, who dwelt in the small house by the
sea ? " and the man laughed, and asked after Calum
Eachern, Eiradh told him her troubles, and got the
promise of a passage to Canna that day.
In the afternoon it blew hard from the east, but Eiradh
went on board the smack with her kist. They ran out
of the Sound of Mull with the wind, and kept in close
to the Rhu, for the sake of smooth water. Eiradh felt a
heaviness and pain about her heart, and sat on the kist
with her head leaning against the side of the boat. She
had a touch of the sea-sickness, but that passed away.
Alastair steered the smack on the west side of Eig, and
the squalls came so sharp off the Scaur that they had to
take down the topsail. As they sailed in the smooth
water on the leeside of Eig Eiratih asked about the Canna
folk she had known, and most of them were dead and
buried. Then she asked about the old man who had
taught her to read and write, and he was dead too.
Many of the young folk had gone away across the ocean,
to work among strangers and wander in a foreign land.
The heart of Eiradh sank to hear the news ; for she
thought to herself, " Every face will be as strange as the
faces in the south." Then Alastair, seeing she put her
hand to her heart, said " What ails ye, wife ? are you
sick ? " Eiradh nodded, and leant her head over the
boat, looking at the sea.
A little after that the smack rounded the north end of
ZIRADH OP CANNA. 313
Rum, and Eiradh saw Canna in the sea, just as she had
left it long ago. There was a shower all over the ocean,
but the green side of Canna was shining with the light
through a cloud. Eiradh looked and looked ; for there
was not an inch of the green land but she knew by
heart.
The wind blew fresh and keen, and they had to lower
the peak of the mainsail running for the harbour. Eiradh
saw the tower, all gray and wet in the rain, and she
thought she heard the lady's voice calling as in old times.
Then she looked over to the mouth of Loch Scavaig,
thinking to herself, " There is the place where my brothers
were lost ! " and that brought up the picture of her father,
sitting dead on the cliffs, and looking out to sea. Eiradh's
eyes were blind with tears, and she could not see Canna
any more ; but as they ran round into the bay, her eyes
cleared, and she saw her home close by the water-side,
with the roof all gone, and the walls broken down, and a
cow looking out of the door.
A little after that, when the anchor was down and the
mainsail lowered, Alastair touched Eiradh on the arm,
thinking she was asleep, for she was leaning back with her
face in her cloak. Then he drew back the cloak, and saw
her face with a strange smile on it, and the eyes wide open.
Though he was a big man, he was scared, and called out
to his mates, and an old man among them said, " Sure
enough she is dead." So they carried her body ashore
in their boat, and put it in one of the houses, and sent
\\ord to the laird
3 14 EIRADH OF CANNA.
Eiradh Eachern had died of the same disease that killed
her mother. She had o'er many thoughts to live long, and
she knew the name of trouble. In her kist they found her
grave-clothes all ready made and neatly worked with her
own hands, and they buried her on the hill-side close to
her father and mother. May the Lord God find her ready
there to answer to her name at the Last Day 1
THE ENP.
S. Cowan 6 Co., Slrathmon Printing Works >
[August, 1883.
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