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The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer

R >> Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.] >> The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer













A POEM,

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE LEARNED AND
EMINENT MR WILLIAM LAW, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.


In silence to suppress my griefs I've tried,
And kept within its banks the swelling tide!
But all in vain: unbidden numbers flow;
Spite of myself my sorrows vocal grow.
This be my plea.--Nor thou, dear Shade, refuse
The well-meant tribute of the willing muse,
Who trembles at the greatness of its theme,
And fain would say what suits so high a name.
Which, from the crowded journal of thy fame,--
Which of thy many titles shall I name? 10
For, like a gallant prince, that wins a crown,
By undisputed right before his own,
Variety thou hast: our only care
Is what to single out, and what forbear.
Though scrupulously just, yet not severe;
Though cautious, open; courteous, yet sincere;
Though reverend, yet not magisterial;
Though intimate with few, yet loved by all;
Though deeply read, yet absolutely free
From all the stiffnesses of pedantry; 20
Though circumspectly good, yet never sour;
Pleasant with innocence, and never more.
Religion, worn by thee, attractive show'd,
And with its own unborrow'd beauty glow'd:
Unlike the bigot, from whose watery eyes
Ne'er sunshine broke, nor smile was seen to rise;
Whose sickly goodness lives upon grimace,
And pleads a merit from a blubber'd face.
Thou kept thy raiment for the needy poor,
And taught the fatherless to know thy door; 30
From griping hunger set the needy free;
That they were needy, was enough to thee.
Thy fame to please, whilst others restless be,
Fame laid her shyness by, and courted thee;
And though thou bade the flattering thing give o'er,
Yet, in return, she only woo'd thee more.
How sweet thy accents! and how mild thy look!
What smiling mirth was heard in all thou spoke;
Manhood and grizzled age were fond of thee,
And youth itself sought thy society. 40
The aged thou taught, descended to the young,
Clear'd up the irresolute, confirm'd the strong;
To the perplex'd thy friendly counsel lent,
And gently lifted up the diffident;
Sigh'd with the sorrowful, and bore a part
In all the anguish of a bleeding heart;
Reclaim'd the headstrong; and, with sacred skill,
Committed hallow'd rapes upon the will;
Soothed our affections; and, with their delight,
To gain our actions, bribed our appetite. 50
Now, who shall, with a greatness like thy own,
Thy pulpit dignify, and grace thy gown?
Who, with pathetic energy like thine,
The head enlighten, and the heart refine?
Learn'd were thy lectures, noble the design,
The language _Roman_, and the action fine;
The heads well ranged, the inferences clear,
And strong and solid thy deductions were:
Thou mark'd the boundaries out 'twixt right and wrong,
And show'd the land-marks as thou went along. 60
Plain were thy reasonings, or, if perplex'd,
Thy life was the best comment on thy text;
For, if in darker points we were deceived,
'Twas only but observing how thou lived.
Bewilder'd in the greatness of thy fame,
What shall the Muse, what next in order name?
Which of thy social qualities commend--
Whether of husband, father, or of friend?
A husband soft, beneficent, and kind,
As ever virgin wish'd, or wife could find; 70
A father indefatigably true
To both a father's trust and tutor's too;
A friend affectionate and staunch to those
Thou wisely singled out; for few thou chose:
Few, did I say, that word we must recall;
A friend, a willing friend, thou wast to all.
Those properties were thine, nor could we know
Which rose the uppermost, so all wast thou.
So have I seen the many-colour'd mead,
Brush'd by the vernal breeze, its fragrance shed: 80
Though various sweets the various field exhaled,
Yet could we not determine which prevail'd,
Nor this part _rose_, that _honey-suckle_ call
But a rich bloomy aggregate of all.
And thou, the once glad partner of his bed,
But now by sorrow's weeds distinguished,
Whose busy memory thy grief supplies,
And calls up all thy husband to thine eyes;
Thou must not be forgot. How alter'd now!
How thick thy tears! How fast thy sorrows flow! 90
The well known voice that cheer'd thee heretofore,
These soothing accents thou must hear no more.
Untold be all the tender sighs thou drew,
When on thy cheek he fetch'd a long adieu.
Untold be all thy faithful agonies,
At the last anguish of his closing eyes;
For thou, and only such as thou, can tell
The killing anguish of a last farewell.
This earth, yon sun, and these blue-tinctured skies,
Through which it rolls, must have their obsequies: 100
Pluck'd from their orbits, shall the planets fall,
And smoke and conflagration cover all:
What, then, is man? The creature of a day,
By moments spent, and minutes borne away.
Time, like a raging torrent, hurries on;
Scarce can we say _it is_, but that 'tis gone.
Whether, fair shade! with social spirits, tell
(Whose properties thou once described so well),
Familiar now thou hearest them relate
The rites and methods of their happy state: 110
Or if, with forms more fleet, thou roams abroad,
And views the great magnificence of God,
Points out the courses of the orbs on high,
And counts the silver wonders of the sky!
Or if, with glowing seraphim, thou greets
Heaven's King, and shoutest through the golden streets,
That crowds of white-robed choristers display,
Marching in triumph through the pearly way?
Now art thou raised beyond this world of cares,
This weary wilderness, this vale of tears; 120
Forgetting all thy toils and labours past,
No gloom of sorrow stains thy peaceful breast.
Now, 'midst seraphic splendours shalt thou dwell,
And be what only these pure forms can tell.
How cloudless now, and cheerful is thy day!
What joys, what raptures, in thy bosom play!
How bright the sunshine, and how pure the air!
There's no difficulty of breathing there.
With willing steps a pilgrim at thy shrine,
To dew it with my tears the task be mine; 130
In lonely dirge, to murmur o'er thy urn
And with new-gather'd flowers thy turf adorn:
Nor shall thy image from my bosom part;
No force shall rip thee from this bleeding heart.
Oft shall I think o'er all I've left in thee,
Nor shall oblivion blot thy memory;
But grateful love its energy express
(The father gone) now to the fatherless.




