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 THE EARLY YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH 
 
THE EARLY YEARS 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 POET AND ESS A VIST 
 
 9L ^tuUp for fating gBtih 
 
 CHIEFLY REMINISCENCES OF TEN YEARS' COMPANIONSHIP 
 
 REV. T. BRISBANE. 
 
 "V 
 
 SLonfcan : 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON, 
 27, Paternoster Row. 
 
 MDCCCLXIX. 
 
,SsBs 
 
 " We can remember when we knew only the outer childish rim, 
 and from the crescent guessed the sphere." — Dreamthorp. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Various sketches of Alexander Smith have 
 already been published since his death. These, 
 however, have been only the brief reminiscences 
 of loving friends of his later years. They may be 
 said to commence with his career of authorship. 
 Their writers seem to have known little of his 
 earlier years of education, aspiration, struggle, and 
 preparatory toil. The information they give of 
 this, the most interesting, instructive, and exem- 
 plary period of his life, consists of little more than 
 the date and place of his birth, and the trade to 
 which he served apprenticeship. What has thus 
 been published was indeed worthy of being so ; 
 but what has been left untold is none the less 
 worthy of being recorded. His youth was as pure 
 and noble as his manhood. No part of it now 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 demands concealment by the hand of charity. 
 There is consequently a very general regret among 
 his earliest acquaintances and friends that a fuller 
 account of those days has not been written : and 
 several of them, because I was then for several 
 years most closely associated with him in friend- 
 ship, and so had ample means of knowing " his 
 stream of life from fount to sea," having frequently 
 urged upon me to write such an account, I, at 
 length, so far complied as to give, in the columns 
 of a weekly local journal, a short narrative to its 
 limited number of readers. This, however, so far 
 from satisfying seemed to increase the desire it was 
 designed to gratify ; and, consequently, further 
 pressed both by old and several new friends who 
 happened to read that partial account, and whose 
 judgment I cannot but respect, I have ventured 
 to lay this fuller volume before the general public. 
 If I have done so too hastily, it may, perhaps, be 
 deemed pardonable in his earliest friend to have 
 been easily induced to place, though last, some 
 tangible tribute of affectionate remembrance on a 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 grave where so many have already, in one form or 
 other, laid theirs. 
 
 The only requisite I possess for the task I have 
 undertaken, is a fuller knowledge of Mr. Smith's 
 early years than others may have. This advan- 
 tage, however, is counterbalanced by a fear lest my 
 unpractised pen may, after all, fail justly to present 
 the well-known features of so fair a life before the 
 reader's view. Still I cling to the hope that, with 
 a hand moved by affection and steadied and re- 
 strained by truth, the work may be so done that 
 the limner and his art may be forgotten, and the 
 face growing before him on these pages, alone 
 command the attention of the reader, — or at least 
 so command it, that he and the critic shall find 
 it easy to exercise charity sufficient to cover any 
 multitude of literary sins which a tyro in book- 
 making may commit. 
 
 I aim not at praising the dead ; and should I 
 seem to praise, it is because praise I must, where 
 true portraiture itself is praise 3 
 
 As to method, I follow the example of those 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 who have preceded me ; by giving chiefly reminis- 
 cences of that period of the poet's life best known 
 to me. Doing so will indeed necessitate, however, 
 the employment of the ego to an extent which — 
 while I trust neither fulsome nor offensive to the 
 generous reader — I would certainly have preferred 
 to avoid, could I otherwise have told the story as 
 well. After all, it may be better thus ; it is only 
 now that reminiscences can well be given ; and by 
 this method, which others have initiated, materials 
 may best be furnished for a competent biographer 
 in the future. So, poor and faulty as the work 
 may be — 
 
 ' ' I go to plant it on his tomb 
 That, if it can, it there may bloom ; 
 Or dying, there at least may die." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. Page 
 
 Parents — Place and date of birth — Reciprocated affection — Re- 
 moval to Paisley — Education — Illness — Sister's death — First 
 book read — Removal to Glasgow — School — Teacher — Design 
 of the ministry frustrated — Leaves school — A mistake cor- 
 rected — Enters a warehouse — Favourite authors — First poem 
 — Nature of employment — Poetic scribbling — Personal ap- 
 pearance — First love — Shopmates — Literary aspirations — 
 Method of reading I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 Smith becomes a member — His first essay — His interest and 
 influence in the society — Its members described — Subjects on 
 which he wrote — Decline of the society — Its influence on 
 Smith 29 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CLYDE. 
 
 Smith's knowledge of scenery not derived from books — Our 
 friendship commenced — Our favourite walk — Kenmuir — The 
 Marriage Well — The poets read — Sunsets — An incident — Bon 
 mots— Carmyle — Carmyle revisited — Changes — A singular 
 experience — Bothwell Priory — Campsie Glen 45 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HIGHLANDS. 
 
 First trip — Arran — First pedestrian tour — Stirling — Bridge of 
 Allan — Donne — Callander — An incident in church — Pass of 
 Leney — A graveyard — "The Garden and the Child" — A 
 letter — Bridge of Bracklin — Highland wit — The Trossachs — 
 Echo — Loch Katrine — Loch Lomond — Tarbet — Glen Croe 
 — Inverary — Home 64 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 REVELATIONS. 
 
 Our friendship — The poet silent — Feeling his way — Produces 
 his MS. — Correspondence — An autobiographic letter — Pre- 
 sentiment of early death — A singular poetic epistle — A pre- 
 diction — Patient preparations 82 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 
 
 Second pedestrian tour — Holy Loch — Figures — His memory — 
 Kyles of Bute to Oban — Places around — Glencoe — Wearied — 
 Strange lodging — Drinking song — Addisonian Soiree — A sad 
 event — Poem " Barbara " — His manner of reading — One of 
 his "fair shapes " — Appears in print — Admiration of Gilfil- 
 lan's writings — Gilfillan's influence — Appeals to Gilfillan — 
 Gilfillan's reply — Third pedestrian tour — Loch Goil — Inve- 
 rary — Loch Awe — Ben Cruachan — Pass of Brandir — An un- 
 fortunate Bath — Oban — Unwell — Rothesay — Stanley's grave 97 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 
 
 First notice by Gilfillan — Gilfillan meets Smith — MSS. shown 
 to Dr. Nichol— Smith and the Professor — " The Critic " — 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Second notice — Effects of these articles — Introductions to new 
 friends — A mistake corrected— His great teacher — Character 
 of his genius — An early promise — Preparations for publica- 
 tion — Origin of "A Life Drama" — Gilfillan's true position in 
 
 relation to that work — Third highland tour — Dundee — Calls 
 on Gilfillan — Loch Earn, etc. — The last of the " fair 
 shapes" — A letter with love sonnet 121 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " A LIFE DRAMA : " ITS CRITICS, THE PUBLIC, AXD 
 POET 
 
 "A Life Drama " published — Its reception — Circumstances and 
 mental state in which written and published — Fame, and its 
 effect on the author — On others — Anecdotes — Sabbath ob- 
 servance — His early religious spirit, hi verse — Evidences of — 
 Causes of its temporary decadence — Warned by Gilfillan — 
 Still retains this spirit — Leaves warehouse life — Removal 
 from Glasgow — A trip to England — Correspondence — Trip 
 to the highlands — Guest of Duke of Argyle — Wide fame — 
 Begins a literary life — The effort fails 140 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 Becomes secretary of university — Feelings on settling there — A 
 letter — Sydney Dobell — War Sonnets — A letter — Marriage — 
 A letter anent it — YVardie — ;i City Poems'" — Decline of fame 
 — Accusations — " Firmilian," its cause and influence — Ay- 
 toun and Smith — "Edwin of Deira " — His prose works — 
 Illness — Death — Burial — Monument .177 
 
THE EARLY YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Bt'ftl) anti Bopfrcotu 
 
 " One whispers here thy boyhood sung 
 
 Long since its matin song, and heard 
 The low love language of the bird 
 In native hazels tassel-hung. 
 
 The other answers, 'Yea, but here 
 Thy feet have stray'd in after-hours 
 With thy lost friend among the bowers, 
 
 And this hath made them trebly dear. 5 "' 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 TV^ILMARNOCK in the county of Ayr, and 
 Paisley in the adjoining county of Ren- 
 frew, have long maintained preeminence among 
 
 B 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 the towns of Scotland in the number of their 
 sons who have been endowed with poetic genius ; 
 and Alexander Smith, singularly, had an early- 
 connexion with both of these favoured seats of 
 the Scottish muses. In the former he was born, 
 while in the latter he passed his early boyhood 
 and received the first elements of his educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Being thus a native of the county of Burns, and 
 a nursling of the town of Tannahill and the 
 Wilsons, it may not seem strange that his soul 
 was imbued with a large measure of the poetic 
 spirit. The mantle of endowment which fell upon 
 him, however, was certainly not that of either of 
 these bards. His poetic faculty differed greatly 
 from that of any of these. Burns was intensely 
 Scotch and Tannahill was only a little less so ; 
 but in Smith's genius there are no vernacular 
 indications whatever, either in language or senti- 
 ment. In expression he is purely English ; in 
 spirit broadly cosmopolitan. 
 
 His father, Peter Smith, belonged to a village 
 
BIRTH AXD BOYHOOD. 
 
 near Kilmarnock, quaintly called Old Rome, and 
 was by trade a designer — at first of calico print- 
 ing and afterwards of sewed muslins ; while his 
 mother, whose maiden name was Helen Murray — 
 a woman of remarkable mental endowment and 
 tenderest maternal feeling — was a native of the 
 Highlands. In 1829 they took up residence in 
 a humble thatched house situated near the foot 
 of Douglas Street, Kilmarnock ; and there on the 
 last day of that year, Alexander, their first child, 
 was born. In one of his productions entitled " A 
 Boy's Poem," which forms part of his " City 
 Poems," he has himself alluded to this fact in 
 representing the "Boy" assaying to his mother— 
 
 ' ' It was the closing evening of the year, 
 The night that I was bom. I laughed, and said— - 
 ' The old year brought me in his dying arms, 
 And laid me in your breast ; his last task done, 
 He went away, through whirls of blinding snow.' " 
 
 Both of these his parents still live to mourn the 
 early death of their first-born and gifted son. 
 Between him and his mother there always existed 
 
 B 2 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 one of the noblest instances of reciprocal affection 
 that has ever been manifested in the family circle. 
 In speaking of her on one occasion in his seven- 
 teenth year, with great tenderness of emotion, he 
 related that he had recently discovered as a fact in 
 his own history, what he represents the " Boy's" 
 mother, in the poem already quoted, saying in 
 answer to her son's reference to the night of his 
 birth :— 
 
 " 'Tis sixteen years, 
 And every night I've looked upon your sleep, 
 Although you knew it not." 
 
 To be first in maternal affection especially, 
 seems to be one of the special blessings of primo- 
 geniture, and this birthright Alexander Smith 
 always possessed ; and while partiality towards a 
 first-born has not unfrequently spoiled its object, 
 it certainly did not do so in his case. He ever 
 remained worthy of the affection bestowed upon 
 him, and never did that love receive a better 
 return than from him. He exhibited in youth 
 that unyielding truthfulness which he has so highly 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 5 
 
 extolled in "Alfred Hagart's Household;" while 
 his gentleness, yet firmness of disposition and 
 purity of conduct were such as to constrain affec- 
 tion, which he ever answered with more than 
 ordinary filial devotion towards her who gave it. 
 His mother may earlier than others have per- 
 ceived his remarkable genius, and esteemed him 
 the more on that account ; but whether she did 
 or not, the character of his opening manhood in 
 a great city w^as such as could not but win a good 
 mother's heart, while his unbounded reverence 
 for her, on the other hand, was doubtless promo- 
 tive in no small measure of manly virtue. Indeed, 
 it always seemed to me that this reciprocal affec- 
 tion, which I have seldom seen equalled, and 
 never seen surpassed, w r as the real sunshine of 
 his youth, and therefore demands special notice 
 in tracing and recording the course of his life. 
 
 Shortly after the passing of the Reform Bill in 
 1832, and so while Alexander was only merging 
 into boyhood, the trade of Kilmarnock fell into 
 such a languishing state that Peter Smith, like 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 many others, was compelled to seek a livelihood 
 elsewhere. And having at length secured a 
 situation in Paisley, he removed with his family 
 to that town in 1834, where they remained for 
 several years, with a brief interval during which, 
 from the vicissitudes of trade, they seem to have 
 been forced back again to Kilmarnock. But they 
 remained for only a brief period in that town 
 on this occasion. Once more they left it, and now 
 finally, by returning to Paisley. 
 
 This early removal from Kilmarnock, may be 
 regarded as the reason of no particular reference 
 being found in his works to that town or its 
 environs. No poet or literary man has drawn 
 more largely — it might, perhaps, be said so largely 
 — from his own life, history, and experience, or 
 confined his descriptions more to scenes familiar- 
 ised to him by actual residence, than Alexander 
 Smith. You seldom find him far from home in his 
 works. None of his readers require to be told 
 where he has lived, except in this one instance. 
 Kilmarnock is unquestionably the Spiggleton of 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 " Alfred Hagart's Household," but it is not de- 
 scribed in the novel as Greysley and Hawk- 
 head are. In fact there are only a few incidental 
 allusions in one of his latest works — " A Summer 
 in Skye" — to indicate that he had ever been in 
 Ayrshire. It sufficiently accounts for this that, he 
 left Kilmarnock at too infantine an age for that 
 town and its neighbourhood to have made any dis- 
 tinct and lasting impressions on his imagination 
 and memory. The poet's eye had not yet opened 
 within him, and Ayrshire remained almost a terra 
 incognita till near the end of his short life. It was 
 in Paisley that his being opened to a perception of 
 the beauties of nature and the charms .of literature. 
 In this town — which he has compared to " an 
 aviary of singing birds," called "the abode of poetic 
 inspiration," and described so graphically towards 
 the close of the second volume of " A Summer in 
 Skye," and also under the name of Greysley in 
 " Alfred Hagart's Household " — he spent his early 
 boyhood, and acquired the elements of the art of 
 reading. As far as school learning, is concerned, 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 that is nearly all that can be said regarding his 
 education in Paisley. Partly owing to his resi- 
 dence in that town also being only of short dura- 
 tion, and from other causes immediately to be re- 
 ferred to, his school attainments were of the most 
 rudimentary character when the family again 
 removed. At the time of that removal he was too 
 young to have read the writings of Tannahill, 
 Motherwell, Alex. Wilson, and John Wilson — 
 better known as Christopher North, — or the nu- 
 merous less illustrious poets of that remarkably 
 poetic town ; and also too young to have become 
 acquainted with, and been capable of appreciating, 
 the scenery made classic by their walks, musings, 
 and poems. The only part of the scenery around 
 Paisley which had been painted in unfading poetic 
 colouring on his youthful mind, was that stretching 
 for two or three miles along the course of the 
 Glasgow and Paisley Canal, near to which he 
 resided ; and the impressions which he then re- 
 ceived of that locality he has faithfully and 
 felicitously expressed in " Alfred Hagart's House- 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 hold." It was during a short sojourn, in after 
 years, at the neighbouring village of Williams- 
 burgh, that he began to ramble among 
 
 " Gleniffer's bonny woods and braes." 
 
 It would certainly be wrong to say that the last 
 mentioned work, or, indeed, that any of Mr. 
 Smith's works, is autobiographical ; yet in several 
 of them, and especially in it, there is a great deal 
 of the author's personal history, contemplated 
 under a poetic atmosphere, wrought up, as no 
 one even slightly acquainted with him and his 
 family can fail to perceive. The original of almost 
 every character in that novel is easily enough 
 discoverable within the circle of his relatives and 
 friends. In some instances, indeed, the likeness is 
 closer than is commendable in fictitious writing ; 
 but there is one character in that tale, the deline- 
 ation of which could not offend the sensitiveness 
 of any one, while it must charm every reader, 
 and for the execution of which the writer deserves 
 highest praise. It is that of little " Katy Hagart." 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 In sketching that character Mr. Smith was in- 
 dulging one of the most hallowed recollections of 
 his early days in Paisley, and of an event which he 
 was often wont to refer to, but never without deep 
 emotion. It was to him especially, but also to all 
 connected with him, an ever sadly memorable 
 event. It happened that he fell dangerously ill 
 of fever when a boy, and for a short time his life 
 was despaired of. At length, however, he slowly 
 recovered, though at the cost of being slightly 
 marred in appearance for life, as, through weak- 
 ening or contraction of the nerves of one eye under 
 the pow T er of the disease, it retained ever after 
 a squint. In times of vigorous health this defect, 
 though visible, was not great; but on occasion of 
 any temporary indisposition, it became invariably 
 increased, and so gave indication to his friends of 
 his state of health. His constitution was also for a 
 number of years, in fact, until he became publicly 
 known, enfeebled by this fever. He was rendered 
 peculiarly liable to take cold, which always induced 
 a short, unpleasant, barking cough — a yearly com- 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. n 
 
 plaint, which caused him and his family frequent 
 concern. But worse than this befell : — 
 
 " While yet a child 
 He had a playmate in his summer sports, — 
 Inseparable they were as sun and shade " — 
 
 a sister, some two years or so younger than him- 
 self, who was also stricken down by the fever, and 
 who died of it before he had fully recovered, so 
 that he saw her no more, and 
 
 " For years his heart was darkened like a grave 
 By a sepulchral yew. " 
 
 Her death made a very deep and solemn im- 
 pression upon his young spirit, and awakened 
 within him his religious instincts, and also his 
 poetic faculities. The memory of her fair young 
 form, and life, and early death, remained fresh 
 through after-years on his sensitive heart, and 
 became ever increasingly surrounded with a glow- 
 ing atmosphere of poetic radiance. Her death 
 refined and enriched his being. It was to him 
 
12 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 so far gain. She became to him henceforth a 
 companion angel — an unseen spiritual presence 
 always near him. While still quite a young lad, 
 therefore, he read often, with much melancholy 
 fondness and tender emotion, Leigh Hunt's essay 
 on " Deaths of Little Children," and Longfellow's 
 " Footsteps of Angels." I have frequently heard 
 him, with his wondrously impressive intonation 
 of voice, quote especially the following words of 
 Hunt — " Death arrested her with his kindly harsh- 
 ness, and blessed her into an eternal image of 
 youth and innocence." . 
 
 But another important incident connected with 
 his education happened during his convalescence 
 at this time. He had never as yet read a book 
 through, but his mother one day put into his still 
 feeble hands "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress," which 
 entirely captivated his mind, excited his imagina- 
 tion, and sent his thoughts wandering through 
 dream-land to an extent which must rather have 
 retarded than promoted his recovery to perfect 
 health. The reader of " A Boy's Poem " will find 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 13 
 
 there a reference to this fact of his history also, in 
 the passage beginning — 
 
 " In those dark days I was surprised with joy — 
 The deepest I have found upon the earth. 
 One night, when my weak limbs were drawing strength 
 From meats and drinks, and long delicious sleep, 
 I raised a book to kill the tedious hours — 
 The glorious dreamer's," etc. 
 
 These two incidents made him at once poetical in 
 feeling and imaginative thought. The Highland 
 servant girl too of "Alfred Hagart's Household," 
 is not altogether a myth. The original of that 
 character I have several times heard him speak 
 of as either domesticated, or at least a frequent 
 visitor, at his own home in Paisley, and her weird 
 stories had also a considerable influence in stimu- 
 lating his naturally poetic mind. But while he was 
 thus under the power of these three teachers — 
 death, Bunyan, and the narrator of Ossianic 
 legends — the boy was removed from Paisley to 
 Glasgow. 
 
 After the family had settled in Glasgow, 
 
14 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Alexander was sent to prosecute his education at 
 a school in John Street, which was conducted by 
 Mr. Niel Livingstone, who ultimately became a 
 minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and still 
 labours with acceptance as pastor of the church 
 connected with that denomination in the parish 
 of Stair in Ayrshire. His love of learning, the 
 readiness with which he acquired it, together with 
 his seriousness of spirit and thoughtfulness of dis- 
 position, induced his parents to entertain the desire 
 of educating him for the Christian ministry in 
 connexion with the Secession Church ; and at this 
 time that was deemed by himself the most desir- 
 able of all occupations. The necessities of the 
 family, however, required that he should soon 
 begin to do something towards his own support : 
 and consequently, though the purpose was not at 
 once wholly abandoned, he meantime left school, 
 when he had received only a meagre education, 
 being an entire stranger to the classics, only very 
 partially acquainted with English grammar, and 
 poorly versed in geography ; in short, he could 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 15 
 
 read well, write well, and cast up ordinary 
 accounts tolerably well. That was the whole 
 amount of his school education.* Mr. Smith, 
 
 * It is true that another account has been given of this matter. 
 In Good Words of March 1867, appeared the following: "It 
 is common to speak of such men who have not had the advantage 
 of a University training, as more or less wonderful samples of self 
 education, and Smith has in this way been described as ' self- 
 taught.' In the sense of which it is true of every man of any force 
 and originality, he was self-taught. But it would be a great 
 mistake to forget that he had received the benefit of that wise 
 provision which Scotland has for centuries made for the education 
 of her children. Smith's early education embraced a good know- 
 ledge of English, arithmetic, and geography ; some history and' the 
 elements of mathematics and Latin. A youth so furnished with 
 the capacity and will to carry on his education by the study of 
 the best works in literature, need not, perhaps, form any subject 
 of condescending wonder, when it is found that he can write good 
 poetry and prose, and even prove himself in the kingdom of letters 
 the peer of professors and senior wranglers." But there is a very 
 palpable vein of exaggeration running through the whole passage 
 regarding Smith's early advantages, from which this extract is 
 taken. That "his early education embraced a good knowledge " 
 of all the above branches is not correct. I speak what I know, 
 and confidently affirm that, if ever he acquired a good knowledge, 
 or any knowledge, of mathematics, it was after he went to Edin- 
 burgh as secretary of the University. Certainly mathematics 
 
1 6 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 therefore, was not only a truly self-taught man, but 
 he was so with merely the very ordinary school 
 education usually given to a working man's son 
 thirty years ago, to begin with. To state the plain 
 truth in this matter is only to ascribe the more, 
 and the due amount of honour to his memory, 
 while it renders the lesson of his life all the more 
 encouraging and stimulative to the youth of that 
 class to which he belonged. Thus equipped then, 
 when he was under twelve years of age — a period 
 of life when it really was not possible to have 
 acquired all the branches of education ascribed 
 to him by some — the event happened which he 
 has expressed in the following lines — 
 
 " So on a summer morning I was led 
 Into a square of warehouses, and left 
 'Mong faces merciless as engine wheels." 
 
 His object now was to learn his father's occupation, 
 
 never formed any part of his early education, nor did a good 
 knowledge of the elements of Latin ; for what he did learn of the 
 rudiments of that language was under my tuition, several years 
 after he had left school. 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 17 
 
 which at that time was a lucrative one to at least 
 a few talented individuals. He had formed no 
 companionships previously at school, nor, while 
 always frank and social with those near his own 
 age among whom he toiled, did he form any real 
 companionship among them for two or three years ; 
 so that in the great city, 
 
 " ' Mid the eternal hum, the boy clomb up 
 Into a shy and solitary youth, 
 With strange joys and strange sorrows.''' 
 
 He had already read much for his years, and his 
 mornings and evenings were still devoted to read- 
 ing. " Books were his chiefest friends." The works 
 of the English poets, particularly of Byron and 
 Wordsworth, at this time delighted him most, for 
 he had not yet formed acquaintance with Shelley, 
 Keats, and Tennyson, who afterwards became his 
 chief teachers. Next to poetry, he was addicted 
 to the reading of history, travels, and novels. In 
 novel reading, however, his natural literary taste 
 made him eclectic. From his earliest days, Scott 
 was his favourite in this department of literature, 
 
 C 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 and after Scott came Cooper. Several of the 
 American tales of the latter, which he read at a 
 very early age, made a deep impression on his 
 imagination, and constrained him to seek fuller 
 knowledge of the scenery, history, and literature of 
 that country. Among the first books of travels 
 which he consequently read was Stephens' travels 
 in South America ; and it, together with Cooper's 
 novels, so excited his mind, that the first poem of 
 any length which he composed was an American 
 tale of love and war, entitled " Black Eagle," from 
 the name of the hero of the piece, who was an 
 Indian warrior. This poem was written rapidly 
 about his sixteenth year, but was soon afterwards 
 destroyed, being judged by his ripening genius 
 unworthy of preservation. But it was by no means 
 his first poetic effort. From earliest boyhood " his 
 own heart made him a poet," and in school days 
 he often indulged in writing verses. 
 
 The warehouse in which he was first employed 
 was that of Alexander Buchanan & Co., on the 
 right hand of Queen Court, Queen Street. His 
 
BIRTH AXD BOYHOOD. j 9 
 
 occupation here consisted in tracing the lines of 
 sewed muslin designs with lithographic ink ; and 
 as this process of " penning," as it is technically 
 called, is wholly mechanical, though the first step 
 towards designing, his mind had freedom to pursue 
 its poetic fancies. It was, therefore, so far, an 
 advantageous occupation for him, and he prized it 
 on that account. The muses were with him all 
 day at his work, and he encouraged and gave 
 attentive ear to their w r hisperings. The piece of 
 paper used under the hand of the penner, to 
 prevent contact w r ith the prepared surface of the 
 design, was often by night filled with hasty 
 scribblings, and w r as then rolled up and deposited 
 in his vest pocket. These scribblings were polished 
 and expanded at home before the young poet 
 retired to bed, or in the still hours of early 
 morning. 
 
