The manager of the Glasgow theatre was one Alexander, a long-legged,
long-armed Scotchman of great mobility. He pleased the public, so I
suppose he had a fairly good troupe of actors. However that may be, he
had Edmund Kean with him for two nights, once as Richard III., once as
Macbeth. I was deeply impressed by the acting of this great tragedian,
though I believe he was on his last legs. It was said that he was dosed
with brandy every time he went on the stage, and that on quitting it he
sank exhausted into another’s arms; yet, once on the boards, he was firm
of step and voice. Knowing his condition, the pathos of the scene was the
more touching, though no one could have judged that he was a sick, much
less a dying man. His voice now clear, soft, touching; then stentorian
and explosive in its rattle, according to the necessity of the situation.
With what an eye he gazed! And his demeanour! He could bring more tragic
feeling out of stillness, and the silence of deep thought, than was
to be found in the play he performed in. It was as if the persons he
represented had escaped the grave and thrown themselves once more into
the struggle.
At an advanced period of the summer, my brother came to Glasgow, and very
wisely proposed that we should make a tour; and this we did principally
on foot. We visited some of the lochs and bens, climbed Grampian hills,
and worked our way to Breadalbane Castle, returning by Loch Long. This
I mention merely to note an incident connected with it which was, that
by the action of the fresh air, the exercise, and the scenery on mind
and body, I imagined my emotions had a poetic cast, and accordingly I
composed verses. These my brother, who was as little experienced in human
affairs as myself, though he was deep in the study of law, proposed my
sending to Sir Walter Scott, the all-powerful author, soliciting his
perusal, with the hope of being taken heed of as a poet. What led to
this folly on our part was, the facility with which Crabbe rose to fame
and fortune by a similar act of impertinence. All know that he sent
some verses to the generous Burke, which were very fresh, asking for
the patronage of that great statesman, to whom he was utterly unknown.
Burke, wonderful to relate, took him under his notice, and finally
procured him a living in the gift of the Duke of Rutland. This was very
noble of Burke, but it did a great deal of harm by leading innocent young
authors, like myself, to suppose that the nobility and other powerful men
were still the patrons of literary men, especially of the useless poets.
If one looks back, one perceives that the majority of our poetic authors
owed their success to patrons who made their works a fashion. Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakespeare, had noble or royal patrons; Milton there was no
one to patronize, whence the market value of “Paradise Lost” rose only
to ten pounds. Dryden belonged to the upper class, so he had a patron in
himself; Pope was made a fashion through patronization: Bolingbroke alone
would have sufficed to lift him up into fame.
In modern times poetry became noble itself. There was Byron, a peer;
Shelley was a sprig of baronetcy, and a rebel in Church and State, which
was a great assistance; while Keats, being a vulgarian, was left out in
the cold to die for want of flattery and flannel.
Coleridge never met with a patron; he who surpassed every poet but one in
genius; so he famished, exclaiming, “Work without hope, draws nectar in a
sieve!”
And Wordsworth, with his narrow intellect and wide emotions,—he had
patrons; the cloth took him up, and the public followed suit, an act
they could only have performed for a third-rate poet, the first and
second-rate being much above their comprehension.
The course of such human events will not have the slightest influence
on men endowed with true poetic genius. They know the wording of their
commission; they know its signature, written as it is in invisible ink;
they know its seal, on which the six days of creative work is engraved,
with Some One resting on the seventh.
The upshot of all this is, a poet is born to celebrate Nature, who
is everlasting. He informs himself that nations fulfil only a given
series of events, and that all concerning them, except their history
and literature, is lost. He makes himself acquainted with the bulky
circumstance that Greece and Rome were once as lively and self-confident
as ourselves, as frivolous and as fashionable, but that in the midst of
their greatness and their rubbish there were predestined poets; that
Homer was one and Horace another, and that the legacy of their work
is the only legacy they could leave us. He tells himself that he is
appointed to do certain work that shall hereafter celebrate the existence
of his own beloved and glorious land, the country, the beloved country of
his birth and death!