Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/65

Rh in Edinburgh and the neighbourhood. His style of pulpit oratory was marked with the same merits and faults which distinguish his poetry. His style was more striking than eloquent, and his voice and gesture more violent than elegant; but his discourses were marked with strong traits of original genius, and although he pleaded an internal feeling of disappointment at being unequal to attain his own ideas of excellence as a preacher, it was impossible to listen to him without being convinced of his uncommon extent of learning, knowledge of ethics, and sincere zeal for the interest of religion.

The autumn of the same year was employed in a tour to the Highlands and Hebrides, in which Leyden accompanied two young foreigners who had studied at Edinburgh the preceding winter. In this tour he visited all the remarkable places of that interesting part of his native country, and, diverging from the common and more commodious route, visited what are called the rough bounds of the Highlands, and investigated the decaying traditions of Celtic manners and story which are yet preserved in the wild districts of Moidart and Knoidart. The journal which he made on this occasion was a curious monument of his zeal and industry in these researches, and contained much valuable information on the subject of Highland manners and tradition, which is now probably lost to the public. It is remarkable, that after long and painful research in quest of original passages of the poems of Ossian, he adopted an opinion more favourable to their authenticity than has lately prevailed in the literary world. But the confessed infidelity of Macpherson must always excite the strongest suspicion on this subject. Leyden composed, with his usual facility, several detached poems upon Highland traditions, all of which have probably perished, excepting a ballad, founded upon the romantic legend respecting MacPhail of Colonsay and the Mermaid of Correvrecken, inscribed to lady Charlotte Campbell, and published in the third volume of the Border Minstrelsy, which appeared at the distance of about a twelvemonth after the first two volumes. The opening of this ballad exhibits a power of harmonious numbers which has seldom been excelled in English poetry. Nor were these legendary effusions the only fruit of his journey; for, in his passage through Aberdeen, Leyden so far gained the friendship of the venerable professor Beattie, that he obtained his permission to make a transcript from the only existing copy of the interesting poem entitled Albania. This work, which is a panegyric on Scotland in nervous blank verse, written by an anonymous author in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Leyden afterwards republished along with Wilson's "Clyde," under the title of "Scottish Descriptive Poems," 12mo, 1802.

In 1801, when Mr Lewis published his Tales of Wonder, Leyden was a contributer to that collection, and furnished the ballad called the Elf-king; and in the following year, he employed himself earnestly in the congenial task of procuring materials for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, the first publication of Walter Scott. In this labour, he was equally interested by friendship for the editor, and by his own patriotic zeal for the honour of the Scottish borders, and both may be judged of from the following circumstance. An interesting fragment had been obtained of an ancient historical ballad, but the remainder, to the great disturbance of the editor and his coadjutor, was not to be recovered. Two days afterwards, while Mr Scott was sitting with some company after dinner, a sound was heard at a distance like that of the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging of the vessel which scuds before it. The sounds increased as they approached more near, and Leyden (to the great astonishment of such of the guests as did net know him,) burst into the room, chanting the desiderated ballad with the most enthusiastic gesture, and all the energy of the saw-tones of his voice already commemorated. It turned out, that