University of Virginia Library

I've bought of Wordsworth,—not thoughts deep
As truth i' th' bottom of a well,
Nor wings of power to soar, and sweep
O'er summits, inaccessible
Without such aid;—but, for a penny,
I've bought a hero, one worth many.
A genuine pedlar. What he said,
Or dream'd, shall in Three Books be penn'd?
For your true Epic must, I've read,
Have a beginning, middle, end:
So said the Scotchman, Aristotle,
So prov'd his pupil, Amos Cottle.
In modern, as in ancient, days,
What have not mortals done for praise?
Thou, who to th' everlasting skies
Link'st ashes, by an empty name,
With Time, and two Eternities!
Shadow of dust! immortal Fame!
Thou only deathless where all die!
Priz'd nothing! sole reality!
Pride, that unbow'd can pass the shrine
Of Glory's god, yet bends at thine;
And well may man love trifles here,
If e'en their shadow thus is dear!
But who, alas! will dribble forth
My praises from the grateful North?
Small praise need he expect, in sooth,
Who praises Sawney with the truth.
But while I laud the booing nation,
I have this common consolation,
That when I shall be lowly laid,
And turn'd to dust, which casts no shade,
The ‘loftiest’ Scot, that lives a slave,
Would boo, for sixpence, o'er my grave.

In eighteen-hundred twenty-two,
Mac Whisky hight, a Sawney true,
Half choak'd with dust, and sick of clamour,
Left Sheffield and the sleepless hammer.
E'en profit's ‘sel’ had vainly tried
To tempt him longer there to 'bide.
The smoke, in two nights and a day,
Had smutch'd his raw red hide to grey;
And, like a whale, he blew and cough'd,
And rubb'd his reeky optics oft,
And shook his lugs, as shakes a cur,
When sous'd i' th' dyke, his hide and fur.
Yet, smiling, on his way he went,
And seemed in ‘heart and soul content’;
For he had, in a clout with care,
Tied up a slice o' th' Sheffield air,
(In shape not oval, somewhat round,
In weight exactly half a pound,)
Which, on his travels, well he knew,
Might gain him cash, and honour too;
Provided it were not mistaken
For half a pound of Sheffield bacon.
Leaving old Hallam's hell below,
He climbed the hills four miles or so.
And then—But, ere we tell the story,
We will, like other heirs of glory,
To make our Epic a complete one,
Invoke our Muse; and she's a sweet one.

Edina!—Athens!—classic home
Of dog-mouthed seers, who sell their foam!
Cockayne of Thule! wilt thou lend
Thy ink and goosequill to a friend,
Who, tho' no Scot, alike reveres
Scots, and Athenians, that have ears?
Alike to me, wherever flock they,—
Scotch Greek, Scotch Yankey, or Scotch Cockney;
I rival Butler's ‘lofty line,’
Deathless to make a son of thine,
Who, speaking truth with modesty,
Was doomed to hell's black pillory;
And, had not foot imperial kick'd him,
Would have become, alas! the victim
Of true Scotch meekness, and Scotch care;
But, rescu'd by the king of men,

Iliad, Book 1, verse 172.

Still lives, to boo and blush again,
And show his slice of Sheffield air.
To all who wish that sight to see,
At two peeps for the half bawbee.
Fain would I honour my high theme,
Scotch worth recording to all time,
And in sweet pickle steep a dream,
As crowdie, or Scotch praise sublime,
Immortal as thy fragrance pure,
Which, long endur'd, may still endure.
But the rich poets, at their own
Cost, furnish thoughts and words alone,
Not pen and ink; and for a bard
To purchase, without cash, is hard,
And, without credit, harder still.
Oh! haste, then, with thy ink and quill,
Or Scotland's ‘sel’ may rue this day,
And, unrecorded, fidge for aye!
But, land of sweets! poor Sawney's home,
Which still he scents, where'er he roam!
No Southron chiel, that kens thee well,
Can e'er forget thy ancient smell,
Nor I, a stranger, may refuse
To make thy memory my Muse.
Hail, fragrant Muse! thou'rt strang as whisky;
So, to our tale return we, frisky,
And if we can't get ink and pen,
By Jove, we'll chalk, like cross-legg'd men.

