hall see the like of Captain Paton no mo'e!
[44] This humorous elegy was first published in _Blackwood's Magazine_
for September 1819. Captain Paton was a well-known character in Glasgow.
The son of Dr David Paton, a physician in that city, he obtained a
commission in a regiment raised in Scotland for the Dutch service. He
afterwards resided with his two maiden sisters, and an old servant
Nelly, in a tenement opposite the Old Exchange at the Cross, which had
been left him by his father. The following graphic account of the
Captain, we transcribe from Dr Strang's interesting work, "Glasgow and
its Clubs," recently published:--"Every sunshine day, and sometimes even
amid shower and storm, about the close of the past and the commencement
of the present century, was the worthy Captain in the Dutch service seen
parading the _plainstanes_, opposite his own residence in the Trongate,
donned in a suit of snuff-coloured brown or 'genty drab,' his long spare
limbs encased in blue striped stockings, with shoes and buckles, and
sporting ruffles of the finest cambric at his wrists, while adown his
back hung a long queue, and on his head was perched a small three-cocked
hat, which, with a _politesse tout a fait Francais_, he invariably took
off when saluting a friend. Captain Paton, while a denizen of the camp,
had studied well the noble art of fence, and was looked upon as a most
accomplished swordsman, which might easily be discovered from his happy
but threatening manner of holding his cane, when sallying from his own
domicile towards the coffee-room, which he usually entered about two
o'clock, to study the news of the day in the pages of the _Courier_. The
gallant Captain frequently indulged, like Othello, in speaking--
'Of moving incidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the
imminent deadly breach.'
And of his own brave doings on the tented field, 'at Minden and at
Dettingen,' particularly when seated round a bowl of his favourite cold
punch, made with limes from his own estate in Trinidad, and with water
newly drawn from the Westport well." It remains to be added, that this
"prince of worthy fellows" died in July 1807, at the age of sixty-eight.
CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.[45]
_From the Gaelic._
Listen to me, as when ye heard our father
Sing, long ago, the song of other shores;
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
All your deep voices, as ye pull your oars:
Fair these
|