“P.S. Oh the anecdote!”
* * * * *
To the circumstance mentioned in this letter he recurs more than once in the Journals which he kept abroad; as thus, in a passage of his “Detached Thoughts,”—where it will be perceived that, by a trifling lapse of memory, he represents himself as having produced this gazette, for the first time, on our way to dinner.
“In the year 1814, as Moore and I were going to dine with Lord Grey in Portman Square, I pulled out a ‘Java Gazette’ (which Murray had sent to me), in which there was a controversy on our respective merits as poets. It was amusing enough that we should be proceeding peaceably to the same table while they were squabbling about us in the Indian seas (to be sure the paper was dated six months before), and filling columns with Batavian criticism. But this is fame, I presume.”
The following poem, written about this time, and, apparently, for the purpose of being recited at the Caledonian Meeting, I insert principally on account of the warm feeling which it breathes towards Scotland and her sons:—
“Who hath not glow’d
above the page where Fame
Hath fix’d high Caledon’s
unconquer’d name;
The mountain-land which spurn’d
the Roman chain,
And baffled back the fiery-crested
Dane,
Whose bright claymore and
hardihood of hand
No foe could tame—no
tyrant could command.
“That race is gone—but
still their children breathe,
And glory crowns them with
redoubled wreath:
O’er Gael and Saxon
mingling banners shine,
And, England! add their stubborn
strength to thine.
The blood which flow’d
with Wallace flows as free,
But now ’tis only shed
for fame and thee!
Oh! pass not by the Northern
veteran’s claim,
But give support—the
world hath given him fame!
“The humbler ranks,
the lowly brave, who bled
While cheerly following where
the mighty led—
Who sleep beneath the undistinguish’d
sod
Where happier comrades in
their triumph trod,
To us bequeath—’tis
all their fate allows—
The sireless offspring and
the lonely spouse:
She on high Albyn’s
dusky hills may raise
The tearful eye in melancholy
gaze,
Or view, while shadowy auguries
disclose
The Highland seer’s
anticipated woes,
The bleeding phantom of each
martial form
Dim in the cloud, or darkling
in the storm;
While sad, she chants the
solitary song,
The soft lament for him who
tarries long—
For him, whose distant relics
vainly crave
The coronach’s wild
requiem to the brave!
“’Tis Heaven—not
man—must charm away the woe
Which bursts when Nature’s
feelings newly flow;
Yet tenderness and time may
rob the tear
Of half its bitterness for
one so dear:
A nation’s gratitude
perchance may spread
A thornless pillow for the
widow’d head;
May lighten well her heart’s
maternal care,
And wean from penury the soldier’s
heir.”