END OF BLAIR'S POEMS.









POETICAL WORKS
OF
WILLIAM FALCONER.




THE LIFE AND POETRY OF

WILLIAM FALCONER.


It may seem singular how the life of a sailor--a life so full of
vicissitude and enterprise, of hair's-breadth escapes, of contact with
wild men and wild usages, and of intercourse with a form of nature so
vast, so fluctuating, so mysterious, and so terribly sublime as the
ocean, which, in its calm and silence, forms an emblem of all that is
peaceful and profound, and, in its tempestuous rage, of all that is
unreconciled and anarchical in the mind of man, now comparable to a

"Cradled child in dreamless slumber bound!"

and now to a mad sister of the earth, screaming and foaming in fierce
and aimless antagonism to her brother--should have reared so few poets.
This may arise either from the uncultivated and careless character of
sailors as a class, or from the influence of habit in deadening the
effect of the grandest objects. It is the same with other modes of life
equally romantic. What more so than that of a shepherd among the
Grampian Mountains, constantly living between the everlasting hills and
the silent sun and stars, surrounded by streams, cataracts, deep dun
moorlands, and the wild-eyed and wild-winged creatures which dwell in
them alone, their life hid in Nature, and their cries of rude praise
going up continually to Nature's God? And yet the Highlands of Scotland
have not hitherto produced one great rural poet, except Macpherson, who
did belong to the peasantry. And so of the seafaring class; only, so far
as we remember, have expressed, the one in verse, and the other in
prose, the 'poetry' of their calling,--namely, Cooper and Falconer, both
of whose descriptions of sea storms and scenery have been equalled, if
not surpassed, however, by such landsmen as Byron and Scott. A poetic
mind, which comes in contact with strange and wonderful events or
scenery only at intervals, often carries away a much more vivid idea of
their striking features than those who reside constantly in their midst.
It must be a very rough rope, to borrow an image from the theme, which
does not feel softer after long handling. It is the short and sudden
impression, made in the twinkling of an eye, which is at once the most
lively and the most lasting. When, however, enthusiasm continues, as in
some favoured cases, unabated by familiarity, and is united to thorough
technical knowledge, then the professional man may be nearly as
successful as the amateur, or if there be any deficiency in freshness of
feeling, it is made up for by accuracy of knowledge. It was so in the
case of James Hogg, the poet of the shepherd life of Southern Scotland,
and in William Falconer, the poet of British shipwreck. We shall
afterwards show how his knowledge of his profession partly helped and
partly hindered him in his poem.

