Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/56



Sir D. K. S—f—d next mounted his beast, With its tail to the West and its head to the East, And on like a War Knight the brute he did urge, To nose the effect of the fam'd 'Russell Purge;' But at Bothwell the Mail Guard roar'd out—'Lost by Eight!' When about went the prad, as it had taken fright; Sir Dan he stuck on, and again 'clipsed the Sun, To the utter confounding of neighbour, M'P—n.

That Motherwell's prospects were improved by a removal to Glasgow may be admitted, since that city, from its greater size, would necessarily afford a wider field for the display of his abilities; but I have many doubts whether the change was friendly to the development and cultivation of his poetical faculty. The charge of a three-times a-week paper leaves little leisure for the prosecution of a formal course of study, while the distracting anxieties which are inseparable from political warfare are altogether incompatible with that repose of mind which is essential to the achievement of distinction in any walk of literature. It is my impression, therefore, that his muse was comparatively idle in Glasgow, and that his attention was directed to the improvement of old rather than to the composition of new poems. This idea is partially confirmed by an inspection of two quarto volumes of manuscript pieces which he left behind him, the one of which is nearly a transcript of the other, and was obviously executed at Glasgow; and it is farther strengthened by the fact, that he published little after he came to this city which had not been written long before. It would be idle to talk of