Vindictive leaves the argent fields above,
Borne on broad wings the guilty world he awes,
And grasps the lightning in his shining claws.
_Botanic Garden_, p. I, c. I, 205.
where I cannot but observe the peculiar beauty of the epithet applied to
the plumes of the eagle. It is the right translation of the word by
which Pindar has described the ruffling of the wings on the back of
Zetes and Calais.
[Greek:--pteroisin naeta pephrikontas ampho porphyreois.]
Pyth. 4, 326.
which an Italian translator has entirely mistaken;
Uomin' ambi, ch'orrore a' risguardanti
Facean coi rosseggianti
Vanni del tergo.
But Darwin could have known nothing of Pindar; and the word may perhaps
he found with a similar application in one of our own poets.
As the singularity of his poems caused them to be too much admired at
first, so are they now more neglected than they deserve. There is about
as much variety in them as in a bed of tulips, of which the shape is the
same in all, except that some are a little more rounded at the points
than others; yet they are diversely streaked and freckled, with a
profusion of gay tints, in which the bizarre (as it is called by the
fanciers of that flower) prevails. They are a sight for one half hour in
the spring, and no more; and are utterly devoid of odour.
* * * * *
WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE.
William Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at
Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father,
Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the church of Scotland, was
pastor. His mother was Julia, daughter of Thomas Henderson, of
Ploughlands, near Edinburgh. In his thirteenth year, his love of poetry
was kindled by reading Spenser's Faery Queen. Two years after, his
father, who was grown old and infirm, and had a large family to educate,
by an unusual indulgence obtained permission to reside in Edinburgh,
where Mickle was admitted a pupil at the High School. Here he remained
long enough to acquire a relish for the Greek and Latin classics. When
he was seventeen years old, his father unluckily embarking his capital
in a brewery, which the death of his wife's brother had left without a
manager, William was taken from school, and employed as clerk under the
eldest son, in whose name the business was carried on. At first he must
have been attentive enough to his employment; for on his coming of age,
the property was made over to him, on the condition of paying his family
a certain share of the profits arising from it. Afterwards, he suffered
himself to be seduced from business by the attractions of literature.
His father died in 1758; and, in about three years he published, without
his name, Knowledge, an Ode, and a Night Piece, the former of which had
been written in his eighteenth year. In both there is more of
seriousness and reflection than of that fancy which marks his subsequent
productions. Beside these, he had finished a drama, called the Death of
Socrates, of which, if we may judge from his other tragedy, the loss is
not to be lamented, and he had begun a poem on Providence. The
difficulties consequent on his trusting to servants the work of his
brewery, which he was too indolent to superintend himself, and on his
joining in security for a large sum with a printer who failed, were now
gathering fast upon him. His creditors became clamorous; and at
Candlemas (one of the quarter days in Scotland) 1762, being equally
unwilling to compound with them, as his brother advised him to do, and
unable to satisfy their demands, he prevailed on them to accept his
notes of hand, payable in four months. When the time was expired, he
found himself, as might have been expected, involved in embarrassments
from which he could devise no means of escaping. His mind was harassed
by bitter reflections on the distress which threatened those whom his
parent had left to his protection; and he was scared by the terrors of a
jail. But they, with whom he had to reckon, were again lenient. He
consoled himself with recollecting that his delinquency had proceeded
from inadvertence, not from design, and resolved to be more sedulous in
future: but had still the weakness to trust for relief to his poem on
Providence. This was soon after published by Dodsley, and, that it might
win for itself such advantages as patronage could give, was sent to Lord
Lyttelton, under the assumed name of William Moore, with a
representation that the author was a youth, friendless and unknown, and
with the offer of a dedication if the poem should be again edited. This
proceeding did not evince much knowledge of mankind. A poet has as
seldom gained a patron as a mistress, by solicitation to which no
previous encouragement has been given. It was more than half a year
before he received an answer from Lyttelton, with just kindness enough
to keep alive his expectations. In the meantime, the friendly offices of
a carpenter in Edinburgh, whose name was Good, had been exerted to save
his property from being seized for rent; but the fear of arrest impelled
him to quit that city in haste; and embarking on board a coal vessel at
Newcastle, he reached London, pennyless, in May, 1763. His immediate
necessities were supplied by remittances from his brothers, and by such
profits as he could derive from writing for periodical publications.
