Burns used this dialect in so many other of his compositions. His declared purpose was to paint the manners of rustic life among his "humble compeers," and it is not easy to conceive, that this could have been done with equal humour and effect, if he had not adopted their idiom. There are some, indeed, who will think the subject too low for poetry. Persons of this sickly taste will find their delicacies consulted in many a polite and learned author: let them not seek for gratification in the rough and vigorous lines, in the unbridled humour, or in the overpowering sensibility of this bard of nature. To determine the comparative merit of Burns would be no easy task. Many persons, afterwards distinguished in literature, have been born in as humble a situation of life; but it would be difficult to find any other who, while earning his subsistence by daily labour, has written verses which have attracted and retained universal attention, and which are likely to give the author a permanent and distinguished place among the followers of the muses. If he is deficient in grace, he is distinguished for ease as well as energy; and these are indications of the higher order of genius. The father of epic poetry exhibits one of his heroes as excelling in strength, another in swiftness-to form his perfect warrior, these attributes are combined. Every species of intellectual superiority admits, perhaps, of a similar arrangement. One writer excels in forceanother in ease; he is superior to them both, in whom both these qualities are united. Of Homer himself it may be said, that, like his own Achilles, he surpasses his competitors in mobility as well at -strength. The force of Burns lay in the powers of his understanding, and in the sensibility of his heart; and these will be found to infuse the living principle into all the works of genius which seem destined to immortality. His sensibility had an uncommon range. He was alive to every species of emotion, He is one of the few poets that can be mentioned, who have at once excelled in humour, in tenderness, and in sublimity; a praise unknown to the ancients, and which in modern times is only due to Ariosto, to Shakespeare, and perhaps to Voltaire. To compare the writings of the Scottish peasant with the works of these giants in literature, might appear presumptuous; yet it may be asserted that he has displayed the foot of Hercules. How near he might have approached them by proper culture, with lengthened years, and under happier auspices, it is not for us to calculate. But while we run over the melancholy story of his life, it is impossible not to heave a sigh at the asperity of his fortune; and as we survey the records of his mind, it is easy to see, that out of such materials have been reared the fairest and the most durable of the monuments of genius. A GREAT number of poems have been written on the Death of Burns, some of them of considerable poetical merit. To have subjoined all of them to the present edition, would have been to have enlarged it to another volume at least; and to have made a selection would have been a task of con-siderable delicacy. The Editor, therefore, presents one poem only on this melancholy subject; a poem which has not before appeared in print. It is from the pen of one who has sympathized deeply in the fate of Burns, and will not be found unworthy of its author-the Biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici. Of a person so well known, it is wholly unnecessary for the Editor to speak; and, if it were necessary, it would not be easy for him to find language that would adequately express his respect and his af fection. ON THE DEATH OF BURNS.. BY MR ROSCOE. REAR high thy bleak majestic hills, Thy airy heights, thy woodland reign, As green thy towering pines may grow, And dull and lifeless all around, For his wild harp lies all unstrung, And cold the hand that wak'd its sound. What tho' thy vigorous offspring rise, Yet who shall now their praises tell, With step-dame eye and frown severe And all his vows to thee were due: Thy lonely wastes and frowning skies That wak'd him to sublimer thought; And with sincere devotion brought To thee the summer's earliest bloom. But, ah! no fond maternal smile His days with early hardships tried; Day-dreams of immortality |