residence at Ellisland. Above two hundred songs images, both familiar and awful, we should be were, however, thrown off by Burns in his latter disposed to rank the Address to the Deil. The years, and they embraced poetry of all kinds. poet adopted the common superstitions of the Moore became a writer of lyrics, as he informs peasantry as to the attributes of Satan; but his readers, that he might express what music though his Address is mainly ludicrous, he interconveyed to himself.

Burns had little or no sperses passages of the highest beauty, and blends technical knowledge of music. Whatever plea- a feeling of tenderness and compunction with his sure he derived from it, was the result of per- objurgation of the Evil One. The effect of consonal associations—the words to which airs were trast was never more happily displayed than in adapted, or the locality with which they were con- the conception of such a being straying in lonely nected. His whole soul, however, was full of the glens and rustling among trees-in the familiarity finest harmony. So quick and genial were his of sly humour with which the poet lectures so sympathies, that he was easily stirred into lyrical awful and mysterious a personage—who had, as melody by whatever was good and beautiful in he says, almost overturned the infant world, and nature. Not a bird sang in a bush, nor a burn ruined all ; and in that strange and inimitable glanced in the sun, but it was eloquence and outbreak of sympathy in which a hope is expressed music to his ear. He fell in love with every fine for the salvation, and pity for the fate, even of female face he saw; and thus kindled up, his Satan himselffeelings took the shape of song, and the words fell as naturally into their places as if prompted

But fare-you-weel, auld Nickie-ben! by the most perfect knowledge of music. The

Oh, wad ye tak a thought and men'!

Ye aiblins might-I dinna keninward melody needed no artificial accompani

Still hae a stake; ment. An attempt at a longer poem would have

I'm wae to think upo' yon den, chilled his ardour ; but a song embodying some

Even for your sake! one leading idea, some burst of passion, love, patriotism, or humour, was exactly suited to the The folly Beggars is another strikingly original impulsive nature of Burns's genius, and to his production. It is the most dramatic of his works, situation and circumstances. His command of and the characters are all finely sustained. Currie language and imagery, always the most appro- has been blamed by Sir Walter Scott and priate, musical, and graceful, was a greater marvel others for over-fastidiousness in not admitting than the creations of a Handel or Mozart. The that humorous cantata into his edition, but we Scottish poet, however, knew many old airs-still do not believe that Currie ever saw the Jolly more old ballads; and a few bars of the music, or Beggars. The poem was not published till a line of the words, served as a key-note to his 1801, and was then printed from the only copy suggestive fancy. He improved nearly all he known to exist in the poet's handwriting. Of the touched. The arch humour, gaiety, simplicity, Cotter's Saturday Night, the Mountain Daisy, or and genuine feeling of his original songs, will be the Mouse's Nest, it would be idle to attempt any felt as long as 'rivers roll and woods are green.' eulogy. In these Burns is seen in his fairest They breathe the natural character and spirit of colours--not with all his strength, but in his hapthe country, and must be coeval with it in exist- piest and most heart-felt inspiration-his brightest ence. Wherever the words are chanted, a picture sunshine and his tenderest tears. The workmanis presented to the mind; and whether the tone ship of these leading poems is equal to the value be plaintive and sad, or joyous and exciting, one of the materials. The peculiar dialect of Burns overpowering feeling takes possession of the im- being a composite of Scotch and English, which agination. The susceptibility of the poet inspired he varied at will-the Scotch being generally him with real emotions and passion, and his reserved for the comic and tender, and the English genius reproduced them with the glowing warmth for the serious and lofty-his diction is remarkably and truth of nature.

rich and copious. No poet is more picturesque Tam o Shanter is usually considered to be in expression. This was the result equally of Burns's master-piece: it was so considered by accurate observation, careful study, and strong himself, and the judgment has been confirmed by feeling. His energy and truth stamp the highest Campbell

, Wilson, Montgomery, and almost every value on his writings. He is as literal as Cowper. critic. It displays more various powers than any The banks of the Doon are described as faithfully of his other productions, beginning with low comic as those of the Ouse; and his views of human life humour and Bacchanalian revelry—the dramatic and manners are as real and as finely moralised. scene at the commencement is unique, even in His range of subjects, however, was infinitely Burns-and ranging through the various styles of more diversified, including a varied and romantic the descriptive, the terrible, the supernatural, and landscape, the customs and superstitions of his the ludicrous. The originality of some of the country, the delights of good-fellowship and boon phrases and sentiments, as

society, the aspirations of youthful ambition, and, Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,

above all, the emotions of love, which he depicted O'er a' thé ills of life victorious !

