Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/225

Rh

There were times, however, when the heart of Nicoll, otherwise so gentle, could express its feelings in the most indignant outburst. In proof of this, we have only to allude to his "Bacchanalian," a wild, but eloquent and heart-rending appeal in behalf of the poor, on account of the reckless intemperance with which the pangs of starvation, and the precariousness of utter poverty are too generally accompanied.

The shop which Nicoll opened as a circulating library gave little promise of success : an attachment, also, which he had formed for a young and amiable woman, whom he wished to make his partner in life, induced him to seek more remunerative occupation, for which he had already shown himself to be fully qualified. He therefore left Dundee in 1836, and was soon after appointed editor to the "Leeds Times," through the kind interposition of Mr. Tait, the Edinburgh publisher. He now considered himself settled for life, so that after a short continuance in Leeds he ventured, at the close of 1836, to bid adieu to the love of change, by becoming a married man. Everything now wore the rose-hue of happiness: he had a delightful home, and an affectionate partner, to animate him in his literary duties; and these duties were so successful, that the journal which he conducted was weekly increasing in circulation. But a canker-worm was at the root of this fair-spreading gourd, and even already it was about to wither. The origin of this is to be found more or less in the nature of provincial journalism over the whole of Britain. Although the "Leeds Times" was a large weekly paper, filled within and without, and so ably managed that its circulation was increasing at the rate of 200 subscribers per week, the salary it afforded was nothing more than 100 per annum. Thus it is that the great political Jupiter Tonans of a county town, whose We seems to "shake the spheres," is often the miserable thrall of a knot of shareholders, whose only aim is to secure a large dividend at the smallest amount of outlay; and thus he is compelled to occupy a position in society for which his income is totally inadequate. It is, in short, the very perfection of poverty, because the show of respectability eats up the substance: the larder is empty, that the neat drawing-room may be kept up. All this Robert Nicoll soon experienced; and although he was already overtoiled with the labours of his journal, which he performed without an assistant, he found that additional toil must be endured to meet the necessary expenditure of his station. He therefore undertook, in the 'spring of 1837, the task of writing the leading articles of a journal newly started in Sheffield; and this, with his duties in the "Leeds Times," which he continued without abatement, soon turned the balance. His health gave way, and his constitution was broken. He continued to struggle on, and perhaps might have rallied for a new life of exertion, for as yet he had only entered his twenty-third year, but the general parliamentary election, in the summer of 1837, interposed, in which the representation of Leeds was contested between Sir John Becket and Sir William Molesworth; Nicoll espoused the cause of the latter, and entered the contest with such ardour that his health was injured beyond recovery. Unable any longer to toil at the editorial desk, he returned