What literary emigrations from the North of young men of genius,
seduced by a romantic passion for literary fame, and lured by the
golden prospects which the happier genius of some of their own
countrymen opened on them. A volume might be written on literary
Scotchmen, who have perished immaturely in this metropolis; little
known, and slightly connected, they have dropped away among us, and
scarcely left a vestige in the wrecks of their genius. Among them some
authors may be discovered who might have ranked, perhaps, in the first
classes of our literature. I shall select four out of as many hundred,
who were not entirely unknown to me; a romantic youth--a man of
genius--a brilliant prose writer--and a labourer in literature.
ISSAC RITSON (not the poetical antiquary) was a young man of genius,
who perished immaturely in this metropolis by attempting to exist by
the efforts of his pen.
In early youth he roved among his native mountains, with the battles
of Homer in his head, and his bow and arrow in his hand; in calmer
hours, he nearly completed a spirited version of Hesiod, which
constantly occupied his after-studies; yet our minstrel-archer did not
less love the severer sciences.
Selected at length to rise to the eminent station of the Village
Schoolmaster,--from the thankless office of pouring cold rudiments
into heedless ears, RITSON took a poetical flight. It was among the
mountains and wild scenery of Scotland that our young Homer, picking
up fragments of heroic songs, and composing some fine ballad poetry,
would, in his wanderings, recite them with such passionate expression,
that he never failed of auditors; and found even the poor generous,
when their better passions were moved. Thus he lived, like some old
troubadour, by his rhymes, and his chants, and his virelays; and,
after a year's absence, our bard returned in the triumph of verse.
This was the most seducing moment of life; RITSON felt himself a
laureated Petrarch; but he had now quitted his untutored but feeling
admirers, and the child of fancy was to mix with the everyday business
of life.
At Edinburgh he studied medicine, lived by writing theses for the
idle and the incompetent, and composed a poem on Medicine, till at
length his hopes and his ambition conducted him to London. But the
golden age of the imagination soon deserted him in his obscure
apartment in the glittering metropolis. He attended the hospitals,
but these were crowded by students who, if they relished the
science less, loved the trade more: he published a hasty version
of Homer's Hymn to Venus, which was good enough to be praised, but
not to sell; at length his fertile imagination, withering over the
taskwork of literature, he resigned fame for bread; wrote the preface
to Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, compiled medical articles for the
Monthly Review; and, wasting fast his ebbing spirits, he retreated to
an obscure lodging at Islington, where death relieved a hopeless
author, in the twenty-seventh year of his life.
The following unpolished lines were struck off at a heat in trying his
pen on the back of a letter; he wrote the names of the Sister Fates,
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos--the sudden recollection of his own fate
rushed on him--and thus the rhapsodist broke out:--
I wonder much, as yet ye're spinning, Fates!
What threads yet twisted out for me, old jades!
Ah, Atropos! perhaps for me thou spinn'st
Neglect, contempt, and penury and woe;
Be't so; whilst that foul fiend, the spleen,
And moping melancholy spare me, all the rest
I'll bear, as should a man; 'twill do me good,
And teach me what no better fortune could,
Humility, and sympathy with others' ills.
--------------Ye destinies,
I love you much; ye flatter not my pride.
Your mien, 'tis true, is wrinkled, hard, and sour;
Your words are harsh and stern; and sterner still
Your purposes to me. Yet I forgive
Whatever you have done, or mean to do.
Beneath some baleful planet born, I've found,
In all this world, no friend with fostering hand
To lead me on to science, which I love
Beyond all else the world could give; yet still
Your rigour I forgive; ye are not yet my foes;
My own untutor'd will's my only curse.
We grasp asphaltic apples; blooming poison!
We love what we should hate; how kind, ye Fates,
To thwart our wishes! O you're kind to scourge!
And flay us to the bone to make us feel!--
Thus deeply he enters into his own feelings, and abjures his errors,
as he paints the utter desolation of the soul while falling into the
grave opening at his feet.
The town was once amused almost every morning by a series of humorous
or burlesque poems by a writer under the assumed name of _Matthew
Bramble_--he was at that very moment one of the most moving spectacles
of human melancholy I have ever witnessed.
It was one evening I saw a tall, famished, melancholy man enter a
bookseller's shop, his hat flapped over his eyes, and his whole
frame evidently feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The
bookseller inquired how he proceeded in his new tragedy. "Do not talk
to me about my tragedy! Do not talk to me about my tragedy! I have
indeed more tragedy than I can bear at home!" was the reply, and
the voice faltered as he spoke. This man was Matthew Bramble, or
rather--M'DONALD, the author of the tragedy of Vimonda, at that moment
the writer of comic poetry--his tragedy was indeed a domestic one,
in which he himself was the greatest actor amid his disconsolate
family; he shortly afterwards perished. M'Donald had walked from
Scotland with no other fortune than the novel of "The Independent"
in one pocket, and the tragedy of "Vimonda" in the other. Yet he
lived some time in all the bloom and flush of poetical confidence.
