THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.
When the Ettrick Shepherd was first heard of, he had indeed but just learned to write, by copying the letters of a printed ballad, as he lay watching his flock on the mountains; but thirty years or more have passed since then, and his acquirements are now such, that the Royal Society of Literature, in patronizing him, might be justly said to honour a laborious and successful student, as well as a masculine and fertile genius. We may take the liberty of adding, in this place, what perhaps may not be known to the excellent managers of that excellent institution, that a more worthy, modest, sober, and loyal man does not exist in his majesty's dominions than this distinguished poet, whom some of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling in the license of tavern-suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude as ever nursed the melancholy of a poetical temperament.—Ibid.
MR. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM
Needs no testimony either to his intellectual accomplishments or his moral worth; nor, thanks to his own virtuous diligence, does he need any patronage. He has been fortunate enough to secure a respectable establishment in the studio of a great artist, who is not less good than great, and would thus be sufficiently in the eye of the world, even were his literary talents less industriously exercised than they have hitherto been. His recent Lives of the British Painters and Sculptors form one of the most agreeable books in the language; and it will always remain one of the most remarkable and delightful facts in the history of letters, that such a work—one conveying so much valuable knowledge in a style so unaffectedly attractive—so imbued throughout, not only with lively sensibility, amiable feelings, honesty and candour, but mature and liberal taste, was produced by a man who, some twenty years before, earned his daily bread as a common stone-mason in the wilds of Nithsdale. Examples like these will plead the cause of struggling genius, wherever it may be found, more powerfully than all the arguments in the world.—Ibid.
DUELLING
Is the only crime into which an upright man, wanting in moral firmness, can be impelled by the law of honour. Surely there could be no difficulty in putting an end to this absurd and abominable practice by wholesome laws. Appoint six months' imprisonment for the offence of sending a challenge, or of accepting it; two years if the parties meet; and if one falls, transport the other for life. Appoint the same punishment in all cases for the seconds; and from the day in which such a law should be enacted, not a pair of duelling pistols would ever again be manufactured in this country, even for the Dublin market.—Ibid.