There is no reason to suppose that he was indebted to Lyttelton for more
than the commendation of his genius, and for some criticism on his
poems; and even this favour was denied to the most beautiful among them,
his Elegy on Mary, Queen of Scots. The cause assigned for the exclusion
was, that poetry should not consecrate what history must condemn, a
sacred principle if it he applied to the characters of those yet living,
but of more doubtful obligation as it regards past times. When
Euripides, in one of his dramas, chose to avail himself of a wild and
unauthorized tradition, and to represent Helen as spotless, he surely
violated no sanction of moral truth; and in the instance of Mary, Mickle
might have pleaded some uncertainty which a poet was at liberty to
interpret to the better part.
During his courtship of Lyttelton he was fed at one time by hopes of
being recommended in the West Indies; and, at another, of being served
in the East; till by degrees the great man waxed so cold, that he wisely
relinquished his suit. His next project was to go out as a merchant's
clerk to Carolina; but some unexpected occurrences defeating this plan
also, he engaged himself as corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford.
Here he published (in 1767) the Concubine, a poem, in the manner of
Spenser, to which, when it was printed, ten years after, having in the
meantime passed through several editions, he gave the title of Syr
Martyn.
Early in life, his zeal for religion had shewn itself in some remarks on
an impious book termed the History of the Man after God's own Heart; and
in 1767, the same feelings induced him to publish A Vindication of the
Divinity of Jesus Christ, in a Letter to Dr. Harwood; and, in the year
following, Voltaire in the Shades, or Dialogues on the Deistical
Controversy.
He was now willing to try his fortune with a tragedy, and sent his Siege
of Marseilles to Garrick, who observed to him, that though abounding in
beautiful passages, it was deficient in dramatic art, and advised him to
model it anew; in which task, having been assisted by the author of
Douglas, and having submitted the rifacciamento of his play to the two
Wartons, by whom he was much regarded, he promised himself better
success; but had the mortification to meet with a second rebuff. An
appeal from the manager to the public was his unquestioned privilege;
but not contented with seeking redress by these means, he threatened
Garrick with a new Dunciad. The rejection which his drama afterwards
underwent at each of the playhouses, from the respective managers,
Harris and Sheridan, perhaps taught him at least to suspect his own
judgment.
In 1772, being employed to edit Pearch's Collection of Poems, he
inserted amongst them his Hengist and Mey, and the Elegy on Mary. About
the same time he wrote for the Whitehall Evening Post. But his mind was
now attracted to a more splendid project. This was a translation of the
great Epic Poem of Portugal, the Lusiad of Camoens, which had as yet
been represented to the English reader only through the inadequate
version of Fanshaw. That nothing might hinder his prosecution of this
labour, he resigned his employment at Oxford, and retired to a farm-house
at Forrest-hill, about five miles from that city, the village in
which Milton found his first wife, and where Mickle afterwards found his
in the daughter of his landlord. By the end of 1775, his translation was
completed and published at Oxford, with a numerous list of subscribers.