Vimonda was even performed several nights, but not with the
success the romantic poet, among his native rocks, had conceived was
to crown his anxious labours--the theatre disappointed him--and
afterwards, to his feelings, all the world!
LOGAN had the dispositions of a poetic spirit, not cast in a
common mould; with fancy he combined learning, and with eloquence
philosophy.
His claims on our sympathy arise from those circumstances in his life
which open the secret sources of the calamities of authors; of those
minds of finer temper, who, having tamed the heat of their youth by
the patient severity of study, from causes not always difficult to
discover, find their favourite objects and their fondest hopes barren
and neglected. It is then that the thoughtful melancholy, which
constitutes so large a portion of their genius, absorbs and consumes
the very faculties to which it gave birth.
Logan studied at the University of Edinburgh, was ordained in the
Church of Scotland--and early distinguished as a poet by the
simplicity and the tenderness of his verses, yet the philosophy of
history had as deeply interested his studies. He gave two courses of
lectures. I have heard from his pupils their admiration, after the
lapse of many years; so striking were those lectures for having
successfully applied the science of moral philosophy to the history of
nations. All wished that Logan should obtain the chair of the
Professorship of Universal History--but from some point of etiquette
he failed in obtaining that distinguished office.
This was his first disappointment in life, yet then perhaps but
lightly felt; for the public had approved of his poems, and a
successful poet is easily consoled. Poetry to such a gentle being
seems a universal specific for all the evils of life; it acts at the
moment, exhausting and destroying too often the constitution it seems
to restore.
He had finished the tragedy of "Runnymede;" it was accepted at
Covent-garden, but interdicted by the Lord Chamberlain, from some
suspicion that its lofty sentiments contained allusions to the
politics of the day. The Barons-in-arms who met John were conceived to
be deeper politicians than the poet himself was aware of. This was the
second disappointment in the life of this man of genius.
The third calamity was the natural consequence of a tragic poet being
also a Scotch clergyman. Logan had inflicted a wound on the
Presbytery, heirs of the genius of old Prynne, whose puritanic
fanaticism had never forgiven Home for his "Douglas," and now groaned
to detect genius still lurking among them.[60] Logan, it is certain,
expressed his contempt for them; they their hatred of him: folly and
pride in a poet, to beard Presbyters in a land of Presbyterians![61]
He gladly abandoned them, retiring on a small annuity. They had,
however, hurt his temper--they had irritated the nervous system of a
man too susceptible of all impressions, gentle or unkind--his
character had all those unequal habitudes which genius contracts in
its boldness and its tremors; he was now vivacious and indignant, and
now fretted and melancholy. He flew to the metropolis, occupied
himself in literature, and was a frequent contributor to the "English
Review." He published "A Review of the Principal Charges against Mr.
Hastings." Logan wrestled with the genius of Burke and Sheridan; the
House of Commons ordered the publisher Stockdale to be prosecuted, but
the author did not live to rejoice in the victory obtained by his
genius.
This elegant philosopher has impressed on all his works the seal of
genius; and his posthumous compositions became even popular; he who
had with difficulty escaped excommunication by Presbyters, left the
world after his death two volumes of sermons, which breathe all that
piety, morality, and eloquence admire. His unrevised lectures,
published under the name of a person, one Rutherford, who had
purchased the MS., were given to the world in "A View of Ancient
History." But one highly-finished composition he had himself
published; it is a philosophical review of Despotism: had the name of
Gibbon been affixed to the title-page, its authenticity had not been
suspected.[62]
From one of his executors, Mr. Donald Grant, who wrote the life
prefixed to his poems, I heard of the state of his numerous MSS.; the
scattered, yet warm embers of the unhappy bard. Several tragedies, and
one on Mary Queen of Scots, abounding with all that domestic
tenderness and poetic sensibility which formed the soft and natural
feature of his muse; these, with minor poems, thirty lectures on the
Roman History, and portions of a periodical paper, were the wrecks of
genius! He resided here, little known out of a very private circle,
and perished in his fortieth year, not of penury, but of a broken
heart. Such noble and well-founded expectations of fortune and fame,
all the plans of literary ambition overturned: his genius, with all
its delicacy, its spirit, and its elegance, became a prey to that
melancholy which constituted so large a portion of it.
Logan, in his "Ode to a Man of Letters," had formed this lofty
conception of a great author:--
Won from neglected wastes of time,
Apollo hails his fairest clime,
The provinces of mind;
An Egypt with eternal towers;[63]
See Montesquieu redeem the hours
From Louis to mankind.
No tame remission genius knows,
No interval of dark repose,
To quench the ethereal flame;
From Thebes to Troy, the victor hies,
And Homer with his hero vies,
In varied paths to Fame.
Our children will long repeat his "Ode to the Cuckoo," one of the most
lovely poems in our language; magical stanzas of picture, melody, and
sentiment.[64]
These authors were undoubtedly men of finer feelings, who all perished
immaturely, victims in the higher department of literature! But this
article would not be complete without furnishing the reader with a
picture of the fate of one who, with a pertinacity of industry not
common, having undergone regular studies, not very injudiciously
deemed that the life of a man of letters could provide for the simple
wants of a philosopher.
