THE POETS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE.
The Poets of Dumfriesshire. By Frank Miller. (James Mac- Lehose and Sons. 103. net.)—The county of Dumfries is certainly a Parnassus. It may claim what is almost the very earliest specimen of English, the lines inscribed on the Bothwell Cross. Dumfries has at least a better claim to the author than any other county. Passing over sundry doubtful productions, we come to the unquestioned fact of the Admirable Crichton, born at Eliock in the county, not at Cluny in Perthshire, which his father did not own till two years after James Crichton's birth. It is true that what has come down to us from his pen is not very admirable. Mr. Miller gives his ode, " Ad Laurentium Massaro," but has he correctly printed stanza iv.? We can neither scan
nor construe it :—
" Si forte Gades impiger ultimos, Syrtesve, nut Lidos visere barbaros Vellem, nee Indos iuterve Syrtes Destituent ope contumaces."
Should not cut be et, and contumaces be contumacem ? Later on we come to " Johnnie Armstrong's Last Good-Night," a ballad with some fine touches. So when Johnny comes before the King,
" The King he inovit his Bonnet to him, He wist he was a King as well as He."
And this is one of many, highly interesting, though we are never quite sure that a ballad has not been "faked,"—the practice has
been lamentably common. A chapter on " Covenanting and Jacobite Verse" follows,—" Covenanting" verse is something of a novelty. The chief specimen here is a piece of Latin elegiacs, from which we may quote one couplet, which neatly sums up the faith of the party :—
" Invadit Christi regnum cum prineipe praesul, Arrogat hie Regi quod rogat ipse Sibi."
Then we have " The Classic School," some of it good of its kind, as these lines from Thomas Blacklock's poem on his father:— "A man content himself, and God, to know ; A heart with every virtue formed to glow; Beneath each pressure uniformly great ; In life untainted, unsurprised by fate."
Then comes the "Golden Age of Burns," and after this a groat succession of accomplished writers. Mr. Miller has devoted himself to the cult with praiseworthy zeal, and has raised a monumentuin of no small distinction to his compatriots, for he too is, we presume, a Dumfriesshire man.
Previous page
