South Africa. The first of the following passages describes his experience of the Boers after he had learnt Dutch enough to communicate with them and preach to the 'Colonial' Hottentots; the second was added just before the publication of the Narrative in 1834.

Boer Neighbours in 1820.

I thus found myself all at once, and not a little to my own surprise, performing the novel and somewhat incongruous functions of a sort of civil and military officer, of a medical practitioner, religious instructor, engineer, architect, gardener, plasterer, cabinet-maker, and, I might add, tinker! In short, I was driven to do the best I could in the peculiar position in which circumstances had placed me; and when (as was frequently the case) my own knowledge and the experience of others failed me, I was obliged to trust to 'mother-wit.'

Few of

About this period we were somewhat teased by Sunday visits from our Dutch-African neighbours of the lower part of the Glen-Lynden valley and the Tarka. Solicitous to keep upon friendly terms with these people, I always made it a point to receive them courteously, and usually asked them to dine with me. But finding that they made a practice of visiting us on Sundays, either to gratify idle curiosity or with a view to commercial dealings, I fell upon a scheme which effectually relieved us from this annoyance. I took care to acquaint them that it was contrary to our principles to transact secular business on the Sunday; and when any of them came, I offered them a seat among my Hottentot audience, and invited them to read aloud the Sunday service. them, I found, could read even the New Testament without much stammering and spelling; and they considered it, moreover, a shocking degradation to sit down amidst a group of Hottentots. We were therefore speedily relieved altogether from their Sunday visitations. other respects, we found them generally, however uncultivated, by no means disagreeable neighbours. They were exceedingly shrewd at bargain-making, it is true, and too sharp sometimes even for cautious Scotchmen; but they were also generally civil and goodnatured, and, according to the custom of the country, extremely hospitable. On the whole, their demeanour to us, whom they might be supposed naturally to regard with exceeding jealousy, if not dislike, was far more friendly and obliging than could, under all the circumstances, have been anticipated.

In

Vision of a British South African Empire. Nay, more; however Utopian such 'visions' may appear to some people, I will venture to predict that if some such system (I speak of the principle, not of the details-which may perhaps require to be greatly altered from this rude outline) shall be now adopted, and judiciously and perseveringly carried into operation, we shall at no remote period see the tribes beyond the frontier earnestly soliciting to be received under the protection of the colony, or to be embraced within its limits and jurisdiction. . . . The native tribes, in short, are ready to throw themselves into our arms.

Let us open

our arms cordially to embrace them as men and as brothers. Let us enter upon a new and nobler career of conquest. Let us subdue savage Africa by justice, by kindness, by the talisman of Christian truth. Let us thus go forth, in the name and under the blessing of

God, gradually to extend the moral influence, and, if it be thought desirable, the territorial boundary also, of our colony, until it shall become an Empire, embracing Southern Africa from the Keisi and the Gareep to Mozambique and Cape Negro-and to which, peradventure, in after days, even the equator shall prove no ultimate limit.

There is a Life of Pringle, by Leitch Ritchie, prefixed to the Poetical Works (1839).

Francis Egerton, Earl of Ellesmere (1800-57), second son of the first Duke of Sutherland, was born in London, and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He sat for Bletchingley, Sutherland, and South Lancashire, and was Irish Secretary (1828-30) and Secretary for War (1830). In 1833, on succeeding to the Bridgewater estates, he assumed the name of Egerton, in lieu of Leveson-Gower, and in 1846 was created Earl of Ellesmere. He translated a large number of books on military history, on subjects Italian, Turkish, and Chinese, and on things in general, in prose and in verse, from French, German, and Italian -from Dumas, Victor Hugo, Goethe, Schiller, and others-his Faust being perhaps his feeblest claim to remembrance, for it was neither vigorous nor faithful. His own poems were graceful; King Alfred and Bluebeard were plays.

Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841), a Spaniard by birth, has the glory of having written what was by Coleridge overpraised as 'the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language'-save for a single unimportant exception, his one poem. He was born at Seville, son of an Irish Roman Catholic merchant settled in Spain who had translated his name to Blanco and become to all intents a Spaniard. Ordained a priest in 1799, he acted for a while as chaplain and confessor, but having lost his faith, he came in 1810 to London, added White to his name, and for four years edited a monthly Spanish paper, subsidised by the English Government and designed to stir up national feeling against the French, then in Spain. He received an English pension of £250, was tutor to Lord Holland's son (1815-16), and was admitted to Anglican orders. Made a member of Oriel College, he became the intimate of Newman and Pusey, who learnt much from his knowledge of Catholic theology. He was for a time tutor in Whately's family at Dublin (1832-35), and became a Protestant champion, but fled to Liverpool when he found himself gradually driven to become a Unitarian. Though he worked diligently at English, he was never thoroughly at home in it; but he published Letters from Spain by Don Leucadio Doblado (1822), Internal Evidences against Catholicism (1825), Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion (in answer to Moore's; 1833), and other works both in English and Spanish. His Autobiography (edited by J. H. Thom, 1845) is reviewed in Glad

stone's Gleanings. The following (Academy, 12th September 1891) is his latest version of the 'Sonnet on Night :'

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew

Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this goodly frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? But through a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came : And lo! Creation broadened to man's view! Who could have guessed such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun? or who divined, When bud and flower and insect lay revealed,

Thou to such countless worlds hadst made us blind? Why should we then shun Death with anxious strife? If Light conceals so much, wherefore not Life?

The Second Lord Thurlow (EDWARD HOVELL THURLOW, 1781-1829), minor poet, was the son of the Bishop of Durham and nephew and successor (in the peerage) of the Lord Chancellor (see page 634). Born in London and educated at the Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1810 onwards he published several collections of poems which, amid much affectation and some bad taste-sarcastically dealt with by Moore, Byron, and the critics contain not a little real poetry. Charles Lamb said of his work: 'A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack of matter and circumstance, is, I think, one reason of the coldness with which the public has received the poetry of a nobleman now living; which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, is entitled to something better than neglect. I will venture to copy one of his sonnets in this place [the London Magazine], which for quiet sweetness has scarcely its parallel in our language.'

To a Water-bird.

O melancholy bird, a winter's day

Thou standest by the margin of the pool,
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To patience, which all evil can allay.
God has appointed thee the fish thy prey;
And given thyself a lesson to the fool
Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,

And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.
There need not schools, nor the professor's chair,
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart.
He who has not enough, for these, to spare
Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,
And teach his soul, by brooks and rivers fair :
Nature is always wise in every part.

More frequently quoted, and at least equally characteristic, is the following

Song to May.

May! queen of blossoms,

And fulfilling flowers,

With what pretty music

Shall we charm the hours?

Wilt thou have pipe and reed,
Blown in the open mead?

Or to the lute give heed
In the green bowers?

Thou hast no need of us,
Or pipe or wire;
Thou hast the golden bee

Ripened with fire;

And many thousand more
Songsters, that thee adore,
Filling earth's grassy floor

With new desire.

Thou hast thy mighty herds,
Tame, and free livers;
Doubt not, thy music too

In the deep rivers;
And the whole plumy flight,
Warbling the day and night—
Up at the gates of light,
See, the lark quivers !
When with the jacinth

Coy fountains are tressed;
And for the mournful bird

Greenwoods are dressed,
That did for Tereus pine;
Then shall our songs be thine,
To whom our hearts incline:
May, be thou blest!

