What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? Delightful visitant! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet The schoolboy, wandering through the wood Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,* What time the pea puts on the bloom, Sweet bird thy bower is ever green, O could I fly, I'd fly with thee! [Written in a Visit to the Country in Autumn.] 'Tis past! no more the Summer blooms! Ascending in the rear, Behold congenial Autumn comes, The Sabbath of the year! What time thy holy whispers breathe, And twilight consecrates the floods; O let me wander through the sounding woods! Ah! well-known streams!-ah! wonted groves, Oh! sacred scene of youthful loves, While sad I ponder on the past, The wild-flower strown on Summer's bier, Dissolve the soul, and draw the tender tear! Alas! the hospitable hall, Where youth and friendship played, Wide to the winds a ruined wall Projects a death-like shade! The charm is vanished from the vales; A stranger to his native bowers: No more Arcadian mountains bloom, The fancied Eden fades with all its flowers! Companions of the youthful scene, *This line originally stood Starts thy curious voice to hear,' which was probably altered by Logan as defective in quantity. 'Curious may be a Scotticism, but it is felicitous. It marks the unusual resemblance of the note of the cuckoo to the human voice, the cause of the start and imitation which follow. Whereas the "new voice of spring" is not true; for many voices in spring precede that of the cuckoo, and it is not peculiar or striking, nor does it connect either with the start or imitation.' -Note by Lord Mackenzie (son of the 'Man of Feeling') in Bruce's Poems, by Rev. W. Mackelvie. Long-exiled from your native clime, My steps, when innocent and young, I mourned the linnet-lover's fate, Condemned the widowed hours to wail: Or while the mournful vision rose, I sought to weep for imaged woes, Alas! misfortune's cloud unkind May summer soon o'ercast! The wrath of nature smites our bowers, And desolate before his time, In silence sad the mourner walks and weeps! And friendship's covenant fails! The bleeding shade, the unlaid ghost? Their chequered leaves the branches shed; They sadly sigh that Winter's near: Nor will I court Lethean streams, The sorrowing sense to steep; Nor drink oblivion of the themes On which I love to weep. Belated oft by fabled rill, While nightly o'er the hallowed hill Aerial music seems to mourn; I'll listen Autumn's closing strain; Then woo the walks of youth again, And pour my sorrows o'er the untimely urn! Complaint of Nature. Few are thy days and full of wo, Thy doom is written, dust thou art, Determined are the days that fly The numbered hour is on the wing Alas! the little day of life Is shorter than a span; Yet black with thousand hidden ills To miserable man. Gay is thy morning, flattering hope Behold! sad emblem of thy state, The flowers that paint the field; When chill the blast of Winter blows, Away the Summer flies, The Winter past, reviving flowers The woods shall hear the voice of Spring, But man departs this earthly scene, No second Spring shall e'er revive The inexorable doors of death What hand can e'er unfold? Who from the cerements of the tomb The mighty flood that rolls along The waters lost can ne'er recall The days, the years, the ages, dark So man departs the living scene, Where are our fathers! Whither gone "The patriarchs, prophets, princes, kings, Gone to the resting-place of man, Thus nature poured the wail of wo, The Almighty heard: then from his throne And from the Heaven, that opened wide, 'When mortal man resigns his breath, The above hymn has been claimed for Michael Bruce by Mr Mackelvie, his biographer, on the faith of internal evidence,' because two of the stanzas resemble a fragment in the handwriting of Bruce. We subjoin the stanzas and the fragment: When chill the blast of winter blows, The flowers resign their sunny robes, Nipt by the year the forest fades, And, shaking to the wind, The leaves toss to and fro, and streak The wilderness behind. 'The hoar-frost glitters on the ground, the frequent leaf falls from the wood, and tosses to and fro down on the wind. The summer is gone with all his flowers; summer, the season of the muses; yet not the more cease I to wander where the muses haunt near spring or shadowy grove, or sunny hill. It was on a calm morning, while yet the darkness strove with the doubtful twilight, I rose and walked out under the opening eyelids of the morn.' If the originality of a poet is to be questioned on the ground of such resemblances as the above, what modern is safe? The images in both pieces are common to all descriptive poets. Bruce's Ossianic fragment is patched with expressions from Milton, which are neither marked as quotations nor printed as poetry. The reader will easily recollect the following:Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Par. Lost, Book iii. [Written after seeing Windsor Castle.] From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls, The poetry-professor died in 1745. His tastes, his love of poetry, and of the university, were continued by his son Thomas, born in 1728. At sixteen, Thomas Warton was entered of Trinity college. He began early to write verses, and his