'And now in years and sense grown auld, In ease I like my limbs to fauld, Debts I abhor, and plan to be From shackling trade and dangers free; That I may, loosed frae care and strife, With calmness view the edge of life; And when a full ripe age shall crave, Slide easily into my grave.'
Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be mentioned Robert Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love verses, written in a conventional strain, are not without music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a pretty song called _Ungrateful Nanny_; and William Hamilton of Bangour (1704-1754), who wrote the well-known _Braes of Yarrow_. The most charming of Scottish lyrics belong, however, to a later period of the century than the age of Pope.
The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse which is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that by the composition of flowing couplets they proved their title to rank with inspired poets. They confounded the art of verse-making with the divine art of poetry, and were not aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget of gold, but for the most part the interest called forth by the poets mentioned in the present chapter, is more historical than poetical, and the reader in passing to the great prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain rather than of loss.
'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'
is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly said, do not beat.
[33] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. vii., p. 62.
[34] Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd. Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot, that
'It borders on disgrace To say he sung the best of human race.'
[35] To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five ballads, and among them several of the finest we possess, which are regarded as ancient by every other authority. If the assumption were proved, this lady would hold a distinguished and unique position among the poets of the Pope period, but there is absolutely no ground for the theory so zealously advocated by Chambers.