Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/314

 in S.D.U.K. Biog. Dict.; Dr. Irving; Public Records; Hew Scott's Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, 1869 (4to), i. 462, 464; Chester's Reg. of Westminster Abbey; Hobbes of Malmesbury's Life and Works—Aytoun assisted in his Thucydides; Addit. MS. 10308, in the Brit. Mus. Library; Rogers without any authority includes ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (pp. i and ii) and Raleigh's ‘Sweet Empress’ in Aytoun's Poems.]

AYTOUN, WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE (1813–1865), poet, born in Edinburgh on 21 June 1813, was the son of Roger Aytoun, writer to the signet, and of Joan Keir. Through both father and mother he belonged to old Scottish families, his progenitors on the father's side being the Aytouns of Inchdairnie in Fifeshire, and the Edmonstounes, formerly of Edmonstoune and Ednam, and afterwards of Corehouse in Lanarkshire, and on the mother's side the Keirs of Kinmonth and West Rhynd in Perthshire. Among his ancestors he counted Sir [q. v.], who followed James VI to England, and was attached to the court till his death in 1638, when he was buried in Westminster Abbey, having been a friend of all the leading men of letters in London, including Ben Jonson and Hobbes of Malmesbury, and himself taken rank among them as a poet. In that character he is chiefly known as the reputed author of two songs, which Burns worked into more modern shape, one of them being ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot,’ the song, of all others, dear to Scotchmen [see ]. Both Aytoun's parents were of literary tastes; and by his mother he was early imbued with a passion for ballad poetry and an imaginative sympathy for the royal race of Stuart. She had seen much of Sir Walter Scott in his boyhood and youth, and supplied his biographer Lockhart with many of the details for his life of Scott. Her knowledge of ballad lore was great, and was very serviceable in enabling her son to fill up gaps, and to correct false readings when preparing his edition of the ‘Ballads of Scotland’ in 1858. Aytoun was educated at the Edinburgh academy and university, and wrote verses fluently and well while still a student. At the age of seventeen he published a small volume called ‘Poland, Homer, and other Poems,’ in which the qualities of his later style were already apparent. He thought of going to the English bar, but after a winter in London, attending the courts of law, he abandoned this intention. Aytoun disliked the idea of following his father's profession, but after a residence of some months at Aschaffenburg, where he devoted himself with enthusiasm to the study of German literature, he returned to Edinburgh. Having no fortune, he put aside the thought of devoting himself to literary pursuits, resumed his place in his father's office, and was admitted as a writer of the signet in 1835. The discipline of his legal practice was of great use in giving him a power of mastering the details of political and other questions which was of distinct service to him at a later period. In 1840 he was called to the Scottish bar, which had more attraction for him than the irksome monotony of a solicitor's practice, and made a fair position for himself there during the years in which he remained in active practice. His heart, however, was in literary pursuits, and he had already begun to feel his way in them by translations from Uhland, Homer, and others, as well as in original poems, which appeared in ‘Blackwood's Magazine’ during the years from 1836 to 1840. Between that period and 1844 he worked together with [Sir] Theodore Martin in the production of what are known as the ‘Bon Gaultier Ballads,’ which acquired such great popularity that thirteen large editions of them were called for between 1855 and 1877. They were also associated at this time in writing many prose magazine articles of a humorous character, as well as a series of translations of Goethe's ballads and minor poems, which, after appearing in ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ were some years afterwards (1858) collected and published in a volume. It was during this period that Aytoun began to write the series of ballads known as ‘Lays of the Cavaliers,’ which first drew attention to him as an original poet, and which have taken so firm a hold of the public that no less than twenty-nine editions of them have appeared, eleven of them since Aytoun's death in 1865. In 1844 he became one of the staff of ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ to which he continued till his death to contribute political and other articles on a great variety of subjects with unflagging industry and a remarkable fertility and variety of resource. Among these were several tales, in which Aytoun's humour and shrewd practical sense were conspicuous. Of these perhaps the most amusing were ‘My First Spec in the Biggleswades,’ and ‘How we got up the Glenmutchkin Railway, and how we got out of it;’ and they had a most salutary effect in exposing the rascality and folly of the railway mania of 1845. People laughed, but they profited—for a time—by the lessons there read to them. In 1845 Aytoun was appointed professor of rhetoric and belles lettres in the univer-