HE HAS A ROYAL BIOGRAPHER. 289 see in the dark grey morning of the Historic day, it happens: King Alfred has recorded the history of the poor poet of Whitby, and the memory of his labour; and his inspiration and his songs are ineffaceably written in the hieroglyphics and memorials of the times.* Little more is known of Cedmon than is related above; but those who desire to see all that can be said of him, may refer to Dr. Young's "History of Whitby"; to Sharon Turner's " AngloSaxons"; Disraeli's "Amenities of Literature"; and Bede's "Ecclesiastical History." CHAPTER XV. ROBERT NICOLL, THE KINE-HERDER. "Scotland's second Burns." HE name of ROBERT NICOLL cannot well be a strange one to most of the readers of these pages, but it has never yet met with the honour it deserves. "Scotland's second Burns," as Ebenezer Elliott has called him, and who has added to this, that "Burns, at his age, had done nothing like him." Sentences like these surround his name with a large amount of interest and importance; and if the writings of the wonderful boy (for he died when only twenty-three years of age) harmonize with this exalted character of them, they should be presented to the public from time to time, until his works, instead of being found in libraries here and there, at wide and distant removes from each other, shall be seen in every small cottage library, on the book-shelf of every young man, and in the catalogue of every Mechanics' Institute and Society for mental improvement. Robert Nicoll said, as every true poet may say, "I have written my heart in my poems, and rude, unfinished, and hasty as they are, it can be read there." His poetry abounds with noble and generous sentiments, and such a Poem his whole life seems to have been. Hence from his life, as well as from his words, there goes forth a salutary influence on every mind, especially of his order, breathing, as both do, the salutary lessons of self-reliance and self-denial, the love of A SCOTTISH HOME. 291 truth, of nature and of man, firmness, and temperance, and faith. Robert Nicoll was born on the 7th of January, 1814, in the little village of Tulliebeltane, near Auchtergaven, a small spot at the foot of the Grampian Hills, in Perthshire. His early years were cradled in poverty, for although his father was a farmer in comfortable circumstances, having become security to the amount of five or six hundred pounds, for a connection by marriage, who had failed and absconded, Mr. Nicoll was plunged into entire ruin. The whole of his property was given up to satisfy the creditors of this person. He was obliged, with his family, to leave his farm, and became a day labourer in those very fields he had rented; but the poems of Nicoll are the best testimony to the character of his early home. That must have been a place of domestic blessedness, and must have been a loving and lovely family, the inspiration of which continued so long intense and pure. It was one of those Homes, painted for immortality in Burns' "Cottar's Saturday Night "—a home of the old world. Religion, Honesty, and Labour were the lessons of self-enduring virtue which were perpetually given from the life; and every member was invoked to a noble course by the memory of the example of those from whom they had descended. This recollection of a worthy birthplace and birthright is a noble incentive to a noble life. There is an anecdote mentioned of the mother of Nicoll, which finely illustrates her character. When the intelligence reached her that her son was at Leeds, sick, dying, and languishing to see her, she had no means of paying the expenses of the long and weary journey. She reached Leeds however; and when a friend afterwards inquired by what means she had been enabled to meet the expenses of the journey, she nobly replied, "Indeed, sir, I shore for the siller." Her wages as a reaper, her harvest fee, were the only means by which she could honestly fulfil the earnest request of her dying son. It may be easily conceived how powerful an influence a mother like this would exert over a sensitive mind and heart. It was mainly through this mother that Robert received the first elements and intimations of education; and it seems ever to have been the object of this noble-minded woman to rear her children, so that they might again take their place in that sphere of respectability from whence, through misfortune alone, the family had been driven. The father of Mrs. Nicoll, "Elder John," as he is called in his grandson's poems, seems to have been likewise a noble specimen of a man. A year or two since he survived at the venerable age of eighty-seven, "the Patriarch of Auchtergavan," remarkable for the possession of his bodily faculties and wonderful mental powers, as well as physical activity. He is said to have been the last wearer of the broad blue lowland bonnet. His grandson says:— MY GRANDFATHER. Hale be thy honest trusty heart, And hale thy beld and snawy pow, Ance proud eneuch was I to sit Beside thee in the muirland kirk, A ruling elder—ane o' weight, Nae wonder though your oe did smirk : My head the preacher's hand upon, And syne as hame alang the muir I prattling by your side did rin, But pennies frae your auld breek pouch MY GRANDFATHER. Thy daily fireside worship dwalls My granny!-Dinna greet, auld man— Can I forget how lang and weel I gat to gar me mend my speed? That frae your lips like pearls ran ; And mind ye how we gat us beuks, Wad my auld father journeys gang; But mair than a'-frae beuks sae auld The path of right from age to age: Be blessings on thy reverend head, The path is narrow, but nae een God bears His ancient servants up, He's borne thee since thy life began: Will hold an honest man. 293 These circumstances, connected with the ancestry of Nicoll, guide the mind to a view of his moral education and |