 " Oft a fine thought would flush his face divine, 
 
 As he had quaffed a cup of golden wine 
 
 Which deifies the drinker : oft his face 
 
 Gleamed like a spirit's in that shady place, 
 
 While he saw smiling upward from the scroll 
 
 The image of the thought within his soul." 
 
 C 2 
 
20 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Then, moved by boyish ecstatic impulse, he would 
 leap from his seat, seize its cushion in both hands, 
 and bring it down with a sudden thwack upon the 
 shoulders of his unsuspecting youthful neighbour, 
 when a brief frolicsome encounter ensued. For 
 these raptures, and other little eccentricities, his 
 shopmates playfully dubbed him with the title of 
 " Daft Sandie." He was at this time a long-limbed 
 lad, with large unfilled bones, rather ungainly in 
 appearance and careless in dress ; sallow in com- 
 plexion, and of a somewhat sad expression of 
 countenance, from precocious thoughtfulness, and 
 of a diffident disposition. In the evening he might 
 be seen walking homewards alone, the thumb of 
 each hand generally thrust into his vest pocket, his 
 head stooping forward till it nearly rested on his 
 breast, and trudging with heavy gait and long 
 strides like one accustomed too early to plod over 
 soft ploughed land. His appearance then was, con- 
 sequently, very unlike what it became in after years, 
 and especially as he neared middle life, and indeed 
 was by no means prepossessing. 
 
BIRTH AXD BOYHOOD. 21 
 
 It was at this time, however, when about thirteen 
 or fourteen years of age, that he first felt the tender 
 passion of love, an event to which he refers in the 
 following lines — 
 
 " Love oped the dusty volume of my life, 
 And wrote, with his own hot and hurrying hand, 
 A chapter in fierce splendours. Then it was 
 I built an altar, raised a flame to love, 
 And a strong whirlwind blew the altar down, 
 And strewed its sparks in darkness." 
 
 The object of this his first and boyish affection, 
 was a tall and graceful dark-haired and dark-eyed 
 maiden, several years his senior to appearance, 
 who was employed in the same warehouse, and 
 whom he has celebrated in " A Boy's Poem," and 
 also refers to in "A Life Drama" thus — 
 
 " One, a queenly maiden fair, 
 Sweepeth past me with an air : 
 Kings might kneel beneath her stare ; 
 Round her heart, a rose-bud free. 
 Reeled I. like a drunken bee, 
 Alas ! it would not ope to me." 
 
 His affection for this damsel was a transitory one. 
 
22 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 He was speedily cured of it by discovering that she 
 was affianced to another warehouse lad of maturer 
 age, and henceforth she became only one of the 
 "fair shapes which pace the garden of his memory." 
 It was merely for poetic uses, and not because of 
 any serious wound inflicted on his heart, that he 
 cherished a fond remembrance of her in after years. 
 I have a vivid recollection of seeing him almost 
 daily about this time ; but it was some two years 
 after, when he was designer in another house, that 
 I became personally acquainted with him. When, 
 towards the close of 1846, our friendship really 
 commenced, he was employed in Messrs. John 
 Robertson & Sons', at the corner of Exchange 
 Square, Queen Street, near 
 
 ' ' Where merchants congregate, 
 And where the mighty war-horse snorts in bronze." 
 
 He has himself introduced his readers into the 
 scene of his daily toils at this time, and favoured 
 them with an imaginary conversation conducted by 
 his fellow-workers, in the passage beginning at 
 page 8 of " City Poems." Some of those among 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 23 
 
 whom he wrought were young men of more than 
 ordinary talent and culture. The verses of one 
 occasionally graced the poet's corner of the city 
 newspapers ; another wrote and published a drama, 
 the scene of which was laid in the Noachian age ; 
 while a third was a painter in water colours of very 
 considerable ability. They all, however, regarded 
 Sandie — as they familiarly named him — as their 
 superior in genius and literary attainments though 
 he was the youngest of all. 
 
 One of the chief excellencies of Smith's genius 
 consists in his graphic portraiture of persons, and 
 curt but clear delineation of character. Few poets 
 have equalled him in sketching off a character in 
 one short sentence. His first efforts at full length 
 portraiture were not very successful, but his power 
 in this grew, and still was growing rapidly w r hen 
 he died. The character of Bertha in " Edwin of 
 Deira" is well sustained, and far surpasses any- 
 thing of the same kind which he had previously done ; 
 but even that is excelled by his after effort in the 
 character of Miss Catherine Macquarrie in " Alfred 
 
24 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Hagart's Household." That is a most sym- 
 metrical, natural, and noble character. It aston- 
 ished all his friends, and its execution must have 
 been contemplated by himself with much laudable 
 pride ; for he was early sensible of his ability of 
 accomplishment falling short of his ambition in 
 dramatic delineation. In miniature painting, how- 
 ever, he was an adept from his youth. His 
 earliest works abound with inimitable miniatures, 
 and he has seldom manifested this talent more 
 happily than in describing his shopmates. Thus :— 
 
 ' ' He at my right hand ever dwelt alone ; 
 A moat of dulness fenced him from the world. 
 My left-hand neighbour was all flame and air — 
 A restless spirit, veering like the wind ; 
 And what a lover ! what an amorous heart ! 
 In the pure fire and fervency of love, 
 Leander, like the image of a star 
 Within the thrilling sea, was scarce his match. 
 His love for each new hero of a week 
 No Hellespont could cool. Among the rest 
 Sat one with visage red with sun and wind, 
 As the last hip upon the frosted brier, 
 When the blithe huntsman snuffs the hoary morn. 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 ~D 
 
 " And there was one 
 
 Who strove most valiantly to be a man ; 
 
 Who smoked, and still got sick, drank hard, and woke 
 
 Each morn with headache ; his poor timorous voice 
 
 Trembled beneath the burden of the oaths 
 
 His bold heart made it bear. 
 
 * * * * •* 
 
 ' ' Harry's laughing face 
 
 Filled with his mischievous and merry eyes." 
 
 These are all true life-pictures which his early 
 friends cannot fail to identify. 
 
 Mr. Smith gave good promise of excelling in the 
 profession of designer, had he fully devoted himself 
 to it, but he never did so. He could not regard it 
 as the profession of his life. His heart was too 
 strongly inclined towards literature and poetry, 
 and, consequently, he did not rise to the first rank 
 as a designer. Very soon after entering a ware- 
 house he ceased also to entertain the desire and 
 prospect of becoming a preacher of the gospel. 
 His own reasons for this shall be given anon in 
 his own words. For several years he had, there- 
 fore, no definite purpose of life-work before him. 
 His growing ambition was to be a true poet, but 
 
26 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 he was, at the same time, convinced that some 
 other occupation required to be pursued in order to 
 gain a steady livelihood — hence the dictum — 
 
 "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 
 Are of imagination all compact," 
 
 was not verified in his case. Meantime he was 
 content to toil on and wait his day, doing all the 
 while his best to serve his employers during ware- 
 house hours ; and the fact that he was retained in 
 the service of Messrs. Robertson for six or seven 
 years, and then left it and the trade of designer 
 simultaneously, and of his own accord, proves that 
 he was a faithful and valued workman. During all 
 these years of industrious toil, he was morning and 
 night educating himself by reading, and cultivating 
 his poetic talent by writing. He had become a 
 most voluminous reader of all kinds of literature. 
 His most intimate friends wondered how, with so 
 little time at his command, he could amass such 
 a knowledge of books as he possessed. He was 
 endowed, however, with a most tenacious and 
 ready memory. By his seventeenth year he knew 
 
BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 27 
 
 better than most persons almost all the English 
 poets from the times of Chaucer. But Keats and 
 Tennyson were now his favourites. 
 
 It was his custom about this time, to confine his 
 reading and study for a period principally to one 
 author, till he had mastered him, and then devote 
 himself similarly to another. Thus, for a consider- 
 able time, he read all he could lay his hands on of 
 the works of Byron, with critiques on these, or what- 
 ever had been written by others relating to the life 
 and writings of that extraordinary genius. Shelley 
 next for a while engaged his leisure hours ; then 
 Coleridge, or Wordsworth, or Keats, Tennyson, 
 Campbell, Thomson, Burns, Shakespeare, Spenser, 
 Chaucer, had each a season of study given specially 
 to him. And one of less wide fame than either of 
 these, who became for a time a very great favourite, 
 must not be forgot— Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law 
 rhymer, His reading in other departments of 
 literature, however, was of the most desultory and 
 fortuitous nature, He had then a great partiality 
 for editions of the poets in small volumes, 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 seemingly because he could carry them in his 
 pocket to read in his rambles, or consult and re- 
 fresh his memory with at any spare moment. In- 
 deed, he was never to be found without some 
 favourite book on his person. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 €i)t gU&ts'om'an &otitty. 
 
 '• "Where once we held debate, a band 
 
 Of youthful friends, on mind and art, 
 And labour, and the changing mart, 
 And all the framework of the land." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 TN the year 1846, a few young men, nearly all 
 of whom were employed in warehouses 
 formed themselves into a Literary Society for 
 essay-writing and debate. This club met every 
 Saturday evening ; and after it had been a few 
 weeks in existence, Smith was introduced to its 
 membership by " bright-eyed Harry," and I thus 
 became more fully acquainted with him than I 
 had been previously. Of this society he was, for 
 the following seven years, a regular attender and 
 the greatest ornament. Each member w r as neces- 
 sitated by the rules to read in rotation an essay 
 
30 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 of his own composition, and it soon came to his 
 turn to occupy the desk. The subject of his pre- 
 lections I have forgot ; but I have a vivid 
 recollection of the introduction, and also of the 
 general impression made by the whole upon the 
 members. The introduction was an elaborated 
 picture, glowing with rich colouring, of Old Father 
 Time sitting meditatively among the ruins of an 
 old feudal pile by moonlight, with the roll of 
 earth's history, partly unfolded, in his hand. The 
 essay from its beginning took the members by 
 surprise, and they listened unto the close with fixed 
 silence and increasing admiration. When the 
 essayist sat down, no one felt disposed to speak. 
 Criticism was disarmed. At length only the most 
 fervent eulogies were expressed. The appearing 
 of " A Life Drama" did not make a more profound 
 sensation on the public than the reading of his 
 first essay did on the society that night. He 
 had been previously almost silent as a member, 
 but they had now discovered his ability, and he 
 was tacitly by all placed first in membership. He 
 
THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 31 
 
 eave a ereat stimulus to the club. Till then the 
 debates seemed generally most interesting, and 
 the society was in danger of becoming an arena of 
 wranglers ; but from that night the debates were 
 doomed to a second place. The ablest members' 
 hearts were made to glow with unwonted warmth 
 in laudable emulation, and the writing of essays 
 became henceforth a serious, earnest, and arduous 
 affair. After one or two abortive attempts, 
 several, made conscious of being too far distanced, 
 withdrew from membership ; but their places were 
 soon filled by others of superior ability. The 
 society continued to be characterised by great 
 enthusiasm till the end of winter, and the most 
 literary of the members having found it a most 
 genial and profitable scene of intercourse, proposed 
 to continue in session during the summer months 
 also ; but the less aspiring objected to this, and 
 proposed an adjournment till the beginning of 
 next winter, and these carried the vote. Smith 
 and other three agreed among themselves, how- 
 ever, to meet every alternate Saturday evening 
 
 \ 
 
32 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 in a coffee-house. There a few others joined them 
 during the summer, and by the commencement 
 of the following winter, there were about twenty 
 regular attenders. This club was now designated 
 " The Addisonian Literary Society." Its regular 
 place of meeting, during the greater part of its 
 history, was in Mons. Simeon's class-room, at the 
 corner of Frederick Street, in George Square. It 
 was among the elite of its members that Smith 
 found his inmost and almost sole circle of friend- 
 ship, till he was brought into public notice by the 
 Rev. Geo. Gilfillan. And although none of them 
 possessed equal genius, or were so extensively 
 read in general literature as he, several of them 
 were young men of sufficient culture and mental 
 endowment to constitute them not only worthy 
 friends of his youth, but also acquaintances by 
 whose intercourse he might and did profit. 
 One, for example, though employed as an en- 
 graver, and having no thought of aspiring to 
 literary fame, possessed a tropical exuberance of 
 imagination, which Smith ever admired, and 
 
THE ADDISOXIAX SOCIETY. 33 
 
 which even surpassed his own, although it was 
 less chaste and restrained. His essays were bur- 
 dened with imagery, often, indeed, of the wildest, 
 but always of the most original kind. Even his 
 common conversation sparkled with metaphoric 
 gems. The " Life Drama" is indebted to him for 
 some of its many fine figures. I have a lively 
 remembrance of sitting with him and Smith one 
 night reading, with many pauses and interfacings 
 of racy comment, and no little wild laughter, 
 Gilfillan's " Bards of the Bible," as it came fresh 
 from the press. Other two members of the club 
 were students in the University, who now occupy 
 pulpits of different denominations. Another was 
 a diligent student of physical science, who while 
 occupying one of the very humblest posts of un- 
 skilled labour, was well known in the centre of 
 the city as "the man with the book," from never 
 being seen on even its busiest streets but threading 
 his way with eyes fixed on the open pages of 
 some volume ; and thus fitted himself for reading 
 papers with credit before the Geological Society 
 
 D 
 
34 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 of Glasgow, of which he was an honoured member, 
 and, finally, by plodding mental industry rose to 
 secure a place on the staff of the Government 
 Survey. 
 
 And there was one of most versatile genius 
 and unbounded wit and comicality — " a fellow 
 of infinite jest" — who unfortunately, failed to ful- 
 fill the promise of his youth, and when last heard 
 of by his early friends, by means of a letter he 
 addressed from America to Smith in Edinburgh, 
 described himself as having lived a curiously 
 chequered life in the New World ; — at one time 
 sailing with the bargemen on the Mississippi ; 
 anon starring on the stage ; next smoking with 
 members of Congress ; then bivouacking with 
 wandering gipsies ; soon after drinking champagne 
 with the President of the States ; and finally, 
 having undertaken the editorship of an influential 
 newspaper, solicited his old fellow-Addisonian, 
 now secretary of Edinburgh University, to be- 
 come his correspondent for Scotland. Another, a 
 voracious reader and devoted student of natural 
 
THE ADDISOXIAX SOCIETY. 35 
 
 philosophy, possessed two faculties in a degree 
 that I have never known equalled in any other 
 person — retentiveness of memory, and the sense 
 of poetic taste. The latter faculty he seemed to 
 possess with the quickness and keenness of an 
 exquisite sense of touch, while his memory was 
 so tenacious that I have heard him, shortly after 
 having read two pages of poetry only once, repeat 
 the whole almost perfectly. His essays were 
 models of graceful diction. His powers of original 
 thought and of ratiocination, however, were not 
 equally great. The stores of other men, which 
 lay in his mind, appeared to induce personal in- 
 activity, and prevent the invigorating exercise of 
 his own powers of cogitation ; for he often played 
 the part of the plagiarist. He was withal a 
 most eccentric genius, wearing at midsummer a 
 top coat, close buttoned to the chin, and carrying 
 a small copy of Shelley's poems in the breast 
 pocket ; having his shirt collar rolled over in the 
 style of Byron ; then changing it for a season 
 after the manner of Keats, his next favourite bard. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Slender in form and solitary in life, no one 
 knew his relations, and he was never heard to 
 speak of them. He seemed to have no senior 
 friends. He was alone in the great city, ever 
 copying the ways of men of literary eminence. 
 Having read, as he said, of Dr. Johnson drinking 
 sixteen cups of tea at a sitting ; he without ascer- 
 taining the size of the cup, would, to the annoy- 
 ance of his landlady, try to do so also, and so 
 injured his stomach that he was confined to his 
 room for two or three days. At length he became 
 a Unitarian preacher, and went to England, taking 
 with him a wife who doubtless soon cured him 
 of his vagaries, and set reasonable limits to his 
 tea drinking. Smith was wont to show great 
 deference to his literary taste and judgment, and 
 honoured him among the first to whom he 
 privately submitted his poetry, and as one of the 
 very few whom he confidentially consulted regard- 
 ing sending his MS., to the Rev. George Gilfillan. 
 It was to this member of the club also that Smith 
 was first and chiefly indebted for his knowledge of 
 
THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 37 
 
 the names of our Scottish wild flowers, and the 
 little acquaintance with botany which he acquired ; 
 and together with him he also received, for a 
 short time, from another Addisonian, lessons in 
 the rudiments of the Latin language ; but neither 
 of the two ever prosecuted that study to any pro- 
 fitable extent. Smith visited this early friend 
 and spent a day with him, on the occasion of his 
 first trip to England after the publication of " A 
 Life Drama." He may be regarded as the Wat 
 of " Horton " — 
 
 u Poor Wat ! once proud as chanticleer that struts 
 Among his dames ; faint challenged, claps his wings 
 And crows defiance to the distant farms — 
 Now meekly sits beneath a shrewish voice, 
 With children round his knee.*' 
 
 Till his death Smith retained a tender regard 
 for him and the other members of the Addisonian 
 Society. 
 
 The last time I had the pleasure of seeing him 
 in Edinburgh, after inquiring, as he never failed 
 to do, regarding several of them, he said, — "Well, 
 
38 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 that society did us both a vast amount of good ; 
 for myself, I know I derived much benefit from it. 
 Through its means I was first stimulated to com- 
 position, and had my latent powers roused to 
 action." When it was his night to read an essay 
 there was always a full meeting of the members, 
 and as each had the liberty of bringing a friend 
 with him, there were generally a few strangers 
 also present. Never but once, as far as I remem- 
 ber, did he fail on these occasions to produce a 
 carefully thought out and well composed paper. 
 The minute book of the society, which is still 
 carefully preserved by its last secretary, shows the 
 following to be the subjects on which he wrote: 
 " Intellect," " on Man," " the claims of History on 
 Man," " on Religious Poetry," " Earnestness," " on 
 Progress," " Addison," characterised in the minutes 
 as " beautiful remarks " on that writer ; " Thoughts 
 anent Life," commended for its composition, but 
 condemned by the members for the gloomy and 
 desponding view the essayist took of our present 
 state of civilisation ; " Thoughts on Napoleon," 
 
THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 39 
 
 "Thoughts on a Friend," "John Keats," "Ebenezer 
 Elliott," " Burns as a National Poet." This, his last 
 essay in the society, was read on November 13, 
 1852, and was regarded as "not only the best and 
 most finished of all Mr. Smith's productions, but 
 also as the best essay ever read in the society." 
 It appeared almost verbatim shortly afterwards 
 in the short lived Glasgow Miscellany, of which 
 Smith was editor ; and a considerable amount of 
 it was made available in the exquisite life of 
 Burns, which he prefixed to the edition of that 
 poet's works which he edited in 1865. 
 
 The fame which Smith at length suddenly 
 acquired as a poet, by the pages of the Eclectic 
 and Critic in 185 1, and 1852 proved indirectly 
 the chief cause of the death of the Addisonian 
 Society. Although it had now served, for him 
 and his most intimate friends, the purpose for 
 which they had joined it, he still loved it as a place 
 of pleasant intercourse, and desired to remain 
 connected with it ; but several of the members 
 now treated him and spoke to him with such un- 
 
4 o ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 wonted tokens of deference, on account of his rising 
 fame, and made such allusions to his poetry as 
 galled his manly spirit. They often brought also 
 young students and silly literary aspirants to the 
 club, who sat and so stared at the poet that the 
 place became unendurable, and he consequently 
 frequently failed to be present. With a few others 
 he endeavoured to save the society by reconsti- 
 tuting it from a limited selection of the oldest 
 members, and changing the place of meeting ; 
 but, after all, a few hilarious students from the 
 country got in, and so changed the character of 
 the club that Smith and his chief friends with- 
 drew altogether, and it soon became defunct from 
 lack of earnestness of purpose and sobriety of 
 spirit. It had, however, served a good end. There 
 have been clubs in the city of greater pretensions, 
 which have had their praises sounded by eminent 
 men ; but it may be questioned if any of them 
 existed to better purpose than the Addisonian. 
 It produced Alexander Smith. He himself, on 
 the day on which it was arranged that he should 
 
THE ADDISONIAN SOCIETY. 41 
 
 appear as a talc-writer in Good Words, confessed 
 his indebtedness to it ; and if the public have in 
 any measure benefited by his writings, they have 
 indirectly at least profited in part by this club. 
 Some of the passages and ornaments of his poems, 
 too, were at least originally suggested to his mind 
 by intercourse with its members. These tw T o lines, 
 for example, describing the earth and heavens as 
 
 1 ' A theatre magnificently lit 
 For sorry acting, undeserved applause," 
 
 occur in an essay read before the society, and 
 still preserved by one of the members, w 7 ho had 
 no idea he was writing poetry. I have also a vivid 
 recollection of several times reading a letter 
 addressed to Mr. Smith by an Addisonian in which 
 — describing a melancholy drive he had in a gig, 
 in a gloomy state of mind, from a railway station 
 in Lanarkshire, on a dark wet night, — the original 
 of the following graphic passage of " A Boy's 
 Poem " occurred : — 
 
 " I paused upon a drear bewildered road, 
 Lined with dark trees, or ghosts, which only seemed 
 
42 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 A darker gloom in gloom, and far away 
 
 A glare went up as of a sunken fire. 
 
 * This is the land of death, and that is hell.' 
 
 I cried, as I went on toward the glare : 
 
 I climbed a bank of gloom, and here I saw 
 
 A burning sea upon a burning shore — 
 
 A lone man sitting black against the light ; 
 
 The long black shadow stretching o'er the sands, 
 
 Long as earth's sunset shades." 
 
 The fine passage too in " A Life Drama," begin- 
 ning — " My friend, a poet must ere long arise ; " is 
 only the more melodious utterance of the im- 
 passioned words of a brother Addisonian, ex- 
 pressed in a colloquy on poets, carried on while a 
 few of us were walking in the western outskirts of 
 the city. 
 
 It is true that Smith was not associated or 
 connected in his youth with any of the recognised 
 or distinguished literary men of Glasgow ; * still, 
 
 * To say as a writer in Good Words, March, 1867, has done, 
 in treating of his early education — " Smith had the advantage in 
 Glasgow of intimate intercourse with men of cultivated literary and 
 poetic powers. Among these were the late Professor Nicholl, Mr. 
 J. Hedderwick, and Mr. Hugh Macdonald," is not a little mislead- 
 
THE ADDIS OXI AX SOCIETY. 43 
 
 as this chapter may serve to show, he was not 
 entirely isolated from genial and profitable society. 
 Indeed, among the members of the Addisonian 
 club, he may have enjoyed society more fitting his 
 own years, educational acquirements, and mental 
 growth, than he would then have done among men 
 of more advanced culture and ripened experience. 
 It is questionable if he would have found among 
 more natured minds, a more inspiring and bracing 
 sphere of self discipline in his earliest years than 
 he did here. By the time he became known to the 
 world, however, he had indeed outgrown all his 
 Glasgow associates. The period had then arrived 
 when the necessities of his genius and whole 
 mental nature, required that he should be severed 
 from these, and mix with men of larger growth 
 as his friends and equals, And it was well for him 
 that, when the ripeness of the occasion came, he so 
 
 ing ; for the truth is, he did not know one of these individuals per- 
 sonally till after George Gilfillan brought him into public notice, as 
 shall be shown in the sequel of this narrative. 
 
44 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 readily found hands outstretched to welcome him 
 within the desiderated sphere. His removal to 
 Edinburgh, " residence in which is an education in 
 itself/' as he has said, was well-timed, as it was 
 very needful, and proved most advantageous. The 
 truth is, no poet or literary man that has arisen 
 from the ranks of the common people, has been 
 more kindly dealt with in Providence, especially 
 in the first stages of his career, than Alexander 
 Smith. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 %\)t CIptie. 
 
 " Oil I remember, and will ne'er forget 
 
 Our meeting spots, our chosen sacred hours, 
 Our burning words that uttered all the soul, 
 Our faces beaming with unearthly loves, 
 Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope 
 Exulting, heart embracing heart entire." 
 
 Pollock. 
 
 T T has been asserted that Smith, previous to the 
 publication of his first volume of poems, was 
 almost wholly indebted to books for his knowledge 
 of rural scenery, and the fact that he has notwith- 
 standing given many admirable descriptions of 
 such scenery, has been adduced as a proof of his 
 eminent genius. This, how r ever, is a mistake, 
 which has perhaps originated in understanding 
 too literally such lines as — 
 
 " For years and years continually were mine — 
 The long dull roar of traffic, and at night 
 The mighty pathos of the empty streets." 
 
46 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 The fact is, there is no attempt made by him in 
 all his works, of describing scenery merely through 
 acquaintance with books, unless it be in the pas- 
 sage of "A Life Drama," beginning — "In the 
 green lanes of Kent," or in the use of such phrases 
 as " Lincoln Fens," and these can scarcely be 
 called descriptions. And in this and subsequent 
 chapters, it will be shown that, by the time he 
 wrote his first book, he had seen and rambled 
 among more of the rich scenery of Scotland than 
 most of his countrymen have ever done. 
 
 But, meantime, let us return to 1846, in order 
 to follow another thread of his life story from that 
 date. 
 
 A few weeks after Smith's admission into the 
 Addisonian Society, our intercourse commenced, 
 which soon ripened into more than acquaintance- 
 ship. On the evening of the last Saturday in 
 October of that year, while passing along Argyle 
 Street, purposing to get out of the city in quest of 
 solitude, he suddenly accosted me, and proposed 
 a walk previous to the assembling of our club. 
 
