LADY ANNE LINDSAY, the eldest daughter of James Earl of Balcarras, was born on the 8th of December, 1750. In 1793 she married Sir Andrew Barnard, librarian to George the Third, and the person to whom Dr. Johnson addressed his celebrated Letter on the formation of a Library. Sir Andrew died 27th of October, 1807, and his Lady, on the 8th of May, 1825, without leaving any issue. Her celebrated song, "Auld Robin Gray," was written about the year 1772. Its origin is simply this:-Lady Anne Lindsay was, to use her own expression, "passionately fond" of an ancient Scottish melody, called "The bridegroom grat when the sun gaed down." This air was sung to her by an aged person at Balcarras, with the old and rather free-spoken words. Her sister Margaret had just married, and left Balcarras with her husband for London; she was melancholy on this occasion, and endeavoured to amuse herself by attempting a few poetical trifles. "I longed to sing old Sophy's air," Lady Barnard writes to Sir W. Scott, July 1823, "to different words, and give its plaintive tones some little history of virtuous distress in humble life, such as might suit it." To do this, Lady Anne imagined a heroine, oppressed her with many misfortunes, sent her Jamie to sea, broke her father's arm, made her mother fall sick, and gave her " Auld Robin Gray" (the name of a herd at Balcarras) for a lover. She wished then to load her (poor thing) with a fifth sorrow; and while attempting to effect this in her closet, she called on her little sister, afterwards Lady Hardwicke, who was the only person near her, to help her to another misfortune. "Steal the cow, sister Anne," said the little girl; and Lady Anne immediately lifted the cow, and completed her song. "Auld Robin Gray" became immediately popular. At the fireside of Balcarras, and amongst the neighbouring peasantry, the song was always called for. "I was pleased in secret," says Lady Barnard, "with the approbation it met with; but such was my dread of being suspected of writing any thing, perceiving the shyness it created in those who could write nothing, that I carefully kept my own secret." The song now wanted the name of an author; the words wore an air of antiquity. Robin Gray was soon, therefore, attributed to David Rizzio, the unfortunate minstrel of Mary Queen of Scots, and as such was considered as a great curiosity. Soon, however, this notion was thrown aside; and some inquisitive person boldly offered in the public newspapers a reward of twenty guineas to any person who would ascertain the authorship past a doubt. "I was persecuted," writes Lady Barnard, "to avow whether I had written it or not, or say where I had got it." In the mean time, an ambassador from the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh, in the person of Mr. Jerningham, their Secretary, paid her a visit, and endeavoured to entrap the truth from her in a way she "took amiss." Nothing was gained from this visit ;"had he asked the question obligingly," Lady Barnard writes, "I should have told him the fact distinctly and confidentially." In July 1823, however, Lady Barnard acknowledged the authorship in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, and sent him two continuations of the song, which she had written long after the song itself. In these, Auld Robin Gray falls sick, confessing that he stole the cow in order to force Jenny to marry him, and dying, leaves what he has to the young couple, who are, of course, immediately united. One of these "Continuations" we have given. The ballad, with the continuations, and the letter acknowledging the authorship, were privately printed by Sir Walter Scott, as a contribution to the Bannatyne Club. Sir Walter added to the ballad the following verse; in which it will be perceived he has borrowed an idea from the Continuation: "Nae langer she wept, her tears were a' spent, Such is the interesting history of one of the most pathetic and affecting compositions that has ever been penned. It is a most perfect picture; the characters of the sad drama-for such it is-seem actually before us as we read; it would be difficult to peruse it without the interruptions of sobs and tears; and perhaps it may be taken as the most entire triumph of simple poetry which the English language presents. WHEN the sheep are in the fauld, when the cows come hame, The woes of my heart fa' in showers frae my ee, Young Jamie loo'd me weel, and sought me for his bride Before he had been gane a twelvemonth and a day, My father cou'dna work-my mother cou'dna spin; My heart it said na, and I look'd for Jamie back; My father argued sair-my mother didna speak, I hadna been his wife, a week but only four, I saw my Jamie's ghaist-I cou'dna think it he, Till he said, "I'm come hame, my love, to marry thee!" say of a'; O sair, sair did we greet, and mickle I gang like a ghaist, and I carena much to spin; THE CONTINUATION. THE wintry days grew lang, my tears they were a' spent ; They said my cheek was wan; I cou'd na look to see— My father he was sad, my mother dull and wae; But that which griev'd me maist, it was Auld Robin Gray; He gaed into his bed-nae physic wad he take; "I've wrong'd her sair," he said," but ken't the truth o'er late; It's grief for that alone that hastens now