A Bad Scottish Poet

On A Particularly Bad Scottish Poet:

Anthony Daniels writes:

Anyone who would demonstrate the superlative badness of McGonagall to those still unacquainted with his work is so spoilt for choice that he is likely, if he is not careful, to end up like Buridan’s ass, quite unable to make up his mind between delectations. I shall therefore, without further reflection, quote from two of his best-known works, “Address to the New Tay Bridge” and “The Tay Bridge Disaster.” The former apostrophizes the new bridge:

Beautiful new railway bridge of the Silvery Tay,
With thy beautiful side-screens along your railway,
Which will be a great protection on a windy day,
So as the railway carriages won’t be blown away,
And ought to cheer the hearts of the
passengers night and day
As they are conveyed along thy beautiful railway.

He then praises the designers of the bridge:

Thy structure to my eye seems strong and grand,
And I hope the designers, Messrs Barlow and
Arrol, will prosper for many a day
For erecting thee across the beautiful Tay.
And I think nobody need have the least dismay
To cross o’er thee by night or by day.

Unfortunately, this last thought proved mistaken, as we learn in the next poem:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

The bridge had collapsed and a train had plunged into the river below. McGonagall concludes his dramatic poem with some reflections on engineering:

your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side by buttresses
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Mr. Daniels expresses a sense that we are to pity the man for his self-destructive delusion, 'like a stroke,' that he was a great poet. It did, after all, cause him to abandon a productive career and end in poverty.

Is it true, though, that poetry lies in pity? That may prove true, in a close reading of Homer or the Beowulf, or the Wanderer; and if it is true, then the pitiful delusion of the poet is surely as fit a subject of poetry as anything else. Too, given that the matter of the Tay bridge fooled the engineers of the day, it seems unfair to mock the poet. Yet many have; and indeed, he had responded to an earlier collapse of one of the ill-designed bridges by just writing another praise-poem.

So let us consider the question. Just how bad was he? We may wish to consider other famous lines of his:

Alas! Lord and Lady Dalhousie are dead, and buried at last,
Which causes many people to feel a little downcast.

Or this:

He was a public benefactor in many ways,
Especially in erecting an asylum for imbecile children to spend their days.

Or this:

He told me at once what was ailing me;
He said I had been writing too much poetry,
And from writing poetry I would have to refrain,
Because I was suffering from inflammation on the brain.