Significant Scots
David Macbeth Moir

MOIR, DAVID MACBETH.—This gentle, amiable, and talented poet and physician, whose worth secured for him the esteem which his genius awakened, and whose recent death is still felt and bewailed as a national bereavement, was born at Musselburgh, on the 5th of January, 1798. His father was a respectable citizen of that ancient burgh, and had a family of four children, of whom David was the second. After having learned the usual branches of education at one of the private town seminaries, the young poet attended the grammar-school of Musselburgh for six years, where he studied the Latin, Greek, and French languages, and the elementary departments of algebra and mathematics. But however diligent a pupil he might be, and whatever might be his usual standing in the class, he was not, in after life, particularly distinguished for his attainments either as a geometrician or a linguist. Like many other men of genius, especially those of a sensitive and poetical temperament, he used these departments of learning merely as the means to an end, and not as the end itself. At the early age of thirteen he commenced the study of his future profession, by becoming apprentice to Dr. Stewart, a medical practitioner in Musselburgh, and soon began to evince that devotedness to the duties of the healing art which he continued till the close of his life.

So early as 1812, David Moir wrote poetry. This, however, in a lad of fifteen, is nothing wonderful; and among the well educated, perhaps, it might be found that, in most cases, the earliest attempts at composition have been made, not in prose, but in verse. It is only when the poetical temperament predominates that the boyish rhymer or rhapsodist becomes a veritable poet, while his companions subside into the language of ordinary life. Not long after this, he showed the bent of his ambition for authorship, by sending two short prose essays to a little Haddington periodical, called the "Cheap Magazine," and their appearance in print was enough to confirm the tendency. It is gratifying to learn that, in these youthful preludings, he, like many who have attained a much higher elevation than himself, was fortunate in possessing not only an affectionate but a talented mother, to whom he read his early productions, and by whom his efforts were encouraged and his taste improved. And well was she rewarded for her care; for she lived till 1842, when her son’s reputation was at its height, and strangers regarded her with respect as the mother of Delta.

In consequence of the request of the inhabitants of Musselburgh, the funeral of Dr. Moir, which took place on the 10th of July, was a public one; and it was attended not only by the provost, magistrates, and town council of the burgh, and the kirk session of Inveresk, but the chief professors, clergymen, and literati of Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. A subscription is now in progress for the erection of a public monument to his memory in the churchyard of Inveresk, where his ashes repose. His widow and eight children still survive.

The Late D. M. Moir
By George Gilfillan

Pleasant and joyous was the circle wont to assemble now and then (not every night, as the public then fondly dreamed) in Ambrose's, some twenty-five years ago: not a constellation in all our bright sky, at present, half so brilliant. There sat John Wilson, "lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye," his hair somewhat thicker, and his eye rather brighter, and his complexion as fresh, and his talk as powerful, as now. There Lockhart appeared, with his sharp face, _adunco naso_, keen poignant talk, and absence of all enthusiasm. There Maginn rollicked and roared, little expecting that he was ever destined to stand a bankrupt and ruined man over Bunyan's dust, and cry, "Sleep on, thou Prince of Dreamers!" There De Quincey bowed and smiled, while interposing his mild but terrible and unanswerable "buts," and winding the subtle way of his talk through all subjects, human, infernal, and divine. There appeared the tall military form of old Syme, alias Timothy Tickler, with his pithy monosyllables, and determined nil admirari bearing. There the Ettrick Shepherd told his interminable stories, and drank his interminable tumblers. There sat sometimes, though seldom, a young man of erect port, mild gray eye, high head, rich quivering lips, and air of simple dignity, often forgetting to fill or empty his glass, but never forgetting to look reverently to the "Professor," curiously and admiringly to De Quincey, and affectionately to all: it was Thomas Aird. There occasionally might be seen Macnish of Glasgow, with his broad fun; Doubleday of Newcastle, then a rising litterateur; Leitch, the ventriloquist, (not professionally so, and yet not much inferior, we believe, to the famous Duncan Macmillan); and even a stray Cockney or two who did not belong to the Cockney school. There, too, the "Director-general of the Fine Arts," old Bridges, (uncle to our talented friend, William Bridges, Esq. of London,) was often a guest, with his keen black eye, finely-formed features, rough, ready talk, and a certain smack audible on his lips when he spoke of a beautiful picture, a "leading article" in "Maga," or of some of the queer adventures (quorum pars fuit) of Christopher North. And there, last, not least, was frequently seen the fine fair-haired head of Delta, the elegant poet, the amiable man, and the author of one of the quaintest and most delightful of our Scottish tales, "Mansie Wauch."

