I can bear at home,' was the reply, and his voice faltered as he spoke. This man was Matthew Bramble, or rather Macdonald, the author of the tragedy of Vimonda at that time the writer of comic poetry." It is obvious that the tragedy he referred to was a wife in ill health and children crying for bread, but the great stream of London life which passed to and fro, many of whom he had doubtless moved to laughter heard not their cry, or saw not their tears. Soon after our author's death a collection of his miscellaneous Works was published, and, in addition to Vimonda, were included "The Fair Apostle," a tragedy; "Love and Loyalty," an opera; "The Prince of Tarinto," a comedy; "The Probationary Odes,” under the nom de plume of Matthew Bramble, which sparkle with wit and humour. Taken as a whole his works show him to have been an author of much versatility of genius. "Velina," perhaps, exhibits his elegant diction and richness of fancy to a greater extent than anything else he has written, and will favourably compare with Spenser, whom he imitated. It has been remarked that the difference between the Englishman and the Scot is that the Englishman begins life as an optimist and ends by becoming a pessimist, whilst the Scot begins a pessimist and ends by becoming an optimist. If this is so in reality, an exception must be made in the case of this fitful genius. Macdonald began life in the most complacent optimism, which he consecrated by music and song, but he ended by hanging his harp on the willow tree, feeling out of harmony with all the world, and died with the conviction that the path of life was strewn with thorns and briers and many bitter herbs. James Mercer, 1734-1803. In James Mercer we have a poet who was not lured to his own undoing by dreams of literary fame like the less fortunate Andrew Macdonald, but rather seemed afraid that even his most intimate friends should know that he was guilty of the sin of rhyming. This feeling was probably induced by the knowledge of his own limitations which his wide reading and accomplished scholarship tended to emphasize. James Mercer was the eldest son of Thomas Mercer, a gentleman of fortune in Aberdeenshire, who took up arms in the Rebellion of 1745 on behalf of the Pretender, and in consequence had to seek refuge in France. His eldest son James received an efficient education, first in the Grammar School and afterwards at Marischal College, Aberdeen, but manifested no desire to enter any of the learned professions. After leaving college he joined his father in Paris, remaining there for seven years, where he had the advantage of associating with the best society of the French metropolis in literature and politics. His chief inclination was to enter the military profession, and at the commencement of the Seven Years War he returned to Britain, resolved to take up arms in his country's cause. On his arrival in England active preparations were being made for the expedition against Cherbourg, and he immediately joined it as a Volunteer, and was compelled to witness the ill-starred attack completely repulsed from the Bay of St. Cas. After the failure of the expedition Mercer joined the British Army in Germany, then under the command of Lord George Sackville, still as a volunteer. He, however, soon obtained a commission as ensign in one of the English regiments, serving with the combined army, subsequently gaining promotion as a lieutenant in a battalion of Highlanders, newly organised by Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell. For several years he remained on the Continent, and at much personal risk shared in the glories of many brilliant victories by the allied army; the most celebrated of which was the Battle of Minden, the details of which he frequently narrated to his friends with much feeling. His Continental experience gave him a knowledge of French and other languages, the former of which he could speak perfectly, and his acquaintance with French authors, especially military and classical, was a subject of astonishment among Frenchmen themselves. In 1763, when close on thirty years of age, he married Miss Douglas, a lady of great personal attraction and of distinguished ancestry which could be traced in a direct line to Gavin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, the first to translate Virgil's Aeneid into English. After his marriage, Mercer removed with his regiment to Ireland, where he remained for about nine years, when he concluded a treaty with Sir Henry Calder, the lieutenant-colonel, with the view of becoming his successor. The treaty was confirmed in the usual manner by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, but by some underhand practice the commission which belonged to Mercer by the recognised principles of equity was given to another, which so disgusted him that he sold out the ordinary commission he held in the army, and with his wife and two daughters returned to a small cottage near Aberdeen. In 1774 he went to the South of France for the benefit of his wife's health, who had been a confirmed invalid for some time, where he remained for two years, after which he returned to Scotland to end his days in a pleasant villa near Aberdeen named Sunny Bank. On the death of his brother, who was a bachelor, he acceded to his fortune, which enabled him to build this pleasant villa. Owing to the continued ill health of his wife, he lived the life of a recluse at Sunny Bank, dividing his time between his books and attendance upon her. To those who had the chance of cultivating his acquaintance, he was greatly esteemed for his culture and refinement, and Beattie, the poet, in a letter to the Duchess of Gordon, speaks of him in the following terms:-" Major Mercer, with more learning than any other man of my acquaintance, has all the playfulness of a schoolboy, and writes with the wit and wisdom of Montesquieu, the sensibility of Rousseau, and the generosity of Tom Jones." Correctly speaking, Mercer was greater as a personality than as a poet, and he appears to have carefully separated his personality from his poetry which is polished and classical to an unnecessary degree, considering the themes of which he treats, which are scarcely worthy of such high and serious literary handling. Although mostly lyrical, there are few gems among his verse that sparkle, but all diffuse uniform luminosity, which, if not entirely monotonous altogether, seldom elevate the thoughts and feelings of the reader above a dead-level which palls upon the imagination. The biographer of Cowper, William Hayley, on hearing that Mercer had sunk under his grief for the loss of his wife, to whom he was evidently much attached, wrote an appropriate epitaph, from which the following lines are taken : "Around this grave, ye types of merit spread; WM. M'ILWRAITH. THE SCOTS VERNACULAR. T is appropriate that members of Burns clubs should have their attention directed to the history and the development. of the vernacular in which Burns literature finds expression, were it only to remove some common misconceptions as to the origin and character of the Scots language. At the outset it is to be observed that the word "Scot" had originally a meaning very different from what it now has, for it referred to a race that spoke a language further removed from the language of Burns than English is from Sanscrit. The original Scots were a Celtic, not a Teutonic, race. They were a branch of the Celtic race that, at a period far beyond authentic history, settled in Ireland, a country which during the sixth and seventh centuries was generally, in the Latin chronicles of the time, referred to as Insula Scotorum. Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, written in the beginning of the eighth century, says, "Ireland is the County of the Scots who, migrating from thence, added a third nation to the Picts and the Britains. There is a large gulf of the sea which formerly divided the nation of the Picts from the Britains, which gulf runs east very far into the land, where to this day stands the strong city of the Britains called Alcuith (Dumbarton). The Scots arriving on the north side of the bay settled themselves there." The Scots who thus settled on the northern banks of the Clyde gradually supplanted their Pictish neighbours, and in the middle of the ninth century their ruler established himself as King over the Picts, although he still retained the designation of the King of the Scots. As the power of the Picts diminished and that of the Scots increased, the term "Scot" came to be applied to the inhabitants of the land over which the Scots King ruled—that is, the part of Britain north of the Forth and the |