PAPERS ON LITERATURE AND ART.
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POETS OF THE PEOPLE.
RHYMES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A HAND-LOOM WEAVER.
By William Thom, of Iverury.
“An’ syne whan nichts grew cauld an’ lang,
Ae while he sicht—ae while he sang.”
Second Edition, with Additions. London, 1845.
We cannot give a notion of the plan and contents of this little volume better than by copying some passages from the Preface:
“The narrative portion of these pages,” says Thom, “is a record of scenes and circumstances interwoven with my experience—with my destiny. * * The feelings and fancies, the pleasure and the pain that hovered about my aimless existence were all my own—my property. These aerial investments I held and fashioned into measured verse. * * The self-portraiture herein attempted is not altogether Egotism neither, inasmuch as the main lineaments of the sketch are to be found in the separate histories of a thousand families in Scotland within these last ten years. That fact, however, being contemplated in mass, and in reference to its bulk only, acts more on the wonder than on the pity of mankind, as if human sympathies, like the human eye, could not compass an object exceedingly large, and, at the same time, exceedingly near. It is no small share in the end and aim of the present little work, to impart to one portion of the community a glimpse of what is sometimes going on in another; and even if only that is accomplished, some good service will be done. I have long had a notion that many of the heart-burnings that run through the Social Whole spring not so much from the distinctiveness of classes as their mutual ignorance of each other. The miserably rich look upon the miserably poor with distrust and dread, scarcely giving them credit for sensibility sufficient to feel their own sorrows. That is ignorance with its gilded side. The poor, in
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