Miscellaneous Poems.
Before dismissing thus curtly, my great Scottish exploit (which, by the way, anticipated by three years my second American visit, but I would not disjoin that from my first) I ought to give some account of the publication of my Miscellaneous Poems by Gall & Inglis at Edinburgh, and of some few of the hospitalities connected therewith, though not revealing domesticities, as against my wholesome rule.
An odd thing happened to me at Mr. Inglis's dinner-table, where I met several literary celebrities. I had just read, and was loud in my praises of a then anonymous work, "Primeval Man Unveiled," and I asked my neighbour, an aged man, if he knew that extraordinary book? Whereupon the whole table saluted the questioner with a loud guffaw; for I was speaking to its author, whom I had innocently so bepraised. However, my mistake was easily forgiven, as may be imagined. I found that the said author was Mr. Inglis's near relative, Mr. Gall,—so my new publisher and I were immediately en rapport.
There are two simultaneous editions of this book of my poetry—one called the Redlined and the other the Landscape; the first on thick paper, and with eight steel engravings, the latter having every page decorated in colours with beautiful borderings of scenery. The volume contains about one-half or less of all the mass of lyrics I have written, some of the pieces having been in earlier books of my poetry, as Ballads and Poems, Cithara, Lyrics of the Heart and Mind, Hactenus, A Thousand Lines, &c. &c.; and they date, though not printed in systematic order, from my fifteenth year to beyond my sixtieth. Fly-leaf lyrics have been continually growing ever since now to my seventy-sixth.
Here are a few further random, extracts from my Scotch diary:—"Arbroath, Sunday, Nov. 2, 1873.—What a comfort it is for once to feel utterly unknown; for even my luggage has only a monogram, and here at the White Hart I am No. 15, and a commercial gent to all appearance: really, it is quite a relief to be some one else than Martin Tupper."
"Read J. S. Mill's autobiography; poor wretch! from his cradle brought up as an atheist by a renegade father, he can have been hardly more responsible for his no faith than a born idiot. However, in these infidel last times, and with our very broad-church and no-church teachings, a man has only to be utterly godless (so he be moral) to make himself a name for pure reason. I'd sooner be the most unenlightened Christian than such a false philosopher. Let a Goldsmith say of me, 'No very great wit, he believed in a God,' for I refuse to deny one, like the Psalmist's fool." "I throw myself so into my readings, that I almost forget my audience, till their cheering, as it were, wakes me up,—and I feel every word I say: if I didn't, that word would fall dead. There is a magnetism in earnestness,—an electric power; I am in a way full of it when reciting, and I am aware of it flowing through the mass of my audience." "It was a touching thing to me to hear the aged Mr. B—— conduct his family worship, singing like an old Covenanter the harmonious Puritan dirgy hymn, reading the Bible most devoutly, and praying (as only Presbyterians can pray) from the heart and not from a formal liturgy, earnestly and eloquently; he prayed also for me and mine, and I thank God and him for it." "My host at Ayr drove me in his waggonette to see the mausoleum at Hamilton Palace, with its wonderful bronze doors after Ghiberti, and its inlaid marble floor, much of which is of real verd antique in small pieces. Then we went down among the dead men, and inspected the coffins of nearly all the Dukes of Hamilton. It is an outrage to have expended so much (£100,000) on this senseless mausoleum, and to have left close by and within sight of the great Grecian palace those filthy crowded streets of poverty and disease—the wretched town of Hamilton—as a contrast to profuse extravagance. The last Duke, the very Lord Douglas who was in the same class with me at Christ Church, and is supposed to have personated me in Tom Quad, has a very graceful temple of Vesta all to himself, with his bust in the middle: his father lies, of all heathenish absurdities, in a real antique Egyptian sarcophagus, into which it is said he was fitted by internal scoopings, the Duke being taller than its former tenant, the Pharaoh. All this done, we drove through some rugged parts of the High Park, to see magnificent oaks, much like some at Albury, in hopes of coming upon the famous wild cattle, grey, with black feet, ears, tail, and nose, and stated to be untameable. To our great satisfaction we did see a herd of thirty-four feeding quietly enough; had we been walking instead of driving we might have fared poorly as hunted ones: though I confess I saw at first no fierceness in the lot of them; but when the herd sighted us, and began ominously to commence encircling our gig, under the guidance of a terrible bull, we turned and fled, as the discreeter part of wisdom; Captain Hamilton, my host, telling me that if they charged us we must jump out and swarm up a tree! I was glad to be out of such a fearful escapade as that." "As to diversities in the Scotch Church, after seeing many clerical specimens of each kind, I judge that (generally) the Established Scotch gives itself the superior airs of the Established English; the Frees are the most intellectual; the U.P.s most pious; the Scottish Episcopal getting excessively high; and some other varieties growing far too broad and pantheistic. I don't wonder to hear Papists say that Protestantism is breaking up; no two parsons are agreed on all points, some on none."
As for social hospitalities, I found them either splendid or kindly—or both—everywhere; and will only name Captain Hamilton of Rozelle, Sir Michael Shaw Stewart of Ardgowan, Mr. Boyd of Glasgow, Mr. Gall and Mr. Nelson of Edinburgh, Mr. Arthur of Paisley, and such other millionaire hosts as James Baird, William Dickson, and the like, as among my wealthiest and kindest welcomers.
Of course, when a guest for a week at Rozelle, I paid due homage to Burns in his own territory; visiting his natal cottage, his funeral cenotaph, Alloway Kirk, the Auld Brig, &c. &c.—all these in company with the millionaire iron-master and most enthusiastic admirer of Tam-o'-Shanter, Mr. James Baird. When he took me to his magnificent castle hard by, he said to me "Ye're vera welcome to ma hoose,"—and I entered to inspect his gallery of pictures: among them I noticed, with surprise at such an incongruous subject for a painting, an ugly red factory in course of building, and a man on a ladder leaning against it, with a hod on his shoulder. To my inquiry about this, he replied, "Yon's mysel',—I'm proud to say; that's what I was, and this is what I am." He had made, while yet a workman, some discovery about cold blast or hot blast (I don't know which) and gained enormous wealth thereby. He is the man who gave half a million of money to the Scotch Established Church.