MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

THAT genius will vindicate its celestial origin and burst through all obstructions, is an axiom illustrated by many splendid and interesting examples. The energies of an original creative mind and bold imagination can never be wholly repressed or obscured by circumstances: the cloud that carries the electric fire conceals it but for a time, and its manifestations appear all the brighter from the previous gloom. In the list of eminent self-taught men who have shed lustre on our imaginative literature, a high rank must be assigned to the poet of the Shipwreck. No distinguished author ever rose from a lower level, or had to contend with more depressing difficulties. His early years were doomed to hardship, disappointment, and misery; and his situation as a common seaman-"a ship-boy on the high and giddy mast"-precluded nearly all opportunities of literary study or advancement, until after long years of severe and irksome toil. In this respect he stands alone in our annals. Burns, Gifford, Bloomfield, or Hogg had no such hard ascent to climb. The shepherd on his hill and the rustic at his plough have each a certain range of natural freedom, and chances of intellectual companionship and enjoyment. The mechanic also has his

hours of leisure and access to books. None of them are debarred the supreme luxury and elevating influences of Sabbath rest, summer walks, and female society. But the young apprenticed seaman is restricted to one set of associates, often men coarse, ignorant, and boisterous, and is chained to a round of duties and dangers-too frequently enforced with all the tyranny or caprice of arbitrary power-from which there is little intermission and no escape. A love of adventure or a passionate desire to visit foreign countries may sometimes soften the picture and veil its harsher

features; but in the case of Falconer there appears to have been no such alluring medium. He entered with strong reluctance on his profession of a sailor, and was only forced into it by utter helplessness and destitution. No other outlet seemed attainable; every gate of hope was shut against him. He therefore submitted, "forlorn of heart," as he tells us, to the severe decree,” and embarked on that faithless and stormy element, from which he was destined ultimately to reap his poetical fame, and in which he found a sad and premature grave.

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WILLIAM FALCONER was born in Edinburgh on the 11th of February 1732. In the parish register, his father (who was also named William) is designated a wigmaker; in other accounts he is termed a "poor barber." He was probably both at different periods of his life; but at this time the wigmakers formed a class of respectable burgesses in the Scottish capital. The maiden name of the poet's mother was Agnes Shand, and she was remembered as a careful and exemplary matron, intelligent, industrious, and affectionate. The elder Falconer carried on business in that ancient quarter of the town known as the Netherbow, where stood the once-famous "Port" or gate condemned to destruction by the government of George II. in petty and ludicrous resentment of the Porteous Mob of 1736, but which flourished long afterwards with its towers, battlements, and spire. This antique structure extended right across High Street, dividing that most picturesque of city thoroughfares from the privileged and historical district of the Canongate. Shops and houses with wooden fronts and "fore-stairs" were clustered round the Port, and in one of these dwelt William Falconer, a citizen remarkable for his humour and eccentricity, who has been compared to Partridge in "Tom Jones," and who, like that learned and witty tonsor, was somewhat unthrifty and unfortunate. Pity it is that the jest and tale which gladden these little coteries do not always carry prosperity with their sunshine! The merriest man in the Netherbow was one of the most unlucky of its tradesmen. William Falconer became insolvent, and the wig-making establishment was given up. His friends then came to his assistance, and he was enabled to begin business as a grocer. The shop was chiefly superintended by his wife, and on the death of this prudent and excellent partner, the affairs of the old man again became deranged. Recovery was hopeless, and the latter days of William Falconer were passed in extreme indigence. The family of this unfortunate couple consisted of

three children: the poet, and a brother and sister both born deaf and dumb, whose pitiable condition added to the other calamities of the poor household. The helpless brother and sister found an asylum as pauper-patients in the Edinburgh Infirmary; William, after a little schooling with one Webster, was put to sea. He was then probably not more than twelve or thirteen years of age, but active and eager for the acquisition of knowledge. A love of nature also—the poet's inheritance-came upon him. As a stripling, he said, his bosom "danced to nature's charms." In the course of his foreign wanderings and night watches, he must occasionally have recalled the unique and magnificent features of his native city and its surrounding scenery, but the distressing circumstances of his boyhood could not be recollected without painful emotion, and in his poetry he is silent as to the scene of his birth and childhood.

It is possible that the humble fortunes of the family had not reached their lowest ebb till some years after the birth of the poet. In describing, under the name of Arion, his early attainments and misfortunes, Falconer conveys the impression that he had at least entered upon a liberal course of education:

"On him fair science dawn'd in happier hour,
Awakening into bloom young fancy's flower;
But soon adversity, with freezing blast,
The blossom wither'd, and the dawn o'ercast.
Forlorn of heart, and by severe decree,
Condemn'd reluctant to the faithless sea,
With long farewell he left the laurel grove
Where science and the tuneful sisters rove."

