POETRY.-Our Rifle Volunteers, 313. An Old Story, 318. The Clown's Song, 320.

SHORT ARTICLES. - Bronzes, 264. The Marshal and the Child, 296. Life's Lessons, 303. Some New Aspects of India Rubber, 317. Goodness of God, 317. The Two Telegrams. 317.

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BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.*

Delta, the elegant poet, the amiable man, and the author of one of the quaintest and most delightful of our Scottish tales, "Mansie Wauch."

PLEASANT and joyous was the circle wont to assemble now and then (not every night, as the public then fondly dreamed) in Ambrose's, some twenty-five years ago: not a constellation in all our bright sky, at present, half so brilliant. There sat John Wilson, "lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye," his hair somewhat thicker, and his eye rather brighter, and his complexion as fresh, and his talk as powerful, as now. There Lockhart appeared, with his sharp face, adunco naso, keen, poignant talk, and absence of all enthusiasm. There Macginn rollicked and roared, little expecting that he was ever destined to stand a bankrupt and ruined man over Bunyan's dust, and cry, "Sleep on, thou Prince of Dreamers!" There De Quincey bowed and smiled, while interposing his mild but terrible and unanswerable" buts," and winding the subtle way of his talk through all subjects human, infernal, and divine. There appeared the tall military form of old Syme, alias Timothy Tickler, with his pithy monosyllables, and determined nil admirari bearing. There the Ettrick Shepherd told his interminable stories, and drank his interminable tumblers. There sat sometimes, though seldom, a young man of erect port, mild gray eye, high head, rich, quivering lips, and air of simple dignity, often forgetting to fill or empty his glass, but never forgetting to look reverently to the Professor," curiously and admiringly to De Quincey, and affectionately to all it was Thomas Aird. There occasionally might be seen Macnish, of Glasgow, with his broad fun; Doubleday, of Newcastle, then a rising litterateur; Leitch, the ventriloquist (not professionally so, and yet not much inferior, we believe, to the famous Duncan Macmillan), and eren a stray Cockney or two who did not belong to the Cockney school. There, too, the "Director-general of the Fine Arts," old Bridges (uncle to our talented friend, William Bridges, Esq., of London), was often a guest, with his keen black eye, finely formed features, rough, ready talk, and We may call Delta the male Mrs. Hemans. a certain smack audible on his lips, when he Like her, he loves principally the tender, the spoke of a beautiful picture, a "leading arti- soft, and the beautiful. Like her, he excels cle" in " Maga," or of some of the queer ad-in fugitive verses, and has seldom attempted, ventures (quorum pars fuit) of Christopher North. And there, last, not least, was frequently seen the fine, fair-haired head of *Written some years ago.

That brilliant circle was dissolved long ere we knew any of its members. We question if it was ever equalled, except thrice: once by the Scriblerus Club, composed of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Bolingbroke; again by the "Literary Club," with its Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Beauclerk, Gibbon, and Fox, and more recently by the "Roundtable," with its Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and their minor companions. It is now, we need not say, entirely dissolved, although most of its members are yet alive, and although its doings and sayings have been of late imitated in certain symposia, reminding us, in comparison with the past, of the shadowy feasts of the dead beside real human entertainments. The "nights" of the North are diviner than the "days."

From this constellation, we mean at present, to cut out one "bright, particular star," and to discourse of him. This is Delta, the delightful. We have not the happiness of Dr. Moir's acquaintance, nor did we ever see him save once. It was at the great Edinburgh Philosophic Feed, of 1846, when Macaulay, Whately, and other lions, young and old, roared, on the whole, rather feebly, and in vulgar falsetto, over their liberal provender. Delta, too, was a speaker, and his speech had two merits at least-modesty and brevity, and contrasted thus well with Whately's egotistical rigmarole, Macaulay's labored paradox, and Maclagan's inane bluster. He was, we understood afterwards, in poor health at the time, and did not do justice to himself. But we have been long familiar with his poems in Blackwood, and the Dumfries Herald, to which he occasionally contributes. We remember well when, next to a paper by North, or a poem by Aird, we looked eagerly for one by Delta in each new number of Ebony; and we now cheerfully proceed to say a few words about his true and exquisite genius.

