William Falconer was born in Edinburgh in the year 1736. He was the son of a poor barber in the Netherbow, who had two other children, both deaf and dumb, who ended their days in a poor-house. He early, through frequent visits to Leith, came in contact with that tremendous element which he was to sing so powerfully, and in which he was to sink at last--which was to give him at once his glory and his grave. While a mere boy, he went, by his own account, reluctantly on board a Leith merchant ship, and was afterwards in the Royal Navy. Of his early education or habits very little is known. He had all his scholarship from one Webster. We figure him (after the similitude of a dear lost sailor boy, a relative of our own) as a stripling, with curling hair, ruddy cheek, form prematurely developed into round robustness, frank, free, and manly bearing, returning ever and anon from his ocean wanderings, and bearing to his friends some rare bird or shell of the tropics as a memorial of his labours and his love. Before he was eighteen years of age, Providence supplied him with the materials whence he was to pile up the monument of his future fame. He became second mate in the ship 'Britannia', a vessel trading in the Levant. This vessel was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, exactly in the manner described in the poem, which is just a coloured photograph of the adventures, difficulties, dangers, and disastrous result of the voyage. In 1751 we find him living in Edinburgh, and publishing his first poem. This was an elegy on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was followed by other pieces, which appeared in the 'Gentleman's Magazine', and which will be found in this volume. Some have claimed for him the authorship of the favourite sea song, "Cease, Rude Boreas," but this seems uncertain. Falconer is supposed to have continued in the merchant service (one of his biographers maintains that he was for some time in the 'Ramilies', a man-of-war, which suffered shipwreck in the Channel) till 1762, when he published his "Shipwreck." This poem was dedicated to the Duke of York, who had newly become Rear-Admiral of the Blue on board the 'Princess Amelia', attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Duke was not a Solomon, but he had sense enough to perceive, that the sailor who could produce such a poem was no ordinary man, and generous enough to offer him promotion, if he should leave the merchant service for the Royal Navy. Falconer, accordingly, was promoted to be a midshipman on board the 'Royal George' (Sir Edward Hawke's ship); the same, we believe, which afterwards went down in such a disastrous manner, and furnished a subject for one of Cowper's boldest little poems. "The Shipwreck" was highly commended by the 'Monthly Review',--then the leading literary organ,--and became widely popular.