"The noble Glencairn has wounded me to the soul here, because I dearly esteem, respect, and love him. He shewed so much attention, engrossing attention, one day, to the only blockhead at table (the whole company consisted of his lordship, dunderpate, and myself), that I was within half a point of throwing down my gage of contemptuous defiance; but he shook my hand, and looked so benevolently good at parting. God bless him! though I should never see him more, I shall love him until my dying day! I am pleased to think I am so capable of the throes of gratitude, as I am miserably deficient in some other virtues.

'With Dr Blair I am more at my ease. I never respect him with humble veneration; but when he kindly interests himself in my welfare, or, still more, when he descends from his pinnacle, and meets me on equal ground in conversation, my heart overflows with what is called liking. When he neglects me for the mere carcass of greatness, or when his eye measures the difference of our points of elevation, I say to myself, with scarcely any emotion, What do I care for him or his pomp either?'

He afterwards presents the following estimate of Dr Blair :—

'It is not easy forming an exact judgment of any one; but, in my opinion, Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and application can do. Natural parts like his are frequently to be met with; his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance; but he is justly at the head of what may be called fine writing; and a critic of the first, the very first rank in prose; even in poetry, a bard of Nature's making can only take the pas of him. He has a heart not of the very finest water, but far from being an ordinary one. In short, he is truly a worthy and most respectable character.'

Amongst the men whom Burns had met and liked at the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, was Joseph Woods, a respectable member of the Edinburgh corps dramatique, and the more likely to be endeared to the Ayrshire poet, that he had been an intimate friend of poor Fergusson. This explains a

PROLOGUE SPOKEN BY MR WOODS ON HIS
BENEFIT-NIGHT,

Monday, 16th April 1787.

When by a generous Public's kind acclaim,
That dearest meed is granted-honest Fame;
When here your favour is the actor's lot,
Nor even the man in private life forgot;
What breast so dead to heavenly Virtue's glow,
But heaves impassioned with the grateful throe.

Poor is the task to please a barbarous throng,
It needs no Siddons' powers in Southern's song;
But here an ancient nation famed afar,
For genius, learning high, as great in war-
Hail, CALEDONIA, name for ever dear!
Before whose sons I'm honoured to appear!
Where every science-every nobler art-
That can inform the mind, or mend the heart,
Is known; as grateful nations oft have found
Far as the rude barbarian marks the bound.
Philosophy, no idle pedant dream,

Here holds her search by heaven-taught Reason's beam;
Here History paints with elegance and force
The tide of Empire's fluctuating course;
Here Douglas forms wild Shakspeare into plan,
And Harley' rouses all the god in man,
When well-formed taste and sparkling wit unite
With manly lore, or female beauty bright
(Beauty, where faultless symmetry and grace,
Can only charm us in the second place),
Witness my heart, how oft with panting fear,
As on this night, I've met these judges here!
But still the hope Experience taught to live,
Equal to judge-you're candid to forgive.
No hundred-headed Riot here we meet,
With Decency and Law beneath his feet;
Nor Insolence assumes fair Freedom's name;
Like CALEDONIANS, you applaud or blame.

Oh thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand
Has oft been stretched to shield the honoured land!
Strong may she glow with all her ancient fire!
May every son be worthy of his sire!

Firm may

she rise with generous disdain

At Tyranny's or direr Pleasure's chain!

Still self-dependent in her native shore,

Bold may she brave grim Danger's loudest roar,

Till Fate the curtain drops on worlds to be no more.

The new edition of the Poems appeared on the 21st April, in a handsome octavo at five shillings. Creech's advertisement contained the following note:-'As the book is published for the sole benefit of the author, it is requested that subscribers will send for their copies; and none will be delivered without money.' The

The Man of Feeling, written by Mr Mackenzie.

Kilmarnock Preface was now abandoned, and in its stead appeared a Dedication

TO THE NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE

CALEDONIAN HUNT:

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN-A Scottish bard, proud of the name, and whose highest ambition is to sing in his country's service -where shall he so properly look for patronage as to the illustrious names of his native land, those who bear the honours and inherit the virtues of their ancestors? The poetic Genius of my country found me, as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my native soil, in my native tongue. I tuned my wild, artless notes, as she inspired. She whispered me to come to this ancient metropolis of Caledonia, and lay my songs under your honoured protection. I now obey her dictates.

Though much indebted to your goodness, I do not approach you, my Lords and Gentlemen, in the usual style of dedication, to thank you for past favours; that path is so hackneyed by prostituted learning, that honest rusticity is ashamed of it. Nor do I present this address with the venal soul of a servile author, looking for a continuation of those favours-I was bred to the plough, and am independent. I come to claim the common Scottish name with you, my illustrious countrymen, and to tell the world that I glory in the title. I come to congratulate my country that the blood of her ancient heroes still runs uncontaminated, and that from your courage, knowledge, and public spirit, she may expect protection, wealth, and liberty. In the last place, I come to proffer my warmest wishes to the great fountain of honour, the Monarch of the Universe, for your welfare and happiness.

