holding the plough, while the poet was letting the water off the field beside him. A sweeter tune mingled with these strains; and when turning up the furrow, he composed the verses to the "Mouse," the "Mountain Daisy," and other rural pieces. His poetical growth was quick, and he had only the nightingale's April before the May. Burns has left examples of nearly every shorter form of rhyme; the description, the satire, the epistle, the elegy, the love-song, the war-lay, and the epigram. He considered "Tam O'Shanter" to be his standard performance, and public opinion confirms his own. I must, however, confess that, in my judgment, the story runs down too fast, and the blaze of imagination seems to be unexpectedly and suddenly quenched in a mean catastrophe, which is the mere stick of the rocket. At the same time it is proper to mention the contrary view of thos: critics-Miss Seward in the number-who regard the jocose moral as admirably in keeping with the general plan, and applaud the poet for laughing at his objectors and retaining the sportive admonition. The story of "The Twa Dogs" is not less admirable in another style. The Scottish poems of Burns can be thoroughly relished by his countrymen only. Cowper remarked, "Poor Burns loses much of his deserved praise in this country through our ignorance of his language. I despair of meeting with any Englishman, who will take the pains that I have taken to understand him. His candle is bright, but shut up in a dark lantern. I lent him to a very sensible neighbour of mine; but his uncouth dialect spoiled all, and before he had read him through, he was quite ramfeezled." Dr. Moore seems to have anticipated this danger, when he warned the poet that all the fine satire and humour of "The Holy Fair" would be lost on the English, and urged him to abandon the Scottish stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern Eng lish verse. The difficulty of comprehension is specially felt in the poems of humour and common life; where a phrase, or a proverb, to the familiar ear brings with it a train of home recollections and pleasures. In such cases, the dialect is the family accent. Frequently, however, the hindrance is scarcely perceived. In "The Cotter's Saturday Night," nearly every stanza has a different tone. Sometimes he writes pure and simple English; another passage requires a glossary; and occasionally he combines the two languages, and blends, with admirable effect, pathos, sublimity, beauty, and homeliness. Dryden said pleasantly of Theocritus, that even his Doric dialect has an incomparable sweetness in his clownishness-like a fai: shepherdess in her country russet, talking in a Yorkshire tone. The Scottish songs of Burns suggest the same agreeable comparison; and a freshness sparkles in every word, like dew on the heather-bell. The "latitudinarianism" of the dialect is very accommodating to the poet, who is able by this Scottish privilege to marry the most opposite and discordant rhymes. Spenser had se the bold example of new spelling a word whenever the exigencies of sound required ; and Burns treated his syllables with the same freedom. The full harmony of his genius flowed into his songs, of which the remark of Mr. Pitt was pre-eminently true, that he could think of no verse, since Shakspeare, which had so much the appearance of coming sweetly from Nature. Under the ragrant birch trees, in the heathery glens, or among the moonlit sheaves, the gushes of music flowed warm from his heart. The range of it is not large, and one mellow, plaintive, delicious love-note always returns upon the ear in beauty. But the song of Burns was no mere outpouring of rich sounds. He bestowed time and patience. "All my poetry," he said, "is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction." Here is the interesting story, from his own pen:—“ My way is-I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then choose my theme--begin one stanza: when that is composed, which is generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature round me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom; humming every now and then the air with the verse I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures as my pen goes on. Seriously, this, at home, is almost invariably my way." The love-poetry of Burns is, for the most part, desire set to music. The unselfishness, the reverence, and the chivalry of affection he did not appreciate, or felt himself unable to portray. Crabbe's tale, in the second letter of "The Borough," has a sublimity of tenderness and a truthful purity which the Ayrshire Bard never equalled. Johnson, running down Hammond, denies the reality of all attachment where there is fiction, and despises a lover who courts his mistress with Roman imagery. Burns, too, sweeps away darts, flames, and graces, as just a Mauchline rabble." I know not why pastoral courtship should be truer than classical, for imagery is only the reflection of feeling. We compare those whom we admire to things which we prize. A woman is not more like a rose on a castle wall, than she is like Diana with her quiver. The rose and the goddess are emblems of beauty, and the poet chooses the one or the other, as the flower or the figure may be most familiar and pleasing to his memory. Taste moulds the lover. Nor is exaggeration in compatible with naturalness. Every poet magnifies a circumstance, and illuminates a heroine; and by so doing, he vanquishes the painter, and wins gratitude for the pen. To Waller, and not to Vandyck, we owe the ideal charms of Saccharisa. The amatory compositions of Burns are not so pure in spirit as the utterance is melocious. One of his correspondents wished to see the loose sentiments threshed out of a particular song. There is ample room for the flail, and with longer life, and in more thoughtful hours, the author would have handled it himself with what advantage to the finer wheat and to his own enduring fame, I need no Bay, for "Sweet this man could sing, as morning lark, And teach the noblest morals of the heart." The language of Burns is worthy of the poetry: animated and flexible, it com bines symmetry with muscle, and harmony with strength. In the choice of the illustration, the happy daring of the phrase, the delicate turn of the expression, and the tunefulness of the numbers, he is seldom surpassed by the most cultivated of his brethren. Even Pope is not a finer study for distinctness and precision. Wordsworth expressed surprise that Burns-passing the fruitful season of hi poetical life within sight of splendid sea-prospects, bounded by the peaks of Arran -should be quite silent respecting them; and he explains the peculiarity by the act, that, in the poetry of Burns, natural appearances seldom take the lead. He affects us as a man, rather than as a poet, by common feelings uttered in the poet's voice. Rivers, hills, and woods are blended in his mind with remembrances of place, time, and sentiment. And I am induced to copy here the very elegant observations of a true and a sympathizing critic, a