To widen more its ravenous reign,
Like a foul bird of restless hell.
Thousands responding bent on prey,
And gorging blood her power obey;
The hoarse-voiced horn began to bray;
The steeds of war began to neigh, &c.
Notwithstanding his exceeding patriotism it cannot be said that Livingston was either very generous or magnanimous. While haunted with painful suspicions he allowed the canker of vindictiveness to mar the finer elements of his nature. His envy also rendered him almost intolerable to all his Highland literary friends in Glasgow. But these, as one of them once remarked, could afford to prize all that was good in the bard and overlook his shortcomings. When this friend was dying William came to ask his forgiveness, which he was assured he had, with the remark, “William, my ghost will not trouble you.” This gentleman knew the bard’s selfish motive in asking pardon, and the superstitious reason for his so doing. Notwithstanding all this, the man was not many days in his grave when the bard began to attack him in a scurrilous letter in the newspapers, which, however, was not inserted. He might be described as a Celtic brother of Walter Savage Landor, whom he resembled in several respects. But the sphere of life in which Livingston was born, and his want of early education, ought to make us charitable in our judgments of the savage element of his character. It must be acknowledged, at the same time, that beneath the barbarian patriotism of his nature there lay a depth of tenderness and warmth of a grateful heart, which we discern in several of his pieces on individual persons. There can be no doubt, also, that many of his eccentricities arose from finding himself out of joint in the social world, where mere patriotism or poetic talent cannot frequently obtain the means or influence which self-conscious spirits so hopelessly look for.
Blar Shunadail, a piece of considerable length and merit, was published in The Gael after his death. The only other piece of importance is Driod-fhoitan Imhir an Racain, a poem of five or six hundred lines long.
It ought to be mentioned that two gentlemen, one belonging to Kintyre and the other to Cowal, were constant friends to Livingston—the late Mr Gilchrist, printer, Glasgow, and also Mr Duncan Whyte, of the same city. Livingston was intensely Celtic in all his ideas and habits. He has written a good deal of prose in English; but in that language he is like a lion in chains. He published “A Vindication of the Celtic Character,” a goodly volume of strong Celtic feeling and prejudice, such as we would now expect from an Irish Celt; also, several parts of a history of Scotland, which he did not finish, he and the publishers having disagreed on account of the strong anti-English feeling displayed by the writer. He swallowed the old Scottish chroniclers, especially their anti-English prejudices, and accepted as pure truth all that they have recorded. The Scotsman of the days of Bruce and Wallace scarcely cherished so much of the spirit of nationality and animosity against England as Livingston did. At the same time there was an element of hollowness in his assumed patriotism into which, however, he sought to thoroughly work himself, like some others of his countrymen of the present day. It can scarcely be denied that an element of unhealthiness prevailed in the moral basis of his nature; but unlike many others of the Highland poets, the smallest trace cannot be found in his works. A few years ago a monument was erected to his memory in Janefield Cemetery, Glasgow. Well has he described his own spirit in the following quatrain of Scotch:—
We see the buckles glancin’