ROBERT FERGUSSON1

IN some respects the undisguised and altogether undisputed pre-eminence of Burns and Scott among the poets of our own country has not been without its evil effects. Shakespeare so far transcended the other dramatists of his time that when we speak of the Elizabethan age, in reference to literature, we think at once of that great name, and hardly of any one else-hardly at all of those other dramatists, some of whom would have furnished forth a lesser time very creditably. Just in the same way the very names of our minor Scots poets are well-nigh forgotten in the fame of that great pair, Burns and Scott. This is quite natural, of course; it is natural that we should not greatly care to dawdle over The Castle of Indolence or The Gentle Shepherd, when we might be reading or re-reading Tam o' Shanter, or The Lay of the Last Minstrel. But, although it is natural, one cannot help regretting the comparative neglect into which Thomson and Ramsay 1 Scots Magazine, November 1892.

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are falling even here in Scotland. As for the poet who is the subject of this paper, Englishmen never knew much of Fergusson, and it is to be feared that most of the generation of Scotsmen which is now growing up are likely through sheer ignorance to take small account of the very special claims which this poor lad possesses on their respect and gratitude. For undoubtedly there are special reasons why Fergusson should keep a warm corner in Scottish hearts which do not apply with equal or nearly equal strength to the cases of Thomson and Ramsay. Thomson was one of those Scotsmen for whom the highroad to London has an irresistible attraction, and when he went away he remained away; in his manner and choice of subjects he is perhaps the least national, the least Scottish of all our poets. Again, one may cherish a hearty feeling of admiration for 'honest Allan,' and yet hold oneself free to confess, as regards his most important work, that though his Shepherd be Gentle, yet, unlike the river Thames, is he also dull.

His

The case is different with Fergusson. poetry is worth remembering for its own sake, but a peculiar regard attaches to his name because of the strong influence he had over Burns. The extent of that influence may be at once realised by any one who takes the

trouble to compare Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle with The Cottar's Saturday Night and Fergusson's poem entitled Leith Races with The Holy Fair of Burns. Burns himself, with that large and generous humanity which makes us so willing to forget or condone his faults, was ever foremost to acknowledge his debt to Fergusson. As is well known, he eagerly sought out, when he came to Edinburgh, Fergusson's unmarked grave in the Canongate churchyard, and, poor and struggling as he then was, put up at his own cost a monument over the remains of the unhappy young man, whom he described, no less truly than pathetically, as his 'elder brother in misfortune.' But notwithstanding the generous praise of his great successor, Fergusson has so strangely been allowed to slip out of sight, that it is only by patient search at the second-hand bookstalls that one can hope to pick up a copy of the poems which once stirred Scotsmen from one end of the kingdom to the other. One can only wonder that a good and adequate edition of Fergusson's works has yet to appear, and surely no very long

1 The following is the inscription, written by Burns, on the stone in the Canongate Churchyard :

:

'No sculptur'd marble here, nor pompous lay,

No storied urn nor animated bust,

This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way

To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust.'

time should now be allowed to pass before such an edition is presented to the public. Meanwhile, the aim of this essay is to tell shortly and simply the little there is to tell regarding Fergusson's life, and to say something also of those qualities which have given him the high place he holds among our national poets. To those who know little of Fergusson such an attempt may be welcome; those who already know all that the writer has to tell them may not object to travel in company with him over what, if it is a familiar road, is so because it is also a favourite one.

His

Robert Fergusson, then, was born in Edinburgh on the 5th of September 1750, in a small house 'whose site is now, it is believed, occupied by North Bridge Street.' Like most of our Scots poets, he was sprung of poor parents. father, William Fergusson, a native of Tarland in Aberdeenshire, had settled in the metropolis four years before the birth of our poet. Here he could not be said to have fallen on his feet. True, he had found employment, but the sum he received in return for his services was barely sufficient to keep body and soul together, and for many years he was constantly changing his situation, never very greatly for the better. At last, in 1763, thirteen years after the birth of

Robert, he obtained a fairly good appointment as clerk or accountant in the linen department of the British Linen Company; and there he remained till his death.

By all accounts William Fergusson was one of those honest, upright, hard-pushed men, of a type happily familiar enough in Scotland, who have much to suffer at Fortune's hands, but bear up bravely and uncomplainingly through it all. We learn further that he was not without intellectual interests, and even that he had some smack of culture. He took an interest in what his bairns were doing with their Ovid and Horace; those of his letters which have been preserved and printed1 are not at all badly expressed, and one or two are lit up by a gentle sense of humour. It is said. that he, too, had once dallied with the Muse, but any poetical tastes he may have had the stern business of life must have given him very little leisure to indulge. On the whole, one can gather that he was a kind and careful parent, not at all of an austere or illiberal cast of mind; and one naturally thinks with a sigh that had he only lived long enough he would have been able to sympathise with his son's peculiar genius, while at the same time he might have done much to

1 In Mr. A. B. Grosart's valuable edition of 1851, to which my indebtedness is great, and is here very gladly acknowledged.