The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Social Life oj the Borders. 309
all men knowable. But though avva\- from his native
place. Cunning-ham's poems show he was never forgetful
of it ; and though many of his best works, such as
the Lives of British Painters, one of the most delightful of
books, has no connection with it, still it is as a poet, an'l
as an illustrator of Scottish life and character, and as a pre-
server of Border Tradition, that Cunningham will be
remembered. Like all the border poets his genius was
essential!}' h'rical, and his larger imaginative works, such
as The Maid of Elvai, Sir Marmaduke ]\Iaxwell, Paul
Jones, and Sir Michael Scott are now entirel}' forcgotten.
There are few poems of the kind, from the stern co\"enant-
ing spirit breathing through them, finer than the
Cameronian Ballads, the Ballad of The Lord's Marie, and
the Mermaid of Galloway, founded on a tradition akin to
that of the Lorelic. His Jacobite Songs have the feelings
of the most earnest follower of the Prince, whilst, after
Burns and Hogg, there is no song writer to equal Cunningham,
and those who ha\-e read Lockhart's Life of Scott will
remember \\-ith what pleasure Sir Walter used to sit and
listen to Mr Lockhart singing " It's hame, hame, hame,"
and indeed he wrote it, I think, finer than anything in
Burns.
The last, from amongst man\- others, of the dis-
tinguished men of the period who seems to claim attention,
is Thomas Aird, a poet whose works are far too little
known. \\\ original contributor to Blackwood, when the
second edition of his poems appeared, the Saturda\' Review
spoke highl\- of them, and though then a man of fift\--four
the re\-iewer described them as the effort of a }'Oung man.
His Dex'il's Dream on Mount Aksbeck, conceived, I haxc
heard, when walking from his natixe Bowden across the
hills on a pilgrimage to Burns' Tomb, De Ouince\- thought
one of the most remarkable poems of the centur\-, filled as
it is with wild imaginative grandeur ; and Carl\-lc, who
might occasionall}- be seen walking with him in his \-early
visit to his brother in Dumfries, wrote of his poetr}-, " there