6 contested elections among our English neighbours-from whose pens, indeed, our national partialities are somewhat soothed to find that all those rhymes have proceeded. Of all the Whig songs,' says the editor, there is not one that I can trace to be of Scottish ' original.' 6 The Jacobite muse is very differently endowed; though we will confess that her warblings have somewhat disappointed us. Not that we deny the merit of many of them; but because the proportion of insipid, middling, and positively bad is far greater than we had expected. This may no doubt be owing to the compiler's taste, which is evidently of a coarse and vulgar description. He has certainly had the means of discovering all the relics of value which exist; and few have probably perished in the short period that has elapsed since they were composed. Voluminous collections were open to his researches in the hands of all good Jacobites. Besides innumerable contributors of detached songs, he mentions eleven of those stores; and, at length, they poured in upon him so profuse that he actually grew terrified when he heard of a MS. volume.' It adds greatly to the value of the collection, that the music of each air is given; and copious notes are subjoined, containing remarks and extracts-the former not always very happy or very elegant-the latter generally from books in common use; but, upon the whole, conveying a great deal of the information requisite to illustrate the text. These notes are, in bulk, exactly equal to the text; and the Appendix, beside the whig effusions already mentioned, gives a number of Jacobite songs, the airs of which he could not discover. This class is inferior in merit, generally speaking, to the other, and comprises several English songs. The first song in the volume is that famous one, The King shall enjoy his own again,' which is said to have produced such marvellous effects in favour of the Royal cause during half of the seventeenth century, and, during a great part of the eighteenth, to have animated their falling hopes. It is altogether English, and possesses no kind of poetical merit. Probably the words of the burthen, and the air, may have been the cause of its success. the notes upon it, Mr. Hogg makes mention of a Dr. Walker who happened to be overseer of the market at Ipswich in Suffolk, on account of giving false evidence at an assize held there.' (p. 155.) In other words, he stood in the pillory for perjury. Now, if Mr. Hogg thinks to make himself popular by imitating some of the bad and bald jokes of Walter Scott's notes, we must whisper to him that it was in spite, and not in consequence of such things, that the Minstrel's fame waxed great. The third and fourth songs are in ridicule and vituperation of Leslie's Marches-to Scotland and to Marston Moor. Of the former, Mr. Hogg says, 'It is the most 'perfect thing of the kind to be found in that or any other age; In and, wild as some of the expressions are, must be viewed as a great curiosity. It is the very essence of sarcasm and derision, ' and possesses a spirit and energy for which we may look in vain in any other song existing.' Sure we are, these remarks are any thing rather than either perfect, or spirited, or even a curiosity' -except it be for containing at once a specimen of the bathos and the hyperbole. A good notion of the taste of the editor may however be gathered from it. We therefore subjoin two verses of the piece he thus extols-premising that the second is so much coarser than even these, as to preclude our inserting it;-for, of the Jacobite muse, it may be said, as was once observed of her Jacobin 'sister-though she may have the mille ornatus, the mille decen'ter habet is quite another matter.' 'March!-march!-pinks of election, Why the devil don't you march onward in order? Ere the blue bonnets come over the Border. You shall preach, you shall pray, you shall teach night and day, Down with the kirk and its whilliebaleery! And the kist fu' o' whistles, that maks sic a cleary; Jockey shall wear the hood, Jenny the sark of God For codpiece and petticoat, dishclout and daidle.' pp. 5-7. 6 This extract has brought us at once to the cardinal defect of Mr. Hogg, as the editor of a selection. He praises almost indiscriminately, and he wants delicacy almost entirely. Thus he describes, in one note, a poem on George the First's arrival in England, and public entry into his capital, as having more humour of the kind than any thing he ever saw ;' as being a high treat;' an 'old poem ' of sterling rough humour,' and so forth; yet, from the six or seven pages of it which he gives as a sample, we should be disposed to think it one of those rough diamonds, (as they are termed,) the roughness of which is admitted-the value uncertain; a remark applicable to the men, as well as the verses, which are frequently so designated. It is dull, flat, and extremely indelicate. Of the coarseness we dare not give specimens; let these lines suffice to show forth its other merits. 'Next these a Presbyterian Shot-man, In state affairs a very hot man, Elated, but when danger's near,' &c. p. 277. We should fatigue our readers were we only to make references to the instances of this editor's gross and coarse taste, with which this volume abounds. Some songs and prose quotations seem, indeed, selected for no other merits than their vulgar ribaldry. Why else, for instance, is the passage from the mock funeral oration on Hugh Peters given at p. 257? Not surely to display the editor's acquaintance with history, which is so great that he stops to inform his readers who Hugh Peters was, and speaks of him as a person wholly unknown. But another principle of selection is much more apparent throughout the book. The text is filled with songs, and the notes with extracts, the only merit of which is their virulent abuse of the Hanoverian or Constitutional party, or, as they are generally denominated, the Whigs. And, as the old Whigs of the Covenant are vilified under the same name, Mr. Hogg manifestly indulges in the insertion of attacks upon them, with the hope that the great body of persons now known by that denomination may share the odium or the ridicule scattered by those obsolete lampoons. We must pass over the vile and filthy attacks upon George I. and his favourites, because we cannot, without offence to all propriety, cite them; but, as a specimen