|
NICOLL, ROBERT.—The life of a
poet born and nursed in poverty, is generally continued in poverty to the
close: his career is a struggle of want and privation, of which the end too
often is nothing but defeat and disaster. Such was the history of Robert
Nicoll, a poet of great promise, but whose career was terminated before the
promise was fulfilled: he was only shown to us, and then snatched away. He
was the second son in a family of nine children, and was born at the farm of
Little Tulliebeltane, in the parish of Auchtergaven, in Perthshire, on the
7th of January, 1814. At the time of his birth his father was a farmer in
comfortable circumstances; but having rashly become security to the amount
of £500 or £600 for a friend who failed, he was reduced to the condition of
a day-labourer on the fields which he had formerly rented. It was one of
those numerous cases in which Scottish caution is no match for Scottish
clannishness. Not only was the worthy ex-farmer thus a sufferer, but his
family also; for as fast as they grew up to active boyhood they were sent
out to work for their living. Such was the fate of poor Robert Nicoll, who,
when only seven years old, was employed in herding all summer, that he might
be able to afford attendance at school during the months of winter. It was
fortunate for him that with means of education so scanty and precarious, he
had, in his mother, the best of all teachers. She taught him to cherish the
love and practice of truth—to struggle boldly with adversity, that he might
eat, however sparingly, the bread of independence—and, what was better
still, she instructed him to rest his hopes and aspirations upon something
nobler than mere earthly subsistence. These lessons, moreover, were given
not merely in formal words, but also in living practice, for she too was
frequently employed in field labour, to contribute her full share in the
maintenance of the family, while she endured her hard fate not only with
resignation but cheerfulness. When Scotland ceases to abound in such
mothers, it will no longer have a history worth recording.
Having thus laid an
educational foundation that could bear a superstructure however broad or
weighty, Robert Nicoll found that he was fitted for something better than
tending cattle. It had now done its good work, as he after-words testified:—
"A wither’d woodland twig would
bring
The tears into my eye:—
Laugh on! but there are souls of love
In laddies herding kye."
He bound himself apprentice
to Mrs. J. H. Robertson, wine merchant and grocer in Perth, and during the
little spare time which his new duties allowed him, he commenced the work of
self-education in good earnest. For this purpose he purchased "Cobbett’s
English Grammar,"and did not rest till he had made himself master of its
principles. He thus writes to his brother: "I am grown very industrious. I
read in the morning while sluggards are snoring; all day I attend to my
business; and in the forenights I learn my grammar." He thus also specifies
the amount of his opportunities: "I am employed in working for my mistress
from seven o’clock in the morning until nine at night, and I must therefore
write when others sleep." His means of intellectual improvement were greatly
facilitated by the kindness of a friend, who lent him his ticket to the
Perth Library, and the books which he especially selected for study were
such as showed the serious cast of his mind: they were "Milton’s Prose
Works," "Locke’s Works," and several of the writings of Jeremy Bentham, the
last of which became his chief favourites. And that he was studying to
purpose, the following extract from a letter to his mother will sufficiently
attest: "I look upon the earth as a place where every man is set to struggle
and to work, that he may be made humble and pure-hearted, and fit for that
better land to which earth is the gate. I think, mother, that to me has been
given talent; and, if so, that talent was given to make it useful to man. I
am determined never to bend to the storm that is coming, and never to look
back on it after it has passed. Fear not for me, dear mother; I feel that,
whether I be growing richer or not, I am growing a wiser man, which is far
better."
On finishing his
apprenticeship, Nicoll repaired to Edinburgh; but not finding employment
there, he opened a circulating library in Dundee, for which undertaking his
affectionate mother lent him £20—to her an absolute fortune— the raising of
which must have involved her in trying difficulties, but which he gave
himself no rest until he had repaid. It was the year 1835, the year in which
he became "of age," and by the character as well as amount of his labour, he
soon showed how conscious he was of the duties of full-grown manhood. He
became an extensive contributor to the newspapers of the liberal party in
Dundee; he delivered political lectures; he made speeches at public
meetings. It will be seen from these that he was an enthusiastic politician,
as well as a devout believer in the fact that everything good in government
can be made better still. But that species of intellectual labour by which
he will be best and longest known, and with which we have most to do,
consisted of poetry, of which he published a volume, under the title of
"Songs and Lyrics." The chief faults of these were, that they were written
in many cases in the Scottish dialect, of which he had not full mastery—and
that his language, when impassioned, overflowed into redundancy. Had he
lived longer, it is probable that a more matured experience would have
induced him to abandon the former, and correct the latter error. Even as it
is, however, these poems are admirable, considering that they were written
at such an early period: they strike those keynotes of the heart which
matured age cannot always reach, but to which old age as well as youth can
gladly listen. Indeed, the character and spirit of his poesy, so gentle, so
thoughtful, and devout, and withal so imbued with deep truthful feeling, are
perhaps best embodied and illustrated in the following extract:—
"The green leaves waving in the morning
gale—
The little birds that ‘mid their freshness sing—
The wild-wood flowers, so tender-ey’d and pale—
The wood-mouse sitting by the forest spring—
The morning dew—the wild bee’s woodland hum,
All woo my feet to nature’s forest home.
