and delightful. This charming stream is the outlet of Loch Lomond, and through a track of four miles pursues its winding course over a bed of pebbles, till it joins the Firth of Clyde at Dumbarton. On this spot stands the castle formerly called Alcluyd, and washed by these two rivers on all sides except a narrow isthmus, which at every spring-tide is overflowed; the whole is a great curiosity, from the quality and form of the rock, as from the nature of its situation. A very little above the source of the Leven, on the lake, stands the house of Cameron, belonging to Mr Smollett (the late commissary), so embosomed in oak wood, that we did not perceive it till we were within fifty yards of the door. The lake approaches on one side to within six or seven yards of the windows. It might have been placed on a higher site, which would have afforded a more extensive prospect, and a drier atmosphere; but this imperfection is not chargeable on the present proprietor, who purchased it ready built, rather than be at the trouble of repairing his own family house of Bonhill, which stands two miles hence, on the Leven, so surrounded with plantations, that it used to be known by the name of the Mavis (or Thrush) Nest. Above the house is a romantic glen, or cleft of a mountain, covered with hanging woods, having at the bottom a stream of fine water, that forms a number of cascades in its descent to join the Leven, so that the scene is quite enchanting.
I have seen the Lago di Gardi, Albano di Vico, Bolsena and Geneva, and I prefer Loch Lomond to them all-a preference which is certainly owing to the verdant islands that seem to float upon its surface, affording the most enchanting objects of repose to the excursive view. Nor are the banks destitute of beauties which can partake of the sublime. On this side they display a sweet variety of woodland, corn field, and pasture, with several agreeable villas, emerging as it were out of the lake, till at some distance the prospect terminates in huge mountains, covered with heath, which, being in the bloom, affords a very rich covering of purple. Everything here is romantic beyond imagination. This country is justly styled the Arcadia of Scotland; I do not doubt but it may vie with Arcadia in everything but climate. I am sure it excels it in verdure, wood,
in a cottage which Dr Armstrong, then abroad, engaged for him in the neighbourhood of Leghorn. The warm and genial climate seems to have awakened his fancy, and breathed a temporary animation into his debilitated frame. He here wrote his Humphry Clinker, the most rich, varied, and agreeable of all his novels. Like Fielding, Smollett was destined to die in a foreign country. He had just committed his novel to the public, when he expired, on the 21st of October 1771, aged 51. Had he lived a few years longer, he would have inherited, as heir of entail, the estate of Bonhill, worth about £1000 a-year. His widow erected a plain monument over his remains at Leghorn, and his relations, who had neglected him in his days of suffering and distress, raised a cenotaph to his memory on the banks of the Leven. The prose works of Smollett will hereafter be noticed. He wrote no poem of any length; but it is evident he could have excelled in verse had he cultivated his talents, and enjoyed a life of greater ease and competence. Sir Walter Scott has praised the fine mythological commencement of his Ode; and few readers of taste or feeling are unacquainted with his lines on Leven Water, the picturesque scene of his early days. The latter were first published in Humphry Clinker,' after the above prose description of the same landscape, scarcely less poetical. When soured by misfortune, by party conflicts, and the wasting effects of disease, the generous heart and warm sensibilities of Smollett seem to have kindled at the recollection of his youth, and at the rural life and manners of his native country.
Ode to Independence.
Strophe.
Thy spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye;
Thy steps I follow, with my bosom bare,
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.
Deep in the frozen regions of the north,
A goddess violated brought thee forth,
Immortal Liberty, whose look sublime
Hath bleached the tyrant's cheek in every varying clime.
With frantic superstition for his guide,
What time the iron-hearted Gaul,
The sons of Woden to the field defied
Armed with the dagger and the pall,
The ruthless hag, by Weser's flood,
In Heaven's name urged the infernal blow;
And red the stream began to flow:
The vanquished were baptised with blood!
