SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. rublishcd ly WILLIAM HODGE & Co., Glasgow WILLIAMS & NOKOATE, London and Edinburgh Hbbotsforfc Series of tbe Scotttsb ipoets Edited by GEORGE EYRE-TODD SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VOLUME I LORD YESTER LADY GRIZEL HAILLIE LADY WARDLAW WILLIAM HAMILTON OF GILBERTFIELD SIR JOHN CLERK ALLAN RAMSAY ROBERT CRAWFORD - ROBERT BLAIR THE AUTHOR OF ALBANIA- ALEX- ANDER ROSS JAMES THOMSON- DAVID MALLET- WILLIAM HAMILTON OF BANGOUR ALEXANDER WEBSTER GEORGE HALKET ALISON RUTHERFORD- JOHN WILSON SIR GILBERT ELLIOT TOBIAS SMOLLETT ADAM SKIKVING WILLIAM WILKIE - THOMAS BLACKLOCK JOHN SKINNER JOHN HOME- JEAN ELLIOT-JOHN LAPRAIK WILLIAM FALCONER- WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE LONDON AND EDINBURGH SANDS & COMPANY Cotteg* Library K/ NOTE. IN compiling these pages use has been made of a number of valuable, if partial, collections, such as Leyden's Scottish Descriptive Poems, Chambers's Songs of Scotland prior to Burns, Paterson's Ayrshire Contemporaries of Burns, Walker's Bards of Bon-Accord, and Harper's Bards of Galloway, to say nothing of the collections of the eighteenth century itself Ramsay's Evergreen and Tea-Table Miscellany, Herd's Collection, and Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, &c. Independent biographies, contemporary records, and original publications by the poets themselves have, however, in most cases been available. In order to furnish, what has not existed hitherto, a comprehensive anthology of the eighteenth century poetry of Scotland, and to render the bead-roll of the poets as complete as possible, it has been found necessary to extend the work to two volumes. CONTENTS. PAGE SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, i LORD VESTER, 9 Tweedside, ........ 9 LADY GRIZEL BAILLIE, 11 " Werena my heart licht I wad dee," ... 12 "The Ewe-buchtin's bonnie," .... '14 LADY WARDLAW, 15 Hardyknute, ....... 17 WILLIAM HAMILTON OF GILBERTFIELD, ... 30 The Last Dying Words of Bonnie Heck, . 31 SIR JOHN CLERK, 35 O Merry may the Maid be, . 35 ALLAN RAMSAY, 38 Elegy on Maggie Johnston, ..... 41 Patie's Song, . 46 //. Peggy and Jenny (The Gentle Shepherd, Sc. ), 48 Epistle to William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, . 57 RAMSAY continued. ALLAN ,, Al E Lochaber no More, ...... 62 The Young Laird and Edinburgh Katie, . 63 Up in the Air, 65 The Widow, 67 ROBERT CRAWFORD 68 Tweedside, 69 The Bush Abune Traquair, . 71 Doun the Burn, Davie, ..... 73 ROBERT BLAIR, 75 The Grave, 76 THE AUTHOR OF ALBANIA, 82 Albania, ........ 82 ALEXANDER Ross, 87 Wooed and Married and A', .... 88 Wooed and Married and A', .... 92 The Rock and the Wee Pickle Tow, ... 94 JAMES THOMSON, 98 Winter, 101 The Castle of Indolence, 113 DAVID MALLET, 116 William and Margaret, . 118 Rule Britannia, . 121 The Birks of Invermay, . 123 WILLIAM HAMILTON OF BANV.OUR, . 124 Song, 126 The Braes of Yarrow, . 127 CONTENTS. x, I'AUE ALEXANDER WEBSTER, 133 I . O, How Could Venture, . 133 GEORUE HALKET, 135 Logic o' Buchan, 135 ALISON RUTHERFORD, 137 Lines to Mr. Walter Scott, 138 The Flowers of the Forest, . 140 JOHN WILSON, 141 Clyde, 142 SIR GILBERT ELLIOT, 148 My Sheep I Neglected, ..... 148 TOBIAS SMOLLETT, 150 The Tears of Scotland, . 152 Ode to Leven Water, . 155 ADAM SKIRVING, 157 Johnnie Cope, . 158 WILLIAM WILKIE, 160 The Death of Hercules, . , . 160 THOMAS BLACKLOCK, 172 On Euanthe's Absence, . 173 Happy Marriage, ..... .175 JOHN SKINNER, ........ 176 Tullochgorum, . 177 The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn, . 181 JOHN HOME, . ...... 185 Douglas, 187 xii CONTENTS. PAGE JEAN ELLIOT, 204 The Flowers o' the Forest, 205 JOHN LAPRAIK, 207 When I upon thy Bosom lean, .... 208 WILLIAM FALCONER, 209 The Smiling Plains, . 210 The Shipwreck, . 211 WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, .... 224 The Sailor's Wife, ...... 226 Cumnor Hall, . ..... 229 SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IT has been the fashion since the time of Scott and Byron and Wordsworth to look with something of disdain upon the English poetry of the days of Queen Anne and the early Georges. Nor is this disdain altogether without good reason. The poetic splendours of the Stuart period, the most glorious in the annals of English letters, appear to have flushed and paled in curious unison with the fortunes of the Stuart kings.