Born in Langholm manse, and educated at Edinburgh High School, failed as a brewer, and turned author in London. In 1765 he published a poem, “The Concubine” (or “Syr Martyn”), and in 1771–75 his version rather than translation of the “Lusiad” of Camoens. In 1779 he went to Lisbon as secretary to Commodore Johnstone, but his last years were spent in London. His ballad of “Cumnor Hall” (which suggested “Kenilworth” to Scott) is poor stuff, but “There’s nae luck about the house” is assured of immortality. See Life by Sim prefixed to Mickle’s Poems (1806).

Personal

  Mickle was a man of genius, who had ventured upon the chance of living by his literary labours,—an experiment always perilous, generally injurious, and often fatal, in the worst acceptation of the word. Mickle, however, did not overrate the powers which he was conscious of possessing, and knew that he could rely upon himself for their due exertion; and he had sufficient worldly prudence to look out for a subject which was likely to obtain notice and patronage. That he was actuated by this motive in fixing upon the Lusiad, appears evidently by the manner in which his translation is executed, and the matter with which it is accompanied. In saying this, no reproach is intended to a man whom we admire and respect; whose memory is without a spot, and whose name will live among the English poets.

The Mariner’s Wife

  Mickle assisted in Evans’s “Collection of Old Ballads”—in which “Cumnor Hall” and other pieces of his first appeared; and though in this style of composition he did not copy the direct simplicity and unsophisticated ardour of the real old ballads, he had much of their tenderness and pathos. A still stronger proof of this is afforded by a Scottish song, “The Mariner’s Wife,” but better known as “There’s nae Luck about the House,” which was claimed by a poor school-mistress, named Jean Adams, who died in the town’s Hospital, Glasgow, in 1765. It is probable that Jean Adams had written some song with the same burthen (“There’s nae luck about the house”), but the popular lyric referred to seems to have been the composition of Mickle. An imperfect, altered, and corrected copy was found among his manuscripts after his death; and his widow being applied to, confirmed the external evidence in his favour, by an express declaration that her husband had said the song was his own, and that he had explained to her the Scottish words. It is the fairest flower in his poetical chaplet. The delineation of humble matrimonial happiness and affection which the song presents, is almost unequalled.

  Mickle’s ballad of “Cumnor Hall,” which suggested to Scott the groundwork of his romance of “Kenilworth,” is a tame production compared with the charming little poem of “The Mariner’s Wife,” in regard to which doubt has been expressed whether Mickle was really its author. It first appeared as a broad-sheet, sold in the streets of Edinburgh. Mickle did not include it in an edition of his poems, published by himself; but Allan Cunningham claims it for him on the ground that a copy of the poem, with alterations marking the text as in process of formation, was found among Mickle’s papers, and in his handwriting; also, that his widow declared that he said the song was his. Beattie added a stanza, which mars its flow, and is omitted in our version. The poem was claimed by Jean Adams, a poor school-mistress, who died in 1765. Chambers thinks that it must, on the whole, be credited to Mickle. Dean Trench does not feel at liberty to disturb the ascription of this “exquisite domestic lyric” to Mickle. Burns, not too strongly, characterized it as “one of the most beautiful songs in the Scotch or any other language.”

  To Mickle has been attributed the Scottish song “There’s na’e luck about the hoose,” which of itself is sufficient to establish a poetical reputation. Internal evidence is rather against the likelihood of his authorship and in favour of that of Jean Adams (1710–1765), but there is no definite external evidence, and the doubt on the subject cannot be resolved.

  One cannot be quite sure that Mickle wrote this delightful poem, but I like to believe he did, rather than to keep his name out of the collection altogether, for to my knowledge he has achieved nothing else to come near it.

Lusiad, 1775

  Nor let the critic, if he finds the meaning of Camoens in some instances altered, imagine that he has found a blunder. It was not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure in reading a translation is to see what the author exactly says,—it was to give a poem that might live in the English language,—which was the ambition of the translator.

  A man of genius, and of great poetical powers. He translated the “Lusiad” of Camoens in a free paraphrastick manner, but with the spirit of an original poet. I never could account for the neglect of so very poetical a work.

  No poet perhaps has ever been so greatly indebted to a Translator as Camoens, whose “Lusiad,” in the very elegant and spirited version of Mr. Mickle, has perfectly the air of an English original; its defects are concealed or mitigated, while its beauties catch double lustre from the British dress.

