A NEGLECTED SCOTTISH POET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2756, 9 January 1907, Page 71

A NEGLECTED SCOTTISH POET.

How many people remember even the name of the author of "The Sabbath"? And yet this neglected Scottish poet deserves remembrance, if only for the praise of Scott and the blame of Byron. "Poor Grrahame," wrote Sir Walter to Joanna Baillie, "'gentle, and amiable, and enthusiastic, deserves all you can say of him ; his was really a hallowed harp, as he was himself an Israelite without guile. How often have I teased him, but never out of his good humour, by praising Dundee and laughing at the Covenanters ! — but I beg your pardon ; you are a Westland Whig, too, and will perhaps make less allowance for a descendant of the peisecutors. I think his works should be collected and published for the benefit of his family. Surely the wife and orphans of such a man have a claim on the generosity of the pubiic "

— Byron's Scorn. — There is no life of this poet and preacher, James Grahame, but, as a wiiter in the Westminster Review says, "this noble tribute from the greatest of his countrymen is worth volumes of biography." "The Sabbath" was published anonymously in 1804, and to conceal the matter from his wife Grahame used to meet his printer at obscure coffee-houses in order to correct his proofs. When the poem appeared his wife exclaimed, much to his astonishment, "Ah, James, if you could but produce a poem like this ! ' The delighted poet immediately acknowledged the authorship, winch some years afterwards brought upon 'iim the lash of Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" : Moravians rise 1 bestow =ome meet reward On dull Devotion— lo 1 the Sabbath Bard. Sepulchral Grahame, pouis his notes sublime In mangled prose, nor e'ei aspires to rhyme, Breaks into b'nnk the Gospel of St. Lukt>, And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch , And. Un h«-turbed by conscientious qualms, Pervertb the Prophets and purloins the Psaims

•'• The Sabbath."—

Let me quote, to show how far removed from reality is the chaige of cant, these opening lines of Grahame's best poem : How still the morning of the hallowed day! Mute is the voice of rural labour, hushed The ploughboy's whist.c and the milkmaid's

song. The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers That yester-morn bloomed waving m the

breeze Sounds the most faint attract the ear — the

hum Of early bee. the trickling of the dew, The distant bleating, midway up the bill Calmness sits throned on yon unmoving cloud. Born in Glasgow in 1765, the son of a wealthy Whig lawyer, Grahame died near his native town at the age of 46. ''Never.'' said a friend who watched with his wife at his bedside tiiree days befoie Ins death — "never was a purer or gentlei mind than his, never poet more beloved." — T.P.s Weekly.