William Falconer was born in Edinburgh in the year 1736. He was the son
of a poor barber in the Netherbow, who had two other children, both deaf
and dumb, who ended their days in a poor-house. He early, through
frequent visits to Leith, came in contact with that tremendous element
which he was to sing so powerfully, and in which he was to sink at
last--which was to give him at once his glory and his grave. While a
mere boy, he went, by his own account, reluctantly on board a Leith
merchant ship, and was afterwards in the Royal Navy. Of his early
education or habits very little is known. He had all his scholarship
from one Webster. We figure him (after the similitude of a dear lost
sailor boy, a relative of our own) as a stripling, with curling hair,
ruddy cheek, form prematurely developed into round robustness, frank,
free, and manly bearing, returning ever and anon from his ocean
wanderings, and bearing to his friends some rare bird or shell of the
tropics as a memorial of his labours and his love. Before he was
eighteen years of age, Providence supplied him with the materials whence
he was to pile up the monument of his future fame. He became second mate
in the ship 'Britannia', a vessel trading in the Levant. This vessel was
shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, exactly in the manner described in the
poem, which is just a coloured photograph of the adventures,
difficulties, dangers, and disastrous result of the voyage. In 1751 we
find him living in Edinburgh, and publishing his first poem. This was an
elegy on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was followed by
other pieces, which appeared in the 'Gentleman's Magazine', and which
will be found in this volume. Some have claimed for him the authorship
of the favourite sea song, "Cease, Rude Boreas," but this seems
uncertain.

Falconer is supposed to have continued in the merchant service (one of
his biographers maintains that he was for some time in the 'Ramilies', a
man-of-war, which suffered shipwreck in the Channel) till 1762, when he
published his "Shipwreck." This poem was dedicated to the Duke of York,
who had newly become Rear-Admiral of the Blue on board the 'Princess
Amelia', attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Duke was not
a Solomon, but he had sense enough to perceive, that the sailor who
could produce such a poem was no ordinary man, and generous enough to
offer him promotion, if he should leave the merchant service for the
Royal Navy. Falconer, accordingly, was promoted to be a midshipman on
board the 'Royal George' (Sir Edward Hawke's ship); the same, we
believe, which afterwards went down in such a disastrous manner, and
furnished a subject for one of Cowper's boldest little poems. "The
Shipwreck" was highly commended by the 'Monthly Review',--then the
leading literary organ,--and became widely popular.

While in the 'Royal George', Falconer contrived to find time for his
poetical studies. Retiring sometimes from his messmates, into a small
space between the cable-trees and the ship's side, he wrote his Ode on
"the Duke of York's Second Departure from England, as Rear-Admiral."
This poem was severely criticised in the 'Critical Review'. It has
certainly much pomp, and thundering sound of language and versification,
but wants the genuine Pindaric inspiration.

At the peace of 1763 the 'Royal George' was paid off, and Falconer
became purser of the 'Glory', frigate of 32 guns. About this time he
married a young lady named Hicks, daughter of a surgeon in
Sheerness-yard--a lady more distinguished by her mental than her
physical qualities. The poet dubbed her in his verses, "Miranda." It is
hinted that he had some difficulty in procuring her consent to marry
him, and was forced to lay regular siege to her in rhyme. At length she
capitulated, and the marriage was eminently happy. She survived her
husband many years; lived at Bath, and enjoyed a comfortable livelihood
on the proceeds of her husband's "Marine Dictionary."

When the 'Glory' was laid up at Chatham, Commissioner Hanway, brother of
the once celebrated Jonas Hanway (whom Dr Johnson so justly chastised
for his diatribe against Tea), showed much interest in the pursuits and
person of our poet. He even ordered the captain's cabin to be fitted up
with every comfort, that Falconer might pursue his studies without
expense, and with all convenience. Here he brought his "Marine
Dictionary" to a conclusion--a work which had occupied him for years,
and which supplied a desideratum in the literature of the profession.
The design had been suggested by one Scott, and approved of by Sir
Edward Hawke; and the book, when it appeared in 1769, was greatly
commended by Dr Hamel, the Frenchman, who had gained note himself, by
producing some works on naval architecture. From the 'Glory' Falconer
received an appointment in the 'Swift-sure'. In 1764 he issued a new
edition of "The Shipwreck," carefully corrected, and with considerable
additions. The next year he issued a political poem, in which, like a
true tar of the 'Royal George', he took the King's side, and emitted
much dull and drivelling bile against Lord Chatham, Wilkes, and
Churchill. The satire proved that, though at home on the ocean, he was
utterly "at sea" in land-politics.

