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-Bella, horrida bella, Et Tybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno. Or, as honest Withers says of himself, in a dark lanthrene offering a dim discovery on riddles and semi-riddles, &c., intermixed with cautions, remembrances, predictions," &c.

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SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF * HECTOR MACNEILL.

HECTOR MACNEILL was descended sessed, for some centuries, a small hefrom a respectable family, who posreditary estate in the southernmost district of Argyllshire. His father, after

-And I perhaps among them may be several vicissitudes of fortune, obtain

That was let loose for service to be done, In order to such kinds (as I believe

ed a company in the 42d regiment of Scotch Highlanders, with whom he served several severe campaigns in

I am, and when I'm gone, some will Flanders. Having been seized with

perceive,

Though none observe it now),

I blunder out what worldly-prudent men Count madnesse.

p. 7.

Human prediction must be for ever separated from divine prophecy; there is nothing supernatural in the prescience we are asserting; and Socrates, though he cajoled his heathens, with the story of his "Demon," was a great predictor.

The present contemplation of the future, with the statesman or the philosopher, is entirely derived from that of the past, which includes the history of the present. An intimate familiarity with the past, combined with natural sagacity and our own experience, will be sufficient to form a great predictor in human affairs. This prophet may be liable to run too close those parallels in history which so frequently appear; but in all historical parallels much is to be dropped and much to be substituted, before their common principles can be made to agree; the full comprehension, the fact of the future in the past, forms that prescient faculty, with which some great men have unquestionably been endowed.

Absorbed in present views, carried away by a sectarian presumption and egotism, the audacious revolutionists of these times strike into a bye-path in pursuit of their empirical measures; they dare to imagine that their own inventions can suggest to them all that is to be done and all that is to be said; a contempt, and even an oblivion of the past, is the glory of their ignorance; and, therefore, we are perpetually discovering that their new is old, while the old remains for them still new, when we take the pains to discover it, to this unlessoned and stripling race of politicians.

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dangerous pulmonary complaint, he disposed of his commission, and retired with a wife and two children, to that beautiful residence, Rosebank, near Roslin, where, on the 22d of October 1746, the subject of this memoir was born, who, to use his own words, "amidst the murmur of streams, and the shades of Hawthornden, may be said to have inhaled with life the atmosphere of a poet."

Captain Macneill possessed all the generosity of a soldier, and all the hospitality of a Highlander, so that, in no long time, he found himself in circumstances somewhat embarrassed, and was forced to sell the delightful spot to which he had become most strongly attached. He then retired to a farm on the banks of Loch Lomond, where, for several years, he enjoyed the calm pleasures of a rural life, with uninterrupted felicity to himself and his family. But having lost a considerable sum of money by the failure of one friend, and become involved in a lawsuit, in consequence of having been security for another, the latter part of his life was darkened by misfortune. An opulent relation in Bristol, having paid Captain Macneill a visit during his distresses, took a fancy for his little namesake, Hector, and promised to provide for him. Accordingly, after two years' preparatory education at a public seminary, the youth was sent, at the age of fourteen, to Bristol. The cousin, to whose charge he was committed, had been the Captain of a West India trader, and finally realised a considerable fortune, by

This sketch has been drawn from the

autobiography of the poet, now in possession of one of his most esteemed friends; a very entertaining and instructive work, and which, we understand, will probably be given to the public.

tomed progress of human nature, the foresight of the predictors is unquestionable. Hartley, in his " Observations on Man," &c. published in 1749, predicted the fall of the existing governments and hierarchies in these two simple propositions :

“PROP. 81. It is probable that all the civil governments will be overturned.

PROP. 82. It is probable that the present forms of church government will be dissolved."

We are told that Lady Charlotte Wentworth, much alarmed at these falls of church and state, asked Hartley when these terrible things would happen? The predictor answered, "I am an old man, and shall not live to see them; but you are a young woman, and probably will see them." We can hardly deny that the prediction has failed;-it has taken place in America, and it has occurred in France. A fortuitous event has comfortably thrown back the world into its old corners; but we still revolve in a circle; what is dark and distant shall be clear as we approach it; and these 81st and 32d propositions of our Vaticinator may again come round in a crisis.

