Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/101



Soon after the issue of this volume the poetess set up a girls' school at the quay head of Crawford-bridge, and here she varied the simple routine by giving Shakespearean readings to her pupils. According to tradition she swooned with excitement while reciting scenes from ‘Othello.’ The idol of her studies, however, was the ‘Clarissa’ of Richardson, and the story goes that she once closed her school for six weeks and travelled on foot the whole distance to London to visit the author.

Troubles came thick upon her; her book was of little pecuniary advantage; the unsold copies were shipped to Boston and never heard of again; and Jean Adam, being compelled to give up her school, became a wanderer. Disappointed and soured, the poor woman got a precarious living as a hawker for years, and the last record of her life's story finds her toiling home again to Greenock. An order of the bailies of that town admitted her to the Glasgow poorhouse as ‘a poor woman in distress; a stranger who has been wandering about.’ The next day (3 April 1765) she died, and was ‘buried at the house expense.’

Her published poems were only fitted to win a little local popularity, and her only passport to fame is the claim so persistently asserted for her of the authorship of the ‘Song of the Mariner's Wife,’ or ‘There's nae Luck aboot the House!’ a simple, humorous, and touching lyric, one of the sweetest in any language. This may have been an old and favourite song that she used to recite to her pupils; but it is unlikely that such a strain of home and married love could have been written by this wayward and unwedded woman. Her verses, although correct in phrase and sentiment, are inflated and childish. This song was first heard in the streets, and hawked for sale about 1772, and at length found a place in Herd's collection 1776, and in the ‘Nightingale’ in 1778. After a time, becoming a great favourite, it was claimed for Jane Adams by some of her former pupils, who professed to have heard her recite it—if so it must have been forty years before. The tradition is that it was written of Colin and Jean Campbell of Crawfordsdyke. A copy of it was found, in his own handwriting, among the papers of Julius Mickle (the translator of Camoens's ‘Lusiad’), who died in 1788. As this poet had a fertile imagination and power of rich and varied versification, and wrote very good songs and ballads, a counterclaim has been set up for him, although, if correct, it is singular that he never included the song among his poems published during his lifetime. Of the seven verses now always comprised in this poem, the last two are known to have been added by Dr. Blair.

[Cromek's Select Scotish Songs, i. 189; Robert Chambers's Songs of Scotland prior to Burns; Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, i. 226; Good Words, March 1869; Stenhouse's Illustrations of the Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland; Notes and Queries, 3rd series, x. 313; 4th, iii. 282, 370; Chalmers's English Poets, xvii.]  ADAM, JOHN (1779–1825), Anglo-Indian statesman, was eldest son of William Adam [see ]. He was born on 4 May 1779; was educated at the Charterhouse; received a writership on the Bengal establishment in 1794; and, after a year at Edinburgh University, landed at Calcutta in 1796. The greater part of his career was spent in the secretariat. He was private as well as political secretary to the Marquis of Hastings, whom he accompanied in the field during the Pindari or third Mahratta war. In 1817 he was nominated by the court of directors member of council; and as senior member of council he became acting governor-general of India on Lord Hastings's departure in January 1823. His rule lasted for seven months, until the arrival of Lord Amherst in August of the same year. It is memorable in history chiefly for one incident — the suppression of the freedom of the English press in India. James Silk Buckingham, afterwards M.P. and founder of the ‘Athenæum,’ had established the ‘Calcutta Journal,’ which published severe comments upon the government. Adam cancelled Buckingham's license, without which no European could then reside in India, and passed regulations restricting newspaper criticism. Buckingham appealed to the court of proprietors at home, to the House of Commons, and to the Privy Council; but the action of Adam was sustained by each of these three bodies. Another unpopular act of Adam's governor-generalship was to withdraw official support from the banking firm of Palmer, who had acquired a preponderant influence with the Nizam of the Deccan. Adam also deserves credit for being the first Indian ruler to appropriate a grant of public money for the encouragement of native education. Adam's health had now broken down. After in vain seeking relief by a voyage to Bombay, and by a visit to Almorah in the lower Himalayas, he was ordered home to England. He died off Madagascar on 4 June 1825. Though some of his public acts involved him in unpopularity, his personal character had won him almost universal