HISLOP, JAMES,
a minor poet, was the son of parents in humble life, in the parish
of Kirkconnell, Dumfries-shire, where he was born in 1798. He was
brought up by his grandfather, a country weaver, and when little
more than a child he was sent to herd sheep and cattle at the farm
of Dalblair, in a neighbouring parish. He next became a shepherd boy
at the farm of Boghead, parish of Auchinleck, Ayrshire, and some
years afterwards removed to Corsebank, and subsequently to Carcoe,
near Sanquhar. He now obtained private instructions in grammar and
Latin, to which he added French and mathematics. After trying an
evening school, he removed, towards the end of 1819, to Greenock,
and opened a school in that town. But not succeeding, he returned to
Carcoe, where he devoted himself to the study of French and Italian
literature. His ‘Cameronian Dream’ first appeared in the Edinburgh
Magazine for February 1821. Several others of his poems were
published in the same periodical. He was now induced to open a
school in Edinburgh, but soon after was appointed schoolmaster in
the Doris frigate. Three years after, he visited his relations at
Carcoe, where he resumed his contributions to the Edinburgh
Magazine, in a series of ‘Letters from South America.’ In 1825 he
proceeded to London, and was engaged, for a short period as a
reporter for one of the London newspapers.
In
1826 he was appointed head master of an academy in the neighbourhood
of London, and in the following year he joined, as schoolmaster, the
Tweed man-of-war, ordered to the Mediterranean, and afterwards to
the Cape of Good Hope. Among the numerous poems which he composed at
sea at this time, that entitled ‘The Scottish Sacramental Sabbath,’
after the manner of Burns’ ‘Cottar’s Saturday Night,’ is perhaps the
best. While the Tweed was cruising off the Cape de Verd islands,
with one of the officers, the whole of the midshipmen, and the
surgeon of the ship, he went to visit the island of St. Jago. With
the exception of the officer, who swam back to the ship, they all
slept on shore in the open air, and were, in consequence, all seized
with fever, which, in the case of six of them, including the surgeon
and four midshipmen, proved fatal. After lingering for twelve days,
Hislop died 4th December 1827, in his 29th
year.