Experience had not yet taught him wariness in his approaches to his
patron. At the suggestion of his relative, Commodore Johnstone, in an
unlucky moment he inscribed his book to the Duke of Buccleugh. This
nobleman had declared his acceptance of the dedication in a manner so
gracious, that Mickle was once more decoyed with the hope of having
found a powerful protector. After an interval of some months, he learnt
that his incense had not been permitted to enter the nostrils of the new
idol, and that his offering lay, where he left it, without the slightest
notice. For this disappointment he might have considered it to be some
compensation that his work had procured him the kindness of those who
were more able to estimate it. Mr. Crowe assisted him in compiling the
notes; Lowth offered to ordain him, with the promise of making some
provision for him in the church; and one, whose humanity and candour are
among the chief ornaments of the bench on which Lowth then sate, Doctor
Bathurst, soothed him by those benevolent offices which he delights to
extend to the neglected and the oppressed. Nor were the public
insensible to the value of his translation. A second edition was called
for in 1778; and his gains amounted on the whole to near a thousand
pounds, a larger sum than was likely to fall to the share of an author,
who so little understood the art of making his way in the world. It was
not, however, considerable enough to last long against the calls made on
it for the payment of old debts, and for the support of his sisters; and
he was devising further means of supplying his necessities by a
subscription for his poems, when Commodore Johnstone (in 1779) being
appointed to head a squadron of ships, nominated him his secretary, on
board the Romney. Mickle had hitherto struggled through a life of
anxiety and indigence; but a gleam of prosperity came over the few years
that remained. A good share of prize-money fell to his lot; and the
squadron having been fortunately ordered to Lisbon, he was there
received with so much distinction, that it would seem as if the
Portuguese had been willing to make some amends for their neglect of
Camoens, by the deference which they shewed his translator. Prince John,
the uncle to the Queen, was ready on the Quay to welcome him at landing;
and during a residence of more than six months he was gratified by the
attentions of the principal men of the country. At the first institution
of the Royal Academy at Lisbon, he was enrolled one of the Members. Here
he composed Almada Hill, an epistle from Lisbon, which was published in
the next year; and designing to write a History of Portugal, he brought
together some materials for that purpose.
When he had returned to England, he was so much enriched by his agency
for the disposal of the prizes which had been made during the cruise,
and by his own portion of the prize-money, that he was enabled to
discharge honourably the claims which his creditors still had on him,
and to settle himself with a prospect of independence and ease. He
accordingly married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Robert Tompkins, of
Forrest-hill, and took a house at Wheatley, a little village about five
miles from Oxford. Some interruption to his tranquillity occurred from
the failure of a banker, with whom his agency had connected him, and
from a chancery suit, in which he too hastily engaged to secure a part
of his wife's fortune. He then resumed his intention of publishing his
poems by subscription, and continued still to exercise his pen. His
remaining productions were a tract, entitled The Prophecy of Queen Emma,
an ancient Ballad, &c., with Hints towards a Vindication of the
Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian and Rowley (in 1782), and some
essays, called Fragments of Leo, and some reviews of books, both which
he contributed to the European Magazine. He died after a short illness,
on the 25th of October, 1788, at Forrest-hill, while on a visit at the
house of his father-in-law; and was buried at that place. He left one
son, who was an extra-clerk in the India House, in 1806, when the Life
of Mickle was written by the Rev. John Sim, a friend on whom he enjoined
that task, and who, I doubt not, has performed it with fidelity.
Mickle was a man of strong natural powers, which he had not always
properly under controul. When he is satisfied to describe with little
apparent effort what he has himself felt or conceived, as in his ballads
and songs, he is at times eminently happy. He has generally erred on the
side of the too much rather than of the too little. His defect is not so
much want of genius as of taste. His thoughts were forcible and vivid;
but the words in which he clothed them, are sometimes ill-chosen, and
sometimes awkwardly disposed. He degenerates occasionally into mere
turgidness and verbosity, as in the following lines:
Oh, partner of my infant grief and joys!
Big with the scenes now past my heart o'erflows,
Bids each endearment fair at once to rise,
And dwells luxurious on her melting woes.
When his stanza forced him to lop off this vain superfluity of words,
that the sense might be brought within a narrower compass, he succeeded
better. Who would suppose, that these verses could have proceeded from
the same man that had written the well known song, beginning "And are ye
sure the news is true," from which there is not a word that can he taken
without injury, and which seems so well to answer the description of a
simple and popular song in Shakspeare?