All who have traversed the banks of the Leven,
or sailed along the shores of Loch Lomond, in a
calm clear summer day, when the rocks and islands
are reflected with magical brightness and fidelity in
its waters, will acknowledge the truth of this de-
scription, and can readily account for Smollett's
preference, independently of the early recollections
which must have endeared the whole to his feelings
and imagination. The extension of manufactures in
Scotland has destroyed some of the pastoral charms
and seclusion of the Leven, but the course of the
river is still eminently rich and beautiful in sylvan
scenery. Smollett's health was now completely
gone. His pen, however, was his only resource,
and on his return to England he published a politi-
cal satire, The Adventures of an Atom, in which he
attacks his former patron, Lord Bute, and also the
Earl of Chatham. As a politician, Smollett was far
from consistent. His conduct in this respect was
guided more by personal feelings than public prin-
ciples, and any seeming neglect or ingratitude at
once roused his constitutional irritability and indig-
nation. He was no longer able, however, to con-
tend with the 'sea of troubles' that encompassed
him. In 1770, he again went abroad in quest of
health. His friends endeavoured, but in vain, to
procure him an appointment as consul in some port
in the Mediterranean; and he took up his residence | And Independence saw the light.
The Saxon prince in horror fled,
From altars stained with human gore,
And Liberty his routed legions led
In safety to the bleak Norwegian shore.
There in a cave asleep she lay,
Lulled by the hoarse-resounding main,
When a bold savage passed that way,
Impelled by destiny, his name Disdain.
Of ample front the portly chief appeared:
The hunted bear supplied a shaggy vest;
The drifted snow hung on his yellow beard,
And his broad shoulders braved the furious blast.
He stopt, he gazed, his bosom glowed,
And deeply felt the impression of her charms:
He seized the advantage Fate allowed,
And straight compressed her in his vigorous arms.
Strophe.
The curlew screamed, the tritons blew
Their shells to celebrate the ravished rite;
Old Time exulted as he flew;
The light he saw in Albion's happy plains,
Where under cover of a flowering thorn,
While Philomel renewed her warbled strains,
The auspicious fruit of stolen embrace was born-
The mountain Dryads seized with joy,
The smiling infant to their charge consigned;
The Doric muse caressed the favourite boy;
The hermit Wisdom stored his opening mind.
As rolling years matured his age,
He flourished bold and sinewy as his sire;
While the mild passions in his breast assuage
The fiercer flames of his maternal fire.
Accomplished thus, he winged his way,
And zealous roved from pole to pole,
The rolls of right eternal to display,
And warm with patriot thought the aspiring soul.
On desert isles 'twas he that raised
Those spires that gild the Adriatic wave,
Where Tyranny beheld amazed
Fair Freedom's temple, where he marked her grave.
He steeled the blunt Batavian's arms
To burst the Iberian's double chain;
And cities reared, and planted farms,
Won from the skirts of Neptune's wide domain.
He, with the generous rustics, sat
On Uri's rocks in close divan;
And winged that arrow sure as fate,
Which ascertained the sacred rights of man.
Arabia's scorching sands he crossed,
Where blasted nature pants supine,
Conductor of her tribes adust,
To Freedom's adamantine shrine;
And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast!
He snatched from under fell Oppression's wing,
And taught amidst the dreary waste,
The all-cheering hymns of liberty to sing.
He virtue finds, like precious ore,
Diffused through every baser mould;
Even now he stands on Calvi's rocky shore,
And turns the dross of Corsica to gold:
He, guardian genius, taught my youth
Pomp's tinsel livery to despise :
My lips by him chastised to truth,
Ne'er paid that homage which my heart denies.
Antistrophe.
Those sculptured halls my feet shall never tread,
Where varnished vice and vanity combined,
To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread,
And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind.
While Insolence his wrinkled front uprears,
And all the flowers of spurious fancy blow;
And Title his ill-woven chaplet wears,
Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow:
Where ever-dimpling falsehood, pert and vain,
Presents her cup of stale profession's froth;
And pale disease, with all his bloated train,
Torments the sons of gluttony and sloth.
Strophe.
In Fortune's car behold that minion ride,
With either India's glittering spoils oppressed,
So moves the sumpter-mule in harnessed pride,
That bears the treasure which he cannot taste.
For him let venal bards disgrace the bay,
And hireling minstrels wake the tinkling string;
Her sensual snares let faithless pleasure lay,
And jingling bells fantastic folly ring:
Disquiet, doubt, and dread, shall intervene ;
And nature, still to all her feelings just,
In vengeance hang a damp on every scene,
Shook from the baleful pinions of disgust.
Nature I'll court in her sequestered haunts,
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell;
Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts,
And health, and peace, and contemplation dwell.
