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in such a degree in this world. All these charming qualities, heightened by an education much beyond any thing I have ever met with in any woman I ever dared to approach, have made an impression on my heart that I do not think the world can ever efface. My imagination had fondly flattered itself with a wish, I dare not say it ever reached a hope, that possibly I might one day call you mine. I had formed the most delightful images, and my fancy fondly brooded over them; but now I am wretched for the loss of what I really had no right to expect. I must now think no more of you, as a mistress, still I presume to ask to be admitted as a friend. As such I wish to be allowed to wait on you, and as I expect to remove in a few days a little farther off, and you, I suppose, will perhaps soon leave this place, I wish to see you or hear from you soon; and if an expression should perhaps escape me rather too warm for friendship, I hope you will pardon it in, my dear Miss

for once.)

(pardon me the dear expression

CRITICAL REMARKS.

THE edition of the Works of Burns published by DR CURRIE, in the year 1800, was accompanied with a Critical Essay on the productions of our author, written with all that ability and candour which distinguish the labours of his amiable biographer. Since the period above alluded to numerous Critiques on the writings of Burns have appeared, some of which have been attributed to men of great eminence in literature. Many of the friends and admirers of Burns, think there is reason to complain of the severity with which several of the writers of these criticisms have animadverted on the morality of some of his productions, as well as on his personal character; and this has been greatly heightened by the celebrity of some of the literary journals in which these remarks appeared. It is obvious to every one possessed of the least candour, that the memory of Burns has been much calumniated in many respects; he has been charged with the faults of many pieces which he never published, and had his personal character inseparably blended with the demerits of these writings. From the concurring testimony of a number of respectable individuals, who were intimately acquainted with Burns in the latter part of his life (which have been published to the world in varieus shapes), we are warranted to believe that the ac

counts which have been circulated of his dissipated habits, were in many instances greatly exaggerated. None of the Crings on the wrongs of or ather has attracted more attention than that which appeared in the Edinburgh Review for January 1909, occa sioned by the review of some of his posthumous pie ces exced Edarus, elected and published by a Mr Cramer. Arbaugh the water of this rexis his, in several iscences, vectored remarks on the character of Bams which we cannot be regaring 25 100 severe, pet the article is very abij werden, and CHICLITS METy coservations that must meet with the most unguided scperoitin of the reader. We sht mererice take the liberty of extracting part of i. coining ourselves chudy to what resumes to the character at Bats as a wrder.

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that he was born in an humble station, and that much of his early life was devoted to severe labour, and to the society of his fellow-labourers. But he was not himself either uneducated or illiterate; and was placed perhaps in a situation more favourable to the development of great poetical talents, than any other which could have been assigned him. He was taught, at a very early age, to read and write; and soon after acquired a competent knowledge of French, together with the elements of Latin and Geometry. His taste for reading was encouraged by his parents and many of his associates; and, before he had ever composed a single stanza, he was not only familiar with many prose writers, but far more intimately acquainted with Pope, Shakespeare and Thomson, than nine tenths of the youth that leave school for the university. These authors, indeed, with some old collections of songs, and the lives of Hannibal and of Sir William Wallace, were his habitual study from the first days of his childhood; and, co-operating with the solitude of his rural occupations, were sufficient to rouse his ardent and ambi→ tious mind to the love and the practice of poetry. He had as much scholarship, we imagine, as Shakespeare, and far better models to form his ear to harmony, and train his fancy to graceful invention.' Edinburgh Review, No. 26. p. 249, 250.

Almost all the great poets of every country have appeared in an early stage of their history, and in a period comparatively rude and unlettered. Homer went forth like the morning star before the dawn of literature in Greece; and almost all the

great and sublime poets of modern Europe are already between two and three hundred years old. Since that time, although books and readers, and opportunities of reading, are multiplied a thousand fold, we have improved chiefly in point and terseness of expression, in the art of raillery, and in clearness and simplicity of thought. Force, richness and variety of invention, are now at least as rare as ever. But the literature and refinement of the age does not exist at all for a rustic and illiterate individual; and, consequently, the present time is to him what the rude times of old were to the vigorous writers which adorned them.

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'But though, for these and for other reasons, we can see no propriety in regarding the poetry of Burns chiefly as the wonderful work of a peasant, and thus admiring it much in the same way as if it had been written with his toes; yet there are peculiarities in his works which remind us of the lowness of his origin, and faults for which the defects of his education afford an obvious cause, if not a legitimate apology. In forming a correct estimate of these works, it is necessary to take into account those peculiarities.

The first is, the undisciplined harshness and acrimony of his invective. The great boast of polished life is the delicacy, and even the generosity of its hostility, that quality which is still the characteristic as it is the denomination of a gentleman,—that principle which forbids us to attack the defenceless, to strike the fallen, or to mangle the slain,—and enjoins us, in forging the shaft s of satire, to increase

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