original, that it would be absurd to institute a comparison. When our poet escapes from the contagion of Edinburgh, he often blazes forth in beautiful descriptions of nature; yet with the excep. tion of the Farmer's Ingle, he has not produced any poem in which the expectation, raised by passages of splendid merit, is not disappointed before the conclusion. The opening of Leith Races is admirable. "Mirth" is a true poetic vision, and may compare with Burns's Coila; but the moment the poet ceases to gaze on the fairy phantom of his imagination, he and she part company. She is not the inspiring genius of the day, for though this poem possesses considerable merit, it displays little of the exhilarations of mirth. It too frequently happens, that the finest note of preparation vibrates a little while on the delighted ear, and is heard no more. In the exordium of the Ghaist, the midnight horrors of a churchyard are brought before the mind in imaginations worthy of Shakspeare, yet the succeeding dialogue between the spirits of Heriot and Watson does not rise above the tone of common conversation. Of the love ode or song, which forms the most numerous, and perhaps the most valuable portion of Burns's poetry, Fergusson has not left us a single specimen. Love seems to have been a stranger to his bosom. This is the more singular in a youthful poet, of strong passions, and of a romantic imagination; yet in his poetry we discover no traces of it, fancied or ideal, and no mention is made of it in his life. With all these deductions, and some may think that they have been made with an unsparing hand, Fergusson was a man of great original genius. He owes nothing to any of his predecessors. His language (and it is admirable), his sentiments, his subjects, his mode of treating them, are all his own. He was endowed by nature with great susceptibility of mind, and seems most readily to have taken the tone of the objects around him. He lived in poetry, and whatever presented itself to his eye, was with him a theme for the muse. In this way his subjects are often ill chosen; yet it is wonderful with what art he has elevated the low, and thrown over materials the most unpromising an interest which does not seem to belong to them. There was in his mind all the elements of the poetical character,-feeling, fancy, imagination, and enthusiasm; but his enthusiasm was depressed and chilled by poverty, the eye of his imagination dimmed by the city atmosphere, and the light of his understanding prematurely quenched by a terrible malady. In pleasing views of rural life, he is inferior to Ramsay, and in mastery of the human heart, to Burns; but he is equal to the latter, and far superior to the former, in vigour of intellect, and certainly not inferior to either in powers of description. Had he written less, his volume would have been more pleasing in perusal, but it is uncertain if we should have risen from it with a more exalted idea of his genius; and had fortune been as auspicious to him in placing him in a situation favourable to the developement of poetical talent, as nature in endowing him with that rare quality, there is reason to believe, that he would have scarcely had a rival in the galaxy of Scottish glory, rich as it is in luminaries of the first magnitude. b Fable, Songs, A Saturday's Expedition, The Canongate Playhouse in Ruins, The Amputation, a Burlesque Elegy, The Peasant, the Hen, and Young Ducks, a 40 45 48 50 52 53 54 56, 57 On seeing a Lady paint herself, On the Death of Mr Thomas Lancashire, To the Memory of Cunningham, the Poet, The Delights of Virtue, A Tavern Elegy, Good Eating, Tea, The Sow of Feeling, An Expedition to Fife and the Island of May, 75 To Sir John Fielding, on his attempting to suppress the Beggar's Opera, Character of a Friend, To Dr Samuel Johnson, Epigram on seeing scales used in a Mason Epitaph on General Wolfe, Epigram on the numerous Epitaphs for Gen. Epilogue, spoken by Mr Wilson in the cha- My Last Will, Codicil to my Last Will, 8⌘❁ * * *88383328* * ྨ 79 ib. 85 ib. ib. 86 88 90 |