PAGE

'Delaying as the tender ash delays

To clothe herself, when all the woods are green.'

This sonnet was addressed to his brother-poet, Robert Buchanan. See Mr. Buchanan's David Gray, and Other Essays, 1868, p. 117. 233-CCCCLXII. There is something infinitely touching in the fondness with which young poets passing through the shadows' have looked to this little flower as the emblem of hope for them. One of our latest inheritors of unfulfilled renown' thus glorifies it in sonnetform (The Life of a Scottish Probationer: being a Memoir of Thomas Davidson. With his Poems and Extracts from his Letters. By Dr. James Brown, of Paisley: 1878, 2nd ed., p. 226):

A SICK MAN TO THE EARLIEST SNOWDROP.
From off the chill and misty lower verge

Of Autumn, when the flowers were all gone past,
Looks, that were prayers, o'er Winter I did cast,
To see beyond thy fancied form emerge :
Thy advent was my dream, while storms did surge,
And if Hope walked with me 'tween blast and blast,
With phantom Snowdrops her pale brows were graced.
And now thy presence and my heart's fulness urge
This word of hail to thee, Emblem of meekness,-
Yet in thy meekness brave and militant,
Leading flower-armies from the bloomy South,
Hard on the heels of Frost and Cold and Bleakness!
O when I spied thee in this yearly haunt

'Life! Life! I shall not die!' brake from my mouth.
Thomas Davidson.

It was probably the reference in the text to the snowdrop that suggested the exquisitely tender episode in Mr. Buchanan's Poet Andrew, which manifestly depicts the brief sad life of David Gray. Age cannot wither such poetry as that in which Andrew's father, the simple-hearted handloom weaver, tells the story of his son's death (Idyls and Legends of Inverburn, 1865, p. 59):

'One Sabbath day

The last of winter, for the caller air

Was drawing sweetness from the bark of trees-
When down the lane, I saw to my surprise

A snowdrop blooming underneath a birk,

And gladly pluckt the flower to carry home
To Andrew.

Saying nought,

Into his hand I put the year's first flower,
And turn'd awa' to hide my face; and he ..

.. He smiled..and at the smile, I know not why,

It swam upon us in a frosty pain,

The end was come at last, at last, and Death
Was creeping ben, his shadow on our hearts.

DD

Dabid Gray.

We gazed on Andrew, call'd him by his name,
And touch'd him softly.. and he lay awhile,
His een upon the snow, in a dark dream,
Yet neither heard nor saw; but suddenly,
He shook awa' the vision wi' a smile,
Raised lustrous een, still smiling, to the sky,
Next upon us, then dropt them to the flower
That trembled in his hand, and murmur'd low,

Like one that gladly murmurs to himsel'

"Out of the Snow, the Snowdrop-out of Death

Comes Life;" then closed his eyes and made a moan,
And never spake another word again.'

The following tribute in sonnet-form to David Gray's memory from the pen of another living writer, originally printed in Hedderwick's Miscellany, 7 March, 1863, will fittingly close our selection from Luggie's poet. (A Scholar's Day-Dream, Sonnets, and Other Poems, 1870, p. 190):

PAGE

IN MEMORIAM'

DAVID GRAY.

Oh, rare young soul! Thou wast of such a mould

As could not bear the poet's painful dower!
Hence, in the sweet spring-tide of opening power,
Ere yet the gathering breeze of song had roll'd
Out on the world its music manifold,

Death gently hushed the harp, lest storm or shower-
Which surely life had brought some later hour-
Should snap the quivering strings or dim their gold.
Yet not the less shall tender memories dwell

In those sweet notes-and sad as sweet they seem-
Which from the burning touch of boyhood fell;
For long as little Luggie winds her stream,
And the twin Bothlin prattles down the dell,
Thither shall many a pilgrim turn and dream!
Alsager Hay Hill.

Oliver Madox Brown.

234-CCCCLXIII. descries: used in the old sense = marks, points out. From The Dwale Bluth, Hebditch's Legacy, and other Literary Remains of Oliver Madox Brown, Author of Gabriel Denver.' Edited by William M. Rossetti and F. Hueffer. With a Memoir and Two Portraits: 1876. The editors note that the sonnet was found prefixed to the first MS. of 'The Black Swan,' a tale written in the winter of 1871-2 and published in an altered form under the title of 'Gabriel Denver,' in 1873; and that there were duplicate readings to several of the lines. They record also that even some years earlier, while in his fourteenth year, and before it had ever been supposed by his family that he so much as understood the meaning

of the word sonnet, this truly marvellous boy' had produced a number of sonnets, which he unfortunately destroyed ‘in a fit of morbid irritability or bashfulness caused by their being shown to a few friends. One of these, however, written for a picture by Mrs. Stillman (then Miss Spartali), and printed on the gilt of the frame, has survived. It is as follows:

Leaning against the window, rapt in thought,

Of what sweet past do thy soft brown eyes dream,
That so expressionlessly sweet they seem?
Or what great image hath thy fancy wrought
To wonder round and gaze at? or doth aught
Of legend move thee, o'er which eyes oft stream,
Telling of some sweet saint who rose supreme
From martyrdom to God, with glory fraught ?
Or art thou listening to the gondolier,
Whose song is dying o'er the waters wide,
Trying the faintly-sounding tune to hear
Before it mixes with the rippling tide?

Or dost thou think of one that comes not near,

And whose false heart, in thine, thine own doth chide?

End of the Notes

INDEX OF AUTHORS

WITH DATES OF BIRTH AND DEATH

The Roman numerals denote the numbers in the Text, the figures the
pages of the Notes.

ALEXANDER, William, Earl of Sterline (1580-1640) 322, 323

ALFORD, Henry (1810-1871) CCCCXIX-CCCCXX

AYTON, Robert (1570-1638) 323

BAMPFYLDE, John Codrington Warwick (1754-1796) 393, 394

BARNES, Barnabe (1568-9-1609) CVIII-CIX, 277, 284, 299, 305, 306

BARNFIELD, Richard (1574-1627) 300

BEAUMONT, John (1582-3-1627) 247

BEDDOES, Thomas Lovell (1803-1849) CCCXLVII

BELL, Henry Glassford (1805-1874) CCCLVII-CCCLVIII

BEST, Charles (temp. Elizabeth) 254

BLANCHARD, Samuel Laman (1804-1845) CCCXLVIII-CCCL

BOWLES, William Lisle (1762-1850) CLXX-CLXXII, 363

BRETON, Nicholas (1555-1624) 302

BROWN, Oliver Madox (1855-1874) CCCCLXIII, 451

BROWNE, William (1588 ?-1643 ?) CXXXIII-CXXXV, 273, 333, 334, 335

BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett (1809-1861) CCCxcvii-ccccxvшII

BRYDGES, Samuel Egerton (1762-1837) CLXIX

BURNS, James Drummond (1823-1864) CCCCXLI

BYRON, George Gordon Noel (1788-1824) CCLXIII.

CHAPMAN, George (1557-1634) XL, 263

CLARE, John (1793—1864) CCLXXXIV-CCXCIII

CLARKE, Charles Cowden (1787-1877) 418

CLOUGH, Arthur Hugh (1819-1861) CCCCXXXIII

COLERIDGE, Hartley (1796—1849) CCCXVII-CCCXXXIV, 427, 428, 431

COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) CCXXXVI-CCXXXIX, 362, 391

COLERIDGE, Sara (1803-1852) 399

COLLINS, Mortimer (1827-1876) CCCCXLVII

CONSTABLE, Henry (1555-1610 ?) XXXV-XXXVIII, 259

COWPER, William (1731-1800) CLXIII, 357