"Cradled child in dreamless slumber bound!"
and now to a mad sister of the earth, screaming and foaming in fierce and aimless antagonism to her brother—should have reared so few poets. This may arise either from the uncultivated and careless character of sailors as a class, or from the influence of habit in deadening the effect of the grandest objects. It is the same with other modes of life equally romantic. What more so than that of a shepherd among the Grampian Mountains, constantly living between the everlasting hills and the silent sun and stars, surrounded by streams, cataracts, deep dun moorlands, and the wild-eyed and wild-winged creatures which dwell in them alone, their life hid in Nature, and their cries of rude praise going up continually to Nature's God? And yet the Highlands of Scotland have not hitherto produced one great rural poet, except Macpherson, who did belong to the peasantry. And so of the seafaring class; only, so far as we remember, have expressed, the one in verse, and the other in prose, the
poetry
of their calling,—namely, Cooper and Falconer, both of whose descriptions of sea storms and scenery have been equalled, if not surpassed, however, by such landsmen as Byron and Scott. A poetic mind, which comes in contact with strange and wonderful events or scenery only at intervals, often carries away a much more vivid idea of their striking features than those who reside constantly in their midst. It must be a very rough rope, to borrow an image from the theme, which does not feel softer after long handling. It is the short and sudden impression, made in the twinkling of an eye, which is at once the most lively and the most lasting. When, however, enthusiasm continues, as in some favoured cases, unabated by familiarity, and is united to thorough technical knowledge, then the professional man may be nearly as successful as the amateur, or if there be any deficiency in freshness of feeling, it is made up for by accuracy of knowledge. It was so in the case of James Hogg, the poet of the shepherd life of Southern Scotland, and in William Falconer, the poet of British shipwreck. We shall afterwards show how his knowledge of his profession partly helped and partly hindered him in his poem.
William Falconer was born in Edinburgh in the year 1736. He was the son of a poor barber in the Netherbow, who had two other children, both deaf and dumb, who ended their days in a poor-house. He early, through frequent visits to Leith, came in contact with that tremendous element which he was to sing so powerfully, and in which he was to sink at last—which was to give him at once his glory and his grave. While a mere boy, he went, by his own account, reluctantly on board a Leith merchant ship, and was afterwards in the Royal Navy. Of his early education or habits very little is known. He had all his scholarship from one Webster. We figure him (after the similitude of a dear lost sailor boy, a relative of our own) as a stripling, with curling hair, ruddy cheek, form prematurely developed into round robustness, frank, free, and manly bearing, returning ever and anon from his ocean wanderings, and bearing to his friends some rare bird or shell of the tropics as a memorial of his labours and his love. Before he was eighteen years of age, Providence supplied him with the materials whence he was to pile up the monument of his future fame. He became second mate in the ship
Britannia
, a vessel trading in the Levant. This vessel was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, exactly in the manner described in the poem, which is just a coloured photograph of the adventures, difficulties, dangers, and disastrous result of the voyage. In 1751 we find him living in Edinburgh, and publishing his first poem. This was an elegy on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was followed by other pieces, which appeared in the
Gentleman's Magazine
, and which will be found in this volume. Some have claimed for him the authorship of the favourite sea song, "Cease, Rude Boreas," but this seems uncertain.
Falconer is supposed to have continued in the merchant service (one of his biographers maintains that he was for some time in the