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of a new residence on Turreff, in Aberdeenshire, offering him the occupation, rent free, of a mansion in that village, belonging to the Errol family. The offer was gratefully accepted, and, in a short time, Mr. Meston was again seen at the head of a flourishing academy. His mode of life appears to have become here more exemplary; but misfortune, notwithstanding, still pursued him. A quarrel happened between two of the young gentlemen of his academy, one of whom stabbed the other; and, although no blame could be imputed to Mr. Meston on account of the unfortunate occurrence, many parents, apprehensive of similar accidents, withdrew their children, and left poor Meston, for the second time, a teacher without scholars.

From Turreff, he now removed to Montrose; and, after an unsuccessful attempt to establish a new academy there, went to Perth, where he was induced to leave off public teaching, to become tutor to the children of Mr. Oliphant, of Gask.

In this family, he continued several years; but his health beginning to fail, he repaired, for the benefit of mineral waters, to Peterhead, where he was supported chiefly by the bounty of his old friend, the Countess of Errol, who evinced an assiduity of attention to his wants, which is above all praise.

Meston was now, however, on the gallop down the hill of life; and, anxious to close his career on that spot which had been the scene of his highest honours on earth, he went from Peterhead to Aberdeen, where he terminated a lingering illness in death, in the spring of the year 1745, and fifty-seventh year of his age. His remains were interred, in a private manner,

in the Spital church of Old Aberdeen; and, in dull obscurity, they still moulder, without a stone or inscription, to mark the grave of the man who composed many admired epitaphs for others, who sleep the sleep of death around him.

The productions which Meston has left behind him are all poetical, and were first collected in a small volume, published at Edinburgh in 1767. They consist of the Knight," printed as early as 1723; "Mother Grim's Tales;" a second part of the latter by Mother Grim's grandson, Jodocus, with a long Latin title, and containing several pieces in the same language; and, lastly, some songs.

In his larger pieces, Meston appears to have made Butler his model; and, like all men who are so inconsiderate as to form themselves on the model of a day, has suffered by it in permanent reputation. He possessed genius enough to have secured to the name of Meston an ever-during celebrity; but, with a prodigality as censurable in intellectual as in worldly concerns, gave up to party feeling and local events those exertions, of which immortality might have had the harvest. It must be confessed, too, that Meston is inferior to the model of his selection; Butler is sometimes low in his humour, but very seldom so, except when his verses are viewed abstractedly from the heroes of his satire; but Meston is often much lower, and in any sense in which a reader chuses to regard him.

The charms of his conversational powers have been before alluded to. The editor of the Edinburgh edition of his works says, that " he possessed an uncommon fund of wit and humour, in the timing of

which he had a particular art." "On these occasions," it is added, "it was impossible for the most phlegmatic disposition to continue five minutes in his company without being convulsed with laughter."

The character of Meston may be summed up in a few words. He was a poet, with more of the habits of one than was fortunate for his fame; he was a man of genius, who, to have lived happy, should have been born with the fortune of a fool of quality. That he did not rise to excellence in the line which nature had chalked out for him, we may ascribe, with Dr. Ogilvie, "to the two great foes of every nobler effort of human genius indigence and dependence."

R.M.

JOHN HOME.

In the romantic ode by Collins on the Superstitions of the Highlands, we meet with a singular instance of poetical prediction; it would seem as if the poet had caught a portion of that second sight, which holds so eminent a place in the superstitions he describes. He had not long before formed, at Winchester, an acquaintance with a Scottish licentiate, of the name of John Home, who was then on a visit to England; and discovered in him so congenial a poetic spirit, that he not only dedicated to him his Ode on the Superstitions, but ventured, in the first stanza, thus to prefigure his future eminence :

"Home,thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads long Have seen thee ling'ring, with a fond delay, 'Midst those soft friends, whose hearts, some future day, Shall melt perhaps to hear thy tragic song.

It is probable, that Home had communicated to Collins some specimens of his dramatic talent, although none of those which are before the public can be traced to so early a date. Home was, at this time, in his twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year. He was born in the parish of Ancrum in Roxburghshire, in

1724; studied at Edinburgh, and was licensed to preach the gospel in 1747.

While at the university, Home formed one of a company of twenty students, who, on the interruption given to their studies by the rebellion of 1745, offered their services to act as volunteers with the royal forces; but, from a want of union or zeal, or of both, soon afterwards dispersed themselves. Mr. Home, however, whose patriotic ardour appears to have exceeded that of his companions, retained his arms, and marched with a detachment of the royal army to Falkirk. In the disgraceful route, for it cannot be called battle, which befel the king's army in that neighbourhood, Home was taken prisoner by the rebels, and sent to Doune Castle, on the borders of the Highlands. From this place, however, he, in a short time, contrived to effect his escape, and, on the restoration of tranquillity after the battle of Culloden, returned to the university, to complete his studies for the church. On entering into orders, his hopes did not probably extend beyond sitting down for life, the dull parson of some country parish; and in snatching from his supposed destiny the intermediate opportunity of paying a visit to England, he both gratified a natural desire of extending his knowledge of the world, and threw himself in the way of acquiring a degree of refinement which could not be expected amid the party feuds of the northern metropolis. When in London, there can be little doubt that he drank deeply of the pleasures of theatrical representation; and crude as his ideas of dramatic effect must have been from any thing he could, at that period, have seen in Scotland, they could not PART 1.]

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