University of Virginia Library

William Newton's father was a carpenter in the Peak of Derbyshire, with a large family. He was too ignorant to give his son any literary advantages, and too indigent to procure them for him. A dame-school, where a little writing was taught, formed the boundary of our minstrel's education. He worked at his father's trade, and early became so ingenious, skilful, and industrious, as to be employed by a few families of consequence in the neighbourhood. On those occasions, it has been said, he used to examine books, accidentally left in the apartments where he worked. They a wakened into sensibility and expansion the internal fires of his spirit. Every species of fine writing engaged his attention, but poetry enchanted him. From that period all the earning of his mechanic industry, which he could prudently spare, were expended in purchasing books.

Mr Cunninghame, an ingenious and lettered clergyman in the Peak, accidentally discovered this flower of the desert. A reserved disposition, modest and unobtrusive, had over his talents cast a veil, which few had capacity to pierce. Newton was employed, not only to execute, but to construct machines for the Derbyshire cotton-mills, and he had been previously retained as one of the master-workmen in the Duke of Devonshire's splendid buildings at Buxton. Early in life he married a woman of his own rank, and is known to be a kind husband, a tender father, and, in all respects, a worthy man. When the author was with her father at his living in the Peak, in the summer 1783, Mr Cunninghame told her, that Newton had a considerable number of well-chosen books, religious, philosophic, historic, and poetic. It was then that Mr C--- first introduced him to her, as the minstrel of her native mountains. Mr Newton is not ill looking, but has nothing in his appearance beyond the decent and the clean, till conversation on ingenious subjects lights up his countenance. When the first embarrassments were past, which arose from a modest consciousness that he had not the manners of polished life, he conversed, though in the accent of his country, on various themes, with perspicuity and taste, and in perfectly good language; upon the books he had read, the striking scenery of the few countries he had seen, and the nature of his own destiny, perceptions, and acquirements. The ease and elegance of his epistolary style are most extraordinary, his birth and uneducated youth considered.—The following are extracts from a letter of thanks, which the author received from him on being presented with the compositions she had sent into the world.

“All that your pensive, your lonely friend can return for “this unmerited kindness, are the warm effusions of a grateful “heart. My walk along the vale of life, has not been through “a wilderness of sweets. Your having scattered in my path “flowers of so agreeable an odour, culled from the bowers of “the muses, will lighten, in many an irksome hour, the weight “of manual labour. Since I received this testimony of your “regard, hope and joy have aided the hands of the mechanic. “Sublime and beautiful objects, which I used to view with “melancholy languor, have now acquired the most animating “charms in my sight. As a warm sun-beam dispels the heavy “dews, and raises the head of the drooping field-flower, so has “your kind attention dispersed the clouds, which were cast “about me by adverse fortune. I have lately added to my “little collection of poetry, the works of that sublime bard, “and learned and ingenious critic, Mr Hayley; and I now “live in the midst of charming Monsaldale, whose graces you “have so faithfully described in the poem, which you have “been so good to address to me. Last week Mr Cunninghame “found me in this lovely valley, surrounded by wheels, springs, “and other mechanical implements. To his imagination they “appeared as the effect of magic, and he called me Prospero.”

To have found, in the compositions of a laborious villager, some bright sparks of native genius, amid the dross of prosaic vulgarity, had been pleasing, though perhaps not wonderful; but the elegance and harmony of Newton's writings, both in prose and verse, are miraculous, when it is remembered that till Mr Cunninghame distinguished him, he had associated only with the unlettered vulgar.

Monsaldale is the loveliest of the Derbyshire vallies. If its features are less sublime than those of Dovedale, they are more soft and smiling, and not less picturesque. Strange that Monsaldale should seldom be included in the chart traced out for the curious, who mean to explore the wonders, and the beauties of Derbyshire!

The following stanzas are extracted from a poem, written by Newton, and addressed to the author of this miscellany. They were composed during the dangerous walk, which his business obliged him to take through the severe winter 1785, between the little town of Tideswell, where his family resided, and Monsaldale, where he was employed in the cotton-mills. He took this walk every morning, before the day broke, and every evening after it had closed, over the bleak and mountainous tracts of Tideswell Moor, always covered with snow when the winters are rigid.

Near the author's native village, Eyam, in Derbyshire.

The red and varied leaf of the mountain-ash justifies the epithet gay.