--It is old and plain:
The songsters, and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their threads with bone,
Do use to chaunt it. It is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
Syr Martyn is the longest of his poems. He could not have chosen a
subject in itself much less capable of embellishment. But whatever the
pomp of machinery or profuseness of description could contribute to its
decoration has not been spared. After an elaborate invocation of the
powers that preside over the stream of Mulla, a "reverend wizard" is
conjured up in the eye of the poet; and the wizard in his turn conjures
up scene after scene, in which appear the hopeful young knight, Syr
Martyn, "possest of goodly Baronie," the dairy-maid, Kathrin, by whose
wiles he is inveigled into an illicit amour, the good aunt who soon dies
of chagrin at this unworthy attachment, the young brood who are the
offspring of the ill-sorted match, his brother, an openhearted sailor,
who is hindered by the artifices of Kathrin from gaining access to the
house, and lastly, the "fair nymph Dissipation," with whom Syr Martyn
seeks refuge from his unpleasant recollections, and who conspires with
"the lazy fiend, Self-Imposition," to conduct him to the "dreary cave of
Discontent," where the poet leaves him, and "the reverend wizard" (for
aught we hear to the contrary) in his company. Mean and familiar
incidents and characters do not sort well with allegory, which requires
beings that are themselves somewhat removed from the common sphere of
human nature to meet and join it a little beyond the limits of this
world. Yet in this tale, incongruous and disjointed as the dream of a
sick man, velut aegri somnia, he has interspersed some lines, and even
whole stanzas, to which the poet or the painter may turn again and again
with delight, though the common reader will scarce find them sufficient
to redeem the want of interest that pervades the whole.
His elegy on Mary, Queen of Scots, is also a vision, but it is better
managed, at once mournful and sweet. He has thrown a pall of gorgeous
embroidery over the bloody hearse of Mary.
Wolfwold and Ella, of which the story was suggested by a picture of
Mortimer's, is itself a picture, in which the fine colouring and
spirited attitudes reconcile us to its horrors.
His tragedy is a tissue of love and intrigue, with sudden starts of
passion, and unprepared and improbable turns of resolution and temper.
Towards the conclusion, one of the female characters puts an end to
herself, for little apparent reason, except that it is the fifth act,
and some blood must therefore be shed; Garrick's refusal, in all
likelihood, spared him the worse mortification of seeing it rejected on
the stage. Yet there is here and there in it a masterly touch like the
following:
Either my mind has lost its energy,
Or the unbodied spirits of my fathers,
Beneath the night's dark wings, pass to and fro,
In doleful agitation hovering round me.
Methought my father, with a mournful look,
Beheld me. Sudden from unconscious pause
I wak'd, and but his marble bust was here.
Almada Hill has some just sentiments, and some pleasing imagery; but
both are involved in the mazes of an unskilful or ambitious phraseology,
from which it is a work of trouble to extricate them. It was about this
time, that the laboured style in poetry had reached its height. Not "to
loiter into prose," of which Lyttelton bade him beware, was the grand
aim; and in their eagerness to leave prose as far behind them as
possible, the poets were in danger of outstripping the understanding and
feelings of their readers. It was this want of ease and perspicuity in
his longer pieces, which prevented Mickle from being as much a favourite
with the public, as many who were far his inferiors in the other
qualities of a poet. When a writer is obscure, only because his
reasoning is too abstruse, his fancy too lively, or his allusions too
learned for the vulgar, it is more just that we should complain of
ourselves for not being able to rise to his level, than of him for not
descending to our's. But let the difficulty arise from mere
imperfections of language, and the consciousness of having solved an
involuntary enigma is scarcely sufficient to reward our pains.
The translation of the Lusiad is that by which he is best known. In
this, as in his original poems, the expression is sometimes very faulty;
but he is never flat or insipid. In the numbers, there is much sweetness
and freedom: and though they have somewhat of the masculine melody of
Dryden, yet they have something also that is peculiarly his own. He has
in a few instances enriched the language of poetry by combinations
unborrowed from any of his predecessors. It is doubtful whether as much
can be said for Pope's translation of Homer. Almost all who have written
much in the couplet measure, since Waller clipped it into uniformity,
have been at times reduced to the necessity of eking out their lines in
some way or other so as to make the sense reach its prescribed bound.
