M‘NEILL,^[1. In strict accordance with the poet’s usual orthography of his name, this article ought to have been placed under Μαc, but unavoidable circumstances rendered this impracticable. ] Hector, a distinguished Scottish poet, born on the 22d of October 1746, at Rosebank, on the Esk, and almost amongst the classic woods of Hawthornden. Here his father, descended from an old respectable family in the south of Argyleshire, had retired from military service to enjoy the undisturbed calm of domestic life. Pecuniary circumstances, however, ere long forced him, with his family, from this choice retreat, to, occupy a farm on the banks of Loch Lomond, where part of the boyhood of Hector, the youngest and favourite child, was spent amongst those scarcely less beautiful or less classic scenes, on which the young eyes of Buchanan and Smollett had gazed with delight; and where their “rural pipe,” as well as his own, was first tuned to freedom and love.

His early education, with the exception of a short time spent at a school in the neighbourhood, was solely conducted by his father at home, who, along with the common branches, carefully imbued his mind with, piety and good morals, and, with parental fondness and pride, also encouraged his boyish passion for the muses. Preparatory, however, to going to Bristol to the house of a wealthy mercantile relative, who had promised to provide for young Hector, the latter was, at the age of twelve, sent to Glasgow for two years, to acquire those branches immediately applicable to a commercial life. On his arrival at Bristol, he was occupied for a short time in the counting-house of his relative, and in completing his commercial education previously to his departure for the West Indies. Having spent three years, with neither comfort nor success, in mercantile pursuits in Antigua, and other three with strict honour and integrity in a civil capacity, in the office of the provost-marshal of Granada, he returned to his native land with the acquisition of the French language, but with no more wealth than when he departed.

Both his mother and sister had died in his absence, and his father did not survive his return above a year and a half. The small inheritance to which he thus succeeded he sunk in an annuity; but this only enabled him indolently to waste six valuable years in a connection which, howsoever regarded in the islands he had left, is still properly dishonourable in this, and which must, no doubt, as much as “the idìe propensity of rhyming,” have impeded his future success in life. The loss of his annuity by bankruptcy, however, broke the spell which had bound him, and urged him to seek some resource for warding off the immediate approach of want.

In this emergency, through the interest of a friend in London, he was appointed to the office of assistant-secretary in the flag-ship of Admiral Geary. Having made two cruises, the one under Admiral Geary, and the other under Admiral Darby, he resigned a situation which necessity alone had made him at first accept. Soon afterwards, however, he was induced to undertake the same office in the flag-ship of Sir Richard Bickerton, appointed to the East Indian station. During this service he was present in the last naval engagement with the able French commander Sufffein; and though his inkstand before him was swept away by the first broadside, and a block fell over his head on the quarter-netting, he evinced more calm intrepidity than the lyric bard of Rome in the battle of Philippi, or the unrivalled orator of Greece on the field of Chaeronea.

Before leaving the Indian shores, on the conclusion of peace with America, he visited Surat, the sculptured excavations ofElephanta,and “smiling Salsett’s cave-wrought coast.” An account of these singular remains of Indian superstition and antiquity, his first attempt at authorship, beguiled the tedium of his voyage home, and was afterwards published in the Archaeologia. Neither enriched with the gold of India, nor secured in a competence by a permanent appointment, he returned to Scotland after an absence of five years, where, to his mortification, he found, as too frequently happens, that success or adversity is considered as the proof of good or bad conduct.
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The reversion of his bankrupt annuity being still unsettled, and economy necessary, he retired for two years to a humble residence in the neighbourhood of Stirling, distinguished alike by the beauties of nature and the memorials of national glory and independence. In this retirement, enhanced by the contrast of vertical suns and tropical scenes, and so congenial to thought and the muses, he produced the beautiful descriptive poem of “The Links of Forth,” which gained him the enlightened friendship of Mr Graham of Gartmore.

The exhausted state of his pecuniary resources, however, compelléd him to revisit the West Indies. On his arrival in Jamaica he was appointed to an office in the customhouse at Kingston; but the debilitating effects of fever, and other circumstances connected with his duties, obliged him to repair to the upland vale of Guanaboo, whose lively hues of vegetation, and “coolness wafted in perfume” from the orange, the logwood, and the lime (citrus medica, var.~) at once exhilarated the mind and invigorated the constitution. Here, by a providentially good fortune, he met with two old school-fellows, whom distance and time now more closely united in friendship, and who, with a liberality becoming their wealth, made him share in their success. At the request of the distinguished Dr Currie, he drew up an impartial statement “on the treatment of the negroes,” which was published at Liverpool by his esteemed friend, to whose memory he has done justice, both in “The Scottish Muse,” and in “The Rose o’ Kirtle:”
“And ye wha mourn at Curric’s urn,
Or weep by Mersey’s river,
Learn, that the rose that virtue blows,
Though dead, will bloom for ever.”

