THE POEMS OF DAVID GRAY.
PUBLISHED BY
JAMES MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.
- London, Hamilton, Adams and Co.
- Cambridge, Macmillan and Co.
- Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas.
- Dublin, W. H. Smith and Son.
MDCCCLXXIV.
THE
POETICAL WORKS
OF
DAVID GRAY
A NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION, EDITED BY
HENRY GLASSFORD BELL
Glasgow
JAMES MACLEHOSE
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO.
1874
All rights reserved
PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY
MACLEHOSE AND MACDOUGALL,
GLASGOW.
TO
The Memory of
HENRY GLASSFORD BELL,
LATE SHERIFF OF LANARKSHIRE,
THIS VOLUME,
ON WHICH HIS LATEST LITERARY LABOUR
WAS BESTOWED,
IS
Affectionately Dedicated.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
This new Edition of the Works of David Gray, containing, it isbelieved, all the maturely finished poems of the author, is a doublememorial. It commemorates “the thin-spun life” of a man of truegenius and rare promise, and the highly cultured judgment and tendersympathies of a critic who has passed away in the vigorous fulness ofhis years.
A specimen page of “The Luggie,” forwarded with an appreciativeletter from a friend, reached the author on the day before his death.He received it as “good news”—the fragmentary realization of hisambitious dreams—and, in the hope that his name might not be whollyforgotten, said he could now enter “without tears” into his rest.[viii]
Within a week before his removal from amongst us, Mr. Glassford Bellwas engaged in correcting the proofs of the present edition. He hadselected from a mass of MSS. and other material what new pieces hethought worthy of insertion in this enlarged edition—he had rearrangedthe whole and finally revised the greater part of the volume, which itwas his intention to preface with a Memoir and Criticism. He lookedforward to accomplishing this labour of love in a period of retirementfrom more active work which he had proposed to pass in Italy.
It has been thought inadvisable to commit to other hands theunexpectedly interrupted task. For a statement of the few andsimple vicissitudes of the Poet’s career, as well as a brief butdiscriminating estimate of his rank in our literature, the reader isreferred to the speech—at the close of the volume—delivered by[ix]Mr. Bell, nine years ago, on the inauguration of the Monument in the“Auld Aisle” Burying-ground. Of the movement which resulted in thistribute