And chased away the passing frown With Bonny ran the burnie down.' Old songs! old songs !-my brain has lost Of Murray's books and Trimmer's schools; The mere remembrance of a slate! Of 'Rest thee, babe,' or 'Robin Gray.' Old songs! old songs!-I should not sigh; Is closely mingled with 'Old Songs.' BESSIE RAYNER PARKES (now Mrs Belloe), the daughter of the late Joseph Parkes of the Court of Chancery (1796-1865), is author of Poems, 1855; Gabriel, 1856; The Cat Aspasia (a prose story); Ballads and Songs, 1863; La Belle France, 1868; &c. As a poetess, this lady is of the romantic and imaginative school of Shelley-to whose memory her poem of Gabriel is dedicated. She has been an assiduous labourer in the cause of social amelioration and female improvement.MISS MARY C. HUME, daughter of the late Joseph Hume, M.P., in 1858 published Normiton, a dramatic poem, with other pieces.-ADELAINE ANNE PROCTER (1825-1864) was author of Legends and Lyrics, a Book of Verse, 1858. This lady was the accomplished daughter of 'Barry Cornwall,' and her poetry had much of the paternal grace and manner.-ISA CRAIG (now Mrs Knox), author of Poems, 1856, is a native of Edinburgh, born October 17, 1831. While working as a sempstress, this lady contributed poems, reviews, and essays to the Scotsman newspaper, and was warmly befriended by the late Mr Ritchie, proprietor of that journal. She afterwards removed to London, and officiated as assistant-secretary of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. She was the fortunate poetess who carried off the prize (50) for the best poem at the Crystal Palace celebration of the Burns Centenary, January 25, 1859.-MISS JEAN INGELOW, a native of Ipswich, Suffolk, born about 1830, has written a volume of Poems, 1862, which ran through fourteen editions in five years. She has also written A Story of Doom, and other Poems, 1867; Mopsa the Fairy, 1869; several prose stories, and numerous contributions to periodical works. Robin Hood.-By MISS PARKES. In a fair wood like this where the beeches are growing, His eye was as blue as the sky in midsummer, Hearty his voice as he hailed the new-comer, Tender to maidens in changeable tune. His step had a strength and his smile had a sweetness, And ever to poets who walk in the gloaming We follow the lead unawares of his spirit, I think as I lie in the shade of the beeches, At least for a while, till we caught up the meaning, His feeble pulse was failing, And his eye was growing dim; In his trembling arms he raised it, On the path they both begin, When he passed through the dread portal, Death is but the gate of life: On the path we all begin, Song.-By MISS INGELOW. When sparrows build, and the leaves break forth, For I know there is dawn in the far, far north, And a scarlet sun doth rise; Like a scarlet fleece the snow-field spreads, And the icy founts run free, And the bergs begin to bow their heads, And plunge, and sail in the sea. O my lost love, and my own, own love, Is there never a chink in the world above And now thou wilt hear me no more-no more Thou didst set thy foot on the ship, and sail Thou wert sad, for thy love did nought avail, We shall walk no more through the sodden plain We shall stand no more by the seething main But perhaps I shall meet thee and know thee again MRS AUGUSTA WEBSTER has published Dramatic Studies, 1866; A Woman Sold, and other Poems, 1867; Portraits; &c. She has also translated the Prometheus Bound and Medea. A love-gift has been given me, And which of you is giver? I came upon you something sad, Musing a mournful measure, Now all my heart in me is glad With a quick sense of pleasure. I came upon you with a heart Half sick of life's vexed story, And now it grows of you a part, Steeped in your golden glory. A smile into my heart has crept, A joy of only seeing! O happy glow, O sun-bathed tree, A love-gift has been given me, LORD NEAVES-FREDERICK LOCKER- A choice little collection of Songs and Verses, Social and Scientific (1869), most of them originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, has been 'garnered up' in a small handsome volume by their author, the HON. LORD NEAVES, a Scottish judge. They are lively, witty, and sarcastic, the sarcasm being levelled at abuses and absurdities in social life. Charles Neaves was born in Edinburgh in 1800, was admitted to the bar in 1822, and raised to the bench in 1854. He was early distinguished as a scholar, of fine taste and fancy, and his Greek and Latin have not disqualified him for law or logic. Sir Edward Coke, that father of English jurisprudence, said: 'It standeth well with the gravity of our lawyers