When you go forth to waken the echoes, in the ancient and favourite amusement of your forefathers, may pleasure ever be of your party, and may social joy await your return! When harassed in courts or camps with the justlings of bad men and bad measures, may the honest consciousness of injured worth attend your return to your native seats-and may domestic happiness, with a smiling welcome, meet you at your gates! May corruption shrink at your kindling indignant glance; and may tyranny in the ruler, and licentiousness in the people, equally find you an inexorable foe! I have the honour to be, with the sincerest gratitude and highest respect, my Lords and Gentlemen, your most devoted, humble servant, ROBERT BURNS.

EDINBURGH, 4th April 1787.

The volume contained another document most remarkable-a list of subscribers extending over thirty-eight pages. Several of

ET. 29.]

LIBERALITY OF THE SCOTTISH PUBLIC TO BURNS.

63

Burns's friends had been very active in promoting this subscription, and the high terms in which he had been spoken of in various publications, had disposed the public to extend its patronage liberally. The consequence was, the extraordinary number of fifteen hundred subscribers, engaging for two thousand eight hundred copies. The Caledonian Hunt stood at the head of the list for a hundred, for each of which, as we have already seen, a guinea was paid. Mr Creech appeared as subscribing for five hundred. Many of the nobility and gentry, and a great number of the most distinguished members of Scottish society in general, are presented in the list; in many instances, two, four, or five copies are taken; in some even a larger number. The Earl of Glencairn takes eight copies, the Countess sixteen, and Lady Betty Cunningham four. The Duchess of Gordon takes twentyone, and the Earl of Eglintoun forty-two. Mr Robert Muir of Kilmarnock, who had taken seventy-two copies of the provincial edition, is now a subscriber for forty; and Mr Archibald Prentice, farmer at Covington Mill, is put down for twenty. Mingled with the names of individuals occur, the Scots College at Valladolid, the Scots College at Douay, the Scots College at Paris, the Scots Benedictine Monastery at Ratisbon, and the Scots Benedictine Monastery at Maryburgh. I have looked over the list with considerable care, and detect only two names belonging to persons whom I know to be still (March 1851) alive; namely, 'Francis Charteris, Esq. Junior' (now Earl of Wemyss), and Mr Charles Hope, advocate' (lately President of the Court of Session).

Full justice has never been done to the Scottish public of that day for its liberality to Burns. Instead of being cold towards him, or refusing to help him up from the lowly and embarrassed circumstances in which nature and fortune had placed him, there was a burst of generous enthusiasm in his favour, and he met with an amount of patronage perhaps unprecedented in Britain since the days of Pope's Iliad. The enactment of the Caledonian Hunt was equivalent to a gift of nearly a hundred pounds. We have seen that two persons, the Earl of Eglintoun, and Mr Miller of Dalswinton, sent him each ten guineas as a gift. Those individuals who subscribed for a multitude of copies of his Poems, may be said to have also given him presents. The whole subscription-list can only be properly viewed as a contribution of society, for the benefit of one whom they understood to be a man of merit above his circumstances. Measured against an ardent modern estimate of the genius of

Burns, the whole contribution may appear not merely small but insignificant; but measured against the idea of a young and poor man, whom various critics had ventured to pronounce an extraordinary genius, and of whom little further was as yet known, it certainly is not small. Nor were its results to the recipient of little moment. A man who had hitherto lived as a farm-labourer, and never before, as he himself confesses, had ten pounds at once in his possession, is instantaneously received into the highest circles of society, treated respectfully and kindly, and endowed with a little fortune of five hundred pounds: it may be, and doubtless is, below the merits of Burns, as we now regard him; but to him at the time, it was a windfall of fortune fully enough perhaps for him to bear with any equanimity.

TO DR MOORE.

EDINBURGH, 23d April 1787.

I RECEIVED the books, and sent the one you mentioned to Mrs Dunlop. I am ill skilled in beating the coverts of imagination for metaphors of gratitude. I thank you, sir, for the honour you have done me, and to my latest hour will warmly remember it. To be highly pleased with your book, is what I have in common with the world; but to regard these volumes as a mark of the author's friendly esteem, is a still more supreme gratification.

I leave Edinburgh in the course of ten days or a fortnight, and after a few pilgrimages over some of the classic ground of Caledonia, Cowden Knowes, Banks of Yarrow, Tweed, &c., I shall return to my rural shades, in all likelihood never more to quit them. I have formed many intimacies and friendships here; but I am afraid they are all of too tender a construction to bear carriage a hundred and fifty miles. To the rich, the great, the fashionable, the polite, I have no equivalent to offer; and I am afraid my meteor appearance will by no means entitle me to a settled correspondence with any of you, who are the permanent lights of genius and literature.

My most respectful compliments to Miss Williams. If once this tangent flight of mine were over, and I were returned to my wonted leisurely motion in my old circle, I may probably endeavour to return her poetic compliment in kind.

R. B.

CLIFFORD STREET, May 23, 1787. DEAR SIR-I had the pleasure of your letter by Mr Creech, and soon after he sent me the new edition of your Poems. You seem to think it incumbent on you to send to each subscriber a number of copies proportionate to his subscription-money, but you may depend