seems to have regarded letter-writing in much the same light, and to have considered it necessary at times to display all his acquisitions to amuse, gratify, or astonish his admiring correspondents. Considerable deductions must, therefore, be made from his published correspondence, whether regarded as an index to his feelings and situation, or as models of the epistolary style. In subject, he adapted himself too much to the character and tastes of the person he was addressing, and in style he was led away by a love of display. A tinge of pedantry and assumption, or of reckless bravado, was thus at times superinduced upon the manly and thoughtful simplicity of his natural character, which sits as awkwardly upon it as the intrusion of Jove or Danae into the rural songs of Allan Ramsay.* Burns's letters, however, are valuable as memorials of his temperament and genius. He was often distinct, forcible, and happy in expression-rich in sallies of imagination and poetical feeling-at times deeply pathetic and impressive. He lifts the veil from the miseries of his latter days with a hand struggling betwixt pride and a broken spirit. His autobiography, addressed to Dr. Moore, written when his mind was salient and vigorous, is as remarkable for its

*The scraps of French in his letters to Dr. Moore, Mrs. Riddel, &c., have an unpleasant effect. If he had an affectation in anything,' 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: One of his friends, who carried him into the company of a French lady, remarked, with surprise, that he attempted to converse with her in her own tongue. Their French, however, was mutually unintelligible. As far as Burns could make himself understood, he unfortunately offended the foreign lady. He meant to tell her that she was a charming person, and delightful in conversation, but expressed himself so as to appear to her to mean that she was fond of speaking: to which the Gallic dame indignantly replied, that it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent as for women to be loquacious.' The friend who introduced Burns on this occasion (and who herself related the anecdote to Mr. Campbell) was Miss Margaret Chalmers, afterwards Mrs. Lewis Hay, who died in 1843. The wonder is, that the dissipated aristocracy of the Caledonian Hunt, and the buckish tradesmen of Edinburgh,' left any part of the original plainness and simplicity of his manners. Yet his learned friends saw no change in the proud self-sustained and selfmeasuring poet. He kept his ground, and he asked no more.

'A somewhat clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their characters,' says the quaint but true and searching Thomas Carlyle, this winter in Edinburgh did afford him; but a sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it also left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in which the powerful are born to play their parts; nay, had himself stood in the midst of it; and he felt more bitterly than ever that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this time a jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes possession of him; and perverts, so far as aught could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could he but have rightly willed this. It was clear also that he willed something far different, and therefore could not make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one and reject the other, but must halt forever between two opinions, two objects; making hampered advancement towards either. But so it is with many men; "we long for the merchandise, yet would fain keep the price;" and so stand chaffering with Fate, in vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is over!'

literary talent as for its modest independence and clear judgment; and the letters to Mrs. Dunlop-in whom he had entire confidence, and whose lady-like manners and high principle rebuked his wilder spirit-are all characterised by sincerity and elegance. One beautiful letter to this lady we are tempted to copy; it is poetical in the highest degree, and touches with exquisite taste on the mysterious union between external nature and the sympathies and emotions of the human frame:

ELLISLAND, New-year-day Morning, 1789.

In

This, dear madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description !-the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings; everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self-enjoyment should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituted routine of life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little better than mere machinery.

This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue-skied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end of autumn; these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday.

I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the 'Spectator'-the Vision of Mirzaa piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables; On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer.'

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities-a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave

In another of his letters we have this striking autobiographical fragment:

I have been this morning taking a peep through, as Young finely says, 'the dark postern of time long elapsed;' and you will easily guess 'twas a rueful prospect: what a tissue of thoughtlessness, weakness, and folly! My life reminded me of a ruined temple; what strength, what proportion in some parts! what unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruins in others! I kneeled down before the Father of Mercies, and said:Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' rose eased and strengthened. I despise the superstition of a fanatic, but I love the religion of a man.

And again in a similar strain:

There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more-I do not know if I should call it pleasure-but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me-than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation in a cloudy winter-day,

and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain! It is my best season for devotion: my mind is wrapped up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, walks on the wings of the

wind.'

To the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, Burns seems to have clung with fond tenacity; it survived the wreck or confusion of his early impressions, and formed the strongest and most soothing of his beliefs. In other respects his creed was chiefly practical. Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,' he says, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.' The same feeling he had expressed in one of his early poems:

But deep this truth impressed my mind,

Through all his works abroad,

The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.