  Mickle’s version of the Lusiad offers an affecting instance of the melancholy fears which often accompany the progress of works of magnitude, undertaken by men of genius. Five years he had buried himself in a farmhouse, devoted to the solitary labour; and he closes his preface with the fragment of a poem, whose stanzas have perpetuated all the tremblings and the emotions, whose unhappy influence the author had experienced through the long work. Thus pathetically he addresses the Muse:—

	—Well thy meed repays thy worthless toil;
	Upon thy houseless head pale want descends
	In bitter shower; and taunting scorn still rends
	And wakes thee trembling from thy golden dream:
	In vetchy bed, or loathly dungeon ends
	Thy idled life—

And when, at length, the great and anxious labour was completed, the author was still more unhappy than under the former influence of his foreboding terrors. The work is dedicated to the Duke of Buccleugh. Whether his Grace had been prejudiced against the poetical labour by Adam Smith, who had as little comprehension of the nature of poetry as becomes a political economist, or from whatever cause, after possessing it for six weeks the Duke had never condescended to open the volume.

  The translation of the “Lusiad” is that by which he is best known. In this, as in his original poems, the expression is sometimes very faulty; but he is never flat or insipid. In the numbers, there is much sweetness and freedom: and though they have somewhat of the masculine melody of Dryden, yet they have something also that is peculiarly his own. He has in a few instances enriched the language of poetry by combinations unborrowed from any of his predecessors. It is doubtful whether as much can be said for Pope’s translation of Homer.

  In the execution of his task, treated Camoens with as little ceremony as the French used towards the Italian pictures which they re-painted in the Louvre; but with this difference, that the original was not destroyed by the process, and that he undertook nothing more than he was well qualified to perform. Some things he kept out of sight, others he softened, others he elevated and enriched. Wherever he thought any thing could be inserted with advantage, he inserted it.

  The “Lusiad” is best known in England by the translation of Mickle, who has been thought to have done something more than justice to his author, both by the unmeasured eulogies he bestows upon him, and by the more substantial service of excelling the original in his unfaithful delineation. The style of Mickle is certainly more poetical, according to our standard, than that of Camoens; that is, more figurative and emphatic: but it seems to me replenished with common-place phrases, and is wanting in the facility and sweetness of the original; in which it is well known that he has interpolated a great deal without a pretence.

  That poem, in Mickle’s translation, is as little like the work of Camoens as Pope’s “Iliad” is like the “Iliad” of Homer. Mickle has made it declamatory where Camoens is simple, and all the rapidity of the narrative is lost in the diffuse verses of the translator.

General

  Mickle’s story of Syr Martyn is the most pleasing of his original pieces. The object of the narrative is to exhibit the degrading effects of concubinage, in the history of an amiable man, who is reduced to despondency and sottishness, under the domination of a beldam and a slattern. The defect of the moral is, that the same evils might have happened to Syr Martyn in a state of matrimony. The simplicity of the tale is also, unhappily, overlaid by a weight of allegory and of obsolete phraseology, which it has not importance to sustain. Such a style, applied to the history of a man and his housekeeper, is like building a diminutive dwelling in all the pomp of Gothic architecture.

  Mickle was a man of strong natural powers, which he had not always properly under controul. When he is satisfied to describe with little apparent effort what he has himself felt or conceived, as in his ballads and songs, he is at times eminently happy. He has generally erred on the side of the too much, rather than of the too little. His defect is not so much want of genius as of taste. His thoughts were forcible and vivid; but the words in which he has clothed them, are sometimes ill-chosen, and sometimes akwardly disposed. He degenerates occasionally into mere turgidness and verbosity…. When his stanza forced him to lop off his vain superfluity of words, that the sense might be brought within a narrow compass, he succeeded better.

  A schoolfellow, who was now, like himself, a writer’s apprentice, recollects the eagerness with which he thus made himself master of Evans’s Ballads, shortly after their publication; and another of them, already often referred to, remembers, in particular, his rapture with Mickle’s “Cumnor Hall,” which first appeared in that collection. “After the labours of the day were over,” says Mr. Irving, “we often walked in the Meadows”—(a large field intersected by formal alleys of old trees, adjoining George’s Square)—“especially in the moonlight nights; and he seemed never weary of repeating the first stanza.”… I have thought it worth while to preserve these reminiscences of his companions at the time, though he has himself stated the circumstance in his Preface to “Kenilworth.” “There is a period in youth,” he there says, “when the mere power of numbers has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in after life. At this season of immature taste, the author was greatly delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne. The first stanza of ‘Cumnor Hall’ especially had a peculiar enchantment for his youthful ear—the force of which is not yet (1829) entirely spent.” Thus that favourite elegy, after having dwelt on his memory and imagination for forty years, suggested the subject of one of his noblest romances.

  Mickle would have excelled in the Scottish dialect, and in portraying Scottish life, had he known his own strength, and trusted to the impulses of his heart, instead of his ambition.

  Mickle had not power to produce any long and sustained work, though he could, on the rare occasions when he designed to be simple and natural, write a few graceful and pleasing verses. His odes of the Pindaric type have gone the way of nearly all such odes. Some of his songs have fared and have deserved to fare no better. If indeed we could credit him with that exquisite one, “There’s nae luck about the house,” it must be admitted that he for once rose high; but if there is any force in internal evidence, scepticism on that point is justified. He has nothing else approaching it in merit, nothing at all resembling it in style.