It was the middle hour between
The morn and noon. The moorland scene
Seem'd doubly fresh. Above, around,
Heav'n, without bound,
Proud emblem of unfetter'd mind,
Stretch'd like the sea o'er realms of stone,
Eternal both. How sweet and lone,
Like a bird never cag'd, the wind
Bow'd the wild flowers, that rose behind
Pure as new snow! The milk-boy's ass
Cropp'd hastily the way-side grass.
With loop-like neck, and eye intent,
The heron o'er the bog was bent,
While, trembling oft, the sedges green
Show'd where the shy coot fed unseen.
Above the clouds,—and they were few,—
A speck, scarce seen, the swallow flew;
And, oh! what captive would not be
That strong-wing'd bird of liberty?
The whinchat sought the runlet's bed,
The buzzing fly was bright,
The plover clamour'd over head,
The snake lay coil'd in light;
And bluebells, in the bracken's gloom,
Seem'd dreaming of last night's perfume.
Oh, well-known, murmuring, mountain bee,
Mac Whisky turn'd his ear to thee!
Oh, ancient moorlands, waste and wild,
Where he had wander'd when a child!
He thought of Scotland, with a tear;
Hell was below, but Nature here!
With shaken locks, and lifted hand,
He dash'd the drop into the sand:
Then yawn'd at every step he took;
Then drank of brandy's bottled brook;
Then by the highway's flowery side
Lay down to sleep, but dream'd he died,
And went forthwith, aged just threescore,
Where never Scotchman went before,
And never will again, 'tis thought,
Till Shakspeare equals Walter Scott.

While keenly blew the biting North,
He dream'd his spirit wander'd forth,
Without or plaid, or shoon, or hose;
But still, behind a greenish nose,
(Whose pimples did not fail to tell
The wearer once lik'd whisky well,)
He seem'd to trudge, beneath the pall
Of darkness supernatural.
The wind, that hurried sullenly,
Not o'er, but through a starless ocean,
(Like swift Time in Eternity,)
Whisper'd alone of life, or motion;
And soon that wind, like one grown old,
Expired,—and all was gloom and cold.
Long then he roam'd the realms of night,
With twinkling nose, his only light,—
Which, glimmering pale on shadows, show'd
That death had pav'd with ice the road;
And o'er a gulph of darkness lay
That narrow, strange, and dismal way.
He seem'd to move with hollow tread,
O'er countless fragments of the dead,
Yet could not trace
Or limb, or face;
No bone, no frozen winding-sheet,
Crackled beneath his feet:
No sound was there, no flutter'd wing,
No leaf, no form, no living thing,—
No beating heart but his,—no air;
But cold that pierc'd the soul was there,
And horror which no tongue can tell,
And silence insupportable:
'Twas depth unplumb'd, 'twas gloom untrod,
'Twas shuddering thought alone with God!
And on he went alone,—alone,—
And felt like life froz'n into stone;
Or life, in earth and gloom laid low,
With pangs untold, with speechless woe,
With buried soul; that living death,
That direst life, which heaves no breath,
Which would, but cannot, move or moan,
Yet feels, and bears, too weak to groan,
(While the worm pauses, as in awe,)
What life, unburied, hath not known,
And e'en abhors in thought to bear.
His tears were frozen in his heart:
He knew he was, but knew not where;
He felt he was a thing apart
From all companionship,—a bird
That wings th' eternal calm, unheard;
On death's wide waste the conscious one;
A flag above the waves, with none
To tell that ship and crew are gone;
A sad memorial, never read;
A meteor in the eyeless gloom;
A blind, endanger'd wretch, unled,
Who would have flown on the lightning's wing
To clasp earth's foulest living thing.
He fear'd no worse, but curs'd his doom,
And mutter'd, in his dreary mood,
“There is no hell but solitude!”

