Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/10

6 In London, Allan Cunningham endeavoured to live by his pen. He found admission among the writers in The London Magazine, and plied his pen with great industry until his death. From the worst anxieties of the struggle on which he had ventured, he was saved by the friendship of Chantrey the sculptor. Francis Chantrey was only four years older than Allan Cunningham. Chantrey had shown his bent for sculpture when apprenticed to a carver and gilder at Sheffield. He had afterwards got some instruction in London at the Royal Academy, and returned to Sheffield, where he received in 1809 from an architect an order for four colossal busts. This started Chantrey upon his career of rising power and prosperity, only a year before young Allan Cunningham appeared in London. Chantrey's amename [sic] was rising; his work was growing on his hands; Walter Scott was among those who sat to him ; and when he recognized the touch of finer thought and fancy in Allan Cunningham and found that he had left the trade of stonecutting, he restored him to it in a form that harmonized with his best aspirations; Chantrey appointed Allan Cunningham to be the principal assistant in his studio.

The work in the studio made daily bread secure, and Allan Cunningham had leisure for such reading as would in some degree train and advance his powers. He found time also for free use of his pen. He wrote a play, "Sir Marmaduke Maxwell." He wrote novels, "Paul Jones" and "Sir Michael Scott." He wrote a "Life of Burns." He wrote songs. The best of his story-books is that which is here reprinted. It was first published in 1822.

In 1826 Allan Cunningham published, in four volumes, "Songs of Scotland, ancient and modern; with an Essay and Notes, historical and critical, and Characters of the