"There I can muse, away from living
men,
Reclining peacefully on nature’s breast—
The wood-bird sending up its God-ward strain,
Nursing the spirit into holy rest!
Alone with God, within this forest fane,
The soul can feel that all save Him is vain.
"Here I can learn—will
learn—to love all things
That he hath made—to pity and forgive
All faults, all failings. Here the earth’s deep springs
Are open’d up, and all on earth who live
To me grow nearer, dearer than before—
My brother loving, I my God adore."
There were times, however,
when the heart of Nicoll, otherwise so gentle, could express its feelings in
the most indignant outburst. In proof of this, we have only to allude to his
"Bacchanalian," a wild, but eloquent and heartrending appeal in behalf of
the poor, on account of the reckless intemperance with which the pangs of
starvation, and the precariousness of utter poverty are too generally
accompanied.
The shop which Nicoll opened
as a circulating library gave little promise of success: an attachment,
also, which he had formed for a young and amiable woman, whom he wished to
make his partner in life, induced him to seek more remunerative occupation,
for which he had already shown himself to be fully qualified. He therefore
left Dundee in 1830, and was soon after appointed editor to the "Leeds
Times," through the kind interposition of Mr. Tait, the Edinburgh publisher.
He now considered himself settled for life, so that after a short
continuance in Leeds he ventured, at the close of 1836, to bid adieu to the
love of change, by becoming a married man. Everything now wore the rose-hue
of happiness: he had a delightful home, and an affectionate partner, to
animate him in his literary duties; and these duties were so successful,
that the journal which he conducted was weekly increasing in circulation.
But a cankerworm was at the root of this fair-spreading gourd, and even
already it was about to wither. The origin of this is to be found more or
less in the nature of provincial journalism over the whole of Britain.
Although the "Leeds Times" was a large weekly paper, filled within and
without, and so ably managed that its circulation was increasing at the rate
of 200 subscribers per week, the salary it afforded was nothing more than
£100 per annum. Thus it is that the great political Jupiter Tonans of
a county town, whose We seems to "shake the spheres," is often the
miserable thrall of a knot of shareholders, whose only aim is to secure a
large dividend at the smallest amount of outlay; and thus he is compelled to
occupy a position in society for which his income is totally inadequate. It
is, in short, the very perfection of poverty, because the show of
respectability eats up the substance: the larder is empty, that the neat
drawing-room may be kept up. All this Robert Nicoll soon experienced; and
although he was already overtoiled with the labours of his journal, which he
performed without an assistant, he found that additional toil must be
endured to meet the necessary expenditure of his station. He therefore
undertook, in the spring of 1837, the task of writing the leading articles
of a journal newly started in Sheffield; and this, with his duties in the
"Leeds Times," which he continued without abatement, soon turned the
balance. His health gave way, and his constitution was broken. He continued
to struggle on, and perhaps might have rallied for a new life of exertion,
for as yet he had only entered his twenty-third year, but the general
parliamentary election, in the summer of 1837, interposed, in which the
representation of Leeds was contested between Sir John Becket and Sir
William Molesworth; Nicoll espoused the cause of the latter, and entered the
contest with such ardour that his health was injured beyond recovery. Unable
any longer to toil at the editorial desk, he returned to Scotland, in the
hope that his native air would cure him; but after a few months of painful
lingering, he died at Laverock Bank, near Edinburgh, on the 9th
of December, 1837. It is gratifying to know that his last days were solaced
by the kindness of influential friends, whom his genius and virtues had
deeply interested in his behalf. After his death, a complete edition of his
poems was published by Mr. Tait, with a biographical sketch prefixed, from
which, and a short article in "Tait’s Magazine,"
Robert Nicoll and his Poems by Ebenezer
Elliott, we
have derived the foregoing particulars.
Poems of Robert Nicoll with a Memoir
of the Author
The Life if of Robert Nicoll
By P. R. Drummond |
