admirer of the French Revolution, he had in 1785 been elected Rector of Glasgow University in opposition to Burke. He gathered about him a large and valuable library and a rich collection of admirable paintings; and when Sir Walter Scott was at Gartmore while writing Rob Roy, Graham lent him many documents and MSS. about the family and the district. Graham (ancestor of Mr Cunninghame-Graham, a well-known writer of a later day, whose wife is also an authoress) wrote songs and lyrics, of which by far the best and the only one known is that printed by Scott in the first edition of the Border Minstrelsy as verses 'taken down from recitation and averred to be of the age of Charles I. They have indeed much of the romantic expression of passion common to poets of that period, whose rays still reflected the setting beams of chivalry.' But in later editions he had to add that he was assured they were by the late Mr Graham of Gartmore.' He told Lockhart he had believed them to be the work of a greater Graham-the famous Marquis of Montrose himself (see Vol. I. p. 817).

If Doughty Deeds.

If doughty deeds my ladye please,
Right soon I'll mount my steed,
And strong his arm, and fast his seat,
That bears frae me the meed.
I'll wear thy colours in my cap,

Thy picture at my heart;
And he that bends not to thine eye
Shall rue it to his smart!

Then tell me how to woo thee, Love,
O, tell me how to woo thee!
For thy dear sake nae care I'll take,
Tho' ne'er another trow me.

If gay attire delight thine eye,
I'll dight me in array,
I'll tend thy chamber door all night,
And squire thee all the day.
If sweetest sounds can win thine ear,
These sounds I'll strive to catch :
Thy voice I'll steal to woo thysell,

That voice that nane can match.
But if fond love thy heart can gain,
I never broke a vow,

Nae maiden lays her skaith to me,
I never loved but you.

For you alone I ride the ring,
For you I wear the blue,
For you alone I strive to sing-

O, tell me how to woo!

Then tell me how to woo thee, Love,
O, tell me how to woo thee!
For thy dear sake nae care I'll take,
Tho' ne'er another trow me.

Alexander Geddes (1737-1802), one of the most remarkable and curiously gifted Scotsmen of his time, was born in Ruthven parish, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parentage, and was educated for the priesthood at the seminary of Scalan in Glenlivat and at Paris (1758-64), where he

acquired a knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, French, Spanish, German, and Low Dutch, as well as of Latin, but devoted himself specially to school divinity and biblical criticism. In 1769 he took a cure of souls at Auchinhalrig in Banffshire, where his too marked sympathy with the Protestants around him (he sometimes went to the parish church services) led to his dismissal (1780). He then went to London, and, by Lord Petre's help, carried on a new translation of the Bible for the use of English Catholics (3 vols. 1792-1800; including only the earlier books to Ruth, with some of the Psalms)-a work whose 'notes and critical remarks' offended Catholics and Protestants alike by 'higher criticism' of startling boldness. Indeed, the critic rivalled the revolutionary freedom of the most thorough-going German rationalists; and Eichhorn and Paulus were both among his correspondents, as well as Dr Kennicott and Bishop Lowth. Geddes claimed explicitly to apply to the sacred text the very same methods as had been so profitably used in connection with the Greek and Latin classics; doubted or disputed the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and held that the writer, whoever he was, adorned his narrative of perfectly natural events with marvels and fictitious Divine interferences, and dressed up fables as true history. The story of the creation is a fable, like other cosmogonies; the story of the fall a mythos. The effect of such methods on the doctrine of inspiration was such as to make the Unitarian Priestley (against whom Geddes defended the Trinity) doubt if a man who believed so little and conceded so much as Geddes could be a Christian. Violent controversy followed, and ecclesiastical interdicts. Geddes died without recanting, qualified his acceptance of the Trinity and the Atonement, but received absolution from a French priest. Public mass for his soul was prohibited by the Roman Catholic bishop.

In Professor George Adam Smith's Criticism of the Old Testament (1901) Geddes is treated as a conspicuous representative, if not the originator, of the view that the Pentateuch is composed, not of two or three documents (Elohistic, Jehovistic, &c.) merely, but of a multitude of independent documents or services-the Fragmentary hypothesis, as it is called. And Geddes anticipated Bleek in regard to the book of Joshua forming an indispensable supplement to the Pentateuch.