to cite verses' -and to write as well as cite verses cannot be derogatory to the dignity of Themis. How to Make a Novel, a Sensational Song. Try with me and mix what will make a novel, Never mind your plot, 'tisn't worth the trouble: All will stand the test that's black enough and bloody. Here's the Newgate Guide, here's the Causes Tumble in beside, pistol, gun, and sabre ; Or, by way of change, in your wild narration, Tame is virtue's school; paint, as more effective, Stir the broth about, keep the furnace glowing : Soon we'll pour it out in three bright volumes flowing. Some may jeer and jibe; we know where the shop is, Ready to subscribe for a thousand copies! A small volume of light graceful London Lyrics, by FREDERICK LOCKER, something in the style of Luttrell or Praed, has been so popular as to reach a fifth edition (1872). Vanity Fair. 'Vanitas vanitatum' has rung in the ears I often hear people abusing it, yet Old Dives there rolls in his chariot, but mind We saw them all go, and we something may learn That stupid old Dives, once honest enough, Contemptible Dives! too credulous Joan! Another writer of light airy vers de société is a young poet, AUSTIN DOBSON. He has a graceful fancy, with humour, and a happy art of giving a new colour to old phrases. His volume of Vignettes in Rhyme is now in a third edition. Some serious verses (After Sedan, &c.) evince higher powers, which Mr Dobson should cultivate. POET-TRANSLATORS-BOWRING, BLACKIE, ETC. The poet-translators of this period are numerous. The most remarkable for knowledge of foreign tongues and dialects was SIR JOHN BOWRING, who commenced in 1821 a large series of translationsSpecimens of the Russian Poets, Batavian Anthology, Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain, Specimens of the Polish Poets, Servian Popular Poetry, Poetry of the Magyars, Cheskian Anthology, or the Poetical Literature of Bohemia, &c. The last of these works appeared in 1832. In 1825 Dr Bowring became editor of the Westminster Review; he sat some time in parliament, and in 1854 was knighted and made governor of Hongkong. He was the literary executor of Jeremy Bentham, and author of political treatises, original poetry, and various other contributions to literature. The original bias of Sir John Bowring seems to have been towards literature, but his connection with Bentham, and his public appointments, chiefly distinguished his career. Sir John was a native of Exeter, born in 1792, died in 1872. -MR JOHN STUART BLACKIE (born in Glasgow in 1809, educated in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and Professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh) in 1834 gave an English version of Goethe's Faust; and in 1850 translated the lyrical dramas of Eschylus, two volumes. Both of these versions were well received; and Mr Blackie has aided greatly in exciting a more general study of Greek in Scotland. In 1866 he published an elaborate work, Homer and the Iliad, being a translation of the Iliad in ballad measure, a third volume of critical dissertations, and a fourth of notes philological and archæological. In 1870 the Professor put forth a volume of War Songs of the Germans. He has published several other translations, and also original poems, chiefly on Highland scenes and legends. In 1874 he zealously advocated the founding of a chair of Celtic Literature in the university of Edinburgh. By the spring of 1876, the funds necessary for this purpose were nearly collected. The enthusiasm of the Professor bears down all opposition! In 1874 Professor Blackie published a scholarly and interesting volume, Hora Hellenica, being a collection of essays and discussions on important points of Greek philology and antiquity, from which we give an extract: The Theology of Homer. The theology of the Homeric poems is not the theology of an individual, but of an age; and this altogether irrespective of the Wolfian theory, which, in a style so characteristically German, with one sublimely sweeping negation, removed at once the personal existence of the supposed poet, and the actual coherence of the existing poem. The principal value of Wolf's theory, in the eye of many genuine lovers of poetry, is that, while it robbed us of the poet Homer and his swarms of fair fancies, it restored to us the Greek people, and their rich garden of heroic tradition, watered by fountains of purely national feeling, and freshened by the breath of a healthy popular opinion, which, precisely because it can be ascribed to no particular person, must be taken as the exponent of the common national existence. To have achieved this