The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer by Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

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Of his pretensions as a philosopher we shall say nothing, save that he
has now no name, and is held rather to have struck at and all about
Hume, than to have smote him hip and thigh. His essays are exceedingly
agreeable reading. Cowper relished no book so well, but they can
scarcely be called either profound or brilliant. They soothe, but do not
suggest--they tickle, but do not tell us anything new. It is as a poet
that his name must survive, and the paean of reception which saluted him
in his "Essay on Truth," entering on stilts, should have been reserved
entirely for the "Minstrel," with the meek harp in his hand.

Much has been said of the effect of fine scenery upon the development of
genius. And as this is the theme of one-half of the "Minstrel," we must
be permitted a few remarks on it. The finest scenery in the world
cannot, then, 'create' genius. A dunce, born in the Vale of Tempe, will
remain a dunce still. And, on the other hand, a poet reared in St Giles
or the Goosedubs will develop his poetic vein. The true influences, we
suspect, of scenery on genius are the following:--1st, Where poetry lies
deep and latent in a deep but silent nature, scenery will act like the
rod of Moses on the rock in bringing forth the struggling waters--it
will prompt to imitation, and gradually supply language. 2d, Early
familiarity with the beautiful aspects of nature will enable the youth
of genius to realize the descriptions of nature in the great poetic
masters, to test their truth, and imbibe their spirit, by comparing them
day by day with their archetypes. He can stand on a snow-clad mountain,
with Thomson's "Winter" in his hands. He can walk through a wood of
pines, swinging in the tempest, and repeat Coleridge's "Ode to
Schiller." He can, lying on a twilight hill, with twilight mountains
darkening into night around him, and twilight fields and rivers
glimmering far below, and one cataract, touching the grand piano of the
silence into melancholy music, turn round and see in the north-east the
moon rising in that "clouded majesty" of which Milton had spoken long
before. He can take the "Lady of the Lake" to the same summit, while
afternoon, the everlasting autumn of the day, is shedding its thoughtful
and mellow lines over the landscape, and can see in it a counterpart of
the scene at the Trosachs--the woodlands, the mountains, the isle, the
westland heaven--all, except the chase, the stag, and the stranger, and
these the imagination can supply; or he can plunge into the moorlands,
and reaching, toward the close of a summer's day, some insulated peak,
can see a storm of wild mountains between him and the west, dark and
proud, like captives at the chariot-wheels of the sun, and smitten here
and there into reluctant splendour by his beams, and think of all the
gorgeous descriptions of sunset and its momentary miracles to be found
in Scott, Byron, Wilson, Croly, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge; or
he can from some mighty Ben look abroad over a country--Scotland, and
the sea below, the blue heaven above, till, in his enthusiasm, he might
deem that he could lay his one hand on the mane of the ocean, and his
other on the tresses of the sun, and feels for the first time the force
of Beattie's own fine words--

"All the dread magnificence of Heaven."

Again, scenery will help sometimes to settle a question with a young
mind, whose intellectual and imaginative faculties are nearly equal,
whether it shall turn permanently to philosophy or to poetry. Such
dilemmas or Hercules choices are not uncommon; and there is a period in
life when the sight of a mountain, or a sunset, or an autumn river, amid
its yellow woods, can have more power than even a book, or the influence
of an older mind, or a young love-passion, in deciding them. Again,
early intimacy with fine scenery furnishes the poetic mind with an
exhaustless supply of images. These being sown in youth, sown broadcast,
and without any effort of the mind to receive or retain them, bear fruit
for ever. It is a shower of morning manna, which no after fervours of
noon, or chills of evening, are able to melt or freeze. Or, shall we say
the mind of the young, especially if gifted, is a daguerreotype plate of
the finest construction, and when surrounded by romantic or lovely
scenes, it receives and preserves them to the last, and can reproduce
them, too, in ever-varying forms, and perpetual succession? And hence,
in fine, it follows, that the greatest poets have either been brought up
in the country, or have early come in contact with a beautiful nature,
as the names of Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton, Thomson, Burns,
Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Wilson, and Thomas Aird, abundantly
prove.