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There is a spirit of political vaticination, which has been often ascribed to the highest source of inspiration, by the enthusiasts of a party; but, since "the language of prophecy" has ceased among them, such pretensions are equally impious and unphilosophical. Knox, the reformer, possessed an extraordinary portion of this bold prophetic confidence. He appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of some persons. Many of his "prophetical sayings," as they were called, esteemed wild at the time, were afterwards remembered with awful astonishment. When condemned to a galley in Rochelle, he predicted that, "within two or three years, he should preach the Gospel at St Giles's in Edinburgh; an improbable event which happened. Of Mary and Darnley, he pronounced, that " as the king, for the queen's pleasure, had gone to mass, the Lord, in his justice, would make her the instrument of his overthrow." Events not long afterwards realized. There are other striking predictions of the deaths of Thomas Maitland, and of

Kirkaldy of Grange, and the warning he solemnly gave to the Regent Murray not to go to Linlithgow, where he was assassinated. Such predictions occasioned a barbarous people to imagine that Knox had some immediate communication with Heaven. One Clerius, a Spanish friar and almanackmaker, clearly predicted the death of Henry the Fourth of France. Peiresc, as Gassendi tells us, although he gave no faith to the vain science of astrology, alarmed for the life of a beloved monarch, consulted with two gentlemen about the king, and sent the Spanish almanack to his majesty. That high-spirited prince thanked them for their care, but slighted the prediction; the event occurred; and, in the following year, the Spanish friar spread his own fame in a new almanack. I have been occasionally struck at the Jeremiads of honest George Withers the poet; some of his works afford many solemn predictions. Some predictions are recorded of this sort, which have been made after the event; but as certain is it, that many have preceded it, which we may fairly account for on mere human principles. The busy spirits of a revolutionary_age, the heads of a party such as Knox was, have frequently secret communications with spies or friends; such a constant source of concealed information, combined with a shrewd, confident, and enthusiastic temper, will account for some mysterious predictions of this nature. Knox was unquestionably endowed with a considerable portion of our Stochastic faculty, as appears by his Machiavellian maxim, on the barbarous destruction of the monasteries and cathedrals."The best way to keep the rooks from returning is to pull down their nests." The event of Henry the Fourth's death, so clearly predicted by the Spanish friar, resulted either from his being acquainted with the plot, or made an instrument in this case by those who were; the report of the assassination, before it occurred, was rife in Spain and Italy. Such as George Withers, will always rise in disturbed times, which are favourable to a melancholy temperament, and sanguine imagination. Like the Sybil attending on Eneas, these usually see nothing but horrid battles, and the Tyber foaming with blood.

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-And I perhaps among them may be

That was let loose for service to be done,
In order to such kinds (as I believe

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF
* *.

HECTOR MACNEILL.

HECTOR MACNEILL was descended

from a respectable family, who possessed, for some centuries, a small hereditary estate in the southernmost district of Argyllshire. His father, after several vicissitudes of fortune, obtained a company in the 42d regiment of Scotch Highlanders, with whom he served several severe campaigns in

I am, and when I'm gone, some will Flanders. Having been seized with a

perceive,

Though none observe it now),

I blunder out what worldly-prudent men
Count madnesse.
p. 7.

Human prediction must be for ever separated from divine prophecy; there is nothing supernatural in the prescience we are asserting; and Socrates, though he cajoled his heathens, with the story of his "Demon,” was a great predictor.

The present contemplation of the future, with the statesman or the philosopher, is entirely derived from that of the past, which includes the history of the present. An intimate familiarity with the past, combined with natural sagacity and our own experience, will be sufficient to form a great predictor in human affairs. This prophet may be liable to run too close those parallels in history which so frequently appear; but in all historical parallels much is to be dropped and much to be substituted, before their common principles can be made to agree; the full comprehension, the fact of the future in the past, forms that prescient faculty, with which some great men have unquestionably

been endowed.