of the rancour which dictates Mr. Hogg's selections, we would refer to the several songs against Bishop Burnet, which are utterly destitute of either poetry or wit, and do not even pretend to be of Scotch origin. In scurrility and barefaced falsehood, however, they make ample amends for all their other defects; whereof take one instance. The Bishop is not only represented as having had a spice of every vice,' but his greediness of gold is particularly specified. In the notes on these pieces, Mr. Hogg says not a word to contradict this notorious untruth; though, with singular ignorance of the subject, he does say that he was always a moderate man.' Dr. King, in his Memoirs, (and he was a stanch Jacobite,) while he truly represents him as a furious party man, and easily imposed upon,' adds, that he was a better pastor than any man who is now seated on the bench of bishops;' and praises him for his exemplary disinterestedness and carelessness of gain, which was so great that he only left his children their mother's fortune, deeming it criminal to save a farthing of his Episcopal revenues. After this the reader will be the less surprised to learn, that the Duke of Marlborough is represented in one song, as as difficult to be rescued from hell as the Bishop; and that King William is celebrated in another for his cowardice in battle. One excellent song' is dedicated to the abuse of the celebrated Archibald, Earl of Argyle, who fell a victim, in 1685, to the most atrocious and perfidious tyranny that ever cursed any modern nation. The following is the concluding stanza. 6 "Thus having yielded up baith his sword and durk, Where with a train he enters the Watergate, The hangman walking before him in muckle state, The martyr-to quarter, And by the lugs to cut the loon shorter. To crown the rebel's pate, And all such traitors as dare oppose the state.' p. 177. Not a syllable is added by Mr. Hogg on the vile and dull scurrility of this excellent Scotch song,' as he is pleased to term it—not a word upon the detestable oppression here dignified with the name of the state;' and to oppose which is held so foul a crime. Yet it relates to the man of whom Mr. Fox, in his History, has closed the biography in these memorable words' Such were the last hours, and such the final close of this great man's life. May the like 'happy serenity, in such dreadful circumstances, and a death equally glorious, be the lot of all whom tyranny, of whatever denomi'nation and description, shall in any age or country call to expiate 'their virtues on the scaffold!' p. 211. And with reference to whom, as if with a prophetic knowledge of the sort of persons who were likely to join in crying down so illustrious a martyr to liberty, he afterwards remarks, that our 'disgust is turned into something like compassion for that very foolish class of men whom the 'world calls wise in their generation.' One of these songs, professing to give the character of a Whig, we are told by the critic, was a great favourite with the Tory ' clubs of Scotland during the late war, in detestation of those who deprecated the principles of Pitt;' and he observes, that it is the 'most violent of all the party songs, bitter as they are.' For this reason alone is it here inserted; for its dulness is at least equal to its violence. Of its correct application to the Whigs of our day, the reader may judge, when he is told that it begins with describing them as saintly hypocrites. All this, however, suits Mr. Hogg's nice and cleanly palate mightily; and that we may have enough of so good a thing, he subjoins the prose character of a Whig, 'drawn by the 'celebrated Butler,' and which sets out with stating him to be 'the spawn of a regicide, hammered out of a rank Anabaptist hypocrite;' and forthwith becomes too indecent to be further transcribed. will here just mention, for the edification of Mr. Hogg, that the 'celebrated Butler,' who, among many other vituperations, compares a Whig to the nettle, because the more gently you handle him, the more he is apt to hurt you,' is well known to those who know any thing of literary history, to have lived in the family, supported by the bounty, of Sir S. Luke, one of Cromwell's captains, at the very time he planned his Hudibras, of which he was pleased to make his kind and hospitable patron the hero. Now we defy We the history of Whiggism to match this anecdote,-or to produce so choice a specimen of the human nettle. That we may not close this article without a specimen of the good songs which the book contains, we shall extract the one which, for sly characteristic Scotch humour, seems to us the best; though we doubt if any of our English readers will relish it. 'Donald's gane up the hill hard and hungry; Donald comes down the hill wild and angry ; Donald will clear the gouk's nest cleverly. Here's to the king and Donald Macgillavry.* Come like a weigh-bauk, Donald Macgillavry, Come like a weigh-bauk, Donald Macgillavry; Balance them fair, and balance them cleverly: Off wi' the counterfeit, Donald Macgillavry. Donald's run o'er the hill but his tether, man, As he were wud, or stang'd wi' an ether, man; When he comes back, there's some will look merrily: Here's to King James and Donald Macgillavry. Come like a weaver, Donald Macgillavry, Come like a weaver Donald Macgillavry, Pack on your back, and elwand sae cleverly; Gie them full measure, my Donald Macgillavry. [There are quoted three more such stanzas.] 2. LETTER FROM JAMES HOGG TO HIS REVIEWER. Our readers will not expect us to copy much from this angry reply of Mr. Hogg to the preceding review-when we inform them, that he calls his antagonist, "clumsy booby," jackanapes," a "hack of Constable's," "great gawk," a "coarse tyke," four times "an ass" and a "great blackguard!" with a few more indecent epithets. The following are select specimens of his critical witand in the rest of this critique under Mr. Hogg's signature, the reader will find his frankness to be vulgarity, and his bluntness coarse egotism. "What would you think, suppose I should just stop a little-and see what kind of a style you write yourself, you who are so desperate severe a critic on other folk. I'm thinking your style is as bald as the face of "Jem Thomson's auld mare ;" and it is plain you have no idea of composition.' * Donald Macgillavry is here put for the Highland Clans generally. |