KENNEDY.-AIRD.-GALT'S LIFE OF BYRON.

Shepherd. But then you see, sir, you're sic a fule already in sae mony things, that the world 'ill no think ae grain the waur o' you gin you'll play the fule in that too. Be a poet, sir, and fling yoursel for food to the hungry critics, for they're in a state o' starvation, and, for want o' something to devoor, wull sune a' dee o' hunger and thrust.

North. There, James, is an exceedingly graceful, elegant, and pathetic little poem, The Arrow and the Rose."

Shepherd. What is't about, and wha's the Owther?

North. Mr William Kennedy,' and the subject is the story of the loves of Henry of Navarre, when Prince of Béarn, and Fleurette, the gardener's daughter-a story traditional in Gascony, and preserved by M. de Jouy.

Shepherd. Wi' your leave, I'll put it in my pouch.

North. "The Captive of Fez," James, is a powerful performance. The versification often reminds one of Dryden and Byron-strong passion pervades the tale-and the descriptions of scenery are at once poetical and picturesque. But I must review it one of these days—and a few magnificent extracts will show that Mr Aird2 is a man of true genius.

Shepherd. He is that, sir—and I ken few men that impresses you in conversation wi' a higher opinion o' their powers than Mr Aird. Sometimes I hae considerable diffeeculty in followin him-for he taks awfu' loups frae premise to conclusion, clearin chasms dizzy to look doun on—and aften annunces as self-evident truths, positions that appear to me unco problematical. But he does, at times, flash fine fancies, half out o' his lips, and half out o' his een; and afore I kent he wrote verses, I saw he was a poet.

North. He's a man of strong intellect and strong imagination-and his mind dwells in a lofty sphere.

Shepherd. Hae you read Byron's Life o' Galt, sir?

North.-I have, James. His lordship used John somewhat scurvily on one or two occasions-but our friend pays

1 Some time private secretary to the Earl of Durham in Canada, and afterwards British Consul for Texas, of which State he wrote an account.

2 Editor of the Dumfries Herald, and author of Religious Characteristics, also of a Memoir of D. M. Moir. His Poetical Works were published by Messrs Blackwood in 1848.

3 A misnomer (not unapt) for Galt's Life of Byron. John Galt, author of The Annals of the Parish, The Ayrshire Legatees, The Entail, &c., was born in 1779, and died in 1839.

GALT A MAN OF GENIUS.

73

him back in his own coin-and we thus have a couple of rather forbidding portraits.

Shepherd. Disagreeable likenesses-eh?

North. Mr Galt is a man of genius, and some of his happiest productions will live in the literature of his country. His humour is rich, rare, and racy, and peculiar withal, entitling him to the character of originality—a charm that never fadeth away; he has great power in the humble, the homely pathetic, and he is conversant, not only with many modes and manners of life, but with much of its hidden and more mysterious spirit.

Shepherd. He's aften unco coorse.

North. True, James, he is not so uniformly delicate and refined as you are in your prose compositions; but lend me your ear, my beloved Shepherd-despise to degrade yourself, even for one moment, by seeming to join the whelps who have been lately snarling at his heels. Let the best of the puppy pack produce anything half as good as the worst of his Tales -and then we shall listen to their barking with less disgust. Shepherd. Wha do you mean, sir?

North. Our inferior periodical literature is much infested by a set of pert puppies, conceited curs, and heavy hounds, on whose hides and hurdies, James, it might not be amiss to try the application of whip-cord. We know how they snarl,-suppose they should be made to let us hear how they howl?

Shepherd. Tak care, sir, they dinna bite you, and gie you the tetanus.

North. They are a set of mangy mongrels, James, and fit but to be flung into some old tan-pit. Their disease originates in the spleen, and in the gall-bladder. In other words, the envy of impotence consumes them, like a cancer in the stomach, or a liver-complaint. Their lean, lank, leathern jaws soon become of a loathsome and leprous yellow-they suffer hideously from the mumps, and the yaws, and the gumscurvy,—these, and several other kindred complaints, being all comprehended under the generic name of the Criticals. Shepherd. They maun be a bonny and a happy set!

North. To leave off metaphor-I must say, James, that these gentry have given me, lately, great disgust.

Shepherd. They are beneath your notice, sir. Scorn to kill them, and leave them to die a natural death.

74

GALT'S LIFE OF BYRON REPREHENDED.

North. The whole pack, as I said, are now yelping at the heels of Mr Galt. The small, insignificant, snotty-nosed, tick-bitten, blear-eyed beagles, were the game they are pursuing so eagerly to turn round upon them, would flee like a frightened flock of sheep.

Shepherd. I agree with you, sir, Galt's genius is great.

North. But, for the life of me, I cannot see the drift of his Life of Byron. I have read it through, James-and the volume, which is far from being a dull one, throws much more light on the personal character of Mr Galt himself than on that of the Noble Childe. Somehow or other, I felt all along, sometimes a painful-sometimes a pleasant inclination to laughter at the bonhomie of the author of the Annals of the Parish. It seems never for one moment to have occurred to him that he was in all things-mind, manner, body, and estate —immeasurably inferior to the mighty creature of whom he keeps scribbling away, sometimes with an approving smirk on his countenance, and sometimes with a condemning scowlboth alike ludicrous in a man so little distinguished either by moral or intellectual majesty as Mr Galt.

