Meanwhile the newspaper critics of the south were giving expression to all sorts of judgments on my verses. It was intimated in the title of the volume that they had been "written in the leisure hours of a journeyman mason;" and the intimation seemed to furnish most of my reviewers with the proper cue for dealing with them. "The time has gone by," said one, "when a literary mechanic used to be regarded as a phenomenon: were a second Burns to spring up now, he would not be entitled to so much praise as the first." "It is our duty to tell this writer," said another, "that he will make more in a week by his trowel than in half a century by his pen." "We are glad to understand," said a third—very judiciously, however—"that our author has the good sense to rely more on his chisel than on the Muses." The lessons taught were of a sufficiently varied, but, on the whole, rather contradictory character. By one writer I was told that I was a dull, correct fellow, who had written a book in which there was nothing amusing and nothing absurd. Another, however, cheered my forlorn spirits by assuring me that I was a "man of genius, whose poems, with much that was faulty, contained also much that was interesting." A third was sure I had "no chance whatever of being known beyond the limits of my native place," and that my "book exhibited none, or next to none, of those indications which sanction the expectation of better things to come;" while a fourth, of a more sanguine vein, found in my work the evidence of "gifts of Nature, which the stimulus of encouragement, and the tempering lights of experience, might hereafter develop, and direct to the achievement of something truly wonderful." There were two names in particular that my little volume used to suggest to the newspaper reviewers. The Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnnie of the ingenious Thorn were in course of being exhibited at the time; and it was known that Thorn had wrought as a journeyman mason: and there was a rather slim poet called Sillery, the author of several forgotten volumes of verse, one of which had issued from the press contemporaneously with mine, who, as he had a little money, and was said to treat his literary friends very luxuriously, was praised beyond measure by the newspaper critics, especially by those of the Scottish capital. And Thom as a mason, and Sillery as a poet, were placed repeatedly before me. One critic, who was sure I would never come to anything, magnanimously remarked, however, that as he bore me no ill will, he would be glad to find himself mistaken; nay, that it would give him "unfeigned pleasure to learn I had attained to the well-merited fame of even Mr. Thom himself." And another, after deprecating the undue severity so often shown by the bred writer to the working man, and asserting that the "journeyman mason" was in this instance, notwithstanding his treatment, a man of fair parts, ended by remarking, that it was of course not even every man of merit who could expect to attain to the "high poetic eminence and celebrity of a Charles Doyne Sillery."
All this, however, was criticism at a distance, and disturbed me but little when engaged in toiling in the churchyard, or in enjoying my quiet evening walks. But it became more formidable when, on one occasion, it came to beard me in my den.
The place was visited by an itinerant lecturer on elocution—one Walsh, who, as his art was not in great request among the quiet ladies and busy gentlemen of Cromarty, failed to draw houses; till at length there appeared one morning, placarded on post and pillar, an intimation to the effect, that Mr. Walsh would that evening deliver an elaborate criticism on the lately-published volume of "Poems written in the leisure hours of a Journeyman Mason," and select from it a portion of his evening readings. The intimation drew a good house; and, curious to know what was awaiting me, I paid my shilling, with the others, and got into a corner. First in the entertainment there came a wearisome dissertation on harmonic inflections, double emphasis, the echoing words, and the monotones. But, to borrow from Meg Dods, "Oh, what a style of language!" The elocutionist, evidently an untaught and grossly ignorant man, had not an idea of composition. Syntax, grammar, and good sense, were set at nought in every sentence; but then, on the other hand, the inflections were carefully maintained, and went rising and falling over the nonsense beneath, like the wave of some shallow bay over a bottom of mud and comminuted sea-weed. After the dissertation we were gratified by a few recitations. "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the "Razor Seller," and "My Name is Norval," were given in great force. And then came the critique. "Ladies and gentlemen," said the reviewer, "we cannot expect much from a journeyman mason in the poetry line. Right poetry needs teaching. No man can be a proper poet unless he be an elocutionist; for, unless he be an elocutionist, how can he make his verses emphatic in the right places, or manage the harmonic inflexes, or deal with the rhetorical pauses? And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'll show you, from various passages in this book, that the untaught journeyman mason who made it never took lessons in elocution. I'll first read you a passage from a piece of verse called the 'Death of Gardiner'—the person meant being the late Colonel Gardiner, I suppose. The beginning of the piece is about the running away of Johnnie Cope's men:"—
* * * * *
"Yet in that craven, dread-struck host,
One val'rous heart beat keen and high;
In that dark hour of shameful flight,
One stayed behind to die!
Deep gash'd by many a felon blow,
He sleeps where fought the vanquish'd van—