Sabbath," in the following year, to the tender mercies of the public. The
approbation with which it was welcomed was great, and the sale of it was rapid.
A few weeks after this, Graham's "Sabbath" was published, so that the "Poor
Man's Sabbath," on account of its priority, had established a refutation of the
charge of plagiarism, which was attempted to be brought against it. A first
and second, and afterwards a third impression of the work was rapidly sold;
and although the profits collectively amounted to no great sum, it brought Struthers something better than a few fleeting pounds; "it made his name and character known," says Lockhart, in his Life of Scott, "and thus served him far more essentially; for he wisely continued to cultivate his poetical talents, without
neglecting the opportunity, thus afforded him through them, of pursuing his
original calling under better advantages." It is not a little to the honour of
Struthers, that his production was patronized by Sir Walter Scott, and also
by Joanna Baillie, the friend and instructor of his early boyhood, from whom
he was so fortunate as to receive a visit at Glasgow in 1808. Such a visit
he thus touchingly commemorates in his old days: "He has not forgotten, and never can forget, how the sharp and clear tones of her sweet voice
thrilled through his heart, when at the outer door she, inquiring for him,
pronounced his name far less could he forget the divine glow of benevolent pleasure that lighted up her thin and pale but finely expressive face,
when, still holding him by the hand she had been cordially shaking, she
looked around his small but clean apartment, gazed upon his fair wife and
his then lovely children, and exclaimed, ’that he was surely the most happy of poets.'"
Encouraged by the success that had crowned his last effort, Struthers persevered amidst the many difficulties of his humble position to cultivate the muse, and the result was the "Peasant's Death," intended as a sequel to the "Poor Man's Sabbath," and which was as favourably received by the public as its predecessor. Then succeeded the "Winter Day," a poem in irregular measure, which he published in 1811. This was followed, in 1814, by a small volume, bearing the title of "Poems, Moral and Religious." In 1818 he published his poem of "The Plough," written in the Spenserian stanza. About the same time he also edited, from the original MS., a collection of poems by Mr. William Muir, to which he appended a biographical preface. A still more important editorial work, which he was induced to undertake, was a collection of songs, published in three volumes, under the title of "The Harp of Caledonia." But after all this labour, the author was as poor as ever, and still dependent upon the work of his hands for his daily bread. The cause of this is to be found not only in his general indifference to lucre, but his sturdy independence, that would not stoop to the higgling of the literary market, and the high estimate he had formed of the dignity of literary exertion. Hear his own estimate of the matter:—"The mercenary spirit of literary men he considers to be the disgrace and bane of human nature an intellectual harlotry, more disgraceful and more destructive to the immortal spirit, than that prostitution of the body, which subjects all who submit to it to self-loathing and the contempt of all men a vice which converts one of the noblest acquisitions of human nature, and that which should be one of the principal sources of distinction in the world—THE KNOWLEDGE OF LETTERS into a curse the most wide-spreading and morally ruinous to which our frail nature can be subjected; and he confesses candidly, that up to this day he has serious doubts whether general or miscel-
