WILLIAM, a poet of considerable eminence, born at Edinburgh about the year 1730, was the son of a poor but industrious barber, all of whose children, except the subject of the present notice, were either deaf or dumb. William appears to have passed but a short period at school, where he received the scanty education required to qualify him for an inferior employment; yet he is believed to have contracted a taste for reading, and a desire for higher attainments than his circumstances permitted him to aspire to. At an early age he was entered as an apprentice on board a merchant-vessel belonging to Leith; and Dr Currie mentions, on the authority of a naval surgeon, that he afterwards served as a common sailor on board the ship of which Campbell, author of Lexiphanes, was purser, and attracted the notice of that individual by indications of talent which were deemed by him worthy of cultivation. How long he continued in this humble capacity is not known; but by some friendly intervention, he was appointed second mate of a vessel called the Britannia, employed in the Levant trade, which, however, was wrecked during her passage from Alexandria to Venice, and only three of the crew, including Falconer, saved. This event, the date of which has not been ascertained, appears to have made a deep impression on his mind, and probably suggested the idea of his poem entitled The Shipwreck, on which his reputation chiefly rests. The first essays of his muse attracted little attention, and were probably commonplace enough; though, if Clarke be right in the opinion that he was the author of "Cease, rude Boreas," an exception must, of course, be made in favour of that popular song. Falconer is supposed to have continued in the merchant service until the spring of 1762, when he recommended himself to the notice of Edward Duke of York, by the dedication of The Shipwreck, and enlisted his royal highness amongst the number of his admirers and patrons. Desirous Falconer, to place him in a situation where he could be befriended, the duke advised him to enter the navy; and before the end of summer, he was rated as midshipman on board the Royal George. But as this ship was paid off at the peace of 1763, and as Falconer's period of service had been far too short to enable him to obtain the commission of lieutenant, he was advised to exchange the military for the civil department of the navy; and, in the course of the same year, he received an appointment as purser of the Glory frigate, a situation which he held until that vessel was laid up in ordinary at Chatham. Being thus once more left without professional employment, he devoted his leisure to literary pursuits. In 1764, he published a new edition of The Shipwreck, in 8vo, corrected and enlarged; and the following year appeared The Demagogue, a political satire, intended as a sort of antidote to the writings of Wilkes and Churchill, but much more remarkable for virulence than wit. His time, however, was chiefly occupied with the compilation of an Universal Marine Dictionary, a work much wanted, and which, when brought out in 1769, was received with general approbation. Before this period he appears to have left his retreat at Chatham for an abode of a less comfortable kind in the metropolis, where, depressed by poverty, that evil-spirit which tracks the footsteps of genius, he subsisted for a time on various resources. But, in the midst of his difficulties, when his situation had become truly distressing, he received an appointment to the pursership of the Aurora frigate, which had been commissioned to carry out to India Messieurs Vanisstarr, Scrofton, and Forde, as supervisors of the Company's affairs; and he was also promised the office of private secretary to these functionaries. From this favourable turn of fortune the friends of the poet, whilst they rejoiced in the present relief which it afforded, conceived him in a fair way eventually to realize a competent independence; but dis alter visum, Providence had decreed it otherwise. The Aurora sailed from England on the 30th September 1769, and after touching at the Cape of Good Hope, was never more heard of; she was supposed to have foundered in the Mozambique Channel, but not a trace remained by which the cause of the calamity could be discovered, or even conjectured.

Besides the productions already mentioned, Falconer was the author of several pieces, the most considerable of which are an Ode on the Duke of York's second departure from England as rear-admiral, and a Poem on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. But as these and similar effusions could never have survived the occasion which produced them, his fame as a poet must entirely rest on The Shipwreck, which, with all its faults, has a fair chance of immortality, appealing, as it does, directly to the feelings of one class of men, and indirectly to the natural sympathies of all. There is a warmth in its colouring, and a reality in its descriptions, which strongly impress the minds particularly of youth, and, notwithstanding the didactic character of the poem, sustain its interest, and enliven even the duller parts by a sort of reflected radiance. Natural feeling, natural imagery, and natural truth, are expressed in natural language, which, if it never rises to a great elevation, seldom sinks below the dignity of the subject, and is throughout animated by a glow of feeling which awakens a kindred emotion in the breast of the reader. Falconer has no striking outbursts of genius; he does not aspire to produce a great effect by a few bold touches, or the rapid and masterly grouping of appalling or horrible circumstances. He labours in detail, bringing before us, without apparent effort, the events as they arise, and conducting us with an interest constantly increasing towards the catastrophe. He paints with minute fidelity as well as picturesque effect; but it is from the general result, rather than from any portion or portions of the work considered separately, that the talents of the artist should be judged. Such a tremendous picture of shipwreck as that which Byron has, in wild sportiveness, thrown out in Don Juan, immeasurably transcends the powers of Falconer, and indeed stands alone in its terrible sublimity; but, on the other hand, the latter, by the careful elaboration of natural circumstances, and the general truth of his delineation, ultimately impresses the mind of the reader, if not with such vivid force, perhaps with even more enduring effect. Of the didactic merits of the poem, nautical men, who are necessarily the most competent judges in this particular, have spoken in terms of high commendation; and it has even been said that the rules and maxims therein delivered for the management of a ship in a perilous emergency are the very best which a practical mariner could adopt. But in our estimation this forms one of the principal defects of the poem considered as such, though it fell in with the spirit of the time when The Shipwreck was produced, and may still recommend it to sailors; nor by ordinary readers, who cannot understand or appreciate this sort of instruction, is it likely to be viewed in any other light than as an incumbrance to the march of the narrative and the progression of events.