ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

DAVID GRAY, AND OTHER ESSAYS, CHIEFLY ON POETRY

DAVID GRAY, AND OTHER ESSAYS,

CHIEFLY ON POETRY.

Sing, Poet, small or mighty—hug to thyself
The luxury of seeing—sing, and die!
’Tis the old story of the figleaf time:
A groping after beauty, a divine,
Aspiring, climbing, impulse, after God;—
Something far better than successful too—
Eternal!

DAVID GRAY,

AND

OTHER ESSAYS, CHIEFLY ON

POETRY.

BY

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

LONDON:

SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON,

MILTON HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL.

1868.

The right of translation is reserved.

FIRST WORD.

IT is from no desire to appear in a new character that I publish the present volume. The following Essays, indeed, are prose additions and notes to my publications in verse, rather than mere attempts at general criticism, for which, indeed, I have little aptitude. They are my Confession of Faith. I have here briefly touched on several great and magnificent questions immediately affecting the poetic personality:—on the nature and character of the Poet par excellence, on the Student’s Vocation, on what is and what is not moral in the Student’s Utterance, slightly on religious light and truth; illustrating my matter by such sketches as that of Whitman, and such notes as that on Herrick’s Hesperides. More would have been added, and particularly an Essay on “The Poetry of David Gray,” had not my health ^vi suddenly broken down just as the volume was going to press. The book, however, is complete as it stands,—an epitome of what may be said hereafter in different ways.
     The biography of David Gray is another matter. A large portion of it appeared some years ago in the “Cornhill Magazine,” but the additions, now first published, are very important. It is a story known and told as only one could know and tell it; and will, I trust, send still more readers to Gray’s wonderful poems. The little green-bound duodecimo, “The Luggie and other Poems, by the late David Gray,” was wafted out unto the great world, heralded by a kindly preface and a brief memoir. It excited little or no comment. The exquisite music was too low and tender to attract crowds, or to entice coteries delighted with the scream of the whippersnapper. Nevertheless, a few rare spirits heard and welcomed the truest, purest, tenderest lyrical note that has floated to English ears this half-century.

                                                                                                                                 ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Sligachan, Isle of Skye,
         Dec. 1, 1867.

CONTENTS.

                                                                                                                             PAGE

I. THE POET, OR SEER         .            .           .            .           .            .           1

II. DAVID GRAY           .           .            .           .            .           .          .         61

III. THE STUDENT, AND HIS VOCATION           .           .            .             175

IV. WALT WHITMAN           .           .            .           .            .           .        201

V. HERRICK’S HESPERIDES           .           .            .           .            .           221

VI. LITERARY MORALITY           .           .            .           .            .             237

VII. ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE           .           .            .           .                269

VIII. ON MY OWN TENTATIVES         .            .           .            .               287

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[Note: I have added some more information concerning David Gray (including Buchanan’s original essay, published in February, 1864 in The Cornhill Magazine and James Hedderwick’s Memoir from The Luggie and Other Poems, published in 1862) which may be of interest.]

Notes on David Gray

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Reviews of David Gray, and other Essays, chiefly on Poetry

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