But, while with deep and deeper sadness,
And almost madness,
He thought of earth, and all the gladness
That once was his, by th' alehouse fire;
(Where sate the beggar, like a squire
With Maister Sawneys, who could pay,
Proud as the de'il their groat to spend;)
And brandy, once his warmest friend,
Now cold to him, and far away;
His nose, he thought, wax'd dim, and dimmer.
Soon darkness wan'd into a glimmer.
Anon, a star dawn'd on his sight,
And biggen'd into painful light,
A sun in universal night,
Shining alone. Yet, petrified
With cold, he seem'd, perforce, to glide,—
Borne, like a leaf, on Fate's dark tide,
Until that lonely orb became
The palace (so he deem'd) of flame,
With roof on star-high pillars borne;
And thence stream'd wide a horrid morn,
That flung infernal splendors o'er
The sea of gloom without a shore.
Thither he went, he knew not why;
He enter'd there inaudibly;
Then silent stood, and, shuddering, gazed
On giant fiends, who toil'd and blaz'd,
And laugh'd in frantic mirth, not ire,
And utter'd speech of soundless fire,—
A language splendid to the sight,
And beautiful, if not polite.
They seem'd, in truth, a jolly set,
As e'er round alehouse ingle met.
On them no wight for poor-rate call'd;
To them no priest for tithe-pig bawl'd;
No parson-justice threatn'd jail,
For death of partridge, hare, or quail;
No starv'd and toil-worn wretch was told,
By printed praises, bought and sold,
Of public charities by th' score,
Upheld by monks with livings four,
And meant the price of livings more.
No plunder'd widow shriek'd for watchmen;
No Scotch slave crack'd of ‘lofty Scotchmen;’
No hireling, beggar-born in vain,
Talk'd of ‘unwiring his champaign;’
No glorious Constitution bless'd them;
No Borough's Light-o'-love caress'd them;
Unlike our wretches nick-named free,
(And truly free to toil and pay,
And die by famine's sad decay,)
No fiend among them long'd to be
A negro slave, that he might flee
From pomp, scorn, hunger, liberty;
Unlike our saints, 'twas their delight
To wash repentant Ethiopes white;
Make purse-pride lick the beggar's feet,
Who swept for daily bread the street;
Not flatter power, but punish wrong;
Not spurn the weak, but bend the strong.
Unenvious stood our hero, long
Gazing on that infernal throng;
For, with rebellious nostrils loth,
He snuff'd the fume of brimstone-broth;
Bad smell, I ween! for he in troth,
Puff'd back the dingy vapour slow,
And yearn'd for canny Edinbro'!
He cough'd amain, ‘in fragrant pain;’
He held his nose, and cough'd again:
He curs'd the air so thick and hot,
And wish'd himself with Walter Scott,
Sir William Curtis, and the King,
Where round sirloin, in courtly ring,
A thousand chins were wagging all
Beneath the dome of festival.
Far, far, from Scotland's feast, was he,
'Mid scenes of woe, and shapes accurs'd,
And feasts are rare i' th' North Countree!
Yet, tho' half choak'd, and ‘like to burst,’
Soon, less perturbed, he turn'd away
From those flame-breathers, to survey
The other wonders, sad and dire,
Of that tremendous hall of fire;
Terrific sights, which, soul subdu'd,
Mac Whisky, mute with horror, viewed.
Sweating, he cring'd and shudder'd there
To th' point of every people'd hair;
His carcass, restless as the ocean,
Seem'd one grey sea, alive with motion;
While hell,—like ev'ry earthly region,—
Own'd that a Scotchman is a legion.

True, in more senses than one.