ames Thomson,
the poet of the "Seasons," a Tweedsider, though the fact is often
forgotten, pays grateful homage to the Tweed as the "pure parent-stream,
whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed." Allan Ramsay and Robert
Crawford, West-country men both, came early under the spell of the
fair river. Crawford's lines are painted with the usual exaggeration of
the period:

"What beauties does Flora disclose!
How sweet are her smiles upon Tweed!
Yet Mary's, still sweeter than those,
Both nature and fancy exceed.
No daisy, nor sweet blushing rose,
Not all the gay flowers of the field,
Not Tweed, gliding gently through those,
Such beauty and pleasure does yield."

Hamilton of Bangour, best known for his "Braes of Yarrow," has an autumn
and winter description of Tweedside which naturally suggests the like
picture by Scott in the Introduction to Canto I. of "Marmion," and it is
more than probable that Sir Walter had this in his mind when penning his
own more perfect lines.

PLATE 14

VIEW OF BEWCASTLE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 44, 67, 72_)

[Illustration]

Robert Fergusson--Burns's "elder brother in the Muses," had his
imagination fired by the memories of the Border, and was one of the
first to celebrate that land over which lies the light of so much poetic
fancy:

"The Arno and the Tiber lang
Hae run full clear in Roman sang;
But, save the reverence o' schools!
They're baith but lifeless dowy pools,
Dought they compare wi' bonny Tweed,
As clear as ony lammer-bead?"

Wordsworth, too, sang of the "gentle Tweed, and the green silent
pastures," though his winsome Three Yarrows is the tie that most endears
him to the Lowland hearts. Since Scott's day the voices in praise of
Tweed have been legion. "Who, with a heart and a soul tolerably at ease
within him, could fail to be happy, hearing as we do now the voice of
the Tweed, singing his pensive twilight song to the few faint stars that
have become visible in heaven?" says John Wilson in his rollicking
"Streams" essay (no "crusty Christopher" there, at any rate). Thomas Tod
Stoddart, king of angling rhymers,

"Angled far and angled wide,
On Fannich drear, by Luichart's side;
Across dark Conan's current,"

and all over Scotland, but found not another stream to match with the
Tweed:

"Dearer than all t