There, study shall with solitude recline,
And friendship pledge me to his fellow-swains,
And toil and temperance sedately twine
The slender cord that fluttering life sustains:
And fearless poverty shall guard the door,
And taste unspoiled the frugal table spread,
And industry supply the humble store,
And sleep unbribed his dews refreshing shed;
White-mantled Innocence, ethereal sprite,
Shall chase far off the goblins of the night;
And Independence o'er the day preside,
Propitious power! my patron and my pride.
Ode to Leven-Water.
On Leven's banks, while free to rove,
And tune the rural pipe to love,
I envied not the happiest swain
That ever trod the Arcadian plain.
Pure stream, in whose transparent wave
My youthful limbs I wont to lave;
No torrents stain thy limpid source,
No rocks impede thy dimpling course,
That sweetly warbles o'er its bed,
With white, round, polished pebbles spread;
While, lightly poised, the scaly brood
In myriads cleave thy crystal flood;
The springing trout in speckled pride,
The salmon, monarch of the tide;
The ruthless pike, intent on war,
The silver eel, and mottled par.
Devolving from thy parent lake,
A charming maze thy waters make,
By bowers of birch, and groves of pine,
And edges flowered with eglantine.
Still on thy banks so gaily green, May numerous herds and flocks be seen: And lasses chanting o'er the pail, And shepherds piping in the dale; And ancient faith that knows no guile, And industry embrowned with toil; And hearts resolved, and hands prepared, The blessings they enjoy to guard!
[Written on the barbarities committed in the Highlands by order of the Duke of Cumberland, after the battle of Culloden, 1746. Smollett was then a surgeon's mate, newly returned from service abroad. It is said that he originally finished the poem in six stanzas; when, some one representing that such a diatribe against government might injure his prospects, he sat down and added the still more pointed invective of the seventh stanza.]
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!
Thy sons, for valour long renowned,
Lie slaughtered on their native ground;
Thy hospitable roofs no more
Invite the stranger to the door;
In smoky ruins sunk they lie,
The monuments of cruelty.
The wretched owner sees afar
His all become the prey of war;
Bethinks him of his babes and wife,
Then smites his breast, and curses life.
Thy swains are famished on the rocks,
Where once they fed their wanton flocks;
Thy ravished virgins shriek in vain ;
Thy infants perish on the plain.
What boots it, then, in every clime,
Through the wide-spreading waste of time,
Thy martial glory, crowned with praise,
Still shone with undiminished blaze?
Thy towering spirit now is broke,
Thy neck is bended to the yoke.
What foreign arms could never quell,
By civil rage and rancour fell.
The rural pipe and merry lay
No more shall cheer the happy day:
No social scenes of gay delight
Beguile the dreary winter night:
No strains but those of sorrow flow,
And nought be heard but sounds of wo,
While the pale phantoms of the slain
Glide nightly o'er the silent plain.
Oh! baneful cause, oh! fatal morn,
Accursed to ages yet unborn!
The sons against their father stood,
The parent shed his children's blood.
Yet, when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor's soul was not appeased:
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murdering steel!
The pious mother, doomed to death,
Forsaken wanders o'er the heath,
The bleak wind whistles round her head,
Her helpless orphans cry for bread;
Bereft of shelter, food, and friend,
She views the shades of night descend:
And stretched beneath the inclement skies,
Weeps o'er her tender babes, and dies.
While the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpaired remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country's fate
Within my filial breast shall beat ;
And, spite of her insulting foe,
My sympathising verse shall flow:
'Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn.'
JOHN ARMSTRONG, the friend of Thomson, of Mallet, Wilkes, and other public and literary characters of that period, is now only known as the author of a didactic poem, the Art of Preserving Health, which is but little read. Armstrong was son of the minister of Castleton, a pastoral parish in Roxburghshire. He studied medicine in Edinburgh, and took his degree of M.D. in 1732. He repaired to London, and became known by the publication of several fugitive pieces and medical essays. A very objectionable poem, the Economy of Love, gave promise of poetical powers, but marred his practice as a physician. In 1744 appeared his 'Art of Preserving Health,' which was followed by two other poems, Benevolence and Taste, and a volume of prose essays, the latter indifferent enough. In 1760 he was appointed physician to the forces in Germany; and on the peace in 1763, he returned to London, where he practised, but with little success, till his death, September 7, 1779, in the 70th year of his age. Armstrong seems to have been an indolent and splenetic, but kind-hearted manshrewd, caustic, and careful (he left £3000, saved out of a small income), yet warmly attached to his friends. His portrait in the Castle of Indolence' is in Thomson's happiest manner :
With him was sometimes joined in silent walk
(Profoundly silent, for they never spoke)
One shyer still, who quite detested talk;
Oft stung by spleen, at once away he broke
To groves of pine and broad o'ershadowing oak;
There, inly thrilled, he wandered all alone,
And on himself his pensive fury wroke,
Nor ever uttered word, save when first shone
The glittering star of eve-Thank Heaven, the day is
done!'
