Part 14 (1/2)
”It is more than possible,” I said, ”that I have co at originality of description and senti to attain propriety of expression, I have only been depicting cohts, and this, too, in inelegant language Yet even in this case, though disappointed, I shall not be withoutverses is quite independent of other men's opinions of them; and I expect to feel as happy as ever in this ah assured that others could find no pleasure in reading what I had found soIt is no s and shadow cannot apply to me, sincethe skill of at least the conorant of masonry and architecture than many professors of these arts who never measured a stanza
There is also so that, unlike some would-be satirists I have not assailed private character; and that, though men may deride me as an unskilful poet, they cannot justly detest me as a bad or ill-naturedthose who may be merry at my expense, in their own coin An ill-conditioned critic is always a more pitiable sort of person than an unsuccessful versifier; and the desire of showing one's own discern than the si him harmless pleasure
Further, it would, I think, not be difficult to show thatmyself a poet is not a whit more ridiculous, and infinitely less mischievous, thanevery day I have seen the vicious atte to teach morals, and the weak to unfold mysteries I have seen men set up for freethinkers ere born not to think at all To conclude, there will surely be cause for self-gratulation in reflecting that, by becoained the reputation of being a mean felloho had teased all his acquaintance until they had subscribed for a worthless book; and that the severest remark of the severest critic can only be, 'a certain anony the blank in the title-page, the authorshi+p of hbourhood, I set myself to see whether I could not,better suited tothe bar or throwing the stone, the coins with a rather indifferent cast is never very unfavourably judged if he i a better; and I resolved onfor the _Inverness Courier_--which was now open to h the kindness of the editor--a series of carefully prepared letters on so-fishi+ng employed, as he tells us in one of his essays, ”all Grub Street” In the north of Scotland this fishery was a popular theo The welfare of whole coree on its success: it formed the basis of many a calculation, and the subject of many an investment; and it was all the more suitable for my purpose from the circumstance that there was no Grub Street in that part of the world to employ itself about it It was, in at least all its better aspects, a fresh subject; and I deehly acquainted with it than at least h, as _litterateurs_, to co I knew the peculiarities of fishermen as a class, and the effects of this special branch of their profession on their character: I had seen the their employments amid the sublime of nature, and had occasionally taken a share in their work; and, further, I was acquainted with not a few antique traditions of the fisheres, in which, as in the narratives of led with a certain amount of real incident, curious snatches of the supernatural
In short, the subject was one on which, as I knew a good deal regarding it that was not generally known, I was in soree qualified to write; and so I occupiedit into a series of letters, of which the first appeared in the _Courier_ a fortnight after my volume of verse was laid on the tables of the north country booksellers
I had first gone out to sea to assist in catching herrings about ten years before; and I now described, in one of my letters, as truthfully as I could, those features of the scene to which I had been introduced on that occasion, which had struck e to me proved equally so, I found, to the readers of the _Courier_ My letters attracted attention, and were republished in my behalf by the proprietors of the paper, ”in consequence,” said my friend the editor, in a note which he kindly attached to the pamphlet which they formed, ”of the interest they had excited in the northern counties”[13] Their modicum of success, lowly as was their subject, coht me my proper course Let it be enerally known;--let me qualify myself to stand as an interpreter between nature and the public: while I strive to narrate as pleasingly and describe as vividly as I can, let truth, not fiction, bethe novel to the true, in provinces of eneral interest than the very humble one in which I have now partially succeeded, I shall succeed also in establishi+ng myself in a position which, if not lofty, will yield ht attain as a mere _litterateur_ who, eneral fund The resolution was, I think, a good one; would that it had been better kept! The following extracts may serve to show that, huave considerable scope for description of a kind not often associated with herrings, even when they eradually darkened, the sky assu breeze, reflected its deeper hues with an intensity approaching to black, and seemed a dark uneven paveht A calm silvery patch, so slowly through the black It seemed merely a patch of water coated with oil; but, obedient to so power than that of either tide or wind, it sailed aslant our line of buoys, a stone-cast fro the line to thrice its former extent--paused as if for athemselves on their narrower base, with a sudden jerk slowly sank 'One--two--three buoys!' exclai them as they disappeared;--'_there_ are ten barrels for us secure' A fewthe haulser fro it aft to the stern, we counwale The first three appeared, fro into flalittered bright in the h the pitchy darkness, visible for a hter than any of the others, and glittered through the waves while it was yet several fatholed with broken sheets of snow, that--flickering aiven by the fisherain forlooreen rays, an instant seen and then lost--the retreating fish that had avoided the led cos
As we raised theunwale, they felt ware shoal even the temperature of the water is raised--a fact well known to every herring fisher them out of thesound, like that of the mouse, but much fainter--a ceaseless cheep, cheep, cheep, occasioned apparently--for no true fish is furnished with organs of sound--by a sudden escape from the air-bladder The shoal, a small one, had spread over only three of the nets--the three whose buoys had so suddenly disappeared; andof fish, some dozen or two in a net; but so thickly had they lain in the fortunate three, that the entire haul consisted of rather ht, and saw an open sea, as before; but the scene had considerably changed since we had lain down The breeze had died into a cal with stars; and the sea, from the sht and starry as the other; with this difference, however, that all its stars seehtly trees, and gave to each its tail There was no visible line of division at the horizon Where the hills rose high along the coast, and appeared as if doubled by their undulating strip of shadohatin the heavens, just where the upper and nether firmaments met; but its presence rendered the illusion none the less complete: the outline of the boat lay dark around us, like the fragment of some broken planet suspended in middle space, far from the earth and every star; and all aroundextended the complete sphere--unhidden above from Orion to the Pole, and visible beneath from the Pole to Orion Certainly sublih to develop the faculties, or thelain asleep There is no profession whose recollections should rise into purer poetry than his; but if the enius, what does it h the scene which sheds upon it its randeur and beauty?