Shepherd. You see, sir, Byron was a Lord, and our freen Galt only a supercargo, a step below a skipper,-and low-born and low-bred folk, especially in the mercantile line, are, for the maist pairt, unco upsetting when they chance, by ony accident, to forgather wi' nobility. It's no the case wi' me, for I was born, thank God, in the Forest, and was familiar frae my youth up wi' the faces o' three successive Dyucks. But our freen Galt, when he first fand himsel in the same ship1 wi' a Lord, maun either hae swarfed wi' fear, or keepit himsel frae swarfin by pure impidence-and wha can blame him for ha'in adopted the latter expedient? Yet, tak my word for't, sir, he was no sae impident in the packet-ship as in the pocket-volumm, and writes about Byron in a very different style, now that he is dead, than he ever daured till speak to him then when he was leevin, wi' that patrician scowl on his brow, that patrician curl on his lip, before which John Galt must have quailed, as bolder men did, to say naething o' that transcendent genius which must have laid its commands on him, to be silent if not servile, just as a king does to his subjects-I will not say a master to his slaves.

1 In 1809 Galt sailed in the same packet-ship with Lord Byron from Gibraltar to Malta.

North. Perhaps, James, you are stating the case somewhat too strongly; yet, as Byron's rank no doubt protected him, when living, from the possibility of any impertinence from Mr Galt, it, if nothing else, should have been his safeguard also in the grave. People in the humble condition of Mr Galt, and when he first met Lord Byron, it was most humble, -are not, by the rules of society, permitted to approach nobility but in a deferential attitude, and within what is called a respectful distance. This is so universally understood, that no man of proper spirit ever dreams of becoming very familiar with "lords, and dukes, and mighty earls," without possessing some peculiar privilege or title to do so, such as at that time does not seem to have belonged to our ingenious westcountryman. Now-he is Somebody-for his genius has distinguished him above the common herd; and genius in Britain, if it does not level all distinctions, elevates its possessor in the scale of society, and justifies cordial acquaintanceship, though it rarely fosters brotherly friendship, between a lout and a lord. But then-he was Nobody-or rather less than nobody; for it appears, from his own statement, that he had no profession-and therefore, James, you are mistaken in supposing him to have been a supercargo; -he had not been so fortunate as to receive a classical education, a want which, in Byron's eyes, must have seemed almost incompatible with the condition, if not the character, of a gentleman; he possessed no personal accomplishments peculiarly calculated to win the regard of Childe Harold; but was, in short, merely a passenger in the same packet. Under such circumstances, the courtesy and affability with which Lord Byron seems to have behaved to Mr Galt, showed the native kindness and goodness of his heart; and we are sorry now to know, that the condescension of the illustrious peer, so far from being properly appreciated by the obscure

commoner

Shepherd. Hoo?

North. Mr Galt, in recording the slight incidents that accompanied the formation of their acquaintanceship, does not scruple, after the lapse of so many years, to speak haughtily of Byron's haughtiness, and of his unbecoming aristocratical airs in issuing orders about his luggage!

Shepherd. I'se warrant that John himsel was far fiercer and fussier about his ain leather trunks and deal chests than his

76

GALT'S MORTIFIED VANITY.

lordship, and far mair domineerin ower his inferiors, if any such there were on board o' the Gibraltar Packet.

North. No doubt. For Mr Galt tells us that he was very hypochondriacal, and seems to say that he was voyaging for no other purpose than to raise his spirits. Well for him that he could afford to do so-but whatever might have been the tone of his temper then, it says little in favour of it now, that he should have given such a colour to the trifling infirmities or caprices of temper exhibited, as he says, by an illustrious young nobleman, at the very time he was receiving from him the most amiable condescensions.

Shepherd. Was Galt, think ye, ever very intimate wi' Byron ?

North. Never. Still he saw something of him; and it might not have been much amiss to tell us what were his impressions. But-James-it was his sacred duty, before doing so, to sift his own soul, and see that no mean or paltry feeling or motive was lurking there-that he was not wincing under the wound of mortified vanity

Shepherd. Ay, sir, there's the rub. Vanity o' vanities! A' is vanity!

North. It seems that his lordship occasionally, in his letters, laughed at Mr Galt; and that, on one occasion, he expressed himself somewhat contemptuously of our friend's literary achievements. One or two harmless gibes of this kind appear in Moore's Life of Byron; and, though far from bitter, they seem to have enfixed themselves, "inextricable as the gored lion's bite." Mr Galt tries to hide his deep and sincere mortification under a shallow and assumed magnanimity; but it will not do-no, James and John, it will not do and the recollection of a single splenetic sentence throws a shadow over almost every page of the Biography, and induces Mr Galt, sometimes, we daresay, unconsciously and unawares, to wind up almost every paragraph with some assertion or limitation slightly or severely injurious to the personal character of the Illustrious Unfortunate.

Shepherd. I wunna ca' that wicked-for that's a strang word-but it was weak-weak-weak-and will be seen through by the saun-blin'.'

North. I wish to set my friend Galt right upon this point.

1 Saun-blin'-sandblind.