Falconer had now left his cabin study with its many pleasant
accommodations, and become a scribbler of all work in a London garret.
Here his existence ran on for a while in an obscure and probably
miserable current. It is said that Murray, the bookseller, the father of
'the' John Murray, of Albemarle Street, wished to take the poet into
partnership,--upon terms of great advantage,--but that Falconer, for
reasons which are not known, declined the offer. "My Murray," as Byron
calls him, was destined instead to have his name connected with a
grander and ghastlier shipwreck than it lay in the brain of the
projected partner of his firm to conceive, or in his genius to
execute--that, namely, described in the ever-detestable, yet
ever-memorable, second canto of "Don Juan."

In 1769, a third edition of his poem was called for, and he was employed
in making improvements and additions when he was again summoned to sea.
In his hurry of departure, he is said to have committed these to the
care of the notorious David Mallett, the son of a Crieff innkeeper, the
friend of Thomson, the biographer of Bacon, and, as Johnson called him,
the "beggarly Scotchman, who drew the trigger of Bolingbroke's
blunderbuss of infidelity," who seems to have paid no manner of
attention to his trust, as mistakes in the nautical terms and a frequent
inferiority in execution manifest.

Falconer had undoubtedly thought the sea a hard and sickening
profession; but latterly found that writing for the booksellers was a
slavery still more abject and unendurable. He resolved once more to
embark upon the "melancholy main." Often as he had hugged its horrors,
laid his hand on its mane, and narrowly escaped its devouring jaws, he
was drawn in again as by the fatal suction of a whirlpool into its
power. Perhaps he had imbibed a passion for the sea. At all events, he
accepted the office of purser to the Aurora frigate, which was going out
to India, and on the 30th of September 1769, he left England for ever.
The Aurora was never heard of more! Some vague rumours, indeed,
prevailed of a contradictory character--that she had been burned--that
she had foundered in the Mozambique Channel--that she had been cast away
on a reef of rocks near Macao--that five persons had been saved from her
wreck, but nothing certain transpired, except that she was lost; and
this fine singer of the sea along with her. Unfortunate Aurora! dawn
soon overcast! Unfortunate poet, so speedily removed!

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built i' the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That laid so low that sacred head of thine."

The drowning of one poet of far loftier genius in the Bay of Spezia,
latterly proved that the offering up of Falconer's life had not fully
appeased the wrath of old Neptune, and that bards may still entertain,
in the lines of Wordsworth,

"Of the old sea some reverential fear."

Burns heard of and deplored the loss of the Poet of the Shipwreck. In
one of his letters to Mrs Dunlop, he mentions the fact, and adds the
beautiful words, "He was one of those daring, adventurous spirits which
Scotland beyond any other country is remarkable for producing. Little
does the fond mother think, as she hangs delighted over the sweet little
leech at her bosom, where the poor fellow may hereafter wander, and what
may be his fate. I remember a stanza in an old Scottish ballad, which
speaks feelingly to the heart--

'Little did my mother think,
That day she cradled me,
What land I was to travel on,
Or what death I should die.'"

Falconer is represented as a bluff, blunt, but cheerful sailor--fond of
amusing his shipmates with acrostics on the names of their
mistresses--with little learning except in seamanship, and what he had
picked up in his travels. His smaller pieces scarcely deserve criticsm.
His whole reputation now reposes on the one pillar of his one poem, "The
Shipwreck."

This poem was greatly overrated when it first appeared. It was by some
critics preferred to Virgil's "Æneid," and compared to the "Odyssey." It
is now, we think, as unjustly depreciated. That there is a good deal of
swollen commonplace in the diction and sentiments, must be admitted.
Falconer arose in a bad age in respect of poetry. The terseness of Pope
was gone, and in his imitators only his tinkle remained. His exquisite
sense and trembling finish had vanished, and only his conventional
diction--the ghost of his greatness--was to be found in the poets of the
time. It was extremely natural that a half-taught mind like Falconer's
should be captivated by what was the mode of the day. Indeed, Burns
himself was only saved from the same error by continuing to write in
Scotch; many of his English verses and his letters are marred by more or
less of the disgusting and vicious affectation of style which then
prevailed; and in parts of Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," we find the
last modified specimen of the evil. Hence, in Falconer the obsolete
mythological allusions--the names with classical terminations--the
perpetual apostrophes--the set and stilted speeches he puts into the
mouths of heroes--the bombast, verbiage, and sounding sameness of much
of his verse. Nor do we greatly admire the story which he introduces
with the poem, nor the discrimination of his characters, nor, what may
be called strictly, the pathos of the piece. Indeed, considering the
size of the poem, there is so much that is vapid and common, that the
counter-balancing excellences must be great ere they could have floated
it so long. To use an expression suitable to the theme, the vessel which
has sailed so far, notwithstanding its numerous leaks, must be of a
strong and sturdy build.

