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THE AUTHOR OF "DARTMOOR." 



Resumed from Page 57. 



Carrington's first appearance before the public as 

 an author was in 1820, when he gave to the world his 

 poem entitled " The Banks of Tamar :" the disad- 

 vantages under which this work was composed will be 

 best evidenced by quoting his own preface : — 



" The severity of criticism may be softened by the intimation, 

 that the M.S.S. of this volume passed from the author to his printer, 

 without having been inspected by any literary friend. 



Other circumstances, very unfavourable to literary composition, 

 have attended this work. In the celebrated tale of "Old Mortality,'' 

 Mr. Patieson, the village teacher, after describing with admirable 

 fidelity, his anxious and distressing labours during the day, ob- 

 serves, — * The reader may have some conception of the relief which 

 a solitary walk in the cool of a fine summer evening affords to the 

 head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, 

 for so many hours, in plying the task of public instruction.' 



* My chief haunt,' he continues, * in these hours of golden leisure, 

 is the banks of the small stream, which, winding through a lone 

 vale of green bracken, passes in front of the village school house,' 

 &c. But the teacher of ' Gandercleuch' possessed advantages which 

 never fell to the lot of the writer of this work. Engaged, like that 

 far-famed personage, in the education of youth, his labours have 

 seldom been relinquished till the close of our longest summer even- 

 ings ; when, instead of retiring to the banks of a beautiful stream, 

 he has almost uniformly been driven, by business connected with 

 his arduous profession, or by literary cares, to his solitary study at 

 home. 



There, — depressed by the previous fatigues of the day, he has oc- 

 casionally indulged in composition, and hence this volume, the 

 production of many a pensive, abstracted hour. In publishing his 

 effusions, the highest ambition of the writer is to please his sub- 

 scribers ; and should he fortunately attain this object, he cheerfully 

 resigns all pretensions to more distinguished honours." 



The poem is planned so as to afford an opportunity 

 of describing the several picturesque scenes on the 

 banks of the river, in a supposed voyage from its junc- 

 tion with the sea to the spot where it ceases to be 

 navigable, the Weir-head ; this course, following • the 



