If equal justice, with unclouded face, This spacious animated scene survey, Say, then, through ages by what fate confined, Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war ; The encroaching tide that drowns her lessening lands, Not but the human fabric from the birth To turn the torrent's swift-descending flood, Mason says, 'The following couplet, which was intended to have been introduced in the poem on the Alliance of Education and Government, is much too beautiful to be lost :' When love could teach a monarch to be wise, And gospel-light first dawned from Bullen's eyes.* TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT. Many who are familiar with Smollett as a novelist, scarcely recollect him as a poet, though he has scattered some fine verses amidst his prose fictions, and has written a spirited Ode to Independence. TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT was born in Dalquhurn House, near the village of Renton, Dumbartonshire, and baptised on the 19th of March 1721. His father, a younger son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, having died early, the poet was educated by his grandfather. After the usual course of instruction in the grammar-school of Dumbarton, and at the university of Glasgow, Tobias was placed apprentice to a medical practitioner, Mr Gordon, Glasgow. He was nineteen when his term of apprenticeship expired, and, at this early age, his grandfather having died without making any provision for him, the young and sanguine adventurer proceeded to London, his chief dependence being a tragedy, called the Regicide, which he attempted to bring out at the theatres. Foiled in this effort of juvenile ambition, Smollett became surgeon's mate on board an eighty-gun ship, and was present at the ill-planned and disastrous expedition against Carthagena, which he has described with much force in his Roderick Random. He left the navy, and resided some time in the West Indies; but had returned to England in 1744, in which year he is found practising medicine in London. In 1746, he published Advice, a Satire; in 1747, Reproof, a Satire; and in 1748 he gave to the world his novel of Roderick Random. Peregrine Pickle appeared three years afterwards. Smollett failed as a physician, and, taking a house at Chelsea, devoted himself to literature as a profession. Notwithstanding his facility of composition, his general information and talents, his life was one continual struggle for existence, imbittered by personal quarrels, brought on partly by irritability of temper. In 1753, his romance of Ferdinand Count Fathom was published, and in * If conscience had any part in moving the king (Henry VIII) to sue for a divorce, she had taken a long nap of almost twenty years together before she was awakened; and perhaps had slept on till doomsday, if Anne Boleyn or some other fair lady had not given her a jog-Dryden. generosity and benevolence, which Smollett exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and irritability. Sterne's writings shew much flourish concerning virtues of which his life is understood to have produced little fruit; the temper of Smollett was Like a lusty winter, The native air of the great novelist was more cheering and exhilarating than the genial gales of the south. On his return from Italy he repaired to Scotland, saw once more his affectionate mother, and sojourned a short time with his cousin, Mr Smollett of Bonhill, on the banks of the Leven. 1755 his translation of Don Quixote. The version of Motteux is now generally preferred to that of our author, though the latter is marked by his characteristic humour and versatility of talent. After he had finished this task, Smollett paid a visit to his native country. His fame had gone before him, and his reception by the literati of Scotland was cordial and flattering. His filial tenderness was also highly gratified by meeting with his surviving parent. 'On Smollett's arrival,' says Dr Moore, he was introduced to his mother, with the connivance of Mrs Telfer (his sister), as a gentleman from the West Indies, who was intimately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a serious countenance approaching to a frown; but, while his mother's eyes were riveted on his countenance, he could not refrain from 'The water of Leven,' he observes in his smiling. She immediately sprung from her chair, Humphry Clinker, though nothing near so conand throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed: siderable as the Clyde, is much more transparent, "Ah, my son, my son! I have found you at last." pastoral, and delightful. This charming stream She afterwards told him that if he had kept his is the outlet of Loch Lomond, and through a track austere looks, and continued to gloom, he might of four miles pursues its winding course over a have escaped detection some time longer; "but bed of pebbles, till it joins the Firth of Clyde at your old roguish smile," added she, " betrayed you Dumbarton. On this spot stands the castle forat once." On this occasion, Smollett visited his merly called Alcluyd, and washed by these two relations and native scenes in Dumbartonshire, rivers on all sides except a narrow isthmus, which and spent two days in Glasgow amidst his boyish at every spring-tide is overflowed; the whole is a companions. Returning to England, he resumed great curiosity, from the quality and form of the his literary occupations. He unfortunately became rock, as from the nature of its situation. A very editor of the Critical Review, and an attack in that little above the source of the Leven, on the lake, journal on Admiral Knowles, one of the com- stands the house of Cameron, belonging to Mr manders at Carthagena (which Smollett acknow- Smollett (the late commissary), so embosomed in ledged to be his composition), led to a trial for oak wood, that we did not perceive it till we were libel; and the author was sentenced to pay a fine within fifty yards of the door. I have seen the Lago of £100, and suffered three months' imprisonment. di Gardi, Albano di Vico, Bolsena and Geneva, and He consoled himself by writing, in prison, his I prefer Loch Lomond to them all-a preference novel of Launcelot Greaves. Another proof of his which is certainly owing to the verdant islands that fertility and industry as an author was afforded by seem to float upon its surface, affording the most his History of England, written, it is said, in four-enchanting objects of repose to the excursive view. teen months. He engaged in political discussion, for which he was ill qualified by temper, and, taking the unpopular side, he was completely vanquished by the truculent satire and abuse of Wilkes. His health was also shattered by close application to his studies, and by private misfortune. In his early days, Smollett had married a young West Indian lady, Miss Lascelles, by