with such mingled fervour and delicacy. This

ecstasy of passion was unknown to the author of the felicity of some of the similes, and the elastic the Task. Nor could the latter have conceived force and springiness of the versification, must anything so truly poetical as the image of Coila, also be considered as aiding in the effect. The the tutelar genius and inspirer of the peasant poem reads as if it were composed in one trans- youth in his clay-built hut, where his heart and port of inspiration, before the bard had time to cool fancy overflowed with love and poetry. Cowper or to slacken in his fervour; and such we know was read and appreciated Burns, and we can picture actually the case. Next to this inimitable tale of his astonishment and delight on perusing such truth' 'in originality, and in happy grouping of strains as Coila's address :

“And wear thou this '-she solemn said, Extract from 'The Vision.'

And bound the holly round my head: With future hope I oft would gaze,

The polished leaves, and berries red, Fond, on thy little early ways,

Did rustling play ;

And, like a passing thought, she fled
Thy rudely carolled, chiming phrase,

In light away.
In uncouth rhymes,
Fired at the simple, artless lays
of other times.

Burns never could have improved upon the grace

and tenderness of this romantic vision-the finest 'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,

revelation ever made of the hope and ambition of Delighted with the dashing roar;

a youthful poet. Greater strength, however, he Or when the north his fleecy store,

undoubtedly acquired with the experience of manDrove through the sky, I saw grim nature's visage hoar

hood. His Tam o' Shanter, and Bruce's Address, Strike thy young eye.

are the result of matured powers; and his songs

evince a conscious mastery of the art and materials Or when the deep green-mantled earth of composition. His Vision of Liberty at LinWarm cherished every flow'ret's birth,

cluden is a great and splendid fragment. The And joy and music pouring forth

reflective spirit evinced in his early epistles is In every grove,

found, in his Lines written in Friars Carse I saw thee eye the general mirth

Hermitage, to have settled into a vein of moral With boundless love.

philosophy, clear and true as the lines of Swift, "When ripened fields and azure skies,

and informed with a higher wisdom. It cannot Called forth the reapers' rustling noise,

be said that Burns absolutely fails in any kind of I saw thee leave their evening joys,

composition, except in his epigrams; these are And lonely stalk,

coarse without being pointed or entertaining. To vent thy bosom's swelling rise

Nature, which had lavished on him such powers In pensive walk.

of humour, denied him wit.

In reviewing the intellectual career of the poet, "When youthful love, warm-blushing, strong, Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along,

his correspondence must not be overlooked. His Those accents, grateful to thy tongue,

prose style was more ambitious than that of his The adored Name,

poetry. In the latter he followed the dictates of I taught thee how to pour in song,

nature, warm from the heart, whereas in his letters To soothe thy flame.

he aimed at being sentimental, peculiar, and strik

ing; and simplicity was sometimes sacrificed for 'I saw thy pulse's maddening play,

effect. As Johnson considered conversation to be Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way,

an intellectual arena, wherein every man was Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray,

bound to do his best, Burns seems to have reBy passion driven; But yet the light that led astray

garded letter-writing in much the same light,

and to have considered it necessary at times to Was light from Heaven,

display all his acquisitions to amuse, gratify, 'I taught thy manners-painting strains,

or astonish his admiring correspondents. ConThe loves, the ways of simple swains,

siderable deductions must, therefore, be made Till now, o'er all my wide domains

from his published correspondence, whether reThy fame extends ;

garded as an index to his feelings and situation, And some, the pride of Coila's plains,

or as models of the epistolary style. In subject, Become thy friends.

he adapted himself too much to the character and “Thou canst not learn, nor can I shew,

tastes of the person he was addressing, and in To paint with Thomson's landscape glow ;

style he was led away by a love of display. A Or wake the bosom-melting throe,

tinge of pedantry and assumption, or of reckless With Shenstone's art;

bravado, was thus at times superinduced upon the Or pour, with Gray, the moving flow

manly and thoughtful simplicity of his natural Warm on the heart.

character, which sits as awkwardly upon it as the

intrusion of Jove or Danaë into the rural songs of “Yet, all beneath the unrivalled rose,

Allan Ramsay.* Burns's letters, however, are valuThe lowly daisy sweetly blows; Though large the forest's monarch throws His army shade,