That brilliant circle was dissolved long ere we knew any of its members. We question if it was ever equalled, except thrice: once by the Scriblerus Club, composed of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Bolingbroke; again by the "Literary Club," with its Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Beauclerk, Gibbon, and Fox: and more recently by the "Round-table," with its Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and their minor companions. It is now, we need not say, entirely dissolved, although most of its members are yet alive, and although its doings and sayings have been of late imitated in certain symposia, reminding us, in comparison with the past, of the shadowy feasts of the dead beside real human entertainments. The "nights" of the North are diviner than the "days."

From this constellation, we mean, at present, to cut out one "bright, particular star," and to discourse of him. This is Delta, the delightful. We have not the happiness of Dr. Moir's acquaintance, nor did we ever see him, save once. It was at the great Edinburgh Philosophic Feed of 1846, when Macaulay, Whately, and other lions, young and old, roared, on the whole, rather feebly, and in vulgar falsetto, over their liberal provender. Delta, too, was a speaker, and his speech had two merits, at least, modesty and brevity, and contrasted thus well with Whately's egotistical rigmarole, Macaulay's labored paradox, and Maclagan's inane bluster. He was, we understood afterwards, in poor health at the time, and did not do justice to himself. But we have been long familiar with his poems in "Blackwood" and the "Dumfries Herald," to which he occasionally contributed. We remember well when, next to a paper by North, or a poem by Aird, we looked eagerly for one by Delta in each new number of "Ebony;" and we now cheerfully proceed to say a few words about his true and exquisite genius.

We may call Delta the male Mrs. Hemans. Like her, he loved principally the tender, the soft, and the beautiful. Like her, he excelled in fugitive verses, and seldom attempted, and still more seldom succeeded, in the long or the labored poem. Like her, he tried a great variety of styles and measures. Like her, he ever sought to interweave a sweet and strong moral with his strains, and to bend them all in by a graceful curve around the Cross. But, unlike her, his tone was uniformly glad and genial, and he exhibited none of that morbid melancholy which lies often like a dark funeral edge around her most beautiful poems: and this, because he was a _masculine_ shape of the same elegant genus.

Delta's principal powers were cultured sensibility, fine fancy, good taste, and an easy, graceful style and versification. He sympathized with all the "outward forms of sky and earth, with all that was lovely, and pure, and of a good report" in the heart and the history of humanity, and particularly with Scottish scenery, and Scottish character and manners. His poetry was less a distinct power or vein, than the general result and radiance of all his faculties. These exhaled out of them a fine genial enthusiasm, which expressed itself in song. We do not think, with Carlyle, that it is the same with all high poets. _He_ says--"Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility, and a certain vague tunefulness of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from them, but rather the result of their general harmony and completion." Now, 1st, Carlyle is here grossly unjust to Keats. Had the author of Hyperion nothing but maudlin sensibility? If ever man was devoured, body and soul, by that passion for, and perception of, the beauty and glory of the universe, which is the essence of poetry, it was poor Keats. He was poetry incarnate--the wine of the gods poured into a frail earthy vessel, which split around it. Nor has Burns, of whom Carlyle is here writing, left any thing to be compared, in ideal qualities, in depth, and massiveness, and almost Miltonic agnificence, with the descriptions of Saturn, and the Palace of the Sun, and the Senate of the Gods in "Hyperion." Burns was the finest lyrist of his or any age; but Keats, had he lived, would have been one of the first of _epic_ poets. 2dly, We do not very well comprehend what Carlyle means by the words "no organ, which can be superadded to, or disjoined from the rest." If he means that no culture can add, or want of it take away, poetic faculty, he is clearly right. But, if he means that nature never confers a poetic vein distinct from, and superior to, the surrounding faculties of the man, we must remind him of certain stubborn facts. Gay and Fontaine were "fable-trees," Goldsmith was an "inspired idiot." Godwin's powerful philosophic and descriptive genius seemed scarcely connected with the man; he had to write himself _into_ it, and his friends could hardly believe him the author of his own works! Even Byron was but a common man, except at his desk, or "on his stool" as he himself called it. He had to "call" his evil spirit from the vasty deep, and to lash himself very often into inspiration by a whip of "Gin twist." And James Hogg was little else than a haverer, till he sat down to write poetry, when the "faery queen" herself seemed to be speaking from within him. Nay, 3dly, we are convinced that many men, of extraordinary powers otherwise, have in them a vein of poetry as distinct from the rest as the bag of honey in the bee is from his sting, his antennae, and his wings, and which requires some special circumstance or excitement to develop it. Thus it was, we think, with Burke, Burns, and Carlyle himself. All these had poetry in them, and have expressed it; but any of them might have avoided, in a great measure, its expression, and might have solely shone in other spheres. For example, Burke has written several works full, indeed, of talent, but without a single gleam of that real imagination which other of his writings display. What a contrast between his "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," or his "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," (an essay containing not one sublime, and not two beautiful sentences in it all,) and the "rare and regal" rhetorical and poetic glories of his "Essay on the French Revolution," or his "Letters on a Regicide Peace!" Burns might have been a philosopher of the Dugald Stewart school, as acute and artificially eloquent as any of them, had he gone to Edinburgh College instead of going to Irvine School. Carlyle might have been a prime-minister of a somewhat original and salvage sort, had it been so ordered. None of the three were so essentially poetical, that all their thoughts were "twin-born with poetry," and rushed into the reflection of metaphor, as the morning beams into the embrace and reflection of the lake. All were stung into poetry: Burke by political zeal and personal disappointment, Burns by love, and Carlyle by that white central heat of dissatisfaction with the world and the things of the world, which his temperament has compelled him to express, but which his Scottish common sense has taught him the wisdom of expressing in earnest masquerade and systematic metaphor. But, 4thly, there is a class of poets who have possessed more than the full complement of human faculties, who have added to these extensive accomplishments and acquirements, and yet who have been so constituted, that imaginative utterance has been as essential to their thoughts as language itself. Such were Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, &c., and such are Wilson, Bailey, Aird, and Yendys. These are "nothing, if not poetical." All their powers and acquisitions turn instinctively toward poetic expression, whether in verse or prose. And near them, although on a somewhat lower plane, stood Delta.

