Pauses and revolutions intervene,
The mind is set to many a varied tune.
And jars and plays in harmony by turns."
Alexander Bethune.
Though my wife continued, after our marriage, to teach a few pupils, the united earnings of the household did not much exceed a hundred pounds per annum—not quite so large a sum as I had used to think it a few years before; and so I set myself to try whether I could not turn my leisure hours to some account, by writing for the periodicals. My old inability of pressing for work continued to be as embarrassing as ever, and, save for a chance engagement of no very promising kind, which presented itself to me unsolicited about this time, I might have failed in procuring the employment which I sought. An ingenious self-taught mechanic—the late Mr. John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed—after making good his upward way from his original place at the compositor's frame, to the editorship of a provincial paper, started, in the beginning of 1835, a weekly periodical, consisting of "Border Tales," which, as he possessed the story-telling ability, met with considerable success. He did not live, however, to complete the first yearly volume; the forty-ninth weekly number intimated his death; but as the publication had been a not unprofitable one, the publisher resolved on carrying it on; and it was stated in a brief notice, which embodied a few particulars of Mr. Wilson's biography, that, his materials being unexhausted, "tales yet untold lay in reserve, to keep alive his memory." And in the name of Wilson the publication was kept up for, I believe, five years. It reckoned among its contributors the two Bethunes, John and Alexander, and the late Professor Gillespie of St. Andrews, with several other writers, none of whom seem to have been indebted to any original matter collected by its first editor; and I, who, at the publisher's request, wrote for it, during the first year of my marriage, tales enough to fill an ordinary volume, had certainly to provide all my materials for myself. The whole brought me about twenty-five pounds—a considerable addition to the previous hundred and odds of the household, but, for the work done, as inadequate a remuneration as ever poor writer got in the days of Grub Street. My tales, however, though an English critic did me the honour of selecting one of them as the best in the monthly part in which it appeared, were not of the highest order: it took a great deal of writing to earn the three guineas, which were the stipulated wages for filling a weekly number; and though poor Wilson may have been a fine enough fellow in his way, one had no great encouragement to do one's very best, in order to "keep alive his memory." In all such matters, according to Sir Walter Scott and the old proverb, "every herring should hang by its own head."
I can show, however, that at least one of my contributions did gain Wilson some little credit. In the perilous attempt to bring out, in the dramatic form, the characters of two of our national poets—Burns and Fergusson—I wrote for the "Tales" a series of "Recollections," drawn ostensibly from the memory of one who had been personally acquainted with them both, but in reality based on my own conceptions of the men, as exhibited in their lives and writings. And in an elaborate life of Fergusson, lately published, I find a borrowed extract from my contribution, and an approving reference to the whole, coupled with a piece of information entirely new to me. "These Recollections," says the biographer, "are truly interesting and touching, and were the result of various communications made to Mr. Wilson, whose pains-taking researches I have had frequent occasion to verify in the course of my own." Alas, no! Poor Wilson was more than a twelvemonth in his grave ere the idea of producing these "Recollections" first struck the writer—a person to whom no communications on the subject were ever made by any one, and who, unassisted save by one of the biographies of the poet—that in Chambers' "Lives of Illustrious Scotsmen,"—wrote full two hundred miles from the scene of his sad and brief career. The same individual who, in Mr. Wilson's behalf, is so complimentary to my "pains-taking research," is, I find, very severe on one of Fergusson's previous biographers—the scholarly Dr. Irving, author of the Life of Buchanan, and the Lives of the older Scottish Poets—a gentleman who, whatever his estimate of the poor poet may have been, would have spared no labour in elucidating the various incidents which composed his history. The man of research is roughly treated, and a compliment awarded to the diligence of the man of none. But it is always thus with Fame.
"Some she disgraced, and some with honours crown'd;
Unlike successes equal merits found:
So her blind sister, fickle Fortune, reigns.
And, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains."