Born at Glasgow, April 22, 1765. His father was a successful lawyer, and, by a very common error, he conceived that no other profession could be so suitable or so advantageous for his son. James, dutiful, and shrinking from opposition, as he did all through life, obeyed the parental wish, and after completing his literary course at the university of his native city, went in 1784 to Edinburgh, where he studied law, first to qualify himself for the business of writer to the signet, and subsequently for the Scottish bar, of which he was elected a member in 1795. His inclinations, however, were all for retirement and literature; and finally, when he had reached the mature age of forty-four, he took orders in the English Church, and became curate first at Shipton, Glouchestershire and then at Sedgefield in the county of Durham. He did not long enjoy an office which he adorned by his pious and eloquent ministrations. Ill health compelled him to try the renovating effects of his native air, but he died shortly after his return, September 14, 1811. The works of Grahame consist of a dramatic poem “Mary Queen of Scots” (published in 1801), “The Sabbath” (1804), “British Georgics” (1804), “The Birds of Scotland” (1806), and “Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade” (1810).

Personal

  Poor Grahame, gentle, and amiable, and enthusiastic, deserves all you can say of him; his was really a hallowed harp, as he was himself an Israelite without guile. How often have I teazed him, but never out of his good-humour, by praising Dundee and laughing at the Covenanters!

  I propose to send to one of the periodical works a biographical notice of the life and writings of my poor friend Grahame. But so small a part of James’s value lay in his poetry, that I feel it difficult to express my real sentiments about it…. One of the most endearing circumstances which I remember of Grahame was his singing. I shall never forget one summer evening that we agreed to sit up all night, and go together to Arthur’s Seat, to see the sun rise. We sat, accordingly, all night in his delightful parlor—the seat of so many happy remembrances! We then went and saw a beautiful sunrise. I returned home with him, for I was living in his house at the time. He was unreserved in all his devoutest feelings before me; and from the beauty of the morning scenery, and the recent death of his sister, our conversation took a serious turn, on the proofs of infinite benevolence in the creation, and the goodness of God. As I retired to my own bed, I overheard his devotions—not his prayer, but a hymn which he sung, and with a power and inspiration beyond himself, and everything else. At that time he was a strong voiced and commanding-looking man. The remembrance of his large, expressive features when he climbed the hill, and of his organ-like voice in praising God, is yet fresh, and ever pleasing in my mind. But it is rendered a sad recollection from contrasting his then energy with the faltering and fallen man which he afterwards became.

  Tall, solemn, large-featured, and very dark, he was not unlike one of the independent preachers of the commonwealth. He is styled “sepulchral Grahame” by Byron. Neither the bar, at which he practised a few years, nor Whig principles, in the promotion of which he was most ardent (but with which he meant only the general principles of liberty), were the right vocation of a pensive nature, whose delight was in religion and poetry…. With the softest of human hearts, his indignation knew no bounds when it was roused by what he held to be oppression, especially of animals or the poor, both of whom he took under his special protection. He and a beggar seemed always to be old friends. The merit of his verse consists in its expressing the feelings of his own heart. It all breathes a quiet, musing benevolence, and a sympathy with the happiness of every living creature. Contention, whether at the bar or in the church, had no charms for one to whom a Scotch tune was a pleasure for a winter evening, and who could pass the whole summer days in cultivating the personal acquaintance of birds in their own haunts, and to whom nothing was a luxury that excluded the etherial calm of indolence. Yet his virtue was by no means passive. He was roused into a new nature by abhorrence of cruelty, and could submit to anything in the cause of duty.

General

  We have a new poet come forth amongst us—James Graham, author of a poem called the “Sabbath,” which I admire very much.