Poetry, with Delta, was rather the natural outflow of his whole soul and culture combined, than an art or science. His poetry was founded on feelings, not on principles. Indeed, we fancy that little true poetry, in any age, has been systematic. It is generally the work of sudden enthusiasm, wild and rapid ecstasy acting upon a nature prefitted for receiving the afflatus, whether by gift or by accomplishment, or by both united. Even the most thoroughly furnished have been as dependent on moods and happy hours as the least. The wind of inspiration bloweth where it listeth. Witness Milton and Coleridge, both of whom were masters of the theory of their art, nay, who had studied it scientifically, and with a profound knowledge of cognate sciences, and yet both of whom could only build up the lofty rhyme at certain seasons, and in certain circumstances, and who frequently perpetrated sheer dulness and drivel. The poetry of Homer, of Eschylus, of Lucretius, of Byron, of Shelley, of Festus--in short, the most of powerful poetry--has owed a vast deal more to excitement and enthusiasm than to study or elaborate culture. The rhapsodists were the first, have been the best, and shall be the last of the poets. And with what principles of poetic art were the bards of Israel conversant? And what systems of psychology or aesthetics had Shakspeare studied? And in what college were trained the framers of the ballad-poetry of the world--the lovers who soothed with song their burning hearts--the shepherds who sang amid their green wildernesses--the ploughmen who modulated to verse the motion of their steers--the kings of the early time who shouted war-poetry from their chariots--the Berserkars whose long hair curled and shook as though life were in it, to the music of their wild melodies--and the "men of sturt and strife," the rough Macpherson-like heroes, whose spirits sprang away from the midst of flood and flame, from the gallows or the scaffold, on whirlwinds of extempore music and poetry? Poetry, with them, was the irresistible expression of passion and of imagination, and hence its power; and to nothing still, but the same rod, can its living waters flow amain. Certain fantastic fribbles of the present day may talk of "principles of art," and "principles of versification," and the necessity of studying poetry as a science, and may exhaust the resources of midnight darkness in expressing their bedrivelled notions; but our principle is this--"Give us a gifted intellect, and warm true heart, and stir these with the fiery rod of passion and enthusiasm, and the result will be genuine, and high, and lasting poetry, as certainly as that light follows the sun."