Upon his passage home he composed the second canto of the sweetly wild poem of “The Harp,” founded on a tradition of the Hebrides, and communicated to him by Graham of Gartmore, with whom, on his return to Stirlingshire, he lived for nearly two years in the closest intimacy of friendship. From prudential motives, however, and perhaps not a little in the spirit of “not burning his harp for woman,” he retired from this loved abode to Argyleshire, in order to break off a mutual attachment between him and a near relative of his patron. But this separation told on his sensitive and feeling frame, though the interesting scenery of Argyleshire, the society of friends, and the composition of admired songs to the favourite airs of the country, considerably alleviated his tender pain.

Welcomed, from the popularity of his songs, by the fashionable society of Glasgow, he was, by the liberality of a friend, about to engage there in business, when, on the breaking out of the revolution in France, the commerce and prosperity of that city experienced a reverse so severe as completely to prevent the execution of his intentions. Soon after he was afflicted with a nervous disorder, which, by improper treatment, continued about six years. During this malad xed his residence for a time in a cottage near the fielu or Bannockburn, “dear to the muse, but doubly dear to'liberty.” Here, unable either to read or write above a few minutes without distress, he, like the blind minstrels of other times, composed “Scotland’s Skaith,” by memory alone; the happiest effort of his genius, and which induced his countrymen to consider him as the gifted bard on whom the inspiring mantle of Burns had fallen. The sequel to this simple, pathetic tale, which ran through fourteen editions in a year, he composed in the same manner, and published under the title of “The Waes of War ;” but this was not so well received, from its being then considered as satirically reflecting upon the Dutch campaign.

In the hope of recovery from his long-protracted complaints, although by many deemed irremediable, he again sailed for Jamaica. This voyage happily contributed alike to restore his health and to afford him a future competence. By the death of one of the companions of his boyhood, the Grahams of Three-Mile-River, whose kindness and liberality he had formerly experienced when in Jamaica, he now received a legacy, and the surviving brother settled on him an annuity for life. Under his friendly roof, previously to his return, he wrote “The Scottish Muse,” descriptive of the various vicissitudes of his own poetical life; and also a grateful epitaph to his deceased friend, as in duty he might “with a brother’s woes record his own.”

Upon his arrival in Scotland, almost like one risen from the grave, when the voice of envy is silenced by death, a species of posthumous fame hailed his return. With the well-deserved emoluments of his poetical labours, and another bequest of an intimate medical friend in Jamaica, in addition to his annuity, he spent the evening of his days in the capital of his native land, in the enjoyment of publicly-awarded honour, lettered ease, and comparative affluence. Here he published “The Pastoral or Lyric Muse of Scotland,” illustrative of the music and song of the Scottish Arcadia—the green hills and dales of the Teviot, Tweed, and Yarrow: also two satirical poems, entitled “Town Fashions,” and “Bygane Times and Late Come Changes.” His last literary efforts were “The Scottish Adventurers,” and an unpublished autobiography in three volumes, which has been the chief guide in this brief account. Such were the calm labours of the years spent in Edinburgh, till the 15th March 1818, when, at an age beyond the common limit of human existence, he closed his frequently adverse, but not inglorious career, leaving a name endeared to his countrymen, and embalmed in the song of his father-land.

Born a poet, with a musical ear, a melodious voice, and a feeling mind, MacneilΓs disposition ill accorded with the rough life of the British seamen, and still less with the cautious acquiring habits of the merchant. From his attachment to truth, he was free, undisguised, and even severe; quick in temper, yet serene and social; proudly honourable, yet warm and benevolent. True to nature and feeling, as a poet he excels in the simple and pathetic; and though his humour and satire be less successful, his manner is serious and his aim uniformly well directed.

In the year 1801 an edition of his poetical works issued from the London press, in two vols. 12mo. The second edition, Edinburgh, 1806, in two vols. 12mo, contains additional songs, The Rose o’ Kirtle, and Verses on Dr Doig, to whom the beautiful octavo edition of Scotland’s Skaith, Edinburgh, 1795, is dedicated. The third edition, Edinburgh, 1812, in two vols. 12mo, does not, as might be supposed, contain the following poems, though written after the publication of the preceding edition: The Pastoral or Lyric Muse of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1808, 4to; Town Fashions, or Modern Manners delineated, Edinburgh, 1810, 12mo; Bygane Times and Late Come Changes, Edinburgh, 1811, 12mo.

His publications in prose are, an Account of the Caves of Canara, Ambola, and Elephanta, in the eighth volume of the Archaeologia, 1787; On the Treatment of the Negroes in Jamaica, Liverpool, 1788; and The Scottish Adventurers, or the Way to Rise, a historical tale, two vols. Edinburgh, 1812, 8vo. (s. s.)