whom he had a daughter. This only child died at the age of fifteen, and the disconsolate father tried to fly from his grief by a tour through France and Italy. He was absent two years, and published an account of his travels, which, amidst gleams of humour and genius, is disfigured by the coarsest prejudices. Sterne has successfully ridiculed this work in his Sentimental Journey. Some of the critical dicta of Smollett are mere ebullitions of spleen. In the famous statue of the Venus de Medici, 'which enchants the world,' he could see no beauty of feature, and the attitude he considered awkward and out of character! The Pantheon at Rome-that 'glorious combination of beauty and magnificence' he said looked like a huge cockpit open at the top. Sterne said justly, that such declarations should have been reserved for his physician; they could only have sprung from bodily distemper. Yet be it said,' remarks Sir Walter Scott, 'without offence to the memory of the witty and elegant Sterne, it is more easy to assume, in composition, an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise the virtues of Nor are the banks destitute of beauties which can 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 description, 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 most 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 political 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 principles, and any seeming neglect or ingratitude at once roused his constitutional irritability and indignation. He was no longer able, however, to contend 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 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, in his 51st year. Had he lived a few years longer, he would, by the death of his cousin, Commissary Smollett (November 12, 1775), 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, Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky! Hath bleached the tyrant's cheek in every varying clime. What time the iron-hearted Gaul, In Heaven's name urged the infernal blow; The vanquished were baptised with blood! The curlew screamed, the tritons blew The mountain Dryads seized with joy He flourished bold and sinewy as his sire; ANTISTROPHE. was Arabia's scorching sands he crossed, To freedom's adamantine shrine; And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast! 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, Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow: Where ever-dimpling falsehood, pert and vain, STROPHE. In Fortune's car behold that minion ride, Ode to Leven Water. On Leven's banks, while free to rove, Pure stream, in whose transparent wave With white, round, polished pebbles spread; Still on thy banks so gaily green, The Tears of Scotland. Written on the barbarities committed in the Highlands by the English forces under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, after the battle of Culloden, 1746. It is said that Smollett originthat such a diatribe against government might injure his prospects, ally finished the poem in six stanzas; when, some one representing he sat down, and added the still more pointed invective of the seventh stanza. Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn! The wretched owner sees afar What boots it, then, in every clime, The rural pipe and merry lay O baneful cause, O fatal morn, Devouring flames and murdering steel! The pious mother, doomed to death, While the warm blood bedews my veins, AUTHOR OF 'ALBANIA.' In 1737 a poem in blank verse, entitled Albania, was published by T. Cooper, London, prefaced with some remarks and with a dedication to General Wade by an editor who, like the author of the poem, is unknown. The editor states that Albania was written by a Scotch clergyman'some years ago, who is since dead.' It appears from the poem itself, that the author was twenty-four years of age at the time of its composition. Aaron Hill prefixed some highly encomiastic lines to the editor, but the little volume seems to have remained unnoticed and unknown till 1783, when Dr Beattie, in one of his Essays on Poetry and Music, quoted a picturesque passage, praised also by Sir Walter Scott, which describes invisible hunting,' a superstition formerly prevalent in the Highlands. The poem consists of 296 lines. It was edited by Dr John Leyden, and reprinted with other Scottish descriptive poems in 1803. Apostrophe to Albania, or Scotland. O loved Albania! hardy race of men! Early, ere yet the wakeful cock has crowed. Hail, land of bowmen! seed of those who scorned My life, my strength, my first and latest song! The Invisible Hunting. E'er since of old, the haughty thanes of Ross Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears Tingle with inward dread. Aghast he eyes Nor knows, o'erawed, and trembling as he stands, JOHN WILSON. In the volume with Albania Dr Leyden included Clyde, a poem by JOHN WILSON (1720-1789), who was sometime parochial schoolmaster at Lesmahago, and afterwards at Greenock. In 1767 the magistrates and minister of Greenock, before they admitted Wilson to the superintendence of the grammar-school, stipulated that he should abandon the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making!' He complied, burned his unfinished manuscripts, and faithfully kept his word. The world lost nothing by the barbarism of the Greenock functionaries, for though Wilson was a smooth and fluent versifier, he had none of the fire or originality of the 'maker' or true poet. The Clyde extends to nearly 2000 lines. Boast not, great Forth, thy broad majestic tide, And wheeling round and round in sportive mood, THE REV. RICHARD GIFFORD. In 1753 an anonymous poem entitled Contemplation was published by Dodsley, and attracted the attention of Dr Johnson. The author was the Rev. RICHARD GIFFORD (1725-1807), vicar of Duffield, county of Derby, rector of North Ockendon in Essex, and chaplain to the Marquis of Tweeddale, to whose family he was related. The poem consists of seventy-one stanzas, and opens as follows: Rural Morning Scene. Dropt is the sable mantle of the night; And, while she hails the glad return of light, The music spreads through nature: while the flocks And sweetest Phoebe, she, whose rosy cheeks Even from the straw-roofed cot the note of joy Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound, The last of these stanzas, slightly altered, was quoted by Johnson in his Dictionary to illustrate the word 'vicissitude,' and was repeated by him to Boswell at Nairn. Southey was grateful to the great Cham of literature,' for preserving the stanza, of which he says 'a sweeter was never composed.' The pensive tone and the versification of Gifford's poem, with some of its expressions, were evidently copied from Gray's Elegy. We subjoin four more stanzas from Contemplation: Address to Health. How shall I woo thee, sweetest, rose-lipped fair? |