It may, perhaps, be objected, besides, that Delta has left no large or great poem. Now, here we trace the presence of another prevalent fallacy. Largeness is frequently confounded with greatness. But, because Milton's Paradise Lost is both large and great, it does not follow that every great poem must be large, any more than that every large poem must be great. Pollok's Course of Time is a large and a clever, but scarcely a great poem. Hamlet and Faust may be read each in an hour, and yet both are great poems. Heraud's Judgment of the Flood is a vast folio in size, but a very second-rate poem in substance. Thomas Aird's Devil's Dream covers only four pages, yet who ever read it without the impression "this is a great effort of genius." Lalla Rookh was originally a quarto, but, although brilliant in the extreme, it can hardly be called a poem at all. Burns's Vision of Liberty contains, in the space of thirty-two lines, we hesitate not to say, all the elements of a great poem. Although Delta's poems be not large, it is not a necessary corollary that they are inferior productions. And if none of them, perhaps, fill up the whole measure of the term "great," many of them are beautiful, all are genuine, and some, such as Casa Wappy, are exquisite.

Health is one eminent quality in this pleasing writer. Free originally from morbid tendencies, he has nursed and cherished this happy tone of mind by perusing chiefly healthy authors. He has acted on the principle that the whole should be kept from the sick. He has dipped but sparingly into the pages of Byron and Shelley, whereas Wordsworth, Wilson, Southey, and Scott, are the gods of his idolatry. Scott is transcendently clear. Indeed, we think that he gives to him, as a poet, a place beyond his just deserts. His ease, simplicity, romantic interest, and Border fire, have blinded him to his faults, his fatal facility of verse, his looseness of construction, and his sad want of deep thought and original sentiment. To name him beside or above Wordsworth, the great consecrated bard of his period, is certainly a heresy of no small order. One or two of Wordsworth's little poems, or of his sonnets, are, we venture to say, in genuine poetical depth and beauty, superior to Scott's _five_ larger poems put together. _They_ are long, lively, rambling, shallow, and blue, glittering streams. Wordsworth's ballads are deep and clear as those mountain pools over which bends the rowan, and on which smiles the autumn sky, as on the fittest reflector of its own bright profundity and solemn clearness.

Well did Christopher North characterize Delta as the poet of the spring. He was the darling of that darling season. In all his poetry there leaped and frolicked "vernal delight and joy." He had in some of his verses admirably, and on purpose, expressed the many feelings or images which then throng around the heart, like a cluster of bees settling at once upon flower--the sense of absolute newness, blended with a faint, rich thrill of recollection--the fresh bubbling out of the blood from the heart-springs--the return of the reveries of childhood or youth--the intolerance of the fireside--the thirst after nature renewed within the soul--the strange glory shed upon the earth, all red and bare though it yet be--the attention excited by every thing, "even by the noise of the fly upon the sunny wall, or the slightest murmur of creeping waters"--the springing up of the sun from his winter declinature--the softer and warmer lustre of the stars--and the new emphasis with which men pronounce the words "hope" and "love." To crown a spring evening, there sometimes appears in the west the planet Venus, bright yellow-green, shivering as with ecstasy in the orange or purple sky, and rounding off the whole scene into the perfection of beauty. The Scottish poet of spring did not forget this element of its glory, but sung a hymn to that fair star of morn and eve worthy of its serene, yet tremulous splendor.

Delta was eminently a national writer. He did not gad abroad in search of the sublime or strange, but cultivated the art of staying at home. The scenery of his own neighborhood, the traditions or the histories of his own country, the skies and stars of Scotland, the wild or beautiful legends which glimmer through the mist of its past--these were "the haunt and the main region of his song," and hence, in part, the sweetness and the strength of his strains. Indeed, it is remarkable that nearly all our Scottish poets have been national and descriptive. Scotland has produced no real epic, few powerful tragedies, few meditative poems of a high rank, but what a mass of poetry describing its own scenery and manners, and recording its own traditions. King James the Sixth, Gawin Douglas, Davie Lyndsay, Ramsay, Fergusson, Ross of the "Faithful Shepherdess," Burns, Beattie, Sir Walter Scott, Wilson, Aird, Delta, and twenty more, have been all more or less national in their subject, or language, or both. We attribute this, in a great measure, to the extreme peculiarity of Scottish manners, as they were, and to the extreme and romantic beauty of Scottish scenery. The poetic minds, in a tame country like England, are thrown out upon foreign topics, or thrown in upon themselves; whereas, in Scotland, they are arrested and detained within the circle of their own manners and mountains. "Paint us first," the hills seem to cry aloud. A reason, too, why we have had few good tragedies or meditative poems, may be found in our national narrowness of creed, and in our strong prejudice against dramatic entertainments. As it is, we have only Douglas, and three or four good plays of Miss Baillie's, to balance Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and all that galaxy--not to speak of the multitudes who have followed--and only the "Grave," the "Minstrel," and the "Course of Time," to compare with the works of George Herbert, Giles Fletcher, Quarles, Milton, Young, Cowper, and Wordsworth.

