Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/282

546 abode, Struthers adventured on his first attempt in authorship, and, like many tyro authors, he was soon so much ashamed of it, that he burnt the whole impression, and did his best to forget the trespass. What was the nature of the work, or whether it was in poetry or prose, he has not informed us, although from a chance hint that escapes him in his biography, we rather think it was the former.

The next attempt of Mr. Struthers in authorship was one that was to bring him into notice, and establish his reputation as a poet of no common order. We allude to his "Poor Man's Sabbath;" and as the origin of this work is characteristic both of the writer and the period, we give it in his own words, where he speaks of himself in the third person: "Though the removal of our subject from a country to a town life, was upon the whole less grievous than he had anticipated, still it was followed by regrets, which forty-eight long years have not yet laid wholly asleep. Of these, the first and the most painful was his position on the Sabbath day. In the country his Saturday was equally tranquil, rather more so than any other day of the week. He was, on the Saturday night, always early to bed, and on the Sabbath morning up at his usual hour—had his moments of secret meditation and prayer—his family devotions—his breakfast and dressing over by nine o'clock, when his fellow-worshippers of the same congregation, who lived to the westward of him, generally called at his house. Among them was his excellent father, and one or two old men of the highest respectability as private members of the church, with whom he walked to their place of worship, Black's Well meeting-house, Hamilton, returning with them in the evening, enjoying the soothing influences of the seasons, whether breathing from the fragrant earth, or glowing from the concave of the sky; taking sweet counsel together, and holding delightful fellowship with the God of all grace, and of all consolation, and with each other, in talking over the extent, the order, the grandeur, and the excellent majesty of His kingdom." From this picture of a rural Scottish Sabbath at the beginning of the present century, he turns to those Sabbatical evils of our cities, which, at that period of recent introduction, have ever since been on the increase:—"In town, on the contrary, he found Saturday always to be a day of bustle and confusion. There was always work wanted, which could not be had without extra exertion. He was always earlier up in the morning, and later in going to bed on that day than on any other day of the week. With the extra labour of that day, added to the everyday toils of the week, he was often exhausted, and his hands so cut up, that it was not without difficulty that he managed to shave himself. On the morning of the Sabbath, of course, he was weary, drowsy, and listless, feeling in a very small degree that glowing delight with which he had been accustomed to hail the hallowed day. At the sound of the bell he walked into the meeting-house with the crowd, an unnoticed individual, unknown and unknowing; his nobler desires clogged and slumbering; his activities unexcited; and his whole frame of mind everything but that which he had been accustomed to experience, and which it was, amidst all these evil influences, his heart's desire it should have been."

These feelings wrought themselves into stanzas, and the stanzas, in course of time, grew into a regular poem. Still warned, however, by his late failure, Struthers was afraid to venture once more into the press, until the success of a war ode, entitled "Anticipation," which he published in 1803, when the dread of a French invasion was at its height, encouraged him to commit the "Poor Man's