THE CAMERON'S FAREWEEL. The bugle is sounding the "Bonnets o' blue," The field is before us whaur mony may fa', Your lover, perchance, 'mang the rest, lassie; Has planted strang hopes in my breist, lassie. Tho' tears o' affection may yet dim my e'e To ken that thou lo'est me will lichten the heart, Ae kiss, my dear Annie, syne fareweel awhile, On fields that are blood-stain'd thy lover may tread, T JOHN WRIGHT, HE Galston poet, as he has generally been called, was as truly a born bard as any man who ever courted the Piërian Nymphs, or drank of Castalia's springs; although, in the end, he was one of the most unfortunate-as his death was certainly ́ the most melancholy-of all the votaries of the tuneful Nine. He was born at Auchincloigh, in the parish of Sorn, in the uplands of Ayrshire, in 1805. When but a child, Wright's parents removed to the town of Galston, which is situated on the beautiful banks of the Irvine, to the north of Auchincloigh. When about thirteen he was apprenticed as a weaver to a good and intelligent man named George Brown. He, however, was only versed in religious literature, and in polemics; but Wright early soared off into the realms of poetry, his young spirit having been nursed by his lonely rambles among the mountains and by the banks of the sweet Burnawn. Books of all kinds he read with avidity, but poetry was the delight of his soul, and that of Byron had a charm for him above any other. Notwithstanding his most imperfect education, Wright had rhymed almost from infancy; but love, with which his heart was smitten early, made him compose with care. His first effort was a love song; his next was a tragedy, which he entitled 'Mahomet, or the Hegira.' At this he laboured until it extended to more than fifteen hundred lines, all of which he had to keep on his memory, being unable as yet to commit them to writing. It was, however, condemned by his most intelligent friends, and ultimately he gave it up. At this time he had to labour at the dull monotonous loom for not less than fifteen hours a-day, but even this did not prevent him, "at stolen hours when labour done," from wandering out by the Irvine, and among the grand old woods of Cessnock, and there indulging his poetic dreams. In 1824, when he was only nineteen, "The Retrospect was announced, though it did not appear for four years afterwards. The whole of the first canto, of fifty-nine Spenserian stanzas, he retained on his memory until he could get a friend to write it down. This he at last was able to obtain, and both cantos, with some minor poems, were written out. With his manuscript buttoned up in his breast, and hardly a copper in his pocket, he set out for Edin burgh. Going by Glasgow, he got an introduction to Struthers, the author of "The Poor Man's Sabbath," and to Dugald Moore, a Glasgow poet of not a little eminence, author of "The African," "Scenes from the Flood," &c. They read and praised his poems, and assisted him with money to proceed to Edinburgh. Here, when well-nigh desperate, he was introduced to a Dumfriesshire gentleman—the late Mr David Hastings, who succeeded in persuading Professor Wilson to peruse the MS. The latter expressed his approval, and commended the poems highly-treating the poor author with great kindness. Henry Glassford Bell also became his patron and his friend. After a stay of three months in Edinburgh, and acting under the advice of numerous other literary men, he procured nearly one thousand subscribers. Under these cheering auspices the work appeared, and was most favourably noticed by the London Quarterly Review, the Monthly Review, Blackwood's Magazine, and by many others of lesser note. Strange as it may seem, only a few of the people of his native town were proud of his success, most of them envied his fame, and mocked and jeered at the poet, who scourged them in "The Street Remarkers." A second edition of his poems was soon published, and now the poet married, and might have done well, for he had pocketed almost £100 by his first edition alone; but his success had turned his head, or at least had thrown him sadly off his balance. He took to drinking, left Galston for Cambuslang, parted with his wife, and left her two fine boys. He became a wanderer and a hopeless inebriate, looking behind with regret, and before him with hopeless despair. He continued to write occasionally, and at times tried to struggle back into the paths of sobriety. Then he would launch his terrible imprecations at intemperance. But his self-control seemed to be gone. At last he was found one night about the year 1846, in the streets of Glasgow, in a deplorable and unconscious state, and was carried into the infirmary, seemingly dying. A Galston man was then employed there, whose duty it was to see all patients properly cleaned. He recognised the unfortunate poet to be his old acquaintance and townsman. Wright died the following day, and the official easily enlisted the sympathies of a number of the Galston folk then resident in Glasgow, and they gave him a decent burial-even among the great, and where so many poets lie in the Necropolis. A cast of his finelyintellectual head was taken, which, however, latterly shared in the disastrous lot of the poet. For a while it was kept at the infirmary. Ultimately it came into the possession of a Galston man, and was brought to his native town, but meeting with an accident, after sundry repairs, it was at last "used up," as the mistress of the house said, "in scorin' the kitchen floor!" Mr Wm. Todd, an elder brother of the bard of "The Circling Year," tells us that as showing how little his high talents were valued, or his lofty poetry admired, by the people of his native place-“His poetry was generally condemned by his fellow-townsmen for its obscurity. No one was able to understand it, except Willie Abbot and Rab Young, and one or two others. But then they both were weavers, and wore waistcoats with moleskin sleeves, and so their opinions went for nothing!" Notwithstanding his wayward follies, Wright's works had reached a third edition three years before his death, and they are still gradually gaining an honourable and enduring place in our literature. In his last great work, "The Life of Burns," we find the gifted George Gilfillan quoting approvingly from "The Retrospect." Our first extracts are from "The Retrospect "-the first is an apostrophe to poverty; the second, which is in praise of woman, forms the conclusion of the poem. Stern poverty! how heavy and how hard- Transfix, pale heaving Hope at every breath; Before thy freezing breath we shrink afar, And what in happier life might find applause, Shower on me all thy plagues! yet not aghast Or bend beneath thee to a timeless grave; Man, the proud scoffer, may contemn; though all He casts himself a suppliant at thy feet; Frozen apathy not long his wintry seat May fix where thou should'st sway-sole mortal boon That charm'st through life, and mak'st a deathbed sweet; Grief fades in thy bright beam like mists from noon, Or crags that melt in light beneath the summer moon. Heaven's fairest semblance, woman! fount where lies Of vengence in proud man, inflamed by time, Like show'r of summer dropped from heavenly clime, |