Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, Ben Ledi, and Ben Voirlich,presenting a front, as seen from Moorhouse, unsurpassed for boldness by anything in Scotland. These mountains, which were afterwards designated by him Scotia's northern battlement of hills,' formed his favourite view; and often did he rise from writing at Moorhouse, and go out to a small elevation beside it, called the Head of the Close, and admire them in their varied appearances throughout the year. Nothing, however, delighted him so much as walking out alone, in a good day, without any definite purpose, into the moors that lie to the south and south-east of Moorhouse; wandering among them from height to height, or from glen to glen, till, as he expressed it, 'his soul was filled with their glories.' His favourite places of resort in these walks were the top of Balagich, and a great hollow about three miles to the south-east of it, towards Loudon Hill, called the Crook of the Lainsh, where the moors may be said to be in perfection,—stretching out on all sides as far as the eye can reach, and where scarcely a cultivated spot or any trace of man's art is visible." A reference to these moorland walks, and a conjoint description of these two places, occurs in the well-known passage in the fifth book of his Poem, commencing— "Nor is the hour of lonely walk forgot." During his attendance at the University and at the Divinity Hall, Pollok was not distinguished from the other students by any peculiar prestige or success; although unquestionably a discerning observer, if adImitted to intimacy with him, must have perceived the germs of an ardent and lofty intellect. we are told, "In speaking," "he was not always prompt in expression. He had nothing of that sparkling cleverness which is sometimes as telling in debate as more substantial qualiOccasionally he halted in a sentence, as if still ties. excogitating materials of reply, or as if he were consciously in possession of important principles to which he was unwilling to do injustice by an imperfect utterance of them." But these disadvantages were counterbalanced by the powerful grasp he took of his subject, and, when occasion called for it, by great earnestness and energy of manner; while his eye had a commanding power rarely met with, and his voice was an appropriate vehicle for the intenser emotions. He had no eccentricities, neither did he think he did God service by being morose or ascetic. Stern and simple enough was his mode of life for the most part, for so his circumstances enjoined; but he never sought to separate himself from ordinary humanity by a narrow formalism. He was generally frank and affable; yet to those who were inquisitive or encroaching, especially if they were wealthy or literary persons, he was not only distant and reserved, but utterly inaccessible. Though of a nature essentially grave, thoughtful, and earnest, he was frequently, when in company-as is not seldom seen in such temperaments, on the principle of reactionjocular and successful at banter; but it was said of him that there was "sense in his nonsense," and that great talent was required to talk it as he did. Like most young men brought up in the country, he could ride, drive, and handle a gun; nor did he feel any scruple, when an occasion required, to take the place of his brother John in the Renfrewshire yeomanry cavalry-where he showed himself "an excellent horseman, kept his place well in the ranks, and went through the sword-exercise with dexterity." He did not forswear the pipe, though, as he tells us, often remonstrated with on the subject by his lady friends. His youthful poems do not exhibit much individuality or vividness of emotion; nevertheless in them, and among his published letters, we see unmistakable traces of one who had a high place in his heart. Once we find him, too, in company of two college friends, on one of their walking excursions, carving the initials of fair ones in a belt of fir-trees. "This piece of great affection finished," he says, "I proposed that we should next carve our own names, making obeisance to the fair ones; this I spoke from the heart, for they were dear valued letters to which I was to bow." The name of her who was so esteemed by the author of one of the greatest poems of his country, is not known to the public. Those fir-trees where the initials were carved, will now probably be sought for in vain; and even if they were found, Nature with her soft " effacing fingers" must long ago have drawn a veil over the secret. From his boyhood Pollok was distinguished by great firmness, fearlessness, and decision of character,―qualities which at times stood him in good stead. When delivering his first discourse in the Divinity Hall, on the text, “By one man's disobedience many were made sinners," his over-poetical and in parts somewhat turgid strain, excited the disdainful smiles and laughter of the elder students; but Pollok went on cool and collected, until, coming to a sentence by no means unsuitable to the occasion, he leant over the pulpit, and said, fetching a sweep at the same time with his arm, and looking down in righteous wrath on the scoffing students-"Had sin not entered into the world, no idiot smile would have gathered on the face of folly to put out of countenance the man of worth!" After this, there were no more interruptions. Curiously enough, the first sermon which he preached as a licensed minister (in Dr Brown's Chapel, Edinburgh) was likewise attended by circumstances which put his firmness and self-possession to a severe test. "The first head of his discourse," -and says his brother, "he delivered with ease and readiness; but immediately after announcing the second head, he hesitated paused momentarily tried to go onstopped. For a moment he looked expressively to me, seated directly before him in the back-seat below; and I can never forget his look. He tried once more to go on, and again stopped. He then made a decided stand in an attitude of determined recollection, as if he had been thinking over the discourse entirely alone; and thus, after a short pause, during which he retained perfect selfpossession, so that the audience never seemed to lose confidence in him, he recalled the sentence which had escaped him, and went on, from that to the end, calmly and collectedly as before." "Was there ever such selfpossession!" said Dr Belfrage of Slateford, at the end of the service. These are but the "outer edges" of Pollok's character; for conduct is often a very imperfect exponent of the nature within. A man is ever greater than his works, though few there be that find him so. Many of the highest thoughts and noblest feelings pass between man and his own spirit; their development in action being circumscribed by the external conditions of the individual's life. Pollok was one whose outer life gave but feeble token of the lofty treasures within. Wandering alone upon the moors, gazing on the glories of the far-reaching prospect, resting in sylvan glade or quiet nook, the Poet loved to "hold high converse with his soul," and dream of things solemn and sublime, which he was afterwards to embody in immortal verse. As he himself has said "It was, indeed, a wondrous sort of bliss The lonely bard enjoyed, when forth he walked Of visionary things, fairer than aught That was; and saw the distant tops of thoughts, Which men of common stature never saw, Greater than aught that largest words could hold, Pollok early felt an aspiration to accomplish something worthy; and this impulse soon became a fixed purpose, regulating his life. "I never envied my companions," says he, nor even any of my contemporaries; for I was daily bringing my soul to the trial of those standards of excellence which Time hath left standing behind him.” But in his twenty-fourth year (1822) the consideration of circumstances forced itself upon him, and he began to ask himself, Where am I to live, and what am I to do for the future? He says "I began to think seriously how unreasonable it was to put my father to any more expenses; and to feel how inadequate all that he could spare me was for maintaining me in that way-no extravagant one, as you know-in which I wished to live. He had already given me an education beyond his circumstances-for which, I trust, God shall reward him by me- -and not only without ever saying, or seeming to think, that I was burdensome to him, but accompanying every farthing I received from him with a look of as much satisfaction and paternal sweetness, as I had put into his hand some gift of my filial affection. He never complained; but he had given me the means of knowing my duty; and every thought now began to be imbued, and every plan tried, by the need I was in of gaining something for myself. Poetry had been hitherto the darling of my soul; and all my studies had been conducted, and my observations on the world made, with the design of accomplishing myself in that art, for which, I thought, nature had intended me. But I could not bear the idea of writing hastily, or of being forced to let anything out of my hands before I had made it as perfect as I could by time and pains.” 66 In these circumstances, accident, and the need of realising money, led him to the composition of some short tales in prose—namely, "Helen of the Glen," 'Ralph Gemmell," and "The Persecuted Family." The first of these was written in the summer of 1823, and the copyright of |