THE CLYDE. 47 
 
 And as he had heard of my intention to enter 
 college on the following Monday, we were speedily 
 engaged in conversation on our respective hopes 
 and aims in life. Mine were so far fixed, and 
 interested him ; but his w r ere dim and uncertain. 
 As he then informed me, however, he had till very 
 recently ardently entertained a similar prospect 
 to that which I was about to prosecute. Our 
 conversation thus become close and confidential, 
 as walking on, we left the city behind us, and 
 journeyed several miles along the Cathcart Road, 
 aided by the light of the Hutchiesontown furnaces. 
 At length we returned to our club, no longer 
 acquaintances but friends, and under a mutual 
 promise to meet again on the afternoon of that 
 day week. That was to me, and I hope in some 
 measure also to him, a fortunate though accidental 
 meeting. I had then no idea of the character and 
 calibre of the youth I had ignorantly endeavoured 
 o shun. The treasure of friendship, and the profit 
 which in various ways I derived for years from that 
 casual meeting, cannot be told nor estimated. 
 
48 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 11 An opulent soul 
 Dropt in my path like a great cup of gold, 
 All rich and rare with stories of the gods." 
 
 And now 
 
 " It is the proudest memory of my youth 
 That I was his familiar and beloved." 
 
 During the whole of the winter, we spent every 
 Saturday afternoon together, and very rarely was 
 there a third person present. Then as summer 
 drew on, and the college had closed for the 
 session, we met almost every night as he came 
 out of the warehouse. This practice we con- 
 tinued for more than six years. Talking much 
 on many themes, we frequently conversed of per- 
 sonal matters ; rehearsed each other's history, 
 forecast our hopes, and told the secrets of the 
 soul, as far as one may to his fellow-mortal, and 
 as one can only do to the closest and sincerest 
 friend in the spring of unsophisticated youth. 
 Each summer evening when the sky was clear, 
 we walked from eight till ten o'clock. Our 
 
THE CLYDE. 49 
 
 favourite and most frequent path being " beside 
 the river that we used to love." 
 
 " Beneath the crescent moon on autumn nights, 
 
 We paced its banks with overflowing hearts, 
 
 Discoursing long of great thought-wealthy souls, 
 
 And with what spendthrift hands they scatter wide 
 
 Their spirit- wealth, making mankind their debtors. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Or haply talked of dearer personal themes, 
 
 Blind guesses at each other's after -fate ; 
 
 Feeling our leaping hearts, we marvelled oft 
 
 How they should be unleashed, and have free course 
 
 To stretch and strain far down the coming time." 
 
 And on Saturday, when at an earlier hour than 
 on the other days of the week, 
 
 " Labour laid down his tools and went away — 
 The park was loud with games, clear laughter shrieks 
 Came from the rings of girls around the trees ; 
 The cricketers were eager at their play, 
 The stream was dotted with the swimmers' heads. 
 Gay boats flashed up and down. 
 ■* . * * # 
 
 We hurried on, 
 Through all the mirth, to where the river ran, 
 In the grey evening, 'tween the hanging woods," 
 
 of sweet Kenmuir, "with a soul-soothing murmur." 
 
 E 
 
50 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Many are the allusions to this wood in " A Life 
 Drama " and the " City Poems." It was our 
 favourite haunt during all these six years. There 
 is no walk around Glasgow equal to that of about 
 six miles, by the windings of the Clyde, to Ken- 
 muir ; and during this time we must have enjoyed 
 it at least twenty times each year — on the Satur- 
 day afternoons. The wood affords some of the 
 finest glimpses of sylvan and river scenery I have 
 ever seen. With its changing moods, no lover of 
 the beautiful can ever weary of it. The ground, 
 moreover, is thickly carpeted with the richest 
 variety of wild flowers ; and here with several of 
 these we formed our first acquaintance. Whole 
 beds of blue hyacinth fill the air with their deli- 
 cious odour. 
 
 ' ' Oh, fair the wood on summer days, 
 While a blue hyacinthine haze 
 Is dreaming round the roots !" 
 
 There, also, are beds of primrose, violet, cranes- 
 bill, speedwell, starwort, woodruff; and it is the 
 only place for many miles around the city where 
 
THE CLYDE. 51 
 
 you will find the yellow globe-flower, or " lucken 
 gowan " of the Ettrick Shepherd. This wood is 
 less than a mile above the sweetly picturesque 
 village or "clachan" of Carmyle. where the Clyde 
 flows murmuringly over a crescent-shaped weir, 
 constructed, apparently, to secure a supply of 
 water to two dusty meal mills and other works. 
 For a short distance, both below and above this 
 spot, there is very exquisite wood and water 
 scenery ; but Kenmuir Bank is the gem of this 
 part of the Clyde. It is a narrow steep, rising 
 from the river to a height of about 60 or 70 feet, 
 and so closely covered with trees that all summer 
 there is " a green gloaming in the wood,'' to use 
 one of the happy phrases of Hugh Macdonald, 
 who knew the place well, loved it much, and has 
 honoured it with one of his sketches in his " Ram- 
 bles Round Glasgow.'' At the bottom of the 
 bank, towards its east end, there is a perennial 
 spring of peculiarly pleasant water, called the 
 Marriage Well, to which there is the following 
 reference, among others, in "A Life Drama/' 
 
 E 2 
 
52 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Within yon grove of beeches is a well. 
 
 * * *• ■* * 
 
 Memories grow around it thick as flowers. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Beside that well I read the mighty Bard, 
 Who clad himself with beauty, genius, wealth ; 
 Then flung himself on his own passion-pyre 
 
 And was consumed," 
 
 which is an autobiographic fact. Frequently have 
 we sat together for hours, one on each side of the 
 spring, on long summer evenings, reading aloud 
 by turns the English poets. All Byron's minor 
 poems and greater part of " Childe Harold," 
 several plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Keats, 
 and many others did we thus read " covered with 
 secrecy and silence there." And 
 
 " Sometimes we sat whole afternoons, and watched 
 The sunset build a city frail as dream, 
 With bridges, streets of splendour, towers ; and saw 
 The fabrics crumble into rosy ruins, 
 
 And then grow grey as heath." 
 
 " Breezes are blowing in old Qiaucer's verse, 
 'Twas here we drank them ; here for hours we hung 
 O'er the fine pants and trembles of a line. 
 Oft, standing on a hill's green head, we ielt 
 
THE CLYDE. 53 
 
 Breezes of love, and joy, and melody, 
 
 Blow through us, as the winds blow through the sky ;" 
 
 for the best and our favourite place from which to 
 watch 
 
 " When the great sunset burned itself away," 
 
 was the top of this bank. The view here is truly 
 magnificent, and has been well described by 
 ■Macdonald in his rambles. Smith was still stand- 
 ing in imagination here, and painting from nature 
 — recording what he had actually seen when he 
 wrote — 
 
 " From yonder trees I've seen the western sky 
 All washed with fire, while, in the midst, the sun 
 Beat like a pulse, welling at ev"ry beat 
 A spreading wave of light/' 
 
 The photograph of that particular sunset still 
 hangs fresh in my mind, and I also retain a vivid 
 recollection of that which immediately follows the 
 above lines — 
 
 c - ' Where yonder church 
 Stands up to heaven, as if to intercede 
 For sinful hamlets scattered at its feet, 
 I saw the dreariest sight," etc. (Life Drama, pp. 51, 52.) 
 
54 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 In the second volume of " A Summer in Skye," 
 Smith has described Kenmuir, and in narrating 
 a ramble to it, records an incident that happened 
 several years before he had first visited the 
 Hebrides. It may not be out of place to repeat 
 it here, seeing he has omitted in his report one 
 of his own characteristic smart sayings on the 
 occasion. We had walked together from the city 
 along the river side as far as Dalbeth Burn, near 
 Harvey's Dyke, when we beheld a plain but tidily 
 dressed old, good-looking, matronly woman, and a 
 sprightly boy about twelve years of age, standing 
 in embarrassment, because of recent floods having 
 carried away the plank which had bridged the still 
 swollen streamlet. We assisted them over their 
 difficulty, and having received may thanks, pushed 
 on towards Carmyle and Kenmuir, leaving them 
 behind. At length, having spent some time in the 
 wood, we again reached the village on our return. 
 " But what is to do ? The children are gathered in 
 a circle, and the wives are standing at the open 
 doors. There is a performance going on. The 
 
THE CLYDE. 55 
 
 tambourine is sounding, and a tiny acrobat, with a 
 fillet round his brow, tights covered with tinsel 
 lozenges, and flesh coloured shoes, is striding 
 about on a pair of stilts, to the no small amuse- 
 ment and delight of the juveniles. He turns his 
 head," and I had no sooner said — " Tis the boy of 
 Dalbeth Burn," than Smith, laying one hand on 
 my shoulder, and pointing with the other to the 
 sylph-like form poised in the air, whispered in 
 my ear, " Be not forgetful to entertain strangers ; 
 for some" — laying emphasis on the last word — 
 "have entertained angels unawares."* But we are 
 recognised : the boy smiles and honours us with a 
 graceful salute ; — the old lady, too, gives the 
 tambourine a few special beats, and drops us one 
 of her best curtsies, and, as w r e have become " the 
 observed of all observers," we make a hasty 
 retreat. 
 
 * Smith was often very happy at a bon mot of this kind. On 
 another occasion, for example, when we were passing through the 
 village of Camlachie, a group of women and boys were assembled 
 round a milk cart, the owner of which was engaged in an angry 
 
56 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 But Smith was certainly not gifted with 
 prophetic vision when he wrote in his second 
 volume of " A Summer in Skye," regarding 
 Carmyle — "an old, quiet, sleepy place, where 
 nothing has happened for the last fifty years, and 
 where nothing will happen for fifty years to come." 
 And I suspect he had not visited the village for 
 several years, or he would not have written further — 
 " For half a century not one stone has been placed 
 upon another here;" for, on revisiting Carmyle a 
 
 altercation with a ragged little urchin ; and having a large measure 
 full of buttermilk in his hand, he dashed the whole contents 
 in his rage on the boy's face — " Eh, that's a sour doiik" said 
 Smith. And again, during one of the brief visits he paid to 
 Glasgow, after he was located in Edinburgh, being accosted on the 
 street by a member of the Addisonian Society with a — "Well, 
 have you come back for a change of air ? " " No, I have only come 
 for a change of smoke," was his quick reply. At another time, a 
 member of the same club, being engaged during one of its sittings, 
 on the opposite side of a debate from him, finished a long argument 
 rather inelegantly, by saying "that is the right stuff; " "and it is 
 stuff" retorted Smith, without rising from his seat. Such ejacu- 
 lations of spontaneous wit were frequent with him in the club. 
 Indeed, it was generally thus that he answered his opponents, for 
 he never excelled in argumentation. 
 
THE CLYDE. 57 
 
 few months after his death, I found several new 
 
 houses had been added to the village since he and 
 
 I used to pass through it, while some old ones 
 
 had undergone considerable alteration, in order to 
 
 render them more conformable to modern taste. 
 
 A railway, too, had been carried through the 
 
 district, and a station built at only a short distance 
 
 from this loveliest and loneliest village of the 
 
 Clyde. It therefore requires no seer's gift to 
 
 foretell that, long before the fifty years during 
 
 which nothing is to happen here, the Carmyle of 
 
 to-day shall have altogether passed away. The 
 
 change has already begun ; and I confess that, 
 
 while I found a considerable advantage in being- 
 
 conveyed in a few minutes by rail to Carmyle on 
 
 this occasion, it pained me to behold the station, 
 
 and especially to witness the alterations made and 
 
 making in the old-fashioned village. There was 
 
 one house, however, on which happily time had 
 
 wrought no change, and which I passed with very 
 
 peculiar feelings. This was the very humble but 
 
 always clean refreshment house, where Smith and 
 
58 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 I were wont to partake of bread and cheese and 
 porter, on our way home from Kenmuir. I felt 
 strongly inclined to enter, and sit alone for a 
 while in its large sombre room with white sanded 
 floor, that I might meditate on the past, and try 
 to realize in imagination 
 
 " The touch of a vanished hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still." 
 
 But time and other considerations forbade the 
 gratification of this melancholy longing on the 
 present occasion ; so I passed on through the 
 village to the Clyde, and turned towards Kenmuir. 
 It was nearly fifteen years since I had been here 
 before along with Mr. Smith. Indeed, often as I 
 had once frequented the place, I had seldom been 
 there but in his company, and all my associations 
 of it were consequently connected with him. 
 Therefore, as I at length entered the wooded bank, 
 and began to thread the winding footpath, there 
 came upon my spirit one of the strangest and 
 most powerful experiences of my life. All in this 
 
THE CLYDE. 59 
 
 once so familiar scene was so much the same as of 
 old. The trees had grown no greater ; there they 
 stood, at angles of the path, with their unchanged 
 features. Xo additional shrub, even, seemed to 
 be added to the tangle. The very blades of grass 
 seemed just the same blades. The old flowers 
 had not died — there they were in their wonted 
 spots. All was so startlingly familiar that I felt 
 as if I had renewed my youth ; the past was 
 restored ; the intervening years became a vanished 
 dream. At one moment I could not resist obey- 
 ing an impulse to turn round and make sure that 
 Smith was not behind me. Had I then seen his 
 form, I do not think it would have surprised 
 me much ; nor had I heard him pronounce my 
 name, would it have startled me. My imagination 
 was in that state of heat and tension in which 
 apparitions may be begotten. My progress 
 through the wood gave me a fuller understanding 
 than I had previously — a kind of realization, 
 indeed— of "the valley of the shadow of death." 
 I felt as if accompanied through "all the lonely 
 
60 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 greenery of the place " by the spirit of my 
 departed friend. Yet there was no fearfulness 
 upon my heart. I was filled with solemn enjoy- 
 ment. It was a powerful experience, which I had 
 in no measure anticipated. It came upon me 
 suddenly by the singularly-familiar look of all 
 surrounding objects linking me anew to the past ; 
 and I do not believe it could be repeated again 
 to the same degree of intensity by another visit 
 to the same scene. The feeling subsided, not 
 as it came, but gradually, as I approached the 
 end of the bank. I then sat down by the side 
 of the well, and tried to recall the sweetly-solemn 
 impression, by summoning my imagination to seat 
 the loved form as of old on the opposite side of 
 the well, but in vain. I then retraced the path 
 for a short distance, and perceived that several 
 trees had their barks sculptured with the initial 
 letters of names far more thickly than they used 
 to be. This was a clear indication that Smith's 
 poems and Macdonald's book of " Rambles," had 
 given a notoriety to the place which it did not 
 
THE CLYDE. 61 
 
 formerly possess. And this surmise was speedily 
 confirmed by entering into conversation with the 
 tenant of the land, whom I found sitting under 
 a tree at the top of the bank, as I left the wood. 
 On remarking that it used to be a very lonely 
 spot, for on often visiting it in years past I 
 scarcely ever met any person in it ; " Oh," said 
 he, "it is not so now, for within the last few 
 years it has many visitors, and especially on the 
 Sabbaths, when it has far too many." On being 
 further asked if he knew of any cause of this 
 increase of visitors, he said " No," and appeared 
 to be ignorant of Smith and Macdonald having 
 celebrated his farm in their writings, I had 
 observed, also, before leaving the wood, that its 
 former, and natural silence, was ever and anon 
 disturbed by the puff and whistle of railway 
 engines, so that the following sentence by Smith 
 — "The shallow wash and murmur of the Clyde 
 flows through a silence as deep as that of an 
 American wilderness," is alreadv out of date. 
 Sic tempora mutaniur ! 
 
62 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 By starting from Queen Street at 4 o'clock p.m., 
 our Saturday afternoon's excursions were occasion- 
 ally extended farther than Kenmuir. One place 
 in particular, thus visited once or twice each 
 summer, was Bothwell Priory. In going thither 
 we sometimes walked by the northern bank of 
 the Clyde, as far as the bridge which spans the 
 river a mile or so below that hoary ruin, and then 
 pursued the rest of the way along the south bank. 
 This necessitated our fording the Calder, which 
 we did by one wading and carrying the other 
 on his back. But as this route involved other 
 disadvantages, among which were the ordinary 
 risks of trespassers, we more irequently, with regret 
 at being separated from the much-loved Clyde, 
 went by the London road, and returned by 
 Cambuslung and Rutherglen. An occasional 
 summer holiday was sometimes also spent at the 
 Priory in reading the poets ; and I have a very 
 specially endeared remembrance of us passing 
 one such day in autumn, while the reapers were 
 busy in the golden grain, in Campsie's most 
 
THE CLYDE. 63 
 
 romantic glen. There we lay for hours, under 
 the cloudless sky, upon a jutting bossy rock below 
 one of the falls, during which time Smith read the 
 whole of Thomson's " Castle of Indolence," and 
 never was poem read in more auspicious scene 
 and circumstance, or more appreciated. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " This rambling strain 
 Recalls our summer walks again ; 
 When doing nought — and to speak true, 
 Not anxious to find aught to do, — 
 The wild unbounded hills we ranged, 
 While oft our talk its topic changed ; 
 And desultory as our way, 
 Ranged, unconfined, from grave to gay." 
 
 Scott. 
 
 A S Smith was allowed a week of holidays 
 
 each summer, we began in 1848 spending 
 
 it together in excursions to the Highlands. Our 
 
 first trip was to the island of Arran. We set 
 
 out on a Monday morning in July. 
 
 " The morn rose blue and glorious o'er the world ; 
 The steamer left the black and oozy wharves, 
 And floated down between dark ranks of masts. 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 65 
 
 And at length in Brodick Bay, 
 
 " We reached the pier, 
 Whence girls in fluttering dresses, shady hats, 
 Smiled rosy welcome " — 
 
 not to us, however. We were strangers to all. 
 Our means did not permit us putting up at the 
 fashionable hotel. But this was no hardship ; 
 for the gay company and bustle of the place 
 would not have been at all congenial to our 
 young and rather solitary spirits ; so we sought 
 for a private lodging, and with considerable 
 difficulty — for the little town was overcrowded 
 with tourists and summer visitors — found a house 
 where one bedroom might be had ; and as this 
 entirely suited both our purse and our inclination, 
 we took it for a week. On the following morn- 
 ing we walked along the shore to Glen Sannox, 
 where we spent the whole long summer day, by 
 turns walking, climbing, and lying on the heather ; 
 conversing much on many topics, and. particularly 
 on the superstitions of the Highlanders and 
 
 F 
 
66 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 islanders of Scotland, as Smith has indicated in 
 the following lines : — 
 
 * ' The beauty of the morning drew me on 
 Into a gloomy glen. The heavy mists 
 Crept up the mountain-sides. I heard the streams ; 
 The place was saddened with the bleat of sheep. 
 'Tis surely in such lonely scenes as these 
 Mythologies are bred. The rolling storms — 
 The mountains standing black in mist and rain, 
 With long white lines of torrents down their sides — 
 The ominous thunder creeping up the sky — 
 The homeless voices at the dead of night 
 Wandering among the glens — the ghost -like clouds 
 Stealing beneath the moon, — are but as stuff 
 Whence the awe-stricken herdsman could create 
 Gods for his worship." 
 
 Other glens were also visited, and the hills were 
 climbed, but we were prevented reaching the 
 top of Goatfell by the gathering of a thunder 
 storm. On the whole, however, the weather 
 was fine during our holidays, and we had a 
 season of intense enjoyment. It was the first 
 trip we had taken together, and so highly were 
 we delighted with it, that it was resolved, as we 
 lay one day in Glen Sannox, that, if spared till 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 67 
 
 next summer, we would take a pedestrian tour 
 together through some part of the Highlands — 
 Smith insisting, as a special part of the agree- 
 ment, that no third person should be of the 
 party. By this time we had come to understand 
 each other, and both of us found our rambles 
 most agreeable and profitable when no other 
 friend was present. Indeed, it was a peculiar 
 characteristic of Smith that, while he could be 
 social and enjoy select society, he found far 
 most delight himself! and his conversation was 
 most rich and captivating when with only one 
 genial friend. To know him, you required to 
 have him for a while by himself. And if you 
 were happy enough to secure this occasionally, 
 you could not but love him for the rest of your 
 life in a more than ordinary degree. This cha- 
 racteristic he retained until his death. 
 
 In accordance with the above agreement, in 
 July of the following year (1849), 
 
 "Like clouds or streams we wandered on at will 
 Three glorious days." 
 
 F 2 
 
6S ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Travelling first by train to Stirling — accompa- 
 nied by a friend and his betrothed — we spent 
 several hours visiting the Castlehill and the 
 other places of historic and natural interest 
 about the town, and paid a hasty visit to the 
 field of Bannockburn ; then, knapsack on back, 
 and stick in hand, we turned our faces towards 
 Benledi, under whose shade we had resolved to 
 sleep that night, and began our journey on foot 
 to Callander. Our friends accompanied us as 
 far as Bridge of Allan — at that time a small 
 and humble village, lovely indeed, but very un- 
 like the present gay resort of invalids. At length 
 we reached Doune, where "A Duke of Albany 
 lost his head in view of the Castle : a blind 
 trout lives in its well, and visitors feel more in- 
 terested in the trout than in the duke." So we, 
 like other visitors, bent down over the well, and 
 being favoured with the sight of "a shadow on 
 the sandy bottom, and the twinkle of a fin," 
 pursued our journey, and finally reached Callan- 
 der, as Smith has related thus, — " It was sunset 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 69 
 
 as I approached . it first — years ago. Beautiful 
 the long crooked street of white-washed houses, 
 dressed in rosy colours. Prettily dressed chil- 
 dren were walking or running about. The empty 
 coach was standing at the door of the hotel, 
 and the smoking horses were being led up 
 and down. And right in front stood King 
 Benledi clothed in imperial purple, the spokes 
 of splendour from the sinking sun raying far 
 into heaven from behind his mighty shoulders." 
 Here we spent the following day — Sunday. In 
 the forenoon we attended Divine service in the 
 Free Church, where a peculiar incident occurred. 
 Before leaving our hotel, Smith engaged to put a 
 New Testament in his pocket to serve us both in 
 church. And having his attention fixed on some 
 object, thought, or person, as the minister at 
 length announced the first psalm, he put his hand 
 in his pocket and handed me the book, to look 
 up the place. But on opening the small volume, 
 instead of a New Testament with the psalms of 
 David, in metre, appended, I found it to be a copy 
 
70 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 of " Don Juan," and immediately handed it back 
 to him open at the title-page. Having glanced 
 at it and seen his mistake, our eyes met, and the 
 grotesque idea of the " Don " in church, destroyed 
 for a space, I fear, becoming solemnity in both 
 our minds. 
 
 In the afternoon we walked up the pass of 
 Leney to Loch Lubnaig, feeling on our spirits the 
 spell of Scott's muse ; for we were now in the 
 scene of " The Lady of the Lake." 
 
 " Benledi saw the cross of fire" 
 
 carried through this pass by young Angus of 
 Duncraggan, and delivered into the hands of 
 young Norman of Armandave, as the latter came 
 forth from the chapel of St. Bride leading the 
 fair Mary of Tombea from the altar, where she 
 had pledged to him her troth. 
 
 But even Scott was destined to be soon forgot, 
 while thoughts and feelings more in harmony with 
 the sacred day were awakened within us, as before 
 we reached Lubnaig, "the lake of the rueful 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 71 
 
 countenance," we came suddenly upon a place 
 unnoticed in guide-books, which made a deep 
 impression upon our spirits — the most sombre 
 and solitary of burial grounds — a true " God's 
 acre " among the mountains, with no abode of 
 living man in sight. Smith has several times 
 alluded to this spot in his works. In the second 
 volume of " A Summer in Skye," he writes of it 
 thus, — " Beside the road is an old churchyard, 
 for which no one seems to care — the tombstones 
 being submerged in a sea of rank grass.'' In 
 " A Life Drama," he describes it as — ■ 
 
 "The still, old graveyard 'mong the dreary hills ;" 
 
 and in " A Boy's Poem," as— 
 
 " A churchyard covered with forgetful grass." 
 
 But the passage in which he has specially referred 
 to it occurs in that exquisite little poem, which 
 he incorporated in "A Life Drama," but as 
 originally composed, was entitled "The Garden 
 and the Child," and regarding which the Rev. 
 
72 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 George Gilfillan wrote, on reading it in MS., — 
 " Which must be published. It reminds us of the 
 style of Wordsworth's finer ballads, and has made 
 us both weep and thrill." In his " Gallery of 
 Literary Portraits/' too, he has said of it, — " Which 
 alike we and the author consider the best strain 
 in the whole ( Life Drama.' It was the perusal of 
 it which first increased to certainty our previous 
 notion that Mr. Smith was one of our truest poets." 
 The following lines contain the record of our 
 visit to this " still, old graveyard " : — 
 
 ' ' By the shores of Loch Lubnaig, 
 A dear friend and I were walking 
 ('Twas the Sabbath,) we were talking 
 Of dreams and feelings vague ; 
 We paused by a place of graves, 
 Scarcely a word was 'twixt us given, 
 Silent the earth, silent the heaven, 
 No murmur of the waves, 
 The awed loch lay black and still 
 In the black shadow of the hill. 
 We loosed the gate and entered in," etc. 
 
 This, in truth, we did both on going and return- 
 ing, and spent some time among the graves. But, 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 73 
 
 of course, the eclipse of the sun, described as 
 witnessed there, was not seen corporis oculis, but 
 only by the poet's "vision and faculty divine." 
 
