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If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honourable death

Is here:-up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!

Seek out-less often sought than found-
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

WILLIAM TENNANT.

[TENNANT, born at Anstruther, Fifeshire, in 1786, was in early life a schoolmaster, and later on Professor of Oriental Languages at St. Andrew's. Anster Fair, by which he is known to poetry, was written in 1811 and published in 1812. The Thane of Fife, a long narrative poem, published in 1822, was a failure, and the same may be said of his Hebrew Dramas and his tragedies of Cardinal Bethune and John Balliol. He died in 1848.]

The author of Anster Fair is an extraordinary instance of a single-poem poet. When Byron translated the first Canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, he spoke of the Italian poet as 'the founder of a new style of poetry lately sprung up in England,' explaining that he 'alluded to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft.' Tennant, however, anticipated the ingenious Whistlecraft in the introduction of this new style into the English poetry of the nineteenth century. He was the first to use with masterly effect the style which Byron associated for all time with Don Juan. After taking rank at an early age among the masters of mock-heroic, he abandoned this field, essayed the true-heroic, and failed, but never returned to his first love.

Whether Tennant's poetic vein was exhausted, or crushed beneath his weight of learning, or simply abandoned as out of keeping with his grave and reverend professorial character, we have no means of knowing. The abundance and freshness of the vein almost negatives the hypothesis of exhaustion. Even when read after Don Juan, Anster Fair must excite admiration by the flexibility and rapid freedom of its verse. There is no trace of poverty in the ornaments embroidered on the fantastically cut garment; the artist runs riot in the wealth of his fantastic imagination, spending prodigally as if from an inexhaustible purse. Tennant has told us himself that it was in laughing over Peebles to the Play the humorous extravaganza ascribed to James I of Scotland, that

the first thought of Anster Fair occurred to him, and his diction shows that he was a delighted student of Spenser and Shakespeare. It was probably from these native sources and not from the Italian masters that he drew his inspiration. His discipleship to Spenser is proclaimed in the Alexandrine with which he closes his eightrhyme stanza. But he was no mere imitator and copyist; homegrown popular legends and popular sports supplied him with his materials, and he handled them boldly in his own fashion, transporting them into a many-coloured atmosphere of humorous imagination. The specimen here quoted will give some idea of his powers of imaginative description.

VOL. IV.

X

W. MINTO.

RAB THE RANTER'S BAG-PIPE PLAYING.

[From Anster Fair.]

Nodded his liege assent, and straightway bade
Him stand a-top o' th' hillock at his side;
A-top he stood; and first a bow he made

To all the crowd that shouted far and wide;
Then like a piper dexterous at his trade,

His pipes to play adjusted and applied;

Each finger rested on its proper bore,

His arm appeared half-raised to wake the bag's uproar.

A space he silent stood, and cast his eye
In meditation upwards to the pole,

As if he prayed some fairy power in sky

To guide his fingers right o'er bore and hole; Then pressing down his arm, he gracefully

Awaked the merry bag-pipes' slumbering soul, And piped and blew, and played so sweet a tune As well might have unsphered the reeling midnight moon.

His every finger, to its place assigned,

Moved quivering like the leaf of aspen tree,
Now shutting up the skittish squeaking wind,
Now opening to the music passage free;
His cheeks, with windy puffs therein confined,
Were swol'n into a red rotundity

As from his lungs into the bag was blown
Supply of needful air to feed the growling drone.

And such a potent tune did never greet
The drum of human ear with lively strain,

So merry, that from dancing on his feet

No man, undeaf, could stockishly refrain;

So loud, 'twas heard a dozen miles complete,
Making old Echo pipe and hum again;

So sweet, that all the birds in air that fly
Charmed into new delight came sailing through the sky.

Nor was its influence less on human ear:

First from their gilded chairs upstart at once,
The royal James and Maggie, seated near,
Enthusiastic both and mad to dance :

Her hand he snatched and looked a merry leer,
Then capered high in wild extravagance,
And on the grassy summit of the knoll,

Wagged each monarchial leg in galliard strange and droll.

As when a sunbeam from the waving face
Of well-filled water-pail reflected bright
Varies upon the chamber walls its place,

And quivering tries to cheat and foil the sight;
So quick did Maggie with a nimble grace,
Skip pattering to and fro, alert and light,

And with her noble colleague in the reel

Haughtily tossed her arms, and shook her glancing heel.

The Lords and Ladies next, who sat or stood
Near to the Piper and the King around,
Smitten with that contagious dancing mood
'Gan hand in hand in high lavolt to bound,
And jigged it on as featly as they could,

Circling in sheeny rows the rising ground,
Each sworded Lord a Lady's soft palm griping,
And to his mettle roused at such unwonted piping.

Then did the infectious hopping mania seize

The circles of the crowd that stood more near,
Till round and round, far spreading by degrees,
It maddened all the Loan to kick and rear:
Men, women, children, lilt and ramp and squeeze,
Such fascination takes the general ear,
Even babes that at their mothers' bosoms hung
Their little willing limbs fantastically flung.

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