just in the nick of time for preserving the decaying relics of his nation's past. Had these two men never lived, or had there been no revolution to rouse them into song, it is safe to say, that those heroic Scottish legends and those sweet Irish melodies would have vanished for ever from the earth. Moore, and Goldsmith (1728-74), are perhaps the two chief Irish poets who have established a name and reputation in the great republic of English letters. These two Irishmen had many points in common, and still deeper traits of difference. Both were educated at Trinity College, Dublin; both experienced trouble in their college course; both left Ireland young; both travelled much in Europe; both lived mainly in London; both had that amiable and social Irish nature which made them intensley popular and much-beloved; both were noted singers and musicians-Moore being one of the finest singers and pianists in London, and Goldsmith actually paying his way with his flute, "footing it and fluting it through the half of Europe; both had the proverbial poetic and Irish improvidence, living faster than their means-Moore having to flee for debt to France, and Goldsmith not even able to flee, being on one occasion confined to his bedroom, when his landlady pawned his wearing apparel for the rent, till Dr. Johnson gave her a guinea to let the unfeathered bi-ped free. On the other hand it might be said of them; if Moore was born in a shop in Dublin, Goldsmith was born in a country rectory in Longford (some fifty years earlier) where his father was an Episcopal minister; if Goldsmith had a deeper vein of thought with a beguiling tinge of melancholy, Moore had a lighter touch and gayer song and brighter disposition; if Goldsmith had a heavier step as poet, novelist, essayist, historian, Moore had more dance and sparkle as poet, satirist, lampoonist, musician; if Goldsmith was humorous without always knowing it, Moore was always consciously witty; if Goldsmith shone best in the study or on the stage, Moore shone best in the drawing room and at the club. In fact their chief difference is accounted for at once, if we remember that Goldsmith was a chip of the old Saxon stock, while Moore was a scion of the sunnier Celtic race. W. CLARKE ROBINSON, B.Sc., M.A., PH.D., University Extension Lecturer; Sometime Lecturer in the University of Durham, England. RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE REV. THOMAS HAMILTON, M A., D.D., LL.D., PRESIDENT OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAST. (First President of the Belfast University Extension Society. COTT is instinctively the bard of the past, and of mediæval times, just as Shelley is the poet of the future, and of things that have not been. Scott's mind was attracted from his youth to the wild and violent times of his country's early history, when plunder, war, and private feud formed the main occupation for the chieftains of the Scotch and English border. But past events, however rugged and unsavoury at the time of their enactment, get rounded off somehow in the vista of receding years. The dust of ages, which has been called "the bloom of time," covers all interstices and angles, and lends a mellowing softness even to plunder, crime, and war. It is in this sense that distance truly lends enchantment to the view; and in Sold by OLLEY & CO., 8 Royal Avenue, Belfast. Scott's case the distant was brought very near, for he was directly descended from a long line of border ancestors, famed in border frays, and by looking backwards through their eyes, as through the lenses of a telescope, he was able to bring the varying scenes and legends of the past right down beneath his gaze. Some of his ancestors played prominent parts in local history, and ran imminent risks and dangers. Tradition tells how his father's great-grandfather, Sir William Scott, was once actually seized in a raid on Sir Gideon Murray's English cattle, and was thrown into a dungeon, where he had the option of being hanged or of marrying "Big-mouthed Meg," the ugliest of Sir Gideon's three ugly daughters! But she was a distinguished lady in her way, having won the prize at an anti-beauty show, and taken the "cake" for ugliness over four whole counties! The handsome Scott deliberated three days on the alternative, and at last decided-which do you think? the lady, or the tight rope? The Scotts were not made of hanging stuff; they loved life too dearly; and so "Big-mouthed Meg" became an ancestress of the poet Sir Walter. The poet's father was the first of the line who took to city life, being an attorney in Edinburgh; and there his son Walter, the future poet, was born, August 15th, 1771. He was the ninth in a large family of twelve, the first six of whom died in infancy-they, too, did not take kindly to city life, but set off to the ancestral hunting grounds as soon as possible. Being a feeble, sickly child, and doomed, like Byron, to a lifelong lameness, Walter was sent to pass his early years on his grandfather's farm at Sandy Knowe, in a romantic district near the Cheviot Hills. He went for his education to the High School and University of Edinburgh. He joined his father's profession, and became a respectable lawyer. But his fascination grew for the scenes and haunts and legends round his grandfather's farm. He loved to roam around the Grampians and the Cheviot Hills, and down the valleys of the river Tweed, and over all that border country, which, like most frontier provinces, had been the scene in earlier days of many a fierce encounter between the Scotchmen and the southern English foe. These border lands had thus become the home of many a death-recording, but death-defying song-for heroes' blood has always helped the most to swell the flood of human song. The Rhine, the Rubicon, the Danube, Lake Erie, the Grecian Archipelago, the Alsatian Mountains, the Pyrenees, the Caucauses, and many another frontier land and stream, have acquired most of their historic fame from the shock of hostile armies along the common border. And so this Scotch and English border is indeed romantic ground, all permeated with legends and traditions of rival chiefs and clansmen, who fought, or loved, or fell in border fray, and who, upon a wider field, would have won a wider fame. And even now the tombs of doughty wights may still be seen in many a mossgrown churchyard among the hills, or sheltered by a tree or cold whin-stone, or even only by a bracken brush or tuft of sere grass upon the bare hill side. And there are lingering sayings yet to tell how there lies interred below, in the words of the elegiac poet Gray— Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest, All these ballads, legends, superstitions, and traditions young Walter Scott collected with insatiable love and zeal; and all the old books and literature, like Bishop Percy's "Reliques," only whetted his appetite for personal investigation. He spent his days and nights with hoaryheaded farmers and shepherds, who, in their youth, had been in brisk encounters, or whose sires had brushed the dew of morning from the heather as they drove off the flocks or herds of the hereditary foe. Sometimes it was only the flocks or deer the rival clan drove off, as at Chevy Chase; sometimes it was a gallant steed; sometimes, in the style of Lord Lochinvar, at Netherby Hall, it was some fair Ellen, Constance, Clara, willingly abducted from her father's halls, or from the garden of some unsuspecting nunnery; sometimes it was the deadly conflict of king-led armies, as at Flodden Field, or Bannock-Burn, or the siege of Berwick or Carlisle. It was in a territory where every castle, hill, and river had witnessed scenes like these, that Walter Scott, as schoolboy, student, lawyer, found his pastime, interest, study. But he worked diligently at his profession at the bar, and had considerable practice. Scott's poetic genius was late in blossoming. In his twenty-fifth year he was attracted by a wild and ghostly German ballad, called Lenore, by the poet Buerger, and the ring and tramp of it so stuck in Scott's head that he never rested till he turned it into English verse, calling it, from the two main characters, "William and Helen." The original has some sixty-six short stanzas, and seems like a variation of the poems on the storm-god, Odin, and his furious host, riding o'er the tombs and crags by moonlight. The hero, William, had left his young bride, Helen, and gone with the crusades, and no one knew his fate. One night, in her despair, as Helen falls asleep, "Hark, hark," she hears a noise, "a knock, tap-tap,' and thinks it is her William come to take her to the marriage-feast in Hungary, as he enters, saying— Awake, awake, arise! my love, how, Helen, dost thou fare? The black barb snorts, the bridle rings; haste, busk, and boune, and seat thee, The feast is made, the chamber spread, the bridal guests await thee! Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode, splash! splash! along the sea; The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, the flashing pebbles flee. |