MILLER-THE SKYLARK.

365

der meditation and reflection, the colours are like those fine deep-toned hues of the middle ages; they are not garish as a day-beam, but meditative; they reflect the pensive mind; this calm soul has crept into the past; it is as if the hoar-frost of antiquity had settled, indeed, upon the window, while the soar and sob of his verse is like the wind when it moans through melancholy crypt and aisle.

If anything further is wanted by the reader to give a complete view of Thomas Miller, it will be furnished by the following exquisite poems :

TO THE SKYLARK.

Whither away! companion of the sun,

So high, this laughing morn? Are those soft clouds

Of floating silver, which appear to shun

Day's golden eye, thy home?—or why, 'mid clouds

Of loosened light, dost thou pour forth thy song?

Descend, sun-loving bird, nor try thy strength thus long!

Ætherial songster! singing merrily,

Thy wings keep time to thy rich music's flow, Rolling along the sky celestially,

And echoing o'er the hill's wood-weaving brow,

Along the flood, which back reflects the sky,

And thee, thou warbling speck, deep mirrored from on high.

And thou hast vanished, singing, from my sight,

So must this earth be lost to eyes of thine:

Around thee is illimitable light:

Thou lookest down, and all appears to shine
Bright as above! Thine is a golden way,
Pavilioned all around with golden spreading day!

The broad, unbounding sky is all thy own,
The silvery sheeted heaven is thy domain,
No landmark there, no hand to bring thee down,
Glad monarch of the blue star-studded plain,
To thee in airy space far stretching given,
The vast unmeasured floor of cherubim-trod heaven.

And thou hast gone, perchance to catch the sound
Of angels' voices, heard far up the sky,

And wilt return harmonious to the ground;
Then, with new music, taught by those on high,
Ascend again, and carol o'er the bowers

Of woodbines waving sweet, and wild bee bended flowers.

Lovest thou to sing alone above the dews,
Leaving the nightingale to cheer the night,
When rides the moon, chasing the shadows' hues
From dark-robed trees, and scattering far her light
O'er town and tower? But thou art with the sun,
Looking on wood and vale, where low-voiced rivers run.
I hear thy strain, now thou art nearing earth,
Like quivering aspens moves each fluttering wing;
Rising in glee thou comest down in mirth,

Hast heard the seraphs to their Maker sing

The Morning Hymn, and comest to teach thy mate

The Anthem thou hast brought from Heaven's gold-lighted gate.

Lute of the sky, farewell! till I again

Climb these cloud-gazing hills. Thou must not come To where I dwell, nor pour thy Heaven-caught strain Above the curling of my smoking home.

Others may hear thee, see thee, yet not steal

That joy from thy glad song which it is mine to feel.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DAVID GRAY: HIS LIFE AND POEMS.*

ITH the heartiest disposition in us to pay honour to all who, like DAVID GRAY, lived to illustrate the universality and catholicity of true genius, its power to break through all obstacles, and to hallow the shades of humblest life and labour, and to use the scantiest education for the purposes of mental and spiritual elevation: with all this in us, we must yet think that his is a name and genius which has been overpraised, and is in danger of being overpraised. We are forbidden to take any low ground in estimating him, for he says, “I am so accustomed to compare my own mental progress with that of such men as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the dream of my youth will not be fulfilled if my fame equal not at least that of the latter of these three." True, in other moments he modified these expressions, and perhaps even felt shame for a self-consciousness so daring, and an estimate of his powers and hopes so singularly immodest. But this inflated self-exaggeration coloured all his thoughts, his efforts, and his ambitions. It is not much in our way to pat crowing cocks; but in the case of this young man some of the leading journals have done it extravagantly. No doubt his poems are, so far as we have seen them, full of power and full of promise, but

The Luggie and other Poems. By David Gray. With a Memoir by James Hedderwick, and a Prefatory Notice by R. M. Milnes, M.P. Macmillan.

we have frequently called the attention of our readers to volumes containing, we believe, the evidence of still higher and more varied power. This little volume deserves to be read most affectionately, and appreciating sympathies will find it full of things to admire; and the essay of Lord Houghton, a matured veteran of letters, Poet Member of Parliament, and man of the world, is a delightful instance of watchful interest and patience, outliving all the roughening of life and society; and while shedding a mild and sufficient glow of encouragement and praise round the course of a young man, exercising also the restraining influences of maturity and sympathetic wisdom in attempting to give profitable vent to his powers, and to save him from wretchedness and disappointment.

David Gray was a young Scotchman, born on the 29th of January, 1838, on the banks of the Luggie, about eight miles from the city of Glasgow, in a little row of houses called Duntiblae, on the south side of the stream. When he was a child his parents removed to Merkland, on the north side, where they still continue to dwell.

All his associations, therefore, says Mr. Hedderwick, his affectionate biographer, clustered about Merkland, which is situated within a mile of the town of Kirkintilloch, on the Gartshore road. It has neither the dignity of a village, nor the primitive rudeness of a clachan, but is simply a group of roadside cottages, some half-dozen in number, humble, but with slated roofs, having pleasant patches of garden in front and behind, and wholly occupied by handloom weavers and their families, who receive their webs and their inadequate remuneration from the manufacturing warehouses of the great city. His parents are both living an industrious and exemplary couple, with the constant click of the shuttle in one division of their cottage, and with doubtless the occasional squall of juvenile voices in the other. David was the eldest of eight children, there being four boys and three girls now left. The Luggie flows past Merkland, at the foot of a precipitous bank, and shortly afterwards loses itself among the shadows of Oxgang, with its fine old mansion-house and rookery, and debouches at Kirkintilloch into the Kelvin, one of

It is a

the tributaries of the Clyde, celebrated in Scottish song. mere unpretending rivulet, yet sufficient to turn the wheel of an old meal-mill at the straggling village of Waterside, a little way up the stream, though in a lower level of the valley. Neither, except at one or two points, is it of a character to attract a lover of the picturesque. But although not particularly fitted for a painter's eye, it sufficed for a poet's love. The little bright-eyed firstborn of the Merkland handloom weaver had the more accessible nooks of it by heart long before his ambitious feet could carry him to more beautiful regions; and although in later years he extended the radius of his rambles, and made intimate acquaintance with the magnificent glens and cascades in the recesses of the Campsie fells, his tiny "natal stream," at the foot of the familiar "brae," so associated in his heart with the recollections of childhood and the endearments of home, never lost its freshness or its charm.

He received his education, and being a Scotch lad he had all the advantages of a classical education, in the Kirkintilloch parish school. It was intended that he should devote himself to the work of the Christian ministry in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, to which his parents belonged. He accordingly studied as a Queen's Scholar in the Free Church Normal Seminary, and in Glasgow he contrived to attend the Humanity, Greek, and other classes in the University, supporting himself as a pupil teacher, and afterwards as a private tutor. He, however, abandoned the idea of the pulpit, and does not seem to have taken kindly to the profession of schoolmaster. With such advantages, we cannot speak of him as evidencing the same native and inborn genius manifested by John Clare, or Robert Nicoll, who never received any aid of training hand or fostering of education.

He

His attention turned to London and to literature. obtained some friendly offices from Mr. Dobell (Sydney Yendys), and, full of dreams of literary eminence, and the thought of "bursting like a meteor upon London," he started away to the metropolis; but of course disappointment only met him there, more bitter than when he