song, as it was his first, seems unfortunately to have proved prophetic. Again at the end he repeats that it is patriotism alone which inspires his poetry :— "Thus, Caledonia, many hilled! to thee, If he had lived long however, we may be sure that the fervour of soul which displays itself in such verse would again have enforced utterance. Much was lost in that early and nameless grave. It may be desirable in a few sentences to recall the common features of this band of Scotchmen, and to mark what was new in their contribution to literature. All of them were distinguished by a certain independence of mind with reference to the literary fashion of the time: even Mallet needed but the example of Thomson to encourage him to cut himself free from it. The taste of the Queen Anne poets influenced them only to a slight degree. All of them too brought freshness with them, either, like Armstrong and Blair, as students of a manner which had fallen into disuse, or, like Thomson, from a new and original study of nature. It was precisely on these lines that the great literary revolution of the latter part of the century proceeded. The leaders of the romance movement turned for inspiration either to the Elizabethans or to the remains of our old popular poetry, as Blair and Armstrong, and as Hamilton and even Mallet had done The leaders of the natural school followed in the footsteps of Thomson, left the city and the study, and ceased to accept their impressions of nature at second hand. Like him, they trusted rather to "A heart That watches and receives." Thus the men who have just been reviewed foreshadow, far more clearly than is commonly believed, the work of the revolutionary poets. They did not indeed do that work beforehand; but they helped greatly to make the doing of it possible. CHAPTER IX. THE LATER ANGLO-SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. JUST about the time when Thomson and his contemporaries were beginning to write, another set of poets of very different character were in their infancy. John Wilson, William Wilkie, Thomas Blacklock, and John Home were all born about the opening of the third decade of the century. William Falconer, William Julius Mickle, and James Beattie were some ten years younger. Later still came James Macpherson, Michael Bruce, and John Logan. These men differ widely among themselves, but still more widely from their immediate predecessors. It is curious that, except for dramatic composition, blank verse, the favourite measure of the former period, almost disappears in this. So too does that freshness of matter which is the chief merit of the elder group. It would seem that the longer continuance of close intercourse with England had made the weight of southern influence more heavily felt, and had checked the growth of native ideas. The chronological order ought to be observed so far as to separate the first group from the rest; for it will be found that, while the characteristic of that group is merely imitation of the school of Pope, the later writers appear first to be groping after something new, and then to grasp it. This something new is romanticism. In the first group John Home, as a dramatist, stands apart. Of the others, Blacklock and Wilkie agree in this, that they touch hands at once with the English Augustan poets and with the ancient classical writers whom these professed to admire, and from whom they took their name. Blacklock is much the smaller man of the two. He has in truth little claim to remembrance except such as can be founded upon a pathetic story and an amiable and virtuous character. He lost his eyesight from smallpox in infancy; and struggling under this disadvantage he managed to acquire a considerable degree of learning. His favourite pursuit was poetry; an unwise choice, for he had no grandeur of idea to atone for the want of precision which must mark the descriptions of one who has never seen that which he describes. Even in an age when mediocre verse was more charitably received than it is at the present day, he would, but for the interest inspired by his blindness, have failed to attract attention. In virtue of that however, and of his personal charm, he was most favourably received. The kindly sceptic, David Hume, did all he could in his behalf, even surrendering to him his salary as Advocates' Librarian; and Spence, the professor of poetry at Oxford, to whom Blacklock was introduced by Hume, wrote an account of his life, character, and writings which made him known to the English public. Blacklock in his turn, at a later day, had it in his power to stretch a helping hand to Robert Burns; and the fact that he was partly the means of turning Burns from his design of emigrating, constitutes for him a stronger claim to remembrance than anything he ever wrote. For in truth neither his prose nor his poetry is of much value. In the poetry there is not one gleam of original power; and there is little even of that conventional prettiness which sometimes makes the minor poet mildly attractive. Blacklock tried with song, ode, pastoral, and elegy to climb the gentler slopes of Parnassus; William Wilkie attempted to storm its steepest heights by means of his ambitious epic, The Epigoniad. He has fallen under a shadow of oblivion somewhat deeper than he deserved, though it is easily explained. A short poem moderately well done has a better chance to be read than a long one of the same quality, though the ability which has gone to the creation of the latter may be much greater than that devoted to the slighter work. The Epigoniad is moderately good; but it requires more than moderate merit to induce men to read [an epic in nine books. Wilkie was a man with a history very similar to that of scores of his countrymen who, by dint of dauntless character and strong understanding, have conquered an unpropitious fortune. He was born in 1721, and was sent at the age of fourteen to the University of Edinburgh, but in the midst of his studies was recalled by his father's death to manage a farm and provide for a mother and three sisters. Most lads would have sunk under the burden, or at the utmost would have contented themselves with fighting successfully the battle for existence. But Wilkie never surrendered his ambitions. He carried through his studies to the end, was licensed, and received first the assistantship and afterwards the principal |