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knowing the services of Lieut. Duff, was pleased to prefer his claims in such terms to the Board of Admiralty, that he was immediately appointed Captain and Commander of the Martin sloop of war, upon the Scotch station.

torious, that he was immediately appointed to the command of the Ambuscade frigate, of 32 guns, and two years after to the Glenmore, of 38 guns.

In these ships he served in the North Seas, and upon the coast of Ireland, till 1801, when upon a Soon after his promotion, Captain general promotion in the navy, he Duff married Miss Sophia Dirom, was appointed to the Vengeance, of second daughter of Alexander Di-74 guns, belonging to the Channel rom, Esq. of Muiresk, to whom he had been from childhood attached, and fixed the residence of his family in Edinburgh.

Upon the breaking out of the last war, in the beginning of 1793, the same influence was again' most kindly exerted for Captain Duff's farther promoti n, when he was one of a very few Masters and Commanders who were appointed Post Captains by the Earl of Chatham, at that time First Lord of the Admiralty, to whom indeed he had the honour to have been personally known in the passage to and at Gibraltar, during the former war. At his Lord ship's desire, Captain Duff soon after relinquished the command of a frigate then fitting out for him, in which, at so early a period of the war, he would probably have made his fortune, in order to go upon an expedition to the West Indies as Captain of the Duke, of 90 guns, bearing the flag of the Hon. Commodore Murray. This ship led the attack of the batteries at Martinico, and, at the close of the action, after silencing the battery to which she had been opposed, the powder magazine had but just been secured, when she was struck by lightning, her main, mast shivered to pieces, and her hull so damaged that it was necessary to send her home to be repaired.

The farther attack upon Martinico having been deferred, the Commodore returned to England in the Duke. He expressed the highest esteem for Captain Duff, and reported his conduct to have been so meri

fleet.

This ship, after having been de-. tached to the Baltic, to reinforce the fleet that attacked Copenhagen, became one of the squadron under Rear-Admiral Campbell, which, after cruizing for some time off Rochefort, was sent to Bantry Bay for the protection of that part of Ireland. Upon this station they continued till the signature of the preliminaries of peace, when, instead of returning to their homes, to which, after so long a war, the officers and men anxiously looked forward, they were ordered to Jamaica, to watch the movements of the armament sent from France to attempt the recovery of the French part of the island of St Domingo from the usurped government of the Blacks.

Capt. Duff had no opportunity, in the course of the last war, either, of farther signalizing himself, or of materially improving his fortune; but he was always active and vigilant, and, though strict in discipline, had the happiness of being respected and beloved by the officers and men of every ship which was under his command. On the trials at Portsmouth, it came out in evidence, that, when the ringleaders of the mutiny, which arose in the squadron in Bantry Bay, sounded the crew of the Vengeance, they found them so attached to their Captain, that they could not be moved. That ship, there is reason to believe, was the only one in which no mutinous spirit broke out; and upon the squadron coming to Portsmouth, previous to their sailing for

the

the West Indies, her crew was indulged with leave to come on shore by turns, while all the others were confined to their ships.

Not more than eighteen months had elapsed after Captain Duff had returned from the West Indies to the bosom of his family and friends, when the present war broke out.— He again solicited employment; and a general invasion of these united kingdoms being threatened by the French and their allies, he, in the meantime, without pay or emolument, assisted the General and Staff Officers in examining the coasts of the Frith of Forth, with which he was well acquainted, and in making arrangements for its defence. His steady patron, the Duke of Gordon, with his excellent son, the Marquis of Huntly, seconded his application to be again called into active service; and General the Earl of Moira, Commander of the forces in Scotland, by whom he had been appointed to the command of a division of the craft which had been voluntarily offered for the defence of the Frith of Forth, generously and unsolicited, wrote to the Earl of St Vincent, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in his behalf.

Upon the general promotion in the Navy, which took place in April 1804, Captain Duff was appointed to the command of the Mars, of 74 guns, and immediately proceeded to join her off Ferrol. He cruized off that port, and successively off Rochefort and Brest, as one of the Channel Fleet, till, in May last, he was detached to Cadiz, under Vice-Admiral Collingwood, whose small squa-, dron of four ships of the line, afterwards encreased to eight, continued to keep their station off that port, unawed by the arrival of the combined fleet.

Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson having, in the end of September, re

d from England, to resume the

command upon that most important station, made a disposition of his increased force into two divisions, one of which was to be led by himself, and the other by Vice Admiral Collingwood. Rear-Admiral Louis having been detached to the Mediterranean with 7 sail of the line, Captain Duff had the honour, upon his departure, though there were senior Captains in the fleet, to be appointed Commodore of the advance squadron of four sail of the line, by the recom mendation, no doubt, of Vice-Admiral Collingwood, who selected the Mars to be second to himself in his division of the fleet. On the 21st of October, in the ever-memorable battle of Trafalgar, Captain Duff acted with such judgment and intrepidity, that, though his ship sailed ill, and there was little wind, he was the third in action; and was one of four ships which, owing to an unfortunate calm, had to maintain the conflict for a considerable time with the leeward division of the enemy's fleet. He continued to exert himself with the most undaunted heroism, having at one time to contend with no less than four of the enemy's ships, till he was struck dead by a cannon shot, one hour and five minutes after the commencement of the battle; about the same time that the companion of his youth, Captain Cooke, was killed in the Bellerophon, and that their Commander in Chief, the Great Lord Nelson, was mortally wounded on board the Victory!

Captain Duff was a man of fine stature, strong and well made, above six feet in height, and had a manly, open, benevolent countenance. During thirty years service, he had not been four years unemployed; about twenty months after his return from the West Indies in 1787, and not quite two years after the last war. Although he went early to sea, he lost no opportunity of improving himself in the theory, as well as in

the

the practice of his profession, and acted the part of an instructor and father to the numerous young men who were under his command. By his beloved wife he had five children, of whom a boy and two girls remain, together with their disconsolate mother, to mourn their father's death. His son, thirteen years of age, had joined him as a midshipman on the 19th September last; and soon after his arrival on board the Mars wrote exultingly to his mother, that his father's ship had been put in the post of honour, next to Vice Admiral Collingwood, in his division of the fleet. This spirited youth, who has commenced his career in so interesting a manner, was, after the transcendent victory of Trafalgar, removed by Admiral, now Lord Collingwood, with the kindest attention, from on board the Mars to the Euryalus frigate, which was soon after sent with dispatches to England. The Hon. Captain Blackwood, the distinguished officer who commands that ship, has undertaken, in the handsomest manner, to continue to take charge of the son of his respected friend, the late Captain Duff, than whom, he has been pleased to say, "His Majesty's service could "not boast of a better or more gal"lant officer." We can add with the greatest truth, that he was also a tender husband; an affectionate parent; a dutiful son, and a sincere friend: - In the navy, he was called WORTHY Duff!

write down whatever comes uppermost. You are certainly to blame in not writing much oftener than you do; for I am fully persuaded, that by reading one hour and writing two, you will better improve your understanding, and correct your taste, than by reading all the three. How can you be so selfish? What does it signify to your friends how much knowledge you have, if you use no means to communicate it to them? It is certainly incumbent on us who live in this wild country, where useful information is so hard to attain, to communicate to each other every new idea that strikes us; and if you do it not at all times when you may, you cannot when you would, but are in the same predicament with the Irishman -Coming into a house one asked him if he could play upon the violin? He replied he did not know whither he could play upon one or not, for that he never had tried it. tried it. And tho' our observations on things could be of no use to the generality of mankind, they may be of very much utility to one another. For my part when I write a good, letter, as I expect this will be, I am always sorry that none can be the better for it save one or two.-I for got where I left off at last time, a bout natural and attractive writers, but I remember that the rule I mentioned whereby to distinguish them

was,

:

"What oft' was thought, but ne'er so well express'd." I have since been thinking, that it is possible for an author to describe actions, manners, and scenery, infinitely above,

Letters on Poetry, by the ETTRICK and as far below, what was generally

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ever thought, acted, or seen before; and still never lose sight of Nature. Shakespeare is a great instance of the former, who having exhausted worlds and then imagined new,' presented us with many characters and scenes that no fancy but Shakespeare's could ever have given birth to: for certainly, if ever the spirit of

in

inspiration was bestowed on a man in these latter ages, his was the gift. Yet to say that these flights are unnatural, would be the most palpable impropriety; for in fact they are the most natural of his works, and, contrary to all other instances, his peasants and clowns are the most unnatural characters. I shall only trouble you to read the Midsummer night's Dream, where you find a number of the most wild and extravagant ideas im-gin able, delivered in a manner the most elegant, and withal so very natu. ral as to be exactly correspondent to the several characters of the whimsical airy beings which he brings in to deliver them.-Yea so accurately do they suit our notions of these flimsy spirits, that the oldest mau in Ettrick or Eskdale, although they have seen and spoke with the fairies many a time, cannot impress you more with the reality of their existence, altho' the one believes he tells you the truth, and the other knows he does not. I conclude then, that though his thoughts were not as our thoughts, still he must be ranked with the first of natural writers. There are others again, such as Goldsmith, Thomson, and Burns, who follow the plain path of life; their works are literal copies from the book of nature. In them every man meets the same ideas that have floated on his mind; the same feelings which have touched his heart; and the same scenes in which he hath been an actor; yet he never thought, felt, nor acted them to such purpose as he finds them there delineated. In short, every reader finds there something of himself, and every body you know loves to hear or read of himself.This is the reason why they are so generally approved; for where there is nothing of self, there is seldom any I hope you will improve these loose-hints, and believe me your ever faithful

interest.

