and Milton-in Germany, Wieland-in Italy, Ariosto, are proofs of this assertion. Such airy beings awe the untutor'd swain ; Nor thou, though learn'd, his homelier thoughts neglect ; These are the scenes of fimple fure effect, That add new conquefts to her boundless reign, Nor needft thou blush that fuch faise themes engage There Shakespeare's felf, with every garland crown'd, Collin's Ode on the Popular Superftition of the Highlands. (a) Nor have I only the greatest poets to support me in my choice of this subject, but likewise the ablest critics. Mr Addison employs a paper in the Spectator (419) on the fairy way of writing, which, he justly observes, requires a very odd turn of thought. He bestows great praises on it; and says, " it is indeed more difficult than any that depends on the poet's fancy, because he has no pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own invention." To the same purpose I may also quote Bishop Hurd, who, speaking of the tragic distress which Tasso and others have introduced into pastorals, says of Shakespeare," He saw, I suppose, that pastoral subjects were unfit to bear a tragic distress. And besides, when the distress rises to any height, the wantonness of pastoral imagery grows distasteful. But, to make up in surprise what was wanting in passion, Shakespeare hath, 1 with great judgment, adopted the popular system of fairies; which, while it so naturally supplies the place of the old sylvan theology, gives a wildness to this sort of pastoral painting, which is perfectly inimitable.— Notes on Horace, vol. 1. p. 211. 4th edition. Besides these arguments, deduced from the example of the poets and the remarks of critics, the very country in which I was born had a tendency to direct my attention to this subject. Collins, in his fine ode on the superstition of the highlands, observes to Mr Home, on his return to Scotland; 'Tis Fancy's land on which thou fet'ft thy feet, Beneath each birken fhade on mead and hill. Indeed it is extremely worthy of being remarked, that Scotland has ever been considered as the country of strange productions, of enchantment, and of romance. The Caledonian forest was a favourite place for the Paladines, the Knights of the Round Table, and other testy gentlemen, to exercise their valour in. The caves of our country are represented by the romantic writers as infested with dragons, and its seas with orks. Shakespeare considered the heaths of Scotia as the scenery best fitted for the introduction of his weird sisters, and (to pass from ancient to modern writers) the Abbé de Lille, in a late poem, L'homme de Champs, tells a pretty long and not very natural story, of a young shepherdess, named Egeria, who lived with her father in one of the floating islands of Scotland, as if floating islands were as common in this country as reindeer are in Lapland. Sous les monts de L'Ecoffe en un lac où des Iles, 2 Chant. Nor is it only the poets who have peopled our country with "gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire ;" but I have remarked that even the philosophers and divines. of other countries are willing to consider Scotia as abounding in anomalous productions. Thus De Maillet, in his Telliamed, endeavouring to prove that men originally had tails, says, "There are a great number of these men in Ethiopia, Egypt, the Indies, England, and especially Scotland, according to all relations (b).” I shall not examine at present whether thus making Scotland the scene of astonishing productions and supernatural events, be owing to the wild romantic beauties of the country, or to its remoteness, and the supposed uncivilized condition of its inhabitants. Probably its remoteness from the more early cultivated parts of Europe, and its being so little known, was the principal reason, for it is natural for a poet to place his wonders in distant and unknown lands. All Homer's prodigies are in Sicily, or on the then unfrequented coasts of Italy, and in short on those shores of the Mediterranean farthest from the regions where he recited his poem: There he places the isle of Circe, the Cyclops, and Scylla and Charybdis. The monsters which Pliny speaks of are all too in strange and distant countries, on the banks of the Ganges, in Pontus, and in Africa: it is in such scenes that he places his dog-headed people, those who want heads altogether, and those who live only on the smell of apples. But whatever be the cause of our picturesque and sublime country being made use of in this manner, to furnish out wild descriptions, a Scotsman has certainly fully as great a right as any one to make use of any advantage furnished by his situation, compensating his proximity to the scenery by justness of description. I may be pardoned, therefore, if in a Drama, written in the dialect of the country, and of which the scenes are laid in the most romantic situation perhaps in Scotland, I may be pardoned if I have introduced some personages who, though now reckoned supernatural, existed once (if ancient tale can be in aught believed) in great abundance: I fpeke of many hundred yere agoe, But now can no man fee no elfes moe. Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. The time unfortunately being past when people. Employ'd the power of fairy hands Gray. As to the locality of the action, I have chosen the Falls of Clyde, partly no doubt on account of the ancient tradition on which my pastoral is founded, partly because they are near the place where I was born, but principally on account of the sublime beauties of the scenery. In every country and with writers in I believe every modern language, a fairy land, or fairy prospect or or scene, is synonimous with one of exquisite beauty; and in every country, too, such scenes, when they exist, should be celebrated by the poetical writers of the country. In Greece, not a rivulet flowed, not a mountain reared its head unsung; at every step imagi"Quacunque enim ingredimur in aliquam historiam vestigium ponimus."-Cicero Defin. lib. nation burns. V. c. 2. (c) The ingenious editor of the Works of Burns, speaking of the Scotish songs, says, "The alliance of the words of the Scotish songs with the music has, in some instances, given to the former a popularity which otherwise they would not have obtained." "The association (continues he) of the words and the music of these songs with the more beautiful parts of the scenery of Scotland, contribute to the same effect. It has given them not merely popularity, but permanence; it has imparted to the works of men some portion of the durability of the works of Nature. If, from our imperfect experience of the past, we may judge with any confidence respecting the future, songs of this description are of all others least likely to die. In the changes of language they may no doubt suffer change, but will perhaps survive while the clear stream sweeps down the vale of Yarrow, or the yellow broom waves on the Cowdenknows. "Burns has made an important addition to the songs of Scotland: he has enlarged the poetical scenery of his country (d). Many of her rivers and mountains, formerly unknown to the Muse, are now consecrated by his immortal verse. The Doon, the Lugar, the Ayr, the Nith, and the Cluden, will in future, like *the Yarrow, the Tweed, and the Tay, be considered |