revolution of critical sentiment with regard to the Homeric poems, to have set before the eyes of a Shelley or a Coleridge writing to express their own of Europe the world-wide distance between the poetry opinions, and the songs of a race of wandering minstrels singing to give a new echo to the venerable voices of a common tradition; this were enough for the Berlin philologer to have done, without attempting to estabinstincts of a sound aesthetical and of a healthy historical lish those strange paradoxes, repugnant alike to the criticism, which have made his name so famous. The fact is, that the peculiar dogmas of Wolf, denying the personality of the poet and the unity of the poems, have nothing whatever to do with that other grand result of his criticism to which we have alluded-the clear state ment of the distinction between the sung poetry of popular tradition and the written poetry of individual authorship. Not because there was no Homer, are the Homeric poems so generically distinct from the modern productions of a Dante, a Milton, and a Goethe; but because Homer lived in an age when the poet, or rather the singer, had, and from his position could have no other object than to reflect the popular tradition of which his mind was the mirror. As certainly as a party newspaper or review of the present day represents the sentiments of the party of which it is the organ, so certainly did a Demodocus or a Phemius, a Homer or a Cinathus the public singers of the public banquets of a singing, not a printing age-represent the sentiments of the parties, that is, the people in general, for whose entertainment they exercised their art. 'Tis the very condition, indeed, of all popular writing in the large sense, that it must serve the people before it masters them; that while entertainment is its direct, and instruction only its indirect object, it must, above all things, avoid coming rudely into conflict with public feeling or public prejudice on any subject, especially on so tender a subject as religion; nay, rather, by the very necessity of its position give up the polemic attitude altogether in reference to public error and vice, and be content, along with many glorious truths, to give immortal currency to any sort of puerile and perverse fancy that may be interwoven with the motley texture of popular thought. A poet, even in modern times, when the great public contains every possible variety of small publics, can ill afford to be a preacher; and if he carries his preaching against the vices of the age beyond a certain length, he changes his genus, and becomes, like Coleridge, a metaphysician, or, like Thomas Carlyle, a prophet. But in the Homeric days, corresponding as they do exactly to our medieval times, when the imaginations of all parties reposed quietly on the bosom of a common faith, to suppose, as Herodotus in a wellknown passage (ii. 53) does, that the popular minstrel had it in his power to describe for the first time the function of the gods, and to assign them appropriate names, were to betray a complete misconception both of the nature of popular poetry in general, and of the special character of the popular poetry of the Greeks, as we find it in the pages of the Iliad and Odyssey. So far as the mere secular materials of his songs are concerned, Homer, we have the best reason to believe, received much more than he gave; but in the current theology and religious sentiment, we have not the slightest authority for supposing that he invented anything at all. Amid the various wealth of curious and not always coherent religious traditions, he might indeed select this and reject that, as more or less suited for his immediate purpose; he might give prominence to one aspect of his country's theology, while he threw another into the shade; he might even adorn and beautify to some extent what was rude, and here and there lend a fixity to what was vague; but whatsoever in the popular creed was stable, his airy music had no power to shake; whatsoever in the vulgar tradition had received fixed and rigid features, his plastic touch had no power to soften. the work of her daughter, LADY DUFF GORDON (who died in 1869), entitled Letters from Egypt, 1863-65.