Buchanan, ROBERT

Buchanan, ROBERT, a versatile writer in verse and prose, born in Glasgow on the 18th August 1841. He was educated at Glasgow University, where his closest friend was the short-lived David Gray (1838-61). In the year 1860 the two set out for London to set the Thames on fire; but gloom and poverty hung over their steps, and fame did not come until too late for the elder of the pair. Buchanan's first work, Undertones, a volume of verse, published in 1863, was well received. The Idylls and Legends of Inverburn followed in 1865, and next year London Poems, the latter his first distinct success, and indeed a rare combination of lyrical vigour and insight into humble life, lightened up with humour and sweetened with pathos. Later volumes of verse are a translation of Danish ballads and Wayside Posies (1866); North Coast Poems (1867); Napoleon Fallen: a Lyrical Drama (1871); The Drama of Kings (1871); Ballads of Love, Life, and Humour (1882); and The City of Dream (1888). He has besides contributed prose to the magazines, and one of his articles earned for itself an unhappy notoriety, that under the pseudonym of 'Thomas Maitland,' on 'The Fleshly School of Poetry' in the Contemporary Review for October 1871. It was mainly an attack upon Dante G. Rossetti, and that poet answered for himself in a famous letter to the Athenæum on 'The Stealthy School of Criticism.' Mr Swinburne's scathing pamphlet, Under the Microscope (1872), followed, and eventually Buchanan was fain to withdraw the main part of his charge. Buchanan has also written several novels; among them A Child of Nature (1879), God and the Man (1881), The Martyrdom of Madeline (1882), and Foxglove Manor (1884). He was successful as a dramatist with A Nine Days' Queen, Lady Clare, Storm-beaten, and Sophia (an adaptation of Tom Jones). His poem, The Wandering Jew (1893), attacked Christianity. The poet's finances were latterly much embarrassed.