We find in Delta little meditative power or tendency. His muse had no "speculation" in her eye. Whether from caution, or from want of the peculiar faculty, he never approached those awful abysses of thought which are now attracting so many poets--attracting them, partly from a desire to look down into their darkness, and partly from a passion for those strange and shivering flowers which grow around their sides. Leigh Hunt, in his late autobiography, when speaking of Blanco White, seems to blame all religious speculation, as alike hopeless and useless. But, in the present day, unless there be religious speculation, there can, with men of mind, be little religion--no creed--nor even an approximation toward one. Would Mr. Hunt destroy that link, which in every age has bound us to the infinite and eternal? Would he bring us back to mere brute worship, and brute belief? Because we cannot at present form an infallible creed, should we beware of seeking to form a creed at all? Because we cannot see all the stars, must we never raise our eyes, or our telescopes, to the midnight heavens? Because HE has been able to reach no consistent and influential faith, ought all men to abandon the task? So far from agreeing with this dogmatic denunciation, we hold that it argues on the part of its author--revered and beloved though he be--a certain shallowness and levity of spirit--that its tendency is to crush a principle of aspiration in the human mind, which may be likened to an outspringing angel pinion, and that it indirectly questions the use and the truth of all revelation. We honor, we must say, Blanco White, in his noble struggles, and in his divine despair, more than Leigh Hunt, in his denial that such struggles are wiser than a maniac's trying to leap to the sun, and in the ignoble conceptions of man's position and destiny which his words imply. And, notwithstanding his chilling criticism, so unlike his wont, we believe still, with Coleridge, that not Wordsworth, nor Milton, have written a sonnet, embodying a thought so new and magnificent, in language so sweet and musical, and perfectly fitted to the thought, like the silvery new moon sheathed in a transparent fleecy cloud, as that of Blanco White's beginning with "Mysterious Night."

Delta, we have already said, gained reputation, in prose, as well as in verse. His Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, is one of the most delightful books in the language. It is partly, it is true, imitated from Galt; but, while not inferior to him in humor, it has infused a far deeper vein of poetry into the conception of common Scottish life. Honor to thee, honest Mansie! Thou art worth twenty Alton Lockes, the metaphysical tailor (certainly one of the absurdest creations, and surrounded by the most asinine story of the age, although redeemed by some glorious scenes, and one character, Sandy Mackay, who is just Thomas Carlyle humanized). But better than thee still, is thy 'prentice, Mungo Glen, with decline in his lungs, poetry in his heart, and on his lips one of the sweetest laments in the language! Many years have elapsed since we read thy life, but our laughter at thy adventures, and our tears at the death of thy poor 'prentice, seem as fresh as those of yesterday!

Why did Delta only open, and never dig out, this new and rich vein? He alone seemed adequate to follow, however far off, in the steps of the Great Wizard. Aird seemed to have exhausted his tale-writing faculty, exquisite as it was. Wilson's tales, with all their power, lack repose; they are too troubled, tearful, monotonous, and tempestuous. Galt, Miss Ferrier, the authoress of the Odd Volume, Macnish, &c., are dead....

We had not the pleasure of hearing Delta's recent lectures. They were, chatty, conversational, lively, full of information, although neither very eloquent, nor very profound. He knew too well the position in which he stood, and the provender which his audience required! Nor, we confess, did we expect to meet in them with a comprehensive or final vidimus of the poetry of the last fifty years. His Edinburgh eye has been too much dazzled and overpowered by the near orbs of Walter Scott and Wilson, to do justice to remoter luminaries. Nor was criticism exactly Delta's forte. He had not enough of subtility--perhaps not enough of profound native instinct--and, perhaps, some will think, not enough of bad blood. But his criticism must, we doubt not, be always sincere in feeling, candid in spirit, and manly in language. Still, we repeat, that his power and mission were in the description of the woods and streams, the feelings and customs, the beauties and peculiarities, of 'dear Auld Scotland.'

It may, perhaps, be necessary to add, that the name Delta was applied to Dr. Moir, from his signature in "Blackwood," which was always [Symbol: Delta]; that he was a physician in Musselburgh, and the author of some excellent treaties on subjects connected with his own profession; and that while an accomplished litterateur and beautiful poet, he never neglected his peculiar duties, but stood as high in the medical as in the literary world.

The poetical works of David Macbeth Moir
 Volume 1  |  Volume 2

Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith

Outlines of the ancient history of medicine
Being a view of the progress of the healing art among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Arabians by D. M. Moir (1831)