Besides his memorable contribution to English biblical criticism, Geddes wrote numerous letters, appeals, and pamphlets in his own defence; an apology for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain, disquisitions on the penal laws, and other argumentative treatises; an ironical defence of slavery; and a number of sermons. But he is also known as an indefatigable poet in Latin, English, and vernacular Scotch. His 'translation' in spirited Hudibrastic verse of some of Horace's Satires (1778) was rather a lively 'imitation;' it secured a literary success and the praise of Professors

Robertson, Reid, and Beattie, and in 1780 the author was made an LL.D. of Aberdeen. On his being elected a corresponding member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, he addressed to the society a poetical epistle in 'geud ald Scottis' phrase, printed in the first volume of their Transactions, along with a dissertation on 'The Scoto-Saxon Dialect' which represents truer views than were then current, and translations of an eclogue of Virgil and an idyl of Theocritus in Scots. His Epistola Macaronica ad Fratrem (1790), on a great public dinner of the English Protestant Dissenters, is a clever and amusing performance; and Bardomachia, on a battle between two rival bards in a bookseller's shop (1800; when 'Peter Pindar' attacked Gifford in a shop in Piccadilly) was also macaronic, with an English version appended.

Linton, a Tweeddale Pastoral (1781), celebrated the birth of an heir to the house of Traquair, where Geddes had been tutor; the Carmen Seculare pro Gallica Gente (1790; followed by two others) praised the French Revolution. There were also A Norfolk Tale (1791), suggested by a journey to visit Lord Petre; L'Avocat du Diable, on a lawsuit against Peter Pindar; a doggerel parody of a Cambridge University sermon; a painfully literal verse translation of the first book of the Iliad; and a mock-heroic poem in nine cantos on an electioneering affair in which the Bishop of Bangor took a conspicuous part, called The Battle of Bangor, or the Church's Triumph. Another of his clever translations in iambics was Ver Vert, or the Parrot of Nevers, from the French of Gresset, a poem afterwards translated by Father Prout. He used to be credited, on no sufficient grounds, with the authorship of the pathetic song Lewie Gordon, and of the broadly and vulgarly humorous Wee Wifukie, more probably the work of Alexander Watson, Lord Byron's Aberdeen tailor. Geddes was companionable and brilliant in conversation, full of anecdote, wit, and epigram; but he was apt to be trying to his friends by his indiscretions in speech and writing, and seemed too willing to startle people by the audacity of his paradoxes.

From the 'Dissertation on the Scoto-Saxon

Dialect.'

It is my opinion that those who, for almost a century past, have written in Scots, Allan Ramsay not excepted, have not duly discriminated the genuine Scottish idiom from its vulgarisms. They seem to have acted a similar part with certain pretended imitators of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, who fondly imagine that they are copying from those great models, when they only mimic their antique mode of spelling, their obsolete terms, and their irregular construction. Thus, to write Scottish poetry (for prose has been seldom attempted), nothing more was deemed necessary than to interlard the composition with a number of low words and trite proverbial phrases, in common use among the illiterate; and the more anomalous and farther removed from polite usage

those words and phrases were, so much the more apposite and eligible they were accounted. It was enough that they were not found in an English lexicon to give them a preference in the Scottish glossary; nor was it ever once considered that all words truly Anglo-Saxon were as truly Scoto-Saxon words, and that every exotic term which the English have borrowed from other languages, the Scots had an equal right to appropriate.

By the last sentence he claims an antihistoric liberty that allowed him to introduce in his own poems, as most of his contemporaries had done, along with indubitable Scotch words, as many English words and spellings as were found convenient -a practice which produces a highly artificial dialect; and like his contemporaries, too, Geddes permitted himself to manufacture Scotch words for English ones, obviously on erroneous analogies. Thus because the English o is in Scots often (not always) a, because the English home is in Scotch hame, therefore roam is rame, the city of Rome, Rame, and moment, mament! The two translations from Virgil and Theocritus were printed in a curious phonetic system of his own, which makes them all but unintelligible even to those familiar with old Scotch: thus, hame is hém; frae is fre; ease is èz; braid, brâd; thou, thû; praise, preis; wha, hua; while, huyl; you, ghù; deein, dìan; laughs, lâkhs; power, pùr; and the Aberdeenshire value of the Scotch u or ui is given by è (=ee in English), muses becoming mèses.

In the Epistle to the Antiquaries he laments the low estate of the Muse of vernacular Scots; surveys her achievements in the past; and pays a tribute to Burns, remarkable even in the year (1792) when it was printed in the Transactions, which could obviously not have formed any part of the epistle as sent to the society immediately on Geddes's election in 1785, before the Kilmarnock edition had appeared and before Burns had been heard of in Edinburgh.

