"The sun has gane down o'er the lofty Ben-Lomond,
And left the red clouds to preside o'er the scene,
While lanely I stray in the calm summer gloamin,

To muse on sweet Jessie, the flower o' Dumblane.
How sweet is the brier, wi' its sauft fauldin' blossom!
And sweet is the birk, wi' its mantle o' green;
Yet sweeter and fairer, and dear to this bosom,

Is lovely young Jessie, the flower o' Dumblane."

Tannahill's poems are far inferior to his songs. He did not write well in English; and they are often commonplace and artificial.

Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, born in 1781, sprung from the manufacturing poor of England, and was early accustomed to toil and privation, though eventually he won ease and comparative affluence. Elliott writes from genuine feeling and impulse. Against the laws relating to the importation of corn he especially inveighed ; hence his title. In depicting the social and political wrongs of the poor he has committed many errors of taste which his genius has fortunately redeemed. Elliott is said to have approved of "equal division of unequal earnings." As a poet he often rises into pure sentiment and real eloquence.

This, entitled "A Poet's Prayer," shows Elliott at his best.

"Almighty Father! let thy lowly child,

Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold-
A patriot bard by sycophants reviled,

Let him live usefully, and not die old!

Let poor men's children, pleased to read his lays,
Love for his sake the scenes where he hath been.

And when he ends his pilgrimage of days,
Let him be buried where the grass is green,
Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late
To hear the bee his busy note prolong;

There let him slumber, and in peace await

The dawning morn, far from the sensual throng,

Who scorn the wind-flower's blush, the redbreast's lovely song."

One more poet of this time, who amid poverty and discouragement struggled valiantly for a place among the "lords of song," claims our notice. "The battle of his life was brief," and at twenty-five the over-tasked body of Robert Nicoll surrendered to

"The mild herald by our fate allotted

To lead us with a gentle hand

Into the Silent Land."

Nicoll had steadily cultivated his mind by reading and writing, and his poems, especially the short occasional pieces and songs, display happy rural imagery and fancy. Some of his poetry was written when, far gone in consumption, like poor Keats, he "felt the daisies growing over him."

This, from a poem entitled "Thoughts of Heaven," may serve as a specimen of Nicoll's style :

"High thoughts!

They come and go,

Like the soft breathings of a listening maiden,

While round me flow

The winds, from woods and fields with gladness laden:

When the corn's rustle on the ear doth come,

When the eve's beetle sounds its drowsy hum,
When the stars, dewdrops of the summer sky,
Watch over all with soft and loving eye;

While the leaves quiver

By the lone river,

And the quiet heart

From depths doth call,

And garners all;

Earth grows a shadow

Forgotten whole,

And Heaven lives in the blessed soul."

Among the poets here reviewed we have not the marvellous workmanship that reveals the master-hand,—sometimes only simple poetic utterances, yet they sang as one sings who believes what he is singing; and though we cannot look to them for

"Poems round and perfect as a star,"

let us still honor the valiant souls who, amid "want and poortith cold," have kept the heaven-kindled flame of poesy alight, and while learning in suffering, have taught in song.

CHAPTER XIX.

"FEMALE POETRY."

EFFREY, that doughty Scot before whose critical blud

JEFF

geon many a poor poet has shaken in his shoes, in a review of 1829 has been pleased to accord to the metrical composition of our sex the name of " Female Poetry;" and, not without grave doubts as to its elegance and propriety, I have used his appellative as the designation of this chapter.

Of women as artists this has been encouragingly said: "In their finished performances they accomplish perhaps more completely than men all the ends at which they aim; and the pure specimens of feminine art exhibit a fine and penetrating spirit of observation, soft-handed delicacy of touch, and unerring truth of delineation," and it might be added (though these are the exception, not the general rule), rugged masculine strength and power, as in the painting of Rosa Bonheur, the prose of George Eliot, and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It cannot be denied that woman, since the downfall of Eve, has had compulsory and especial training in the hard school of patience; and although "patience is" not, as has been asserted, "genius," by the cultivation of this humble virtue she has not only attained to an important condition of artistic success, but has obtained a positive advantage over the bolder but less all-enduring artisans of the other

sex.

To the inherent and inevitable necessities of her life, rather than to the sparsity of her education or the tyranny of her social position, must, I think, be attributed the fact that woman has seldom taken the highest rank as a creative artist. The sacred duties of wifehood and motherhood alone, involving as they do an endless round of attention to petty detail, have tended rather to make woman 66 careful and troubled about many things" than to foster and develop in her any latent artistic power. But a discussion of woman's duties and capabilities leads far afield; and the question of the equality of the sexes as unprofitable as it is much vexed-has been so ably and thoroughly discussed that I need but say, with Dennis, that prudent "double," "so much has been said, and so well said, etc.,' ," and wisely return to my own especial subject.

Of purely feminine art, without the slightest masculine admixture, our literature affords no fairer specimen than the poetry of Felicia Hemans, born at Liverpool, 1793. Her father was a native of Ireland, her mother of mingled Italian and German descent. To compound a poet Nature could not more happily have chosen her elements, easy spontaneous mental facility from Ireland, intellectual insight from Germany, and sensuous fervor from Italy.

From her cradle Felicia Browne was distinguished for beauty and precocity. Her father, a merchant of considerable eminence in Liverpool, on account of commercial reverses was obliged to break up his establishment in that city before his daughter had attained her seventh year. He removed with his family into Wales, and there, among the most picturesque mountain scenery, in a large old mansion beside the "ever-sounding sea," her poetic genius was nursed. There she imbibed that romantic love of Nature which became to her an intense passion.

The "green land of Wales," with its hoary ruins and