Most have done it by means of epithets, which were always found to be
"friends in need." Mickle either breaks the lines with a freedom and
spirit which were then unusual, or repeats something of what has gone
before, a contrivance that ought to be employed sparingly, and used
chiefly when it is desirable to produce the effect of sweetness.
The preference which he sometimes claims in the notes for his author,
above the other epic poets of ancient and modern times, is less likely
to conciliate the good opinion than to excite the disgust of his
readers. There is no artifice that a translator can resort to with less
chance of success, than this blowing of the showman's trumpet as he goes
on exhibiting the wonders of his original. There are some puerile
hyperboles, for which I know not whether he or Camoens is responsible;
such as--
The mountain echoes catch the big swoln sighs.
The yellow sands with tears are silver'd o'er.
Johnson told him that he had once intended to translate the Lusiad. The
version would have had fewer faults, but it may be questioned whether
the general result would have been as much animation and harmony as have
been produced by Mickle.
In addition to the poems, which were confessedly his, there are no less
than seventeen in Mr. Evans's collection of Ballads, of which a writer
in the Quarterly Review[1] some years ago expressed his suspicion that
they were from the pen of Mickle. It has been found on inquiry, that the
suggestion of this judicious critic is fully confirmed. One of these has
lately been brought into notice from its having formed the groundwork of
one of those deservedly popular stories, which have lately come to us
from the north of the Tweed. It is to be wished that Mickle's right in
all of them were formally recognized, and that they should be no longer
withheld from their place amongst his other poetical writings, to which
they would form so valuable an accession.
FOOTNOTE
[1] For May 1810, No. VI. The title of the Ballads are Bishop Thurston,
and the King of Scots, Battle of Caton Moor, Murder of Prince
Arthur, Prince Edward, and Adam Gordon, Cumner Hall, Arabella
Stuart, Anna Bullen, the Lady and the Palmer, The Fair Maniac, The
Bridal Bed, The Lordling Peasant, The Red Cross Knight, The
Wandering Maid, The Triumph of Death, Julia, The Fruits of Jealousy,
and The Death of Allen.
* * * * *
JAMES BEATTIE.
James Beattie was born on the 25th of October, 1735, at Laurencekirk,
in the county of Kincardine, in Scotland. His father, who kept a small
shop in that place, and rented a little farm near it, is said to have
been a man of acquirements superior to his condition. At his death, the
management of his concerns devolved on his widow. David, the eldest of
her six children, was of an age to assist his mother. James, the
youngest, she placed at the parish school of his native village, which
about forty years before had been raised to some celebrity by Ruddiman,
the grammarian, and was then kept by one Milne. This man had also a
competent skill in grammar. His other deficiencies were supplied by the
natural quickness of his pupil, and by the attention of Mr. Thomson, the
minister of Laurencekirk, who, being a man of learning, admitted young
Beattie to the use of his library, and probably animated him by his
encouragement. He very early became sensible to the charms of English
verse, to which he was first awakened by the perusal of Ogilby's Virgil.
Before he was ten years old, he was as well acquainted with that writer
and Homer, as the versions of Pope and Dryden could make him. His
schoolfellows distinguished him by the name of the Poet.
At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen,
where he attended the Greek class, taught by Dr. Blackwell, author of
the Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, and was by him singled out as the
most promising of his scholars. The slender pittance spared him by his
mother would scarcely have sufficed for his support, if he had not added
to it one of the bursaries or pensions that were bestowed on the most
deserving candidates. Of a discourse which he was called on to deliver
at the Divinity Hall, it was observed, that he spoke poetry in prose.
Thomson was censured for a similar impropriety in one of his youthful
exercises; but Beattie gained the applause of his audience.