  The greater part of it [“The Sabbath”] is written in a heavy and inelegant manner. The diction throughout is tainted with vulgarity, and there is no selection of words, images, or sentiments, to conciliate the favour of the fastidious reader. The author has evidently some talents for poetical compositions, and is never absolutely absurd, tedious, or silly; but he has no delicacy of taste or imagination; he does not seem to feel the force of the sanction against poetical mediocrity, and his ear appears to have no perception of the finer harmony of versification. If he be a young man, we think there are considerable hopes of him: but if this be the production of maturer talents, we cannot in our conscience exhort him to continue to the service of the muses…. It contains a good deal of doctrine and argumentation, indeed, both in the text and in the notes; but nothing that is not either very trite or very shallow and extravagant…. The whole publication, indeed, though not entitled to stand in the first rank of poetical excellence, is respectably executed, and may be considered as very creditable, either to a beginner, or to one who does not look upon poetry as his primary vocation.

  While the criticasters of his own country were pronouncing sentence of condemnation upon it, for its pious dulness and inanity, the “Sabbath” had found its way from one end of Great Britain to the other;—it was in the mouths of the young, and in the hearts of the aged.

  His taste was singular, and his manner correspondent. The general tenor of his style is homely, and frequently so prosaic that its peculiar graces appear in their full lustre from the contrast of meanness that surrounds them. His readers may be few; but whoever does read him will probably be oftener surprised into admiration, than in the perusal of any one of his contemporaries. The most lively, the most lovely sketches of natural scenery, of minute imagery, and of exquisite incident, unexpectedly developed, occur in his compositions, with ever-varying, yet ever-assimilating features.

  The blank verse of Grahame has some resemblance in structure to that of Cowper and of Wordsworth; but as an artist, he was much inferior to and wants the correctness of either. Whether this arose from deficiency of ear—which could not well be, as he is said to have sung the ballads and songs of our native land mellifluously, and with a touching tenderness—or from some preconceived conviction of its effect in preventing monotony, we have ever, here and there, a line that halts, or that grates prosaically on the ear, like an instrument out of tune. His pages are never lighted up with wit or humour; and it has been objected to him, that he is too uniformly tender or solemn.

  It [“British Georgics”] does not exhibit any particular system of husbandry; it amuses rather than instructs, and recommends the study of the science rather than teaching of it. The work embraces a mixed description, and is lavish on rural modes and manners; the poetry is both lame and tame, and never rises beyond a feebleness of conception, and a descriptive halt. The portion of practical knowledge is very minute, with incidental notes of new introductions.

  Grahame’s genius was limited in its range but within that range was exquisitely true and beautiful. He had no dramatic power, has written no lyrics of merit, and his vein of thought is far from profound. He has been called the Cowper of Scotland, and resembles him in tenderness of feeling, truth of natural description, and ardent piety, but is vastly inferior in strength of mind, force and continuity of style, and, whatever he might do in private, has in his poetry given no evidence of possessing a particle of Cowper’s refined and inimitable humour.

  We may add, before we leave these northern scenes, to which for a time the high flood of intellectual activity seemed to have been transferred, the gentle name of James Grahame, the author of the “Sabbath.” He was not a great poet, nor is that a great poem, but it is very national, and full of a tender sweetness—and echo of Cowper on Scottish soil. Grahame came to light among the early band of the Edinburgh Reviewers, a spectator and sympathiser, if no more—adding a mild enthusiasm for the work of his stronger and more daring friends to his own gentle faculty…. His poems are full of the atmosphere of a pure and retired existence, with something, however, that reminds the reader more of a Scottish manse than an English parsonage; and he was always intensely national.

  When married, Grahame discovered that his wife thought but meanly of his poetry, and this, no doubt, was his main reason for publishing “The Sabbath” anonymously in 1804. It charmed him to find Mrs. Grahame in raptures over the descriptive beauty, the vivid historical illustrations, the moving, sentimental pictures, and the deep religious earnestness of a poem that is Scottish to the core; and he then avowed the authorship. Three new editions were called for in a year, and to these Grahame added descriptive and thoughtful “Sabbath Walks.”