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MAYNE, JOHN.—This
amiable and talented poet was born at Dumfries, on the 26th of March, 1759,
and was educated at the grammar-school of that town, under Dr. Chapman,
whose learning and worth his grateful pupil afterwards commemorated in the "Siller
Gun." His stay at school was a short one, and his progress in scholarship
afterwards was chiefly accomplished by self education, as he became a
printer at a very early age, and was employed upon the "Dumfries Journal,"
which was conducted by Professor Jackson. He had not been long thus
occupied, when he left Dumfries for Glasgow, to which latter city he
accompanied his father’s family, and took up his residence with them at the
farther extremity of the Green of Glasgow, this locality being commonly
called Greenhead by the citizens, who have, time out of mind, been proud of
this their place of public recreation on the banks of the Clyde. At a very
early period, the chief predilection of John Mayne appears to have been
towards poetry, and that, too, in his own native dialect, instead of the
statelier and more fashionable diction of Pope and Addison. In him such a
preference was the more commendable, because it was before the poetry of
Burns had arrested the decay of our Doric tongue, and given it a classical
permanency. It deserves to be noticed also, that one of Mayne’s poems on
Halloween appears to have suggested to Burns both the subject and style of
the happiest production of the national muse of Scotland.
So early as 1777, John
Mayne’s chief poem, entitled the "Siller Gun," was published. The history of
this poem is curious, as indicative of a mind that steadfastly adhered to a
single idea until it had completely matured it, and that would not rest
satisfied with an inferior amount of excellence. At first the "Siller Gun"
consisted of not more than twelve stanzas, which were printed at Dumfries on
a single quarto page. Soon afterwards it was reprinted in the same town,
extended into two cantos. It became so popular that other editions followed,
in the course of which it swelled into three cantos; afterwards it extended
to four, in an edition printed in 1808; and when the last version, with the
author’s improvements and final corrections, appeared in 1836, the same year
in which he died, the poem, that originally consisted of only a dozen
stanzas, had expanded and grown into five goodly cantos. It should be
mentioned, also, that this unwonted process of amplification had by no means
impaired either the strength or the excellence of the original material; on
the contrary, every successive edition was an improvement upon its
predecessor, until the last was also the best.
This poem, at present too
little known compared with its remarkable merit, is founded upon an ancient
custom in Dumfries, called "Shooting for the Siller Gun." This practice,
strangely enough, was instituted by James VI., who, of all sovereigns, was
the one most averse to every kind of lethal weapon, and has continued till
modern times, while the events of such a weaponshaw, were generally well
adapted for the purposes of a comic poet. Mr. Mayne selected that trial
which was held in 1777; and in his subsequent editions he took the
opportunity of introducing many of the public characters of his native
Dumfries, who were wont to figure at these annual competitions. The
preparations for the festival are thus humorously described:--
"For weeks before this fete sae clever,
The fowk were in a perfect fever,
Scouring gun-barrels in the river—
At marks practising—
Marching wi’ drums and fifes for ever—
A’ sodgerizing.
And turning coats, and mending breeks,
New-seating where the sark-tail keeks;
(Nae matter though the clout that eeks
Be black or blue);
And darning, with a thousand steeks.
The hose anew!"
The shooting, as he describes
it, was by no means the most efficient kind of practice for the contingency
of a French invasion:
"By this time, now, wi’ mony a dunder,
Auld guns were brattling aff like thunder;
Three parts o’ whilk, in ilka hunder,
Did sea recoil,
That collar-banes get mony a lunder,
In this turmoil.
"Wide o’ the mark, as if to scar us,
The bullets ripp’d the swaird like harrows;
And fright’ning a’ the craws and sparrows
About the place,
Ramrods were fleeing thick as arrows
At Chevy Chace."
After the first publication
of the "Siller Gun," Mr. Mayne continued to write poetry, but with that
careful fastidiousness, in which quality rather than quantity was the chief
object of solicitude. These productions generally appeared in "Ruddiman’s
Magazine," a weekly miscellany, and it was there that his "Halloween," which
was to be honoured by such an illustrious successor, first saw the light. He
also exchanged verses in print with his fellow-townsman, Telford, afterwards
so distinguished among our Scottish engineers. Among Mayne’s few and
short poetical productions of this period, may be mentioned his beautiful
song of "Logan Water," which first appeared about the year 1783. The tune of
"Logan Water," one of our most simple and touching old national melodies,
for which the verses were composed, and especially the intrinsic merits of
the verses themselves, made the song such a universal favourite, that after
taking complete hold of Scotland, it was published with the music in
England, and established as one of the choice performances of Vauxhall.
Burns, also, who mistook it for one of our old Scottish songs, as it was
published anonymously, produced an imitation, under the same title, which
scarcely equals the original. In simplicity, in tenderness, and classic
elegance, we would match the "Logan Water" of Mayne even with the "Fountain
of Bandusia" of Horace.
The other chief poetical
production of Mr. Mayne, next to the "Siller Gun" in point of extent, was
"Glasgow," a descriptive poem, which was published with illustrative notes
in 1803. It is a work of considerable merit, and all the more worthy of
attention, that it describes a state of men and things that has utterly
passed away. Who would recognize in the Glasgow of that day the gorgeous
Tyre of the west, whose merchants are princes, and whose population is
numbered by myriads? In the same year that his "Glasgow" appeared, he also
published "English, Scots, and Irishmen," a patriotic address to the
inhabitants of the three kingdoms.
Although John Mayne loved his
country with all the patriotic ardour of a Scotchman, and celebrated its
people and its scenery as few Scotchmen could do, yet, like many of his
countrymen, he was doomed, during the greater part of his life, to
contemplate it at a distance, and to speak of it to strangers. As a printer,
his occupation was chiefly with the Messrs. Foulis, of the University Press,
Glasgow, under whom he entered into an engagement that continued from 1782
to 1787. He visited London, probably for the first time, in 1785; and,
having been attracted by the facilities that presented themselves there of
permanent and profitable occupation, he moved thither in 1787, when his
engagement in Glasgow had expired, and, during the rest of his long life,
never happened to revisit the land of his nativity. It is well that Scottish
patriotism, instead of being impaired, is so often enhanced by the
enchantment of distance. In London he was singularly fortunate; for after
the usual amount of enterprise and perseverance in literature, to which all
his hopes and energies were devoted, he became printer, editor, and joint
proprietor of the "Star" evening paper. Under his excellent management, the
journal was a thriving one; and, from year to year, he continued to indulge
his poetical likings not only in its columns, but also in the "Gentleman’s
Magazine," to which he occasionally contributed from 1807 to 1817. After a
long life of usefulness and comfort, which extended to seventy-eight years,
he died in his residence, No. 2, Lysson Grove, South, on the 14th of March,
1830, and was buried in his family vault, Paddington church-yard.
As a poet, John Mayne must be
allowed a much higher standing than is usually given to the Scottish bards
of the present century; and in comparing him, it must be with Ramsay,
Ferguson, and Hogg, to whom he approached the nearest, rather than with
inferior standards. The moral character of his writings, also, cannot be too
highly commended. "He never wrote a line," says a popular author, "the
tendency of which was not to afford innocent amusement, or to improve and
increase the happiness of mankind." Of his private character, Allan
Cunningham also testifies that "a better or warmer-hearted man never
existed." |
