Born, at Edinburgh, educated for the law, and called to the Scottish bar in 1840. In 1848 he was appointed Regius professor of English literature in the University of Edinburgh, and the following year married the youngest daughter of Professor John Wilson. He was promoted to the Shrievalty of Orkney and Shetland in 1852. From 1845 to the time of his death, Aytoun was one of the leading contributors to Blackwood. He published “Poland and other Poems,” 1831; “The Lays of Scottish Cavaliers,” 1848; “Bothwell,” 1856; “Firmilian: a Spasmodic Tragedy,” 1858. In conjunction with his friend Sir Theodore Martin he published “Bon Gaultier’s Book of Ballads,” and an edition of translations of several minor poems of Goethe. He was also the author of various tales.

Personal

  The Radicals have set up a silly person of the name of Aytoun, a briefless advocate, as their candidate. He has no chance, but we have made good use of him in our attacks on the Whigs, and great numbers of his voters will go over to Mr. Blair in preference to Jeffrey, and still more in preference to Abercromby.

  It is to ourselves a source of great though melancholy pleasure to look back on our long intercourse with him, which was never interrupted by any differences of opinion or estrangement of feeling. It is rare, indeed, that the relations of business become a source of so much heart-felt pleasure and familiar intimacy; and we cannot think without painful emotion that all this happiness is at an end.

  He was the warmest and most loyal of friends, and, because he was so, he was most happy in his friendships. He was beloved as a son, a brother, and a husband. He had a side for all men; he understood and could make allowance for all peculiarities; and he was quick to appreciate and frank to acknowledge merit of every kind. He was singularly gentle, just, considerate, and forbearing to everything but meanness, vulgarity, and conceit; and even when most provoked by these, he would, out of his large charity, find excuses for “the weak but well-meaning creatures” in whom they had been offensively shown. His duties, public and private, he discharged with conscientious zeal, and with the chivalrous courtesies of a true-hearted gentleman. Therefore he died honoured by his fellow-citizens, and deeply mourned by those who had the happiness to know him as a friend.

  All who knew Aytoun seem to have liked and felt kindly towards him, and to have remembered him as a pleasant, genial, courteous man, refined and cultured, tolerant, warm-hearted and sympathetic, and bringing sunshine wherever he went by his vivacity and good temper. The stories of his ready wit are numerous.

Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, 1848

  Professor Aytoun has selected his ballad themes from striking incidents and from stirring scenes in our mediæval Scottish history—some remote as the field of Flodden, others as recent as that of Drummossie Muir; and he has thrown over them the light of an imagination at once picturesque and powerful…. The perfervidum ingenium Scotorum—that burning, irrepressible energy of character which, whether directed towards good or towards evil, has ever distinguished our country—breathes throughout all his “Lays,” and lends even stern fact the etherealising hues of fiction.

  Here are eight ballads, or “lays,” reminding one, by that name, of Mr. Macaulay’s idea of reconstructing ballad from history; reversing the process by which ancient history makes itself from legendary ballad. Assuming the position of a bard near the time of the action of his several poems, Mr. Aytoun writes his ballads, as we might almost say none but a Scotchman can. In the midst of their very easy flow, of the very careful language, of the true, elaborate poetical dress, there is retained the real tang of the Scotch ballad,—its simplicity, its pathos, its point, and its fire.

  Fashions in poetry may alter, but so long as the themes with which they deal have an interest for his countrymen, his “Lays” will find, as they do now, a wide circle of admirers. His powers as a humorist were perhaps greater than as a poet. They have certainly been more widely appreciated. His immediate contemporaries owe him much, for he has contributed largely to that kindly mirth without which the strain and struggle of modern life would be intolerable. Much that is excellent in his humorous writings may very possibly cease to retain a place in literature from the circumstance that he deals with characters and peculiarities which are in some measure local, and phases of life and feeling and literature which are more or less ephemeral. But much will certainly continue to be read and enjoyed by the sons and grandsons of those for whom it was originally written; and his name will be coupled with those of Wilson, Lockhart, Sidney Smith, Peacock, Jerrold, Mahony, and Hood, as that of a man gifted with humour as genuine and original as theirs, however opinions may vary as to the order of their relative merits.

  Established his fame as a poet of the Walter Scott school. This collection, in which of all his works his chivalrous ardour is most contagious, the impetuous swing of his muse most felt, has required about thirty distinct issues to satisfy the craving of readers.

  The “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers,” on which his chief serious claim must rest, is an interesting book, if hardly a great one. The style is modelled with extreme closeness upon that of Scott, which even Sir Walter, with all his originality and genius, had not been able always to preserve from flatness. In Aytoun’s hands the flats are too frequent, though they are relieved and broken at times by really splendid bursts, the best of which perhaps are “The Island of the Scots” and “The Heart of the Bruce.” For Aytoun’s poetic vein, except in the lighter kinds, was of no very great strength; and an ardent patriotism, a genuine and gallant devotion to the Tory cause, and a keen appreciation of the chivalrous and romantic, did not always suffice to supply the want of actual inspiration.

