Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/173

 across; these were crowded with hearers;—the sashes of the windows were taken out to accommodate the multitude who could not gain admittance. During the whole period of his settlement at Fettercairn, he had regular hearers who flocked to him from ten or twelve of the neighbouring parishes. If an opinion could be formed of what his manner had been in his youth, and at his prime, from what it was a year or two before he died, it must have been vehement, passionate, and impetuous to an uncommon degree. At the time to which we allude, we heard him deliver in his own chapel at Edinburgh, a prayer immediately after the sermon, in which he had alluded to some of the corruptions of the Church of Rome; the impression it made upon our mind was of the most vivid nature; and, we are persuaded, was alike in every other member of the congregation. The following sentence we distinctly remember, "We pray, we plead, we cry, O Lord, that thou wouldst dash out of the hand of Antichrist, that cup of abominations, wherewith she hath poisoned the nations, and give unto her, and unto them, the cup of salvation, by drinking whereof they may inherit everlasting life." But the words themselves are nothing unless they were pronounced with his own tone and manner.

During his residence at Fettercairn he did not confine his labours to his public ministrations in the pulpit, but visited from house to house, was the friend and adviser of all who were at the head of a family, and entered warmly into whatever regarded their interests. He showed the most marked attention to children and to youth; and when any of the household were seized with sickness or disease, he spared no pains in giving tokens of his sympathy and tenderness, and administered consolation to the afflicted. He was very assiduous in discharging those necessary and important duties, which he thought were peculiarly incumbent upon a country clergyman. Such long continued and uninterrupted exertions were accompanied with the most happy effects. A taste for religious knowledge, or what is the same, the reading and study of the Bible, began to prevail to a great extent; the morals of the people were improved, and vice and profaneness, as ashamed, were made to hide their heads. Temperance, sobriety, and regularity of behaviour, sensibly discovered themselves throughout all ranks.

Mr Barclay had a most luxuriant fancy, a great liking for poetry, and possessed considerable facility of versification. His taste, however, was far from being correct or chaste, and his imagination was little under the management of a sound judgment. Many of his pieces are exceedingly desultory in their nature, but occasionally discover scintillations of genius. The truth probably is, that he neither corrected nor bestowed pains on any of his productions in prose or verse. From the ardour of his mind, they were generally the result of a single effort. At least this appears particularly the case in his shorter poems. He does not seem to have perceived or known that good writing, whether in prose or verse, is an art, and not to be acquired without much labour and practice, as well as a long and repeated revisal of what may have been written. Mr Barclay's compositions in both styles, with two or three exceptions, appear to have merely been thrown forth upon the spur of the moment. As soon as written, they were deposited among his manuscripts, and, instead of being attentively examined by him, and with a critical eye, were shortly after submitted to the public. Besides his works in prose, he published a great many thousand verses on religious subjects.

He had composed a Paraphrase of the whole book of Psalms, part of which was published in 1766. To this was prefixed, "A Dissertation on the best means of interpreting that portion of the canon of Scripture." His views upon this subject were peculiar. He was of opinion that, in all the Psalms which are