Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/255

Rh well-known street called the Netherbow, where he ultimately became insolvent. A brother and sister of the tuneful Falconer—the only individuals who stood in that relation to him—were born deaf and dumb; and the latter, on account of her infirmities, was a constant inmate of the royal infirmary of Edinburgh, some time after the beginning of the present century. The father of the poet was a cousin-german of the Rev. Mr Robertson, minister of the parish of Borthwick; so that this humble bard was a very near relation of the author of the History of Scotland, and also of lord Brougham and Vaux. Old Falconer being reduced to insolvency, was enabled by his friends to open a grocer's shop; but being deprived of his wife, who was a prudent and active woman, his affairs once more became deranged, and he terminated his life in extreme indigence.

The education of young Falconer was of that humble kind which might have been expected from his father's circumstances. A teacher of the name of Webster gave him instructions in reading, writing, and arithmetic. He used to say that this was the whole amount of his school education. It appears that he possessed, even in early youth, an ardour of genius, and a zeal in the acquisition of knowledge, which in a great measure supplied his deficiences. In his poem of the Shipwreck, he evidently alludes to his own attainments, in the following lines: —

When very young, he was torn from his self-pursued studies, and entered as an apprentice on board a merchant vessel belonging to Leith. He afterwards became servant to Mr Campbell, the author of Lexiphanes, who was purser of the ship to which he belonged, and who, finding in him an aptitude for knowledge, kindly undertook to give him some instructions in person. He subsequently became second mate in the Britannia, a vessel in the Levant trade, which, on her passage from Alexandria to Venice, was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece. Only three of the crew were saved, and Falconer was of the number. The event furnished him with the material of a poem, by which it is probable his name will be for ever remembered.

The poet was at this time about eighteen years of age. In 1751, when two or three years older, he is found residing in his native city, where he published his first known work, a poem, "Sacred to the Memory of his Royal Highness, Frederick, Prince of Wales." He is said to have followed up this effort by several minor pieces, which he transmitted to the Gentleman's Magazine. Mr Clarke, the editor of a respectable edition of his poems, points out "The Chaplain's Petition to the Lieutenants in the Ward-room," the "Description of a Ninety Gun Ship," and some lines "On the Uncommon Scarcity of Poetry," as among these fugitive productions. Mr Clarke has likewise presented his readers with a whimsical little poem, descriptive of the abode and sentiments of a midshipman, which was one of the poet's early productions ; and offers some reasons for supposing that he was the author of the popular song, "Cease, rude Boreas."

Little is known of Falconer during this period of his life, except that he must have been making considerable additions to his stock of knowledge and ideas. His poem, "The Shipwreck," was published in 1762, being dedicated