THOMAS PRINGLE. 2G7 



And if all else that Pringle sang were to pass away, 

 surely that one verse of his Farewell to Scotland will be 

 immortal, 



' My native land, my native vale, 



A long, a last adieu, 

 Farewell to bonny Teviotdale, 

 And Cheviot's mountains blue.' 



But the poet Pringle yields precedence to Pringle 

 the man. His very defects were those which character- 

 ize heroic minds. Calculating shrewdness, caution, mer- 

 cantile prudence, all those stunted virtues which, like 

 the treasure-guarding dwarfs of mediaeval legend, keep 

 the portals of worldly success, were indeed lacking in 

 his mental constitution. But what capacity of self- 

 sacrifice, what chivalrous generosity, what unquenchable 

 ardour of goodness, dwelt in his breast ! Of all the 

 voices raised on behalf of the slave, not one was more 

 purely, passionately earnest than Pringle's. And not 

 for the slave alone, for every human being to whom he 

 could do good, was Pringle zealous. From his youth 

 he had experience of straitened circumstances, he knew 

 the most malignant spite of foes, the bitterest apathy 

 and listlessness of friend and patron, but in the heavenly 

 well of that heart the wormwood and the gall were 

 turned to sweetness. 



