Nor yet less pleasing at the heavenly throne, The Sabbath service of the shepherd-boy! In some lone glen, where every sound is lulled To slumber, save the tinkling of the rill, Or bleat of lamb, or hovering falcon's cry, Stretched on the sward, he reads of Jesse's son ; Or sheds a tear o'er him to Egypt sold, And wonders why he weeps: the volume closed, With thyme-sprig laid between the leaves, he sings The sacred lays, his weekly lesson conned With meikle care beneath the lowly roof, Where humble lore is learnt, where humble worth Pines unrewarded by a thankless state. Thus reading, hymning, all alone, unseen, The shepherd-boy the Sabbath holy keeps, Till on the heights he marks the straggling bands Returning homeward from the house of prayer. In peace they home resort. Oh, blissful days! When all men worship God as conscience wills. Far other times our fathers' grandsires knew, A virtuous race to godliness devote.

From 'Sabbath Walks.'

Delightful is this loneliness; it calms
My heart pleasant the cool beneath these elms
That throw across the stream a moveless shade.
Here nature in her midnoon whisper speaks;
How peaceful every sound!-the ringdove's plaint,
Moaned from the forest's gloomiest retreat,
While every other woodland lay is mute,
Save when the wren flits from her down-coved nest,
And from the root-sprigs trills her ditty clear-
The grasshopper's oft-pausing chirp-the buzz,
Angrily shrill, of moss-entangled bee,

That soon as loosed booms with full twang away-
The sudden rushing of the minnow shoal
Scared from the shallows by my passing tread.
Dimpling the water glides, with here and there
A glossy fly, skimming in circlets gay
The treacherous surface, while the quick-eyed trout
Watches his time to spring; or from above,
Some feathered dam, purveying 'mong the boughs,
Darts from her perch, and to her plumeless brood
Bears off the prize. Sad emblem of man's lot! .
How dazzling white the snowy scene! deep, deep
The stillness of the winter Sabbath day-

Not even a footfall heard. Smooth are the fields,
Each hollow pathway level with the plain :
Hid are the bushes, save that here and there
Are seen the topmost shoots of brier or broom.
High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached
The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch.
Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried;
No step approaches to the house of
prayer.
The flickering fall is o'er: the clouds disperse,
And show the sun, hung o'er the welkin's verge,
Shooting a bright but ineffectual beam

On all the sparkling waste.

From the Georgics.'

How pleasant came thy rushing, silver Tweed, Upon my ear, when, after roaming long

In southern plains, I've reached thy lovely bank! How bright, renowned Sark, thy little stream,

Like ray of columned light chasing a shower,
Would cross my homeward path; how sweet the sound,
When I, to hear the Doric tongue's reply,

Would ask thy well-known name!

And must I leave,

Dear land, thy bonny braes, thy dales,
Each haunted by its wizard stream, o'erhung
With all the varied charms of bush and tree?
And must I leave the friends of youthful years,
And mould my heart anew, to take the stamp
Of foreign friendships in a foreign land,
And learn to love the music of strange tongues!
Yes, I may love the music of strange tongues,
And mould my heart anew to take the stamp

Of foreign friendships in a foreign land :

But to my parched mouth's roof cleave this tongue,
My fancy fade into the yellow leaf,

And this oft-pausing heart forget to throb,
If, Scotland, thee and thine I e'er forget.

John Leyden (1775-1811), Orientalist and poet, was born at Denholm in Roxburghshire. His father, a shepherd, seeing his natural bent, determined to educate him for the Church, and from 1790 to 1797 he was a student of Edinburgh University. He made rapid progress; was an excellent Latin and Greek scholar; and acquired also French, Spanish, Italian, and German, besides studying Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. He became no mean proficient in mathematics and various branches of science; every difficulty seemed to vanish before his commanding talents, retentive memory, and robust application. His college vacations were spent at home; and as his father's cottage afforded him little opportunity for quiet and seclusion, he looked out for accommodation abroad. In a wild recess,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'in the den or glen which gives name to the village of Denholm, he contrived a sort of furnace for the purpose of such chemical experiments as he was adequate to performing. But his chief place of retirement was the small parish church, a gloomy and ancient building, generally believed in the neighbourhood to be haunted. To this chosen place of study, usually locked during week-days, Leyden made entrance by means of a window, read there for many hours in the day, and deposited his books and specimens in a retired pew. It was a well-chosen spot of seclusion, for the kirk-excepting during divine service is rather a place of terror to the Scottish rustic, and that of Cavers was rendered more so by many a tale of ghosts and witchcraft of which it was the supposed scene, and to which Leyden, partly to indulge his humour, and partly to secure his retirement, contrived to make some modern additions. The nature of his abstruse studies, some specimens of natural history, as toads and adders, left exposed in their spirit-phials, and one or two practical jests played off upon the more curious of the peasantry, rendered his gloomy haunt not only venerated by the wise, but feared by the simple of the parish.' From this singular and romantic study, Leyden sallied forth, with his