* The exuberant blaze of imagination which followed the accession of its in James I., and spread to widest the * Curiously enough, the great period of English genius is always termed Elizabethan, though the only great literary reputations which belong strictly to the reign of the Tudor queen are those of Spenser and Marlowe. Shakespeare, it is true, the greatest of his earlier in Elizabeth's spirit all, produced plays time ; " " but Hamlet appeared in the year of James First's accession, and more than a dozen of the plays came afterwards. The works of Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Webster, and Shirley all the Shakespearean dramatists and poets, in fact belong to the days of James I. and I. while the and cavalier Charles ; metaphysical poets, with the great names of Milton and Butler and Bunyan, all came later, also within Stuart times. B VI 2 SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE days of Charles, died down, strangely, as if extingufshed, at the death of the latter mon- arch. Twelve years later, at the Stuart Restoration, the smouldering embers of national " genius flashed again into fire Paradise Lost," " " " Hudibras," and the Pilgrim's Progress appeared, and there was a rekindling of Shakes- pearean drama in the works of Wycherley and Congreve, Otway and Lee. All this, however, was finally quenched at the Revolution in 1688; and the death of Dryden in the year 1700 severed the last link with a greater age. Towards the close of the seventeenth century the standard of poetic merit in England had become one of intellect rather than of emotion. Head, as in all periods of poetic decadence, had taken the place of heart, and manner had come to be of more esteem than matter. For the glow of passion was substituted the brilliance of wit, and instead of the fire of creative imagination there remained only the play of a keenly critical but cold fancy. Poetry, further, fell into a classic mode which was entirely artificial and affected. The poet's mistress was no longer a simple English girl, but, like the court beauties of the time, masquerading in patches and powder and paste, must figure as a make-believe Chloris or Chloe or Phillis. In the verse of the period, Wordsworth has noted, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 3 there does not for several decades appear a simile nature single new drawn directly from ; and some critics, like Professer Veitch, have been tempted to include the entire work of the "correct school," as it is called, in one sweeping condemnation of heartlessness and conventionalism. Whether such condemnation be wholly justified or not, one fact may be remarked. The poetic ideals of the early decades of the eighteenth century, the period in question, were wrought to their finest issue by the genius of Addison, Swift, and Pope, and " the verse of these writers " The Campaign " " " " and Cato," Baucis and Philemon and The " Grand Question Debated," the Essay on " " " Criticism and the Essay on Man despite its brilliance of wit and rhetoric, and the high esteem in which it was held in its own day, is hardly now read except by students of literature. It was to Scotland that the first inspiration of greater things was to be owed. There, an interesting succession of events had cleared the way for a new beginning. A hundred years earlier, in the end of the sixteenth century, the stern Calvinism of Knox and the Reformers had succeeded in choking the copious ancient stream of national poesy. Lyndsay and Maitland, James V. and Alexander Scot and 4 SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE Alexander Montgomerie were without legitimate successors. Next, the removal of the court to London in 1603 had turned the genius of the north into an exotic vein, and for fifty years Scotsmen like Sir William Alexander, Drummond of Hawthornden, and the Marquis Montrose, wrote on an English model and in the English tongue. Then, amid the political troubles of the country, had come a pause the air was too stormy for the bird of poesy to take wing. It was late in the evening of the seventeenth century that, as in the first nights of spring, the sweet new singing began to be heard. Out of the simple old folk-songs and ballads of Scotland the lilts that had been crooned over cradle and spinning wheel, and the rude lays of battle and love that had lingered for ages in the memory of the people came the first inspiration of the new world of song. Francis " Semple gave the sign, with his Piper of " Kilbarchan and other pieces, of a return to native and natural themes. But the more general note was struck later. Lord Yester and Lady Grizel Baillie were the real leaders of those who, singing of humble love and sorrow, went back to the old, simple wells of human nature for their subject. A few years after Lord Yester's time, James Watson and Allan EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 5 Ramsay gathered and published their collections of popular minstrelsy. Then Ramsay's own " " Gentle Shepherd appeared. This at once struck the keynote of the new natural and romantic movement in poetry. From that period, though Pope and the brilliant con- stellation of his followers continued, in shining rhetoric and sparkling wit, to write of "nymphs" " " " and cupids and the fair," to apostrophise " " " the winds as zephyrs and the heart as the vital urn," there was growing in Scotland a sincerer school Thomson was painting winter as he knew it on Teviotside Hamilton actually ; of Bangour and John Home were drawing story and inspiration alike direct from the old narrative ballads and Elliot and Isobel ; Jean Pagan were singing sweetly of Flodden Field and love among the hills.