Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/230

494 his wife and children, he expired early next morning (the 23d of November), but so tranquilly, that he seemed only to have turned himself again to sleep.

Besides the works we have already enumerated, Picken, a short time before he died, had completed the "Black Watch," a tale containing the origin of the 42nd regiment, and its exploits during the period of Fontenoy, and those stirring campaigns which, as yet, historical novel-writing had left untouched. This work, which he regarded as his best, was the only legacy which he could bequeath to his wife and six children, who were left otherwise unprovided by his death.

PRINGLE, .—This excellent poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Blaiklaw, in Teviotdale, on the 5th of January, 1789, and was the son of a respectable farmer. In infancy lie was so unfortunate as to have his hip joint dislocated by an accident, and this evil, which might have been cured, was culpably concealed by his nurse, until it was past remedy, so that he became a cripple for life, and was obliged to use crutches.

Having completed the usual course of preliminary education, Thomas Pringle was sent to the grammar-school of Kelso, and after continuing there three years, he went to Edinburgh, to finish his literary training at the university. Up till this time, owing to his lameness, his life had been one chiefly of reading and contemplation, while his favourite sports were those of a stationary character—fishing, gardening, and mechanical experiments. While a student at the college, he, like most persons of an imaginative temperament, exclusively devoted himself to poetry and belles lettres, to which every other acquirement was made auxiliary. At this period, also, his impatience of tyranny and oppression, and stout love of independence were curiously manifested. On hearing that Joanna Baillie's play of the "Family Legend," which was about to be produced in the Edinburgh theatre, had been previously doomed to ruin by a literary clique, and was to be strangled upon the stage, Pringle gallantly shouldered his crutch, and resolved to be the lady's champion. At the head of a body of forty or fifty young men, armed with cudgels, he took possession of the centre of the pit as soon as the doors were opened; and when the play went on, their applauding shouts, seconded by the terific drumming of their staves, put every token of dissatisfaction to flight, and secured the success of the tragedy. It was the French mob in the gallery, keeping the Convention below to rights—a remedy every whit as mischievous and unjust as the evil which it sought to cure.

As during his stay at college, Pringle had been unable to settle his choice upon any of the learned professions, he betook himself on quitting it to the pursuit of literature; and as some permanent situation was necessary as a main-stay, he became a clerk in the Register Office, where his duty consisted in copy- ing out old records, by which his mind was left unincumbered for the literary occupation of his leisure hours. The fruit of this was a poem called "The Institute," which he published, in conjunction with a poetical friend, in 1811. It seems to have been of a satirical nature, and was abundantly lauded; but as his salary from the Register Office was a small one, he soon found that something more than mere commendation was needed. In 1816 he was a contributor to "Albyn's Anthology," and to the "Poetic Mirror," in the last of which he published a poem in imitation of the style of Sir Walter Scott, and of which Sir Walter declared that he wished "the original notes had always been as fine as their echo." But who can forget that benevolence and self-negation which