* The scraps of French in his letters to Dr Moore, Mrs Riddel, Yet green the juicy hawthorn grows

&c. have an unpleasant effect. 'If he had an affectation in anyAdown the glade.

thing,' says Dugald Stewart, 'it was in introducing occasionally (in conversation) a word or phrase from that language.' Campbell

makes a similar statement, and relates the following anecdote : Then never murmur nor repine ;

*One of his friends, who carried him into the company of a Strive in thy humble sphere to shine ;

French lady, remarked, with surprise, that he attempted to converse

with her in her own tongue. Their French, however, was mutually And, trust me, not Potosi's mine, Nor king's regard,

unintelligible. As far as Burns could make himself understood, he

unfortunately offended the foreign lady. He meant to tell her Can give a bliss o'ermatching thine,

that she was a charming person, and delightful in conversation, A rustic bard.

but expressed himself so as to appear to her to mean that she was

fond of speaking: to which the Gallic dame indignantly replied, *To give my counsels all in one

hat it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent as for

women to be loquacious.' The friend who introduced Burns on Thy tuneful flame still careful fan;

this occasion (and who herself related the anecdote to Mr CampPreserve the dignity of man,

bell) was Miss Margaret Chalmers, afterwards Mrs Lewis Hay, With soul erect;

who died in 1843. The wonder is, that the dissipated aristocracy

of the Caledonian Hunt, and the buckish tradesmen of EdinAnd trust, the universal plan

burgh,' left any part of the original plainness and simplicity of his Will all protect.

Yet his learned friends saw no change in the proud

manners.

189

able as memorials of his temperament and genius. bell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, He was often distinct, forcible, and happy in ex- and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with pression-rich in sallies of imagination and poeti- particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle cal feeling—at times deeply pathetic and impress of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing ive. He lifts the veil from the miseries of his cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal latter days with a hand struggling

betwixt pride morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the and a broken spirit. His autobiography, addressed friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of to Dr Moore, written when his mind was salient machinery, which, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes and vigorous, is as remarkable for its literary the impression of the passing accident? Or do these talent as for its modest independence and clear workings argue something within us above the trodden judgment ; and the letters to Mrs Dunlop-in clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those whom he had entire confidence, and whose lady- awful and important realities--a God that made all like manners and high principle rebuked his things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a wilder spirit-are all characterised by sincerity world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave. and elegance. One beautiful letter to this lady

In another of his letters we have this striking we are tempted to copy; it is poetical in the highest degree, and touches with exquisite taste autobiographical fragment: on the mysterious union between external nature I have been this morning taking a peep through, and the sympathies and emotions of the human as Young finely says, 'the dark postern of time long frame:

elapsed, and you will easily guess 'twas a rueful pros

pect : what a tissue of thoughtlessness, weakness, and ELLISLAND, New-year-day Morning, 1789.

folly! My life reminded me of a ruined temple ; what This, dear madam, is a morning of wishes, and would strength, what proportion in some parts ! what unsightly to God that I came under the apostle James's descrip- gaps, what prostrate ruins in others ! I kneeled down tion !--the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. În before the Father of Mercies, and said : * Father, I that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and am blessings ; everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquil- no more worthy to be called thy son. I rose eased lity and self-enjoyment should be removed, and every and strengthened. I despise the superstition of a fanatic, pleasure that frail humanity can taste should be yours. but I love the religion of a man. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of

And again in a similar strain : devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence -1 do not know if I should call it pleasure—but some

There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some thing which exalts me, something which enraptures me minds, to a state very little better than mere machinery.

-than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue plantation in a cloudy winter-day, and hear the stormy skied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary wind howling among the trees, and raving over the these, tîme out of mind, have been with me a kind of plain! It is my best season for devotion : my mind

is wrapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, in holiday. I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the the wings of the wind.”

the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, 'walks on Spectator--the Vision of Mirza—a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a To the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, word of three syllables : 'On the 5th day of the moon, Burns seems to have clung with fond tenacity ; it which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I survived the wreck or confusion of his early imalways keep holy, after having washed myself, and pressions, and formed the strongest and most offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high soothing of his beliefs. In other respects, his bill of Bagdat

, in order to pass the rest of the day in creed was chiefly practical. Whatever mitigates meditation and prayer.'

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the sub- the woes, or increases the happiness of others," he stance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for says, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatthose seeming caprices in them, that one should be par- ever injures society at large, or any individual in ticularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, it, this is my measure of iniquity. The same feelwhich on minds of a different cast, makes no extra- ing he had expressed in one of his early poems: ordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in

But deep this truth impressed my mind, spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the hare

Through all his works abroad,

The heart benevolent and kind self-sustained and self-measuring poet. He kept his ground, and

The most resembles God. he asked no more.

A somewhat clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of Conjectures have been idly formed as to the probfeeling of Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny mind of Burns. We may as well speculate on the Carlyle, this winter in Edinburgh did afford him ; but a sharper able

effect which education would have had on the it also left with him. He had seen the gay

and gorgeous arena, in change which might be wrought by the engineer, stood in the midst of it; and he felt more bitterly than ever that the planter, and agriculturist,

in assimilating the here he was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid wild scenery of Scotland to that of England. game. From this time a jealous indignant fear of social degrada; Who would wish-if it were possible—by sucfellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make approximate to the oak or the elm? Nature is pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings towards his richer cessive graftings, to make the birch or the pine this. It was clear also that he willed something far different, and various in all her works, and has diversified genius therefore could not make one. Unhappy it was that he had not as much as she has done her plants and trees. power to choose the one and reject the other, but must halt for In Burns we have a genuine Scottish poet: why ment towards either. But so it is with

many men we long for should we wish to mar the beautiful order and the merchandise, yet would fain keep the price", and so stand variety of nature by making him a Dryden or chaffering with Fate, in vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is over!'

a Gray? Education could not have improved

Burns's songs, his Tam o Shanter, or any other We wander there, we wander here, of his great poems. He would never have written We eye the rose upon the brier, them but for his situation and feelings as a peasant

Unmindful that the thorn is near, -and could he have written anything better? The

Among the leaves ! whole of that world of passion and

beauty which

And though the puny wound appear,

Short while it grieves. he has laid open to us might have been hid for ever; and the genius which was so well and worthily employed in embellishing rustic life, and

From the Epistle to W. Simpson. adding new interest and glory to his country, would only have placed him in the long proces

We'll sing auld Coila's plains and fells, sion of English poets, stripped of his originality,

Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells,

Her banks and braes, her dens and dells, and bearing, though proudly, the ensign of con

Where glorious Wallace quest and submission.

Aft bure the gree, as story tells,

Frae southron billies.
From the Epistle to James Smith,

At Wallace' name what Scottish blood This while my notion's ta'en a sklent

But boils up in a spring-tide flood ! "To try my fate in guid black prent;

Oft have our fearless fathers strode
But still the mair I'm that way bent,

By Wallace' side,
Something cries Hoolie!

Still pressing onward, red-wat shod,
I red you, honest man, tak tent !

Or glorious died ! Ye'll shaw your folly. “There's ither poets, much your betters,

Oh, sweet are Coila's haughs and woods,

When lintwhites chant amang the buds, Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,

And jinkin' hares in amorous whids,
Hae thought they had insured their debtors

Their loves enjoy,
A' future ages;

While through the braes the cushat croods
Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages.'

With wailfu' cry! Then farewell hopes o' laurel-boughs,

Even winter bleak has charms to me To garland my poetic brows!

When winds rave through the naked tree; Henceforth I 'll rove where busy ploughs

Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree

Are hoary gray:
Are whistling thrang,

Or blinding drifts wild furious flee,
An' teach the lanely heights an' howes
My rustic sang

Darkening the day!
I 'll wander on, with tentless heed

O Nature! a' thy shows and forms How never-halting moments speed,

To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms! Till fate shall snap the brittle thread;

Whether the summer kindly warms,

Wi' life and light,
Then, all unknown,
I'll lay me with the inglorious dead,

Or winter howls in gusty storms
Forgot and gone !

The lang, dark night!
But why o' death begin a tale ?

The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,

Till by himsel he learned to wander,
Just now we're living sound and hale,
Then top and maintop crowd the sail,

Adown some trotting burn's meander,

And no think lang;
Heave care o'er side!
And large before enjoyment's gale,

Oh, sweet to stray, and pensive ponder

A heart-felt sang!
Let's tak the tide.
This life, sae far 's I understand,
Is a' enchanted fairy land,

To a Mountain Daisy,
Where pleasure is the magic wand,

On turning one down with the plough in April 1786.
That, wielded right,
Maks hours like minutes, hand in hand,

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Dance by fu' light.

