t and purest pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast
or inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times his pen drops touches
of light on minute objects, that till then had slumbered in the shade,
but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, as component and
characteristic parts of our lowland landscapes. Let others labour away
at long poems, and for their pains get neglect or oblivion; Moir is seen
as he is in many short ones, which the Scottish Muses may "not willingly
let die." And that must be a pleasant thought when it touches the heart
of the mildest and most modest of men, as he sits by his family-fire,
beside those most dear to him, after a day past in smoothing, by his
skill, the bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness to health, in
alleviating sufferings that cannot be cured, or in mitigating the pangs
of death.

Pollok had great original genius strong in a sacred sense of religion.
Such of his short compositions as we have seen, written in early youth,
were but mere copies of verses, and gave little or no promise of power.
But his soul was working in the green moorland solitudes round about his
father's house, in the wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and
Mearns, separated by thee, O Yearn! sweetest of pastoral streams that
murmur through the west, asunder those broomy and birken banks and
trees, where the grey-linties sing, is formed the clear junction of the
rills, issuing, the one from the hill-spring above the Black-waterfall,
and the other from the Brother-loch. The poet in prime of youth (he died
in his twenty-seventh year) embarked on a high and adventurous emprise,
and voyaged the illimitable Deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in
a holy pride felt them to be broad, as they hovered over the dark abyss.
"The Course of Time," for so young a man, was a vast achievement. The
book he loved best was the Bible, and his style is often Scriptural. Of
our poets, he had studied, we believe, but Milton, Young, and Byron. He
had much to learn in composition; and, had he lived, he would have
looked almost with humiliation on much that is at present eulogised by
his devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is there, though often
dimly developed, and many passages there are, and long ones too, that
heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine enthusiasm.

"His ears he closed, to listen to the strains
That Sion's bards did consecrate of old,
And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon."

Let us