my date; But a' is for the best, since death will shortly free A young and faithful heart that was ill match'd wi' me. "I loo'd, and sought to win her for mony a lang day ; "O what cared I for Crummie! I thought of nought but thee, "But sickness in the house, and hunger at the door, "It was na very lang ere a' did come to light; "Is Jamie come?" he said; and Jamie by us stood- And the dear wife hersel, that ne'er should hae been mine." We kiss'd his clay-cold hands—a smile came o'er his face; The days at first were dowie; but what was sad and sair, But sweeter shines the sun than e'er he shone before, THOMAS CHATTERTON, the posthumous son of the master of a free school in Bristol, was born in that city, on the 20th of November, 1752. He left the Bristol charity school in 1767, and was bound apprentice to a Mr. Lambert, a scrivener. His occupation here was laborious and servile, and he slept with his master's footboy. One by one, during the year 1768, and under circumstances which our space will not permit us even to advert to, he produced what he called the original manuscripts of the poems of Thomas Rowley. Gentlemen of Bristol afterwards beset him for participation in his fancied stores, flattered him for what they got, and left him only the more miserable for their flatteries. Mr. Lambert's friends were his friends, but he still slept with Mr. Lambert's foot-boy. In a desperate effort to escape such drudgery he made that remarkable application to Horace Walpole, which was defeated by his own pride, and the too late regretted coldness of Walpole. The taint of insanity which he appears to have inherited from his father now showed itself in an attempt he made upon his life, and Mr. Lambert dismissed him. Free at last, he turned his thoughts with impetuous hope to London. The rest of Chatterton's melancholy story is told in the letters he afterwards wrote to his mother and sister. Within four short months his London career began and closed, yet it witnessed all the most fitful extremes of hope and despair. In the hectic gaiety with which he struggles to conceal the latter feeling from his poor friends, and in the buoyant certainty of greatness to which he shows himself lifted by the most trifling success, his letters are models of the profoundest pathos. The "seething brains and shaping fantasies, which apprehend more than cooler reason can," were indeed Chatterton's; but these, we cannot help thinking, included also in his case qualities which redeem his short and unhappy life from the more ordinary class of literary miseries. His pride and his honour never deserted him. He did not die after descending to make his talents instruments of evil to others, or of disgrace to himself. Panting and jaded as he was, and pursued to the extremest verge by the dogs of hunger and necessity, literature still remained a refreshment and a hope to him, when madness suddenly terminated all. His poison draught is not to be compared to Boyse's blanket, or to the prison of Savage, or even to the loaf of the starving Otway. The last letter he wrote to his sister, a fortnight before his death, had honest pride and hope in it. He would not "humble" himself, he said, for any fortune. "I must be among the great." He had now removed from his lodgings in Shoreditch to Mrs. Angel's, a sash-maker, in Brook-street, Holborn. Great darkness rests over the few remaining days of his existence. His mother and sister still received small unnecessary presents, which kept up their hopes, and they little thought that the giver was at that time in want of the necessaries of life. Invitations to dinner and supper he invariably declined, that he might not seem to stand in need of them. On the 24th of August, 1770, according to his landlady's account, “as she knew he had not eaten any thing for two or three days, she begged he would take some dinner with her, but he was offended at her expressions, which seemed to hint he was in want, and assured her he was not hungry." In the evening of the same day he swallowed arsenic in water, and on the 25th of August, 1770, was found dead in his room, near a table covered with the scraps of papers he had destroyed. A verdict of insanity was returned, and the body, unclaimed by any friends, and unknown where he had lived, was buried in a shell in the burying ground of Shoe-lane workhouse. So perished in his pride, by a sudden fit of madness, this "marvellous boy." The "Poems of Rowley" are proved, beyond doubt, to have been the work of Chatterton, though it is strange that, to the last, he would never distinctly avow them. The extracts we have made will enable the reader to judge somewhat of their vigour, their learning, their facility and sweetness, and the rich abundance of their thought. The fragment "from Goddwynn" is prodigiously fine. Any criticism on the writings of Chatterton, however, would be misplaced. The lovers of poetry have chiefly to regret the loss of the great things he would have done. His person, like his genius, was premature. Though only seventeen when he died, he had a manliness, a dignity, and a singular power of address, far beyond his years. His mouth was marked with the deep lines of sensibility and thought, and his eyes, though grey, were remarkably piercing. |