Absorbed in present views, carried away by a sectarian presumption and egotism, the audacious revolutionists of these times strike into a bye-path in pursuit of their empirical measures; they dare to imagine that their own inventions can suggest to them all that is to be done and all that is to be said; a contempt, and even an oblivion of the past, is the glory of their ignorance; and, therefore, we are perpetually discovering that their new is old, while the old remains for them still new, when we take the pains to discover it, to this unlessoned and stripling race of politicians.

dangerous pulmonary complaint, he disposed of his commission, and retired with a wife and two children, to that beautiful residence, Rosebank, near Roslin, where, on the 22d of October 1746, the subject of this memoir was 66 aborn, who, to use his own words, midst the murmur of streams, and the shades of Hawthornden, may be said to have inhaled with life the atmosphere of a poet."

Captain Macneill possessed all the generosity of a soldier, and all the hospitality of a Highlander, so that, in no long time, he found himself in circumstances somewhat embarrassed, and was forced to sell the delightful spot to which he had become most strongly attached. He then retired to a farm on the banks of Loch Lomond, where, for several years, he enjoyed the calm pleasures of a rural life, with uninterrupted felicity to himself and his family. But having lost a considerable sum of money by the failure of one friend, and become involved in a lawsuit, in consequence of having been security for another, the latter part of his life was darkened by misfortune. An opulent relation in Bristol, having paid Captain Macneill a visit during his distresses, took a fancy for his little namesake, Hector, and promised to provide for him. Accordingly, after two years' preparatory education at a public seminary, the youth was sent, at the age of fourteen, to Bristol. The cousin, to whose charge he was committed, had been the Captain of a West India trader, and finally realised a considerable fortune, by

This sketch has been drawn from the

autobiography of the poet, now in possession of one of his most esteemed friends; a very entertaining and instructive work, and which, we understand, will probably be given to the public.

various mercantile occupations. He was pleased with the diligence and ability of his ward, and determined that, like himself, he should become a merchant and a seaman. It was at first intended that he should be sent on a "trying voyage" to the coast of Guinea, in a slave-ship; but this plan was laid aside, and Hector Macneill was entered on board the Ruby, Captain Henderson, bound to St Christophers and Antigua, as ordinary, but was birthed with the second mate, gunner, and carpenter, in the steerage. If he liked the sea, something was to be done for him on his returning to port; if not, his cousin gave him introductory letters to some of his particular friends in St Christophers, together with one for his son, who had the charge of his father's store-houses in that island.

The voyage to St Christophers completely sickened young Macneill with the sea, and after a year's unsatisfactory residence on that island with his patron's son, he sailed for Guadaloupe, on an engagement of three years, in the employ of a merchant there, which had been represented to him as in all respects highly eligible. In this situation he met with nothing but insults and bad treatment, and Guadaloupe having been, in virtue of the treaty of peace between England and France, restored to the latter, the merchant with whom he lived departed for America, and left him, at the age of seventeen, to shift for himself, with only eight or ten pistoles in his pocket, and not a single friend who cared for him in the island. After many difficulties, he contrived to get a passage to St John's, Antigua, where he found the cousin with whom he had parted at St Kitt's, and immediately began to assist him as a clerk. Finding, however, that this person expected him to work day and night without any salary, he quitted his employment, and found himself once more set adrift, and at the mercy of the waves of fortune. It was not long, however, till he was recommended by a friend to the Provost-Marshal of Grenada, as a person qualified, by his general talents, and more particularly by his knowledge of the French language, to assist in his office, and being chosen to the situation, he soon afterwards arrived at St George's Town in that island. Here he lived happily and usefully for

.

three years, discharging the duties of his office with great credit, and respected by all. Here too, had he been of a money-making disposition, he might have realised some fortune, but unluckily for himself, he was not, and after six year's residence in the West Indies, his sole property was an unblemished reputation. At this time he heard that his mother and sister were dead, and upbraiding himself for having allowed his family to remain so long ignorant of his fate in life, he resolved to return to his father's house, and see what prospects might open up for him in his native country.

