Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/270

12 the piece, we were equally surprised and pleased with the felicity and modulation of its language.

The only poem which Mr Hamilton wrote in his native dialect was the "Braes of Yarrow," which has been almost universally acknowledged to be one of the finest ballads ever written. But Mr Pinkerton, whose opinion of the ancient ballad poetry of Scotland has always had considerable weight, has passed a different judgment on it. "It is," says he, "in very bad taste, and quite unlike the ancient Scottish manner, being even inferior to the poorest of the old ballads with this title. His repeated words and lines causing an eternal jingle, his confused narration and affected pathos, throw this piece among the rubbish of poetry." The jingle and affected pathos of which he complains are sometimes indeed sickening.

On the other hand, the isolated condemnation of Mr Pinkerton must be allowed to have little weight against the interest with which this poem has so signally impressed Mr Wordsworth, as appears from his beautiful poems of "Yarrow Unvisited" and "Yarrow Visited."

There exists in manuscript another fragmentary poem by Mr Hamilton, called the "Maid of Gallowshiels." It is an epic of the heroi-comic kind, intended to celebrate the contest between a piper and a fiddler for the fair Maid of Gallowshiels. Mr Hamilton had evidently designed to extend it to twelve books, but has only completed the first and a portion of the second. Dr Leyden, who owns himself indebted to the friendship of Dr Robert Anderson for his knowledge of this MS., gives the following account of it in his preface to the "Complaynt of Scotland." "In the first (book) the fiddler challenges the piper to a trial of musical skill, and proposes that the maid herself should be the umpire of the contest.

"The history of the two heroes is related with various episodes; and the piper deduces his origin from Colin of Gallowshiels, who bore the identical bagpipe at the battle of Harlaw, with which his descendant resolves to maintain the glory of the piper race. The second book, the subject of which is the trial of skill, commences with the following exquisite description of the bagpipe: