Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/196

460 of St. Jerry," "Billy Routing," and the "Auncient Waggonere," in which Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were successively imitated, or rather mimicked, with most comic aggravations. We can remember, as if it had been yesterday, the loud explosion of laughter, from the Tweed to Caithness, which the last-mentioned poem produced, when the readers of "Maga," who had been wont to revere the "Ancient Mariner" as the most awe-inspiring of poetical productions, were suddenly shaken from their propriety at finding it, notes and all, travestied with such singular effect. In 1823, he had for his neighbour and acquaintance John Galt, who was then residing near Musselburgh; and so well was the literary reputation of Moir now established, that the distinguished novelist, on being suddenly called off to America before he had finished the "Last of the Lairds," intrusted the winding-up of the tale to Delta, which he accomplished to the author's satisfaction.

As his poetical productions in "Blackwood" had met with such success, Mr. Moir collected and published the best of them, with a few new additions, at the close of 1824, under the title of "Legend of Genevieve, with other Tales and Poems."

But the wide circulation of the magazine had already made them so well known that they had no longer the freshness of novelty, and therefore the reception of the volume, as compared with its merits, was but indifferent. At the same period, he was employed in a prose work, from which, perhaps, he has derived a wider, if not so lasting a popularity as he has done from his poetical productions. This was the "Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," which he supplied in a series of chapters, during three years, to "Blackwood's Magazine," and afterwards published as a separate work, with several additions and improvements. And what reader of this singular tale can fail to persuade himself that he has met with the veritable Mansie in flesh and blood? He is sure that he has seen the man somehow and somewhere, although whether as a flying tailor or not he cannot distinctly remember. Such is the great charm of the tale: the character and events are thrown off with such truthfulness, that the fun and fiction have all the worth of reality, or something very like it. Like Scott and Galt, midway between whom Delta at once took his place as a novelist, he collected events that had actually happened, and sayings that had been audibly uttered, and, after improving them, grouping them, and throwing over them such a colouring of his own imagination as gave them harmonious uniformity, as well as picturesque effect, he embodied them all in the doings and blunders of a half-silly, half-pawkie, vainglorious, and good warm-hearted creature, who lives, fights on, stumbles through the ups and downs of life, but still manfully does his duty, and finally attains comfort, substance, and worship as the most thriving of village tailors. The work was also admirably suited to the Scottish national character, which abounds in sly, grave humour, rather than in the buoyant and more imaginative attribute of wit. Hence the favour with which "Mansie Wauch" was received, especially in Scotland, where it was best understood, and the permanent place which it has obtained in our northern literature of fiction, as one of the choicest productions of its day; and he who holds an interview with Mansie departs, not a sadder, but a merrier, and, withal, a wiser man than before.

While Mr. Moir was thus so industrious in authorship, and deriving from it the reputation he so justly merited, he did not on that account suffer himself to be allured from the daily toils of his profession. How many young aspirants for literary fame, after reaping but a tithe of Delta's success, have flung