Robert Pollok (1798–1827), a young licentiate of the United Secession Church, survived only a few months the publication of his most notable work, The Course of Time, which speedily attained great popularity, especially among 'serious' people in Scotland. Many who scarcely ever dipped into modern poetry were tempted to read a work which set forth their theological tenets in this unwonted and impressive form; while for less devout readers the poem had force and originality enough to attract, in spite of its theme. The Course of Time is a long blank-verse poem in ten books, written in a style that sometimes imitates Milton, and at other times resembles the work of Cowper, Blair, and Young. In describing the spiritual life and destiny of man, the seer varies the religious speculations of an unhesitating Calvinist with episodical pictures and narratives. The poem is often harsh, turgid, and antipathetic; its worst fault-all but inseparable from the subject and plan-is its tediousness; whole sections are like a dull sermon in blank verse. But those who welcomed it warmly were more in the right than the moderns who neglect it utterly; there are many suprisingly fine things in it. The Course of Time,' said Professor Wilson, 'for so young a man is a vast achievement. . . . He has much to learn in composition. . . . But the soul of poetry is there, though often dimly developed; and many passages there are, and long ones too, that heave and hurry and flow along in a divine enthusiasm.' The encouraging critic of this scriptural poem is, be it remembered, the Kit North who loved cock

fighting, and dealt so severely with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats.

Pollok was born at the farm of North Moorhouse in the parish of Eaglesham in Renfrewshire, and after some schooling at Mearns and Fenwick, and a brief interlude of cabinet-making, was sent to the University of Glasgow. While he was a student of divinity in the Hall of the United Secession Church, he wrote a series of prose Tales of the Covenanters, published anonymously. The Course of Time was all written in the eighteen months between the end of 1824 and the middle of 1826, before his last term at the divinity hall; and was published in the spring of 1827 by Blackwood on the advice of Professor Wilson and 'Delta' Moir, who both gave highly complimentary verdicts on the poem with the somewhat formidable title. Pollok was duly licensed to preach the gospel' in May; preached his first sermon after license in the church of Dr John Brown, father of the author of Rab and his Friends; and received kindly courtesy and encouragement from the literary patriarch of a long-past generation, Henry Mackenzie, the 'Man of Feeling,' now over eightyfour years of age. The poet-probationer was fast becoming famous; but pulmonary disease had declared itself, and it was evident that he was doomed to an early grave. The anxiety and effort of composition had aggravated the malady; the milder air of Shirley Common near Southampton brought no improvement; and after lingering a few weeks, the victim died on the 17th of September.

This description of Lord Byron was one of the two passages first read by Wilson that moved him to his unexpectedly friendly and favourable judgment of the Course of Time:

And first in rambling school-boy days,
Britannia's mountain-walks, and heath-girt lakes,
And story-telling glens, and founts, and brooks;
And maids, as dew-drops pure and fair, his soul
With grandeur filled, and melody, and love.
Then travel came, and took him where he wished.
He cities saw, and courts, and princely pomp:
And mused alone on ancient mountain brows;
And mused on battle-fields, where valour fought
In other days; and mused on ruins grey

With years and drank from old and fabulous wells;
And plucked the vine that first-born prophets plucked;
And mused on famous tombs; and on the wave
Of ocean mused; and on the desert waste.
The heavens, and earth of every country saw :
Where'er the old inspiring Genii dwelt,
Aught that could rouse, expand, refine the soul,
Thither he went, and meditated there.

He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced.
As some vast river of unfailing source,
Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed,
And oped new fountains in the human heart.
Where fancy halted, weary in her flight,
In other men, his fresh as morning rose,

And soared untrodden heights, and seemed at home,
Where angels bashful looked. Others, tho' great,

Beneath their argument seemed struggling whiles;
He from above descending, stooped to touch
The loftiest thought; and proudly stooped, as tho'
It scarce deserved his verse. With Nature's self
He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest
At will with all her glorious majesty.
He laid his hand upon the Ocean's mane,'
And played familiar with his hoary locks.
Stood on the Alps, stood on the Apennines,
And with the thunder talked, as friend to friend;
And wove his garland of the lightning's wing,
In sportive twist-the lightning's fiery wing,
Which, as the footsteps of the dreadful God,
Marching upon the storm in vengeance seemed-
Then turned, and with the grasshopper, who sung
His evening song, beneath his feet, conversed.