We have, however, the poet's own statement, made repeatedly to his friend, Governor Hunter, that his education was confined to reading, writing, and a little arithmetic; and the early age at which he must have left home, added to the straitened circumstances of his parents, may be held as confirmatory of the fact. The farewell to science and the laurel grove was probably, in those days of artificial poetry, deemed necessary and indispensable as an embellishment of the narrative. Falconer was entered apprentice on board a merchant vessel belonging to Leith. The usual period of apprenticeship for a sailor was then four years, but it is doubtful whether Falconer served the whole of this period. Before he had completed his eighteenth year we read of his having exchanged the merchant service

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for the royal navy; of his wandering, apparently without any fixed employment, through various scenes in the East, and of his engaging himself at the port of Alexandria as a mate on board the Britannia, a merchantman engaged in the Levant trade. In the royal navy the purser of his ship was Archibald Campbell, son of Professor Campbell of St. Andrews, and who is known as author of a parody on the style of Dr. Johnson, entitled "Lexiphanes." To this literary purser Falconer acted as servant, and, according to Dr. Currie (the biographer of Burns), Campbell delighted in improving the mind of the young seaman, and afterwards, when the latter had attained celebrity, felt a pride in boasting of his scholar. The period of tuition, however, must have been a brief one, for in the autumn of 1750 Falconer, then only eighteen, as we have stated, sailed from Alexandria for Venice as second mate of the Britannia. Such an appointment for one so young, speaks well for his proficiency as a sailor. The British merchantmen at this time, as we learn from Mr. Stanier Clarke, remained trading from port to port in the Levant and Mediterranean, until ordered for England, when they generally loaded with silks at Leghorn. The Britannia had "wafted her commercial store" along the shores of Africa and Italy, and having touched at Alexandria and Crete, sailed for Venice, whence she was to steer for England. The vessel, however, was overtaken by a dreadful storm off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, and suffered shipwreck. The whole of the crew, consisting of about fifty men, perished, with the exception of three of the number, of whom Falconer happily was one. The incidents of the voyage, and its disastrous termination, left an indelible impression on the young sailor's memory, and years afterwards he selected them as the subject of that poem which has rendered his name and misfortunes immortal.

After the wreck of the Britannia, and his return to England, Falconer revisited his native city, and there made his first appearance as an author. The death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in March 1751, called forth numerous elegies and lamentations, and among the public mourners was our young poetical mariner. His effusion, printed at Edinburgh, is entitled, A Poem Sacred to the Memory of his Royal Highness Frederick, Prince of Wales. The poem, it must be admitted, was one of the most unpromising of youthful productions. Melpomene has rarely been invoked with less success; for conventional as the poetical style and diction of that period

were, such puerile and inflated lines as the following-the best in the piece —are below even the ordinary standard :—

"O bear me to some awful silent glade,
Where cedars form an unremitting shade;
Where never track of human feet was known;
Where never cheerful light of Phoebus shone;
Where chirping linnets warble tales of love,

~ And hoarser winds howl murmuring through the grove;
Where some unhappy wretch aye mourns his doom,
Deep melancholy wandering through the gloom:
Where solitude and meditation roam,

And where no dawning glimpse of hope can come !
Place me in such an unfrequented shade,

To speak to none but with the mighty dead;
To assist the pouring rains with brimful eyes,
And aid hoarse howling Boreas with my sighs."

The youth and circumstances of the writer form an excuse for such immaturity of taste and judgment. But it is curious to find Falconer, many years afterwards, in the second edition of his Shipwreck, allude with some complacency to this first production :—

"Thou who hast taught the tragic harp to mourn,

In early youth, o'er royal Frederick's urn."

His desire to appear loyal, and steadfast in his loyalty, had overpowered his critical perceptions. For about ten years subsequent to this period our author is supposed to have been engaged in the merchant service. He has enumerated all the shores he traversed—from the Peruvian regions to savage Labrador, and from Damascus, "pride of Asian plains," to the isthmus of Darien. Adversity, he said, still pursued him, but self-improvement was not neglected. He picked up acquaintance with the French, Spanish, and Italian languages, and he occasionally, when in Britain, sent a copy of verses to that popular repertory of fugitive literature, the Gentleman's Magazine. Some of these pieces have been identified and reprinted. The best of them are nautical, showing that he had at length struck into the true path of his genius. The following Description of a Ninety-Gun Ship is correct and animated:

'Amidst a wood of oaks with canvas leaves,

Which form'd a floating forest on the waves,