"I composed

money, and still less in keeping it." the song," he said, long afterwards, in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and I never recollect it but my heart melts and my blood sallies." The passion which he felt failed to find its way into the verse; there is some nature, but no inspiration :

These lines give little indication of future strength; his vigour of thought increased with his stature; before he was a year older, the language of his muse was more manly and bold :

"I dreamed I lay where flowers were springing,
Gaily in the sunny beam,

Listening to the wild birds singing

By a falling crystal stream;

Straight the sky grew black and daring,

Thro' the woods the whirlwinds rave,

Trees, with aged arms, are warring,
O'er the swelling drumlie wave."

Few of the early verses of Burns are preserved; some he himself destroyed, others were composed, but not, perhaps, committed to paper; while it is likely that not a few are entirely lost. In his nineteenth summer, the leisure season of the farmer, while studying mensuration at a school on the sea-coast, he met with the Peggy of one of his earliest songs. "Stepping into the garden," he says, "one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel

"Like Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower."

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless." On his return home the harvest was commenced. To the fair lass of Kirkoswald he dedicated the first fruits of his fancy, in a strain of equal freedom and respect, beginning

Now wastlin' winds and slaught'ring guns
Bring autumn's pleasant weather;
The moorcock springs on whirring wings
Amang the blooming heather;

Now waving grain wide o'er the plain

Delights the weary farmer,

And the moon shines bright when I rove at night

To muse upon my charmer."

In a still richer strain he celebrates his nocturnal adventures with another of the fair ones of the west. Burns could now write as readily as he could speak, and pour the passion which kindled up his veins into his compositions. It is thus he sings of Annie

"I hae been blythe wi' comrades dear,

I hae been merry drinkin';

I hae been joyfu' gatherin' gear,

I hae been happy thinkin;

But a' the pleasures e'er I saw,

Tho' three times doubled fairly,

That happy night was worth them a'

Amang the rigs o' barley."

He who could write such lines as these had little to learn from the muse; and yet he soon surpassed them in liquid ease of expression and happy originality of sentiment. It is one of the delusions of his biographers, that the sources of his inspiration

are to be sought in English poetry; but, save an image from Young, and a word or so from Shakspeare, there is no trace of them in all his compositions. Burns read the English poets no doubt with wonder and delight: but he felt he was not of their school; the language of life with him was wholly different; the English language is, to a Scottish peasant, much the same as a foreign tongue; it was not without reason that Murray, the oriental scholar, declared that the English of Milton was less easy to learn than the Latin of Virgil. Any one conversant with our northern lyrics will know what school of verse Burns imitated when he sang of Nannie—a lass who dwelt on the banks of the Lugar:

"Behind yon hills where Lugar flows,

'Mang moors an' mosses many, O;
The wintry sun the day has closed
And I'll awa' to Nannie, O.

"Her face is fair, her heart is true,
As spotless as she's bonnie, O;
The opening gowan, wat wi' dew,
Nae purer is than Nannie, O."

Such was the language in which the Poet addressed the rustic damsels of Kyle; ladies are not very apt to be won by verse, let it be ever so elegant; they set down the person who adorns them with the lilies and the roses of imagination as a dreamer, and look around for more substantial comfort. Waller's praise made Sacharissa smile-and smile only; and another lady of equal beauty saw in Lord Byron a pale-faced lad, lame of a foot, and married a man who could leap a five-barred gate; yet Burns was, or imagined himself, beloved; he wrote from his own immediate emotions; his muse

was no visionary dweller by an imaginary fountain, but a substantial

"Fresh young landart lass,"

whose charms had touched his fancy. Nor was he one of those who look high and muse on dames nursed in velvet laps, and fed with golden spoons. "He had always," says Gilbert, "a particular jealousy of people who were richer than himself; his love, therefore, rarely settled on persons of this description. When he selected any one out of the sovereignty of his good pleasure to whom he should pay his particular attention, she was instantly invested with a sufficient stock of charms out of the plentiful stores of his own imagination; and there was often a great dissimilitude between his fair captivator as she appeared to others, and as she seemed when invested with the attributes he gave her." His own words partly confirm the account of Gilbert. "My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare of this world, my fortune was various, sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes mortified with repulse." That his love was sometimes repulsed, we have the assurance of a poem, now lost, in which, like Cowley, he had recorded his labours in the way of affection; when doors were closed against him, or the Annie or Nannie of the hour failed in their promises, he added another verse to the ballad, the o'erword of which was, "So I'll to my Latin again." If he sought consolation in studying the Latin rudiments when jilted, his disappointments in that way could not be many, for

his knowledge of the language was small. In his twenty-fourth year his skill in verse enabled him to add the crowning-glory to his lyric compositions; who the lady was that inspired it we are not told, but she must have been more than commonly beautiful, or more than usually kind: as the concluding compliment might have been too much for one, he has wisely bestowed it on the whole sex; the praise of other poets fades away before it ;

"There's nought but care on every han',

In every hour that passes, O!
What signifies the life o' man

An' 'twere na for the lasses, O!

"Auld nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O!
Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O!"

The progress which Burns made in the more serious kind of verse during this lyrical fit was not at all so brilliant; his attempts have more of the language of poetry than of its simple force and true dignity. There are passages, indeed, of great truth and vigour, but no continued strain either to rival his after flights, or compare with the unity and finished excellence of " My Nannie, O," and " Green grow the Rashes." He had prepared himself, however, for those more prolonged efforts; nature had endowed him with fine sensibility of heart and grandeur of soul; he had made himself familiar with nature, animate and inanimate; with the gentleness of spring, the beauty of summer, the magnificence of autumn, and the stormy sublimity of winter; nor was he less so with rural man, and his passions and pursuits. Though indulging in no sustained flights