Like any common weed and vile.
WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN
(1813-1865)
ytoun the second, balladist, humorist, and Tory, in proportions of about equal importance,--one of the group of wits and devotees of the status quo who made Blackwood's Magazine so famous in its early days,--was born in Edinburgh, June 21st, 1813. He was the son of Roger Aytoun, "writer to the Signet"; and a descendant of Sir Robert Aytoun (1570-1638), the poet and friend of Ben Jonson, who followed James VI. from Scotland and who is buried in Westminster Abbey. Both Aytoun's parents were literary. His mother, who knew Sir Walter Scott, and who gave Lockhart many details for his biography, helped the lad in his poems. She seemed to him to know all the ballads ever sung. His earliest verses were praised by Professor John Wilson ("Christopher North"), the first editor of Blackwood's, whose daughter he married in 1849. At the age of nineteen he published his 'Poland, Homer, and Other Poems' (Edinburgh, 1832). After leaving the University of Edinburgh, he studied law in London, visited Germany, and returning to Scotland, was called to the bar in 1840. He disliked the profession, and used to say that though he followed the law he never could overtake it.
While in Germany he translated the first part of 'Faust' in blank verse, which was never published. Many of his translations from Uhland and Homer appeared in Blackwood's from 1836 to 1840, and many of his early writings were signed "Augustus Dunshunner." In 1844 he joined the editorial staff of Blackwood's, to which for many years he contributed political articles, verse, translations of Goethe, and humorous sketches. In 1845 he became Professor of Rhetoric and Literature in the University of Edinburgh, a place which he held until 1864. About 1841 he became acquainted with Theodore Martin, and in association with him wrote a series of light papers interspersed with burlesque verses, which, reprinted from Blackwood's, became popular as the 'Bon Gaultier Ballads.' Published in London in 1855, they reached their thirteenth edition in 1877.
"Some papers of a humorous kind, which I had published under the nom de plume of Bon Gaultier," says Theodore Martin in his 'Memoir of Aytoun,' "had hit Aytoun's fancy; and when I proposed to go on with others in a similar vein, he fell readily into the plan, and agreed to assist in it. In this way a kind of a Beaumont-and-Fletcher partnership commenced in a series of humorous papers, which appeared in Tait's and Fraser's magazines from 1842 to 1844. In these papers, in which we ran a-tilt, with all the recklessness of youthful spirits, against such of the tastes or follies of the day as presented an opening for ridicule or mirth,--at the same time that we did not altogether lose sight of a purpose higher than mere amusement,--appeared the verses, with a few exceptions, which subsequently became popular, and to a degree we then little contemplated, as the 'Bon Gaultier Ballads.' Some of the best of these were exclusively Aytoun's, such as 'The Massacre of the McPherson,' 'The Rhyme of Sir Launcelot Bogle,' 'The Broken Pitcher,' 'The Red Friar and Little John,' 'The Lay of Mr. Colt,' and that best of all imitations of the Scottish ballad, 'The Queen in France.' Some were wholly mine, and the rest were produced by us jointly. Fortunately for our purpose, there were then living not a few poets whose style and manner of thought were sufficiently marked to make imitation easy, and sufficiently popular for a parody of their characteristics to be readily recognized. Macaulay's 'Lays of Rome' and his two other fine ballads were still in the freshness of their fame. Lockhart's 'Spanish Ballads' were as familiar in the drawing-room as in the study. Tennyson and Mrs. Browning were opening up new veins of poetry. These, with Wordsworth, Moore, Uhland, and others of minor note, lay ready to our hands,--as Scott, Byron, Crabbe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey had done to James and Horace Smith in 1812, when writing the 'Rejected Addresses.' Never, probably, were verses thrown off with a keener sense of enjoyment."
With Theodore Martin he published also 'Poems and Ballads of Goethe' (London, 1858). Mr. Aytoun's fame as a poet rests on his 'Lays of the Cavaliers,' the themes of which are selected from stirring incidents of Scottish history, ranging from Flodden Field to the Battle of Culloden. The favorites in popular memory are 'The Execution of Montrose' and 'The Burial March of Dundee.' This book, published in London and Edinburgh in 1849, has gone through twenty-nine editions.
His dramatic poem, 'Firmilian: a Spasmodic Tragedy,' written to ridicule the style of Bailey, Dobell, and Alexander Smith, and published in 1854, had so many excellent qualities that it was received as a serious production instead of a caricature. Aytoun introduced this in Blackwood's Magazine as a pretended review of an unpublished tragedy (as with the 'Rolliad,' and as Lockhart had done in the case of "Peter's Letters," so successfully that he had to write the book itself as a "second edition" to answer the demand for it). This review was so cleverly done that "most of the newspaper critics took the part of the poet against the reviewer, never suspecting the identity of both, and maintained the poetry to be fine poetry and the critic a dunce." The sarcasm of 'Firmilian' is so delicate that only those familiar with the school it is intended to satirize can fairly appreciate its qualities. The drama opens showing Firmilian in his study, planning the composition of 'Cain: a Tragedy'; and being infused with the spirit of the hero, he starts on a career of crime. Among his deeds is the destruction of the cathedral of Badajoz, which first appears in his mental vision thus:--