Beattie employs the greater part of his first Canto of the "Minstrel" in
showing the influence of Nature on the dawning mind of a poet. And there
can be little doubt that it is the scenery of his own native region, and
the progress of his own mind, that he has described. "The long, long
vale withdrawn," is the Howe of the Mearns--the "uplands" whence he
views it, are the hills of Garvock--the "mountain grey," is the Grampian
ridge to the north-west--the "blue main" is the German Ocean, expanding
eastward--and the "vale" where the hermit is overheard pouring out his
plaint, may not inaptly be figured by that portion of Glen Esk, which
meets the all-beautiful Burn, and where "rocks on rocks are piled by
magic spell," and where, then as now,

"Southward a mountain rose with easy swell,
Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made."

And, besides, there is his famous piece of cloud scenery, beginning,

"And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,"

the truth of which any one may attest by walking up, in the cloudy and
dark day, the Cairn-a-Mount, a lofty knoll, across which a road leads to
Deeside, to the north of the poet's birthplace, and watching the sea of
vapour boiling, shifting, sinking, rising, tumultuating at his feet.

Gray used to contend that, the stanza beginning, "O how canst thou
renounce the boundless store?" was absolute inspiration, but objected,
we think erroneously, to one word in it as French--"the _garniture_ of
fields," to which Cary very properly produces, in reply, the words from
our common version of the Bible--"The Lord _garnished_ the heavens." We
have noticed a stronger objection to a line in this otherwise perfect
stanza. It is this--

"All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields."

Here is unquestionably a tautology, since to shield and to shelter
convey precisely the same idea.

The charm of the "Minstrel" greatly lies in its blending of the moral
elements with the material imagery of the poem. The mind, the growth of
which he describes, is not forced into activity, or hatched prematurely
by electric heat; it developes sweetly, gradually, and in finest harmony
with the beautiful and the great around it--like a fir amidst the
plantations of Woodmyre, or a planetree on the far-seen heights of
Esslie. The second canto has beautiful passages, but is, on the whole,
more vague and fantastic than the first. We regret exceedingly that
Beattie never found leisure for writing a third canto, and leading
Edwin, whom he had brought to the threshold, within the sanctuary of
song, and consecrating him the "High Priest of the Nine," by baptizing
him into the Christian faith. The poem is a dream as well as a
fragment--no poetic mind was perhaps ever so thoroughly insulated as
that of his hero--but the "dream is one," it is consistent with itself,
and is painted with trembling truth of touch and delicate tenderness of
feeling. We feel it to be destitute of profound suggestiveness and
massive thought, but its verse is solemnly dignified, its imagery is
chastely grand, and a rich chiaroscuro rests like a tropical night upon
the whole. Besides the stanzas we have already alluded to, it has some
of those brief touches which show the master's hand: such as--

"Some deem'd him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad;"

or in his curse upon the Cock, the line--

"And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear;"

or the burst of description, how like the scene when the clouds suddenly
disperse, and show us

"the evening star.
And from embattled clouds emerging slow,
Cynthia came riding in her silver car:
And hoary mountain cliffs shone faintly from afar."

His smaller poems possess many felicitous lines. The "Ode to Peace"
closes splendidly, and the "Hermit" is little inferior to Gray's
"Elegy." Its burden is the doctrine of the Resurrection, and it breathes
a more evangelical spirit than Gray. It begins in gloom, but ends in
glory--a glory reflected from the revealed truth of Scripture, which,
once believed, seems then to the poet corroborated by those analogies of
nature which had previously ministered despair instead of hope--such as
the monthly death and resurrection of the moon, and the nightly
darkening and morning revelation of the beauties of the landscape. The
stanza commencing with "'Tis night," may be called perfectly beautiful;
and we shall not soon forget that Dr Thomas Brown never quoted it
without tears, and that he quoted it, in tones of deep and tremulous
pathos, in the last lecture he ever delivered to his students.

On the whole, Beattie may be ranked beside, or near, Campbell, Collins,
Gray, and Akenside. Deficient in thought and passion, in creative power,
and copious imagination, he is strong in sentiment, in mild tenderness,
and in delicate description of nature. Whatever become of his Essay on
Truth, or even of his less elaborate and more pleasing Essays on Music,
Imagination, and Dreams, the world can never, at any stage of its
advancement, forget to read and admire the "Minstrel" and the "Hermit,"
or to cherish the memory of their warm-hearted and sorely-tried author.