 I retain in my possession a letter from Smith 
 of this year, which contains this charming lyric 
 as originally written. The letter begins thus — 
 
 Friday Night. 
 
 My dear T , 
 
 I hereby send you a 
 poem, a phantom of heart and brain, composed 
 very rapidly, in a most diabolical mood, when I 
 might have said, regarding my inner man, 
 
 " Hell is empty, 
 
 And all the devils are here." 
 
 . . . It is not very long. The rhymes may be ' 
 bad, but ... it was writ in two hours. 
 
 A. Smith. 
 
 This is interesting, as showing the rapidity with 
 which he could write such verses at the early 
 age of nineteen. But the poem was thus quickly 
 composed, because it was written under a true 
 
74 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 and powerful inspiration, which came upon him 
 under the following circumstances : — It happened, 
 on the day of its composition, that he was, as 
 described in the above letter, in one of those 
 melancholy moods to which he was often subject 
 in those days, without any very definite cause, 
 and, in returning from dinner along the Trongate 
 to his work, he came upon a bright, rosy, laughing 
 little girl, " beautiful as heaven," and the sight of 
 her sweet, happy innocence thrilled his heart, 
 fired his imagination, and awoke all the music of 
 his soul. All the afternoon he was silent at his desk. 
 The child was still before him ; his imagination 
 brooded over her beauty in musing reverie, and 
 more and more his soul glowed before the breath 
 of inspiration, till eight o'clock, when he went 
 straight and in silence from the warehouse to 
 his room in Charlotte Street, and, lifting his pen, 
 allowed his heated, pent up thoughts to rush 
 into the mould of poetry. In comparing my copy 
 as thus written that night with the piece as it 
 now occurs in " A Life Drama," I find a number 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 75 
 
 of verbal emendations, most of which, though, 
 
 as I think, not all, are improvements. In one 
 
 place, also, three verses have been expunged, and 
 
 others inserted in their stead, while three new 
 
 verses have been added. But — I know not well 
 
 how to account for it, — I am never so affected 
 
 when I read this piece as part of " A Life Drama," 
 
 as when I read it in accordance with its original 
 
 composition, as an isolated lyric. It seems to 
 
 have suffered, as I regard several of the author's 
 
 other early poems did, even to a greater extent, 
 
 by unnatural incorporation in, and unfavourable 
 
 juxtaposition with, other portions of the " Life 
 
 Drama." When I read this piece as published, 
 
 I confess that Mr. Gilfillan's eulogium of it seems 
 
 excessive, but it never does so when I read it as 
 
 he did, when he commended it — as an isolated 
 
 and independent poem. Every time I peruse 
 
 my copy in the letter before me, I am affected 
 
 with deep and varied emotions ; and often very 
 
 much regret that Mr. Smith was not content to 
 
 appear, at the beginning, before the world simply 
 
76 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 as a lyrist. Had he done so, I believe he would 
 to-day have occupied a unique and unrivalled 
 position in the kingdom of poets. 
 
 But to return to our narrative. After a hasty 
 visit to the Bridge of Bracklin, we were, on the 
 following morning, on our way to the Trossachs 
 by an early hour, — for we had a long day's 
 journey in prospect. 
 
 The morning was of doubtful promise. Huge 
 masses of clouds hurried after each other across 
 the sky, and we were consequently apprehensive 
 of rain. Under this feeling we had not proceeded 
 far till we came upon an aged Highlander work- 
 ing upon the road, from whom we were favoured 
 with the only attempt I have heard a Highland 
 peasant, in his native wilds, make at wit. After 
 addressing him with the usual good morning^ 
 one of us asked, — " Do you think we shall have 
 rain ? " " I ha'e nae doubt o't," was his reply, 
 which having caused us — with our townsmen's 
 ideas of a mountaineer's powers of prognosticating 
 by the signs of the sky — to hesitate whether we 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 77 
 
 should retrace our steps or hasten our speed 
 onwards, we ventured the further inquiry — " Do 
 you think it will be soon ?" when he responded, 
 "Ah, I canna jist say, but I'm sure it '11 rain 
 sometime ; an' a bad business it would be if it 
 did na." Whether the Scottish Highlanders are 
 endowed with wit or not I know not ; but if they 
 are, they do not exercise the faculty much be- 
 fore strangers. Wit is generally allied with 
 sprightliness and volubility, but the Highlander 
 at home is taciturn and morose. But amused 
 rather at Donald's effort than his success, we 
 pushed on, and soon under the double spell of 
 Scott and nature — romance and reality, 
 
 " We walked 'mid unaccustomed sights and sounds; 
 Fair apparitions of the elements 
 That lived a moment on the air, then passed 
 To the eternal world of memory :" 
 
 for the spirit of the prince of novelists seemed to 
 haunt the scene opening every moment in fuller 
 beauty before us. The rolling clouds casting 
 alternate shade and sunshine on the gorgeous 
 
78 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 landscape, only varied and enhanced its effects 
 upon our minds. It would be impossible to de- 
 scribe our emotions. They were varied ; some- 
 times awing, but more generally jubilant. At 
 one moment, in what is properly the Trossach's 
 pass, our spirits sought vent in shouting lustily, 
 and so woke to our surprise the reverberating 
 echoes of the hills ; and as peak after peak thus 
 unexpectedly answered to our voices, our hearts 
 were filled with a new joy. Never before nor 
 after did I see Smith so excited. It is not to 
 be wondered, therefore, that he has marked the 
 spot, in his works, thus — " Echo sits babbling 
 beneath the rock ;" and also recorded the fact 
 as follows, in a " A Boy's Poem," — 
 
 We raised a shout, 
 A sullen echo — then were heard the sweet 
 And skiey tones of spirits 'mid the peaks, 
 Faint voice to faint voice shouting ; dim halloos 
 From unseen cliff and ledge ; and answers came 
 From some remoter region far withdrawn 
 Within the pale blue sky." 
 
 But at length, in all its loveliness, Loch Katrine 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 79 
 
 burst upon our view, and we sat down by its brink 
 and gazed a while on Helen's Isle. No boat nor 
 form of any kind was visible upon its waters, 
 and no voice, no sound was heard. The July 
 sun shining unclouded now in its full strength, 
 caused even the birds of song to seek the covert 
 of the woods, and hushed the voice of nature, 
 w T hile it spread a splendour over all the scene. 
 To rest and lie in reverie indeed were sweet, 
 but could not be long indulged. Having heroic- 
 ally resolved to be true pedestrians, we de- 
 termined to have nothing to do with the steamer 
 on Loch Katrine, but to walk the whole length 
 of the classic lake — round its head, and rest for 
 the night at Tarbet on Loch Lomond. And this 
 purpose we accomplished. Towards the end of 
 our journey, however, the clouds which had been 
 gathering for some time began to distil a soaking 
 rain, as the following extract from a sonnet re- 
 lates : — 
 
 Near our journey's end, 
 As down the moorland road we straight did wend, 
 
8o ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 To Wordsworth's Inversneyd, talking to kill 
 The cold and cheerless drizzle in the air, 
 'Bove me I saw — at pointing of my friend — 
 An old fort, like a ghost upon the hill, 
 Stare in blank misery through the blinding rain ; 
 So human-like it seemed in its despair — 
 So stunned with grief — long gazed at it we twain." 
 
 From Inversneyd we were rowed over to Tarbet 
 by two greedy Highlanders, who did not fail, from 
 our inexperience, to fleece us a little. At Tarbet 
 we lodged for the night, and next day proceeded 
 to Inverary, by Arrochar, round the head of Loch 
 Long and through Glen Croe, in which we ex- 
 perienced the drenching powers of a Scotch mist. 
 Seated at length on the celebrated "rest and be 
 thankful" under the heavy dusk and soaking 
 atmosphere, a woman, blind of one eye and bare 
 of foot, with a miserable-looking child tied on 
 back by an old tartan plaid, came suddenly uj 
 us through the mist, and on being asked if it 
 always rained up here, replied, " No, it's shist 
 this way." The mist at length rolled away as 
 we hied onward, and, under a good breeze, our 
 
THE HIGHLANDS. 81 
 
 clothes dried on us before we reached Loch 
 Fyne ; and having been ferried across to Inverary, 
 we took steamer the following morning to Glas- 
 gow, where we arrived in due time, with scarcely 
 a shilling between us ; but, in truth, we had not 
 one pound sterling each when we started. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 i ' A prophecy and intimation, 
 A pale and feeble adumbration." 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 HAD by this time become aware of Smith's 
 devotion to poetry. Indeed, there were few 
 secrets between us now. A friendship more close 
 and sincere could scarcely exist between two 
 persons. He was silent, however, for a consider- 
 able time after I became acquainted with him, 
 regarding his writing poetry. At first he re- 
 peated a few lines occasionally in our evening 
 rambles. At length it became a practice, when 
 three or more of the select of the Addisonian 
 club met together for a stroll by Clyde side, 
 for each to repeat from memory the finest pas- 
 sages of the poets, on some particular subject, 
 
REVELATIONS. 83 
 
 that he recollected. And, on these occasions, 
 Smith sometimes quietly introduced a few lines 
 of his own, in order to see how they were ap- 
 preciated — concealing, of course, the authorship. 
 And as I had generally heard them before, I pre- 
 served a friendly reticence. On being requested 
 to name the author, an evasive answer was given. 
 Sometimes, too, he indulged in a little mischiev- 
 ous humour by extemporising a stanza of no 
 great merit, in order to try his critics. One night, 
 for example, each was repeating passages on Love, 
 and Smith, after having quoted numerous fine 
 passages, pretending to have forgotten the author- 
 ship, repeated the following lines, which were ex- 
 temporised by himself :— 
 
 " 'Tis sad to sleep 'neatli the cold black loam/ 
 'Tis sad from this world to part ; 
 But sadder far 'tis to have no home, 
 No home in a human heart." 
 
 And he was much amused by the most sober 
 minded of the company expressing unbounded 
 admiration, and demanding their repetition that 
 
 G 2 
 
84 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 they might be imprinted indelibly on his memory. 
 And, indeed, the praise then bestowed thus upon 
 them seems for a while to have caused Smith to 
 regard them favourably himself; for I find them 
 in his own handwriting in a serious poem I have 
 by me, which was cut down, and in great part 
 used up again piecemeal, in the compilation of 
 "A Life Drama.'' 
 
 I had no idea, however, of how much he had 
 written till the following incident occurred : — Not 
 finding him as usual at our meeting-place one 
 evening, and learning from one of his fellow- 
 workers that he had not been in the warehouse 
 that day, I suspected that he might be unwell, as 
 he had complained the previous night of a slight 
 cold ; and on the following morning I had a note 
 from him stating that such was the case, and re- 
 questing me as he had no intention of leaving 
 home that day either, to visit him in the evening. 
 I consequently did call upon him in the evening, 
 when I found him seated alone in his snug little 
 room before the fire. We had a long talk to- 
 
REVELATIONS. 85 
 
 gether. He seemed all the while, however, in an 
 abstracted mood. I suspected there was some- 
 thing on his mind which he desired to communi- 
 cate, and endeavoured in various ways to lead 
 him into freer conversation. But all being in 
 vain, I at length rose to leave, when he suddenly 
 also rose to his feet, saying, " Sit down a little : 
 I have something that I wish to show you." He 
 then went to a drawer and took out a mass of 
 manuscript, and, sitting down again, began to 
 read from it with a rather tremulous voice. I 
 was soon captivated and astonished. When he 
 was done reading, we sat for some moments in 
 silence ; for I was as one bewildered with surprise. 
 Had I spoken as I then felt, I should have ex- 
 pressed myself, perhaps too warmly, only in un- 
 measured terms of laudation, and so have chanced 
 to offend him ; for he utterly disliked flattery. 
 At length, having abruptly said, " I had no idea 
 that you had written so much," he replied, " Well, 
 but what do you think of it?" " Think of it," I 
 answered, " I know not what to think or say of 
 
86 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 it just now ; but this I will say," rising from emo- 
 tion and taking his hand, " go on and do take 
 care of these manuscripts ; for I believe the 
 world will love to read them, and may ask for 
 them soon." And so I turned to leave, while he, 
 pressing my hand with much feeling, said, " I 
 understand and thank you. Let us say no more 
 at present. We shall be able to speak more freely 
 of this again." So we parted. But next night we 
 met again, and finding that we could speak more 
 freely then, had a long and interesting conversa- 
 tion on life's purposes and aims, in connection 
 with, and as suggested by, the preceding night's 
 revelation. But still feeling that I could better 
 express my thoughts to him by writing than 
 viva voce, I addressed to him — as we were both 
 wont to do on special occasions — a letter, of 
 which I kept no copy, and the contents of which 
 I cannot now recall. The following answer, 
 however, will reveal so far its nature, and, 
 what is of more importance, also account for a 
 fact in his life to which reference has already 
 
REVELATIONS. 87 
 
 been made, both in these pages and by other 
 writers. 
 
 " Monday Evening. 
 u Dear Tom, 
 
 " As we talked this night last week, few 
 
 stars were visible in my spirit sky ; those visible 
 
 looked dreary and cold. One has gone out since. 
 
 Let it go. A star, 'my life's star,' burnetii, and 
 
 will burn : when it sets, I set. 
 
 "Your letter, I need not say, was read with 
 interest. You have my sincere thanks. You 
 have been very frank with me of late ; I will 
 return you like for like. I will unclasp my soul 
 to you, and you may read what I had hoped one 
 day to have avowed proudly ; or, that hope 
 failing, to have buried it for ever — a dead hope in 
 a dead heart. 
 
 " You may recollect, on the evening which has 
 given rise to this epistle, you made a guess as to 
 what mine aspirations tended — you guessed poetry. 
 I made some evasive answer. I could not then 
 say 'Ay.' I can now say you guessed aright. 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 It has been the seventh heaven of my aspirations 
 for years ; a passion running as deep as the 
 aboriginal waters of my being. At the present 
 moment the ' passion poesy ' standeth on the necks 
 of all the others like a king, and it will ultimately 
 swallow them as the serpent of Moses swallowed 
 the serpents of the Egyptian magicians. It is 
 with a feeling of humiliation I make this con- 
 fession. I know not how you will receive it, I 
 trust, however, you will do me justice in your 
 thoughts ; that you will not place me in the 
 
 category with the D s, K s, J s. I 
 
 believe my spirit is something different from theirs 
 — deeper and sincerer. I am unconscious of that 
 pitiful vanity (the Alpha and Omega of their 
 hopes) to see one's name in print ; the immortality 
 of five minutes in the ' poet's corner/ Above all, 
 don't laugh or sneer, however much you may pity. 
 I could bear sneers on this point from no one, 
 least of all from you. I might keep silent, but I 
 would suffer like a martyr in his shirt of fire. 
 Believe me it's no laughing matter. Underneath 
 
REVELATIONS. 89 
 
 those wide doming heavens, that ancient sun, those 
 pitying stars, of all the miseries this is the chiefest 
 — when one has the soul, blood, heart, pulses of an 
 angel — all but the wings ! This is egotism with a 
 vengeance, but we are all egotists ; and all we are, 
 feel or see — this universe of souls, stars and suns, is 
 but a sublime egotism of Deity. 
 
 " You tell me you wish I should yet fill a pulpit : 
 this may never be. I speak in sober sadness 
 when I say I am unfit for public life. That fire 
 once burnt brightly on the hearthstone of my 
 heart — the flame flickered, waned, and died ; a 
 mighty wind scattered the red embers like autumn 
 leaves : ' the hearthstone is now cold ; I do not 
 wish to fill a pulpit. 
 
 "You may be inclined to ask, 'What do you 
 intend to do?' I might say, ' Nothing.' To 
 attempt to become a preacher is useless : inca- 
 pacity within — without difficulties no capacity 
 could overcome — prevent it. What I would like 
 is just some way of living which would feed and 
 cover this carcase, and allow much time to roam 
 
90 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 through book-world, and the world of my own 
 spirit, like the new-born Adam in the new-born 
 Eden. You may say this life I desire to lead will 
 not be a useful one for my fellows. Granted ! 
 I do not intend to gird on an apron and become 
 waiter to the world. 
 
 " If you judge me by the length of my letter 
 you may think me rather ungrateful. I am at 
 the confessional, and, certes, the confession is no 
 pleasant task. I do not know, however, that 
 anything more need be said. I have unbosomed 
 myself as well as I could. I fear this night's work 
 will lessen your esteem for me, as I have fallen 
 somewhat in my own in the course of it. If it 
 so be, I will be the only loser. Jog along, Tom ; 
 the road of life is rough, but the eternities are 
 ahead. We will reach them soon. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 A. Smith." 
 
 The sentiment with which this letter concludes 
 — " the eternities are ahead : we shall reach them 
 
REVELATIONS. 91 
 
 soon," was from Smith's pen, no merely flippant 
 saying. As several persons have already noticed, 
 he has in his writings, with singular plainness and 
 frequency, expressed forebodings of a premature 
 death. The couplet, — 
 
 " Before me runs a road of toil 
 With, my grave cut across," 
 
 has since his death been repeatedly quoted in 
 instance of this. But his works do not express 
 this feeling more frequently than his conversation 
 did from the first day that I knew him. The 
 general tenor of his youth was by no means 
 melancholy ; still, in our private walks and con- 
 ferences he was ever and anon uttering this 
 gloomy presentiment. But the following poetical 
 epistle which he sent me this winter, when our 
 regular meetings were again restricted to the 
 Saturday afternoon, exhibits it so fully as seems 
 to warrant its being published.* 
 
 * In publishing it, however, it is desirable that the reader under- 
 stand, that though in my judgment it is a production not unworthy 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 The poet was, in this instance, alas ! a true 
 vates — a prophet The epistle is headed — 
 
 " A DREAM. 
 
 '• I had a dream, wrapt in prophetic sleep 
 The picture of a lifetime passed before me. 
 
 I saw a youth, 
 And he was not a stranger ; for he seemed 
 To bear resemblance to myself or you. 
 His heart was bared before me, and I saw 
 The deepest secrets of his inmost soul, 
 His thoughts, his feelings, his emotions — all. 
 I started, for methought they were my own, 
 And so I loved him — 'twas a fearful love. 
 
 He sought not much companionship, 
 And his close intimates had never dreamed 
 He was so strange a being. None could guess, 
 From what he said or did, the wild idolatry 
 Which reigned within. He worshipped intellect 
 Most fervently, and his young heart longed 
 High to be marshalled 'mongst the mighty dead. 
 
 of Smith's early muse, it is not given here as a specimen of his 
 poetic talent. It would be altogether improper to print it as such, 
 seeing it was evidently written off rapidly at one sitting, and was 
 never designed by him for the press. It would never, therefore, 
 have been put in type by me had it not, apart entirely from its not 
 inconsiderable poetic value, been specially interesting as a prophecy 
 now singularly and sadly fulfilled. 
 
REVELATIONS. 
 
 93 
 
 He was a lonely being, a dreamer strange, 
 
 He mingled with the whirl of human life — 
 
 A mingler masked. He was not what he seemed ; 
 
 (But, ah ! he was tmmasked, and his pale brow 
 
 Dewy with death- sweat gleams upon me now) 
 
 He had no sympathy with the rude world : 
 
 His world was in himself ; and with his dreams — 
 
 Most gorgeous dreams — he sported years away. 
 
 He loved not company, 
 Nor was he solitary, for nature spake 
 Most musically to his listening ear— 
 The lull of waters and the sighing breeze. 
 At eventide — the holy twilight stealing on, 
 The flowers, the waving grass, the sunset sky, 
 Streaked with rich purple — all these had a voice. 
 And when the glorious night o'erspread the world 
 With her dark wings, distilling pearly dew 
 Upon the thirsty flowers, how passing sweet 
 Were then his wanderings no man can tell ; 
 For star-born melody came floating by ; 
 His tranced ear drank music spiritually wild. 
 Night was holy — the full-orbed moon 
 Rolled on her bright path through the deep blue sky. 
 Bathing the landscape in her silvery light ; 
 And one thin fleecy cloud which onward sailed, 
 Tinged by her rays, seemed like a spirit's home. 
 And the wild gleaming stars which lit the vault 
 Of heaven— the myriad toned voice of night, 
 Roused up a tide of passion in his soul 
 Which may be felt — which words can never tell. 
 
94 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 When stirred by more than mortal sympathies, 
 
 When his own heart-strings thrilled to nature's melody, 
 
 When poetry rolled o'er him like a flood, 
 
 Had he met then an every-day companion, 
 
 All, all was stilled, and for a time he seemed 
 
 To be a soulless mass like those around him. 
 ****** 
 
 This vision vanished, and another came. 
 
 Years had rolled on, and he was now a man. 
 
 His dark hair clustered on his death-like brow, 
 
 Startlingly pale, and his deep sunk eye, 
 
 Alas ! 'twas sadly changed since days of yore ! 
 
 Seldom he smiled ! but oh ! that ghastly smile 
 
 Illumed the brow of agony ! Where now 
 
 ( Were all his pantings after future fame — 
 
 His dreams of boyhood — were they realized ? 
 
 Yes he won a name, but — lost himself, 
 
 For death's barbed arrow quivered in his heart. 
 
 Soon he would be numbered with the mighty dead ; 
 
 Soon he would be voiceless — yet the echo 
 
 Of his voice would speak for evermore. 
 
 His fame now seemed 
 
 To his fast flitting soul an empty dream ; 
 
 Undying laurels on a fleshless brow ; 
 
 A golden halo o'er a grinning skull. 
 
 I sadly gazed upon that half-known face, 
 
 And felt as if my doom were shadowed there. 
 ****** 
 
 'Tis the stilly hush of midnight, 
 
 The sighing wind is mute, and not a sound 
 
REVELATIONS, 95 
 
 Floats on the air. How glorious this scene ! 
 All things imbued with the moon's cold beam, 
 Silvery and pure ! The starry-fretted vault 
 Of midnight heaven, with its rich pageantry, 
 Is scarce more lovely than the sleeping earth. 
 The nodding woods flash back the moonbeams pale, 
 And these quiet, moveless waters, at this hour 
 Appear like sheeted silver. 
 
 I stood beside a grave : 
 It was his grave ; and there I stood, as if 
 Some fearful secret was to be revealed. 
 His tomb was far remote from cities' hum ; — ■ 
 He never loved their bustle, and his grave 
 Was midst that nature which he loved so well. 
 The grass was spangled with the glittering dew, 
 And the sweet-scented violets had a tear 
 Gleaming upon their face. The modest daisy, 
 And all the flowers which bloomed around his grave. 
 Were clad in grief — all wet with nature's tears. 
 I thought upon the mouldering dead, and wept. 
 His life was brief, yet glorious ; and now 
 All that remained was lying 'neath my feet. 
 I looked upon the gravestone, and on it 
 Was carved — ' Here lies an Addisonian.' 
 My life-blood curdled, and my trembling limbs 
 Could not support me. I fell — and woke, 
 The chilly sweat standing on my fevered brow. 
 O God, is this the shadow of my destiny ! " 
 
 A. Smith. 
 
96 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 But not one line of Mr. Smith's had as yet 
 appeared in print. He was in no such haste as 
 juvenile poets generally are to rush into type. He 
 had for several years written such poetry as few 
 could write, before any, except his nearest relatives 
 and one or two of his most intimate and confi- 
 dential friends, knew that he had composed one 
 stanza. This was, perhaps, the result unitedly of 
 ambition and diffidence. He was ambitious of 
 his productions having more than an ephemeral 
 existence in some newspaper or magazine, and at 
 the same time sensitively afraid of their being 
 either rejected or regarded as merely mediocre. 
 So 
 
 " Studious of song 
 And yet ambitious not to sing in vain," 
 
 he wrote on, re-wrote often, and long reserved. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ok Htgfrlatftg, %obt, antr gdgriratton& 
 
 " We marked each memorable scene, 
 And held poetic talk between ; 
 Nor hill nor brook we paced along 
 But had its legend or its song." 
 ■*•***■* 
 
 " Since oft thy praise 
 
 Hath given fresh vigour to my lays ; 
 
 Since oft thy judgment could refine 
 
 My flattened thought, or cumbrous line, 
 
 Still kind, as is thy wont, attend." 
 
 Scott. 
 
 T N the month of July of next year, after spend- 
 ing a day or two as guests of a mutual friend 
 at Strone, we started on the second of our 
 pedestrian tours through the Highlands. Our 
 brief sojourn at Strone was a pleasant and 
 profitable one. Holy Loch became much en- 
 deared to us by its surpassing loveliness, and, 
 consequently, was several times visited in after 
 
 H 
 
98 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 years. Comparing it with the other Scottish 
 lochs, Smith says, " Smallest and loveliest of 
 them all." It is a famous haunt of landscape 
 painters, and on this occasion we met on its shore 
 John Cairns, a painter of no little merit, between 
 whose death and that of Smith only a few months 
 elapsed. I had the pleasure of introducing them 
 at this time to each other. On the afternoon of 
 our arrival at Strone, we took a walk together to 
 the village of Kilmun, and on returning rested for 
 some time on the green sward, under the shade of 
 some noble trees near the coast road. Each 
 seemed to be a great bee-hive. The murmuring 
 hum of the insects, blending with the murmuring 
 surge of the adjacent waters, was to us a new and 
 exquisite sensation, and we lay long enjoying 
 it. The impression was not lost on Smith. His 
 readers may remember the following allusion 
 among others : — 
 
 "I lay beneath a glimmering sycamore, 
 Drowsy with murmuring bees." 
 
