articles cannot possibly be forgotten by all the thousands who have told me that they once delighted in them,—some fair or bright image some tender or pure feeling-some high or solemn thought must survive,—and enough for me, Jamesif in hours of gay or serious memories, some mirthful or melancholy emanation from my mind be restored to being, even though the dreamer knows not that it was mine,—but believes it to have arisen then for the first time in his own imagination. Did I choose to write books, I believe they would find readers. But a book is a formal concern,-and to read it one must shut himself up for hours from society, and sit down to what may indeed be a pleasant task,-but still it is a task,—and in the most interesting volume that ever was written, alas! there are many yawns. But a good article-such as many of mine that shall be nameless-may be read from beginning to end under the alternate influence of smiles and tears;—and what if it be laid aside, and perhaps never meets more the fair face that bedewed or illumined it?-yet methinks, James, that the maiden who walks along the spring braes is the better and the happier of the sights, scents, and sounds she enjoys there, though in a month she remembers not the primrose-bank, on which, cheered by the skylark's song, she sat and smiled to see her long dishevelled tresses reflected in the Fairy's Pool.

Shepherd. That's no unbonny.

North. I believe that all my words are not wasted, each succeeding month, on the idle air. Some simple melodies, at least, if no solemn harmonies, are sometimes heard, mayhap from my lyre, floating along the lonely valleys, and the cheerful villages, and even not undistinguishable amid the din of towns and cities. What if, once heard, they are heard no more? They may have touched a string, a chord, James, in some innocent, simple, but not unthoughtful heart; and that string, that chord, James, as well thou knowest, for thou art one of nature's own poets,-I but a proser-and an old greyhaired proser too,—may thenceforth of itself "warble melody," while, if untouched by me or you, or other lovers of their kind, it might have lain mute for ever! If so, verily I have had my reward.

Shepherd. What for do you never try to write verses, sir? Ca' and they'll come.

North. An old poet is an old fool, James.

72

KENNEDY.-AIRD.-GALT'S LIFE OF BYRON.

Shepherd. But then you see, sir, you're sic a fule already in sae mony things, that the world 'ill no think ae grain the waur o' you gin you'll play the fule in that too. Be a poet, sir, and fling yoursel for food to the hungry critics, for they're in a state o' starvation, and, for want o' something to devoor, wull sune a' dee o' hunger and thrust.

North. There, James, is an exceedingly graceful, elegant, and pathetic little poem, "The Arrow and the Rose."

Shepherd. What is't about, and wha's the Owther?

North. Mr William Kennedy,' and the subject is the story of the loves of Henry of Navarre, when Prince of Béarn, and Fleurette, the gardener's daughter-a story traditional in Gascony, and preserved by M. de Jouy.

Shepherd. Wi' your leave, I'll put it in my pouch.

North. "The Captive of Fez," James, is a powerful performance. The versification often reminds one of Dryden and Byron-strong passion pervades the tale-and the descriptions of scenery are at once poetical and picturesque. But I must review it one of these days-and a few magnificent extracts will show that Mr Aird2 is a man of true genius.

Shepherd. He is that, sir-and I ken few men that impresses you in conversation wi' a higher opinion o' their powers than Mr Aird. Sometimes I hae considerable diffeeculty in followin him—for he taks awfu' loups frae premise to conclusion, clearin chasms dizzy to look doun on—and aften annunces as self-evident truths, positions that appear to me unco problematical. But he does, at times, flash fine fancies, half out o' his lips, and half out o' his een; and afore I kent he wrote verses, I saw he was a poet.

North. He's a man of strong intellect and strong imagination-and his mind dwells in a lofty sphere.

8

Shepherd. Hae you read Byron's Life o' Galt, sir?

North.-I have, James. His lordship used John somewhat scurvily on one or two occasions—but our friend pays

1 Some time private secretary to the Earl of Durham in Canada, and afterwards British Consul for Texas, of which State he wrote an account.

2 Editor of the Dumfries Herald, and author of Religious Characteristics, also of a Memoir of D. M. Moir. His Poetical Works were published by Messrs Blackwood in 1848.

3 A misnomer (not unapt) for Galt's Life of Byron. John Galt, author of The Annals of the Parish, The Ayrshire Legatees, The Entail, &c., was born in 1779, and died in 1839.

GALT A MAN OF GENIUS.

133

73

him back in his own coin-and we thus have a couple of rather forbidding portraits.

Shepherd. Disagreeable likenesses-eh?

North. Mr Galt is a man of genius, and some of his happiest productions will live in the literature of his country. His humour is rich, rare, and racy, and peculiar withal, entitling him to the character of originality—a charm that never fadeth away; he has great power in the humble, the homely pathetic, and he is conversant, not only with many modes and manners of life, but with much of its hidden and more mysterious spirit.

Shepherd. He's aften unco coorse.

North. True, James, he is not so uniformly delicate and refined as you are in your prose compositions; but lend me your ear, my beloved Shepherd-despise to degrade yourself, even for one moment, by seeming to join the whelps who have been lately snarling at his heels. Let the best of the puppy pack produce anything half as good as the worst of his Tales -and then we shall listen to their barking with less disgust. Shepherd. Wha do you mean, sir?

