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CLELAND, WILLIAM, the
troubadour, as he may be called, of the covenanters, was born about the
year 1671, having been just twenty-eight years of age at his death, in
1689. When only eighteen, he held command as captain in the covenanting
army at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge. It would thus appear likely, that he
was born in a respectable grade of society. He seems to have stepped
directly from the university into the field of arms; for it is known that
he was at college just before completing his eighteenth year; at which age
he enjoyed the rank above-mentioned in the whig army. Although Cleland
probably left the country after the affair at Bothwell, he is found
spending the summer of 1685, in hiding, among the wilds of Clydesdale and
Ayrshire, having, perhaps, returned in the unfortunate expedition of the
earl of Argyle. Whether he again retired to the continent is not known;
but, after the revolution, he reappears on the stage of public life, in
the character of lieutenant-colonel of the earl of Angus’ regiment,
called the Cameronian regiment, in consequence of its having been raised
out of that body of men, for the purpose of protecting the convention
parliament. That Cleland had now seen a little of the world, appears from
a poem entitled, some Lines made by him upon the observation of the vanity
of worldly honours, after be had been at several princes’ courts. [We
also observe, in Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica, that he published "Disputatio
Juridica de Probationibus," at Utrecht, in 1684; which would imply
that he studied civil law at that celebrated seminary.]
It is a strong mark of the
early popularity of Hudibras, that, embodying though it did the sarcasms
of a cavalier against the friends of civil and religious liberty, it
nevertheless travelled into Scotland, and inspired with the principle of
imitation a poet of the entirely opposite party. Cleland, who, before he
left college, had written some highly fanciful verses, of which we have
preserved a copy below, [These form part of a poem entitled, "Hollo,
my Fancy," which was printed in Watson’s Collection of Scottish
Poems, at the beginning of the last century: -
In conceit like Plaeton,
I’ll mount Phoebus chair,
Having ne’er a hat on,
All my hair a’burning,
In my journeying,
Hurrying through the air.
Fain would I hear this fiery horses neighing!
And see how they on foamy bits are playing!
All th stars and planets I will be surveying
Hollo, my fancy, whither wilt thou go?
O, from what ground of nature
Doth the pelican,
That self0devouring creature,
Prove so forward
And untoward
Her vitals for to strain!
And why the subtle fox, while in death’s wounds lying,
Doth not lament his wounds by howling and by crying!
And why the milk-white swan doth sing when she’s a0dying!
Hollo, my fancy, whither wilt thou go?
&c. &c. &c.]
composed a poem in the
Hudibrastic style, upon the celebrated expedition of the Highland host,
which took place in 1678. His object was to satirise both the men who
composed this expedition and those who directed it to take place. It
chiefly consists in a ludicrous account of the outlandish appearance,
senseless manners, and oppressive conduct of the northern army. So far as
satire could repay the rank cruelty of that mode of constraining men’s
consciences, it was repaid—for the poem is full of poignant sarcasm,
expressed in language far above the poetical diction, of that day, at
least in Scotland. It was not published, however, till 1697, nearly twenty
years after the incident which called it forth, when at length it appeared
in a small volume, along with several other poems by the same author. We
present the reader with the following specimen of the composition, being a
description of the Highlanders:—
Some might have judged they
were the creatures
Call’d selfies, whose
customes and features
Paracelsus doth
descry,
In his occult philosophy,
Or faunes, or brownies, if ye will,
Or satyres, come from Atlas hill;
Or that the three-tongu’d tyke was sleeping,
Who hath the Stygian door a keeping:
Their head, their neck, their leggs, and thighs
Are influenced by the skies;
Without a clout to interrupt them,
They need not strip them when they whip them;
Nor loose their doublet when they’re hanged
* * *
But those who were their
chief commanders,
As such who bore the pirnie standarts;
Who led the van and drove the rear,
Were right well mounted of their gear;
With brogues, and trues, and pirnie plaides,
And good blue bonnets on their heads,
Which on the one side had a flipe,
Adorn’d with a tobacco-pipe.
With dirk, and snap-work, and snuff-mill,
A bagg which they with onions fill,
And, as their strict observers say,
A tame horn fill’d with usquebay.
A slasht-out coat beneath her plaides,
A targe of timber, nails, and hides;
With a long two handed sword,
As good’s the country can afford—
Had they not need of bulk and bones,
Who fight with all these arms at once?