 It was also while lying, on the following day, on 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 99 
 
 the beach, a little farther down the loch, and 
 watching the flow and reflux of the tidal waves, 
 that the following original, much and justly 
 admired figure was begotten in the poet's mind. 
 After a few moments of silent, thoughtful gazing, 
 he quietly stretched out his hand, a sweet smile 
 lighting up his countenance, and said, almost in 
 these very words, — 
 
 " See, the bridegroom sea. 
 Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride ; 
 And in the fulness of his marriage joy, 
 He decorates her tawny brow with shells ; — 
 Retires a space, to see how fair she looks, 
 Then proud runs up to kiss her." 
 
 This became a favourite image with him. It is 
 repeated in various forms, less fully drawn out, 
 four times at least in " A Life Drama" alone. It 
 was thus spontaneously, while looking upon some 
 object, that almost all his finest metaphors were 
 acquired, and not during study at his desk. They 
 came, they w r ere not excogitated. All nature was 
 to his mind full of symbols, and he was ever wake- 
 ful to discern and understand them. It was his 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 u chief joy to draw images from everything." As 
 we could both on occasions walk together for miles 
 without speaking, his mind at such times was 
 always busy ; and when any happy image 
 presented itself to his imagination, he very 
 generally, if no third person was present, gave 
 immediate utterance to it. So frequently did this 
 occur, that it constituted one of the richest charms 
 of his society, and proved him to be truly a born 
 poet, illustrating the lines, — 
 
 " Familiar things enough to you and me 
 Take a strange glory from the poet's mind.' , 
 
 When such ideas dawned upon the horizon of 
 his mind, there were no manifestations of ecstacy 
 or rapture made by him. There might, indeed, 
 be seen a momentary sparkle in his eye, or glow 
 upon his countenance, but there was no "fine 
 frenzy rolling," and no airs, — all was quiet and 
 natural. Nor did I ever see him on such occasions 
 use any note-book. His memory was so tenacious 
 that he fixed there his most transitory thoughts 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 101 
 
 " in a sure place," to work out and polish at his 
 leisure ; and I never heard him regret that he had 
 forgotten any idea that had once been present to 
 his mind. He regarded it, as one of the first laws 
 of friendship, that any spontaneous thought which 
 he thus expressed should not be repeated to 
 others. The violation of this law gave him great 
 offence, and he who rendered himself once guilty 
 was not likely to be favoured with another oppor- 
 tunity of so transgressing. 
 
 From Strone we sailed across to Greenock, and 
 went thence by steamer through the Kyles of Bute 
 and Crinnan canal to Oban. On the following day 
 we visited Dunstaffnage, Connal ferry, the vitrified 
 fort of Berigonium ; and the next day sailed to 
 Ballahulish at the mouth of Glencoe. 
 
 The coach for Loch Lomond stood in readiness 
 for the passengers when we landed, but strapping 
 our knapsack on our shoulders we started for the 
 Glen on foot, before the coach, with the purpose of 
 reaching Tyndrum that night. To see Glencoe 
 was our chief object in this trip. Our expectations 
 
102 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 were great ; but they were more than realized. 
 We drank of the grandeur of the scenery till we 
 were intoxicated with joy. Our minds became 
 oppressed. The heat of the day, too, was intense. 
 I shall never forget my emotions when the moor 
 of Rannoch at length, " with its grey boulders," 
 opened upon our view. We stood still, and " long 
 gazed at it we twain." In due time we arrived at 
 King's House, with keen appetites for dinner. And 
 here we enjoyed an hour's rest. Then staff again in 
 hand we resumed our journey. But after we had 
 walked about two miles, Smith threw himself down 
 on the grass by the road side, and stretched at full 
 length we lay rather longer than I thought we 
 could afford to do, seeing no house for a night's 
 accommodation was to be expected nearer than the 
 inn at Tyndrum. Ominous clouds, too, were ga- 
 thering onwards, and several distant peals of thun- 
 der had been urging us to haste. Sol endeavoured 
 to stimulate my friend to arise, but to my surprise, 
 for I had never seen him fail in walking before, he 
 said he was too wearied, and was resolved to lie 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 103 
 
 still where he was, and for once have a good sleep 
 on the turf. This, however, I regarded as too 
 hazardous to think of, and at length overcame his 
 obstinacy by promising to endeavour to secure 
 a bed, at least, for the night, in the first house 
 we might come to, and so give up the idea 
 of reaching Tyndrum till next day. We had to 
 walk a few miles, however, before we found any 
 house where we could have the accommodation 
 required. And even then we had to put up, as a 
 great favour, in a very humble and smoky high- 
 land hut. Here, however, we got a thoroughly 
 clean bed in a very small room, and slept soundly 
 till four o'clock next morning. At that hour I hap- 
 pened to awaken, and opening my eyes was startled 
 at beholding a volume of blue smoke curling down 
 through the top of the bed. My first impression 
 was one of alarm. But having satisfied myself 
 that the smoke was only coming, as a matter of 
 course, from the peat fire which was already being 
 kindled mid-floor the adjoining kitchen, and hav- 
 ing opened the door of our room to allow it to 
 
104 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 escape, I awoke my friend, and pointing upwards 
 to the smoke, he speedily stood upon the floor, 
 under the impression that the house was on fire. 
 Having dressed, and received some warm milk and 
 oatmeal cakes from our kindly old hostess, who 
 was already sitting enveloped in peat reek, with a 
 black cutty pipe in her mouth, we started for Loch 
 Lomond. And, finally, from Tarbet took the 
 steamer to Balloch, and proceeding thence by train 
 to Bowling, and steamer to Glasgow, completed 
 our tour for the year. There is at least one allu- 
 sion to the scene of this excursion in the drinking 
 song sung by Arthur in " A Life Drama." 
 
 " I've drank in Red Rannoch amidst its grey boulders, 
 Where fain to be kisst 
 Through his thin scarf of mist, 
 Ben More to the sun heaves his wet shining shoulders." 
 
 It was in listening to the most noted elocutionist 
 among the Addisonians reciting Motherwell's sword 
 chant, that Smith conceived the purpose of writing 
 that song in similar measure ; and after composing 
 it, having requested his oratorical friend to favour 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 105 
 
 him by reciting it, the whole club, and a few 
 friends, had the pleasure of hearing it recited at 
 the following annual soiree of the society. 
 
 The annual soiree of the Addisonian was quite 
 an event to us all in those days. It was an esta- 
 blished law of the club that no one should be ad- 
 mitted to that festival unless accompanied by a 
 lady ; and as Smith and I were very seldom in 
 society, and consequently failed to cultivate ac- 
 quaintance with the fair sex, this law gave us every 
 year a little annoyance. The other members came 
 to be aware of our embarrassment connected with 
 securing partners, and made it the subject of no 
 little mirthful banter. But Smith was sometimes, 
 I fear, involved in an unpleasant dilemma from 
 compliance w r ith this rule ; as, being wisely resolved 
 to remain free of any permanent attachment in his 
 present circumstances, but at the same time very 
 susceptible to female charms, he found it more 
 difficult to disengage himself from, than to procure 
 a partner. About this time, however, such a disen- 
 gagement was effected in a very melancholy man- 
 
io6 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 ner. He had for some time been continuing to pay 
 attention to a young lady who had been with him 
 at our last annual gathering, and if I mistake not, 
 had agreed to meet her on a particular evening. 
 A dense fog, however, hung over the city all that 
 day, and when evening came the young lady failed 
 to be at the place of meeting : the thick darkness 
 and stifling condition of the atmosphere seemed to 
 him a sufficient reason for this. But early on the 
 following day the mournful intelligence was brought 
 to him that she had been found that morning lying 
 dead in the Glasgow and Paisley canal. On the 
 afternoon of the previous day, having made a call 
 at the southern extremity of the city, she had en- 
 deavoured to reach home the nearest way by going, 
 as she was accustomed to do often, for a short dis- 
 tance by the canal bank — although her friends had 
 advised her not to do so on this occasion ; and in 
 groping her way by the oft frequented path, she 
 must have fallen into the water. 
 
 But Smith has related the incident in the follow- 
 ing passage of " A Boy's Poem " : — 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 107 
 
 " The fatal sun 
 
 Sucked vapours from the marsh. From morn till eve 
 
 The streets were huddled in a yellow fog, 
 
 Through which the lamps burned beamlessly and dim, 
 **■**■* 
 
 She sought relief in friends, and rose at last 
 
 With fond and hurried heart. They went with her. 
 
 1 Don't take the river, cousin, 'tis so dark.' 
 
 1 It is the shortest way — good night, good night. 
 
 They plead, — she broke from them — they called to her. — 
 
 She tossed a laughing answer from the dark. 
 
 The girls returned through thick-mist blinded streets, 
 
 And sat 'mid music in delighted rooms, 
 
 "While she groped, weeping in night's foggy heart. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Hour passed on hour, 
 
 And gradually each apprehensive lip 
 
 Grew silent with concern ; then as they sat, 
 
 Like fern leaves troubled by a sudden wind, 
 
 Their hearts were stricken by a speechless fear ; — 
 
 Each read the terror in the other's face. 
 
 They searched with lights — they madly called her name ;— 
 
 Night heard, and, conscience-stricken, held its breath, 
 
 And listened wild. At length, in the bleared morn, 
 
 They saw a something white within the stream, — 
 
 He raised his drowned bride in distracted arms." 
 
 This unfortunate young lady possessed a singu- 
 larly gentle disposition, combined with thought- 
 fulness of mind. Smith was only acquainted with 
 
108 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 her for a brief period, and after her melancholy 
 death he evidently disliked to hear her spoken of, 
 and I never endeavoured to ascertain what im- 
 pression she had made upon his heart. He did not 
 seem, however, to have entertained any tenderer 
 affection than that of friendship, though he cer- 
 tainly esteemed her very highly, and his sorrow 
 at her lamentable death was sincere and poignant. 
 For several days he shunned all society. On the 
 night of the day on which he had seen her remains 
 interred, we walked together for several miles 
 beyond the city, but he was indisposed for con- 
 versation, and I allowed him to indulge his sad 
 and solemn thoughts in silence. He was of a 
 very sensitive and sympathetic nature, and on 
 this occasion it was more deeply moved to sadness 
 than I had seen it previously. 
 
 As a short time after this sad event we 
 walked together by Clydeside, he repeated to me 
 from memory the whole of what must be regarded 
 one of the finest productions of his genius — the 
 verses ending with the refrain " Barbara " (which, 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 109 
 
 by the way, was the real Christian name of this 
 unfortunate lady), which occur in the poem " Har- 
 ton " in the volume of " City Poems." The man is 
 not to be envied who can read that pensive lyric, 
 and especially its intensely pathetic close, without 
 tearful emotion. But the effect produced on the 
 mind by reading it, cannot equal that produced by 
 hearing it repeated by the poet's own lips, as it 
 came fresh from his wounded heart. There never 
 were two things more mutually adapted than 
 Smith's composition and his voice. No other man 
 can read his poetry so well as he did himself. I 
 have often been greatly moved by his voice, 
 but I never was so overcome by emotion in 
 reading or listening to any poetic production as I 
 was that night. Some, on finding this gem in 
 " City Poems," have instanced it as indicating that 
 Smith had made considerable progress as a poet 
 from the time that George Gilfillan had, as they 
 think too lavishly, praised him, and the "Life 
 Drama " was published. But the fact is, whether 
 such progress had been made or not, there is no 
 
1 1 o ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 proof of it in this case, as these verses to Barbara, 
 whether actually among the pieces shown to Mr. 
 Gilfillan or not I cannot tell, were certainly- 
 composed and repeated in my hearing before " A 
 Life Drama " had been thought of by Mr. Smith. 
 It is, indeed, possible that they received some 
 polishing from the time they were repeated to 
 me till they were published, but that is all. It 
 may be worthy of notice here, further, that this 
 young lady may be regarded as the second of 
 the " fair shapes " of memory celebrated in the 
 " Life Drama.'' The following lines clearly refer 
 to her : — 
 
 " One comes shining like a saint, 
 But her face I cannot paint, 
 For mine eyes and blood grow faint. 
 
 " Eyes are dimmed as by a tear, 
 Sounds are rushing in mine ear, 
 I feel only she is here ; 
 
 " That she laugheth where she stands, 
 That she mocketh with her hands. 
 I am bound in tighter bands." 
 
 Smith now occupied a place occasionally in the 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS, in 
 
 poet's corner of the Glasgow Citizen, the most 
 literary weekly newspaper of the West of Scotland, 
 under the editorship of James Hedderwick, himself 
 no mean poet ; while Hugh Macdonald, one of 
 our best minor poets, acted as sub-editor. His 
 first appearance in that newspaper was made in 
 July 6th, 1850, in lines " To a Friend/' written in 
 the Spenserian stanza, and signed Smith Murray. 
 But the larger lyrics, several of which had 
 already been composed by him, he wisely re- 
 served in MS. for further elaboration, revisal, and 
 publication in a less ephemeral vehicle. 
 
 For several years previously he had been an 
 ardent, though not indiscriminate, admirer of the 
 writings of the Rev. George Gilfillan. Everything 
 from the pen of that gifted minister of Dundee 
 was hailed and diligently perused by him ; and 
 on every occasion of his visiting Glasgow as 
 a preacher or lecturer, Smith was certain to 
 be one of his hearers. No man in Scotland 
 wielded at that time so great an influence over 
 young aspiring minds intent on self-culture as 
 
1 1 2 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Mr. Gilfillan ; and among others, Smith was at- 
 tracted to him by his hearty, impartial appreciation 
 of genius, and the bold utterance of his convic- 
 tions. By his writings in " Hogg's Instructor," 
 " The Eclectic," " The Critic," etc., Smith's mind 
 was in no slight degree stimulated. Several of his 
 earliest friends remember him speaking frequently 
 of two articles, especially, from Gilfillan's pen, 
 which appeared in " Hogg's Instructor," in July, 
 1845, on " Genius," as containing sentences which 
 greatly quickened his latent faculties, and, to use 
 his own words, " haunted my mind for months." 
 Hence, at length, emboldened by Mr. Gilfillan's 
 commendations of the " Roman," by Sidney 
 Yendys or Dobell, Smith, after consultation with 
 two of his young friends of the Addisonian 
 Society, resolved to submit a selection of his 
 poems to him whom he had so long admired, and 
 from whose writings he had derived so much benefit. 
 Consequently, in April, 185 1, he sent a small parcel 
 of MS., accompanied with a modest letter, solicit- 
 ing criticism and advice, to Dundee. Mr. Gilfillan 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 113 
 
 happened, however, to be then from home ; and on 
 his return, finding a great accumulation of MS. 
 and correspondence awaiting him, Smith's poems, 
 written in an unfamiliar, boyish, unformed, and 
 straggling hand, after being hastily glanced at 
 were laid aside for fuller inspection at a less busy 
 hour, and, being overlaid, were soon forgot. No 
 reply to his letter, therefore, came to Glasgow 
 during a lapse of several weeks, and, as a natural 
 consequence, the young aspirant of the muses felt 
 not a little dejected. Still he retained sufficient 
 confidence in Mr. Gilfillan's kindliness of nature to 
 hope that lack of courtesy was not the cause of 
 his disappointment. So, after some delay, he ad- 
 dressed another modest letter of inquiry regarding 
 the fate of his MS. This brought speedily a reply 
 which completely dispelled all his fears and doubts. 
 Mr. Gilflllan had meantime perused the poems 
 more carefully, and so appreciative, encouraging, 
 and eulogistic was his response, that Smith was 
 filled w T ith unwonted joy, incited to increase hope- 
 fulness, and stirred to greater activity in composi- 
 
 I 
 
ii4 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 tion. Other poems, at Mr. Gilfillan's desire were 
 transmitted for his inspection, and a friendly 
 correspondence commenced between the poet and 
 the critic. Thus several months glided away. At 
 length came July, with its usual week of vacation, 
 and again we set out on a pedestrian tour to the 
 highlands. 
 
 To this trip we had given much precogitation, 
 in choosing our course, fixing its. stages, and 
 acquiring all the information we could regarding 
 the most important places and objects of interest. 
 
 We first of all sailed by steamer, on Saturday 
 afternoon, to the head of Lochgoil, then walked 
 through Hell's Glen to Lochfine, and crossed the 
 ferry to Inverary, where we remained till Monday 
 morning. On Sabbath we attended the parish 
 church, and were both highly pleased with the 
 preaching of the venerable minister. On the after- 
 noon we took a quiet walk to the top of the very 
 picturesque hill of Duniquoich, discoursing on 
 sundry enigmas of human life. From the hill top 
 we had an extensive view of Lochfine and its sur- 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIONS. 115 
 
 rounding scenery ; but having formed very high 
 expectations of the prospect to be enjoyed here, 
 we were on the whole rather disappointed. On 
 Monday morning we started by five o'clock on the 
 road to Oban, by Loch Awe and Ben Cruachan. 
 It was a very pleasant morning. The grey mist 
 still lay upon the mountains. Nature had not yet 
 fully awaked. The solemn stillness of the early 
 morn — a stillness broken only by the muffled ripple 
 of the water rills, and the occasional plaintive 
 bleat of sheep awed our spirits, and we walked 
 on in silence through the narrow lonely glen, till 
 we were suddenly startled by a voice or sound, 
 neither of us had ever heard before — Cuckoo, 
 cuckoo ! Instantly we stood, and eye met eye with 
 gleam of gladsome surprise, when Cuckoo, cuckoo, 
 again broke the stillness, leaving it more deep and 
 solemn than before. The joy of our hearts was 
 great. Smith has expressed the feeling thus, — 
 
 " Cuckoo, cuckoo, woke somewhere in the light. 
 I started at the sound and cried, ' O voice, 
 I've heard you often in the poet's page — 
 Now in your stony wilds.' " 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Indeed he did utter such a sentiment at the time, 
 though not exactly in such measured cadence. 
 Our pause, however, was but for a moment. On 
 we sped. The mists crept up the mountains' sides, 
 and before the rays of the ascending sun soon 
 vanished quite away. Our path sloped upwards, 
 and at length we came upon the spot called 
 \ Burke's view," — a view of mountainous grandeur, 
 truly and greatly sublime, over which we hung 
 with a long lingering gaze. Loch Awe now lay 
 before and beneath us in its exquisitely solemn 
 beauty. As we approached it we were much struck 
 with its unruffled stillness, lying low amidst the 
 mountains, while the peculiar transparency of its 
 waters, reflecting with marvellous distinctness the 
 mountain's side and overhanging trees, gave us 
 intense delight. Very pleasant was now our way 
 on to the inn of Cladish, near the head of the 
 loch. Here we rested an hour and breakfasted. 
 Then strapping on our knapsacks once more, we 
 pursued our way round the head of the loch till 
 we came upon the foot of Ben Cruachan, towering 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AXD ASPIRATIONS. 117 
 
 upwards in massive majesty, and had the ever 
 memorable ruin of Kilchurn Castle near, directly 
 on our left. Sitting down by the roadside, being 
 reluctant to enter the mountain path and leave 
 this most lovely scene, — we took out our small 
 guide-book, and read anew the story of the castle, 
 and long gazing tried to imagine what it was in 
 the days of its glory, till our reverie was dispelled 
 by the sound of wheels, and looking back upon 
 the road we beheld the coach for Oban advancing 
 towards us. We then resolved to make up for the 
 time we had so pleasantly whiled away here, by 
 driving for half a dozen miles upon the coach. 
 Fortunately for us, though not for the proprietor, 
 there were few passengers, and the driver seemed 
 glad of our signal to stop. So, seated near him, we 
 bowled along through the wild pass of Brandir, 
 with the dark waters of the Awe flowing turbulently 
 beneath us on our left ; and entertained by the 
 coachman's naive description of places, and narra- 
 tion of local incidents, till we reached Loch Etive. 
 We then left the coach and resumed our true 
 
n8 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 character of pedestrians. The day was now well 
 spent, and walking by the side of the loch we 
 imagined it would be refreshing to have a bath in 
 its waters. So in we went. This proved rather a 
 serious proceeding, however, as, probably being too 
 much fatigued, the cold water had the effect on 
 Smith of producing vomiting, and so thoroughly 
 prostrating his strength that it was with much 
 difficulty we accomplished the remaining ten miles 
 or so of our journey to Oban. There he became 
 worse, and required to lie in bed till next forenoon 
 under medical attendance. It became, consequently, 
 necessary also to abandon the prospect of com- 
 pleting our projected trip, which was to proceed 
 on foot, by the course of the Caledonian canal to 
 Inverness. Hence having rested one day in Oban, 
 we sailed by steamer to Rothesay, and spent the 
 remainder of our vacation time in boating, and 
 making short rambles on the island of Bute. In 
 a day or two Smith was quite well again, and we 
 had a very agreeable time of it on this, " the fairest 
 and most melancholy of all the islands of the 
 
HIGHLANDS, LOVE, AND ASPIRATIOXS. 119 
 
 Clyde." The epithet " melancholy," which Smith 
 has bestowed on Bute, is owing to the presence of 
 numerous emaciated invalids, who frequent the 
 island during summer on account of its remarkably 
 salubrious atmosphere. Our favourite walk while 
 here w r as to Ascog Point, where the finest of all 
 views upon the island may be had. The prospect 
 of the Clyde there is most extensive, varied, and 
 very lovely. Every day were we seated for a while 
 near the grave of Stanley, first actor, then painter, 
 and devout Christian. This is the spot of which 
 Smith writes in " A Boy's Poem" — 
 
 "There was a ruined chapel 011 the coast, 
 And by it lay a little grassy grave 
 
 Still as a couching lamb. The people told 
 How years ago a grey-haired, childless man 
 (His name is still remembered by the world), 
 Came to these shores, and lay down there to rest 
 Till the last trumpet's cry." 
 
 Though this is most certainly the scene referred 
 to in these lines, the poet did not intend a precise 
 description of it. He has used a poet's licence, 
 and given at least one touch of imaginary colouring 
 
120 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 by the word " ruined " in the first line : for the 
 little white chapel, or Free church, by the side of 
 which is Stanley's " grassy grave," is by no means 
 a ruin. And though there are the dilapidated 
 remains of a building at a short distance, it bears 
 evidence of having been employed for a very 
 different purpose than a chapel. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Z\)t Barfc anfc Ijfe leraltJ* 
 
 " He has lived all his days 
 With beauty and with grandeur and with power 
 Unrecognised till now." (Smith). 
 
 (i The listening throng 
 Applaud the master of the song." Scott. 
 
 QTIMULATED by correspondence with Mr. 
 Gilfillan, Smith now devoted his leisure hours 
 with increased diligence to poetic composition ; 
 and in the month of October appeared the first 
 public notice of his poems, in the pages of the 
 Eclectic, in an article on " Recent Poets/' from Mr. 
 Gilfillan's pen. In the same month, too, that 
 reverend critic being in Glasgow, officiating at a 
 Communion, met Smith by appointment on the 
 " preaching Monday," as it is called. On that day 
 
122 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 they walked arm in arm along Trongate in friendly 
 conversation. They thus met and became person- 
 ally acquainted for the first time. Gilfillan had 
 brought " The Garden and the Child," " The Page 
 and the Lady," and other poems submitted to his 
 judgment, along with him ; but offered to show 
 them to the late Dr. Nichol, Professor of Astro- 
 nomy, before returning them. Mr. Smith gladly 
 availed himself of this offer ; and the professor was 
 so highly pleased with a perusal of these pieces 
 that he immediately invited the young author to 
 his house, where he was frequently afterwards a 
 visitor and a guest. It was, indeed, a very com- 
 mon thing, during this winter, for Smith to walk 
 from the warehouse after eight o'clock p.m., down 
 to Partick, and spend an hour at the Observatory. 
 Through these visits he became also of course 
 acquainted with the professor's son, Mr. John 
 Nichol, then a student, and presently Professor of 
 English Literature in the University of Glasgow. 
 Dr. Nichol was thus the first man of literary 
 eminence with whom Smith became intimate in 
 
THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 123 
 
 Glasgow, and he remained to his death an ardent 
 and steadfast friend. 
 
 In reviewing the University Album of this year, 
 Mr. Gilfillan made another laudatory reference to 
 Smith — presenting him before the students as one 
 worthy of their emulation. And Smith having, 
 during winter, sent him some other productions 
 of his poetic genius — particularly a poem entitled 
 " The Old Manor House" — Gilfillan in the follow- 
 ing spring wrote a long article in the Critic, on 
 " A New Poet in Glasgow," in which he not only 
 gave copious extracts from several of the MSS. be- 
 fore him, but published some of the poems entire. 
 It was a rare, if not altogether unprecedented pro- 
 ceeding for a critic thus to review poems of a living 
 writer which were still only in manuscript, and Mr. 
 Gilfillan accounted for doing so by saying — " His 
 (Smith's) aim is at present partly to get his poetry 
 printed, but principally to w 7 ork up his way to a 
 situation more congenial to his mind, more worthy 
 of his powers, and allowing him more leisure for 
 his favourite pursuits." And he called earnestly 
 
124 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 " specially on Glasgow friends, ever generous and 
 warm-hearted, to look to it, that they neglect not 
 one of the finest poets — perhaps, indeed, one pro- 
 mising to be the finest since Campbell — their good 
 city had produced." 
 
