schoolmaster named Charles Dawson, who, because he had added some superficial notes, has, by a skilful species of plagiarism, claimed the whole poem. During the last century, some loco-descriptive sketches were published in the Scotish Magazines, but without acquiring even a temporary reputation. In England, however, since Denham's Cooper's Hill, various models have been produced, in this species of composition; which are enumerated by Dr. J. Warton in his edition of Pope's Works.
The fundamental subject of the local poem, as Dr. Johnson properly observes, is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation[1]. The subject which Wilson proposed to himself, has the merit of unity; a merit in which the greater part of descriptive poems are extremely defective. He describes the course of the Clyde, delineates the various scenes which it presents, and diversifies his narrative by historical allusions, suggested by the particular scenes which he describes. The course of the river Clyde pointed out a natural and perspicuous arrangement of the different scenes; a quality in which the local poem is generally defective, as it is
- ↑ Johnson's Life of Denham, ap. Lives of the English Poets.
