Before I had risen on the morning of the day succeeding that in which I had been demolished by the elocutionist, Cousin Walter made his way to my bedside, with a storm on his brow dark as midnight. "Is it true, Hugh," he inquired, "that the lecturer Walsh ridiculed you and your poems in the Council House last night?" "Oh, and what of that?" I said; "who cares anything for the ridicule of a blockhead?" "Ay," said Walter, "that's always your way; but I care for it! Had I been there last night, I would have sent the puppy through the window, to criticize among the nettles in the yard. But there's no time lost: I shall wait on him when it grows dark this evening, and give him a lesson in good manners." "Not for your life, Walter!" I exclaimed. "Oh," said Walter, "I shall give Walsh all manner of fair play." "Fair play!" I rejoined; "you cannot give Walsh fair play; you are an overmatch for five Walshes. If you meddle with him at all, you will kill the poor slim man at a blow, and then not only will you be apprehended for manslaughter—mayhap for murder—but it will also be said that I was mean enough to set you on to do what I had not courage enough to do myself. You must give up all thoughts of meddling with Walsh." In short, I at length partially succeeded in convincing Walter that he might do me a great mischief by assaulting my critic; but so little confident was I of his seeing the matter in its proper light, that when the lecturer, unable to get audiences, quitted the place, and Walter had no longer opportunity of avenging my cause, I felt a load of anxiety taken from off my mind.
There reached Cromarty shortly after, a criticism that differed considerably from that of Walsh, and restored the shaken confidence of some of my acquaintance. The other criticisms which had appeared in newspapers, critical journals, and literary gazettes, had been evidently the work of small men; and, feeble and commonplace in their style and thinking, they carried with them no weight—for who cares anything for the judgment, on one's writings, of men who themselves cannot write? But here, at length, was there a critique eloquently and powerfully written. It was, however, at least as extravagant in its praise as the others in their censure. The friendly critic knew nothing of the author he commended; but he had, I suppose, first seen the deprecatory criticisms, and then glanced his eye over the volume which they condemned; and finding it considerably better than it was said to be, he had rushed into generous praise, and described it as really a great deal better than it was. After an extravagantly high estimate of the powers of its author, he went on to say—"Nor, in making these observations, do we speak relatively, or desire to be understood as merely saying that the poems before us are remarkable productions to emanate from a 'journeyman mason.' That this is indeed the case, no one who reads them can doubt; but in characterizing the poetical talent they display, our observations are meant to be quite absolute; and we aver, without fear of contradiction, that the pieces contained in the humble volume before us bear the stamp and impress of no ordinary genius; that they are bespangled with gems of genuine poetry; and that their unpretending author well deserves—what he will doubtless obtain—the countenance and support of a discerning public. Nature is not an aristocrat To the plough-boy following his team a-field—to the shepherd tending his flocks in the wilderness—or to the rude cutter of stone, cramped over his rough occupation in the wooden shed—she sometimes dispenses her richest and rarest gifts as liberally as to the proud patrician, or the titled representative of a long line of illustrious ancestry. She is no respecter of persons; and all other distinctions yield to the title which her favours confer. The names, be they ever so humble, which she illustrates, need no other decoration to recommend them; and hence, even that of our 'journeyman mason' may yet be destined to take its place with those of men who, like him, first poured their 'wood-notes wild' in the humblest and lowliest sphere of life, but, raised into deathless song, have become familiar as household words to all who love and admire the unsophisticated productions of native genius." The late Dr. James Browne of Edinburgh, author of the "History of the Highlands," and working Editor of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," was, as I afterwards learned, the writer of this over-eulogistic, but certainly, in the circumstances, generous critique.
