Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, vol. II, pp. 39, 40.

This knack of making auld-warld wardies clack in hamespun rhyme Fergusson possessed in the highest degree. His vocabulary has a strength, a fulness, and a vigour about it which secure instant recognition. Fergusson wields the brave utterance of Scotia as the potter wields and moulds the finest clay. Like all noble and well-chosen speech, Fergusson's commended itself to every sort and condition of men, and readers of all classes instinctively recognised that a new magician had arisen; that in these thoroughly original and unique Scots poems it was indeed true of the words, in the fullest sense, that ilk ane at his billy's back Kept guid Scots time.

This gift of perfect manipulation of human speech, either in prose or verse, is one that has come very rarely in the history of genius to a writer so young as Fergusson. It has more usually been the growth of maturer years. This peculiar gift is something different from divine afflatus the poet's inspiration; there may be less of genius in it, but there is infinitely more of talent. In a few lines, in a vivid word picture, Fergusson succeeds in giving us a living, breathing transcript from Nature. The wonder of all this is increased when one recollects that Fergusson was but a lad of twenty or so when he obtained his supremacy. His English poems were almost, if not quite, worthless. They had the ring of the conventional, artificial period about them, without any redeeming felicity, or originality of genius; and though they obtained some vogue, they are now, except in the personal or antiquarian sense, absolutely without interest. I have read them and re-read them, and read them again, and I must honestly testify that from the first line to the last I have found but two or three stanzas which have struck me as having any genuine ring of true poetic metal. GORDON, ALEXANDER, 1894, Robert Fergusson, The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 277, pp. 392, 393.

Apart from the fact that he struck the keynote, which was afterwards accentuated by the Ayrshire poet, of all the modern vernacular verse of Scotland, he remains, by reason both of his genius and of his tragic story, one of the three most

interesting figures of eighteenth century Scottish poetic annals. In Fergusson's case it is unnecessary to make allowance for his youth: he was but twenty-three when he died. Had he lived longer, it is true, his genius might have developed higher imaginative power, and experience might have given him more artistic resource. But the fact remains that in the field of Scottish poetry which he essayed he has been surpassed only by two or three competitors. "Leith Races" and "Hallowfair" present pictures almost as racy and realistic, if indeed not so boisterous, as their great prototypes, King James's "Christ's Kirk on the Green" and "Peblis to the Play." The same pieces, with "The Election" and "The Setting of the Session," afford the most graphic impression extant of the Edinburgh life of his day. His "Elegies," "Braid Claith," "Hame Content," and "Torn Kirk Bell" were masterpieces in a rich vein of satiric humour. And his

"Gowdspink" with his "Farmer's Ingle" depicted fields of homely charm in which Fergusson has been improved upon only . The same by Burns himself.

commendation cannot be given to Fergusson's English poems, which comprise more than half his work. These are written for the most part in the affected and conventional taste of much of the Scoto-English verse of the time. But his pieces in the rich Lowland-Scottish dialect-pieces which were eagerly read by the common people everywhere in his own day-remain enough to furnish reputations for half a dozen poets.-EYRE-TODD, GEORGE, 1896, Scottish Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, pp. 111, 113, 114.

Has been a good deal over-praised, though he has no small merit, especially in some Edinburgh pieces and in "The Gowdspink."-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 594.

My claim, therefore for Robert Fergusson, as I have all along stated, is a modest but a definite one. He is to be gratefully remembered for what his vernacular poems did for Robert Burns; for what he did in the nick of time in asserting the worth and dignity and potentiality of his and our mother-tongue; for his naturalness, directness, veracity. simplicity, raciness, humour, sweetness,

melody; for his felicitous packing into lines and couplets sound common sense; for his penetrative perception that the man and not "braid claith" or wealth is "the man for a' that;" for his patriotic love of country and civil and religious freedom; and for the perfectness

with only superficial scratches rather than material flaws-of at least thirteen of his vernacular poems, and for sustaining the proud tradition and continuity of Scottish song.-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1898, Robert Fergusson (Famous Scots Series), p. 159.

LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED

1768-78

Read Tucker's "Introduction to his Light of Nature Pursued." There is a desultoriness in his style and manner for which I have no mercy on such topics as he has undertaken to treat.-GREEN, THOMAS, 1779-1810, Diary of a Lover of Literature.

I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say than in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. I shall account it no mean praise if I have been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, what, in that otherwise excellent performance is spread over too much surface.-PALEY, WILLIAM, 1785, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Preface.

I do not know of any work in the shape of a philosophical treatise that contains so much good sense so agreeably expressed. HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1807, ed., The Light of Nature Pursued, Abridgment.

But I must be permitted to add that as a metaphysician he seems to me much more fanciful and solid, and, at the same time, to be so rambling, verbose, and excursive as to be more likely to unsettle than to fix the principles of his readers. -STEWART, DUGALD, 1815-21, First

Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica.

A vast mine of thought.-WILSON, JOHN, 1823, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 13, p. 331, note.