Warton has praised the Art of Preserving Health' for its classical correctness and closeness of style, and its numberless poetical images. In general, however, it is stiff and laboured, with occasional passages of tumid extravagance; and the images are not unfrequently echoes of those of Thomson and other poets. The subject required the aid of ornament, for scientific rules are in general bad themes for poetry, and few men are ignorant of the true philosophy of life, however they may deviate from it in practice. That health is to be preserved by temperance, exercise, and cheerful recreation, is a truth familiar to all from infancy. Armstrong, however, was no ascetic philosopher. His motto is, take the good the gods provide you,' but take it in moderation.
The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by well-informed experience found
The least your bane, and only with your friends.
The effects of over-indulgence in wine he has finely
described :-
But most too passive, when the blood runs low,
Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,
And bravely by resisting conquer fate,
Try Circe's arts; and in the tempting bowl
Of poisoned nectar sweet oblivion swill.
Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves
In empty air; Elysium opens round,
A pleasing phrenzy buoys the lightened soul,
And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;
And what was difficult, and what was dire,
Yields to your prowess and superior stars:
The happiest you of all that e'er were mad,
Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.
But soon your heaven is gone: a heavier gloom
Shuts o'er your head; and, as the thundering stream,
Swollen o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook,
So, when the frantic raptures in your breast
Subside, you languish into mortal man;
You sleep, and waking find yourself undone.
For, prodigal of life, in one rash night
You lavished more than might support three days.
A heavy morning comes; your cares return
With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well
May be endured; so may the throbbing head;
But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
Involves you; such a dastardly despair
Unmans your soul, as maddening Pentheus felt,
When, baited round Citharon's cruel sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.
In prescribing as a healthy situation for residence
a house on an elevated part of the sea-coast, he
indulges in a vein of poetical luxury worthy the en-
chanted grounds of the Castle of Indolence:'
The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm;
Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights
The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain
Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.
Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks,
Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest.
To please the fancy is no trifling good,
Where health is studied; for whatever moves
The mind with calm delight, promotes the just
And natural movements of the harmonious frame.
All who have witnessed or felt the inspiriting effects of fine mountain scenery on invalids, will subscribe to the truth so happily expressed in the concluding lines of this passage. The blank verse of Armstrong somewhat resembles that of Cowper in compactness and vigour, but his imagination was hard and literal, and wanted the airy expansiveness and tenderness of pure inspiration. It was a high merit, however, to succeed where nearly all have failed, in blending with a subject so strictly practical and prosaic, the art and fancy of the poet. Much learning, skill, and knowledge are compressed into his poem, in illustration of his medical and ethical doctrines. The whole is divided into four books or divisions the first on air, the second on diet, the third on exercise, and the fourth on the passions. In his first book, Armstrong has penned a ludicrously pompous invective on the climate of Great Britain, steeped in continual rains, or with raw fogs bedewed.' He exclaims
Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene:
Good Heaven! for what unexpiated crimes
This dismal change! The brooding elements
Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath,
Prepare some fierce exterminating plague?
Or is it fixed in the decrees above,
That lofty Albion melt into the main?
Indulgent nature! O, dissolve this gloom;
Bind in eternal adamant the winds
That drown or wither; give the genial west
To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly south,
And may once more the circling seasons rule
The year, not mix in every monstrous day!
Now, the fact we believe is, that in this country
there are more good days in the year than in any
other country in Europe. A few extracts from the
Art of Preserving Health' are subjoined. The
last, which is certainly the most energetic passage
in the whole poem, describes the 'sweating sickness'
which scourged England
Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
Their ancient rage at Bosworth's purple field.