General

  Has evinced early in life the very highest talents for lyric poetry, and enriched the literature of his country with a volume of ballads, which exceed the strains of Tyrtæus in patriotic spirit, while they rival the odes of Dryden in fire and pathos. So great, indeed, is their merit, and so varied the talent and powers of their accomplished author, that no hesitation need be felt in predicting for him, if his life is spared, the highest destiny in the realms of poetry, as well as the less inviting fields of political discussion.

  If you should happen to lift the first volume of Professor Aytoun’s “Ballads of Scotland,” the book of its own accord will open at “Clerk Saunders,” and by that token you will guess that the ballad has been read and re-read a thousand times. And what a ballad it is! The story in parts is somewhat perilous to deal with, but with what instinctive delicacy the whole matter is managed! Then what tragic pictures, what pathos, what manly and womanly love!

  Aytoun’s humour and poetry stand quite apart. Between the broad fun of “How I became a Yeoman”—another of his best Blackwood papers—and the fife and kettledrum liveliness of the “Lays,” there is no moral connection visible. In short, all we ever read or saw of Aytoun induces us to think of him as a shrewd, able Scot, with a strong vein of the national humour, but whose poetry was mere cleverness exercised on the traditionary material of his political school. His white rose was not waxen—we do not say that. But we do say that it had a very faint smell; that though his poetic Jacobite romanticism was real as far as it went, it did not go very far…. His mind, though of good quality, was not fertile.

  Bothwell was not a hero about whom it was possible to feel any concern. Whatever gloss might be put upon his character, the main fact was not to be got over, that he was a thoroughly selfish, worthless villain, “bloody, bold, and resolute,” and the last man either to feel or to talk, as men must feel and talk who are to engage our sympathies in verse. It was, therefore, clearly impossible to keep faith with history, and at the same time be in harmony with the laws of poetic art. Bothwell, as a character in a drama, would have given splendid scope for poetical handling. Bothwell in a dungeon, telling his own story, was a mistake. Aytoun struggled gallantly against these difficulties, but they were too much for him. The result was a poem full of passages of great beauty and picturesque force, but the ultimate verdict of the public has declared it unsatisfactory as a whole.

  No more remarkable representative than Aytoun to the last of what we have called the afterglow from the spirit of Scott.

  His finest poetical work shows clearly how largely he was influenced by the same spirit which influenced Scott—the spirit of romanticism aroused by the study of the old ballads. As a poet his powers were considerable, although most of his poems exhibit the same general characteristics. The undeniable animation of his verse, and his frequent flashes of descriptive power, cause him to be credited with more imaginative fire than in reality he possesses. But none can deny its presence in those fine lines which depict the exploits of the Scottish exiles at the passage of the Rhine, or in some of the stanzas (hardly, however, so good) which depict the massacre of Glencoe. Undoubtedly he possessed, also, the enviable faculty, rare even among men of genius, of knowing where his real strength lay. Hence he avoided fruitless waste of literary energy and did the best work of which he was capable. The chief quality of his poetry is its picturesqueness; it reproduces very vividly one aspect of the Scottish sentiment which belonged to a by-gone age.

  His racy and overflowing humour was occasionally extravagant and uproarious. In his prose tales he carried exaggeration to excess, and upset probability in a riot of ludicrous fancy. But he had the keenest appreciation of the comic foibles of his countrymen, and especially of the Western Scott.

  It is not, of course, contended that Aytoun was a profound inquirer or a great thinker; he was no Bagehot, nor, in all probability, had he ever reasoned out for himself any abstract system of politics. All that can be claimed for him is a very exceptional measure of ability, good sense and acuteness, combined with a gift of clear and lively writing…. Whatever is to be thought of the “Lays of Ancient Rome,” the “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers” and “Bothwell” (which is nothing but a protracted lay) share few of their excellencies and exaggerate all their defects. With little true strength and little true feeling, they abound in violence and in stagey rhetoric. The conventional simplicity, directness, and movement of the old ballads are scarce attempted; the monotonous jingle of the verse is scarce ever varied. Of technical finish, in a sense, there is plenty; that is to say, there are no doubtful rhymes or superfluous syllables. Yet too many epithets, and even lines, cry aloud that their presence is due to no intrinsic propriety of their own, but to the exigencies of rhyme and metre.

  During his later life-time, Professor Aytoun ranked as one of the leading literary men in Scotland, especially after Professor Wilson’s death, when the mantle of Christopher North had fallen on his shoulders. It is true that there were not many to shred the mantle with him; and he himself modestly attributed his fame and popularity entirely to this state of matters. It is perhaps a pity that, after having established his reputation and influence, Aytoun continued to spend so much of his time on clever little squibs and satires, whose themes were absolutely of the place and moment, instead of concentrating himself on some greater work that would to this day have been associated with his name. Much of his writing was on current politics, and writing of this sort is apt to share the fate of yesterday’s newspaper. His “Bothwell” failed to be a masterpiece, and, owing perhaps mainly to the clumsy form of a prolonged monologue into which he cast it, reads very heavily. His only novel, though full of beautiful descriptive writing, hung fire, and has never become popular. Yet it should be remembered that both of them were written towards the end of his life, after trouble and ill-health had deadened his spirit.