It is in mixed, not in pure philosophy, that his superiority consists. In the part of his work which relates to the intellect, he has adopted much from Hartley, hiding but aggravating the offence by a change of technical terms; and he was ungrateful enough to countenance the vulgar sneer which involves the mental analysis of that philosopher in the ridicule to which his physiological hypothesis is liable.

Take him all in all, however, the neglect of his writings is the strongest proof of the disinclination of the English nation, for the last half century, to metaphysical philosophy.- MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES, 1830, Second Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica.

Happy beyond all men in the power of illustrating the obscure by the familiar; but happier still in the most benevolent and cheerful temper, and in a style which beautifully reflects the constitutional gaiety and kindness of his heart. There is a charm even in his want of method, and in the very clumsiness of his paragraphs; for each sentence bears him testimony that he is too intent on his object to think of anything else, and that to teach controversialists to understand and to love each other was the single end for which he lived and wrote. he lived and wrote. Of his metaphysical

speculations, the most original and curious is the "Enquiry into the Nature and the Operation of Motives." But his excellence consists in the brightness and in the variety of the lights he has thrown round. the whole circle of those topics over which natural and revealed religion exercise a common and indivisible dominion. To rid them of mere logomachies, to show much the fiercest disputants may be unconsciously agreed, to prove how greatly Christianity is misrepresented by many of her opponents, and misunderstood by many of her friends-and, without ever assuming the preacher's office, to explain the depths of the great Christian canon of

mutual love as the universal substratum of all moral truth,-this is the duty which he has undertaken, and which he executes, often successfully, and always with such courage, diligence, and vivacity, and with so unbroken a sunshine of a placid and playful temper, as to render the "Light of Nature" one of the most attractive books in our language, both to those who read to be themselves instructed on these questions, and to those who read with the view of imparting such instruction to others. STEPHEN, SIR JAMES, JAMES, 1840, Works of the Author of Natural History of Enthusiasm, Edinburgh Review, vol. 71, p. 242.

Tucker's style has several charms rarely met in philosophical works-charms, indeed, that are more or less incompatible with rigorous scientific precision. The diction is simple, thickly interspersed with colloquial idioms, and has an exquisitely musical flow. In every other sentence we are delighted with some original felicity of expression or of illustration. The loose and often ungrammatical structure of the sentences, and the diffusive rambling character both of the work as a whole and of the several divisions, forbid his being taken as a model for strict scientific exposition; but the popular expositor of practical wisdom might learn a great deal from his copious and felicitous language

and imagery. Obviously, however, it will not do even for popular purposes to imitate him closely. The expense of his voluminous treatise may have something to do with the general neglect of so ingenious a writer; but at any rate it is significant against close imitation of his style that the views of Happiness and Virtue in Paley's "Moral Philosophy," which are simply Tucker's summarised and formulated, are never referred to their original author.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, A Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 472.

The voluminous but fascinating “Light of Nature Pursued" a huge storehouse of thought that is not seldom original, put with constant vividness and much humour, though diffusely and without order.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898 (A Short History of English Literature, p. 634.

GENERAL

The most agreeable of metaphysicians. -HUNT, LEIGH, 1847, Garth, Physicians and Love-Letters; Men, Women and Books.

Tucker is an example of a very rare species-the philosophical humorist, and is called by Mackintosh a "metaphysical Montaigne." The resemblance consists in the frankness and simplicity with which Tucker expounds his rather artless speculations, as he might have done in talking to a friend. He was an excellent country squire, not more widely read than the better specimens of his class, but of singularly vivacious and ingenious intellect. His illustrations, taken from the commonest events and objects, are singularly bright and happy. He has little to say upon purely metaphysical points, in which he accepts Locke as his great authority; but his psychological and ethical remarks, though unsystematic and desultory, are full of interest. He was obviously much influenced by Hartley, whom, however, he seems to have disliked. His chief interest was in ethical discussions.—STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1899, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LVII, p. 278.

PERSONAL

With sleek appearance and with ambling

расе,

And, type of vacant head, with vacant face, The Proteus Hill put in his modest plea,Let Favour speak for others, Worth for me.For who, like him, his various powers could call

Into so many shapes and shine in all?

Who could so nobly grace the motley list,
Actor, Inspector, Doctor, Botanist?

Knows any one so well-sure no one knowsAt once to play, prescribe, compound, compose?

-CHURCHILL, CHARLES, 1761, The Rosciad.

Dr. Hill was, notwithstanding, a very curious observer; and if he would have been contented to tell the world no more than he knew, he might have been a very considerable man, and needed not to have recourse to such mean expedients to raise his reputation.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1767, Conversation with George III., Life by Boswell, ed. Hill, vol. II, p. 44.

He had received no academical education; but his ambition prompting him to be a graduate, he obtained, from one of those universities which would scarce refuse a degree to an apothecary's horse, a diploma for that of doctor of physic. After this, he engaged in a variety of works, the greater part whereof were mere compilations, which he sent forth with incredible expedition; and though his character was never in such estimation with the booksellers as to entitle him to an extraordinary price for his writings, he has been known by such works as those above mentioned, by novels, pamphlets, and a periodical paper called "The Inspector, "the labour of his own head and hand, to have earned, in one year, the sum of £1500. He was vain, conceited, and in his writings disposed to satire and licentious scurrility, which he indulged without any regard to truth, and thereby became engaged in frequent disputes and quarrels that always terminated in his own disgrace.-HAWKINS, SIR JOHN, 1787, The Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 211.