There is no corresponding i the landscape is never imparted by the landscape itself, whether to the lass There is no class of recollections more illusory than those which associate--as if they existed in the relation of cause and effect--so scenery with soination The eyes open, and there is an external beauty seen; but it is not the external beauty that has opened the eyes
”It was still a dead calm--calm to blackness; when, in about an hour after sunrise, what see to it, in irregular patches, a tint of grey
First one patch would form, then a second beside it, then a third, and then for miles around, the surface, else so silvery, would seerey: the apparent breeze appeared as if propagating itself from one central point In a few seconds after, all would be calm as at first; and then froain form and widen, till the whole Firth see noise, as if a thunder-shoas beating the surface with its multitudinous drops, rose around our boat; the water seemed sprinkled with an infinity of points of silver, that for an instant glittered to the sun, and then resigned their places to other quick glancing points, that in turn were succeeded by yet others The herrings by millions, and thousands ofa few inches into the air, and then falling and disappearing, to rise and leap again Shoal rose beyond shoal, till the whole bank of Gullia sounds were h soht be heard in the cal around us seemed to cover, for hundreds of square h they played beside our buoys by thousands, not a herring swam so low as the upper baulk of our drift One of the fisherht over our second buoy into the middle of the shoal, the fish disappeared froo,' he exclaio I startled thirty barrels of light fish intotheht have had on this occasion; but on hauling our nets for the third and last tiht barrels of fish; and then hoisting sail--for a light breeze froo of twenty barrels”
Meanwhile the newspaper critics of the south were giving expression to all sorts of judgments on my verses It was intimated in the title of the volume that they had been ”written in the leisure hours of a journeyman mason;” and the intimation seemed to furnishwith theone by,” said one, ”when a literary arded as a pheno up now, he would not be entitled to so much praise as the first” ”It is our duty to tell this writer,” said another, ”that he will make more in a week by his trowel than in half a century by his pen” ”We are glad to understand,” said a third--very judiciously, however--”that our author has the good sense to rely ht were of a sufficiently varied, but, on the whole, rather contradictory character
By one writer I was told that I was a dull, correct felloho had written a book in which there was nothing a absurd
Another, however, cheered enius, whose poems, with ” A third was sure I had ”no chance whatever of being known beyond the limits of my native place,” and that my ”book exhibited none, or next to none, of those indications which sanction the expectation of better things to couine vein, found in ifts of Nature, which the stihts of experience, ht hereafter develop, and direct to the achieve truly wonderful” There were two naest to the newspaper reviewers The Taenious Thorn were in course of being exhibited at the tiht as a journeyman mason: and there was a rather sliotten volumes of verse, one of which had issued from the press contemporaneously with mine, who, as he had a little money, and was said to treat his literary friends very luxuriously, was praised beyond measure by the newspaper critics, especially by those of the Scottish capital And Thom as a mason, and Sillery as a poet, were placed repeatedly before , nanimously relad to find hined pleasure to learn I had attained to the well-merited fa the undue severity so often shown by the bred writer to the workingthat the ”journey his treat, that it was of course not even every h poetic eminence and celebrity of a Charles Doyne Sillery”
All this, however, was criticised in toiling in the churchyard, or in enjoyingwalks But it became more formidable when, on one occasion, it came to beard me in my den
The place was visited by an itinerant lecturer on elocution--one Walsh, who, as his art was not in great request aentleth there appeared one , placarded on post and pillar, an inti deliver an elaborate criticism on the lately-published volume of ”Poems written in the leisure hours of a Journey readings The intiood house; and, curious to knoas awaiting ot into a corner First in the entertainment there came a wearisome dissertation on har words, and theDods, ”Oh, what a style of language!”
The elocutionist, evidently an untaught and grossly ignorant ood sense, were set at nought in every sentence; but then, on the other hand, the inflections were carefullyover the nonsense beneath, like the wave of some shallow bay over a bottom of ratified by a few recitations ”Lord Ullin's Daughter,” the ”Razor Seller,” and ”My Nareat force And then caentlemen,” said the reviewer, ”we cannot expect ht poetry needs teaching No man can be a proper poet unless he be an elocutionist; for, unless he be an elocutionist, how can he e the harmonic inflexes, or deal with the rhetorical pauses? And now, ladies and gentlees in this book, that the untaught journeyman mason who made it never took lessons in elocution I'll first read you a passage from a piece of verse called the 'Death of Gardiner'--the person inning of the piece is about the running away of Johnnie Cope's men:”--
”Yet in that craven, dread-struck host, One val'rous heart beat keen and high; In that dark hour of shaash'd by ht the vanquish'd van-- Of silver'd locks and furrow'd brow, A venerable man
E'en when his thousand warriors fled-- Their low-born valour quail'd and gone-- He--the ht alone
He stood; fierce foeroans of despair
The clashi+ng sword, the cleaving axe, The murd'rous dirk were there
Valour ed the brand or launch'd the spear But ere these to that old man!
God was his only fear
He stood where adverse thousands throng'd
And long that warrior fought and well;-- Bravely he fought, firmly he stood, Till where he stood he fell
He fell--he breathed one patriot prayer