English Poetry [pp. 101-106]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
105
Hist, the raven flaps his wing
To the night-mares as they go,
And the death-owl hoarse doth sing,
From the briared dell below.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree."
I have little or no more to say of Thomas Chatterton; I have already said too much. But the heart rules
the head when we look upon the wretched career-least
wretched in its wretched end-of one fitted for the
loftiest achievements. A rocket with " the wide sky"
before it-the blaze and the flight of his genius was
scarcely beyond the fogs that lie near earth. It fell,
blackened, and scorched, and lightless, to the dust.
Had "the marvellous boy" feared death more than he
had been taught to fear life, the rocket would have been
in "the wide sky," not in the dust-the wonder of
men, not their pity.
Thomas Chatterton died in 1770, aged seventeen
years and nine months.
VI. From the days of old Thomas the Rhymer the
barren glens and bleak hills of Scotland have been holy
earth. An essence strong and mystic, an invisible presence, a something undefined, but powerful, hangs above
and rests upon them. "The mantle of historic poetry is
upon her soil!" and the floating and fragmentary images
on this mantle-in their influence, like those upon the
Arras tapestry in the haunted chamber of Monkbarnsfashion the dreams of one looking upon it rarely. The
dreamer dreams of Wallace wight, and of the deeds
of the Bruce-of Douglas "tender and true," and of
the hardy feats of the moss troopers, whose homes were
from Inck Colm to the Solwvay.
But the mantle of a milder poesy is too upon the
Scottish valleys and hills! Shepherds have tuned the
pipe to love among the hollows of Ettrick Wood-on
the levels beside Yarrow-down by the shores of Loch
Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch Leven and Loch
Apollo knows what! A poet has sat on Eildon hill, and
forgotten the hand of Michael the conjurer in a vision
of love. Move where you may you will see the marks
of these. Their songs ring in your ears, as the voices
of the musical doves of the Bahamas haunt him who
visits their pebbly islets. I have now to speak of one
who wound these two mantles together:-mingling the
spirit of martialfiolic* with the softer one of Eros.
Most readers are famniliar with the life as well as
poetry of Robert Burns. The son of a gardener —
brought up to "the plough, scythe and reap-hook"his mind took upon itself the sturdy simplicity of his
occupation. Scarcely a moderate English scholar, unversed in "lore of books," he won himself a place as
an author among the greatest men of his time. Burns,
like Scott, was much indebted to the nursery tales of
his childhood for his success in after life. The oak
springs from an acorn-and an old crone's vagaries had
a great share in making our ploughman a poet. "She
had," he tells us in his brief autobiography, "the largest
collection in the country of tales and songs concerning
devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks,
spunkies, kedyers, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, ap
* There is a dash of merryrattl,igsomeness in the old Scottish
spirit-that spirit which carried the Kerr and the Scott into the
cattle lands South of the Tweed-rendering it a spirit rather of
martialfrolic than of chivalry.
paritions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons,
and other trumpery."
The earliest composition that he read with pleasure
was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's,
beginning
" How are thy servants blest, O Lord."
These he met with in Mason's English Collection, one
of his school-books. He next read the Life of Hannibal, which taught him to strut after the recruiting drum
and bagpipe; and the Life of Wallace, which made
"his veins boil with a Scottish prejudice." From fourteen to sixteen he lived after a most wretched fashiontoiling at the plough, and oppressed by poverty.
At sixteen he fell in love, and his own description of
the affair is so characteristic that I will quote it. "In
my sixteenth autumn, my partner (in the harvest field)
was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself.
She was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into that delicious passion. which in spite of acid disappointments,
gin-horn prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold
to be first of human joys-our dearest blessing here
below. How she caught the contagion I cannot tell.
Yet medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly
said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why
I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of
her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an JEolian
harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little
hand, to pick out the cruel nettle stings and thistles.
Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung
sweetly-and it was her favorite reel which I attempted
giving an imbodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine I could make verses like printed
ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin:
but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed
by a country laird's son on one of his father's maids
with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why
I might not rhyme as well as he-for excepting he
could shear sheep and cast peats, his father living in
the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at
times have been my only, and till within the last twelve
months my highest enjoyment."
His nineteenth summer was spent on a smuggling
coast, where he learned "mensuration, surveying, dialling," &c. and improved in his knowledge of love and
Iwhiskey-drinking. "Yet early ingrained piety and
virtue kept him for several years afterward rather within the line of innocence," notwithstanding that Vive
l',lnour et Vive la Bagoatelle was his sole principle of
action.
Harassed at length by pecuniary difficulties, and
driven to the border of despair, Burns determined on
running off to Jamaica to avoid "the horrors of a
jail." Before putting this resolve into execution, he
published a small edition of his poems by subscription.
tHe cleared by this 201. and gained some reputation.
This sum came very seasonably, as without it he would
have been compelled to indent himself for want of
money to pay his passage. He had taken his place
in a ship about to sail from the Clyde, when a letter
from Dr. Blacklock, by "opening new prospects to