Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/55

Rh profit and loss. He therefore early became a traveller, and a writer of travels. His first work of this nature was entitled "Tales of the Ardennes," which he published under the assumed name of Derwent Conway; and this work was so favourably received by the public on its first appearance, that he was encouraged to continue in the same strain. His next production was "Solitary Walks through many Lands," a work of still higher talent than the preceding, and possessing passages and descriptions of great beauty, originality, and power. This was followed by "Travels in Norway and Sweden," and his "Tour through Switzerland, France, and the Pyrenees," both of which works appeared in Constable's Miscellany. While these volumes were publishing, Inglis was employed as editor of a newspaper at Chesterfield; but the same impatience and yearning for travel that made him abandon the stool of the counting-house, soon drove him from the editorial chair, to resume his beloved life of wandering. He again started for the continent, and visited the Tyrol and Spain; and on returning home, he published two works, containing an account of his travels and observations in these countries. Of these volumes, his "Spain in 1830," was the most successful, and with justice, in consequence of the great amount of interesting information with which it was stored about that land of changes and disasters. After his return from Spain, Mr. Inglis again became editor of a news- paper, and, of all places in the world, the little island of Jersey was the locality in which he was fixed. A permanent stay in such a place was the last thing to be anticipated of such a man; and he had not, therefore, been long in Jersey, when he girded up his loins for fresh rambles and adventure. But whither was he now to wing his course, after he had pretty well exhausted the wide field of Europe? Luckily, a country quite at hand, even Ireland, had not as yet been the subject of his explorations, and thither accordingly his flight was directed. And that his tour was a useful one was well attested by his "Ireland in 1834." While the extensive information and impartial spirit of this work obtained for it a favourable reception from all parties, the correctness of his views on the condition of the country made it be frequently quoted in the House of Commons, during the important parliamentary debates about Ireland in 1835. It is seldom that the soundness and accuracy of an Irish tourist are stamped with such a high attestation.

Hitherto, as we have shown, the literary labours of Inglis had been well appreciated by the public; but still, this was not enough. As all the world is travelling everywhere, the individuality of each aspiring pilgrim, let him go where he will, is lost in a crowd; and let him write what marvels he may, "of the Alps and Apennines, the Pyrenean and the river Po," and "of the cannibals that each other eat, the Anthropophagi," there are others who behold them as well as himself, and are taking notes of them, to put them in a book. And thus his narrative, however ably written or full of interest, lasts only for to-day; for to morrow a fresh tourist issues from the press, while the latest intelligence will be always accounted the best. It was thus that Inglis seems to have felt, when he found himself ousted successively from every country in which he had roamed so diligently, and about which he had written so well. Literary distinction was not to be won by travelling. Already he had written of what many have seen; but now let him tell what no man ever saw let him create a world for himself, and fill it with the creatures and deeds of his own imagining. It was toward this department of fiction, also, that, amidst all his wanderings and authorship, his intellectual longings had been the most