This man was the late ROBERT HERON, who, in the following letter,
transcribed from the original, stated his history to the Literary
Fund. It was written in a moment of extreme bodily suffering and
mental agony in the house to which he had been hurried for debt. At
such a moment he found eloquence in a narrative, pathetic from its
simplicity, and valuable for its genuineness, as giving the results of
a life of literary industry, productive of great infelicity and
disgrace; one would imagine that the author had been a criminal rather
than a man of letters.
"_The Case of a Man of Letters, of regular education, living by honest
literary industry._
"Ever since I was eleven years of age I have mingled with my studies
the labour of teaching or of writing, to support and educate myself.
"During about twenty years, while I was in constant or occasional
attendance at the University of Edinburgh, I taught and assisted young
persons, at all periods, in the course of education; from the Alphabet
to the highest branches of Science and Literature.
"I read a course of Lectures on the Law of Nature, the Law of Nations;
the Jewish, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Canon Law; and then on the
Feudal Law; and on the several forms of Municipal Jurisprudence
established in Modern Europe. I printed a Syllabus of these Lectures,
which was approved. They were intended as introductory to the
professional study of Law, and to assist gentlemen who did not study
it professionally, in the understanding of History.
"I translated 'Fourcroy's Chemistry' twice, from both the second and
the third editions of the original; 'Fourcroy's Philosophy of
Chemistry;' 'Savary's Travels in Greece;' 'Dumourier's Letters;'
'Gessner's Idylls' in part; an abstract of 'Zimmerman on Solitude,'
and a great diversity of smaller pieces.
"I wrote a 'Journey through the Western Parts of Scotland,' which has
passed through two editions; a 'History of Scotland,' in six volumes
8vo; a 'Topographical Account of Scotland,' which has been several
times reprinted; a number of communications in the 'Edinburgh
Magazine;' many Prefaces and Critiques; a 'Memoir of the Life of Burns
the Poet,' which suggested and promoted the subscription for his
family--has been many times reprinted, and formed the basis of Dr.
Currie's Life of him, as I learned by a letter from the doctor to one
of his friends; a variety of _Jeux d'Esprit_ in verse and prose; and
many abridgments of large works.
"In the beginning of 1799 I was encouraged to come to London. Here I
have written a great multiplicity of articles in almost every branch of
science and literature; my education at Edinburgh having comprehended
them all. The 'London Review,' the 'Agricultural Magazine,' the
'Anti-Jacobin Review,' the 'Monthly Magazine,' the 'Universal
Magazine,' the 'Public Characters,' the 'Annual Necrology,' with
several other periodical works, contain many of my communications. In
such of those publications as have been reviewed, I can show that my
anonymous pieces have been distinguished with very high praise. I
have written also a short system of Chemistry, in one volume 8vo; and I
published a few weeks since a small work called 'Comforts of Life,'[65]
of which the first edition was sold in one week, and the second
edition is now in rapid sale.
"In the Newspapers--the _Oracle_, the _Porcupine_ when it existed, the
_General Evening Post_, the _Morning Post_, the _British Press_, the
_Courier_, &c., I have published many Reports of Debates in
Parliament, and, I believe, a greater variety of light fugitive pieces
than I know to have been written by any one other person.
"I have written also a variety of compositions in the Latin and the
French languages, in favour of which I have been honoured with the
testimonies of liberal approbation.
"I have invariably written to serve the cause of religion, morality,
pious christian education, and good order, in the most direct manner.
I have considered what I have written as mere trifles; and have
incessantly studied to qualify myself for something better. I can
prove that I have, for many years, read and written, one day with
another, from twelve to sixteen hours a day. As a human being, I have
not been free from follies and errors. But the tenor of my life has
been temperate, laborious, humble, quiet, and, to the utmost of my
power, beneficent. I can prove the general tenor of my writings to
have been candid, and ever adapted to exhibit the most favourable
views of the abilities, dispositions, and exertions of others.
"For these last ten months I have been brought to the very extremity
of bodily and pecuniary distress.
"I shudder at the thought of perishing in a gaol.
"_92, Chancery-lane, Feb. 2, 1807._
"(In confinement)."
The physicians reported that Robert Heron's health was such "as
rendered him totally incapable of extricating himself from the
difficulties in which he was involved, by the _indiscreet exertion of
his mind, in protracted and incessant literary labours_."
About three months after, Heron sunk under a fever, and perished amid
the walls of Newgate. We are disgusted with this horrid state of
pauperism; we are indignant at beholding an author, not a contemptible
one, in this last stage of human wretchedness! after early and late
studies--after having read and written from twelve to sixteen hours a
day! O, ye populace of scribblers! before ye are driven to a garret,
and your eyes are filled with constant tears, pause--recollect that
few of you possess the learning or the abilities of Heron.
The fate of Heron is the fate of hundreds of authors by profession in
the present day--of men of some literary talent, who can never
extricate themselves from a degrading state of poverty.