ANGUS MACDONALD.
The compositions of Angus Macdonald, the Glen-Urquhart Bard, show poetic genius of a high order in the few poems of his which have yet seen the light. He has left some poems in manuscript which it is hoped, will some day be published. The poems in the Gael and in the Inverness Transactions remind us of the productions of very kindred spirits, Livingston and R. Macdougall. He and Livingston seem to have diligently cultivated the style and manner of Ossian, particularly of the Gaelic of 1807. He was a master of rich idiomatic Gaelic, and having also the “accomplishment of verse,” he could make himself terrible or tender, just as his muse was stirred. He had a particularly true eye for the beauties of nature; and was always accurate and graphic in his descriptions. He possessed a keen and cultivated ear—was a teacher of music for some time; so his verse is full of melody and harmonious cadences. He excelled in poetry of the Ossianic type; but, like all masters of the art, he shows also much tenderness in his love lyrics. He was appointed the first bard of the Inverness Gaelic Society, an office filled by Mrs Mackellar afterwards. He received in 1869 a medal for a prize poem from “The Club of True Highlanders,” London. His daughter, Mrs A. Mackenzie of Inverness, has inherited some of her father’s genius, and is herself the author of compositions of considerable excellence.