Part 17 (1/2)
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I think we must always respect the name and the work of William Cowper.
In our next chapter we shall listen to the music of a different singer, and to the story of a jollier, and yet of a far sadder life.
[1] As a matter of curiosity I give what appears to be the corresponding Gaelic in a couplet of lines, from the version in Rev.
Archibald Clerk's Ossian:--
”A's gile na 'n cobhar,' tha sgavilte Air muir o ghaillinn nan sian.”
l. 75, Duan 1, Fionnghal.
[2] James Macpherson: b. 1736; d. 1796.
[3] Mr. Mackenzie (_Diss. lx.x.xvii., Edit. Highland Soc._, London, 1807) says that he (Macpherson) took some of his Gaelic MSS. to Florida with him and many were lost there.
[4] Macpherson had translated and published the Iliad in 1773. It will interest my readers to know that a copy of this letter in Johnson's hand-writing, was sold in 1875 for 50--five times the sum which he received for the tale of Ra.s.selas!
[5] Sir John Sinclair, a voluminous agricultural writer of Scotland, was strenuous supporter of Macpherson's claims--respecting Ossianic origin, etc. The best exhibit, however, of the Gaelic side of the question may be found in the prefatory _Dissertation_ by Rev. Archibald Clerk, to the beautiful edition of Ossian published by Blackwood & Sons in 1870.
[6] George Halket, a Jacobite schoolmaster, d. 1756; Alexander Ross, minister, b. 1699; d. 1784; John Skinner, Episcopal clergyman, b. 1721; d. 1807.
[7] George Crabbe: b. 1754; d. 1832. _The Village_, _The Borough_, and _Tales of the Hall_, are his best-known works. _Life_, by his son (1834), is a very full and filially devout book of interesting reading.
[8] So late as 1808, the Edinburgh Review, after speaking of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, etc., continues in language which I suppose is Jeffery's own:--
”From these childish and absurd affectations we turn with pleasure to the manly sense and correct picturing of Mr. Crabbe; and after being dazzled and made giddy with the elaborate raptures and obscure originalities of these new artists, it is refres.h.i.+ng to meet again with the spirit and nature of our old masters in the nervous pages of the author [Crabbe] now before us.” Vol. xii., p. 131, Edinboro' Edition.
[9] The old castle was burned in 1816, but has been rebuilt with more than its old splendor.
[10] Smiles, in his _Memoirs of John Murray_--the publisher in question--intimates, however, that the sum was far too large, and Murray a loser by the bargain. Chap. xxii., p. 72, vol. ii. See also Murray's own statement to that effect, p. 385, vol. ii.
[11] William Cowper, b. 1731; d. 1800. Life by Hayley, 1804; another, by Southey (regarded as standard), published with edition of his works in 1833-37. A recent life by Thomas Wright, chiefly valuable for its local details.
[12] Lady Austen married some years later a French gentleman, M. de Tardif, and died in Paris in 1802. She may be counted almost joint-author (with Cowper) of _The Task_.
[13] P. 325, Life, etc., by Thomas Wright, London, 1892.
[14] William Hayley, b. 1745; d. 1820. Life of Cowper, 1803.
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CHAPTER VII
Beyond Dunkeld--which is the southern gateway of the Scottish Highlands--there stretches a great wood, within the domain of the Duke of Athole, where one can wander for miles; the path sometimes mossy, always inviting; now threading dark glens, and again winding under h.o.a.ry forest trees that grow on uplands; now giving glimpses of brook or pool, and now of gra.s.sy glade on which some group of century-old larches slant their shadows; one may hear noises of chattering squirrels, of whirring pheasants, of roaring wood-streams, of pines soughing in the wind; and at last, going up a side-path, the visitor will come to the door of a Hermitage, bedded in densest ma.s.s of foliage. Fifty years ago--to a month--the guide opened that door for me, entered with me, and closed it behind us. I then {258} observed that the whole inner surface of the door was one great mirror, and that there were other mirrors around; while directly opposite was a life-size painting of Ossian fingering his harp; and as I was scanning the details of this picture, the guide touched some hidden spring; Ossian straightway disappeared, sliding into the wall, and through the chasm one looked out upon clouds of spray, behind which an Alpine water-fall with roar and foam plunged down sheer forty feet into a seething pool below. The water-fall through an artful collocation of mirrors seemed to pour down behind you as well; and from the ceiling to pour down above you, and to gird you all about with its din and splash and spray. With the cliffs and the pine boughs it made a pretty grouping of Ossianic charms; and I am sorry to hear that since 1869 or thereabout, the Hermitage, by reason of some vandal outrage, has wholly disappeared.
The only memorial the traveller will find now in that region of the Ossianic harping, of which we spoke in the last chapter, is the Macpherson Stone, which some twenty-five miles farther northward, {259} on the Highland trail, peers out from green copses in the upper valley of the Spey.
I spoke also in our last talk of the literary ferment that had declared itself, and was in active progress along the Scottish border, and in Edinboro'. We had somewhat to say of the poet Crabbe, and of his long and successful poems--now little read; and of those other poems by Cowper, some of which will be always read, and which, when their art shall grow old-fas.h.i.+oned and out of date, will show a tender humanity and a kindly purpose, which I trust will never go out of date.