effect. It has given them not merely popularity, but permanence; it has imparted to the works of man some portion of the durability of the works of nature. If, from our imperfect experience of the past, we may judge with any confidence respecting the future, songs of this description are of all others least likely to die. In the changes of language they may no doubt suffer change; but the associated strain of sentiment and of music will perhaps survive, while the clear stream sweeps down the vale of Yarrow, or the yellow broom waves on the Cowden-Knowes.

The first attempts of Burns in song-writing were not very successful. His habitual inattention to the exactness of rhymes, and to the harmony of numbers, arising probably from the models on which his versification was formed, were faults likely to appear to more disadvantage in this species of composition, than in any other; and we may also remark, that the strength of his imagination, and the exuberance of his sensibility, were with difficulty restrained within the limits of gentleness, delicacy, and tenderness, which seem to be assigned to the love songs of his nation. Burns was better adapted by nature for following, in such compositions, the model of the Grecian than of the Scottish muse. By study and practice he however surmounted all these obstacles. In his earlier songs, there is some ruggedness;

3

ruggedness; but this gradually disappears in his successive efforts; and some of his latter compositions of this kind may be compared, in polished delicacy, with the finest songs in our language, while in the eloquence of sensibility they surpass them all.

The songs of Burns, like the models he followed and excelled, are often dramatic, and for the greater part amatory; and the beauties of rural nature are every where associated with the passions and emotions of the mind. Disdaining to copy the works of others, he has not, like some poets of great name, admitted into his descriptions exotic imagery. The landscapes he has painted, and the objects with which they are embellished, are, in every single instance, such as are to be found in his own country. In a mountainous region, especially when it is comparatively rude and naked, the most beautiful scenery will always be found in the vallies, and on the banks of the wooded streams. Such scenery is peculiarly interesting at the close of a summer-day. As we advance northwards, the number of the days of summer indeed diminishes; but from this cause, as well as from the mildness of the temperature, the attraction of the season increases, and the summer-night becomes still more beautiful. The greater obli. quity of the sun's path on the ecliptic, prolongs

VOL. I.

Y

the

the grateful season of twilight to the midnight hours, and the shades of the evening seem to mingle with the morning's dawn. The rural poets of Scotland, as may be expected, associate in their songs the expressions of passion, with the most beautiful of their scenery, in the fairest season of the year, and generally in those hours of the evening when the beauties of nature are most interesting.*

Το

* A lady, of whose genius the editor entertains high admiration, (Mrs. Barbauld) has fallen into an error in this respect. In her prefatory address to the works of Collins, speaking of the natural objects that may be employed to give interest to the descriptions of passion, she observes," they present an inexhaustible variety, from the Song of Solomon, breathing of cassia, myrrh, and cinnamon, to the Gentle Shepherd of Ramsay, whose damsels carry their milking pails through the frosts and snows of their less genial, but not less pastoral country." The damsels of Ramsay do not walk in the midst of frost and snow. Almost all the scenes of the Gentle Shepherd are laid in the open air, amidst beautiful natural objects, and at the most genial season of the year. Ramsay introduces all his acts with a prefatory description to assure us of this. The fault of the climate of Britain is not, that it does not afford us the beauties of summer, but that the season of such beauties is comparatively short, and even uncertain. There are days and nights, even in the northern division of the Island, which equal, or per

haps

To all these adventitious circumstances, on which so much of the effect of poetry depends, great attention is paid by Burns. There is scarcely a single song of his in which particular scenery is not described, or allusions made to natural objects, remarkable for beauty or interest; and though his descriptions are not so full as are sometimes met with in the older Scottish songs, they are in the highest degree appropriate and interesting. Instances in Instances in proof of this might be quoted from the Lea Rig,* Highland Mary, the Soldier's Return, Logan Water ;§ from that beautiful pastoral, Bonnie Jean, and a great number of others. Occasionally the force of his genius carries him beyond the usual boundaries of Scottish song, and the natural objects introduced have more

haps surpass, what are to be found in the latitude of Sicily or of Greece. Buchanan, when he wrote his exquisite ode to May, felt the charm as well as the transientness of these happy days:

of the character of sublimity. An instance of this kind is noticed by Mr. Syme,* and many others might be adduced:

66

"Had I a cave on some wild distant shore,

Where the winds howl to the wave's dashing roar:

There would I weep my woes,

There seek my lost repose,

Till grief my eyes should close,
Ne'er to wake more."+

In one song, the scene of which is laid in a winter-night, the "wan moon" is described as setting behind the white waves;"‡ in another, the "storms" are apostrophized, and commanded to rest in the cave of their slumbers."§ On several occasions, the genius of Burns loses sight entirely of his archetypes, and rises into a strain of uniform sublimity. Instances of this kind appear in Libertie, a Vision, and in his two war-songs, Bruce to his Troops,** and the Song of Death.++ These last are of a description of which we have no other in our language. The martial songs

of our

nation

*See p. 210 of this Volume.

+ Vol. iv. p. 92.

‡ Ibid. p. 45.

§ Vol. iv. p. 50.

|| Ibid. p. 344.

** Vol. iv. p. 125.

See p. 216 of this Volume.