"In an instant all was dark, And scarcely had he Maggie rallied When out the hellish legion sallied." The chase by the witches, and Tam's very narrow escape across the running stream with the loss of his gray mare's tail, bring the poem to an appropriate ending. It won an immediate popularity, for it was circulated among the Scottish cottages, and one peasant did not meet another without one or both indulging in quotations. This had been the case also with Burns's earlier poems. Allan Cunningham mentions the fact of his father's having procured the volume from a Cameronian clergyman, with this remarkable admonition :-"Keep it out of the way of your children, John, lest ye catch them, as I caught mine, reading it on the Sabbath." One very remarkable evidence of the popularity of "Tam O'Shanter" is the fact that it made the churchyard of Alloway's old haunted kirk quite a fashionable burial-place; for the neighbouring gentry began to vie with humbler worth and noteless industry, in finding in its little area room for their last resting-place. 1 do not attempt to trace the course of Burns's personal story closely, as it is connected with his poetic career, as in the affecting incident of his love for Mary Campbell, and his pathetic lament over her as his "Highland Mary." On every leading event his poetic heart spake from its fulness, as when what he called a bitter blast of misfortune's cold "nor'west" was near driving him from his native land, and he wrote, in obvious allusion to himself, the stanzas "On a Scottish Bard gone to the West Indies :" "Auld cantie Kyle may weepers wear, He was her laureate monie a year That's owre the sea. "He ne'er was gien to great misguiding The Muse was a' that he took pride in "Jamaica bodies, use him weel, An' hap him in a cozie biel: He wad na wranged the vera deil That's owre the sea." The introduction of Burns to Edinburgh society, and his intercourse with it, were hurtful to the moral growth of his genius. It brought him into a closer contact with life, presenting the inequality of human condition, especially amid aristocratic institutions. His own sense of independence, and of his own intrinsic intellectual worth, was strong enough to make him realize social inequality, but not strong enough to raise him above it to a magnanimous contentment :- "See yonder poor, o'erlaboured wight, So abject, mean, and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil. "If I'm designed yon lordling's slave Why was an independent wish Kindly as the peasant-poet was received in Edinburgh, he detected that often in that kindness there was condescension; and, with a sensibility as tremblingly exquisite as his sense was strong, he suspected, as has been remarked by one of his biographers, "that the professional metaphysicians who applauded his rapturous bursts surveyed them, in reality, with something of the same feeling which attends a skilful surgeon's inspection of a curious specimen of morbid anatomy." "I doubt," said Burns himself, in a private record, "whether one man may pour out his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very inmost soul, with unreserving confidence, to another, without hazard of losing part of that respect which man deserves from man, or, from the unavoidable imperfections attending human nature, of one day repenting his confidence." Happy would it have been could Burns have held his spirit at the elevation which he reaches in another strain : Happier still would it have been could he have real ized one of his purest aspirations : "To make a happy fireside clime For weans and wife, That's the true pathos and sublime The question as to the morality of Burns's poetry may be reduced to a simple statement. That he, in his way of life, departed widely from paths which his conscience vainly persuaded him to, in opposition to ungovernable passions, cannot and ought not to be concealed. He never debased himself to a sottish intemperance, but sought convivial excitement, and the worst relief from morbid bodily affections brought on by premature distress. He has uttered a touching appeal for charitable judgments :— Gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang! To step aside is human: One point must still be greatly dark,—— And just as lamely can ye mark "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone He knows each chord-its various tone, Then at the balance let's be mute } We never can adjust it: What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted." His poetry has been charged-falsely, it seems to me— with a contempt or affectation of prudence, decency, and regularity, and an admiration of thoughtlessness, oddity, and vehement sensibility; in short, with a belief in the dispensing power of genius in all matters of morality. Burns had too much masculine good sense ever to fall into that wretched fallacy. He never so deceived himself. Wild words, indeed, often broke from him; and once, in well-known lines, most wrongly, perhaps somewhat impiously, he pleaded that the light which led astray was light from heaven. But he has written enough of self-condemnation, self-reproach, to show he did not think so. Who can doubt this on reading that sincere and solemn avowal in the stanzas he styled "The Bard's Epitaph ?"—as touching a confession as ever was composed: "Is there a whim-inspired fool, Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, And owre this grassy heap sing dool, "Is there a bard of rustic song, Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, That weekly this area throng? Oh, pass not by! But, with a frater-feeling strong, Here heave a sigh. "Is there a man whose judgment clear Wild as the wave? Here pause, and, through the starting tear, |