Pleasures of Melancholy, published when he was nineteen, gave a promise of excellence which his riper productions did not fulfil. Having taken his degree, Warton obtained a fellowship, and in 1757 was appointed Professor of Poetry. He was also curate of Woodstock, and rector of Kiddington, a small living near Oxford. The even tenor of his life was only varied by his occasional publications, one of which was an elaborate Essay on Spenser's Faery Queen. He also edited the minor poems of Milton, an edition which Leigh Hunt says is a wilderness of sweets, and is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation. Some of the notes are highly poetical, while others display Warton's taste for antiquities, for architecture, superstition, and his intimate acquaintance with the old Elizabethan writers. A still more important work, the History of English Poetry, forms the basis of his reputation. In this history Warton poured out in profusion the treasures of a full mind. His antiquarian lore, his love of antique manners, and his chivalrous feelings, found appropriate exercise in tracing the stream of our poetry from its first fountainsprings, down to the luxuriant reign of Elizabeth, which he justly styled the most poetical age of our annals.' Pope and Gray had planned schemes of a history of English poetry, in which the authors were to be arranged according to their style and merits. Warton adopted the chronological arrangement, as giving freer exertion for research, and as enabling him to exhibit, without transposition, the gradual improvements of our poetry, and the progression of our language. The untiring industry and learning of the poet-historian accumulated a mass of materials equally valuable and curious. His work is a vast store-house of facts connected with our early literature; and if he sometimes wanders from his subject, or overlays it with extraneous details, it should be remembered, as his latest editor, Mr Price, remarks, that new matter was constantly arising, and that Warton was the first adventurer in the extensive region through which he journied, and into which the usual pioneers of literature had scarcely penetrated.' It is to be regretted that Warton's plan excluded the drama, which forms so rich a source of our early imaginative literature; but this defect has been partly supplied by Mr Collier's Annals of the Stage. On the death of Whitehead in 1785, Warton was appointed poet-laureate. His learning gave dignity to an office usually held in small esteem, and which in our day has been wisely converted into a sinecure. The same year he was made Camden Professor of History. While pursuing his antiquarian and literary researches, Warton was attacked with gout, and his enfeebled health yielded to a stroke of paralysis in 1790. Notwithstanding the classic stiffness of his poetry, and his full-blown academical honours, Warton appears to have been an easy companionable man, who delighted to unbend in common society, and especially with boys. During his visits to his brother, Dr J. Warton (master of Winchester school), the reverend professor became an associate and confidant in all the sports of the schoolboys. When engaged with them in some culinary occupation, and when alarmed by the sudden approach of the master, he has been known to hide himself in a dark corner of the kitchen; and has been dragged from thence by the doctor, who had taken him for some great boy. He also used to help the boys in their exercises, generally putting in as many faults as would disguise the assistance."* If there was little dignity in this, there was something better-a kindliness of disposition and freshness of feeling which all would wish to retain. The poetry of Warton is deficient in natural ex * Vide Campbell's Specimens, second edition, p. 620. pression and general interest, but some of his longer pieces, by their martial spirit and Gothic fancy, are calculated to awaken a stirring and romantic enthusiasm. Hazlitt considered some of his sonnets the finest in the language, and they seem to have caught the fancy of Coleridge and Bowles. The following are picturesque and graceful: Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon. Deem not devoid of elegance the sage, By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled of painful pedantry, the poring child, Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage. Think'st thou the warbling muses never smiled On his lone hours? Ingenious views engage His thoughts on themes unclassic falsely styled, Intent. While cloistered piety displays Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores New manners, and the pomp of elder days, Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores. Not rough nor barren are the winding ways Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers. On Revisiting the River Loddon. Ah! what a weary race my feet have run On Sir Joshua Reynolds's Painted Window at Oxford. Not of its pomp to strip this ancient shrine, The Hamlet.