year 1755 the authorities resolved to add two months to the length of the annual session; a proceeding which bore hard upon the poorer students, many of whom were sons of farmers. Then as now, poor students in a Scotch university were compelled to spend the summer months in earning enough to pay for their classes in the winter. But in the new part of the town and side by side with King's College in the old part, there was Marischal College, which at that time was not only a separate institution but formed a university by itself. Education there was somewhat cheaper, as no addition was made to its session; and thither, accordingly, many of the poorer students migrated, Macpherson amongst them.

On leaving Marischal College he went to the University of Edinburgh. His name does not appear in the matriculation album; and it is therefore clear that he did not enter that university as a student of arts, or of law or medicine; but there is some possibility that students of divinity alone, especially if they came from another university, were not then required to matriculate.1 It was probably in

1 The suggestion is kindly furnished by the registrar of the university.

the winter of 1755-6 that he was in Edinburgh ; for in the following winter we find him back again in Ruthven, and writing a brief and unfavourable description of the city.

Macpherson was still too young to enter the ministry, and he returned to Ruthven to look about him for the means of making a livelihood. He was hardly twenty; and, for want of something better to do, he took over the charity school in his native village, where he had already managed to earn a little money during his vacation. As it was the only school in the whole district from Speymouth to Lorne, the position was not undistinguished. The employment left him plenty of leisure, and it was then that he wrote most of his early poems. His first attempts were not published, and they would probably never have seen the light if the manuscript of two of them had not come into the hands of his most energetic opponent, who printed them for a controversial purpose, just in the condition in which they were found That Macpherson never intended, perhaps never wished, to publish them is probable from the fact that they were found in their first rough draft, stitched together into the form of a small note-book. That they

were written at this time appears by some memoranda on one of the leaves relating to his school and housekeeping; and to one of the passages the date of its composition is affixed.

There is not much to be said for these

poems. They are on the same level as the productions of most young students with a literary ambition; they are no good; in parts they are even ludicrous. One of them, in blank verse, is apparently an imitation of Robert Blair's Grave, which was published in 1743. It is entitled Death; and although it contains a few fair similes, it is certainly a dreary performance. The other is an unnamed effort in heroics, and in ten cantos, to which one of Macpherson's critics gave the name of The Hunter, to distinguish it from a later production, somewhat resembling it, The Highlander. The following passages show the kind of original work of which Macpherson was capable at the age of twenty; and they are selected, not because of any peculiar merit, for of that they have little, but as showing their author's early liking for descriptions of battle, and the character of his feeling for nature. In The Hunter the influence of Thomson's Seasons is sufficiently obvious; but

:

it will be observed that the imagery is in thorough accord with the prevailing style of the time; for it betrays the study of classical models rather than any capacity for direct ob

servation.

"Whether the sun sports in the fields of light,
Or gloomy night her sable mantle throws
O'er sleeping earth, still imaged to the mind
Of young Andræmon is his darling friend.
Still sighs the breast, still melts the tearful eye,
Still flows the soul in elegies of woe.

The rocks, the plains, the woods, the pleasing

scenes

Where he and young Philætes, raptured, prayed
And talked of virtue, echo to his moan.
Sleep'st thou for ever, O,my darling friend!

He said 'twas night, and solemn silence
reigned

Throughout the plain; no voice, no sound is heard,

But now and then the breathing breezes sigh Through the half-quivering leaves, and, far removed,

The sea rolls feeble murmurs to the shore."

This is the end of the poem on Death. It is neither better nor worse than the rest of it. Macpherson was fond of night pieces, and attempts several of them in his Hunter.

"Thus in the horizon of the silent night
The setting moon darts parallel its light,
Silvers the flood and paints the landscape gay,

And deals around the bright nocturnal day:
But sunk beneath, the pleasing prospects fail,
And every object wears a melancholy veil.
Sunk in a flood of heart-corroding woes
O'erwhelm'd I stood; another scene arose.

In every canto of this poem we come upon the clash of arms.

"Death undetermined points to each his sting, And conquest flutters round on dubious wing, The hill-born youth reminds, with anxious

care,

What vaunts the foul-mouth'd Saxon breathed
on air;

His country's love the youthful hero warms,
And vengeance strung his almost wearied arms.
Upraised aloft the light reflexive blade

Sings through the air, and cleaves the Saxon's
head.

The broken skull and shiver'd helmet strew'd
The sandy plain, that reeks with human blood.
He gasping falls and shakes the thundering
ground,

And dying toss'd his quivering limbs around.
Thus falls an oak that long majestic stood
The tallest honours of the waving wood;
Deep hack'd by the shipwright's unerring hand,
Groans, slow inclines, and falling shakes the
land."

There was undoubtedly much room for improvement in these effusions, and some of it was marked in The Highlander, which found a publisher in Edinburgh about a year and a half

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