Conjectures have been idly formed as to the probable effect which education would have had on the mind of Burns. We may as well speculate on the change which might be wrought by the engineer, the planter, and agriculturist, in assimilating the wild scenery of Scot land to that of England. Who would wish-if it were possible-by successive graftings, to make the birch or the pine approximate to the oak or the elm? Nature is various in all her works, and has diversified genius as much as she has done her plants and trees. In Burns we have a genuine Scottish poet; why should we wish to mar the beautiful order and variety of nature by making him a Dryden or a Gray? Education could not have improved Burns's songs, his 'Tam o' Shanter,' or any other of his great poems. He would never have written them but for his situation and feelings as a peasantand could he have written anything better? The whole of that world of passion and beauty which 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 adding, new interest and glory to his country, would only have placed him in the long procession of English poets, stripped of his originality, and bearing, though proudly, the ensign of conquest and submission

From the Epistle to James Smith.

This while my notion's ta'en a sklent
To try my fate in guid black prent;
But still the mair I'm that way bent,
Something cries Hoolie!
I red you, honest man, tak tent!
Ye'll shaw your folly.

There's ither poets, much your betters,
Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,
Hac thought they had insured their deb-

tors

A' future ages;
Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages.'

Then farewell hopes o' laurel-boughs,
To garland my poetic brows!
Henceforth I'll rove where busy ploughs
Are whistling thrang,
An' teach the lanely heights an' howes
My rustic sang,

I'll wander on, with tentless heed
How never-halting moments speed,
Till fate shall snap the brittle thread;
Then, all unknown,
I'll lay me with the inglorious dead,
Forgot and gone!

But why o' death begin a tale?
Just now we're living sound and hale,
Then top and maintop crowd the sail,
Heave care o'er side!

And large before enjoyment's gale,
Let's tak the tide.

This life, sae far's I understand,
Is a' enchanted fairy land,,

Where pleasure is the magic wand,
That, wielded right,

Maks hours like minutes, hand in hand,
Dance by fu' light.

The magic wand then let us wield;
For ance that five-and-forty's speeled,
See, crazy, weary, joyless eild,

Wi' wrinkled face,
Comes hostin' hirplin' ower the field,
Wi' creepin pace.

When ance life's day draws near the

gloamin',

Then fareweel vacant careless roamin';
And fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin',
And social noise;

And fareweel dear, deluding woman,
The joy of joys:

O Life! how pleasant in thy morning,
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning!
Cold-pausing Caution's lesson scorning,
We frisk away,

Like school-boys, at the expected warn-
ing,
To joy and play.

We wander there, we wander here,
We
eye the rose upon the brier,
Unmindful that the thorn is near,
Among the leaves!
And though the puny wound appear
Short while it grieves.

From the Epistle to W. Simpson.

We'll sing auld Coila's plains and fells,
Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells,
Her banks and braes, her dens and dells,
Where glorious Wallace.

Aft bure the gree, as story tells,

Frae southron billies.

At Wallace' name what Scottish blood
But boils up in a spring-tide flood!
Oft have our fearless fathers strode
By Wallace' side,

Still pressing onward, red-wat shod,
Or glorious died!

Oh, sweet are Coila's haughs and woods,
When lintwhites chant amang the buds,
And jinkin' hares in amorous whids,

Their loves enjoy,
While through the braes the cushat croods
With wailfu' cry!

Even winter bleak has charms to me
When winds rave through the naked tree;
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree
Are hoary gray:

Or blinding drifts wild furious flee,
Darkening the day!

O Nature! a' thy shows and forms
To feeling, pensive hearts hae chaims!
Whether the summer kindly warms,
Wi' life and light,

Or winter howls in gusty storms
The lang, dark night!

The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel he learned to wander,
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
And no think lang;
Oh, sweet to stray, and pensive ponder
A heart-felt sang!

To a Mountain Daisy.

On turning one down with a plough in April 1786.

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure

Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gein.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet
The bonny lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,

Wi' spreckled breast,

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east!

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa's maun
shield:

But thou, beneath the random bield.
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

A gentleman who held the patent for his honours immediately from Almighty God.

But now his radiant course is run,
For Matthew's course was bright;
His soul was like the glorious sun,
A matchless, heavenly light!

1 Eagles.