About eighteen months after Hector's return to Scotland, his father died, leaving him but a very slender patrimony. This he was advised to sink in an annuity; and for several years he contrived, on £80 per annum, not only to support himself, but also three other persons who had unfortunately become dependent on his justice and humanity. He had, fatally for his happiness and respectability, yet from circumstances originating in romantic generosity, formed a connexion which he found it impossible for him to break off; and it was not, till the failure of the person from whom he had purchased his annuity startled him from his indolent and delusive life, that he saw the necessity of tearing himself away from his luckless family ties, and of getting into some employment to ward off the immediate approach of poverty and dependence. Through the interest of a friend in London, he was received as an assistant into the Secretary's-office, in the Victory, Admiral Geary's flag-ship, at that time commanded by the celebrated Captain Kempenfeldt, and made two cruises with the grand fleet, during which nothing of importance occurred; but seeing no prospect of advancement in a profession most uncongenial with his habits and dispositions, he gave up his equivocal and unproductive situation, and again turned his face towards Scotland. In Liverpool he was induced to remain for some months, by his friendship with Messrs Currie and Roscoe (men who afterwards became so illustrious), and with the benevolent and wise Rathbone, who most affectionately loved him; and while there, he received intelligence of his being appointed to the same kind of situation which he had

formerly held, on board the flag-ship of Sir Richard Bickerton, appointed to take the chief command of the naval power in India, in the room of Sir Edward Hughes. After three years absence from Britain-during which he was in the last undecisive action with Suffrein, and encountered most of the difficulties and dangers incident to a sea-faring life-Hector Macneill returned as poor a man as before, fortune having never once smiled upon him—and that promotion which his acknowledged good conduct and excellent talents deserved, having been constantly retarded by some inauspicious event or other, till at last all prospect of ultimate success was finally closed. In this seemingly hopeless situation he again revisited Scotland; and having raised a few hundred pounds on the security, such as it was, of his annuity, he retired to a farm-house near Stirling, and for a year or two gave himself up entirely to literary pursuits, and more especially to the study of poetry, for which he had in early life shewn both inclination and genius, although the hardships and vicissitudes of fortune had left him but little opportunity of cultivating those powers, and enjoying those pleasures in manhood, which had been the delight and ornament of his early youth. In this retirement he seems to have enjoyed much happiness; for he possessed an elasticity and buoyancy of mind which kept him elate and cheerful under circumstances that would have depressed most men into utter despondency. It was then that he made his first appearance before the public as a poet; but though his poem, which was purely descriptive of local scenery, gained him some reputation among his own friends, and with the inhabitants of the beautiful country therein described, this his first attempt was considered by the public as almost a complete failure, and sunk at once into oblivion. Perceiving that poetry was not likely to be a gainful trade, he once more resolved to enter into active life; and having procured some letters of introduction, to opulent and powerful persons in Jamaica, he set sail for that island on a voyage of adventure, being now in his thirty-eighth year, and as unprovided for as when he first embarked on the troubled sea of life.

On his arrival at Kingston, Hector Macneill became an assistant to the Collector of the Customs, a gentleman with whom he had formed acquaintance during the voyage. This worthy person, however, took the first opportunity that occurred of getting rid of him, as soon as he found that he could transact the business of his of fice without his assistance, and Macneill found himself once more, not only totally destitute of present, but hopeless of future employment. The letters of introduction, which he had brought to some eminent persons, were of no use to him; and in his emergency, he had no other resource than to accept, for a time, of the hospitality of a medical friend, at whose house, situated in a beautiful valley, he took up his temporary abode. He soon afterwards discovered that two of the dearest companions of his boyhood were settled in Jamaica, and from their friendship he received every kind of aid that his situation required, and promises, afterwards fully realized, of future encouragement and support, in case of the failure of those schemes which he was about to carry into execution. These, it would appear, were somewhat vague and indefinite; and a favourable opportunity having soon occurred of returning to Britain, Hector Macneill was prevailed on to embrace it, and to try his chance once more in his native country. Before he quitted Jamaica, he had the satisfaction of seeing his two boys, who had been sent out by a generous friend, comfortably settled; and having, through the interest of the governor's secretary, received a small sum of money as the pay of an inland ensigncy, now conferred on him, but antedated, he set sail in good spirit, and in a few months found himself once more in Scotland.

During his homeward voyage, Macneill had finished a poem, which he had begun before he last left Scotland, and he now published it, under the patronage of Mr Grahame of Gartmore, who had long loved the Poet, and admired his genius. This poem, which is called the "Harp," and founded on an interesting Highland tradition, was not very successful on its first publication, but became afterwards a favourite, and brought the author considerable reputation. For some years Hector Macneill resided with his friend in Stirlingshire, and became engaged

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