MISS ELLIOT AND MRS COCKBURN.
Here we find two ladies amicably united in the composition of one of Scotland's finest songs, the 'Flowers of the Forest.' Miss Jane Elliot of Minto, sister of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, wrote the first and the finest of the two versions. Mrs Cockburn, the author of the second, was a remarkable person. Her maiden name was Alicia Rutherford, and she was the daughter of Mr Rutherford of Fernilee, in Selkirkshire. She married Mr Patrick Cockburn, a younger son of Adam Cockburn of Ormiston, Lord Justice-Clerk of Scotland. She became prominent in the literary circles of Edinburgh, and an intimate friend of David Hume, with whom she carried on a long and serious correspondence on religious subjects, in which it is understood the philosopher opened up his whole heart, but which is unfortunately lost. Mrs Cockburn, who was born in 1714, lived to 1794, and saw and proclaimed the wonderful promise of Walter Scott. She wrote a great deal, but the 'Flowers of the Forest' is the only one of her effusions that has been published. A ludicrous story is told of her son, who was a dissipated youth, returning one night drunk, while a large party of savans was assembled in the house, and locking himself up in the room in which their coats and hats were deposited. Nothing would rouse him; and the company had to depart in the best substitutes they could find for their ordinary habiliments,—Hume (characteristically) in a dreadnought, Monboddo in an old shabby hat, &c.—the echoes of the midnight Potterrow resounding to their laughter at their own odd figures. It is believed that Mrs Cockburn's song was really occasioned by the bankruptcy of a number of gentlemen in Selkirkshire, although she chose to throw the new matter of lamentation into the old mould of song.