North. Our inferior periodical literature is much infested by a set of pert puppies, conceited curs, and heavy hounds, on whose hides and hurdies, James, it might not be amiss to try the application of whip-cord. We know how they snarl,—suppose they should be made to let us hear how they howl?

Shepherd. Tak care, sir, they dinna bite you, and gie you the tetanus.

North. They are a set of mangy mongrels, James, and fit but to be flung into some old tan-pit. Their disease originates in the spleen, and in the gall-bladder. In other words, the envy of impotence consumes them, like a cancer in the stomach, or a liver-complaint. Their lean, lank, leathern jaws soon become of a loathsome and leprous yellow-they suffer hideously from the mumps, and the yaws, and the gumscurvy,—these, and several other kindred complaints, being all comprehended under the generic name of the Criticals. Shepherd. They maun be a bonny and a happy set!

North. To leave off metaphor-I must say, James, that these gentry have given me, lately, great disgust.

Shepherd. They are beneath your notice, sir. Scorn to kill them, and leave them to die a natural death.

74

GALT'S LIFE OF BYRON REPREHENDED.

North. The whole pack, as I said, are now yelping at the heels of Mr Galt. The small, insignificant, snotty-nosed, tick-bitten, blear-eyed beagles, were the game they are pursuing so eagerly to turn round upon them, would flee like a frightened flock of sheep.

Shepherd. I agree with you, sir, Galt's genius is great.

North. But, for the life of me, I cannot see the drift of his Life of Byron. I have read it through, James-and the volume, which is far from being a dull one, throws much more light on the personal character of Mr Galt himself than on that of the Noble Childe. Somehow or other, I felt all along, sometimes a painful-sometimes a pleasant inclination to laughter at the bonhomie of the author of the Annals of the Parish. It seems never for one moment to have occurred to him that he was in all things-mind, manner, body, and estate -immeasurably inferior to the mighty creature of whom he keeps scribbling away, sometimes with an approving smirk on his countenance, and sometimes with a condemning scowlboth alike ludicrous in a man so little distinguished either by moral or intellectual majesty as Mr Galt.

Shepherd. You see, sir, Byron was a Lord, and our freen Galt only a supercargo, a step below a skipper,—and low-born and low-bred folk, especially in the mercantile line, are, for the maist pairt, unco upsetting when they chance, by ony accident, to forgather wi' nobility. It's no the case wi' me, for I was born, thank God, in the Forest, and was familiar frae my youth up wi' the faces o' three successive Dyucks. But our freen Galt, when he first fand himsel in the same ship' wi' a Lord, maun either hae swarfed wi' fear, or keepit himsel frae swarfin by pure impidence-and wha can blame him for ha'in adopted the latter expedient? Yet, tak my word for't, sir, he was no sae impident in the packet-ship as in the pocket-volumm, and writes about Byron in a very different style, now that he is dead, than he ever daured till speak to him then when he was leevin, wi' that patrician scowl on his brow, that patrician curl on his lip, before which John Galt must have quailed, as bolder men did, to say naething o' that transcendent genius which must have laid its commands on him, to be silent if not servile, just as a king does to his subjects-I will not say a master to his slaves.

1 In 1809 Galt sailed in the same packet-ship with Lord Byron from Gibraltar to Malta.

North. Perhaps, James, you are stating the case somewhat too strongly; yet, as Byron's rank no doubt protected him, when living, from the possibility of any impertinence from Mr Galt, it, if nothing else, should have been his safeguard also in the grave. People in the humble condition of Mr Galt,—and when he first met Lord Byron, it was most humble, -are not, by the rules of society, permitted to approach nobility but in a deferential attitude, and within what is called a respectful distance. This is so universally understood, that no man of proper spirit ever dreams of becoming very familiar with "lords, and dukes, and mighty earls," without possessing some peculiar privilege or title to do so, such as at that time does not seem to have belonged to our ingenious westcountryman. Now-he is Somebody-for his genius has distinguished him above the common herd; and genius in Britain, if it does not level all distinctions, elevates its possessor in the scale of society, and justifies cordial acquaintanceship, though it rarely fosters brotherly friendship, between a lout and a lord. But then-he was Nobody-or rather less than nobody; for it appears, from his own statement, that he had no profession-and therefore, James, you are mistaken in supposing him to have been a supercargo; -he had not been so fortunate as to receive a classical education, a want which, in Byron's eyes, must have seemed almost incompatible with the condition, if not the character, of a gentleman; he possessed no personal accomplishments peculiarly calculated to win the regard of Childe Harold; but was, in short, merely a passenger in the same packet. Under such circumstances, the courtesy and affability with which Lord Byron seems to have behaved to Mr Galt, showed the native kindness and goodness of his heart; and we are sorry now to know, that the condescension of the illustrious peer, so far from being properly appreciated by the obscure

commoner

Shepherd. Hoo?

North. Mr Galt, in recording the slight incidents that accompanied the formation of their acquaintanceship, does not scruple, after the lapse of so many years, to speak haughtily of Byron's haughtiness, and of his unbecoming aristocratical airs in issuing orders about his luggage!

Shepherd. I'se warrant that John himsel was far fiercer and fussier about his ain leather trunks and deal chests than his