We now bid the author of the "Minstrel" farewell! We love to think of
him wandering in youth through the black plantations of firs, which
border on his birthplace, or climbing grey Garvock Hill, and fixing his
dark pensive eyes on the distant white sails, hovering like rare wings
over the rounded blue-green German deep, or crossing those dreary moors
which lie between Stonehaven and Aberdeen, a solitary pedestrian, in
search of learning and distinction, in that noble old city--or teaching
his son to "consider the cresses of the garden 'how they grow,'" and to
find in them something worth a thousand homilies or elaborate arguments
for the being of a God--or taking his last look of the dead body of his
last son, Montague, and saying, "Now I have done with the world." He had
many of the powers, all the virtues, and scarcely one of the faults
generally supposed to be connected with the character, mind, and
temperament of a poet.

BEATTIE'S POEMS.

THE MINSTREL;

OR,

THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.

PREFACE.

The design was, to trace the progress of a Poetical Genius, born in a
rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason, till that period
at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a
MINSTREL, that is, as an itinerant poet and musician:--a character
which, according to the notions of our forefathers, was not only
respectable, but sacred.

I have endeavoured to imitate Spenser in the measure of his verse, and
in the harmony, simplicity, and variety of his composition. Antique
expressions I have avoided; admitting, however, some old words, where
they seemed to suit the subject: but I hope none will be found that are
now obsolete, or in any degree not intelligible to a reader of English
poetry.

To those who may be disposed to ask what could induce me to write in so
difficult a measure, I can only answer, that it pleases my ear, and
seems from its Gothic structure and original, to bear some relation to
the subject and spirit of the poem. It admits both simplicity and
magnificence of sound and of language, beyond any other stanza I am
acquainted with. It allows the sententiousness of the couplet, as well
as the more complex modulation of blank verse. What some critics have
remarked, of its uniformity growing at last tiresome to the ear, will be
found to hold true only when the poetry is faulty in other respects.

BOOK I.

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
Quarum sacra fero, ingenti perculsus amore,
Accipiant--

VIRGIL

1

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar?
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
Has felt the influence of malignant star,
And waged with Fortune an eternal war--
Check'd by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown,
And Poverty's unconquerable bar--
In life's low vale remote has pined alone,
Then dropp'd into the grave, unpitied and unknown?

2

And yet the languor of inglorious days,
Not equally oppressive is to all;
Him who ne'er listen'd to the voice of praise,
The silence of neglect can ne'er appal.
There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call,
Would shrink to hear the obstreperous trump of Fame;
Supremely blest, if to their portion fall
Health, competence, and peace. Nor higher aim
Had he whose simple tale these artless lines proclaim.

3

The rolls of fame I will not now explore;
Nor need I here describe, in learned lay,
How forth the Minstrel fared in days of yore,
Right glad of heart, though homely in array;
His waving locks and beard all hoary gray;
While from his bending shoulder, decent hung
His harp, the sole companion of his way,
Which to the whistling wild responsive rung:
And ever as he went some merry lay he sung.

4

Fret not thyself, thou glittering child of pride,
That a poor villager inspires my strain;
With thee let Pageantry and Power abide:
The gentle Muses, haunt the sylvan reign;
Where through wild groves at eve the lonely swain
Enraptured roams, to gaze on Nature's charms:
They hate the sensual and scorn the vain,
The parasite their influence never warms,
Nor him whose sordid soul the love of gold alarms.

5

Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn,
Yet horror screams from his discordant throat.
Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn,
While warbling larks on russet pinions float:
Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote,
Where the grey linnets carol from the hill.
Oh, let them ne'er, with artificial note,
To please a tyrant, strain the little bill,
But sing what Heaven inspires, and wander where they will!

6

Liberal, not lavish, is kind Nature's hand;
Nor was perfection made for man below;
Yet all her schemes with nicest art are plann'd;
Good counteracting ill, and gladness woe.
With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow;
If bleak and barren Scotia's hills arise;
There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow;
Here, peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies,
And Freedom fires the soul, and sparkles in the eyes.

