The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Skye Bards. 749
son, accompanied him. In this manner he acquired an
extensive and accurate acquaintance of the various dialects
of the Gaelic language, as well as useful knowledge about
men and manners. During these wanderings he composed
many of his songs. After some years of this sort of travel-
ling he returned to Gairloch, where he was appointed to
conduct the parish school of that place. He seems to have
been exceedingly successful as a teacher. He was loved and
esteemed by a large circle of friends, not only for his excel-
lent playing on the violin and flute, his artistic singing of
his ow^n and other poets' songs, but for his pleasant humour,
and good fellowship. But his career was cut short by a
combinition of asthma and consumption in the year 1790,
in the twenty-eighth year of his age.
John Mackenzie says of him :— " Few of our Highland
bards have acquired the celebrity of William Ross, and
fewer still possess his true poetic power. In purity of
diction, felicity of conception, and mellowness of expression,
he stands unrivalled—especially in his lyrical pieces. Macdonald's
fire occasionally overheats, and emits sparks which
burn and blister, while Ross's flame, more tempered and
regular in its heat, spreads a fascinating glow o\'er the feel-
ings, until we melt before him, and are carried along in a
dreamy pleasure through the arcadian scenes which his
magic pencil conjures up to our astonished gaze. If
Macintyre's torrent fills the brooklet to overflowing, the
gentler stream of Ross, without tearing away the embank-
ment, swells into a smooth flowing, majestic wave—it
descends like the summer .shower, irrigating the meadows,
and spreading a balmy sweetness over the entire landscape.
If it be true that ' speech is the mind's image,' the same
must hold equally true of a song—and, judging from such
of his songs as have come into our hands, our author's mind
must have been a very noble one—a mind richly adorned
with the finest and noblest feelings of humanity—a mind
whose structure was too fine for the rude communion of a
frozen-hearted world—a mind whose emanations gush forth,