Personal satires and eulogies, as well as the ordinary events of Highland humble life and occupations, form the circle of themes with which his muse is occupied. But wherever he gets the opportunity of seizing upon new subjects he straightway rushes at them, and turns them over in the rural though rich alembic of his intellectual and ethical processes, with results which show shrewdness, sagacity, and poetic powers of observation of a high order. In the corrie, on the hillside, or after the chase, Duncan Bàn is at home, and his poetry then rises to the highest pitch of the true pastoral. Elsewhere his muse necessarily travels on lower planes. But, like all his countrymen, inspired by visions of the great bens and far-reaching valleys, he is ever eager to extend his sphere of observation as well as his horizon of knowledge.
In his suggestive poem in Praise of Dunedin, or of Edinburgh, where the patriarchal poet died at the good age of eighty-nine, there is a current of pleasant and pawky observation which reminds us of the great changes that have come over the Scottish capital as over Ben-Dorain of the poet’s “Farewell.” The following verses of a very literal rendering describes the author’s impressions of what usually attracted his gaze in “Bonnie Dunedin”:—
There’s many a noble lady
A poor man here may meet
In gown of silk or satin
That sweeps along the street;
And every pretty thing wears stays,
To keep her straight and spare;
And beauty-spots on her fair face
To make her still more rare.