Thou 's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crush amang the stoure The magic wand then let us wield;

Thy slender stem : For, ance that five-and-forty 's speeled,

To spare thee now is past my power,
See, crazy, weary, joyless eild,

Thou bonny gem.
Wi' wrinkled face,
Comes hostin', hirplin' ower the field,

Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet,
Wi' creepin' pace.

The bonny lark, companion meet,

Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, When ance life's day draws near the gloamin',

Wi' spreckled breast, Then fareweel vacant careless roamin

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet And fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin',

The purpling east !
And social noise ;
And fareweel dear, deluding woman,

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
The joy of joys!

Upon thy early, humble birth ;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth O Life ! how pleasant in thy morning,

Amid the storm, Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning!

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Cold-pausing Caution's lesson scorning,

Thy tender form.
We frisk away,
Like school-boys, at the expected warning,

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
To joy and play.

High sheltering woods and wa's

maun shield:

But thou, beneath the random bield

Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea;
O clod or stane,

Ye stately foxgloves fair to see ;
Adorns the histie stibble-field,

Ye woodbines

hanging bonnilie Unseen, alane.

In scented bowers;

Ye roses on your thorny tree,
There in thy scanty mantle clad,

The first o' flowers.
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head

At dawn, when every grassy blade
In humble guise ;

Droops with a diamond at its head,
But now the share uptears thy bed,

At even, when beans their fragrance shed,
And low thou lies !

l'the rustling gale,

Ye maukins, whiddin' through the glade,
Such is the fate of artless maid,

Come join my wail.
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,

Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood;
And guileless trust,

Ye grouse that crap the heather bud;
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid

Ye curlews calling through a clud;
Low i' the dust.

Ye whistling plover ;

And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood!
Such is the fate of simple bard,

He's gane for ever!
On life's rough ocean luckless starred !
Unskilful he to note the card

Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals,
Of prudent lore,

Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels
And whelm him o'er!

Circling the lake ;

Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Such fate to suffering worth is given,

Rair for his sake.
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven

Mourn, clamering craiks at close o' day,
To misery's brink,

'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay; Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,

And when ye wing your

annual way He, ruined, sink !

Frae our cauld shore,

Tell thae far worlds wha lies in clay,
Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,

Wham we deplore.
That fate is thine—no distant date ;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,

Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower,
Full on thy bloom,

In some auld tree, or eldritch tower,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight,

What time the moon, wi' silent glower
Shall be thy doom.

Sets up her horn,
Wail through the dreary midnight hour

Till waukrife morn!
On Captain Matthew Henderson,

O rivers, forests, hills, and plains !
A gentleman who held the patent for his honours immediately Oft have ye heard my canty strains :
from Almighty God.

But now, what else for me remains
But now his radiant course is run,

But tales of woe?
For Matthew's course was bright;

And frae my een the drapping rains
His soul was like the glorious sun,

Maun ever flow.
A matchless, heavenly light!
O Death! thou tyrant fell and bloody!

Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year,
The meikle devil wi' a woodie

Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear :
Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,

Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear
O'er hurcheon hides,

Shoots up its head,
And like stock-fish come o'er his studdie

Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear

For him that's dead.
Wi' thy auld sides !
He's gane ! he's gane ! he's frae us torn,

Thou, Autumn, wi' thy yellow hair,
The ae best fellow e'er was born !

In grief thy sallow mantle tear !
Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn

Thou, Winter, hurling through the air

The roaring blast,
By wood and wild,

Wide o'er the naked world declare
Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,

The worth we've lost !
Frae man exiled!

Mourn him, thou sun, great source of light !
Ye hills, near neebors o' the starns,

Mourn, empress of the silent night!
That proudly cock your cresting cairns !

And you, ye twinkling starnies bright,
Ye cliffs, the haunts
of sailing yearns,

My Matthew mourn!
Where Echo slumbers !

For through your orb he's ta’en his flight,
Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns,

Ne'er to return.
My wailing numbers !

O Henderson ! the man-the brother!
Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens !

And art thou gone, and gone for ever? Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens !

And hast thou crossed that unknown river,
Ye burnies, wimpling down your glens

Life's dreary bound?
Wi' toddlin' din,

Like thee, where shall we find another,
Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,

The world around ?
Frae lin to lin!

Go to your sculptured tombs, ye great, 1 Eagles.

In a' the tinsel trash o'state