-An Ode. The hinds how blest, who, ne'er beguiled When morning's twilight-tinctured beam To dip the scythe in fragrant dew; In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds, For them the moon with cloudless ray The meadows incense breathe at eve. Or clirub the tall pine's gloomy-crest, Their humble porch with honied flowers, JOSEPH WARTON. The elder brother of Thomas Warton closely resembled him in character and attainments. He was born in 1722, and was the schoolfellow of Collins at Winchester. He was afterwards a commoner of Oriel college, Oxford, and ordained on his father's curacy at Basingstoke. He was also rector of Tamworth. In 1766 he was appointed head master of Winchester school, to which were subsequently added a prebend of St Paul's and of Winchester. He survived his brother ten years, dying in 1800. Dr Joseph Warton early appeared as a poet, but is considered by Mr Campbell as inferior to his brother in the graphic and romantic style of composition at which he aimed. His Ode to Fancy seems, however, to be equal to all but a few pieces of Thomas Warton's. He was also editor of an edition of Pope's works, which was favourably reviewed by Johnson. Warton was long intimate with Johnson, and a member of his literary club. To Fancy. O parent of each lovely muse! O nymph with loosely-flowing hair, An all-commanding magic wand, Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke, Me, goddess, by the right-hand lead, Where Mirth and Youth each evening meet, Where Laughter rose-liped Hebe leads; Yet not these flowery fields of joy That loves to fold her arms and sigh! To Gothic churches, vaults, and tombs, Whilst whistling tempests round her rise, Now let us louder strike the lyre, The trumpet's clangours pierce mine ear, O! guide me from this horrid scene When young-eyed Spring profusely throws Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear. THOMAS BLACKLOCK. A blind descriptive poet seems such an anomaly in nature, that the case of Dr Blacklock has engaged the attention of the learned and curious in no ordinary degree. We read all concerning him with strong interest, except his poetry, for this is generally tame, languid, and commonplace. He was an amiable and excellent man, of warm and generous sensibilities, eager for knowledge, and proud to communicate it. THOMAS BLACKLOCK was the son of a Cumberland bricklayer, who had settled in the town of Annan, Dumfriesshire. When about six months old, the child was totally deprived of sight by the small-pox; but his worthy father, assisted by his neighbours, amused his solitary boyhood by reading to him; and before he had reached the age of twenty, he was familiar with Spenser, Milton, Pope, and Addison. He was enthusiastically fond of poetry, particularly of the works of Thomson and Allan Ramsay. From these he must, in a great degree, have derived his images and impressions of nature and natural objects; but in after-life the classic poets were added to his store of intellectual enjoyment. His father was accidentally killed when the poet was about the age of nineteen; but some of his attempts at verse having been seen by Dr Stevenson, Edinburgh, this benevolent gentleman took their blind author to the Scottish metropolis, where he was enrolled as a student of divinity. In 1746 he published a volume of his poems, which was reprinted with additions in 1754 and 1756. He was licensed a preacher of the gospel in 1759, and three years afterwards, married the daughter of Mr Johnston, a surgeon in Dumfries. At the same time, through the patronage of the Earl of Selkirk, Blacklock was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright. The parishioners, however, were opposed both to church patronage in the abstract, and to this exercise of it! in favour of a blind man, and the poet relinquished the appointment on receiving in lieu of it a moderate annuity. He now resided in Edinburgh, and took boarders into his house. His family was a scene of peace and happiness. To his literary pursuits Blacklock added a taste for music, and played on the flute and flageolet. Latterly, he suffered from depression of spirits, and supposed that his imaginative powers were failing him; yet the generous ardour he evinced in 1786, in the case of Burns, shows no diminution of sensibility or taste in the appreciation of genius. In one of his later poems, the blind bard thus pathetically alludes to the supposed decay of his faculties: Excursive on the gentle gales of spring, He roved, whilst favour imped his timid wing. But mourns abortive hopes and faded fires; The short-lived wreath, which once his temples graced, He died on the 7th of July 1791, at the age of Apart from the circumstances under which they were produced, the poems of Blacklock offer little room or temptation to criticism. He has no new imagery, no commanding power of sentiment, reflection, or imagination. Still he was a fuent and correct versifier, and his familiarity with the visible objects of nature-with trees, streams, the rocks, and sky, and even with different orders of flowers and plants-is a wonderful phenomenon in one blind from infancy. He could distinguish colours by touch; but this could only apply to objects at hand, not to the features of a landscape, or to the appearances of storm or sunshine, sunrise or sunset, or the variation in the seasons, all of which he has described. Images of this kind he had at will. Thus, he exclaims Ye vales, which to the raptured eye Blushed with the morning's earliest ray Or he paints flowers with artist-like precision- 102 |