From the Epistle to the Society of Antiquaries. For tho' 'tis true that Mither-tongue

Has had the melancholy fate

To be neglekit by the great,
She still has fun' an open door
Amang the uncoruptit poor,
Wha be na weent to treat wi' scorn
A gentlewoman bred and born;
Bot bid her, thoch in tatters drest,
A hearty welcome to their best.

There aft on ben-maist bink she sits,
And sharps the edge of cuintry wits,
Wi' routh of gabby saws an' says,
An' jokes an' jibes of uther days:
That gi'e si'k gust to rustic sport
And gar the langsome night leuk short.

At uther times in some warm neuk
She to the cutchok ha'ds a beuk,
And reids in si'k a magic tone
The deeds that our forbeirs ha' done : .
Sa here, gif ye attention gi'e,
Si'k ald warld wunders ye may see;

wont

bench

blazing fire

May see the maiden stap her wheel,
The mistress cease to turn the reel;
Lizzie wi' laddle in her hand
Til pot boil over, gapand stand:
Ev'n hungry Gib his speun depose
And for a mament spare his brose !
An' nou the Muse wi' rapture turns
To Coila's glory, self-taught Burns :
Wha mid the constant avocation
Of a laborious occupation,

Finds time to cull si'k transient flours
As bleum on Galovidean moors;
And, at the pleugh, or at the team,
Glows with a pure poetic gleam.

Whether, in numbers smooth and easy,

He sing the dirgie of a deasy:

Or in a strain mair free an' frisky

Resoun' the praise of Highland whisky:
Or with a Goldsmith's pencil trace
The virtues o' the cottage race :
Or, wieldan' satire's heavy flail,
The cantan' hypocrite assail :
Or mind a patriot of his duty;
Or tune a safter pipe to beuty;

daisy

tune

clear

A merry heart, a murkless head;

A conscience pure, an' void o' dread; A weil-thak't hut, an ingle clear;

thatched

A fu' pint-stowp of reaming beer;

foaming

Wi' critic skill explore the grain
An' fan an' fan it owr again
'Till ne'er a bit of caff remain.
So sal thy name be handit down
With uther poets o' renoun;
An' Burns in gowden cyphers shine
Wi' Inglis, Lindsay, Ballandyne,
Gilbraith, Montgomery; an' far
Before the laif, ornate Dunbar.

Thy rare example sal inspire
Our rising youth with rival fire:
Wha yet may emulate the lays
Of loftiest bards of ancient days.

From Horace's Satires-I. 4. Chaucer and Shakespeare, Lydgate, Ben, And other such old comic men, Were wont, while poets yet had grace, To laugh at Folly, to its face. . .

oaten

chaff

Butler, tho' in a diff'rent pace, Pursued the same inviting chase: Butler, a bard of matchless wit, Had he in smoother numbers writ. How could he?-In an hour, he'd bring Two hundred verses in a string Then pause-and, in another hour, He'd bring two hundred verses more. Copious he flow'd, but wanted skill Or patience to restrain his quill: Yet in his motley, muddy stream Full many a pearl is seen to gleam.

'Tis not the number, but the weight Of lines that we should estimate. Crispinus challenges to rhime'Appoint a judge-a place-a timeGive paper, ink—and let us try

Who writes most verses? You or I?'

The Gods did well, that form'd my mind

Of the pacific, gentle kind,

And made me of a temp'rature

Such boist'rous boasting to endure.
Be thou, Crispinus! and thy fellows,
The emblem of a blacksmith's bellows,
Which, tho' it make a constant din,
Has nought but noisy wind within!

Thrice happy Bays! He twice a year
Can charm ev'n mighty George's ear;
And see each dark and dulsome line
In Boyce's deathless music shine:
While these of mine, scarce one in twenty
Can bear-their palates are so dainty !

Satire, my friend ('twixt me and you),
Can never please but very few.
The reason if you ask-'Tis plain, sir!
The most of mankind merit censure.
Th' ambitious knave, the wealthy fool,
Corruption's tamperer and tool;

The slave of luxury and lust,
The virtuoso mad for rust;

The trader, whose insatiate soul

Drives him like dust from pole to poleAll these with one accord (you know it) Dread poetry, and damn the poet.

'Shun, shun (they cry) the dangerous man : He'll kick or cuff you, if he can.

Let him but have his darling joke,
He cares not whom he may provoke.
Ev'n sacred friendship vainly tries
To 'scape his wanton railleries :
And, once your name is fairly down,
You're made the sport of all the town.'