curious and various stores, to astonish his college associates; he already numbered among his friends the most distinguished literary and scientific men of Edinburgh. In 1796-98 he was tutor to the sons of Mr Campbell of Fairfield, whom he accompanied to the University of St Andrews. There he pursued his own researches in Oriental learning, and was licensed to preach; in 1799 he published Discoveries and Settlements of the Europeans in Northern and Western Africa. He also contributed to the Edinburgh Magazine, to 'Monk' Lewis's Tales of Wonder, and to Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. So ardent was he in assisting Sir Walter that once he walked between forty and fifty miles, and back again, for the sole purpose of visiting an old person who possessed an ancient historical ballad. He cherished a strong desire to visit foreign countries; but when his friends sought from Government on his behalf some appointment for him connected with the learning and languages of the East, the only situation they could obtain for him was that of assistant-surgeon at Madras; and in five or six months Leyden qualified himself for this new profession and obtained a diploma in medicine. In December 1802, summoned to join the Christmas fleet of Indiamen, Leyden finished his poem, the Scenes of Infancy, describing his native Teviotdale, and left Scotland for ever. After his arrival at Madras his health gave way, and he was obliged to remove to Prince of Wales Island. He remained there for some time, visiting Sumatra and the Malayan Peninsula, and amassing the curious information concerning the language, literature, and descent of the Indo-Chinese tribes, which enabled him to lay a most valuable dissertation before the Asiatic Society at Calcutta. An appointment as professor in the Bengal College was soon exchanged for a more lucrative post, that of a judge in Calcutta ; but his spare time was still devoted to Oriental manuscripts and antiquities. 'I may die in the attempt,' he wrote to a friend, 'but if I die without surpassing Sir William Jones a hundredfold in Oriental learning, let never a tear for me profane the eye of a Borderer.' The possibility of an early death in a distant land often crossed the mind of the ambitious student; in his Scenes of Infancy he expressly anticipates a fate he had then no reason to expect:

The silver moon at midnight cold and still,
Looks, sad and silent, o'er yon western hill;
While large and pale the ghostly structures grow,
Reared on the confines of the world below.
Is that dull sound the hum of Teviot's stream?
Is that blue light the moon's, or tomb-fire's gleam,
By which a mouldering pile is faintly seen,
The old deserted church of Hazeldean,
Where slept my fathers in their natal clay,
Till Teviot's waters rolled their bones away?
Their feeble voices from the stream they raise-
'Rash youth! unmindful of thy early days,
Why didst thou quit the peasant's simple lot?
Why didst thou leave the peasant's turf-built cot,

tion who should set foot upon Java. When the success of the well-concerted movements of the invaders had given them possession of the town of Batavia, Leyden displayed the same ill-omened precipitation, in his haste to examine a library, or rather a warehouse of books. The apartment had not been regularly ventilated, and either from this circumstance, or already affected by the fatal sickness peculiar to Batavia, Leyden, when he left the place, had a fit of shivering, and declared the atmosphere was enough to give any mortal a fever. The presage was too just: he took his bed, and died in three days (August 28, 1811), on the eve of the battle which gave Java for a while to the British Empire.' Scott alluded to his death in the Lord of the Isles:

Scarba's Isle, whose tortured shore
Still rings to Corrievreckan's roar,
And lonely Colonsay;

Scenes sung by him who sings no more, His bright and brief career is o'er,

And mute his tuneful strains; Quenched is his lamp of varied lore, That loved the light of song to pour : A distant and a deadly shore

Has Leyden's cold remains

referring here to Leyden's ballad The Mermaid, the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckan; it was published with his Cout of Keeldar in the Border Minstrelsy. Scott too generously said of the opening of the Mermaid that for mere melody of sound it had seldom been excelled in English poetry.

Leyden's learning was portentous; he dealt not merely with Sanskrit and Prakrit, Persian and Pushtu, Hindustani and Bengali, but with the tongues of the Dekkan, of the Maldives, of Macassar and Bali, and with various forms of Malay. He translated important works from and into several of these tongues. At home he had edited the Complaynt of Scotlande, Scottish Descriptive Poems (including Albania, heretofore unpublished; see page 440). But he was more powerful as a scholar than as a poet, though his ballads and shorter poems have more inspiration than his longest piece, the Scenes of Infancy.

Ode to an Indian Gold Coin.

Slave of the dark and dirty mine!

What vanity has brought thee here?

