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Kay's Originals Vol. 2

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396 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. extensive tour of the Highlands, affords a tolerable specimen of his wandering life. If he is to be credited, he visited the abodes of many people of the highest rank and respectability ; and the kindness he everywhere experienced seems for the time to have considerably softened his democratic ravings, for “fair ” scenes and (‘ fair ” ladies are the chief themes of his poetical aspirations. The exquisite absurdity of his compositions is a sufficient apology for indulging our readers with a specimen or two of his sublime wooings of the muse. After celebrating the “Troshes (as he calls them) of Menteith,” and admiring the (‘ ladies fair at sweet Aughry,” we find the Doctor at Auchline, which is thus immortalised in his “Book of Fame :” “ Through famed Breadalbane I did rove, And saw Benmore, the hill of Jove, Where I beheld the palace fine, And ladies fair at sweet Auchline. Sure, by all the Powers above, The Dochart is the river of love, To bathe and wash dfhs CampbelL&e : Miss Auchallader like the sun doth shine ; To love such ladies can be no sin, So I’ll pass on to sweet Killin ! ” Ardvodich and Invercauld next claim his attention :- “ Sweet rural shades of Invercauld, Which calls to mind the days of old ; Such planting upon mountains high, Whose lofty summits touch the sky, Does honour to that Chieftain’s name ; Improvement is the way to fame. Your Highland reel I love to dance, It well might grace the Court of France.” ’ The author must obviously have cut a handsome figure in a Highland reel ; but lest such condescension in a philosopher should prove derogatory to his character, or any mistake exist’w to his identity, he concludes the sonnet with the following important information :- “ I am neither Lord Fife, nor Duke of Nar, . But Dr. B-n, from a country far And since you have deigned on me to look, I hope one day you’ll get yow book.” It would be fatiguing to accompany the Doctor farther in his tour ; enough . has been giyen to prove the harmony of his versification, and the sublimity and beauty of his ideas. Amid all the fair scenes and kind hearts he describes, however, his recollections of the excise suddenly cast their gloom around him, and he bursts into the following impassioned description of (‘H unger-him-ou %it Gauger :”- “ Would you the dregs of mankind trace, Or know a gauger by the face
Volume 9 Page 530
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