Macfarlan was born in
Glasgow on 9 April 1832, son of Andrew Macfarlan, a weaver turned
pedlar from
County Tyrone, and his wife Margaret Marshall. He received some education in Kilmarnock and Glasgow, but was mainly self-taught. Inspired by a stray volume of
Lord Byron when about twelve years old, he borrowed books from public libraries in various towns visited in the wanderings of the family, and by the age of twenty he had read widely. In 1853, having collected pieces he had written, he walked to and from London and secured the publication of a volume of poetry by subscription. The book,
Poems (1854), received favourable reviews but made no money. For a short time subsequently he held a post in the
Glasgow Athenæum, but returned to peddling. He printed in Glasgow a second book,
City Songs (1855), dedicated to
George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle, but, although it was well received by critics, he received little encouragement either from his patron or from the public. Macfarlan was in poor health and was destitute; he obtained and soon lost another job. He was engaged as police-court reporter to the Glasgow
Bulletin. Too erratic for this post, he successfully contributed short stories for a time to the weekly issue of the paper. On 3 August 1855 he married Agnes Miller; they had four children. His wife helped the income by dressmaking.
Charles Dickens printed several of his poems in
Household Words; Macfarlan called him "a prince of editors".
William Makepeace Thackeray, hearing
Samuel Lover recite his
Lords of Labour in 1859, exclaimed: "I don't think Burns himself could have taken the wind out of this man's sails". Macfarlan suffered from
tuberculosis; in October 1862 he collapsed after a day trying to sell his prose pamphlet,
An Attic Study. He died in Glasgow on 6 November 1862, and was buried in Cheapside cemetery,
Anderston, Glasgow. Colin Rae-Brown, a director of the
Bulletin, later wrote that Macfarlan "appeared a perfect riddle. He seemed to possess two separate and distinct individualities: one soaring high in the sunny
empyrean of the
sacred Nine, the other grovelling in the dingiest purlieus of the populous 'City by the Clyde.'" ==Works==