of his poetry, which possesses a richness and originality that places it on a
higher intellectual scale, and insures it a more lasting popularity. It is pleasing
also to record, that it is not only undefaced by a single line which a dying author
would wish to blot, but elevated throughout into the highest tone of pure devotional feeling and religious instruction. In these cases, Sir Walter Scott seems
to think that poor Knox was assuming a part that he was speaking "according to the trick," and nothing more. We would fain charitably believe, however, that the pensiveness of the erring bard was something else than affectation, and his religious feeling than hypocrisy. Had he not cause to write sadly when he yielded to his better feelings, and sat down to give vent to them in the language which he had learned in happier and purer days? Or was he singular under that
——"video naeliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor"——
which meets so many an unfortunate genius midway, like a sign-post between time and eternity, where he can do nothing more than direct others upon their heavenward journey. In the following stanzas, by which his "Songs of Zion" are prefaced, we can both recognize and understand his sincerity, notwithstanding all those unhappy inconsistencies with which it was contradicted:—
Harp of Zion! pure and holy!
Pride of Judah's eastern land!
May a child of guilt and folly
Strike thee with a feeble hand?
May I to my bosom take thee,
Trembling from the prophet's touch,
And, with throbbing heart awake thee
To the songs I love so much?
I have loved thy thrilling numbers
Since the dawn of childhood's day,
When a mother sooth'd my slumbers
With the cadence of thy lay—
Since a little blooming sister
Clung with transport round my knee.
And my glowing spirit blessed her
With a blessing caught from thee.
Mother—sister—both are sleeping
Where no heaving hearts respire,
While the eve of age is creeping
Round the widowed spouse and sure,
He and his, amid their sorrow,
Find enjoyment in thy strain—
Harp of Zion! let me borrow
Comfort from thy chords again.
It is only necessary to add, that this life of literary adventure to which William Knox committed himself, and in which he unwisely squandered his resources of health and strength, was a brief one, for he died at Edinburgh, on the 12th of November, 1825, in his thirty-sixth year. The cause of his death was a stroke of paralysis, which he survived only three or four days.
