Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/103

Rh of his poetry, which possesses a richness and originality that places it on a higher intellectual scale, and insures it a more lasting popularity. It is pleasing also to record, that it is not only undefaced by a single line which a dying author would wish to blot, but elevated throughout into the highest tone of pure devotional feeling and religious instruction. In these cases, Sir Walter Scott seems to think that poor Knox was assuming a part that he was speaking "according to the trick," and nothing more. We would fain charitably believe, however, that the pensiveness of the erring bard was something else than affectation, and his religious feeling than hypocrisy. Had he not cause to write sadly when he yielded to his better feelings, and sat down to give vent to them in the language which he had learned in happier and purer days? Or was he singular under that

which meets so many an unfortunate genius midway, like a sign-post between time and eternity, where he can do nothing more than direct others upon their heavenward journey. In the following stanzas, by which his "Songs of Zion" are prefaced, we can both recognize and understand his sincerity, notwithstanding all those unhappy inconsistencies with which it was contradicted:—

It is only necessary to add, that this life of literary adventure to which William Knox committed himself, and in which he unwisely squandered his resources of health and strength, was a brief one, for he died at Edinburgh, on the 12th of November, 1825, in his thirty-sixth year. The cause of his death was a stroke of paralysis, which he survived only three or four days.