James Hogg.

Account of ALEXANDER SELKIRK.

[As we had lately an opportunity of presenting ur readers with some curious pa ticulars respecting Alex. Selkirk, the origi al Robinson Crusoe; (see the Scots Mag. for Sept. 1805. p. 670-5) our readers may not be displeased to see the present extract, on the same subject, from the Harleian Miscellany, a publication which, from its great value and scarcity, is in very few people's hands. The passage, we believe, has hitherto pissed almost un. noticed.]

Providence displayed: Or, a very surprizing account of one Mr Alexander Selkirk master of a merchantman, called the Cinque Ports, who, dreaming that the ship would soon after be lost, he desired to be left on a desolate island in the South Seas, where he lived four years and four months, without seeing the face of man, the ship being afterward cast away as he dreamed. As also, how he came to be miraculously preserved and redeemed from that fatal place, by two Bristol privateers, called the Duke and Du chess, that took the rich Aquapulco ship, worth one hundred ton of gold, and brought it to England. To which is added, an account of his birth and education; his desIscription of the island where he was cast; how he subsisted; the several strange things he saw, and how he used to spend his time. With some pious ejaculations that he used, composed during his melancholy residence there. Written by his own hand, and attested by most of the eminent merchants upon the Royal Exchange. Quarto, con. taining twelve pages.

N the voyage of the Duke and

Duchess privateers, belonging to Bristol, who took the rich Aquapulco ship, they came to an island called Juan Fernandez; where, sending their pinnace on shore, she

re

1

returned, after some time, bringing with her a man cloathed in goat skins, who seemed as wild as, the goats themselves.

Being brought on board the Duke, he said he had been on the island four years and four months, having been left there by Capt. Stradling in a ship called the Cinque ports, the year 1705, of which ship he was master, and Capt. Dampier, who was then with him, and now on board the Duke, told Capt. Rogers, he was the best man on board the

Cinque ports, who immediately agreed with him to be a mate with him on board the Duke. His name was Alex. Selkirk, a Scotchman and the manner of his being found there was by making a fire the night before, when he saw the two privateers a foresaid, judging them to be Eng lish, by which, judging it to be a ha bitable island, they had sent their boat to see; and so he came to be miraculously redeemed from that solitary and tedious confinement, who otherwise in all human probability, would have ended his life there.

He said, that during his stay there, he had seen several ships pass by, but only two of them came in to an chor, which he judged to be Spaniards, and retired from them, upon which they fired at him; had they been French, he said he would have submitted himself, but choose rather to hazard dying on the island, than to fall into the hands of the Spaniards in those parts, because he believed they would either murder him, or make him a slave in their mines.

The Spaniards landed so near him, before he knew where they were, that he had much ado to escape; for they not only shot at bim, but pursued him into the woods, where he climbed up to the top of a tree, at the foot of which they made water, and killed several goats just by, but went off without discovering him.

He told them, that he was born at Largo, in the county of Fife, in Scot land, and was bred a sailor from his youth.

The reason of his being left on this melancholy island, was a difference betwixt him and his Captain, which, together with the ship's being leaky, made him willing rather to stay there than to go along with him at first, and when he was at last willing to go, the Captain would not receive him.

He had been, he said on the island, to wood and water, when two of the ship's company were left upon it, for six months till the ship returned, being chased thence by two French South sea ships.

He had with him his cloaths and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a bible, some praetical pieces, and his mathematical instruments, and books. He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but, for the first eight months, he had much ado to bear up against melancholy, and the terror of being left alone on such a desolate place,

He built two huts with Pimento trees, covered them with long grass, and lined them with the skins of goats, which he killed with his gun as he wanted; so long as his powder lasted, which was but a pound; and, that being near spent, he got fire by rubbing two sticks of Pimento wood together upon his knee. In the les. ser hut,, at some distance from the other, he dressed his victuals, and in the larger he slept, and employed himself in reading, singing psalms, and praying, so that he said he was a better christian, while in this solitude, than, he was afraid, he should ever be again,

At first, he never eat any thing, till hunger constrained him, partly for grief, and partly for want of bread and salt; nor did he go to

bed,

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