Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/290

554 talent. But, unluckily, the poet, instead of exhibiting this bold bad man with the lofty regal and intellectual qualities which he undoubtedly possessed, has stuck to the sordid and sensual vices with which Beaton was chargeable, and has thus converted him into a mere vulgar incubus. In fact, he has made him talk, not in the elevated language of one to whom high designs, by which Europe itself was to be shaken, were familiar, but rather after the fashion of the vulgar sensualist, who, in the phrase of Knox, "was busie at his compts with Mistris Marion Ogilbie." This was not a picture suited to the improved tastes of the day, and therefore the public would none of "Cardinal Beaton."

Undeterred by the failure of this attempt in dramatic poetry, Tennant, in 1825, published "John Baliol," and only added another unit to his failures. His adoption of the "toom tabard" as his hero, seemed to intimate that his own wits were run out, and the poem therefore fared as its namesake had done it was deposed and sent into oblivion. The public now wondered, and well it might, that the rich promise given in "Anster Fair" had been so poorly redeemed. What had become of that ungovernable wit that had burst its bounds, and overflowed in such profusion? A single stanza of Rob the Ranter was worth fifty Baliols and Beatons to boot. Fortunately for Tennant's character as a poet, his retirement from the stage was calm and graceful. His last work, which he published in 1845, entitled "Hebrew Dramas, founded on Incidents in Bible History," and consisting of three dramatic compositions, illustrative of characters and events mentioned in the earlier part of the Old Testament, are free of the extravagance and bad taste of his former productions, while they abound in passages of poetical dignity and gracefulness. It will easily be surmised, however, from the foregoing statements, that Tennant would have ranked higher as a poet, had he abandoned poetry altogether after his first fortunate hit. It would seem as if he had either poured out all his poetical genius in this one happy attempt, or dried it up in those verbal studies that occupied him wholly to the last.

As a prose writer, Tennant, like other great masters of languages, never attained any high distinction. It would be too much, indeed, to expect from a man who has acquired a dozen or a score of tongues, that he should possess the same power over the world of thought. Accordingly, although he was a contributor to the "Edinburgh Literary Journal," his articles, which chiefly consisted of a correspondence with the Ettrick Shepherd about a new metrical version of the Psalms, do not exhibit any peculiar excellence. His prose, indeed, is as stiff and artificial as if it were a translation, leaving the reader to suspect that he could have written it every whit as well in Syriac or Hindostanee. It seemed, indeed, as if, in the study of so many languages, he had partly forgot his own.

By a system of rigid economy, which his early condition had probably taught him, Tennant became proprietor of the pleasant villa of Devongrove, near Dollar, where he usually spent the summer months at the close of each college session; and there his library was his world, and its books his chief companions. There, also, his peaceful life passed away, on the 15th of October, 1848, in consequence of a cold of two years' standing, by which his constitution was exhausted.

THOM, —This wonderful self-taught sculptor, whose productions excited such general interest, was born, we believe, in Ayrshire, and in the