Great man! the nations gazed, and wondered much, And praised and many called his evil good. Wits wrote in favour of his wickedness; And kings to do him honour took delight. Thus full of titles, flattery, honour, fame; Beyond desire, beyond ambition full,— He died-he died of what? Of wretchedness. Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump Of fame; drank early, deeply drank; drank draughts That common millions might have quenched-then died Of thirst, because there was no more to drink.

Love.

(From Book IV.)

Hail love, first love, thou word that sums all bliss!
The sparkling cream of all Time's blessedness,
The silken down of happiness complete!
Discerner of the ripest grapes of joy
She gathered and selected with her hand,
All finest relishes, all fairest sights,

All rarest odours, all divinest sounds,

All thoughts, all feelings dearest to the soul:
And brought the holy mixture home, and filled
The heart with all superlatives of bliss.

But who would that expound, which words transcends,
Must talk in vain. Behold a meeting scene

Of early love, and thence infer its worth.

It was an eve of autumn's holiest mood.
The corn-fields, bathed in Cynthia's silver light,
Stood ready for the reaper's gathering hand;
And all the winds slept soundly. Nature seemed
In silent contemplation to adore

Its Maker. Now and then the aged leaf
Fell from its fellows, rustling to the ground;
And, as it fell, bade man think on his end.
On vale and lake, on wood and mountain high,
With pensive wing outspread, sat heavenly Thought,
Conversing with itself. Vesper looked forth
From out her western hermitage, and smiled;
And up the east, unclouded, rode the moon
With all her stars, gazing on earth intense,
As if she saw some wonder working there.

Such was the night, so lovely, still, serene,
When, by a hermit thorn that on the hill
Had seen a hundred flowery ages pass,
A damsel kneeled to offer up her prayer-
Her prayer nightly offered, nightly heard.
This ancient thorn had been the meeting-place
Of love, before his country's voice had called
The ardent youth to fields of honour far

Beyond the wave: and hither now repaired,
Nightly, the maid, by God's all-seeing eye
Seen only, while she sought this boon alone-
'Her lover's safety, and his quick return.'
In holy, humble attitude she kneeled,
And to her bosom, fair as moonbeam, pressed
One hand, the other lifted up to heaven.
Her eye, upturned, bright as the star of morn,
For all are friends in heaven, all faithful friends;
And many friendships in the days of time
Begun, are lasting here, and growing still;
So grows ours evermore, both theirs and mine.
Nor is the hour of lonely walk forgot

In the wide desert, where the view was large.
Pleasant were many scenes, but most to me
The solitude of vast extent, untouched
By hand of art, where nature sowed herself,
And reaped her crops; whose garments were the clouds ;
Whose minstrels, brooks; whose lamps, the moon and
Whose organ-choir, the voice of many waters; [stars;
Whose banquets, morning-dews; whose heroes, storms;
Whose warriors, mighty winds; whose lovers, flowers;
Whose orators, the thunderbolts of God;
Whose palaces, the everlasting hills;
Whose ceiling, heaven's unfathomable blue;
And from whose rocky turrets, battled high,
Prospect immense spread out on all sides round,
Lost now beneath the welkin and the main,
Now walled with hills that slept above the storm.
(From Book V.)

Happiness.