7

Then grieve not, thou, to whom the indulgent Muse
Vouchsafes a portion of celestial fire;
Nor blame the partial Fates, if they refuse
The Imperial banquet and the rich attire.
Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre.
Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to Heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony resign'd;
Ambition's grovelling crew for ever left behind.

8

Canst thou forego the pure ethereal soul
In each fine sense so exquisitely keen,
On the dull couch of Luxury to loll,
Stung with disease, and stupified with spleen;
Fain to implore the aid of Flattery's screen,
Even from thyself thy loathsome heart to hide
(The mansion then no more of joy serene),
Where fear, distrust, malevolence abide,
And impotent desire, and disappointed pride?

9

Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields?
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven,
Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven?

10

These charms shall work thy soul's eternal health,
And love, and gentleness, and joy impart.
But these thou must renounce, if lust of wealth
E'er win its way to thy corrupted heart:
For, ah! it poisons like a scorpion's dart;
Prompting the ungenerous wish, the selfish scheme,
The stern resolve, unmoved by pity's smart,
The troublous day, and long distressful dream.
Return, my roving Muse, resume thy purposed theme.

11

There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell,
A shepherd-swain, a man of low degree;
Whose sires, perchance, in Fairyland might dwell,
Sicilian groves, or vales of Arcady;
But he, I ween, was of the north countrie; [1]
A nation famed for song and beauty's charms;
Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil; serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith; invincible in arms.

12

The shepherd swain of whom I mention made,
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd:
An honest heart was almost all his stock;
His drink the living water from the rock:
The milky dams supplied his board, and lent
Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock;
And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent,
Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they went.

13

From labour, health, from health, contentment, springs;
Contentment opes the source of every joy.
He envied not, he never thought of kings;
Nor from those appetites sustain'd annoy,
That chance may frustrate, or indulgence cloy;
Nor Fate his calm and humble hopes beguiled;
He mourn'd no recreant friend, nor mistress coy,
For on his vows the blameless Phoebe smiled,
And her alone he loved, and loved her from a child.

14

No jealousy their dawn of love o'ercast,
Nor blasted were their wedded days with strife;
Each season look'd delightful, as it pass'd,
To the fond husband, and the faithful wife.
Beyond the lowly vale of shepherd life
They never roam'd: secure beneath the storm
Which in Ambition's lofty hand is rife,
Where peace and love are canker'd by the worm
Of pride, each bud of joy industrious to deform.

15

The wight whose tale these artless lines unfold,
Was all the offspring of this humble pair:
His birth no oracle or seer foretold;
No prodigy appear'd in earth or air,
Nor aught that might a strange event declare.
You guess each circumstance of Edwin's birth;
The parent's transport, and the parent's care;
The gossip's prayer for wealth, and wit, and worth;
And one long summer day of indolence and mirth.

16

And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy:
Deep thought oft seem'd to fix his infant eye.
Dainties he heeded not, nor gaude, nor toy,
Save one short pipe of rudest minstrelsy:
Silent when glad; affectionate, though shy;
And now his look was most demurely sad;
And now he laugh'd aloud, yet none knew why.
The neighbours stared and sigh'd, yet bless'd the lad:
Some deem'd him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad.

17

But why should I his childish feats display?
Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled;
Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped,
Or roam'd at large the lonely mountain's head,
Or, where the maze of some bewilder'd stream
To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led,
There would he wander wild, till Phoebus' beam,
Shot from the western cliff, released the weary team.

18

The exploit of strength, dexterity, or speed,
To him nor vanity nor joy could bring.
His heart, from cruel sport estranged, would bleed
To work the woe of any living thing,
By trap, or net; by arrow, or by sling:
Those he detested; those he scorn'd to wield;
He wish'd to be the guardian, not the king,
Tyrant far less, or traitor of the field.
And sure the sylvan reign unbloody joy might yield.

19

Lo! where the stripling, wrapt in wonder, roves
Beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine:
And sees, on high, amidst the encircling groves,
From cliff to cliff the foaming torrents shine:
While waters; woods, and winds in concert join,
And Echo swells the chorus to the skies.
Would Edwin this majestic scene resign
For aught the huntsman's puny craft supplies?
Ah! no; he better knows great Nature's charms to prize.

