Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/133

Rh and strange. It is an affecting illustration, however, of the pleasure which unambitious minds may derive from humble sources, that the poet wrote upon this occasion a self-gratulatory ode, in which he expresses quite as bounding a transport at his accession to a salary of sixpence a day, as Napoleon could have done at the addition of a kingdom to his dominions. We have thought this poem so extraordinary a curiosity in its way, as to make a translation of it, with which we have been furnished by an obliging friend, the example to be presented in this place of the style of Macintyre, so far as the unavoidable formality and tameness of a literal English version can exemplify the exquisite graces of the Gaelic bard.