How can I love to see thee shine

So bright, whom I have bought so dear? The tent-ropes flapping lone I hear For twilight converse, arm in arm ;

The jackal's shriek bursts on mine ear When mirth and music wont to cheer.

By Cherical's dark wandering streams,

Where cane-tufts shadow all the wild, Sweet visions haunt my waking dreams

Of Teviot loved while still a child, Of castled rocks stupendous piled By Esk or Eden's classic wave,

Where loves of youth and friendships smiled, Uncursed by thee, vile yellow slave !

Fade, day-dreams sweet, from memory fade! The perished bliss of youth's first prime, That once so bright on fancy played,

Revives no more in after-time.

Far from my sacred natal clime,

I haste to an untimely grave;

The daring thoughts that soared sublime Are sunk in ocean's southern wave.

Slave of the mine! thy yellow light

Gleams baleful as the tomb-fire drear. A gentle vision comes by night

My lonely widowed heart to cheer: Her eyes are dim with many a tear, That once were guiding stars to mine;

Her fond heart throbs with many a fear! I cannot bear to see thee shine.

For thee, for thee, vile yellow slave,
I left a heart that loved me true!

I crossed the tedious ocean-wave,

To roam in climes unkind and new.
The cold wind of the stranger blew
Chill on my withered heart; the grave,

Dark and untimely, met my view-
And all for thee, vile yellow slave !
Ha! com'st thou now so late to mock

A wanderer's banished heart forlorn,
Now that his frame the lightning shock

Of sun-rays tipt with death has borne? From love, from friendship, country, torn, To memory's fond regrets the prey;

Vile slave, thy yellow dross I scorn! Go mix thee with thy kindred clay !

From 'The Mermaid.'

On Jura's heath how sweetly swell

The murmurs of the mountain bee! How softly mourns the writhed shell

Of Jura's shore, its parent sea!

But softer floating o'er the deep,

The mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay, That charmed the dancing waves to sleep, Before the bark of Colonsay.

Aloft the purple pennons wave,

As, parting gay from Crinan's shore, From Morven's wars, the seamen brave Their gallant chieftain homeward bore.

In youth's gay bloom, the brave Macphail Still blamed the lingering bark's delay: For her he chid the flagging sail,

The lovely maid of Colonsay.

'And raise,' he cried, 'the song of love,
The maiden sung with tearful smile,
When first, o'er Jura's hills to rove,
We left afar the lonely isle!

'When on this ring of ruby red

Shall die,' she said, 'the crimson hue, Know that thy favourite fair is dead, Or proves to thee and love untrue.' Now, lightly poised, the rising oar

Disperses wide the foamy spray, And echoing far o'er Crinan's shore, Resounds the song of Colonsay:

'Softly blow, thou western breeze,

Softly rustle through the sail! Soothe to rest the furrowy seas,

Before my love, sweet western gale! 'Where the wave is tinged with red, And the russet sea-leaves grow, Mariners, with prudent dread,

Shun the shelving reefs below.

'As you pass through Jura's sound, Bend your course by Scarba's shore; Shun, O shun, the gulf profound,

Where Corrievreckan's surges roar !

'Fair is the crystal hall for me

With rubies and with emeralds set; And sweet the music of the sea

Shall sing, when we for love are met.

'How sweet to dance with gliding feet Along the level tide so green, Responsive to the cadence sweet

That breathes along the moonlight scene! 'And soft the music of the main

Rings from the motley tortoise-shell, While moonbeams o'er the watery plain Seem trembling in its fitful swell.' Proud swells her heart! she deems at last To lure him with her silver tongue, And, as the shelving rocks she passed, She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.

In softer, sweeter strains she sung,
Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay,
When light to land the chieftain sprung,
To hail the maid of Colonsay.

O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,
And sadly sink remote at sea!
So sadly mourns the writhed shell
Of Jura's shore, its parent sea.

And ever as the year returns,

The charm-bound sailors know the day; For sadly still the Mermaid mourns

The lovely chief of Colonsay.

Leyden's Poetical Remains, with a Memoir, were published in 1819; at his centenary in 1875 two separate editions appeared, besides a reprint of the Scenes of Infancy, with a Life by the Rev. W. W. Tulloch. Scott's Memoir of him appeared in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811; and there is much about him in Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents (1873), as well as in Lockhart's Life of Scott.

George Crabbe,

in Byron's judgment Nature's sternest painter, yet the best,' was born at Aldeburgh in Suffolk, on the Christmas Eve of 1754. His father was collector of salt-duties, a clever, strong, violent man, who though poor exerted himself to give his boy a good education; he lived to witness his son's growing fame, and, with parental fondness, to transcribe in his own handwriting the poem of The Library. The mother was a meek, religious woman; of three younger brothers, one perished miserably with his whole crew, captain of a slaver whose cargo mutinied triumphantly, and another was lost sight of in Honduras. George got some schooling at Bungay and Stowmarket, and from 1768 to 1774 was surgeon's apprentice at Wickham-Brock and at Woodbridge. In his first place he had to help the ploughboy; in his second he fell in love with Sarah Elmy ( Mira '), who lived with her uncle, a wealthy yeoman, at Parham. Then a spell of drudgery in his father's warehouse; nine months in London, picking up surgery cheaply; some three years' struggling practice at Aldeburgh; and at last in April 1780, with three pounds in his pocket, he sailed again for London, resolved to try his fortune in literature. Eight years before he had written

verses for Wheble's Magazine; he had published Inebriety, a Poem (Ipswich, 1775); and now his Candidate soon found a publisher, unluckily a bankrupt one. A season of penury dire as Chatterton's was borne by Crabbe with pious bravery; he had to pawn clothes and instruments; appeals to Lords Thurlow, North, Shelburne met no response; and early in 1781 he saw himself threatened with arrest for debt, when he made his case known to Burke. Forty-one years later he told Lockhart at Edinburgh how, having delivered his letter at Burke's door, he paced Westminster Bridge all night long until daybreak. Burke proved a generous patron; from the hour of their meeting Crabbe was a made man, and as guest at

GEORGE CRABBE.

From an Engraving after the Portrait by T. Phillips, R.A.

Beaconsfield, he met Fox, Dr Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others of the statesman's great friends. Lord Thurlow-who now, as in the case of Cowper, came with tardy notice and ungraceful generosity-invited him to breakfast, and at parting presented him with a bank-note for £100. Dodsley that same year brought out the Library; and the very next winter Crabbe took orders, and was licensed to the curacy of his native parish of Aldeburgh. In 1782 Burke procured for him the post of chaplain to the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle; thenceforward he was never in fear of want, but he seems to have felt all the ills of dependence on the great, and in 'The Patron' and other poems has strongly depicted them.

In 1783 appeared The Village, already read and corrected by Johnson and Burke. Its success was

instant and complete. Some of the descriptions in the poem-as that of the parish workhouse-were copied into all the periodicals, and at once took that place in our national literature they still retain. Thurlow presented him with two small Dorset livings in his gift, and congratulated him, with an oath, on his being as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen. In 1783 Crabbe married Miss Elmy; and in 1785, taking the curacy of Stathern, near Belvoir Castle, he bade adieu to the ducal mansion and transferred himself to the village parsonage. In 1787 he exchanged his two small Dorset livings for two of greater value in the Vale of Belvoir, one of them the rectory of Muston, and there he lived for a time; but the poet in him remained silent for many years. After thirteen happy years (17921805) in Suffolk, at Parham, Great Glenham, and Rendham, he returned to Muston, his Leicestershire rectory; and his wife having died there in 1813, exchanged it the next year for Trowbridge in Wiltshire. In 1807 he published his Parish Register, which secured an unprecedented success. The poem had been previously submitted to Fox; parts of it-especially the story of Phoebe Dawson -were among the last things that interested the great Whig on his deathbed. The Borough (1810) is similar in substance but more connected; the Tales in Verse (1812) contain perhaps his finest illustrations of life and character. Crabbe spent a great part of his income at Trowbridge (800 a year) in charity. He was still eagerly active in literary work, and in 1817-18 was engaged on his last notable undertaking, The Tales of the Hall (1819); for which and the remaining copyright of all the earlier poems Mr Murray gave £3000. In this connection Tom Moore has given an amusing illustration of his brother-poet's simplicity in money matters. Thomas Campbell commented on his mildness in literary argument, strange in so stern a poet of nature, and on his 'vigilant shrewdness that almost eluded you by keeping its watch so quietly.' The Tales of the Hall were received with the approval due to an old favourite, but without enthusiasm. In 1822 the now venerable poet paid a visit to Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh. He arrived the day Scott at Leith welcomed George IV. to Scotland; and it was in Scott's joy at greeting Crabbe as guest that he sat down on and smashed the glass out of which the king had a little before drunk his health, and which Scott had carried off in the skirt of his coat. It was noted that Crabbe soon got wearied of the New Town, but could amuse himself for ever in the Old. His latter years were spent in clerical duties, in social intercourse, and in fossil-hunting; at threescore and ten he was still busy, cheerful, and affectionate. He died at Trowbridge on 3rd February 1832.

The Village, the Parish Register, and the shorter tales of Crabbe were his most popular poems. The Tales of the Hall are less interesting, though Edward FitzGerald loved them; they deal with the higher ranks of life, and with them the poet of