Though better suited to the music, these lines are inferior to the original.”—Currie.
CCLIX.
TO MR. THOMSON.
[Against the mighty oppressors of the earth the poet was ever ready to set the sharpest shafts of his wrath: the times in which he wrote were sadly out of sorts.]
June 25th, 1793.
Have you ever, my dear Sir, felt your bosom ready to burst with indignation, on reading of those mighty villains who divide kingdoms, desolate provinces, and lay nations waste, out of the wantonness of ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? In a mood of this kind to-day I recollected the air of “Logan Water,” and it occurred to me that its querulous melody probably had its origin from the plaintive indignation of some swelling, suffering heart, fired at the tyrannic strides of some public destroyer, and overwhelmed with private distress, the consequence of a country’s ruin. If I have done anything at all like justice to my feelings, the following song, composed in three-quarters of an hour’s meditation in my elbow-chair, ought to have some merit:—
O Logan, sweetly didst thou glide.[224]
Do you know the following beautiful little fragment, in Wotherspoon’s collection of Scots songs?[225]
Air—“Hughie Graham.”