 These notices created a very considerable sen- 
 sation in the literary world. The extracts were 
 generally accepted at the time as verifying the 
 commendations of the Dundee critic ; and the 
 reading public were not only prepared to welcome 
 the coming poet, but ardent in expectation of his 
 first volume. Seldom, indeed, has any work been 
 waited for as the " Life Drama " was. The service 
 which Mr. Gilfillan thus rendered Smith in herald- 
 ing his advent into the sacred circle of literature, 
 and preparing the public for his audience, was very 
 great. In one day, and before he had himself 
 published anything but a few short pieces in the 
 Glasgow Citizen, Smith had become famous, and 
 talked of as the new and genuine poet in every 
 literary club and coterie in the kingdom. Letters of 
 congratulation, from entire strangers, and distant 
 
THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 
 
 places, began to flow in upon him. Some ardent 
 lovers of letters even undertook long journeys in 
 order to see and encourage him. Thus several 
 valuable friendships were then formed by him for 
 life. Among these friendships, not the least note- 
 worthy was that of Mr. Daniel Lawson, Glasgow. 
 That gentleman, immediately after the appearance 
 of Mr. Gilflllan's notices in the Critic, procured for 
 himself copies of these, which he circulated in the 
 city among persons likely to be interested in, and 
 of service to, the young struggling bard. He also 
 sought out Smith, formed a personal acquaintance 
 with him, and invited him to his house, which be- 
 came for him during his future residence in Glas- 
 gow almost a second home. About this time, also, 
 I had the pleasure, through a friend intimate with 
 Hugh Macdonald, of securing Smith's introduction 
 to that gifted, most genial, and somewhat eccentric 
 man ; and a very close, endeared, and lasting 
 friendship was immediately formed between them. 
 Through Macdonald he was next introduced to 
 James Heddenvich, Esq., editor of the Citizen, who 
 
126 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 shortly after introduced him to Mr. Patrick Proctor 
 Alexander, at that time a frequent contributor to 
 the Citizen and other Glasgow newspapers, and who 
 became Smith's biographer and editor of " Last 
 Leaves." 
 
 As it was towards the close of 185 1 that he 
 formed acquaintance with these literary men of 
 Glasgow, and as he removed to Edinburgh at the 
 beginning of 1854, their educational influence upon 
 him was both late and brief. They may have 
 helped to perfect the poet, but they cannot be re- 
 garded as having aided in the making of him. He 
 was, therefore, to a greater extent than some seem 
 disposed to admit, a truly self-taught man, enjoying 
 only the most meagre advantages of schools and 
 of society in his youth, and indeed till the time at 
 which he became an author. 
 
 The truth is, his great teacher, as in the case of 
 every genuine poet, was Nature. He was educated 
 by her far more than by either men or books. She 
 was his first teacher and his best. His works give 
 evidence of this in various ways. 
 
THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 127 
 
 His chief characteristic, alike in verse and prose, 
 is that of literary painter from actual nature. He 
 cannot be said properly to be dramatic : nor is he 
 to any great extent philosophical — in fact, he often 
 spake, at least, so disparagingly of mental philoso- 
 phy, as rather reflected disadvantageously upon 
 himself. At the same time, he frequently mani- 
 fested, even in his earliest works, no mean power 
 of mental and moral analysis. But he did so only 
 in brief, though often subtle and beautiful, gleams 
 of genius. In sustained analysis of mind and cha- 
 racter he rather failed. He struggled, however, 
 after attaining this power, and so successfully, too, 
 as indicated that, had his life been prolonged he 
 might have possessed it in large measure. But 
 after all, it is analogical rather than in analytical 
 power that he excels. Two things indeed he 
 could do well — depict nature and interpret nature ; 
 but it must be nature in the individual and minute, 
 not in the whole and the comprehensive or com- 
 plex. These, in truth, he could do as few poets 
 have done. As was truly said in a notice of his 
 
128 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 earliest works, "No poet that has ever lived has 
 excelled Smith in the beauty and exquisite analo- 
 gical perception displayed in his images from 
 nature." The individual man, too, he could often 
 well depict, but it was by, as with a glance of in- 
 tuition, discerning his differential attribute, or dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic. In short, what he most 
 excels in is, scenic description and individual por- 
 traiture. His scenes and portraits, however, are 
 almost never imaginary ones — they are pictures 
 from life. His best pieces and passages are those 
 which were written under the inspiration of thought 
 brooding over objects of actual and immediate 
 vision. What he has derived from the inspiration 
 of friends and books, is ever tame compared with 
 what his own excogitation brought him, when 
 gazing with " the faculty Divine " upon the world 
 of human and physical phenomena. Let any 
 thoughtful reader put his works to the test, and he 
 cannot fail to be convinced of this. Let him con- 
 trast, for instance, " Edwin of Deira " with " City 
 Poems." In the former, he draws inspiration more 
 
THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 129 
 
 from book-world and the distant past ; in the latter, 
 from the world actually before him ; and notwith- 
 standing all the higher polish and poetic finish of 
 the versification of Edwin, it not only lacks the 
 fire and richness, but further, does not possess the 
 heart, soul, and rounded wholeness of some of the 
 poems in the earlier volume. Most assuredly, had 
 "Edwin of Deira" been Smith's first work, he 
 would not on its merits, great as they are, have 
 been received by the public as he was ; and we 
 venture to predict, in opposition to the judgment 
 of some eminent critics, it will not live in the me- 
 mories of men, and be quoted from in future, as 
 his other and earlier productions. Thus will it be 
 shown that those friends who endeavoured to divert 
 him from the early and natural bent of his poetic 
 spirit which produced his first poems, committed a 
 grave mistake. 
 
 What, under changed circumstances and new 
 monitors, and with approved modern models set 
 before him, he gained in classical correctness, would 
 almost seem to have been at the cost of losing a 
 
 K 
 
130 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 measure of naturalness and originality. One of 
 the chief poetic tendencies of our day is to regard 
 refinement too much. Naturalness is too often 
 enervated and force lost in finish. Over-refining 
 is effeminating. And Smith at first gave promise 
 of heralding a new era in poetry, or at least of ini- 
 tiating a return to a more Burns-like robustness 
 of tone and treatment. Many deeming they saw, 
 amidst all the extravagances of " A Life Drama," 
 indications of this, heartily hailed his advent as a 
 poet. And it would, perhaps, have been better for 
 his fame, had his muse, purged of the follies of its 
 youth, fulfilled that promise. His place in the 
 literature of the age would then have been more 
 distinctly defined, and his influence upon it more 
 potent even than it is. 
 
 But to return to our narrative. Smith, knowing 
 that the public — now prepared by the extracts 
 which had been laid before them — awaited the 
 appearance of his poems in their full form, devoted 
 every available moment to preparation for publica- 
 tion. Mr. Gilfillan had suggested to him, however, 
 
THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 131 
 
 that the select literary world would be best satis- 
 fied with some longer poem than any he had yet 
 written, in which the sustained concentration of 
 his powers might be shown ; and at once he 
 perceived the justness of the suggestion. But as 
 no subject for such an effort had yet occurred to 
 his mind, he began to entertain the thought of 
 attempting to fuse the detached pieces he had 
 already composed into one extensive mould, 
 formed after the plan of one of them, entitled " A 
 Life Fragment," the first draught of which, from 
 his own pen, I have in my possession ; while a 
 second improved and slightly extended copy- 
 was among the papers sent for inspection to Gil- 
 fillan. This was to become, when thus expanded, 
 " A Life Drama." It was, indeed, a difficult and 
 hazardous conception this to work out. It could 
 not but prove so far a failure. It was almost a 
 necessity that it should bear, more or less, traces of 
 being a patch-work ; and the originally detached 
 lyrics could not but suffer much in their intrinsic 
 value by the process of fusion. When he first 
 
 K 2 
 
132 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 mentioned to me this design, I strongly advised 
 him against its prosecution, although I had great 
 confidence in his powers of adaptation. Mr. Gil- 
 fillan also expressed doubt of the feasibility of the 
 project. Nothing could prevent him, however, 
 from making the venture. The plot — so far as 
 there is any in "A Life Drama" — was soon formed 
 in outline ; and he immediately proceeded with the 
 work of detaching, transposing, piecing, uniting, 
 and supplementing, with great toil, patience, care, 
 and ingenuity. As the work advanced, and 
 he rehearsed it stage by stage in our walks, I 
 became more and more astonished at his ability 
 and fertility of thought, It was thus " A Life 
 Drama " took shape and development. Was it 
 done at a dash ? No, verily. 
 
 1 1 The full faced moon, 
 
 Set round with stars, in at the casement looked, 
 
 And saw him write and write ; and when the moon 
 
 Was waning dim upon the edge of morn, 
 
 Still sat he writing, thoughtful-eyed and pale." 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Great joy he had ; for thought came glad and thick, 
 
 As leaves upon a tree at primrose time ; 
 
THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 133 
 
 And as he wrote, his task the lovelier grew, 
 Like April unto May, or as a child, 
 A smile in the lap of life, by fine degrees 
 Orbs to a maiden, walking with meek eyes 
 In atmosphere of beauty round her breathed. 
 He wrote all winter in an olden room 
 Hallowed with glooms and books." 
 
 And summer, too, had come and gone before his 
 task was done. 
 
 These facts regarding the history of Mr. Smith's 
 first published poem are not generally known, but 
 they account in great measure for the chief defects 
 and blemishes of the work. They have also an 
 important bearing on the literary character and 
 acumen of the Rev. G. Gilfillan. 
 
 Some writers have very broadly charged him 
 with over-praising "A Life Drama" in the pages 
 of the Eclectic and Critic, and so encouraging 
 rather than correcting the spasmodic spirit of the 
 young author. The sins and follies of that work, 
 therefore, whatever they may be, are often thus 
 to some extent rolled and made to lie at his door. 
 But these writers, among whom Aytoun cannot 
 
134 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 be exempted, have dene this either in ignorance 
 of, or by, more or less culpably, ignoring the 
 above facts. The real truth is, when Gilfillan wrote 
 in these magazines heralding a new poet, he had 
 never either seen or heard of " A Life Drama," 
 and could not consequently write about it. That 
 work had not then been written; nay, as a work, 
 the chaos of its creation had not come in the 
 poet's mind. They were a collection of short 
 and, all except one, complete poems, that were 
 subjected to Mr. Gilfillan's verdict, and lay before 
 him in MS. when he wrote to these magazines. 
 And, as has been said above, he rather discouraged 
 than otherwise their fusion into one whole. It 
 is not consequently just to accuse him, as has 
 too often been done, of having then and there 
 almost unqualifiedly eulogised "A Life Drama." 
 Indeed to one who knows, and at the time, knew 
 intimately all the facts of the case, the criticisms 
 that have often been made on Gilfillan's early 
 notices of Smith, appear to constitute one of 
 the most unreasonable passages in the history 
 
THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 135 
 
 of modern literature. It is really wonderful how 
 it all arose* Possibly, however, the oracles of 
 literature may sometimes be thus generally led 
 astray by following too implicity some first voice 
 that sounds from the temple. But the fact is 
 indisputable that Alexander Smith owed more 
 as a literary man, and specially as a poet, to George 
 Gilfillan than to all others. It is certain, too, that 
 Smith thought so himself, and once readily con- 
 fessed it, whatever reticence he may have main- 
 tained when moving in circles in which it had 
 become fashionable to depreciate whatever came 
 from the Dundee critic. And eulogistically as 
 Gilfillan wrote of the poet in his youth, all judges 
 do and must allow, that Smith's after career more 
 than verified the predictions of his enthusiastic 
 herald. 
 
 But before his first volume was ready for the 
 press, the month of July came round, and with 
 it his week of holidays. So the MS. was locked 
 up in his desk, and we started on another tour 
 through the highlands. On this occasion we 
 
136 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 went, first by train to Dundee, where he called 
 on the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan, and had an hour's 
 consultation with him. Thence we proceeded the 
 same afternoon to Perth, and next morning com- 
 menced our pedestrian tour. Our course was 
 by Crieff, Comrie, and Loch Earn ; thence west- 
 ward by Loch Lubnaig to Callander, and home- 
 ward, still on foot, to Stirling, where we took train 
 to Glasgow. 
 
 In the meantime, also, he had formed acquaint- 
 ance with a young lady who became another, 
 and the last celebrated by him, of the " fair 
 shapes," who in after-years floated "through the 
 gardens of his memory ; " and regarding whom, 
 he shortly after being introduced to her, wrote 
 to me thus : — 
 
 " is decidedly the cleverest girl I have met 
 
 with. I have seen her harpoon that blundering 
 
 booby D with a lance of wit, in fine style. 
 
 She often says fine things in conversation ; is a 
 capital hand at a compliment, as, for instance : 
 D had spoken to her of me as a poet ! and 
 
THE BARD AXD HIS HERALD. 137 
 
 as such I was introduced. I wrote her two son- 
 nets. A few nights after, I met her, and Ave had 
 a walk. She inquired when I intended to 
 publish ; I said something of not being ambitious 
 of seeing my productions line portmanteaus ; she 
 said, ' Not portmanteaus — they would line memo- 
 ries.' Ye gods, my strong imagination felt a 
 crown dropping upon my head ! 
 
 "I have got on pretty well to day; — got a 
 partner ; commenced my speech, and got my 
 annual dose of cold — a severe one this time. 
 This cursed weather has done it, and Cardinal 
 Wiseman is the cause of this darkness — confound 
 him. 
 
 " I think I repeated one of the sonnets I speak 
 of, to you, up Clyde side. Here is the other : — 
 
 " Our yearning hearts are deeper than our souls. 
 And love, than knowledge, is diviner food • 
 Though with dead hopes life's rugged paths are strewed ; 
 Though in our ears the muffled death-bell tolls ; 
 And through the silent streets the black hearse rolls ; 
 Yet, the young flowers are laughing in the wood — ■ 
 Where the green linnet feeds her nested brood ; 
 
138 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Yet, rosy children sport on primrose knolls — 
 Far heard o'er summer leas are summer birds, 
 And so 'tis in my spirit's dismalness ; 
 Love is a brightness, that will ne'er depart: 
 Thine image sleepeth in my soul's caress, 
 Like a sweet thought within a poet's heart 
 Ere it is born in joy and golden words. 
 
 " I hope you will excuse this scrawl. The fact 
 is I do not feel very well — have no books to read, 
 and two hours to kill. 
 
 " I am, most truly yours, 
 
 "A. Smith." 
 
 For this young lady Smith entertained much 
 admiration. He came to regret, however, that 
 his acquaintance with her had occasioned her 
 to cherish towards him a tenderer passion than 
 he could reciprocate — a regret not untinged by 
 sorrowful reflections that he had perhaps given 
 her cause for cherishing that passion. And it 
 may, indeed, be regarded as probable that he was 
 working upon his own sombre and wavering ex- 
 periences in connection with this episode of love, 
 
THE BARD AND HIS HERALD. 139 
 
 when he wrote " Squire Maurice," one of his 
 finest productions. Through some of even his 
 later poetic effusions also, there runs a note of 
 reminiscent sadness which may not have been 
 wholly artistic or merely fictitious. He was of 
 too noble a nature to forget, or soon cease to 
 mourn the wound he may have, however inad- 
 vertently, inflicted on a gentle and over-susceptive 
 young heart. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 9L &tfe Brama: ftg Critics, t\)t public 
 antr $oet 
 
 " For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask 
 The classic poet's well-conned task ? " 
 
 " Approach those masters, o'er whose tomb 
 Immortal laurels ever bloom : 
 Instructive of the feebler bard, 
 Still from the grave their voice is heard ; 
 From them, and from the paths they showed 
 Choose honoured guide and practised road." 
 
 Scott. 
 
 OMITH having accepted a generous offer made 
 to him by Bogue, the publisher, was now busy- 
 supplying copy to the press and correcting proof. 
 And at length, at the close of the year 1852, his 
 first book, dated 1853, appeared and created a wide 
 and profound sensation. 
 
 1 ' That was a hit ! 
 The world is murmuring like a hive of bees — 
 He is its theme." 
 
 Newspapers, magazines, and reviews were all can- 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 141 
 
 vassing its merits. Of praise there was no lack, 
 from some, indeed, no limit ; but adverse criticism 
 was not altogether withheld. To revise, however, 
 the judgments of the Eclectic, Critic, Leader, 
 AtJienamm, and the quarterlies, is beyond the 
 province of these pages — they are devoted to the 
 life, rather than to the w r ritings of the poet. 
 
 Smith had now indeed acquired fame, perhaps 
 by this first w r ork too much fame — more than the 
 work deserved on its real merits ; though these were, 
 as must ever be confessed, great, and more than 
 could easily be in future sustained by the author. 
 From the first, he and his most intimate friends 
 perceived and felt this ; indeed, the rapid sale of 
 the book, and the laudations of the many critics, 
 awakened expectations that caused him to join 
 trembling with his mirth. He would have been 
 more than satisfied, he often confessed, with 
 earning a little less fame from his first work ; for 
 while he did earnestly 
 
 " Strive for the poet's crown, he ne'er forgot 
 
 How poor are fancy's blooms to thoughtful fruits ; 
 
142 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 That gold and crimson mornings, though more bright 
 Than soft blue days, are scarcely half their worth." 
 
 Besides, no one was more conscious of the 
 defects and blemishes of " A Life Drama " than 
 himself. Before it was out of the press, indeed, 
 his own taste and judgment had condemned much 
 of it ; and greatly did he marvel often at the 
 unmingled praise bestowed on it by some of its 
 critics. The book was the too rapid product of a 
 sensitive mind under the heat of unnatural and 
 unhealthy excitement, which several things had 
 combined to effect. He had been cradled amidst 
 political agitation. His youth had been passed 
 in the very focus of Scottish chartism. In 1848 
 occurred the last French revolution, and the reflux 
 of that movement had been felt in this country, as 
 was manifest in riotous risings in various parts of 
 the kingdom, but especially in Glasgow. There 
 the mob had at mid-day broken into shops in the 
 very centre of the city ; the military had been 
 called out ; and armed pensioners, too prompt to 
 obey a hasty command, had fired upon the people, 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 143 
 
 fatally shedding blood, which awakened the feeling 
 of revenge in some, and alarm in all ; so that the 
 whole of the inhabitants were thrown for days 
 into a state of ferment. And Smith had been a 
 spectator of the most notable of these riots. 
 
 No thoughtful and sensitive young man could be 
 altogether unmoved or uninfluenced in spirit by 
 the political agitations of those days. He was no 
 politician, however, and still less was he a chartist. 
 And with all his poetic sensitiveness, he was as 
 little affected by these circumstances and events, 
 as any one could be. Indeed, by 1848 his life was 
 being spent very much beyond the sphere of 
 politics. He was now living, as far as the sterner 
 necessities of his lot would allow, in a dreamland 
 of poesy, to which he had been lured, and where 
 his spirit was being entranced by voices, among 
 which that of Keats took the lead. And the 
 riotous voices of the ruder world around, bursting 
 violently in upon this poetic region, seemed only 
 to disturb him, and engage his attention for a 
 passing moment. 'The deep currents of his mind 
 
144 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 were scarcely touched by the boisterous political 
 events of the time. These never moved him to 
 write one political stanza, even though he had 
 taken to the reading of Ebenezer Elliott. The fact 
 of his doing so may seem contradictory of all this ; 
 but the fact is, it was Elliott's strains of genuine 
 poetry, and not his politics nor patriotism that 
 fascinated Smith. 
 
 But a stronger cause of unrest of spirit consisted 
 in his own present and prospective circumstances. 
 He was engaged in an employment uncongenial 
 to his mind ; had ardent longings after a more 
 literary life ; was feeling often the disadvantage 
 of a defective education ; was necessitated to 
 prosecute his favourite studies under this disad- 
 vantage, and also " cabined, cribbed, confined," 
 from want of means and leisure ; with little or no 
 visible prospect, too, of bettering his circumstances ; 
 and having no one of influence among his relatives 
 or friends to whom he could look for help or 
 guidance. In such circumstances it was not 
 wonderful that, patient as he was, his spirit 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 145 
 
 should sometimes become despondent, fretful, and 
 irritated. 
 
 Then, lastly and chiefly, there came so suddenly 
 upon him that great burst of praise, by means of 
 Mr. Gilfillan's article in the Eclectic. That first 
 blare of fame could not but produce, on the mind 
 of so young a man, an excitement, for awhile, un- 
 favourable for the conception and execution of a 
 great poem. But unfortunately, it was precisely at 
 this time that the plan of " A Life Drama " was 
 conceived, concocted, and executed. 
 
 And further, while the circumstances of its origin 
 were such, the directing influences of the moment 
 were, unhappily, even more unpropitious. Keats 
 was no longer now the chief controlling spirit of 
 his genius. The spell of Bailey's " Festus," rather, 
 was now upon him. And too much under his 
 influence, it is to be feared, the composition of the 
 work was commenced and carried out. Evidence 
 of this is very apparent when one compares "A 
 Life Drama," with the previously written " Life 
 Fragment," of which it was to some extent an 
 
 L 
 
146 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 expansion. The latter is throughout in conception, 
 spirit, and treatment, far more Keatsean, — quiet, 
 hazy, dreamy. It is a very different spirit which 
 animates " A Life Drama." The mind of Smith, 
 in fact, was never in such an abnormal state as 
 went he wrote that work. Hence is it that it is 
 so unlike his other works, unlike the man himself, 
 and reflects his own spirit less than anything else 
 that he has written. Every one after reading it 
 felt, in coming into personal contact with the 
 author for the first time, a shock of pleasant 
 surprise ; and no wonder. As he has said himself 
 in his fragmentary poem on " Edinburgh," he sung 
 them " urged by passionate unrest." In this 
 state of mind, then, the poem was too hastily 
 conceived, then, by far too hurriedly written during 
 the nights of 1852, and next, too quickly sent to 
 the press. This is the real cause of its imper- 
 fections. Before it was quite finished, its author 
 had himself begun to see its unnatural feverishness, 
 and other faults ; but the public had been pro- 
 mised, and was waiting for the book ; and so it 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 147 
 
 required to go before the world, ere he had 
 time to perfect it by calm reflective thought. 
 And it is almost certain that had it lain for a few 
 months in manuscript in Mr. Smith's desk, for 
 reconsideration, it would never have been pre- 
 sented to the public as it is ; much of it would 
 have been recast, and much of it pruned. But 
 written as it was, the chief wonder connected with 
 it is, that it is what it is. Very few indeed could, at 
 his age, in such circumstances, and after such a 
 fashion produce a work equal to it. It is a marvel- 
 lous production, and a knowledge of all the facts 
 relating to its composition only tends to make it 
 appear more marvellous. The fame it brought him 
 was great, but it was well merited, and undoubt- 
 edly it was by him much prized. But that fame 
 was also perilous to a young beginner in author- 
 ship. To be raised so high so suddenly, how- 
 ever sweet to the poet, was to the man — ay, and 
 to the poet, too, of necessity trying. 
 
 Smith, however, bore the ordeal with a magna- 
 nimity rare at any age, but doubly rare in youth ; 
 
 L 2 
 
148 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 which disarmed envy, won the admiration of all 
 around him, and evinced that the man was even 
 greater than the poet. Few have ever walked 
 forth from being crowned with such a wreath of 
 laurels, with a heart so little changed, and as meek 
 and manly a bearing, as he did. In fact, few with 
 a poetic temperament could do so. To his fellow- 
 workmen, acquaintances, and friends, he was the 
 same as ever. His fame turned other heads : his 
 own it never turned. 
 
 It was at once amusing and pitiable to see, day 
 after day, some lackadaisical-looking youths stand- 
 ing at the warehouse-door at four or eight o'clock 
 p.m., to get a glimpse of the poet as he came out, 
 and to hear the whisperings — " There he's, there 
 he's " ! — whisperings which he sometimes heard, 
 and was wont to hitch his shoulders, muttering 
 an "Uh!" as, after hurried steps behind him, and 
 he was immediately the object of a not very 
 polite stare. But there were others than in- 
 discreet youths who half amused and half annoyed 
 him. 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 149 
 
 He was now invited frequently to dinner and 
 evening parties by persons of good position in 
 society, and men of literary taste. But to be 
 lionised, however sweet it may be, and generally 
 is, especially to talented young men, he not only 
 had no liking for, but felt a very positive aversion 
 to it ; while against the dissipating influences of 
 the festive board, which have proved so irresistible 
 and destructive to many of the sensitive sons of 
 genius, he stood watchful and invincible. Some of 
 those to whose table he was invited, and several 
 whom he met there as fellow guests, desired to know 
 how they might be helpful in procuring for him a 
 situation more congenial to his mind than that he 
 was presently still engaged in. And Smith was 
 wont to relate, with much humorous enjoyment, 
 that on one such occasion, a wealthy paterfamilias 
 asked him into a private room, and after question- 
 ing him regarding the kind of situation he would 
 like, said he was a believer in phrenology, under- 
 stood the science perfectly, and desired Smith to 
 permit him to manipulate his head, being confident 
 
ISO ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 that he would thereby discover what trade or pro- 
 fession would best suit and be most profitable to 
 him. This request being granted, and the poet's 
 head having been scientifically examined with 
 great care, the phrenologistic old gentleman, as- 
 suming a wise and patronising air, seriously 
 advised his young friend to give up all idea im- 
 mediately of prosecuting poetry or literature as a 
 profession, as the fates were dead against him in 
 these paths. He would not, he could not, succeed 
 in either. He had been endowed for another kind 
 of life altogether ; in fact, he was constituted phre- 
 nologically for trading in dry goods, and, according 
 to his best judgment, the business of a drysalter 
 would suit him better than any other : and as he 
 had influence with one of the chief houses in that 
 trade, he had no doubt that he could soon procure 
 him a situation as learner there. Smith had only 
 to signify acquiescence, and he would see about it 
 at once. But Smith, seeing that the generous old 
 gentleman was riding a hobby, with expressions of 
 thanks for so much kindliness of intention, re- 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 151 
 
 quested a day or two to think of the matter, and 
 so escaped. 
 