Ultimately I found my circle of friends very considerably enlarged by the publication of my Verses and Letters. Mr. Isaac Forsyth of Elgin, the brother and biographer of the well-known Joseph Forsyth, whose classical volume on Italy still holds its place as perhaps the best work to which the traveller of taste in that country can commit himself, exerted himself, as the most influential of north-country booksellers, with disinterested kindness in my behalf. The late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, too, resident at that time at his seat of Relugas in Moray, lent me, unsolicited, his influence; and, distinguished by his fine taste and literary ability, he ventured to pledge both in my favour. I also received much kindness from the late Miss Dunbar of Boath—a literary lady of the high type of the last age, and acquainted in the best literary circles, who, now late in life, admitted amid her select friends one friend more, and cheered me with many a kind letter, and invited my frequent visits to her hospitable mansion. If, in my course as a working man, I never incurred pecuniary obligation, and never spent a shilling for which I had not previously laboured, it was certainly not from want of opportunity afforded me. Miss Dunbar meant what she said, and oftener than once did she press her purse on my acceptance. I received much kindness, too, from the late Principal Baird. The venerable Principal, when on one of his Highland journeys—benevolently undertaken in behalf of an educational scheme of the General Assembly, in the service of which he travelled, after he was turned of seventy, more than eight thousand miles—had perused my Verses and Letters; and, expressing a strong desire to know their author, my friend the editor of the Courier despatched one of his apprentices to Cromarty, to say that he thought the opportunity of meeting with such a man ought not to be neglected. I accordingly went up to Inverness, and had an interview with Dr. Baird. I had known him previously by name as one of the correspondents of Burns, and the editor of the best edition of the poems of Michael Bruce; and, though aware at the time that his estimate of what I had done was by much too high, I yet felt flattered by his notice. He urged me to quit the north for Edinburgh. The capital furnished, he said, the proper field for a literary man in Scotland. What between the employment furnished by the newspapers and the magazines, he was sure I would effect a lodgment, and work my way up; and until I gave the thing a fair trial, I would, of course, come and live with him. I felt sincerely grateful for his kindness, but declined the invitation. I did think it possible, that in some subordinate capacity—as a concocter of paragraphs, or an abridger of Parliamentary debates, or even as a writer of occasional articles—I might find more remunerative employment than as a stone-mason. But though I might acquaint myself in a large town, when occupied in this way, with the world of books, I questioned whether I could enjoy equal opportunities of acquainting myself with the occult and the new in natural science, as when plying my labours in the provinces as a mechanic. And so I determined that, instead of casting myself on an exhausting literary occupation, in which I would have to draw incessantly on the stock of fact and reflection which I had already accumulated, I should continue for at least several years more to purchase independence by my labours as a mason, and employ my leisure hours in adding to my fund, gleaned from original observation, and in walks not previously trodden.
The venerable Principal set me upon a piece of literary taskwork, which, save for his advice, I would never have thought of producing, and of which these autobiographic chapters are the late but legitimate offspring. "Literary men," he said, "are sometimes spoken of as consisting of two classes—the educated and the uneducated; but they must all alike have an education before they can become literary men; and the less ordinary the mode in which the education has been acquired, the more interesting always is the story of it. I wish you to write for me an account of yours." I accordingly wrote an autobiographic sketch for the Principal, which brought up my story till my return, in 1825, from the south country to my home in the north, and which, though greatly overladen with reflection and remark, has preserved for me both the thoughts and incidents of an early time more freshly than if they had been suffered to exist till now as mere recollections in the memory. I next set myself to record, in a somewhat elaborate form, the traditions of my native place and the surrounding district; and, taking the work very leisurely, not as labour, but as amusement—for my labours, as at an earlier period, continued to be those of the stone-cutter—a bulky volume grew up under my hands. I had laid down for myself two rules. There is no more fatal error into which a working man of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming himself too good for his humble employments; and yet it is a mistake as common as it is fatal. I had already seen several poor wretched mechanics, who, believing themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they could alone live in independence as beneath them, had become in consequence little better than mendicants—too good to work for their bread, but not too good virtually to beg it; and, looking upon them as beacons of warning, I determined that, with God's help, I should give their error a wide offing, and never associate the ideas of meanness with an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be independent. And, in the second place, as I saw that the notice, and more especially the hospitalities, of persons in the upper walks, seemed to exercise a deteriorating effect on even strong-minded men in circumstances such as mine, I resolved rather to avoid than court the attentions from this class which were now beginning to come my way. Johnson describes his "Ortogrul of Basra" as a thoughtful and meditative man; and yet he tells us, that after he had seen the palace of the Vizier, and "admired the walls hung with golden tapestry, and the floors covered with silken carpets, he despised the simple neatness of his own little habitation." And the lesson of the fiction is, I fear, too obviously exemplified in the real history of one of the strongest-minded men of the last age—Robert Burns. The poet seems to have left much of his early complacency in his humble home behind him, in the splendid mansions of the men who, while they failed worthily to patronize him, injured him by their hospitalities. I found it more difficult, however, to hold by this second resolution than by the first. As I was not large enough to be made a lion of, the invitations which came my way were usually those of real kindness; and the advances of kindness I found it impossible always to repel; and so it happened that I did at times find myself in company in which the working man might be deemed misplaced and in danger. On two several occasions, for instance, after declining previous invitations not a few, I had to spend a week at a time, as the guest of my respected friend Miss Dunbar of Boath; and my native place was visited by few superior men that I had not to meet at some hospitable board. But I trust I may say, that the temptation failed to injure me; and that on such occasions I returned to my obscure employments and lowly home, grateful for the kindness I had received, but in no degree discontented with my lot.