Whether in crowds or solitudes, in streets
Or shady groves, dwelt Happiness, it seems
In vain to ask; her nature makes it vain ;
Though poets much, and hermits, talked and sung
Of brooks and crystal founts, and weeping dews,
And myrtle bowers, and solitary vales,
And with the nymph made assignations there,
And wooed her with a love-sick oaten reed;
And sages too, although less positive,
Advised their sons to court her in the shade?
Delirious babble all! Was happiness,
Was self-approving, God-approving joy,
In drops of dew, however pure? in gales,
However sweet? in wells, however clear?
Or groves, however thick with verdant shade?
True, these were of themselves exceeding fair;
How fair at morn and even worthy the walk
Of loftiest mind, and gave, when all within
Was right, a feast of overflowing bliss ;
But were the occasion, not the cause of joy.
They waked the native fountains of the soul
Which slept before, and stirred the holy tides
Of feeling up, giving the heart to drink
From its own treasures draughts of perfect sweet.

The Christian faith, which better knew the heart
Of man, him thither sent for peace, and thus
Declared: Who finds it, let him find it there;
Who finds it not, for ever let him seek
In vain; 'tis God's most holy, changeless will.
True Happiness had no localities,
No tones provincial, no peculiar garb.
Where Duty went, she went, with Justice went,
And went with Meekness, Charity, and Love.
Where'er a tear was dried, a wounded heart
Bound up, a bruised spirit with the dew

Of sympathy anointed, or a pang
Of honest suffering soothed, or injury
Repeated oft, as oft by love forgiven;
Where'er an evil passion was subdued,
Or Virtue's feeble embers fanned; where'er
A sin was heartily abjured and left;
Where'er a pious act was done, or breathed
A pious prayer, or wished a pious wish,
There was a high and holy place, a spot
Of sacred light, a most religious fane,
Where Happiness, descending, sat and smiled.
But these apart. In sacred memory lives
The morn of life, first morn of endless days,
Most joyful morn! Nor yet for nought the joy.
A being of eternal date commenced,
A young immortal then was born! And who
Shall tell what strange variety of bliss
Burst on the infant soul, when first it looked
Abroad on God's creation fair, and saw
The glorious earth and glorious heaven, and face
Of man sublime, and saw all new, and felt
All new! when thought awoke, thought never more
To sleep! when first it saw, heard, reasoned, willed,
And triumphed in the warmth of conscious life!
Nor happy only, but the cause of joy,
Which those who never tasted always mourned.
What tongue!-no tongue shall tell what bliss o'erflowed
The mother's tender heart, while round her hung
The offspring of her love, and lisped her name;
As living jewels dropped unstained from heaven,
That made her fairer far, and sweeter seem,
Than every ornament of costliest hue!
And who hath not been ravished, as she passed
With all her playful band of little ones,
Like Luna with her daughters of the sky,
Walking in matron majesty and grace?

All who had hearts here pleasure found: and oft
Have I, when tired with heavy task, for tasks
Were heavy in the world below, relaxed
My weary thoughts among their guiltless sports,
And led them by their little hands afield,

And watched them run and crop the tempting flower-
Which oft, unasked, they brought me, and bestowed
With smiling face, that waited for a look
Of praise-and answered curious questions, put
In much simplicity, but ill to solve;
And heard their observations strange and new;
And settled whiles their little quarrels, soon
Ending in peace, and soon forgot in love.
And still I looked upon their loveliness,
And sought through nature for similitudes
Of perfect beauty, innocence, and bliss,
And fairest imagery around me thronged;
Dew-drops at day-spring on a seraph's locks,

Roses that bathe about the well of life,
Young Loves, young Hopes, dancing on Morning's cheek,
Gems leaping in the coronet of Love!

(From Book V.)

A too bulky and detailed Memoir of Pollok by his brother was published in 1843. The pathos of his short life is well brought out in the little book in the 'Scots' series, by Miss Rosaline Masson, on the strangely contrasted pair, Pollok and Aytoun (1899). The Course of Time reached its twenty-fifth edition in 1867 (12,000 copies were sold the first eighteen months). On his tombstone in the Millbrook churchyard at Southampton stands the ominous epitaph His immortal poem is his monument.' For the inmortal poem, like the tombstone, is sought after by few, and, save in occasional quotation, all but forgotten.

