re a little more rounded at the points
than others; yet they are diversely streaked and freckled, with a
profusion of gay tints, in which the bizarre (as it is called by the
fanciers of that flower) prevails. They are a sight for one half hour in
the spring, and no more; and are utterly devoid of odour.

* * * * *

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE.

William Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at
Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father,
Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the church of Scotland, was
pastor. His mother was Julia, daughter of Thomas Henderson, of
Ploughlands, near Edinburgh. In his thirteenth year, his love of poetry
was kindled by reading Spenser's Faery Queen. Two years after, his
father, who was grown old and infirm, and had a large family to educate,
by an unusual indulgence obtained permission to reside in Edinburgh,
where Mickle was admitted a pupil at the High School. Here he remained
long enough to acquire a relish for the Greek and Latin classics. When
he was seventeen years old, his father unluckily embarking his capital
in a brewery, which the death of his wife's brother had left without a
manager, William was taken from school, and employed as clerk under the
eldest son, in whose name the business was carried on. At first he must
have been attentive enough to his employment; for on his coming of age,
the property was made over to him, on the condition of paying his family
a certain share of the profits arising from it. Afterwards, he suffered
himself to be seduced from business by the attractions of literature.
His father died in 1758; and, in about three years he published, without
his name, Knowledge, an Ode, and a Night Piece, the former of which had
been written in his eighteenth year. In both there is more of
seriousness and reflection than of that fancy which marks his subsequent
productions. Beside these, he had finished a drama, called the Death of
Socrates, of which, if we may judge from his other tragedy, the loss is
not to be lamented, and he had begun a poem on Providence. The
difficulties consequent on his trusting to servants the work of his
brewery, which he was too indolent to superintend himself, and on his
joining in security for a large sum with a printer who failed, were now
gathering fast upon him. His creditors became clamorous; and at
Candlemas (one of the quarter days in Scotland) 1762, being equa