KNOX, WILLIAM.—"It may not be
impertinent to notice that Knox, a young poet of considerable talent, died
here a week or two since. His father was a respectable yeoman, and he
himself, succeeding to good firms under the Duke of Buccleuch, became too
soon his own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. His talent then
showed itself in a fine strain of pensive poetry, called, I think, ‘The
Lonely Hearth,’ far superior to that of Michael Bruce, whose consumption,
by the way, has been the life of his verses. . . . .For my part,
I am a bad promoter of subscriptions; but I wished to do what I could for
this lad, whose talent I really admired; and I am not addicted to admire
heaven-born poets, or poetry that is reckoned very good, considering.
I had him (Knox) at Abbotsford, about ten years ago, but found him
unfit for that sort of society. I tried to help him, but there were
temptations he could never resist. He scrambled on writing for the
booksellers and magazines, and living like the Otways, and Savages, and
Chattertons of former days, though I do not know that he was in extreme
want. His connection with me terminated in begging a subscription, or a
guinea, now and then. His last works were spiritual hymns, and which he
wrote very well. In his own line of society he was said to exhibit infinite
humour; but all his works are grave and pensive—a style, perhaps, like
Master Stephen’s melancholy, affected for the nonce."
In this extract from Sir
Walter Scott’s Diary, an outline of the life, moral character, and literary
productions of an erring and unfortunate son of genius is briefly sketched;
but with the great novelist’s wonted perspicuity, sharp intuitive sagacity,
and immeasurable good-nature, that never could see a fault where there was a
tolerable per contra to recommend.
William Knox was born upon
the estate of Firth, in the parish of Lilliesleaf, Roxburgh, on the 17th
August, 1789, and was the son of an extensive and pastoral farmer in the
shires of Roxburgh and Selkirk. As his parents were in comfortable
circumstances, he received a liberal education, first at the parish school
of Lilliesleaf, and afterwards at the grammar-school of Musselburgh. After
having become a tolerable classical scholar, and acquired a taste for
reading, especially in poetry and romance, he was sent, at little more than
the age of sixteen, to a lawyer’s office, not, however, for the purpose of
studying the law as a future profession, but acquiring the general knowledge
and practical habits of business. This was necessary, as he was the eldest
son of a family of six children, and would naturally succeed to his father’s
extensive farming; but as a school of morals and virtuous habits, a lawyer’s
office, at the beginning of the present century, could scarcely be reckoned
the happiest of selections. After a few months’ training at law, in which he
made little progress, he was called home to assist his father; and in 1812
he commenced farming on his own account, by taking a lease of the farm of
Wrae, in the neighbourhood of Langholm. But steady though he appears to have
been at this period, so that he soon acquired the reputation of a diligent
and skilful farmer, he was so unsuccessful that he lost all interest in
agriculture, threw up the lease of Wrae in 1817, and commenced that
precarious literary life which he continued to the close. Indeed, while he
was ploughing and sowing, his thoughts were otherwise occupied; for even at
the schoolboy age, he had been infected, as half of the human race generally
are at that ardent season, with the love of poetry; but instead of
permitting himself, like others, to be disenchanted by the solid realities
and prosaic cares of life, he cherished the passion until he become
irrecoverably a poet. Unhappy is such a choice when it can lead no higher
than half-way up Parnassus! His boyish efforts were exhibited chiefly in
songs and satires written in the Scottish dialect; and although, when his
mind was more matured, he had the good sense to destroy them, it was only
for the purpose of producing better in their season. In this way his first
publication, "The Lonely Hearth and other Poems," was nearly ready for the
press before he had quitted his farm.
It would be too much to
follow each step of Knox’s progress after he had committed himself to the
uncertainties and mutations of authorship. His life was henceforth occupied
not only in writing works which issued from the press, but others which were
not so fortunate. It was not merely to poetry that he confined himself, in
which case his stock, as a source of daily subsistence, would soon have
failed; he also wrote largely in prose, and was happy when he could find a
publisher. Such a course, sufficiently pecarious in itself, was rendered
tenfold worse by those intemperate practices that had already commenced, and
which such a kind of life tends not to cure, but to aggravate. Still, amidst
all his aberrations, his acknowledged talents as a genuine poet, combined
with his amiable temperament and conversational powers, procured him many
friends among the most distinguished literary characters of the day. We have
already seen the estimate that Sir Walter Scott had formed of him: to this
it may be added, that Sir Walter repeatedly supplied the necessities of the
unfortunate poet, by sending him ten pounds at a time. Professor Wilson also
thought highly of the poetical genius of Knox, and was ever ready to
befriend him. Nor must Southey, a still more fastidious critic than either
Scott or Wilson, be omitted. Writing to William Knox, who had sent him a
copy of one of his poetical works, he thus expresses himself: "Your little
volume has been safely delivered to me by your friend, Mr. G. Macdonald, and
I thank you for it. It has given me great pleasure. To paraphrase sacred
poetry is the most difficult of all tasks, and it appears to me that you
have been more successful in the attempt than any of your predecessors. You
may probably have heard that the Bishop of Calcutta (before he was appointed
to that see) was engaged in forming a collection of hymns and sacred pieces,
with the hope of having them introduced into our English churches. Some of
yours are so well adapted to that object that I will send out a copy of your
book to him."
The principal works of Knox besides
the "Lonely Hearth," which we have already mentioned, were a Christmas tale,
entitled "Mariomne, or the Widower’s Daughter," "A Visit to Dublin," "Songs
of Israel," and the "Harp of Zion." Much of his authorship, however, was
scattered over the periodicals of the day, and especially the "Literary
Gazette." As a prose writer, his works are of little account, and have
utterly disappeared; but the same cannot be said of his poetry, which
possesses a richness and originality that places it on 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 meliora 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 sire.
lie 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. |