I had long sought in vain to procure any authentic materials, however scanty, for a Biographical Memoir of poor FALCONER, when I fortunately met a shipmate of his, Governor HUNTER, at the house of an ingenious Highlander.* With the natural cordiality of a seaman, Mr. HUNTER communicated to me all the information he could remember; and this was also increased by frequent conversations which I enjoyed with that gallant veteran his brother, Lieutenant HUNTER of Greenwich Hospital: but for these gentlemen, the little that has survived respecting FALCONER, would have perished; and even this, owing to the years that have elapsed since the loss of the Aurora, must necessarily be scanty. Mr. WILLIAM FALCONER was born about the year 1730, and was the son of a poor but industrious barber at Edinburgh; who, like Fielding's celebrated Partridge, possessed considerable talents and humour, and maintained a large family by his industry. It is remarkable that all his children, with the sole exception of our Author, were either deaf or dumb: FALCONER himself mentioned this singular circumstance to Captain HUNTER, when they were shipmates together; and "I had after * JOHN M'ARTHUR, Esq. of York Place, a literary and naval character of considerable eminence. wards," adds that officer," an opportunity of being convinced of its truth; when, long after the commencement of my acquaintance with him, I met two of his family labouring under these infirmities in the Poor-house at Edinburgh, where they continued until their death." Poverty in Scotland is never depressed by ignorance, or a want of religious principles: FALCONER therefore, though poor, had a proper bias given to his mind, from the first dawn of its intellectual powers; and it was this bias, impelled by the energy of his genius, which enabled him without any further education, to reach the goal of literary fame. When very young he entered on board a merchant vessel at LEITH, and therein served his apprenticeship. We afterwards find him in the capacity of a servant to CAMPBELL, the Author of LEXIPHANES, when Purser of a ship. This officer, according to Dr. CURRIE,* delighted in improving the mind of our young Seaman; and afterwards, when he had acquired celebrity, this early Patron felt a pride in boasting of his scholar. Probably from the interest of this master, FALCONER was Edition of BURN's Works, vol. ii. p. 283, second edition. It is singular that the Surgeon of a man of war who gave this information to Dr. CURRIS in 1777, should afterwards experience the fate of FALCONER, and be shipwrecked on the Coast of Africa, afterwards made second Mate of a Vessel employed in the Levant trade, which was * shipwrecked during her passage from ALEXANDRIA to VENICE. Only three of the crew survived; and from this melancholy event, calculated to make a lasting impression on his mind, and which seemed, as it were, a foretaste of the dreadful fate he would one day endure; our Poet afterwards drew the outline, and characters of one of the finest Poems in our language. At this distance of time it is impossible to discover the friends who, at so critical a juncture, fostered the hopes, and relieved the necessities of our shipwrecked Mariner; all that I can collect for certain is, that FALCONER continued in the merchant service until he had gained the patronage of his Royal Highness EDWARD DUKE OF YORK, by dedicating to him the inimitable poem of THE SHIPWRECK in the spring of 1762. Previous, however, to this, FALCONER had tried the strength of his natural talent; and, so early as the year 1751, appeared among the poets of his country to lament the death of FREDERICK PRINCE OF WALES: from this period, to the publication of his great work, he occasionally relieved, and strengthened his mind by literary occupation. I have not been able to ascertain the date of this event. b Of this first poetical effort I can only observe, that it contained great faults, with much promise of future excellence, when the style and ideas of its Author had become chastened by the perusal of classic writers: the following are some of the best lines : "Oh bear me to some awful silent glade, Where some unhappy Wretch, aye, mourns his doom, Where Solitude, and Meditation roam, And where no dawning glimpse of Hope can come: Place me in such an unfrequented Shade To speak to none but with the mighty Dead" This Poem was printed at Edinburgh, and is thus alluded to at the close of the third Canto in the second Edition* of the SHIPWRECK: "Thou who hast taught the tragic Harp to mourn, However unsuccessful this attempt might have proved to overcome the natural timidity, or to gratify the tremulous expectation of a young Author; it is natural to suppose, that having advanced thus far on his literary career, he would not afterwards In which they were inserted after the tenth line of p. 137. These lines did not appear in the third edition, and have been omitted in the present one. extinguish the glowing embers of a genius which this attempt had fanned. But where are we to look for those sparks, which perhaps were chiefly confined to himself, or, if communicated, were only given to the confined circle in which he moved? The Gentleman's Magazine contains one Poem,* which I have the authority of Lieutenant HUNTER to assign to FALCONER. I therefore suspect that a few years previous to the publication of THE SHIPWRECK, he occasionally sent poetical communications to that fashionable repository of literary talent; and am strongly inclined to think, that he was the Author of the lines On the uncommon scarcity of Poetry in that Magazine, signed J. W. A SAILOR, as also of The description of a ninety gun Ship, in a subsequent volume, which had no signature. In the first, which appeared in the Magazine for March 1756, how strikingly characteristic of FALCONER is the following passage: "Yet what avails the smiles of lovely Maids, The Chaplain's Petition to the Lieutenants in the Ward Room. (Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 371.) |