In the second, Armstrong introduces an apostrophe
to his native stream, which perhaps suggested the
more felicitous ode of Smollett to Leven Water. It
is not unworthy of remark, that the poet entirely
overlooks the store of romantic association and
ballad-poetry pertaining to Liddisdale, which a
mightier than he, in the next age, brought so pro-
minently before the notice of the world.
[Wrecks and Mutations of Time.]
[Recommendation of Angling.]
But if the breathless chase o'er hill and dale
Exceed your strength, a sport of less fatigue,
Not less delightful, the prolific stream
Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er
A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,
Swarms with the silver fry: such through the bounds
Of pastoral Stafford runs the brawling Trent;
Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such
The Esk, o'erhung with woods; and such the stream
On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air;
Liddel, till now, except in Doric lays,
Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song, though not a purer stream
Through meads more flowery, or more romantic groves,
Rolls towards the western main. Hail, sacred flood!
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
In rural innocence, thy mountains still
Teem with the fleecy race, thy tuneful woods
For ever flourish, and thy vales look gay
With painted meadows and the golden grain;
Oft with thy blooming sons, when life was new,
Sportive and petulant, and charmed with toys,
In thy transparent eddies have I laved;
Oft traced with patient steps thy fairy banks,
With the well-imitated fly to hook
The eager trout, and with the slender line
And yielding rod solicit to the shore
The struggling panting prey, while vernal clouds
And tepid gales obscured the ruffled pool,
And from the deeps called forth the wanton swarms.
Formed on the Samian school, or those of Ind,
There are who think these pastimes scarce humane;
Yet in my mind (and not relentless I)
His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
[Pestilence of the Fifteenth Century.]
Their ancient rage at Bosworth's purple field;
Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
While, for which tyrant England should receive,
Her legions in incestuous murders mixed,
And daily horrors; till the fates were drunk
With kindred blood by kindred hands profused:
Another plague of more gigantic arm
Arose, a monster never known before,
This rapid fury not, like other pests,
Reared from Cocytus its portentous head;
Pursued a gradual course, but in a day
Rushed as a storm o'er half the astonished isle,
And strewed with sudden carcases the land.
First through the shoulders, or whatever part
Was seized the first, a fervid vapour sprung;
With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark
Shot to the heart, and kindled all within;
And soon the surface caught the spreading fires.
Through all the yielding pores the melted blood
Gushed out in smoky sweats; but nought assuaged
The torrid heat within, nor aught relieved
What does not fade? The tower that long had stood The stomach's anguish. With incessant toil,
The crush of thunder and the warring winds,
Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base,
And flinty pyramids and walls of brass
Descend. The Babylonian spires are sunk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old,
And all those worlds that roll around the sun;
The sun himself shall die, and ancient night
Again involve the desolate abyss,
Till the great Father, through the lifeless gloom,
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain,
They tossed from side to side. In vain the stream
Ran full and clear, they burnt, and thirsted still.
The restless arteries with rapid blood
Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly
The breath was fetched, and with huge labourings
heaved.
At last a heavy pain oppressed the head,
A wild delirium came: their weeping friends
Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.
Harassed with toil on toil, the sinking powers
Lay prostrate and o'erthrown; a ponderous sleep
Wrapt all the senses up: they slept and died.
In some a gentle horror crept at first
O'er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin
Withheld their moisture, till by art provoked
The sweats o'erflowed, but in a clammy tide;
Now free and copious, now restrained and slow;
Of tinctures various, as the temperature
Had mixed the blood, and rank with fetid streams:
As if the pent-up humours by delay
Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.
Here lay their hopes (though little hope remained),
With full effusion of perpetual sweats
To drive the venom out. And here the fates
Were kind, that long they lingered not in pain.
For, who survived the sun's diurnal race,
Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeemed;
Some the sixth hour oppressed, and some the third.
Of many thousands, few untainted 'scaped;
Of those infected, fewer 'scaped alive;
Of those who lived, some felt a second blow;
And whom the second spared, a third destroyed.
Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun
The fierce contagion. O'er the mournful land
The infected city poured her hurrying swarms:
Roused by the flames that fired her seats around,
The infected country rushed into the town.
Some sad at home, and in the desert some
Abjured the fatal commerce of mankind.
In vain; where'er they fled, the fates pursued.