It’s marvellous how in such weather
O’er hill and moss they came together;
How in such stormes they came so far;
The reason is, they’re smeared with tar
Which doth defend them heel and neck,
Just as it doth their sheep protect—
* * *
Nought like religion they
retain,
Of moral honestie they’re clean.
In nothing they’re accounted sharp,
Except in bagpipe and in harp.
For a misobliging word,
She’ll durk her neighbour o’er the boord,
And then she’ll flee like fire from flint,
She’ll scarcely ward the second dint:
If any ask her of her thrift,
Foresooth, her nainsell lives by
theft."
Colonel Cleland was not
destined long to enjoy his command in the Cameronian regiment, or the
better times which the revolution had at length introduced. In August,
1689, the month after the battle of Killiecrankie, he was sent with his
men to take post at Dunkeld, in order to prepare the way for a second
invasion of the Highlands. The remains of that army which Dundee had led
to victory, but without gaining its fruits, gathered suddenly into the
neighbourhood, and, on the 21st of August, made a most determined attack
upon the town. Cleland, though he had only eight hundred men to oppose to
four thousand, resolved to fight it out to the last, telling his men,
that, if they chose to desert him, he would stand out by himself, for the
honour of the regiment, and the good cause in which he was engaged. The
soldiers were animated so much by his eloquence and example, that they
withstood the immense odds brought against them, and finally caused the
Highlanders to retire discomfited, leaving about three hundred men behind
them. Perhaps there was not a single skirmish or battle during the whole
of the war of liberty, from 1639, to 1689, which conferred more honour on
either party than this affair of Dunkeld. Cleland, to whom so much of the
glory was due, unfortunately fell in the action, at the early age of
twenty-eight. He was employed in encouraging his soldiers in front of
Dunkeld house, when two bullets pierced his head, and one his liver,
simultaneously. He turned about, and endeavoured to get back into the
house, in order that his death might not discourage his men; but he fell
before reaching the threshold.
It is stated by the editor of the Border
Minstrelsy, but we know not with what authority, that this brave officer
was the father of a second colonel Cleland, who flourished in the beau
monde at London, in the reign of queen Anne, and George I., and who,
besides enjoying the honour of having his character embalmed in the
Spectator under the delightful fiction of Will. Honeycomb, was the author
of a letter to Pope, prefixed to the Dunciad. The son of this latter
gentleman was also a literary character, but one of no good fame. John
Cleland, to whom we are alluding, was born in 1709, and received a good
education at Westminster school, where he was the contemporary of Lord
Mansfield. He went on some mercantile pursuit to Smyrna, where he perhaps
imbibed those loose principles which afterwards tarnished his literary
reputation. After his return from the Mediterranean, he went to the East
Indies, but, quarrelling with some of the members of the Presidency of
Bombay, he made a precipitate retreat from the east, with little or no
advantage to his fortune. After living for some time in London, in a state
little short of destitution, he was tempted by a bookseller, for the sum
of twenty guineas, to write a novel of a singularly indecent character,
which was published in 1749, in two volumes, and had so successful a run
that the profits are said to have exceeded £10,000. It is related, that
having been called before the privy council for this offence, he pleaded
his destitute circumstances as his only excuse, which induced the
president, Lord Granville, to buy the pen of the unfortunate author over
to the side of virtue, by granting him a pension of £100 a year. He lived
many years upon this income, which he aided by writing occasional pieces
in the newspapers, and also by the publication of various works; but in
none of these was he very successful. He published a novel called the Man
of Honour, as an amende honorable for his flagitious work, and also
a work entitled the Memoirs of a Coxcomb. His political essays, which
appeared in the public prints under the signatures, Modestus, a Briton,
&c. are said to have been somewhat heavy and dull. He wrote some
philological tracts, chiefly relating to the Celtic language. But it was
in songs and novels that he chiefly shone; and yet not one of these
compositions has continued popular to the present day. In the latter part
of his life, he lived in a retired manner in Petty France, Westminster,
where he had a good library; in which hung a portrait of his father,
indicating all the manners and d’ abord of the fashionable
town-rake at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Though obliged to
live frugally, in order that he might not exceed his narrow income, Mr
Cleland occasionally received visits from his friends, to whom his
conversation, enriched by many observations of foreign travel, and all
time literary anecdote of the past century, strongly recommended him. He
spoke with fluency the languages of Italy and France, through which
countries, as well as Spain and Portugal, he had travelled on his return
from the East Indies. He died in his house in Little France, January 23,
1789, at time age of eighty.
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