still popular. One of his well-known achievements is his addition of two stanzas to Burns's song, "Of a' the Airts the Wind can Blaw," which are so well executed that they were believed to be the work of Burns himself to a comparatively recent date. It is also to his credit that his popular song."Up in the Mornin' Early," was an improvement on Burns's song on the same subject. It is believed, however, that the tune of this song is of more ancient date, and was wrought into a catch, "I'se gae with thee, my Peggy," which was apparently first published in a collection by John Hinton in 1652. It was also made to serve the base of a birthday song by Henry Purcell, the famous English musician, for the consort of William III. (1692), and was adopted by Gay for one of the songs in his Beggar's Opera." Hamilton was also the author of several musical pieces, among which is "Miss Forbes' Farewell to Banff."

1757-1839.

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In Andrew Scott we have a minor poet of a more robust fibre, though with a less delicate touch, than Hamilton. He was born in 1757, at Bowden Village, Andrew Scott, Roxburghshire, and belonged to the peasant class. After he had reached man's estate he left his birthplace and its rustic scenes behind the Eldon Hills, and entered the military profession, and served as a private soldier through five campaigns of the American War. He was with the army under Cornwallis which surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia. When a young herdladdie a copy of Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd" fell into his possession, and kindled the spark of poetic fire, which kept aglow till a late period of his life. While in the army he entertained his comrades on many occasions by singing them songs of his own composition, amongst which were, Betsy Rosoe," “The old Oak Tree,” and others. He subsequently returned to his native parish, where he died a farm-labourer, to which occupation had been added the office of church beadle. When nearly fifty years of age, he published at Edinburgh, Kelso.

and Jedburgh, five collections of his poetry, which were of sufficient merit to attract the attention of Sir Walter Scott, Lockhart, and others of the Edinburgh litterati of that period.

Although fortune does not seem to have cheered him in the course of his long and adventurous career, he maintained a genial optimism to the last, and his poem entitled Rural Content," or "The Muirland Farmer," is most likely a reflection of his humble tastes and unambitious nature. At all events, the following lines convey his idea of happiness and the simple life :

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My biggin' stands sweet on this south slopin' hill,

And the sun shines sae bonnily beamin' on't,

And past my door trots a clear prattlin' rill,

Frae the loch where the wild ducks are swimmin' on't.

And on its green banks, on the gay simmer days,
My wife trips barefit, ableachin' her claes,
And on the dear creature wi' rapture I gaze,
While I whistle and sing at the pleughin' o't."

1762-1800

While Andrew Scott was induced to tune his lyre by reading the "Gentle Shepherd," Andrew Shirrefs endeavoured to drink more deeply at the same fountain. Andrew Shirrefs, Although born at Aberdeen, 1762, some seventy-six years later than Ramsay's time, he made strenuous efforts to emulate the older poet by writing a pastoral play also. This play was entitled "Jemie and Bess," in which, like the "Gentle Shepherd," th characters are rustic, and the author displays much familiarity with that mode of life. It was played several times in Aberdeen and once at Edinburgh, but it does not appear to have made a great impression. Like most imitations, it was inferior to its model, though merit of a kind must be allowed it. The poet evidently belonged to a family of some position and intellectual calibre, but owing to a physical infirmity he engaged in the trade of a bookseller, and his shop became, like that of Ramsay's in Edinburgh, a literary rendezvous for authors, poets, and

lovers of books. Shirrefs was not void of ambition notwithstanding his infirmity, for in addition to writing poetry he started a newspaper which was destined speedily to come to grief, and for some years he carried on the Caledonian Magazine with a moderate degree of success. On the stoppage of the Caledonian Magazine he removed to Edinburgh, where in 1790 he published a volume of poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect. The most ambitious in the collection is his pastoral Jemie and Bess," but his most popular and best-known piece is his song, "A Cogie o' Yill." After a residence of eight years in Edinburgh he went to London in 1798, but unfortunately his star was soon in the descendant, and after a struggle of a little over two years, duration with fickle fortune, he died at the comparatively early age of forty-eight.