Others, with hopes more specious, crossed the main,
To seek protection in far distant skies;
But none they found. It seemed the general air,
From pole to pole, from Atlas to the east,
Was then at enmity with English blood;
For but the race of England all were safe
In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste
The foreign blood which England then contained.
Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven
Involved them still, and every breeze was bane:
Where find relief? The salutary art
Was mute, and, startled at the new disease,
In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.
To heaven, with suppliant rites they sent their
Heaven heard them not. Of every hope deprived,
Fatigued with vain resources, and subdued
With woes resistless, and enfeebling fear,
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds were heard,
Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell; and oft the bed, they say,
The sickening, dying, and the dead contained.
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An admirable translation of The Lusiad' of Camoens, the most distinguished poet of Portugal, was executed by WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, himself a poet of taste and fancy, but of no great originality or energy. Mickle was son of the minister of Langholm, in Dumfriesshire, where he was born in 1734. He was engaged in trade in Edinburgh as conductor, and afterwards partner, of a brewery; but he failed in business, and in 1764 went to London, desirous of literary distinction. Lord Lyttelton noticed and encouraged his poetical efforts, and Mickle was buoyed up with dreams of patronage and celebrity. Two years of increasing destitution dispelled this vision, and the poet was glad to accept the situation of corrector of the Clarendon press at Oxford. Here he published Pollio, an elegy, and The Concubine, a moral poem in the manner of Spenser, which he afterwards reprinted with the title of Syr Martyn. Mickle adopted the obsolete phraseology of Spenser, which was too antiquated even for the age of the
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'Faery Queen,' and which Thomson had almost wholly discarded in his Castle of Indolence.' The first stanza of this poem has been quoted by Sir Walter Scott (divested of its antique spelling) in illustration of a remark made by him, that Mickle, 'with a vein of great facility, united a power of verbal melody, which might have been envied by bards of much greater renown:'—
Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale, And Fancy to thy faery bower betake; Even now, with balmly sweetness, breathes the gale, Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake; Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, And Evening comes with locks bedropped with dew; On Desmond's mouldering turrets slowly shake The withered rye-grass and the harebell blue, And ever and anon sweet Mulla's plaints renew. Sir Walter adds, that Mickle, 'being a printer by profession, frequently put his lines into types without taking the trouble previously to put them into writing.' This is mentioned by none of the poet's biographers, and is improbable. The office of a corrector of the press is quite separate from the mechanical operations of the printer. Mickle's poem was highly successful (not the less, perhaps, because it was printed anonymously, and was ascribed to different authors), and it went through three editions. In 1771 he published the first canto of his great translation, which was completed in 1775; and being supported by a long list of subscribers, was highly advantageous both to his fame and fortune. In 1779 he went out to Portugal as secretary to Commodore Johnston, and was received with much distinction in Lisbon by the countrymen of Camoens. On the return of the expedition, Mickle was appointed joint agent for the distribution of the prizes. His own share was considerable; and having received some money by his marriage with a lady whom he had known in his obscure sojourn at Oxford, the latter days of the poet were spent in ease and leisure. He died at Forest Hill, near Oxford, in 1788.
The most popular of Mickle's original poems is his ballad of Cumnor Hall, which has attained additional celebrity by its having suggested to Sir Walter Scott the groundwork of his romance of Kenilworth.* The plot is interesting, and the versification easy and musical. Mickle assisted in Evans's Collection of Old Ballads (in which Cumnor Hall' and other pieces of his first appeared); and though in this style of composition he did not copy the direct simplicity and unsophisticated ardour of the real old ballads, he had much of their tenderness and pathos. A still stronger proof of this is afforded by a Scottish song, the author of which was long unknown, but which seems clearly to have been written by Mickle. An imperfect, altered, and corrected copy was found among his manuscripts after his death; and his widow being applied to, confirmed the external evidence in his favour, by an express declaration that her husband had said the song was his own, and that he had explained to her the Scottish words. It is the fairest flower in his poetical chaplet. The delineation of humble matrimonial happiness and affection which the song presents, is almost unequalled
Sae true his words, sae smooth his speech,
His breath like caller air!
His very foot has music in't
As he comes up the stair.
Sir Walter intended to have named his romance Cumnor
Hall, but was persuaded by Mr Constable, his publisher, to adopt the title of Kenilworth.
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