Miss Dunbar belonged, as I have said, to a type of literary lady now well-nigh passed away, but of which we find frequent trace in the epistolary literature of the last century. The class comes before us in elegant and tasteful letters, indicative of minds imbued with literature, though mayhap not ambitious of authorship, and that show what ornaments their writers must have proved of the society to which they belonged, and what delight they must have given to the circles in which they more immediately moved. The Lady Russel, the Lady Luxborough, the Countess of Pomfret, Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, &c. &c.,—names well fixed in the epistolary literature of England, though unknown in the walks of ordinary authorship—may be regarded as specimens of the class. Even in the cases in which its members did become authoresses, and produced songs and ballads instinct with genius, they seem to have had but little of the author's ambition in them; and their songs, cast carelessly upon the waters, have been found, after many days, preserved rather by accident than design. The Lady Wardlaw, who produced the noble ballad of "Hardyknute"—the Lady Ann Lindsay, who wrote "Auld Robin Gray"—the Miss Blamire, whose "Nabob" is so charming a composition, notwithstanding its unfortunately prosaic name—and the late Lady Nairne, authoress of the "Land o' the Leal," "John Tod," and the "Laird o' Cockpen"—are specimens of the class that fixed their names among the poets with apparently as little effort or design as singing birds pour forth their melodies.
The north had, in the last age, its interesting group of ladies of this type, of whom the central figure might be regarded as the late Mrs. Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock, the correspondent of Burns, and the cousin and associate of Henry Mackenzie, the "Man of Feeling." Mrs. Rose seems to have been a lady of a singularly fine mind—though a little touched, mayhap, by the prevailing sentimentalism of the age. The Mistress of Harley, Miss Walton, might have kept exactly such journals as hers; but the talent which they exhibited was certainly of a high order; and the feeling, though cast in a somewhat artificial mould, was, I doubt not, sincere. Portions of these journals I had an opportunity of perusing when on my visit to my friend Miss Dunbar; and there is a copy of one of them now in my possession. Another member of this group was the late Mrs. Grant of Laggan—at the time when it existed unbroken, the mistress of a remote Highland manse, and known but to her personal friends by those earlier letters which form the first half of her "Letters from the Mountains," and which, in ease and freshness, greatly surpass aught which she produced after she began her career of authorship. Not a few of her letters, and several of her poems, were addressed to my friend Miss Dunbar. Some of the other members of the group were greatly younger than Mrs. Grant and the Lady of Kilravock. And of these, one of the most accomplished was the late Lady Gordon Cumming of Altyre, known to scientific men by her geologic labours among the ichthyolitic formations of Moray, and mother of the famous lion-hunter, Mr. Gordon Cumming. My friend Miss Dunbar was at this time considerably advanced in life, and her health far from good. She possessed, however, a singular buoyancy of spirits, which years and frequent illness had failed to depress; and her interest and enjoyment in nature and in books remained as high as when, long before, her friend Mrs. Grant had addressed her as
"Helen, by every sympathy allied,
By love of virtue and by love of song,
Compassionate in youth and beauty's pride."
Her mind was imbued with literature, and stored with literary anecdote: she conversed with elegance, giving interest to whatever she touched; and, though she seemed never to have thought of authorship in her own behalf, she wrote pleasingly and with great facility, in both prose and verse. Her verses, usually of a humorous cast, ran trippingly off the tongue, as if the words had dropped by some happy accident—for the arrangement bore no mark of effort—into exactly the places where they at once best brought out the writer's meaning, and addressed themselves most pleasingly to the ear. The opening stanzas of a light jeu d'esprit on a young naval officer engaged in a lady-killing expedition in Cromarty, dwell in my memory; and—first premising, by way of explanation, that Miss Dunbar's brother, the late Baronet of Boath, was a captain in the navy, and that the lady-killer was his first lieutenant—I shall take the liberty of giving all I remember of the piece, as a specimen of her easy style:—