ingly bad, but we are quite in the dark as to what it may have been: although, to judge by the manner of his self-accusations, it would seem to have been, as Mrs. Quickly would say, "wilful adultery and murder" at the least. After all, however, it may not have been so bad—may have been nothing of the kind—only Walter's ravings leave us to surmise the gloomiest, and be prepared for the worst. Again and again we feel constrained to say to him: Nay, but sit down, there's a good soul, and keep yourself quiet awhile, and do tell us what it's all about? Is it an Old Bailey case, or a case of whisky-toddy? Is it indigestion in esse that afflicts you, or the gallows in posse? Under which curse, Bezonian?
In the department of similitudes and imagery, wherewith to adorn his tale, though not to point his moral, Mr. Smith is probably unrivalled among his contemporaries for astonishing affluence and prodigal expenditure. A trope flies from out his mouth whenever he opens it. His "plainest intention" is made to "curl with metaphors."[1] Had he been born and bred a little farther north, in St. Kilda itself, he would, we cannot but think, have been a living refutation of Johnson's assertion, that St. Kilda poetry must needs be very barren of imagery. "We had in the course of our tour," says Boswell, "heard of St. Kilda poetry. Dr. Johnson observed, 'It must be very poor, because they have very few images.' Boswell: 'There may be a poetical genius shown in combining these, and in making poetry of them.' Johnson: 'Sir, a man cannot make fire but in proportion as he has fuel. He cannot coin guineas but in proportion as he has gold.'" Now Alexander Smith coins guineas past reckoning out of a surprisingly small nugget of bullion. Had he lived all his days on St. Kilda's rocks, he might have written just as readily as he has done, every one of the images in his poetry, and they are Legion. For, whence are his images taken? From sources which might be studied far more favourably in the bleak prison-island of Lady Grange, than in the bustling city of St. Mungo. The sea—the sun, moon, and stars. In devotion to the latter, Alexander Smith might divide honours with Galileo, in a right to the title "starry." Like the children of Leda, he deserves to be exalted hereafter among the stars,—
Λαμπρων ἀστρων πολον ἐξανυσας.
We have our fears, in sooth, that had he lived in the days of Elias the prophet, and been one of the mixed multitude on Mount Carmel, who were adjured to choose that day whom they would serve, his voice would have been for the sun-god. As an infant m his nurse's arms, we suspect him of crying for the moon with high treble vehemence. When a petticoated Ayrshire laddie, conning Divine Songs for Children, his favourite piece was doubtless "Twinkle, twinkle, little star"—and the line "How I wonder what you are!" he must have repeated with wistful dreamy intensity. Can he sympathise with the patriarch Job in accounting it criminal atheism to worship the host of heaven:—"if I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath
- ↑ "I sought out," says the Country Parson, "quaint words and trim invention—
My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell,
Curling with metaphors a plain intention,
Decking the sense as if it were to sell."
