ilworth," and came near giving its name to the novel. The other was
the dialect song of "The Mariner's Wife," which Burns admired so greatly:

"Sae true his heart, sae smooth his speech,
His breath like caller air,
His very foot has music in't,
As he comes up the stair,
For there's nae luck about the house,
There is nae luck at a',
There's little pleasure in the house
When our gudeman's awa',"[33]

Mickle, like Thomson, was a Scotchman who came to London to push his
literary fortunes. He received some encouragement from Lyttelton, but
was disappointed in his hopes of any substantial aid from the British
Maecenas. His biographer informs us that "about his thirteenth year, on
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' falling accidentally in his way, he was
immediately struck with the picturesque descriptions of that much admired
ancient bard and powerfully incited to imitate his style and manner."[34]
In 1767 Mickle published "The Concubine," a Spenserian poem in two
cantos. In the preface to his second edition, 1778, in which the title
was changed to "Syr Martyn," he said that: "The fullness and wantonness
of description, the quaint simplicity, and, above all, the ludicrous, of
which the antique phraseology and manner of Spenser are so happily and
peculiarly susceptible, inclined him to esteem it not solely as the best,
but the only mode of composition adapted to his subject."

"Syr Martyn" is a narrative poem not devoid of animation, especially
where the author forgets his Spenser. But in the second canto he feels
compelled to introduce an absurd allegory, in which the nymph Dissipation
and her henchman Self-Imposition conduct the hero to the cave of
Discontent. This is how Mickle writes when he is thinking of the "Faerie
Queene":

"Eke should he, freed from fous enchanter's spell,
Escape his false Duessa's magic charms,
And folly quaid, yclept an hydra fell
Receive a beauteous lady to his arms;
While bards and minstrels chaunt the soft alarms
Of gentle love, unlike his former thrall:
Eke should I sing, in courtly cunning terms,
The gallant feast, served up by seneschal,
To knights and ladies gent in painted bower or hall."

And this is how he writes when he drops his pattern:

"Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale,
And, Fancy, to thy faerie bower betake!
Even now, with balmy freshness, breathes the gale,
Dimpling wi