The charge is heavy-But agree
To hear, at least, my counter-plea.
And, first, I solemnly disclaim
A poet's venerable name.

For, sure, you cannot think that those,
Who write in verse resembling prose,
Are poets? He who boldly soars
Above the reach of vulgar pow'rs;
Whose bosom, if the Muse inspire,
Glows with a more than mortal fire;

And who, in ev'ry rapt'rous line,
Displays an energy divine;

Commands, not courts, our approbation-
He, he deserves that appellation!

And hence there are (perhaps you know 'em)
Who deem ev'n comedy no poem;
Because it wants that force and fire
Which we in poetry require;
And, but that numbers interpose,
Is nothing more than naked prose.

From the Epistola Macaronica.'

All in a word qui se oppressos most heavily credunt
Legibus injustis test-oathibus atque profanis ;
While high-church homines in ease et luxury vivunt,
Et placeas, postas, mercedes, munia graspant !
Ita cuncti keen were; fari aut pugnari parati
Prisca pro causa.

It is a curious commentary on the brevity of Geddes's poetic fame that not one of his poems, save the translations from Horace and the things contained in the first volume of the Antiquarian Transactions, is to be found in any public library in Edinburgh. There is a Life of Geddes by Dr Mason Good (1803), a shorter Life in Lives of Scottish Poets (vol. ii. 1822), and one in Dr Robert Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen.

Susanna Blamire (1747-94), the Muse of Cumberland,' was, somewhat paradoxically, distinguished for her Scottish songs and poems. She was born of good family in Cumberland, at Cardew Hall near Carlisle, but was brought up by an aunt at Thackwood, endearing herself there to a circle of friends and acquaintance at many a 'merrie neet.' Her elder sister becoming in 1767 the wife of Colonel Graham of Gartmore, Susanna often visited them in Perthshire, where she acquired that taste for Scottish melody and music which prompted her lyrics, The Nabob, And ye shall walk in Silk Attire, The Siller Croun, and others. She knew Allan Ramsay's works, but seems not to have seen anything of Burns's. Besides her Scotch songs, she wrote pieces in the Cumbrian dialect, a number of addresses to friends and occasional verses, and a descriptive poem of some length entitled Stoklewath, or the Cumbrian Village. The Scotch lyrics, much more numerous than the Cumbrian ones, are in a rather artificial Scotch. Some are partly Cumbrian and partly Scotch, and with the Cumbrian words altered (like nobbet in Dinna think, bonnie lassie, I'm gaun to leave thee) appear regularly in Scotch collections. Miss Blamire died unmarried at Carlisle in her forty-seventh year, and her name had almost faded from remembrance, when, in 1842, her poetical works were collected by Dr Lonsdale and published in a small volume, with a memoir and notes by Patrick Maxwell.

The Nabob.

When silent time, wi' lightly foot,

Had trod on thirty years,

I sought again my native land
Wi' mony hopes and fears.

Wha kens gin the dear friends I left
May still continue mine?

Or gin I e'er again shall taste
The joys I left langsyne?

As I drew near my ancient pile
My heart beat a' the way;
Ilk place I passed seemed yet to speak
O' some dear former day;

Those days that followed me afar,

Those happy days o' mine,

Whilk made me think the present joys

A' naething to langsyne!

The ivied tower now met my eye,

Where minstrels used to blaw; Nae friend stepped forth wi' open hand, Nae weel-kenned face I saw ; Till Donald tottered to the door,

Wham I left in his prime, And grat to see the lad return He bore about langsyne.

I ran to ilka dear friend's room,
As if to find them there,

I knew where ilk ane used to sit,
And hang o'er mony a chair;
Till soft remembrance threw a veil
Across these een o' mine,

I closed the door, and sobbed aloud, To think on auld langsyne.

Some pensy chiels, a new-sprung race,
Wad next their welcome pay,
Wha shuddered at my Gothic wa's,

And wished my groves away. 'Cut, cut,' they cried, those aged elms; Lay low yon mournfu' pine.'

Na na! our fathers' names grow there, Memorials o' langsyne.

To wean me frae these waefu' thoughts,
They took me to the town;
But sair on ilka weel-kenned face
I missed the youthfu' bloom.
At balls they pointed to a nymph
Wham a' declared divine;
But sure her mother's blushing cheeks
Were fairer far langsyne!