20

And oft he traced the uplands, to survey,
When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn,
The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray,
And lake, dim-gleaming on the smoky lawn:
Far to the west the long long vale withdrawn,
Where twilight loves to linger for a while;
And now he faintly kens the bounding fawn,
And villager abroad at early toil.
But, lo! the Sun appears, and heaven, earth, ocean smile!

21

And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,
When all in mist the world below was lost.
What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast,
And view the enormous waste of vapour, toss'd
In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,
Now scoop'd in gulfs, with mountains now emboss'd!
And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound,
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound!

22

In truth he was a strange and wayward wight,
Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene.
In darkness, and in storm, he found delight:
Nor less than when on ocean-wave serene
The southern Sun diffused his dazzling sheen, [2]
Even sad vicissitude amused his soul:
And if a sigh would sometimes intervene,
And down his cheek a tear of pity roll,
A sigh, a tear, so sweet, he wish'd not to control.

23

"O ye wild groves! O where is now your bloom?"
(The Muse interprets thus his tender thought)
"Your flowers, your verdure and your balmy gloom,
Of late so grateful in the hour of drought?
Why do the birds, that song and rapture brought
To all your bowers, their mansions now forsake?
Ah! why has fickle chance this ruin wrought?
For now the storm howls mournful through the brake,
And the dead foliage flies in many a shapeless flake.

24

"Where now the rill, melodious, pure, and cool,
And meads, with life and mirth and beauty crown'd?
Ah! see, the unsightly slime and sluggish pool,
Have all the solitary vale imbrown'd;
Fled each fair form, and mute each melting sound,
The raven croaks forlorn on naked spray:
And, hark! the river, bursting every mound,
Down the vale thunders, and with wasteful sway
Uproots the grove, and rolls the shatter'd rocks away.

25

"Yet such the destiny of all on earth!
So flourishes and fades majestic Man.
Fair is the bud his vernal morn brings forth,
And fostering gales awhile the nursling fan.
Oh, smile, ye heavens serene! ye mildews wan,
Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime,
Nor lessen of his life the little span!
Borne on the swift, though silent wings of Time,
Old age comes on apace to ravage all the clime.

26

"And be it so. Let those deplore their doom,
Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn:
But lofty souls, who look beyond the tomb,
Can smile at Fate, and wonder how they mourn.
Shall Spring to these sad scenes no more return?
Is yonder wave the Sun's eternal bed?
Soon shall the orient with new lustre burn,
And Spring shall soon her vital influence shed,
Again attune the grove, again adorn the mead.

27

"Shall I be left forgotten in the dust,
When Fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust,
Bid him, though doom'd to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive
With disappointment, penury, and pain?
No! Heaven's immortal springs shall yet arrive,
And man's majestic beauty bloom again,
Bright through the eternal year of Love's triumphant reign."

28

This truth sublime his simple sire had taught:
In sooth, 'twas almost all the shepherd knew.
No subtle nor superfluous lore he sought,
Nor ever wish'd his Edwin to pursue.
"Let man's own sphere," said he, "confine his view;
Be man's peculiar work his sole delight."
And much, and oft, he warn'd him to eschew
Falsehood and guile, and aye maintain the right,
By pleasure unseduced, unawed by lawless might.

29

"And from the prayer of Want, and plaint of Woe,
O never, never turn away thine ear!
Forlorn, in this bleak wilderness below,
Ah! what were man, should Heaven refuse to hear!
To others do (the law is not severe)
What to thyself thou wishest to be done.
Forgive thy foes; and love thy parents dear,
And friends, and native land; nor those alone:
All human weal and woe learn thou to make thine own."

30

See, in the rear of the warm sunny shower
The visionary boy from shelter fly;
For now the storm of summer rain is o'er,
And cool, and fresh, and fragrant is the sky.
And, lo! in the dark east, expanded high,
The rainbow brightens to the setting Sun!
Fond fool, that deem'st the streaming glory nigh,
How vain the chase thine ardour has begun!
'Tis fled afar, ere half thy purposed race be run.

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