master and a judge of the lyre:' -"It is evident, from almost all his pieces, that it was his delight-indeed it was his forte to localize the personages of his poetry: whether the offspring of his brain like Coila, supernatural beings-like the dancers in Kirk Alloway, or national heroes-like Wallace and Bruce, with the very woods, and hills, and streams which he frequented in his boyhood. And in his mind, this assimilation was so lively and abiding, that there are few of his descriptions-descriptions in number, diversity, and picturesque features seldom equalled-on which he has not cast such sunshine of reality, that we cannot doubt that they had their prototypes in nature, and not in nature only, but in his native district. It is probable that the mind of every one of us lays the scenes of Scripture-narrative, of history, of romance, of epic poetry, in fact, of all that we hear or read of,-in the places where we spent our childhood and youth: as, for example, the Garden of Eden in our father's orchard, where there were many fruit trees; the battle of Cannæ on the wide Common, intersected with trenches; the enchanted castle of some stupendous giant, upon the hill where the ruins of a Saxon tower rise out of a thick wood. It is of some advantage, then, to the poet, that the features of the landscapes, amidst which he first dwelt, but more especially those of the neighbourhood where he went to school, should afford rich and plastic materials, which imagination can diversify a million-fold, in so accommodate as to make them the perpetual theatre I 1 James Montgomery's "Lectures on Poetry," 1833, pp. 253-5 of all that he has been taught to remember concerning those who have lived before him, and all that he invents to increase the pleasures of memory to those that shall come after him. For it is not from the real and visible presence of things that the poet copies and displays; wherever he is, his 'heart' is still 'untravelled;' and it is from the cherished recollections of what early affected him, and could never afterwards be forgotten (having grown up into ideal beauty, grandeur, and excellence in his own mind), that he sings, and paints, and sculptures out imperishable forms of fancy, thought, and feeling. In this respect, all the compositions of Burns are homogeneous. He is in every style, in every theme, not only the patriot, the Scotchman, but the Scotchman the patriot of Ayrshire; so dear and indissoluble are the ties of locality to minds the most aspiring and independent. "Burns, according to his own account, was distinguished in childhood by a very retentive memory. In the stores of that memory we discover the hidden treasures of his muse, which enabled her, with a prodigality like that of nature, to pour forth images and objects of every form, and colour, and kind, while, with an economy, like that of the most practised art, she selected and combined the endless characteristics of pleasing or magnificent scenery, with such simplicity and effect, under every aspect of sky or season, that the bard himself seems rather to be a companion pointing out to the eye the loveliness or horror of a prospect within our own horizon, than the enchanter creating a fairy scene visible only to imagination. He appears to invent nothing, while, in truth, he exercises a much higher faculty than what is frequently called invention. The genius of Burns, like his native stream, confined to his native district, reflects the scenery on the 'Banks of Ayr' with as much more truth and transparency than factitious landscapes are painted in the opaque pages of more ostentatious poets, as the reflections of trees, cottages, and animals, are more vivid and diversified in water than the shadows of the same objects are on land." A word is due to the prose of Burns. The letters of poets include delightful specimens of our language; and the art of Pope, the pictures of Gray, the sunshine of Goldsmith, the heart-scenery of Cowper, and the nature of Scott, afford to some readers a livelier pleasure than their verses. The admirers of Burns add his name to the list. He could and did write noble English, throbbing with life, fashioned in beauty, and moving in grace. But the examples are few. His heart was seldom in the work :-"Except," he assured Mrs. Dunlop, "when prompted by friendship or gratitude, or (which happens extremely rarely) inspired by the Muse that presides over epistolary writing, I sit down, when necessitated to write, As I sit down to beat hemp." The aversion and the effort are sufficiently conspicuous, and the way to escape nem is easily learned. "Just sit down as I do," was the admonition of Goldsmith to a scanty correspondent, "and write forward till you have filled all your paper; it requires no thought; my head has no share in all I write; my heart dictates the whole." In the same temper, Southey assures his wife, after he had seen the young "Roscius,"-"I could tell you how the actor pleased and disappointed me; but the story would take time and thought; and in letter-writing I love to do nothing more than just say what is uppermost." Burns never failed when he let the affections guide his pen, and wrote the uppermost thought as it ¡ose. But Goldsmith was not his model. In youth he had been ensnared by the "wits," and Pope became the object of his imitation. With such an artist who might contend? Burns possessed silver and gold; but only skill the most accom. plished, and practice untiring, could raise the rare chasing on the metal. These endowments he wanted, and his celebrated letters are themes. They have a worse fault: his adulation is immense; and no scribbler, bribing Harley for a meal, ever outshamed the reply of Burns to the "Card" of Lord Buchan. But I will not linger on his faults, of which some did really lean to the side of virtue. And even flattery is occasionally the heart's voice speaking loud. Burns had in him the seeds of a noble character, and the ground was good; but while he slept "his enemy came and sowed tares with the wheat," and the fruit and the weeds grew together. Jeffrey speculated on the healthful influence of pure examples and wise lessons put gently before him. The effort would have been hazardous, for his pride was full of eyes, always wakeful. He boasted of it as a necessity of life, and wished to be stretched to his full length, in the grave, that he might occupy every inch of the ground to which he was entitled. His employment sharpened his tone. A moderate independence, literary leisure, and cultivated friends might have cherished a sweeter temper of charity and meekness in the poet-gauger, weary of a weekly gallop of two hundred miles, and the inspection of yeasty barrels. And what reader of Burns will refuse to echo the voice of Wordsworth, in his sympathy and his prayer?— "Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight- His course was true, When Wisdom prospered in his sight, Yes, freely let our hearts expand, Freely as in youth's season bland. When side by side, his Book in hand. Our pleasure varying at command |