and still more seldom succeeded, in the long or the labored poem. Like her, he has tried a great variety of styles and measures. Like her, he has ever sought to interweave a sweet

and strong moral with his strains, and to bending faculties of the man, we must remind him them all in by a graceful curve around the of certain stubborn facts. Gay and Fontaine Cross. But, unlike her, his tone is uniformly were fable-trees," Goldsmith was an "inglad and genial, and he exhibits none of that spired idiot." Godwin's powerful philosophic morbid melancholy which lies often like a and descriptive genius seemed scarcely condark funeral edge around her most beautiful nected with the man; he had to write himself poems and this, because he is a masculine into it, and his friends could hardly believe shape of the same elegant genus. him the author of his own works! Even Delta's principal powers are cultured sensi- Byron was but a common man, except at his bility, fine fancy, good taste, and an easy, desk, or "on his stool," as he himself called graceful style and versification. He sympa- it. He had to "call" his evil spirit from thizes with all the "outward forms of sky and the vasty deep, and to lash himself very often earth," with all that is "lovely and pure and into inspiration by a whip of “Gin-twist.” of a good report" in the heart and the his- And James Hogg was little else than a tory of humanity, and particularly with Scot-haverer, till he sat down to write poetry, tish scenery, and Scottish character and man- when the "faery queen" herself seemed to ners. His poetry is less a distinct power or be speaking from within him. Nay, thirdly, vein, than it is the general result and radiance we are convinced that many men, of extraorof all his faculties. These have exhaled out dinary powers otherwise, have in them a vein of them a fine genial enthusiasm, which has of poetry, as distinct from the rest as the bag expressed itself in song. We do not think, of honey in the bee is from his sting, his anwith Carlyle, that it is the same with all high tennæ, and his wings, and which requires some poets. He says-" Poetry, except in such special circumstance or excitement to develop cases as that of Keats, where the whole con- it. Thus it was, we think, with Burke, Burns, sists in a weak-eyed, maudlin sensibility, and a and Carlyle himself. All these had poetry in certain vague tunefulness of nature, is no them, and have expressed it; but any of them separate faculty, no organ which can be su- might have avoided, in a great measure, its peradded to the rest, or disjoined from them, expression, and might have solely shone in but rather the result of their general har- other spheres. For example, Burke has mony and completion." Now, first, Carlyle is written several works full, indeed, of talent, here grossly unjust to Keats. Had the but without a single gleam of that real imagauthor of "Hyperion" nothing but maudlin ination which other of his writings display. sensibility? If ever man was devoured body What a contrast between his "Thoughts on and soul, by that passion for, and perception the Present Discontents," or his "Essay on of, the beauty and glory of the universe, the Sublime and Beautiful" (an essay conwhich is the essence of poetry, it was poor taining not one sublime, and not two beautiful Keats. He was poetry incarnate-the wine sentences in it all), and the “rare and regal" of the gods poured into a frail earthy vessel, rhetorical and poetic glories of his "Essay on which split around it. Nor has Burns, of the French Revolution," or his "Letters on a whom Carlyle is here writing, left any thing Regicide Peace!" Burns might have been to be compared, in ideal qualities, in depth, a philosopher of the Dugald Stewart school and massiveness, and almost Miltonic magnifi- as acute and artificially eloquent as any of cence, with the descriptions of Saturn, and them, had he gone to Edinburgh College the Palace of the Sun, and the Senate of the instead of going to Irvine School. Carlyle gods in "Hyperion." Burns was the finest might have been a prime minister of a somelyrist of his or any age; but Keats, had he what original and salvage sort, had it been so lived, would have been one of the first of epic ordered. None of the three were so essenpoets. Secondly, we do not very well com- tially poetical, that all their thoughts were prehend what Carlyle means by the words "no" twin-born with poetry," and rushed into the organ, which can be superadded to, or dis-reflection of metaphor, as the morning beams joined from, the rest." If he means that no into the embrace and reflection of the lake. culture can add, or want of it take away, poetic faculty, he is clearly right. But, if he means that nature never confers a poetic vein distinct from, and superior to, the surround

All were stung into poetry: Burke by politi cal zeal and personal disappointment, Burns by love, and Carlyle by that white central heat of dissatisfaction with the world and the