And this is the main merit of "The Shipwreck." It has in most of its
descriptive passages a certain rugged strength and truth, which prove at
once the perspicacity and the poetic vision of the author, who, while he
sees all the minute details of his subject, sees also the glory of
imagination shining around them. A ship appears before his view, with
its every spar and yard, clear and distinct as if seen in meridian
sunshine, and yet with a radiance of poetry around it all, as if he were
looking at it by moonlight, or in the magical light of a dream. Take the
following lines, for instance:--

"Up-torn reluctant from its oozy cave,
The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave.
High on the slipp'ry masts the yards ascend,
And far abroad the canvas wings extend.
Along the glassy plain the vessel glides,
While azure radiance trembles on her sides."


We grant, indeed, that sometimes his technical lore rises up, as it
were, and drowns the poetry. What imaginative quality, for example, have
we in the following verses?

"The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent,
In streaming pendants flying, is unbent;
With brails refixed, another soon prepared,
Ascending spreads along beneath the yard;
To each yard-arm the head-rope they extend,
And soon their ear-rings and their robans bend.
That task perform'd, they first the braces slack,
Then to the chess-tree drag the unwilling tack;
And, while the lee clue-garnet's lower'd away,
Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay."


This is mere log-book; and such passages are common in the poem. But
frequently he bathes the web of the shrouds and ship-rigging in rich
ideal gold. Take the following:--

"With equal sheets restrain'd, the bellying sail
Spreads a broad concave to the sweeping gale;
While o'er the foam the ship impetuous flies,
The helm the attentive timoneer applies:
As in pursuit along the aerial way,
With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey,
Each motion watches of the doubtful chase,
Obliquely wheeling through the fluid space;
So, govern'd by the steersman's GLOWING hands,
The regent helm her motion still commands."


Falconer may in some points be likened to Crabbe. Like him, he excels in
minute and patient painting. Like him he is capable at times of
extracting the imaginative element from the barest and simplest details.
And, like him, he sometimes sets before us, mere dry inventories or
invoices, instead of such poetical catalogues as Homer gives of ships,
and Milton of devils. It is remarkable that Falconer never shines at all
except when he is describing ships or sea scenery.

"His path is on the mountain waves,
His home is on the deep."


No words in Scripture are so strange to him as these, "There shall be no
more sea." The course of his voyage in the Shipwreck, brings him past
lands the most famous in the ancient world for arts and arms, for
philosophy, patriotism, and poetry. And sore does he labour to lash
himself into inspiration as he apostrophizes them; but in vain--the
result is little else than furious feebleness and stilted bombast. But
when he returns to the element, the impatient, irregular, changeful,
treacherous, terrible ocean--and watches the night, winged with black
storm and red lightning, sinking down over the Mediterranean, and the
devoted bark which is helplessly struggling with its billows, then his
blood rises, his verse heaves, and hurries on, and you see the full-born
poet--

"High o'er the poop the audacious seas aspire,
Uproll'd in hills of fluctuating fire:
With labouring throes she rolls on either side,
And dips her gunnells in the yawning tide.
Her joints unhinged in palsied langour play,
As ice-flakes part beneath the noontide ray;
The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds,
And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds.
From wintry magazines that sweep the sky,
Descending globes of hail incessant fly;
High on the masts with pale and lurid rays,
Amid the gloom portentous meteors blaze!
The ethereal dome in mournful pomp array'd,
Now buried lies beneath impervious shade,--
Now flashing round intolerable light,
Redoubles all the horrors of the night.
Such terror Sinai's trembling hill o'erspread,
When Heaven's loud trumpet sounded o'er its head.
It seem'd the wrathful angel of the wind,
Had all the horrors of the skies combined;
And here to one ill-fated ship opposed,
At once the dreadful magazine disclosed."

This is noble writing. "Deep calleth unto deep." It reminds us of Pope's
translation of that tremendous passage in the 8th Book of the Iliad,
where Jove comes forth, and darts his angry lightnings in the eyes of
the Grecians, and repels and appals their mightiest; Nestor alone, but
with his horse wounded by the dart of Paris, sustaining the divine
assault.

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