795

N 1792 Burns wrote in his first letter to George Thomson: 'Apropos, if you are for English verses, there is on my part an end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity of the ballad or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue.' So that Burns, who fairly represented the practice of his older contemporaries, and who became the standard of all later writers of Scottish verse, followed Ramsay's nondescript and elastic linguistic principle, and with better taste and vastly greater command of his instrument wrote - at times indiscriminatelyalmost pure English, nearly the broadest surviving vernacular, or a broken English, more or less largely sprinkled' with Scotch words. Sometimes even the words were not vernacular Scotch, but archaisms taken from Ramsay (who, as Lord Hailes proved, in ancient Scotch was sadly to seek); sometimes, as Dr Murray has pointed out, they were not Scotch words at all, but 'fancy Scotch' made by Scottifying ordinary English words on an assumed analogy. As a rule Burns was most broadly Scotch when he was most jocular, most largely English when the matter was most serious. In the longer poems, as The Cotter's Saturday Night, some verses are pure English, some nearly pure vernacular, and some a curious arbitrary mixture. Only in some of the songs does the (largely Anglicised) Scotch of his Ayrshire neighbours form the warp and woof of the whole, with English words thrown in. In some of the songs that are reckoned quite Scotch the blend is still more curious-the diction is substantially English, or even the somewhat stilted 'poetic diction' of contemporary southern versewriters, with a few of the words translated into imitation Scotch. My Nannie's awa' is one of Burns's most popular 'Scotch' songs, but nothing is less like the language of Scottish shepherds of any date than :

Now in her green mantle blithe nature arrays,

And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes. Braes is the only genuine Scots word here; 'nature arraying in a green mantle and listening lambkins bleating' being not ordinary but poetic English, such as was used in many of the songbooks current in Burns's time. Most of the

phrases actually occur in the songs given in Cecilia (1784), for example. Dr Murray has said: ""Scots wha hae" is fancy Scotch; that is, it is merely the English "Scots who have" spelled as Scotch. Barbour would have written "Scottis at hes;" Dunbar or Douglas, "Scottis quhilkis hes;" and even Henry Charteris, in the end of the sixteenth century, "Scottis quha hes." . . . "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," although composed of Scotch words, is not vernacular Scotch any more than "How you carry you?" as a translation of "Comment vous portez vous?" is vernacular English.' 'Scots at hes,' it may be added, is still the current Scots form, as it was in Burns's time; 'wha hae' appears only as an imitation of Burns's imitation.

North Germans sometimes use Low German words in High German stories, but the stories themselves do not thus become Platt-Deutsch works. And though a southern Frenchman in Paris gives his articles or verses a southern flavouring of words or phrases from his native Nîmes or Avignon, he is not therefore ranked amongst Provençal authors. Nor would Burns have been the greatest of writers in Scottish dialect unless he had in many of his best poems closely followed the Scottish spoken vernacular of his time. But, as we have seen from his own explicit testimony, while refusing to write 'English verses' at all, Burns was content to write Scotch verses' in which there was merely a 'sprinkling of his native tongue.' And this whether he was bowdlerising the old Scots songs for Thomson, making new ones to the old tunes and with the old refrains, or inditing his own most spontaneous and original strains. Most of his contemporaries, earlier and later, and almost all his successors have adopted a similarly fluctuating standard of mixed dialect; for many, Burns's very modest minimum of Scotticism has amply sufficed. But when it is remembered that the actually spoken Scotch has long been itself a mixed tongue, a patois rather than a dialect, their practice is not so strange as at first it might appear. Most Scottish writers, accepting Beattie's dictum (page 308) that 'to write in the vulgar broad Scotch and yet write seriously had become impossible,' essayed at times to find or construct a dialect which was not vulgar and was not exactly broad Scotch.

Father Geddes's remarks, quoted below (page 799), are interesting as coming from a philological