 As illustrative of the general fame of the young 
 poet in the city at this time, one incident of an 
 amusing nature may be given. A rather popular 
 preacher in the east of Glasgow, being informed 
 by one of his congregation that Alexander Smith, 
 "the new poet of Glasgow," had of late been 
 several times a hearer at his evening sermons, felt 
 not a little elated, and began to think there must 
 be more in his preaching than in his humility 
 he had himself imagined, seeing it could attract 
 such a man of genius. But, alas, on making 
 further inquiry, he learned, to his mortification, 
 that the attraction was not the preacher in the 
 pulpit, but a tradesman's pretty daughter in one 
 of the pews. On this discovery the reverend 
 gentleman used no more efforts to form personal 
 acquaintance with the poet. 
 
 "The new Glasgow Poet," or "the Poet of 
 Glasgow," were titles now frequently applied to 
 him, but which he very much disliked to hear or 
 
j 52 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 read. One of the most respectable and extensive 
 booksellers of the city, whose shop was near to 
 the warehouse in which Smith wrought, on receiv- 
 ing the first parcel of " A Life Drama," advertised 
 it by a large handbill in his window, as " A Life 
 Drama, by Alexander Smith, the Glasgow Poet," 
 and Smith's eye falling on the announcement as 
 he went to his work, his modesty was so stung, 
 that he immediately sent a courteous note, re- 
 questing the placard to be, as a favour, removed, 
 seeing he made no pretensions to the character it 
 ascribed to him ; and the offensive notice instantly 
 disappeared. 
 
 The chief and almost only difference observable 
 in his manner of life from the time that he became 
 known to the public, consisted in his mode of 
 spending the Sabbath. Up till that time he had 
 been a very regular attender of public worship 
 on that day ; but now his Sabbaths were most 
 frequently passed altogether apart from the church. 
 Fidelity to truth demands this fact to be recorded. 
 The auses however, of his being now more fre- 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 153 
 
 quently than previously "with nature on the 
 Sabbath day/' it is not so easy to assign. But 
 this much is certain, the change was not the 
 consequence of the abandonment of any religious 
 conviction. It was merely a defection in practice, 
 not in principle, and consequently one which he 
 would not himself defend. It was observable at 
 the time, and is noticed here, because he was from 
 early youth of a religious temperament. It was 
 certainly from religious feeling, awakened in him 
 apparently by painful events recorded near the 
 beginning of this memoir, that he was induced 
 to entertain thoughts of entering the Christian 
 ministry. That purpose was his own, and not 
 merely the fond fancy of partial parents to see 
 their clever boy some day "wag his head in a 
 pu'pit." He was, however, always of a reserved 
 disposition regarding personal religious life and 
 experience. In our more private and confidential 
 moments of conversation, notwithstanding, he 
 became occasionally communicative respecting this 
 hidden life ; and often showed that the great 
 
154 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 truths of Divine revelation had touched the centre 
 of his soul and awakened within him both thought 
 and feeling. He was ever, moreover, of a reveren- 
 tial spirit. No one ever heard him jest or talk 
 lightly on religious subjects ; nor could he enjoy 
 or tolerate such levity in others. His mind was 
 also richly imbued with Bible-truth ; and his 
 highest early poetic aspirations inclined towards 
 working some of the historic characters of the 
 sacred volume into an epic or dramatic poem. 
 At the time he was engaged, for example, writing 
 "A Life Fragment," — one of his earliest pieces, — 
 begun about his nineteenth year, and which formed 
 the germ of " A Life Drama," — although the fruit 
 proved very unlike the bud — he was also, from a 
 poetic standpoint, pondering the Life of Moses ; 
 and on several occasions spake of it as affording 
 peculiarly rich material for a great epic ; expressed 
 his surprise at no one having attempted it, and 
 his hope of being able himself some day to treat 
 it in a worthy manner. When asked whether he 
 had made any commencement of such a work, 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 155 
 
 he answered, Xo — it was a subject far too high 
 above his reach presently ; would require greater 
 maturity of mind than he now possessed, and 
 would after all demand years of study : but he 
 meant to keep it before him. His ideal poet, too, 
 at that time certainly was 
 
 "One who should hallow poetry to God." 
 
 When he wrote so regarding the poet who 
 
 " Must ere long arise 
 And with a regal song sun- crown this age," 
 
 he wrote as his heart felt, his spirit prompted, and 
 his mind approved. Indeed, his religiousness of 
 spirit in those days reflected itself in his verse to 
 an extent that his works do not now indicate. In 
 "A Life Drama" — by no means the product of 
 a genuine inspiration, but rather of an impulse 
 suddenly kindled by " strange fire," through read- 
 ing such works as Bailey's " Festus " — his poetic 
 soul rushed almost wildly through a new and 
 foreign channel ; and he became unfortunately so 
 far liable to be misjudged, by many, for this his 
 
156 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 first book. Several of the poems of which that 
 work was composed were of a truly religious tone. 
 One such, and among the first written, entitled 
 " The Consecration/' containing the song of 
 Earth's history, lies before me in MS., which 
 though neither after the manner of Milton, nor 
 Young, nor Cowper, nor Watts, nor Montgomery, 
 breathes a truly religious spirit. And here is 
 another piece of those days, which I extract from 
 a letter, not doubting that the judicious and 
 generous will pardon any juvenilities discernible in 
 it, in consideration of its being written about his 
 nineteenth year, and also of its general character 
 and worth. It is hardly needful to premise 
 that it is addressed to a student of theology. 
 
 4 1 O thou of thoughtful brow and daring heart, 
 Speed on thy lofty path like feathered dart ; 
 Who can withstand the siren voice of fame, 
 Nor bend in worship to that shade — A name : 
 Follow the promptings of thy burning soul, 
 Sweep like a tempest to that distant goal ; 
 Toil on, thou noble heart — nor let despair 
 Unnerve thy soul ; but nobly, boldly dare — 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 157 
 
 Dare with thine arm to bear the Cross unfurled. 
 And gather, 'neath its ample folds — a world. 
 This be thy task : what though no marble tomb 
 In gloomy grandeur frowns o'er thy long home ! 
 If not a leading star in Fame's bright van, 
 Know this — the first was ne'er the noblest man, 
 The world's best blood was not a blazing sun, 
 His life was unrevered ; his grave unknown. 
 Prove not a traitor to thy sacred trust 
 Through love of life, nor passion, nor the lust 
 Of gold. Fight well, thou warrior of God, 
 And cleave a path to heaven's bright abode — 
 Return with garlands from the holy war, 
 Then shine beyond the sky a meteor star." 
 
 But even the " Life Drama " itself contains not a 
 few indications of the more religious spirit of those 
 earlier poems out of which it was compiled. Be- 
 sides the passage on the " poet who should ere long 
 arise," already referred to, that other on the degra- 
 dation of the human soul (pages 28 — 35), may be 
 instanced, with the remark that the part containing 
 a turbid love passion did not exist in the original. 
 What could be finer, after the " wail " of the pre- 
 ceding lines, than this — 
 
 "Brothers, hush ! the Lord Christ's hands 
 Ev'n now are stretched in blessing o'er the sea and o'er the lands." 
 
158 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 And the close too — 
 
 " Lo ! I see long blissful ages, when these mammon days are done, 
 Stretching like a golden ev'ning forward to the setting sun." 
 
 Mark, also, how, at the close of " A Life Drama," 
 the hero emerging at length out of the whirlpool 
 of passion in which he "tore at all the creeds," 
 confesses to his friend thus — 
 
 " Charles. He told me once, 
 
 The saddest thing that can befall a soul, 
 Is when it loses faith in God and woman ; 
 For he had lost them both — Lost I those gems — 
 Though the world's throne stood empty in my path, 
 I would go wandering back into my childhood, 
 Searching for them with tears. 
 
 " Edward. Let him go 
 
 Alone upon his waste and dreary road, 
 He will return to the old faith he learned 
 Beside his mother's knee. That memory 
 That haunts him, as the sweet and gracious moon 
 Haunts the poor outcast earth, will lead him back 
 To happiness and God." 
 
 And as if the poet himself were returning to the 
 purer and truer purpose of his earlier youth, he 
 closes the book with the noble sentiment — 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 159 
 
 "I will go forth 'mong men, not mailed in scorn, 
 But in the armour of a pure intent. 
 Great duties are before me, and great songs ; 
 And whether crowned orcrownless, when I fall, 
 It matters not, so as God's work is done. 
 I've learned to prize the quiet lightning-deed, 
 Not the applauding thunder at its heels, 
 Which men call Fame." 
 
 He that could even think that thought, — the man 
 who could write these noble lines, must have 
 had something truly noble, genuinely Christian in 
 his spirit. And let it be remembered that these 
 fine and truly religious passages are fragments of 
 his earliest poems. 
 
 That he was ever, however, even in his earliest 
 years, what is commonly understood by the phrase 
 " a religious poet," is not here meant to be asserted. 
 All that is maintained is, that he was truly religious 
 in spirit. The sensuousness even, or as some think 
 and have said, the super-sensuousness of "A Life 
 Drama," did not characterize those poems which 
 he submitted to the critical eye of the Rev. George 
 Gilfillan. They were free from that, perhaps the 
 
i6o ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 chief, fault of that work. And though after its pub- 
 lication he did " proceed to veil the statue of the 
 Venus, and to uncover those of the Apollo and 
 Jupiter," my opinion, formed from long and close 
 intercourse with him, is that his early religiousness 
 of poetic spirit suffered partial decadence for a 
 time, from want of depth of religious thought, and 
 that owing to a combination of causes. First of 
 all, in part, from personal idiosyncrasy. 
 
 Naturally, instinctively he shrank from any 
 process of lengthened logical analysis, or abstruse 
 scientific investigation. He did not really seem 
 to dislike religious science more than he did all 
 mental science ; nor religious disputation more than 
 political disputation ; but he disliked them all, and, 
 that apparently very much alike. Indeed, he not 
 inaptly describes himself, when in his essay on 
 " Books and Gardens," he makes " the doctor " say, 
 " There is no use speaking on such matters to our 
 incurious, solitary friend here, who could bask 
 comfortably in sunshine for a century, without 
 once inquiring whence came the light and the 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 161 
 
 heat""* He was therefore always more likely to shirk 
 than to fight u the spectres of the mind " — to avoid 
 them than to lay them. In short, he was born 
 more a poet than a philosopher. The strongest pro- 
 pension of his mind was to poetry, not in any true 
 sense to philosophy. The greatest of poets, indeed, 
 are precisely those who have been most philosophic. 
 And here from the first was the rock of peril in 
 Smith's path : in order that he might rise to one of 
 the highest seats in the temple of song, he required 
 to overcome a natural aversion to deep scientific 
 thinking on mental and moral truth, and a too 
 great readiness to be satisfied with beauty merely, 
 mainly, or per se. 
 
 But— and as a second causative— in his early 
 education he had no guide or adviser, and so was 
 left to follow too freely his own impulses, which 
 being followed become always more dominant. 
 True mental discipline, such as may be gained in 
 college life, he had not received. And the time 
 available, in his adolescent age, for mental self- 
 
 * " Dream thorp," page 265. 
 
 M 
 
162 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 culture, was hardly sufficient even for the gratifica- 
 tion of his strong poetic tendencies. 
 
 As he advanced in life, however, he seems to 
 have felt progressively the need of philosophic 
 thought in loftiest song, and so — 
 
 "Another and a nobler me " 
 
 was rising within him ; and he was evidently in his 
 later years looking into the arena of truth, and 
 equipping himself for grappling there with the 
 deeper questions of the human soul, and man's 
 destiny. 
 
 Further, being of a gentle and pacific nature, 
 the Church early disappointed and dissatisfied 
 him. The bitter conflicts of creeds, the often 
 rancorous polemics, and acrimonious contentions of 
 the clergy, divines, and theologians, were to him 
 the most " wretched jangling" of all in this poor 
 world. The almost incessant internal war-cries 
 and actual wars of the Church, — which ought to 
 have been the choicest sphere of concord, rest, and 
 peace, — appeared to him to indicate that there was 
 no rest to be found by entering her pale, and he 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 163 
 
 became evermore disposed to stand apart from her, 
 as from an arena of discord. Alas ! how many 
 such gifted, sensitive, thoughtful, and specially 
 poetic minds ; how many of naturally the finest 
 spirits of our country, have during this and past 
 ages been repelled from the visible Church from 
 the same cause ! 
 
 But once more, unfortunately, the spirit of his 
 first book, constrained the more strictly religious 
 world to look askance upon him as a poet. The 
 learned men of the Church, her ministers, and 
 journalists failed, therefore, to hail and countenance 
 him as heartily as others did, and he became 
 through contact with kindred spirits a poet of the 
 times. And here we come upon a fourth source 
 of moulding or directing influence — the current 
 poetic spirit of our age. It is not wonderful that 
 in his early circumstances, at least, he should have 
 been, in a large measure, influenced by that spirit. 
 It is not in the loftiest sense a thoughtful one — not 
 at any rate a thoughtfully religious one. We have 
 hymn writers in abundance, and a few good ones ; 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 but no poet of our day has manifested any great 
 depth of sound religious thought. The most emi- 
 nent perhaps, is Keble ; but even he was after 
 all only the most exquisite of hymnologists. In 
 Tennyson's " In Memoriam " too, " that strain I 
 heard was of a higher mood " than is common with 
 other poets of our period. The poets and strictly 
 literary men of our day have too generally devoted 
 themselves merely, at best, to the aesthetics of 
 religion. Theirs is the religion of sentiment 
 oftener than that of strong sound sense ; of the 
 imagination or fancy rather than of the intellect ; 
 of the heart rather than of the head, — indeed 
 sometimes as divorced from the head. Feeble 
 are the hands that now essay to strike the harp 
 of Milton, and feeble are the notes, which they 
 evoke. It still waits the master spirit who shall 
 wake its melody as of old. Smith was cast 
 among men of another mould, and almost, and 
 no marvel in so young a man, became one of them. 
 It is to the credit, too, of the Rev. George 
 Gilfillan that he early saw Smith's danger here, 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 165 
 
 and as he had been the first encourager of his 
 
 muse, he was now the first to warn him ; when, 
 soon after the publication of " A Life Drama," 
 sketching him in his " Gallery of Literary 
 Portraits," he wrote thus : — " Now here we think 
 is the vital defect of the poem (A Life Drama), 
 the one thing which prevents us applying to it the 
 epithet 'great.' Mr. Smith is no infidel, and his 
 poetry breathes at times an earnest spirit, but 
 his views on such subjects are extremely vague 
 and unformed. He does not seem sufficiently 
 impressed with the conviction that, no poem ever 
 has deserved the name of great, when not impreg- 
 nated with religion, and when not rising into 
 worship. His creed seems too much that of 
 Keats, ' Beauty is truth — truth beauty.' We repeat 
 that he should look back to the past, and think 
 w T hat are the poems which have come down to us 
 from it, most deeply stamped with the approba- 
 tion of mankind, and which appear most likely to see 
 and glorify the ages of the future. Are they not 
 those which have been penetrated and inspired by 
 
1 66 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 moral purpose, and warmed by religious feeling ? 
 We speak not of sectarian song, nor of the com- 
 mon generation of hymns and hymn writers ; but 
 we point to Dante's 'Divina Commedia ;' to all 
 Milton's poems ; to Spenser's ' Fairy Queen ;' to 
 Herbert's ■ Temple ;' to Young's ' Night Thoughts ;' 
 to Thomson's ' Seasons ;' to some of the better 
 strains of Pope and Johnson ; to Cowper, to 
 Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. 
 The poet who would not merely shine the 
 meteor of a moment, the stare of fools, and the 
 temporary pet of the public, but would aspire 
 to send his name down, in thunder and music, 
 through the echoing aisles of the future, and 
 become a benevolent and beloved potentate over 
 distant ages, and millions yet unborn, must tread 
 in their footsteps, and seek after the hallowed 
 sources of their inspiration." This was timely 
 and noble advice, to which he doubtless gave 
 heed. 
 
 Mr. Smith, then, never, perhaps, possessed any 
 such well defined religious creed as would satisfy 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 167 
 
 the schools of theology. That, however, is in very 
 many instances in this country a possession of 
 no great value. And one may be none the less 
 a true Christian that he is not well versed in 
 all the subtleties of a modern Scottish scribe or 
 Pharisee. But after all, that he was to the close 
 of his life of a genuinely religious spirit, is made 
 abundantly evident by the works of his maturer 
 years ; especially by his prose works, and most 
 of all by his essays, as in " Dreamthorp," where 
 we have more of the inner life of the author 
 revealed than in his poems. Who, for instance, 
 can read the essays on " Death, and the Fear of 
 Dying," and " Christmas," without regarding their 
 author as writing them under the shadow of the 
 Cross, with a spirit made reverent by contempla- 
 tion of Him who hung thereon ? 
 
 And what cause have we to doubt that it was 
 the same religiousness of mind which prompted 
 him in his early youth to think of making Moses 
 the subject of an epic, which induced him, at length, 
 to select as the topic of his last, and his only 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 historic poem, the introduction of Christianity into 
 Britain ? Indeed, that also was a subject which had 
 early, and so long, engaged his thoughts — as wit- 
 ness " An Evening at Home," which forms part of 
 his first published volume, and contains what must 
 be regarded as the germ of " Edwin of Deira." 
 Further, a review of his works as a whole, furnishes 
 pleasing indications that, as a writer, he was be- 
 coming, through the mellowing influences of years, 
 and increasing realization of life's responsibilities 
 and solemnities, ever more Christian in thought 
 and expression. In fine, though he was no avowed 
 or exemplary churchman, he would fail in more 
 than Christian charity, who would venture to pro- 
 nounce him other than a sincere Christian. 
 
 But let us return from endeavouring to analyse 
 the character of the man, to continue the tracing 
 of the more external events of his history. 
 
 From Mr. Bogue he had received ^"ioo for his 
 first book, and with this sum in hand, and a path 
 opened to a literary career, he resolved to leave the 
 trade of designer at the termination of his year's 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 169 
 
 engagement. In the course of a few months this 
 purpose was fulfilled ; and as his father and the rest 
 of the family removed about the same time to 
 Williamsburgh, near Paisley, he took a trip through 
 England towards London, in order to see the coun- 
 try, and form acquaintance with some of the 
 literary men of the capital. On this trip he was 
 accompanied by Mr. John Nichol, and in the course 
 of it I received a number of interesting letters 
 from him, of some of which a few extracts may 
 be given : 
 
 "Ambleside, Monday evening. 
 
 " My dear B 
 
 "I have seen Liverpool, Ulverston, and 
 Biggs. . . . During the last two days I have 
 been among the lakes. Some of them are nearly 
 as wild, and others more soft and beautiful than 
 anything of the same kind in Scotland. I crossed 
 Barrowdell Pass yesterday— a very hard pull it was, 
 but the view from the head was magnificent. In 
 coming down I really thought I would have broken 
 
170 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 my neck. ... I spent some time in Grassmere 
 churchyard. Wordsworth sleeps there, with a 
 number of his friends, and many of the members 
 of his own family around him. The sight is affect- 
 ing enough. Afterwards, I saw the great poet's 
 sister — the companion of his rambles. She has 
 been crazy for twenty years, is now very old and 
 frail, and when I saw her she was drawn about in 
 a wheeled chair. 
 
 " We called on Miss Martineau a few hours ago. 
 No one from her appearance would suspect her ot 
 the sin of authorship. She told a melancholy 
 story of 'Jane Eyre,' who is unwell. 
 
 •J> «L» vL» vjx «J> 
 
 «T» «x» *T» "T* ^> 
 
 There is to be a party at Martineau's to-morrow 
 night. Nichol and I are invited, and I suppose 
 must show face. I will be in Halifax on Saturday. 
 Should you find time to drop a few lines for me I 
 would take it kind. Should you do so address to 
 me at the Post Office. Good-night. 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 "A. Smith." 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 171 
 
 " Oriental Bank Corporation, 
 " Walbrook y London, Saturday morning. 
 " Since I wrote you I have seen a considerable 
 part of England. After finishing the lake country, 
 we came through a part of Yorkshire, containing 
 the finest scenery and the stupidest people it has 
 been my lot to witness. I have seen Bradford, 
 Halifax, Manchester — where we spent a day with 
 John Stobes Smith — Sherwood Forest, Notting- 
 ham, etc. I met ' Festus ' at Nottingham. Al- 
 though I have modified my opinion of him vastly, 
 I could not but look upon him with eager interest. 
 . . . The day after I met him we visited New- 
 stead Abbey together. ... I have been a 
 week in London, and have been enjoying myself 
 in the best manner I can. Last Saturday I was at 
 a literary party, and was much amused by a girl 
 
 who fastened upon me there. She is a Miss 
 
 She professed vast admiration for my bridge scene. 
 Later in the evening she laid me completely on my 
 back, after this fashion : ( I am going to ask you a 
 question, Mr. Smith, and you need not answer it 
 
172 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 unless you choose, you know. Would it not have 
 been as well to have married Violet and Walter at 
 once, and not have sent them through such a career 
 of sin and misery ? ' I did not think the time and 
 place was suitable for an explanation, so I parried 
 the question as dexterously as I could. On Wed- 
 nesday last I drove some forty miles south of Lon- 
 don, to dine with Martin F. Tupper, author of 
 ' Proverbial Philosophy/ . . . He lives in a 
 most beautiful part of the country, and gives good 
 dinners : two virtues which I hope will cover his 
 literary sins. I called on Herbert Spencer and 
 Lewes yesterday. spencer is a quiet, Scotch- 
 looking, thoughtful man. He wishes me to go to 
 the opera with him next week. . . . Lewes 
 and I go to Windsor next Saturday. To-day, 
 Anderson and I go to Buckinghamshire. He 
 returns on Monday, and I go to Yendys' to stay 
 a few days, so I won't be in London till next 
 Tuesday. My new edition appears on Wednesday 
 first. Anderson sends his compliments, and 
 
 " I remain, yours affectionately, A. Smith." 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 173 
 
 For preparing this new edition of a A Life 
 Drama " for the press he was handsomely remune- 
 rated by Mr. Bogue, whose entire conduct towards 
 the young author was most honourable and 
 generous. After paying him the stipulated ;£ioo 
 for the MS., he, before Smith left London, gave 
 him ^50 additional as a present, besides a number 
 of valuable books It is to this £50 that Smith 
 refers in the following letter. 
 
 London, July 14, 1853. 
 
 "My dear Brisbane, — 
 
 " I got yours an hour ago, and very glad 
 was I to get it. I could not think what had kept 
 you silent so long. I have been running about the 
 country a good deal of late. I just returned from 
 M'Dougal this morning, . . . Since I wrote 
 to you I have spent some time at Cheltenham 
 with Yendys. Neither he nor his wife are in 
 good health. His book is to be out in October. 
 I have also been down at Cambridge, and dined 
 in the great hall with the professors and dons. 
 
174 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Very good fellows all of them. I saw a good 
 deal of the person who reviewed me in the Spec- 
 tator, as also the man who worked me off in the 
 Nonconformist. I have not seen your brother 
 yet, but mean to try and see him to-morrow. . . 
 I will be in Paisley on Monday first, and will 
 be at your service any time after that you please, 
 I will see you in the course of next week. I 
 got the fifty pounds from Bogue to day. . . . 
 It is amusing to see Hugh (Macdonald) coming 
 out a la Gilfillan. The verses are good ; but I 
 think, also, he has made rather too much of them. 
 Biggs makes his appearance in the Critic on 
 
 the 1 8th. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 "A. Smith." 
 
 In the course of the following week, he called 
 on me as promised in the above letter, and w T e 
 arranged for a short excursion together to the 
 highlands. Accordingly, in a few days, we went 
 to Aberfoyle, and thence to the Trossachs. As 
 he now resided with his family at Williamsburgh, 
 
A LIFE DRAMA. 175 
 
 we only met about once each week for some time. 
 He felt too lonely, however, to enjoy residence 
 in Paisley. His friends were all in Glasgow, and 
 his visits to the city soon became more frequent. 
 It was about this time he received an invitation 
 from the Duke of Argyle to visit him at his castle 
 at Inverary. In compliance with this invitation, 
 he spent a week at the ducal palace, and very 
 much enjoyed the society of his grace, and of 
 Lord Dufferin, who also happened to be there at the 
 time, and after his return humorously contrasted 
 this visit to Inverary with his first, on the occasion 
 of our second pedestrian trip to the highlands. 
 
 His fame had now spread far. An edition of 
 double the usual number of copies, had been sold 
 of " A Life Drama " in the course of a few months, 
 and a second had appeared. Foreign journals 
 had also made his name favourably known on the 
 continent ; while in America his book was being 
 sold in thousands. He now began a literary 
 career, by undertaking the editorship of a maga- 
 zine called the Glasgow Miscellany, which was 
 
176 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 started by Mr. Robert Buchanan, editor of the 
 Glasgow Sentinel newspaper, and father of 
 Robert Buchanan the poet. This literary effort, 
 however, like all such undertakings in Glasgow, 
 proved a failure. And on Smith accepting a 
 situation which necessitated his leaving the city, 
 it came suddenly to an end. 
 
C HAPTER I X. 
 
 fax €ftinbm$). 
 