-A series of interesting volumes, Beautiful Thoughts from Greek, Latin, Italian, and French Authors, with translations, have been published (1864-66) by DR C. TAIT RAMAGE. SCOTTISH POETS. WILLIAM THOM. WILLIAM THOM, the 'Inverury poet' (17891848), was author of some sweet, fanciful, and pathetic strains. He had wrought for several years as a weaver, and when out of employment, traversed the country as a pedler, accompanied by his wife and children. This precarious, unsettled life induced irregular and careless habits, and every effort to place the poor poet in a situation of permanent comfort and respectability failed. He first attracted notice by a poem inserted in the Aberdeen Herald, entitled The Blind Boy's Pranks; in 1844 he published a volume of Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-loom Weaver. visited London, and was warmly patronised by his countrymen and others; but returning to Scotland, he died at Dundee after a period of distress and penury. A sum of about £300 was collected for his widow and family. The Mitherless Bairn. He When a' ither bairnies are hushed to their hame Aneath his cauld brow siccan dreams hover there, Yon sister, that sang o'er his saftly rocked bed, Her spirit, that passed in yon hour o❜ his birth, Oh! speak na him harshly-he trembles the while, DAVID VEDDER. In 1853 an excellent translation of some of the Spanish dramas of Calderon was published by MR D. F. M'CARTHY.-Various works in the prose literature of Germany have been correctly and ably rendered by MRS SARAH AUSTIN (1793-1867), A native of Burness, Orkney, MR VEDDER a lady of great talent and learning, descended (1790-1854) obtained some reputation by a from the Taylors of Norwich. Among Mrs Austin's translations are Characteristics of Goethe, His Scottish songs and Norse ballads were popuvolume of Orcadian Sketches, published in 1842. 1833; Ranke's History of the Popes, 1840; and Frag-lar in Scotland. The following piece, which Dr ments from the German Prose Writers, 1841. Mrs Chalmers was fond of quoting to his students in Austin also translated from the French Guizot's work on the French Revolution, and Cousin's Report on Prussian Education. She also edited *This word, not found in Burns, is the same as frack, active, vigorous. his theological prelections, is in a more elevated strain of poetry: The Temple of Nature. Talk not of temples-there is one Built without hands, to mankind given ; Its lamps are the meridian sun, And all the stars of heaven; Its walls are the cerulean sky; Its floor the earth so green and fair; The dome is vast immensity All Nature worships there! The Alps arrayed in stainless snow, A thousand fierce volcanoes blaze, As if with hallowed victims rare; And thunder lifts its voice in praiseAll Nature worships there! The Ocean heaves resistlessly, And pours his glittering treasure forth; His waves-the priesthood of the seaKneel on the shell-gemmed earth, And there emit a hollow sound, As if they murmured praise and prayer; On every side 'tis holy groundAll Nature worships there! The cedar and the mountain pine, In reverence bend to Him; GEORGE OUTRAM-A. MACLAGAN, ETC. A small collection of Lyrics, Legal and Miscellaneous (third edition, 1874), was written from time to time by GEORGE OUTRAM (1805-1856), and published after his death. Mr Outram was born at Clyde Iron-works, in the vicinity of Glasgow, of which his father was manager. He passed as an advocate in 1827, but had little legal practice; and in 1837 he accepted the editorship of the Glasgow Herald. He became also one of its proprietors, and settled down in Glasgow to his new duties for life. His friend and biographer, Sheriff Bell, says truly that Mr Outram left behind him the memory of a most kindly, amiable, and gifted man. He had a vein of genuine Scotch humour, as rich as it was original and unique. The Annuity.-Air,' Duncan Davidson? I gaed to spend a week in Fife— An unco week it proved to be For there I met a waesome wife Her grief brak out sae fierce an' fell, I thought her heart wad burst the shell; An'-I was sae left to mysel❜- I sell't her an annuity. The bargain lookit fair eneugh She just was turned o' saxty-three; I couldna guessed she 'd prove sae teugh, By human ingenuity. She jokes her joke, an' cracks her crack, A livin' perpetuity. She hurkles by her ingle side, An' toasts an' tans her wrunkled hide- I read the tables drawn wi' care But tables here or tables there, To ca' for her annuity. I gat the loon that drew the deed- May pass for her annuity. Last Yule she had a fearfu' hoast I thought a kink might set me free; I led her out, 'mang snaw an' frost, Wi' constant assiduity. But deil ma' care—the blast gaed by, An' missed the auld anatomy; It just cost me a tooth, forbye Discharging her annuity. I thought that grief might gar her quit- An' leave her in fatuity! If there's a sough o' cholera Or typhus-wha sae gleg as she? She buys up baths, an' drugs, an' a', In siccan superfluity! She doesna need-she's fever-proof- Ae day she fell-her arm she brak- |