The literary Proteus, Dr., afterwards Sir John Hill, who shared with Orator

Henley the dubious honour of being the most notorious man of his age. Hill was originally an apothecary, but abandoning his business for the stage, he produced a few bad farces at the Haymarket, in which Havhe appeared as an actor. ing been hissed off the stage, he betook himself with industry to the study of medicine and natural history; and many works on these subjects, displaying considerable information and research, proceeded from his pen. As a consequence of his scientific labours, and armed with the cheap honours of a Scotch degree, he obtained a large practice as a physician, and was enabled to launch out into extravagances which increased his notoriety, and showed the shallowness of his character. His activity and industry were indeed marvellous. Though he spent so much of his time in the amusements of

the gay world, and in frequenting places of entertainment, his pen was never idle. -LAWRENCE, FREDERICK, 1855, The Life of Henry Fielding, pp. 304, 305.

Hill was a versatile man of unscrupulous character, with considerable abilities, great perseverance, and unlimited impudence. BARKER, G. F. RUSSELL, 1891, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXVI, p. 398.

GENERAL

See where my son, who gratefully repays
Whate'er I lavish'd on his younger days;
Whom still my arm protects to brave the town
Secure from Fielding, Machiavel, or Brown;
Whom rage nor sword e'er mortally shall
hurt,

Chief of a hundred chiefs o'er all the pert!
Rescued an orphan babe from common sense,
I gave his mother's milk to Confidence;
She with her own ambrosia bronz'd his face,
And changed his skin to monumental brass.
-ANON, 1752, The Pasquinade.

The neutral nonsense, neither false nor true-
Should Jove himself, in calculation mad,
Still negatives to blank negations add;
How could the barren ciphers ever breed;
But nothing still from nothing would proceed.
Raise, or depress, or magnify, or blame
Inanity will ever be the same.
-SMART, CHRISTOPHER, 1753, The Hilliad.

For physics and farces, His equal there scarce is; His farces are physic,

His physic a farce is. -GARRICK, DAVID, On Dr. Hill Farce.

66

Sir John Hill had just wrote a book of great elegance-I think it was called 'Exotic Botany"-which he wished to have presented to the king, and therefore named it to Lord Bute. His lordship waived that, saying that "he had a greater object to propose;" and shortly after laid before him a plan of the most voluminous, magnificent, and costly work that ever man attempted. I tremble when I name its title because I think the severe application which it required killed him; and I am sure the expense ruined his fortune

"The Vegetable System." This work was to consist of twenty-six volumes folio, containing sixteen hundred copperplates, the engraving of each cost four guineas; the paper was of the most expensive kind; the drawings by the first hands.

The

printing was also a very weighty concern; and many other articles, with which I am. unacquainted. Lord Bute said that "the expense had been considered, and that Sir John Hill might rest assured his circumstances should not be injured." Thus he entered upon and finished his destruction. The sale bore no proportion to the expense. After "The Vegetable System" was completed, Lord Bute proposed another volume to be added, which Sir John strenuously opposed; but his lordship repeating his desire, Sir John complied, lest his lordship should find a pretext to cast aside repeated promises of ample provision for himself and family. But this was the crisis of his fate-he died.-HILL, HON. LADY, 1787, An Address to the Public.

One of the most extraordinary characters of the eighteenth century. . . It cannot be denied, that, in many of these volumes, a considerable fund of information, especially on Botany, was communicated

to the public; and though the mode in which it was conveyed was generally slovenly, and sometimes inaccurate and unscientific, our author must be allowed the merit of having greatly contributed to diffuse through the island a taste for natural history. Under this form

the "Inspector" includes one hundred and fifty-two numbers; many of which are written with vivacity, and a few exhibit traits of humour, character, and

imagination. The most useful and interesting papers in the work are devoted to subjects of natural history, especially to fossils, &c. The style of this periodical microscopical observations on insects, paper, as might be expected from the hasty manner in which it was usually writquently ungrammatical.-DRAKE, ten, is often loose and slovenly, and freNATHAN, 1809, Essays Illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer and Idler, vol. II, pp. 238, 241, 245.

This despised man, after all the fertile. absurdities of his literary life, performed more for the improvement of the "Philosophical Transactions," and was the cause of diffusing a more general taste for the science of botany, than any other contemporary. His real ability extorts. that regard which his misdirected ingenuity, instigated by vanity, and often by more worthless motives, had lost for him in the world.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1814, Sir John Hill, Quarrels of Authors.

A detailed account of these many publications would be of but small interest to the modern reader, who knows little of Sir John save his name, and this principally through his quarrels with the Royal Society, and with Garrick. He was a man of remarkable versatility of talent, but his moral character cannot be commended.-ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 185458, Critical Dictionary of English Literature, vol. I, p. 846.