Grahame, JAMES

Grahame, JAMES, author of The Sabbath, was born at Glasgow, April 22, 1765. The son of a prosperous lawyer, he went in 1784 to Edinburgh to study law, and, after qualifying as a writer to the Signet, was admitted as an advocate in 1795. Finding law uncongenial, at forty-four he took orders, and was successively curate of Shipton in Gloucestershire and of Sedgefield in the county of Durham. Ill-health compelled him to return to Scotland, where soon after he died, September 14, 1811. Grahame's poetical works include Mary, Queen of Scots, a dramatic poem (1801); The Sabbath (1804); British Georgics (1804); The Birds of Scotland (1806); and Poems on the Abolition of the Slave-trade (1810). His fame rests securely on his blank-verse poem, The Sabbath. It falls far short of Cowper's vigour, variety, and real genius, but in its tender devotional feeling and occasional felicity in describing quiet Scottish scenery it is not unworthy of that master, whom he resembled further in the retiring amiability of his character.