When Andrew Shirrefs started the Caledonian Magazine one of his poetical contributors was William Beattie, known as the Heckler Poet, obviously because he was a comber of flax by trade and a caustic wit to boot. Beattie was born at Aberdeen, 1762,

William Beattie, 1762-1816.

and was a racy and talented rhymster, who could portray homely scenes with a facile pen. By trade, as we have already stated, he was a flax-dresser operative in a factory near his own house in the Gallowgate. Few particulars are known of him, except that he was a drunken, rollicking carle, who believed that most of the ills which flesh is heir to could be cured by a dram. Indeed, his attitude to life could be well summed up in two lines of Burns's famous Bacchanalian song

"The cock may craw, the day may daw,
And ay we'll taste the barley bree."

Beattie sent a rhymed epistle to the first issue of the Caledonian Magazine, enclosing a poem on Mortality," and followed it up with the "Winter's Night," which is perhaps his most important poem, and which appears to have been

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suggested by The Farmer's Ha'," written upwards of twenty years before. On the dawn of the new century, 1801, Beattie published a small collection of his poems at Aberdeen, under the title of Fruits of Time Parings, which has been several times reprinted. This volume contains The Yule Feast," and "The Alewife Coaxing her Customers," the latter of which abounds with witty and sarcastic allusions. All the poems give graphic touches of rural life, which are mostly happy and always realistic.

"The Winter's Night,"

1766-1813.

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In leaving Beattie, who should not be taken too seriously, we pass to Alexander Wilson, an almost forgotten and much neglected author. Yet he was a man who Alexander Wilson, played many parts, and was scarcely less interesting as a man than he was as an author. When he writes verse he has recourse to the rhymed couplet of Alexander Pope, by whom he was evidently impressed, nor is it inappropriate to his vigorous mind and graphi descriptive powers, although he lacks the artistic balance of Pope. Wilson was born at Paisley, July 6th, 6th, 1766. Some say he was the

son of a small distiller, others that he was the son of a weaver, the latter of which is the more probable. His parents intended that he should enter the Church, but for some reason or other he was apprenticed to the weaving trade when he was thirteen years of age. While a weaver's apprentice he manifested a love of books, of writing verses, and studying nature, for which the sedentary occupation of a weaver was unfavourable. His roving disposition and love of freedom rose in rebellion, and he flung off the fetters of the loom by setting up as a pedlar, an occupation he seems to have followed for three years. Along with his other articles of merchandise he hawked copies of the first volume of his poems, published in 1789; and from his Journal, published in September of the same year, we get a glimpse of his experiences in pushin

the sale of his wares among the country folks, and at the village fairs, of which he could usually see the comic side. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how he could have borne uch taunts and rebuffs had it not been that they appealed to the comic element of his nature-a most essential attribute in the character of a tramp.

Many of Wilson's poems are on themes unworthy of his talents, which appear to have been dashed off with a freedom indicative of the rollicking blade who cannot wait upon fine sentiment or indulge in artistic construction. Although this feature was predominant in early life, he showed in his later years how tenacious and persistent he could be when he hit upon his real vocation. Many of his poems at the period referred to display a vivacity and power of diction which only required judicious guidance; but like Aurora's steeds harnessed to the dawn without a charioteer, he dashed heedlessly on, bearing down every obstacle in his track. Lyrical gifts we cannot claim for Wilson, for in the main his songs are poor, but he had a deep insight into nature and a wealth of descriptive power far beyond the common; though he is frequently coarse, and rarely rises to a refined and delicate pathos. A few lines from his verses on a thunderstorm will convey an idea of his vigorous descriptive powers—

"Two sick'ning months had thus roll'd joyless by,
While heat reign'd tyrant from the vaulted sky,
Again the sun rose in the flaming east,

And pour'd his rays o'er earth and ocean's breast:
But ere yon high Meridian he had gain'd,
Surrounding clouds his dark'ning visage stain'd,
Clouds pil'd on clouds, in dismal huge array,
Swell from the south, and blot the face of day;
O'er the black sky a threat'ning horror spreads,
The brooks brawl hoarser from their distant beds;
The coming storm the woodland natives view,
Stalk to the caves, or seek the sheltering yew:
There pensive droop, and eye the streaming rain,
While light'ning sweeps, and thunder shakes the plain.”

In further illustration of the author's descriptive realism, we give a quotation from his poem entitled The Suicide

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