into the test of a man's loyalty to his King? The poet Crabbe has, in one of his masterly sketches, given us, perhaps, a more vivid delineation of the jarrings and collisions which were at this period the perpetual curse of society than the reader may be able to find elsewhere. He has painted the sturdy Tory mingling accidentally in a company of those who would not, like Burns, drink « the health of William Pitt;" and suffering sternly and sulkily under the infliction of their, to him, horrible doctrines ....

"Now, dinner past, no longer he supprest
His strong dislike to be a silent guest;
Subjects and words were now at his command—
When disappointment frown'd on all he plann’d.
For, hark! he heard, amazed, on every side,
His church insulted, and her priests belied,
The laws reviled, the ruling powers abused,
The land derided, and her foes excused-
He heard and ponder'd. What to men so vile
Should be his language? For his threatening style
They were too many. If his speech were meek,
They would despise such poor attempts to speak—
-There were reformers of each different sort,
Foes to the laws, the priesthood, and the court;
Some on their favourite plans alone intent,
Some purely angry and malevolent ;

The rash were proud to blame their country's laws,
The vain to seem supporters of a cause;

One call'd for change that he would dread to see,
Another sigh'd for Gallic liberty;

And numbers joining with the forward crew,
For no one reason-but that many do-

-How, said the Justice, can this trouble rise—
This shame and pain, from creatures I despise ?"-

And he has also presented the champion of loyalty as surrounded with kindred spirits, and amazed with the audacity of an intrusive democrat,

with whom he has now no more cause to keep terms than such gentlemen as "Captain were wont to do with Robert Burns.

"Is it not known, agreed, confirm'd, confest,
That of all peoples we are govern'd best?
-And live there those in such all-glorious state,
Traitors protected in the land they hate,
Rebels still warring with the laws that give

To them subsistence ?-Yes, such wretches live!
The laws that nursed them they blaspheme; the laws-
Their Sovereign's glory-and their country's cause ;-
And who their mouth, their master fiend; and who
Rebellion's oracle ?-You, caitiff, you!

-O could our country from her coasts expel
Such foes, and nourish those that wish her well
This her mild laws forbid, but we may still
From us eject them by our sovereign will
This let us do .

He spoke, and, seated with his former air,
Look'd his full self, and fill'd his ample chair ;
Took one full bumper to each favourite cause,
And dwelt all night on politics and laws,

With high applauding voice which gain'd him high applause."

Burns, eager of temper, loud of tone, and with declamation and sarcasm equally at command, was, we may easily believe, the most hated of human beings, because the most dreaded, among the provincial champions of the administration of which he thought fit to disapprove. But that he ever, in his most ardent moods, upheld the principles of those whose applause of the French Revolution was but the mask of revolutionary designs at home, after these principles had been really developed by those that maintained them, and understood by him, it may be safely denied. There is not, in all his correspondence, one syllable to give countenance to such a charge.

His indiscretion, however, did not always confine itself to words; and though an incident now about to be recorded, belongs to the year 1792, before the French war broke out, there is reason to believe that it formed the main subject of the inquiry which the Excise Commissioners thought themselves called upon to institute touching the politics of our poet.

At that period a great deal of contraband traffic, chiefly from the Isle of Man, was going on along the coasts of Galloway and Ayrshire, and the whole of the revenue officers from Gretna to Dumfries, were placed under the orders of a superintendent residing in Annan, who exerted himself zealously in intercepting the descent of the smuggling vessels. On the 27th of February, a suspicious-looking brig was discovered in the Solway Frith, and Burns was one of the party whom the superintendent conducted to watch her motions. She got into shallow water the day afterwards, and the officers were enabled to discover that her crew were numerous, armed, and not likely to yield without a struggle. Lewars, a brother exciseman, an intimate friend of our poet, was accordingly sent to Dumfries for a guard of dragoons; the superintendent, Mr Crawford, proceeded himself on a similar errand to Ecclefechan, and Burns was left with some men under his orders, to watch the brig, and prevent landing or escape. From the private journal of one of the excisemen, (now in my hands,) it appears that Burns manifested considerable impatience while thus occupied, being left for many hours in a wet salt-marsh, with a force which he knew to be inadequate for the purpose it was meant to fulfil. One of his comrades hearing him abuse his friend Lewars in particular, for being

slow about his journey, the man answered, that he also wished the devil had him for his pains, and that Burns, in the meantime, would do well to indite a song upon the sluggard: Burns said nothing; but after taking a few strides by himself among the reeds and shingle, rejoined his party, and chanted to them the well-known ditty, The Deil's run awa' wi' the Exciseman.* Lewars arrived shortly afterwards with his dragoons; and Burns, putting himself at their head, waded, sword in hand, to the brig, and was the first to board her. The crew lost heart, and submitted, though. their numbers were greater than those of the assailing force. The vessel was condemned, and, with all her arms and stores, sold by auction next day at Dumfries: upon which occasion, Burns, whose behaviour had been highly commended, thought fit to purchase four carronades, by way of trophy. But his glee went a step farther;-he sent the guns, with a letter, to the French Convention, requesting that body to accept of them as a mark of his admiration and respect. The present, and its accompaniment, were intercepted at the custom-house at Dover; and here, there appears to be little room to doubt, was the principal circumstance that drew on Burns the notice of his jealous superiors.

We were not, it is true, at war with France; but every one knew and felt that we were to be so ere long; and nobody can pretend that Burns was not guilty, on this occasion, of a most absurd and presumptuous breach of decorum.

*The account in the Reliques of this song being composed for "a festive meeting of all the Excise-officers, in Scotland," is therefore incorrect. Mr Train, moreover, assures me, that there never was any such meeting.

When he learned the impression that had been created by his conduct, and its probable consequences, he wrote to his patron, Mr Graham of Fintray, the following letter :

"December 1792.

"SIR, I have been surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr Mitchell, the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your board to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person disaffected to government. Sir, you are a husband and a father. You know what you would feel to see the much-loved wife of your bosom, and your helpless, prattling little ones turned adrift into the world, degraded and disgraced, from a situation in which they had been respectable and respected, and left almost without the necessary support of a miserable existence. Alas! sir, must I think that such soon will be my lot? and from the damned dark insinuations of hellish, groundless envy too? I believe, sir, I may aver it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be, than those I have mentioned, hung over my head. And I say that the allegation, whatever villain has made it, is a lie. To the British Constitution, on revolution principles, next, after my God, I am most devoutly attached. You, sir, have been much and generously my friend. Heaven knows how warmly I have felt the obligation, and how gratefully I have thanked you. Fortune, sir, has made you powerful, and me impotent; has given you patronage, and me dependence. I would not, for my single self, call on your humanity: were such my insular, unconnected situation, I would disperse the tear

8