In vain I sought in music's sound
To find that magic art,
Which oft in Scotland's ancient lays
Has thrilled through a' my heart.
The song had mony an artfu' turn;
My ear confessed 'twas fine,
But missed the simple melody

I listened to langsyne.

Ye sons to comrades o' my youth,

Forgie an auld man's spleen,

Wha 'midst your gayest scenes still mourns

The days he ance has seen.

When time has passed and seasons fled,

Your hearts will feel like mine;

And aye the sang will maist delight

That minds ye o' langsyne!

What Ails this Heart o' Mine?

What ails this heart o' mine?

What ails this watery ee?

What gars me a' turn pale as death When I take leave o' thee? When thou art far awa',

Thou 'lt dearer grow to me;

But change o' place and change o' folk May gar thy fancy jee.

When I gae out at e'en,

Or walk at morning air,

Ilk rustling bush will seem to say
I used to meet thee there.
Then I'll sit down and cry,

And live aneath the tree,
And when a leaf fa's i' my lap,
I'll ca't a word frae thee.

I'll hie me to the bower

That thou wi' roses tied,

And where wi' mony a blushing bud I strove myself to hide.

I'll doat on ilka spot

Where I hae been wi' thee;

And ca' to mind some kindly word By ilka burn and tree.

Auld Robin Forbes (in Cumbrian).

And auld Robin Forbes hes gien tem a dance,
I pat on my speckets to see them aw prance;
I thout o' the days when I was but fifteen,
And skipped wi' the best upon Forbes's green.
Of aw things that is I think thout is meast queer,
It brings that that 's bypast and sets it down here;
I see Willy as plain as I dui this bit leace,
When he tuik his cwoat lappet and deeghted his feace.

The lasses aw wondered what Willy cud see

In yen that was dark and hard-featured leyke me;
And they wondered ay mair when they talked o' my wit,
And slily telt Willy that cudn't be it.

But Willy he laughed, and he meade me his weyfe,
And whea was mair happy thro' aw his lang leyfe?
It's e'en my great comfort, now Willy is geane,

That he offen said-nea pleace was leyke his awn heame!

I mind when I carried my wark to yon steyle,
Where Willy was deyken, the time to beguile,
He wad fling me a daisy to put i' my breast,
And I hammered my noddle to mek out a jest.
But merry or grave, Willy often wad tell

There was nin o' the leave that was leyke my awn sel;
And he spak what he thout, for I'd hardly a plack
When we married, and nobbet ae gown to my back.

When the clock had struck eight, I expected him heame,
And wheyles went to meet him as far as Dumleane ;
Of aw hours it telt, eight was dearest to me,
But now when it streykes there's a tear i' my ee.
O Willy! dear Willy! it never can be

That age, time, or death can divide thee and me!
For that spot on earth that's aye dearest to me,
Is the turf that has covered my Willie frae me.

Hector Macneill (1746-1818), son of an old captain of the 42nd who turned farmer in Stirlingshire, spent some years in the West Indies, in 1780-86 was assistant-secretary on an admiral's flagship, and after two visits to Jamaica settled in Edinburgh on an annuity given him by a friend. He wrote several pamphlets, two novels, and some satirical poems denouncing modern changes; a legendary poem, The Harp (1789), and a descriptive poem, The Carse of Forth; but his name is associated with Scotland's Skaith, or the History o Will and Jean, telling how a husband reduces a happy family to beggary by drinking, and recovers himself after a spell of soldiering and the loss of a leg. But far better known are Macneill's lyrics, several of which- My boy Tammy,' 'I lo'ed ne'er a laddie but ane,' and 'Come under my plaidie,' for example-are still popular Scotch songs; and Mary of Castle-Cary,' in spite of her 'soft rolling ee,' is constantly sung. 'Mary' is appended, as also a verse of each of the two other songs, and part of Scotland's Skaith.

I lo'ed ne'er a laddie but ane,
He lo'ed ne'er a lassie but me;
He's willing to mak me his ain,
And his ain I am willing to be.
He has coft me a rocklay o' blue,
And a pair o' mittens o' green;
The price was a kiss o' my mou',
And I paid him the debt yestreen.

roquelaure, short cloak

Come under my plaidie, the night's gaun to fa';
Come in frae the cauld blast, the drift, and the snaw;
Come under my plaidie, and sit doun beside me ;

There's room in 't, dear lassie, believe me, for twa.
Come under my plaidie, and sit doun beside me,
I'll hap ye frae every cauld blast that can blaw :
Oh! come under my plaidie, and sit doun beside me;
There's room in 't, dear lassie, believe me, for twa.