 ( ' Thy sons, Edina, social, kind, 
 
 With open arms the stranger hail ; 
 Their views enlarg'd, their lib'ral mind 
 
 Above the narrow, rural vale ; 
 Attentive still to sorrow's wail, 
 
 Or modest merit's silent claim : 
 And never may their sources fail! 
 And never envy blot their name ! " 
 
 Burns. 
 
 r I A HE secretaryship of the Edinburgh univer- 
 sity, which now became vacant, was just 
 such a situation as Mr. Smith had long desired 
 to occupy : and being encouraged by several of 
 his friends to make application for it, he im- 
 mediately did so. There was a considerable 
 number of candidates for the office, however ; 
 but having secured the influence of James Hed- 
 derwick, Robert Chambers, the Duke of Argyle, 
 
 N 
 
173 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 and Duncan McLaren — then Lord Provost, and 
 afterwards Member of Parliament for the city, — 
 he became the successful applicant. The post was 
 confessedly conferred on him in consideration 
 of his poetic abilities. He possessed, however, 
 every other qualification necessary for a proper 
 discharge of its duties, and entered the univer- 
 sity as its secretary in the beginning of the 
 year 1854. After he had thus settled in Edin- 
 burgh we corresponded for a while, almost 
 weekly, in writing. The following extracts from 
 one of his letters at this time give a glimpse 
 of him in beginning life in the Scottish capital. 
 
 " Edinburgh. 
 " My dear Tom, 
 
 " I got your welcome letter the other 
 
 day, and am glad to think there is a chance 
 
 of your being through here so soon. . . . 
 
 I feel Edinburgh very dreary occasionally — a 
 
 sad want of old habits, places, and companions. 
 
 By my teetotalism there hangs a tale ; and a 
 
 year hence this abstinence will either be the 
 
IN EDIXnURGH. 179 
 
 most heroic or the most insane proceeding I 
 ever engaged in. 
 
 " Does your next session take place in Edin- 
 burgh or Glasgow ? I think you mentioned 
 to me some time ago that you thought you might 
 require to come here. I hope it may be so. Did 
 you see ' Festus, a criticism by Murillo/ in 
 'Hogg'? and what do you think of it? 
 . . . The hint you give at the end of your 
 letter concerning other matters I can under- 
 stand. Perhaps as far as you are presently 
 concerned it is a pity — perhaps not. We have 
 been comrades and have marched together some 
 eight stages of life's journey with a pretty good 
 knowledge of one another's burdens ; and I sus- 
 pect both of us are now in most precarious 
 circumstances — on the very skirts of the skirmish ; 
 and a few years must either bring us success or 
 defeat. Such matters are not so important 
 now as they were a few years ago ; but they 
 are matters which letter writing cannot do justice 
 to. Were w r e on a still hill-side, or on the tramp, 
 
 N 2 
 
180 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 with a white road stretching miles before us, or 
 in a gloaming room, with a window opening on 
 the sea, we might talk of such like affairs, but 
 assuredly they are not to be written about. 
 For myself I confess the future makes me often 
 afraid — one sees so much in himself to fear, and 
 so much out of himself. Remember me to C. 
 and C, and believe me, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "A. Smith." 
 
 It was my privilege to spend a pleasant week 
 as his guest early in the following summer ; 
 and having gone again to Edinburgh in autumn 
 to complete my studies, we had several delightful 
 rambles together to Lasswade, Roslin, and other 
 places around the city, and enjoyed many happy 
 evenings in his lodgings. New and genial friends 
 were gathering around him, and the dreariness 
 of which he had complained shortly after leav- 
 ing Glasgow, ceased to be felt by him. Sydney 
 Dobell was then residing at Corstorphine, and 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 181 
 
 between the two young poets a close, cordial 
 friendship had commenced. One of my happiest 
 reminiscences of that time is that of accompany- 
 ing Smith on one occasion to Corstorphine, and 
 being introduced by him to the author of " The 
 Roman/' whom we found along with his still 
 delicate, but most amiable wife, gazing with much 
 admiration from the drawing-room window, on a 
 gorgeous sunset. As fruit of this friendship, and 
 these evening visits to Corstorphine, there appeared 
 in the following year, 1855, "War Sonnets," a 
 little volume or poetical brochure on the Crimean 
 war, the joint composition of the two friends. 
 
 Having at length left Edinburgh on the com- 
 pletion of my studies, we still continued to cor- 
 respond frequently by letter. There is nothing 
 in that correspondence, however, of more than 
 private interest, till the following was re- 
 ceived : — 
 
 " December 1st, 1856. 
 "My dear Brisbane, 
 
 "I got your letter the other day, and was 
 
1 82 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 glad to hear that you had got yourself com- 
 fortably located. I expected to see you every 
 day here ; but I then thought that your time 
 being short you would find at the last you 
 had ten thousand times too many things to do, 
 and so just push on to Aberdeenshire. I trust 
 you will find your new mode of life pleasant, 
 and exciting enough to keep your blood warm 
 during the winter. 
 
 "The newspaper came with the account of 
 your ordination. I could hardly help smiling 
 at the thought that, much has come to both 
 of us, which, walking about the outskirts of 
 Glasgow some ten years ago, we looked for- 
 ward to with great interest, and perhaps some 
 little doubt ; and how much a matter of course 
 it seems now ! 
 
 " I don't know if you have seen in the 
 papers the sudden death of Mr. Bogue, the 
 publisher. He died about a week ago. I had 
 a letter just a few days before his death from 
 him, and it was arranged that I should make 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 183 
 
 my appearance for the second time in spring. 
 Whether Tilt (his old partner, who is now con- 
 ducting the business) will publish me, I don't 
 know. I don't apprehend any serious obstacle 
 in the way of getting a publisher. 
 
 " I inclose a little poem which I printed in 
 the National Magazine, and should be glad to 
 hear what you think of it. I am at present 
 busy with an essay on the Scottish Ballads, 
 for a volume of Edinburgh essays, on the same 
 plan as those volumes issued by the Universities 
 of Cambridge and Oxford. I must have it 
 finished before I leave this for the holidays at 
 Christmas, as the volume is advertised for the 
 second week of January. 
 
 " Many thanks for your invitation at Christ- 
 mas, being the third I have to Aberdeenshire 
 at this moment. To each and all of them I 
 must express my gratitude, and decline. A 
 certain lady from the Hebrides is to be in 
 Glasgow at that time, so I cannot come. 
 If D lies on the line of railway from 
 
1 84 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 Inverness, I may perhaps drop in upon you 
 in April. Take a wife, Tom. Now is your 
 opportunity. You have a position, a house, 
 and everything ready. 
 
 "There is nothing new here. We have 
 Thackeray lecturing, and Edinburgh crammed 
 itself into the music hall, and ruffed and ap- 
 plauded most lustily. 
 
 "R is still in Edinburgh. He says he 
 
 does not think he will go forward to the 
 Church at all. 
 
 "I suppose you won't be South for some 
 time. Write to me and let me know how you 
 get on. 
 
 "Yours faithfully, 
 
 "A. Smith." 
 
 But as we were now both busily engaged in 
 the work to which we had respectively devoted 
 ourselves, our correspondence by letter became 
 gradually less frequent ; and I had not been, 
 favoured with an epistle from him for some 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 185 
 
 considerable time, when the following, which 
 explains itself, came to hand : — 
 
 "My dear Brisbane, 
 
 " I know I have acted very badly in not 
 writing earlier ; but for my sin I must plead, 
 in extenuation^ a multitude of good intentions 
 and, fortunately, some little business. I have 
 been arranging matters for a certain great 
 event, which has, I confess, knocked all minor 
 things out of my head. The wedding takes 
 place on Monday first, To you and to all 
 other friends of my bachelorhood I wave a fare- 
 well, and trust that in that other life I may 
 know you all again. 
 
 " I have but little news. I am in press 
 again. This time my publishers are the Mac- 
 millans of Cambridge, who give me ^"250 for 
 the book, the copyright to remain with me. 
 When they make the same amount of profit, 
 the profits are to be equally divided, so that 
 if the thing is at all a success in a commer- 
 
1 86 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 cial point of view, I will gain more by it. I 
 expect ;£ioo or ,£50 from America also. The 
 people who printed the i Life Drama ' have 
 been written on the subject, and I expect an 
 answer soon. I think Macmillan's offer ex- 
 tremely liberal ; and taking the time I have 
 been in Edinburgh, in which the greater portion 
 of the work has been done, and the little wind- 
 falls of money for other literary work, . . . 
 in conjunction with my salary at college, there 
 is a tolerable prospect that, with thriftiness and 
 economy, Flora and I will be comfortable enough. 
 " I can't tell you how strangely I feel in my pre- 
 sent circumstances. Happy, of course ; but happy 
 with a kind or degree of fear and trembling at the 
 heart of it that makes it more intense, while it 
 troubles and shakes it. What the future is I do 
 not know ; and I cannot command it. When a 
 man is alone, he does not care much : with the 
 earth beneath his feet, the sky above his head, and 
 a decent kind of conscience in him, he scrambles 
 along pretty jollily ; but when another nature is 
 
IN EDIXBURGH. 187 
 
 bound up with his own — who must accept the same 
 fate, whether of bliss or bale, smile in the same 
 sunshine, bow the head to the same storm of driv- 
 ing rain — why it does make one feel a little anxious. 
 But hang it ! — these ghosts ought to slink into their 
 graves. What have they to do showing their empty 
 sides and ugly faces among orange blossoms and 
 the silver voices of the marriage bells ? 
 
 " I am sorry that our plans will not allow us to 
 come round by Inverness, so that we shall not have 
 the pleasure of seeing you, as I at one time hoped. 
 We leave Skye on Tuesday by the steamer, and 
 mean to stay a few days at Oban, and reach Edin- 
 burgh on Friday or Saturday night. F. has never 
 been at the Trossachs, and I expect great delight 
 in a trip there when the summer session closes ; 
 and I have also a desire to establish myself for 
 some few weeks at Strone or Kilmun. Is there 
 any chance of your being in Edinburgh soon ? — 
 With best wishes, I remain, yours affectionately, 
 
 a A. Smith." 
 
 His marriage, referred to in the above letter, 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 took place in the spring of 1857. The lady to 
 whom he was then united was Miss Flora Mao 
 donald, daughter of Mr. Macdonald, of Ord, Skye, 
 and related in blood to the heroine of that name ; 
 and connected also with Horatio Maculloch, the 
 painter, between whom and Smith a very cordial 
 friendship existed. 
 
 In the course of little more than a year after 
 his marriage, he removed from Edinburgh to sweet 
 Gesto Villa, at Wardie, near Granton, where on 
 two occasions I had the pleasure of lodging over 
 a night with him. 
 
 The above letter also makes reference to the 
 publication of " City Poems " this same year. This, 
 though to discerning readers the best of all Mr. 
 Smith's poetical works, did not meet with such 
 success as his first volume. From various causes 
 the tide of popular sentiment had now ceased to 
 run so strongly in his favour as it had once done. 
 He had been accused of the sin of extensive 
 plagiarism by some, and condemned by others as 
 too sensational. 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 189 
 
 To the latter charge fullest expression was given 
 in a satirical poem written by Professor Aytoun, 
 and published in 1855, under the title — "Firmilian: 
 a Spasmodic Tragedy, by T. Percy Jones." That 
 work proved a decided hit : it burst like a bomb in 
 the circle of literature, and executed considerable 
 damage on the reputation of several poets. This 
 it did more, perhaps, on the ground of its being 
 well timed, than because of intrinsic poetic worth. 
 It was certainly, however, characterized by great 
 pungency and superlative smartness, in exposing 
 what it termed the " spasmodic " school of poetry 
 to unsparing ridicule. And no one in reading it 
 could fail to perceive that Gilfillan, as a critic, and 
 Bailey, Dobell, and Smith, as poets, were the chief 
 dramatis personcz ; while Carlyle and Ruskin, as 
 prose writers, did not entirely escape being repre- 
 sented. 
 
 Smith was w r ont to laugh heartily over several 
 passages of this book which most directly referred 
 to himself; always spoke of it as a production of 
 true genius, and never bore any malicious grudge 
 
190 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 against its author. But, at the same time, he did 
 not altogether enjoy its allusions to himself: indeed, 
 no man in his circumstances could do so. Nothing 
 so prejudices the mass of men against a public 
 man or author as, though excessive, deserved, and 
 so successful, ridicule. And as this was achieved 
 in " Firmilian " with superlative cleverness, public 
 sentiment which had, perhaps, become already 
 sated with its own over-rapturous applause at 
 " A Life Drama,'' began to look shy at its author. 
 While thus his popularity had commenced to 
 decline, the other less just, and even less scrupulous 
 and unmerciful attack upon his fame, told with far 
 more effect than it would otherwise have done. 
 The charge of plagiarism could happily be an- 
 swered with the common weapon of fair argument, 
 and not a few pens voluntarily fought powerfully 
 thus in Smith's defence. While Shirley Brooks, in 
 a smart characteristic paper in Punch, did him, 
 perhaps, fully as much service as any or all others. 
 Many generous friends, also, from different quarters, 
 wrote consolingly and encouragingly to him private 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 191 
 
 letters of assurance that this was only a passing 
 cloud of infamy which would soon pass away. 
 
 The ridicule of " Firmilian," however, though 
 seemingly less harmless, could not be so well 
 answered — first, from its very nature ; and, further, 
 because unfortunately it was in a good measure 
 deserved ; — and the felicitously conceived nick- 
 name of " Spasmodic" was a barbed arrow which, 
 hitting, stuck. Smith bore this double attack 
 with surprising equanimity and great fortitude, 
 while it both injured him and did him good. 
 Commercially, it marred the sale of his books, and 
 so pecuniarily he suffered by it ; while, at the same 
 time, it sobered his poetic genius, and purged it of 
 the sins of his youth, His own spirit had, indeed, 
 of itself begun to recoil against the spasmodic 
 character of his first book, but the chastising hand 
 of Aytoun confirmed his repentance. Nor was he 
 the only one who profited by " Firmilian" — that, 
 though an unmerciful, was a well-timed and most 
 salutary satire, which laughed out of popular 
 favour a very unwholesome kind of poetry which 
 
192 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 had already received too much countenance, and 
 was corrupting the literature of our age and 
 country. The rising generation of poets were 
 rapidly renouncing the simplicity of nature, and, 
 if not spasmodic, were at least too sensational. 
 Genius seemed too often intoxicated, or fevered, 
 rather than inspired. The muse of song, forsaking 
 ordinary human life, endeavoured to lure us away 
 to a shadowy mist-magnifying land bordering on 
 the realms of spiritual existence, where men that 
 were not men, and women who were not women, 
 but male and female demi-gods, or semi-demons — 
 a mind-begotten hybrid race — now strutted rather 
 than walked the stage of life, mouthing "great 
 swelling words of vanity ;" and anon endeavoured 
 to scale the heavens and talk with the celestials 
 familiarly as equals ; or to dive into the abysmal 
 depths of the nether world, where their eyes lighted 
 up with an unusual kindly look. The life 
 depicted in these poets' pages had neither the 
 dignity of tragedy nor the sprightliness of pan- 
 tomime ; it often, however, partook more of the 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 193 
 
 nature of the latter than of the former ; was pan- 
 tomime with pantaloon and clown, — the most 
 human elements, after all, of that species of per- 
 formance, left out. All the stars in the poetical 
 firmament were spirtively threatening to become 
 comets. To shine seemed nothing ; to glare was 
 grand. What matters might have come to under 
 these pigmy Miltons and Dantes it is hard to say, 
 had not Aytoun and others called them at length 
 to a more sober mood. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, " Firmilian" happened 
 to hit most heavily those who had transgressed 
 least — Gilfillan and Smith. Aytoun seemed to 
 reserve all his sharpest strokes for his own country- 
 men. Gilfillan, especially, was both most cruelly 
 and unjustly dealt with : while of Smith it might 
 be said that he was not only the youngest and 
 least guilty of the whole school, but the first, 
 besides, who himself saw his error and resolved to 
 abandon it. But treated as he was, he showed true 
 nobleness of character in entertaining at the time 
 no feelings of animosity towards his merciless 
 
 O 
 
194 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 reprover. And it is very pleasant indeed to read 
 in his essay on " Sydney Dobell," published among 
 " Last Leaves," with how quiet and gentle a spirit 
 he could, ten years afterwards, refer to "Firmilian" 
 — its influence and its author ; while it is not less 
 pleasant to know that Aytoun, not very long 
 after he so unsparingly lashed the author of " A 
 Life Drama," extended towards him a most 
 generous, friendly hand, introducing him to the 
 pages of " Blackwood," and that a cordial friend- 
 ship existed between them till the one followed 
 the other with an interval of only a few months to 
 the quiet grave. 
 
 " City Poems," which appears to be presently 
 out of print, has, if we mistake not, been gradually 
 rising in public estimation, and is destined to rise 
 still higher, and take the very first place among all 
 Smith's poetical works. After its publication, he 
 immediately devoted himself to the production of 
 a historical poem, " Edwin of Deira." But mis- 
 fortune still followed him ; for though he spent 
 four years in its composition, Alfred Tennyson's 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 195 
 
 "Idylls of the King" — a kindred subject — 
 appeared before its publication, and so rendered 
 Smith again liable to the suspicion of imitation, 
 besides bringing him into unfortunate comparison 
 with the laureate. Not that there were any 
 genuine or great grounds for such comparison, 
 however, being made ; for the two works bear 
 little or no resemblance to each other. Tennyson's 
 is much the larger of the two poems, there is 
 greater variety of character also in it, and he takes 
 a firmer hold of his subject, and gives to it more 
 depth and compactness ; but Smith's " Edwin " 
 sparkles more with gems than the " Idylls " do. 
 But there was only occasion for comparison in 
 the sequence of the two works — nothing more. 
 And, after all, the want of acceptance by the 
 public in Smith's case, did not, perhaps, result so 
 much from the publication of Tennyson's book at 
 this time, as from the fact that public favour had 
 meanwhile, for a season at least, left him as a poet. 
 It is very questionable, indeed, if at this period of 
 his career any poem published by Smith would 
 
 O 2 
 
t 9 6 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 have met with a greater sale than "Edwin" did; 
 unless it had been a veritable " Paradise Lost." 
 The work is not without great intrinsic merits. It 
 is by far the most classical in construction and 
 composition of all his poems. It breathes also a 
 more healthy spirit than of any them. But in the 
 literary as well as the physical world, when the 
 tide recedes a man must just patiently wait its 
 return. It was, however, perhaps, so far un- 
 fortunate that " Edwin of Deira," notwithstanding 
 all its merits, was, for immediate wide acceptance 
 by the public, rather too unlike Mr. Smith's 
 previous poetical productions. Those who had 
 admired his earlier volumes so highly, could not 
 all be expected to admire this one, in w T hich the 
 most peculiar traits of his original genius had 
 almost entirely disappeared. But, further, not- 
 withstanding its great merits, it does not, on the 
 whole, equal " City Poems," in poetic value. The 
 most valuable thing in "Edwin of Deira" was the 
 promise which it gave of what the author might 
 yet have done, in this, to him, new domain of 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 197 
 
 poesy, had years and leisure been allowed him. 
 With such promise it was very rich indeed. That 
 is an article in literature, however, which the 
 general public have neither much discernment to 
 perceive nor inclination to pay for. And it is 
 still more to be regretted that neither his critics 
 nor himself seemed to perceive this very clearly. 
 So, as he neither gained pecuniarily, nor appeared 
 to increase his fame by the publication of this 
 book, he became, it is to be feared, a little dis- 
 heartened — lost some measure of the passionate 
 love for his harp which he once felt, and im- 
 mediately turned his attention more to prose 
 composition. " Edwin of Deira" was his last 
 poetic production of any considerable length. 
 He never abandoned poetry, however ; nor could 
 he do so, — 
 
 " For it was his nature 
 To blossom into song, as 'tis a tree's 
 To leaf itself in April." 
 
 But his future poetical productions w r ere confined 
 to small pieces for the magazines, with the 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 exception of a poem on " Edinburgh " which he 
 had on hand, and which had only progressed a 
 short way, when he died. 
 
 His chief prose work is " Dreamthorp," a volume 
 of essays having few equals in the English 
 language. In it he celebrates the praises of the 
 country, as in his poems he had done those of the 
 town. It is by this volume that he will live 
 longest as an exquisite prose writer, and on it 
 his fame in that department of literature will 
 mainly depend. It gained for him the name of 
 Essayist. 
 
 In 1865 he published, next, "A Summer in 
 Skye," two volumes of very racy and graphic 
 sketching of natural scenery and men and manners, 
 which afford very pleasant reading. The work, 
 however, is slightly marred in unity by extraneous 
 matter at the beginning and close. These two 
 parts constitute excrescences which it is desirable 
 may be removed from future editions of this other- 
 wise exquisite work. 
 
 In the same year also he edited an edition of 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 199 
 
 " Burns " for Macmillan, with a memoir and 
 glossary ; and continued, from month to month to 
 supply " Good Words " with his only prose tale, 
 entitled " Alfred Hagart's Household," which has 
 since been published in a separate form in two 
 volumes. 
 
 Numerous smaller articles from his pen had 
 meantime graced the columns of several news- 
 papers and the pages of sundry magazines and 
 Encyclopedias. Some of the magazine articles 
 have, since his death, been reprinted in the 
 volume entitled " Last Leaves." These works 
 greatly increased his literary reputation. As a 
 prose writer, in fact, he had now become a great 
 and growing favourite with the public, and as a 
 genial and wise moralist he was rapidly rising 
 to a first place among British essayists. But 
 the work performed by him during the last two 
 years had been too great for any man regularly 
 occupied, as he was, in an office daily from 
 ten o'clock a.m. till four o'clock p.m. ; and con- 
 sequently, he began to suffer from an over-wrought 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 brain. Indeed, during the greater part of these 
 two years he was labouring under such a malady, 
 without knowing what ailed him, or taking the 
 only means of cure for this distemper — entire 
 mental rest. As evidence of this, it is very painful 
 now to read such reflections as the following in 
 the second volume of " A Summer in Skye " : — 
 "When I came up here a month or two ago, I 
 was tired, jaded, ill at ease ; I put spots in the 
 sun, I flecked the loveliest blue of summer sky 
 with bars of darkness ; I felt the weight of the 
 weary hours. Each morning called me as a 
 slave-driver calls his slave. In sleep there was 
 no refreshment ; for in dream the weary day 
 repeated itself yet more wearily. I was nervous, 
 apprehensive of evil, irritable — ill in fact." (p. 214,) 
 During all the following year, he continued more 
 or less in this melancholy condition, and all the 
 while was doing more mental work than pre- 
 viously. Surely none of his friends who knew 
 this, but because he looked rosy all the while, 
 " rather fleered at than sympathised with him," 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 201 
 
 "thinking his complaint some form of mere 
 hypochondria," had ever felt themselves the bane- 
 ful effects of an exhausted brain. How one now 
 wishes he had earlier told all to some experienced 
 physician. For two years his holidays only 
 tended to delay the fatal hour. It was a year 
 of entire, and not two months of partial, rest he 
 needed. At length the crisis came. And on 
 November 20, 1866, he lay down upon his bed. 
 His illness, which had now assumed the form of 
 gastric fever, became complicated with diphtheria, 
 and, after deceitful symptoms of recovery, lapsed 
 into typhoid fever ; so gradually sinking under 
 the baneful influences of these malignant maladies, 
 despite the skill of the best of the far-famed 
 physicians of the Scottish capital, and the most 
 assiduous care of those who loved him most, he 
 breathed, at length, his last breath, in his house 
 at Wardie, at nine o'clock on the morning of 
 5th, January, 1867, at the age of thirty-seven years 
 and four days. 
 
 The news of his early death affected with un- 
 
202 ALEXANDER SMITH, 
 
 usual sorrow the whole literary and reading world. 
 But still deeper far was he mourned by his 
 relatives and numerous personal friends ; for he 
 had been a truly good, genial, generous, loving 
 and most loveable man — such a friend as in this 
 world is too rarely found, but once found can 
 never be forgotten, and though lost by death 
 must ever be missed and mourned. 
 
 On ioth January his body was borne to 
 Warriston cemetery by sorrowing bereaved ones ; 
 and as they laid it there in the grave, "the cold 
 but rich light of the early sunset seemed in 
 melancholy harmony with the last scene of his 
 bright and brief career;" but brief as, indeed, that 
 career was, a sable company gathered again, 
 about two months afterwards, around that grave, 
 told of a briefer still, as they laid beside the 
 father the remains of his first-born and much 
 loved little daughter, of whose nativity he had 
 sung most touchingly in his exquisite lyric of 
 " Blaavin." 
 
 His last resting-place is now marked by a 
 
IN EDINBURGH. 203 
 
 memorial of loving hearts. In the beginning of 
 1868, was erected there a beautiful Runic cross 
 monument, with appropriate embellishments, 
 the design of which was furnished as a tribute " 
 of affection by Mr. James Drummond, R.S.A., 
 and containing a medallion likeness of the de- 
 parted, which was executed by Mr. William 
 Brodie, sculptor, another friend. This monument 
 bears the simple inscription, " Alexander Smith, 
 Poet and Essayist. Erected by some of his 
 personal friends." 
 
 But, after all, his noblest monument is that 
 which he himself erected — his life. Seldom if 
 ever, indeed, has one so eminently gifted with a 
 poetic temperament and genius, manifested such 
 self-government, or lived a life so well balanced, 
 beautiful, and blameless. That life is the best 
 lesson he has taught us. It is a valuable legacy 
 to all, but especially to aspiring young men 
 and all candidates in literature. May many such 
 profit by it ! 
 
Butler and Tanner, 
 
 The Set-wood Printing Works, 
 
 Frone, and London. 
 
 4 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 525 322 6