But time and my prayers may perhaps yet restore him,
      Blest peace may restore my dear shepherd to me;
    And when he returns, with such care I ’ll watch o’er him,
      He never shall leave the sweet banks of the Dee. 
    The Dee then shall flow, all its beauties displaying,
    The lambs on its banks shall again be seen playing,
    While I with my Jamie am carelessly straying,
      And tasting again all the sweets of the Dee.

HECTOR MACNEILL.

Hector Macneill was born on the 22d of October 1746, in the villa of Rosebank, near Roslin; and, to to use his own words, “amidst the murmur of streams and the shades of Hawthornden, may be said to have inhaled with life the atmosphere of a poet."[10] Descended from an old family, who possessed a small estate in the southern district of Argyllshire, his father, after various changes of fortune, had obtained a company in the 42d Regiment, with which he served during several campaigns in Flanders.  From continued indisposition, and consequent inability to undergo the fatigues of military life, he disposed of his commission, and retired, with his wife and two children, to the villa of Rosebank, of which he became the owner.  A few years after the birth of his son Hector, he felt necessitated, from straitened circumstances, to quit this beautiful residence; and he afterwards occupied a farm on the banks of Loch Lomond.  Such a region of the picturesque was highly suitable for the development of those poetical talents which had already appeared in young Hector, amidst the rural amenities of Roslin.  In his eleventh year, he wrote a drama, after the manner of Gay; and the respectable execution of his juvenile attempts in versification gained him the approbation of Dr Doig, the learned rector of the grammar-school of Stirling, who strongly urged his father to afford him sufficient instruction, to enable him to enter upon one of the liberal professions.  Had Captain Macneill’s circumstances been prosperous, this counsel might have been adopted, for the son’s promising talents were not unnoticed by his father; but pecuniary difficulties opposed an unsurmountable obstacle.

An opulent relative, a West India trader, resident in Bristol, had paid the captain a visit; and, attracted by the shrewdness of the son Hector, who was his namesake, offered to retain him in his employment, and to provide for him in life.  After two years’ preparatory education, he was accordingly sent to Bristol, in his fourteenth year.  He was destined to an adventurous career, singularly at variance with his early predilections and pursuits.  By his relative he was designed to sail in a slave ship to the coast of Guinea; but the intercession of some female friends prevented his being connected with an expedition so uncongenial to his feelings.  He was now despatched on board a vessel to the island of St Christopher’s, with the view of his making trial of a seafaring life,