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images, both familiar and awful, we should be
disposed to rank the Address to the Deil. The
poet adopted the common superstitions of the
peasantry as to the attributes of Satan; but
though his Address is mainly ludicrous, he inter-
sperses passages of the highest beauty, and blends
a feeling of tenderness and compunction with his
objurgation of the Evil One. The effect of con-
trast was never more happily displayed than in
the conception of such a being straying in lonely
glens and rustling among trees-in the familiarity
of sly humour with which the poet lectures so
awful and mysterious a personage—who had, as
he says, almost overturned the infant world, and
ruined all; and in that strange and inimitable
outbreak of sympathy in which a hope is expressed
for the salvation, and pity for the fate, even of
Satan himself—

But fare-you-weel, auld Nickie-ben!
Oh, wad ye tak a thought and men'!
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken-
Still hae a stake;

I'm wae to think upo' yon den,
Even for your sake!

residence at Ellisland. Above two hundred songs were, however, thrown off by Burns in his latter years, and they embraced poetry of all kinds. Moore became a writer of lyrics, as he informs his readers, that he might express what music conveyed to himself. Burns had little or no technical knowledge of music. Whatever pleasure he derived from it, was the result of personal associations-the words to which airs were adapted, or the locality with which they were connected. His whole soul, however, was full of the finest harmony. So quick and genial were his sympathies, that he was easily stirred into lyrical melody by whatever was good and beautiful in nature. Not a bird sang in a bush, nor a burn glanced in the sun, but it was eloquence and music to his ear. He fell in love with every fine female face he saw; and thus kindled up, his feelings took the shape of song, and the words fell as naturally into their places as if prompted by the most perfect knowledge of music. The inward melody needed no artificial accompaniment. An attempt at a longer poem would have Ichilled his ardour; but a song embodying some one leading idea, some burst of passion, love, patriotism, or humour, was exactly suited to the impulsive nature of Burns's genius, and to his situation and circumstances. His command of language and imagery, always the most appropriate, musical, and graceful, was a greater marvel than the creations of a Handel or Mozart. The Scottish poet, however, knew many old airs-still more old ballads; and a few bars of the music, or a line of the words, served as a key-note to his suggestive fancy. He improved nearly all he touched. The arch humour, gaiety, simplicity, and genuine feeling of his original songs, will be felt as long as 'rivers roll and woods are green.' They breathe the natural character and spirit of the country, and must be coeval with it in exist-piest and most heart-felt inspiration-his brightest ence. Wherever the words are chanted, a picture is presented to the mind; and whether the tone be plaintive and sad, or joyous and exciting, one overpowering feeling takes possession of the imagination. The susceptibility of the poet inspired him with real emotions and passion, and his genius reproduced them with the glowing warmth and truth of nature.

Tam o'Shanter is usually considered to be Burns's master-piece: it was so considered by himself, and the judgment has been confirmed by Campbell, Wilson, Montgomery, and almost every critic. It displays more various powers than any of his other productions, beginning with low comic humour and Bacchanalian revelry-the dramatic scene at the commencement is unique, even in Burns-and ranging through the various styles of the descriptive, the terrible, the supernatural, and the ludicrous. The originality of some of the phrases and sentiments, as

Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious—
O'er a' the ills of life victorious!

the felicity of some of the similes, and the elastic
force and springiness of the versification, must
also be considered as aiding in the effect. The
poem reads as if it were composed in one trans-
port of inspiration, before the bard had time to cool
or to slacken in his fervour; and such we know was
actually the case. Next to this inimitable 'tale of
truth' in originality, and in happy grouping of

The Folly Beggars is another strikingly original production. It is the most dramatic of his works, and the characters are all finely sustained. Currie has been blamed by Sir Walter Scott and others for over-fastidiousness in not admitting that humorous cantata into his edition, but we do not believe that Currie ever saw the Folly Beggars. The poem was not published till 1801, and was then printed from the only copy known to exist in the poet's handwriting. Of the Cotter's Saturday Night, the Mountain Daisy, or the Mouse's Nest, it would be idle to attempt any eulogy. In these Burns is seen in his fairest colours-not with all his strength, but in his hap

sunshine and his tenderest tears. The workmanship of these leading poems is equal to the value of the materials. The peculiar dialect of Burns being a composite of Scotch and English, which he varied at will-the Scotch being generally reserved for the comic and tender, and the English for the serious and lofty-his diction is remarkably rich and copious. No poet is more picturesque in expression. This was the result equally of accurate observation, careful study, and strong feeling. His energy and truth stamp the highest value on his writings. He is as literal as Cowper. The banks of the Doon are described as faithfully as those of the Ouse; and his views of human life and manners are as real and as finely moralised. His range of subjects, however, was infinitely more diversified, including a varied and romantic landscape, the customs and superstitions of his country, the delights of good-fellowship and boon society, the aspirations of youthful ambition, and, above all, the emotions of love, which he depicted with such mingled fervour and delicacy. This ecstasy of passion was unknown to the author of the Task. Nor could the latter have conceived anything so truly poetical as the image of Coila, the tutelar genius and inspirer of the peasant youth in his clay-built hut, where his heart and fancy overflowed with love and poetry. Cowper read and appreciated Burns, and we can picture his astonishment and delight on perusing such strains as Coila's address:

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'When ripened fields and azure skies,
Called forth the reapers' rustling noise,
I saw thee leave their evening joys,
And lonely stalk,

To vent thy bosom's swelling rise
In pensive walk.

'When youthful love, warm-blushing, strong,
Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along,
Those accents, grateful to thy tongue,
The adored Name,

I taught thee how to pour in song,
To soothe thy flame.

'I saw thy pulse's maddening play,
Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way,
Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray,

By passion driven;

But yet the light that led astray

Was light from Heaven.

'I taught thy manners-painting strains,
The loves, the ways of simple swains,
Till now, o'er all my wide domains
Thy fame extends;

And some, the pride of Coila's plains,
Become thy friends.

"Thou canst not learn, nor can I shew,
To paint with Thomson's landscape glow;
Or wake the bosom-melting throe,

With Shenstone's art;

Or pour, with Gray, the moving flow
Warm on the heart.

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'And wear thou this '-she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head:
The polished leaves, and berries red,
Did rustling play ;

And, like a passing thought, she fled
In light away.

Burns never could have improved upon the grace and tenderness of this romantic vision-the finest revelation ever made of the hope and ambition of a youthful poet. Greater strength, however, he undoubtedly acquired with the experience of manhood. His Tam o' Shanter, and Bruce's Address, are the result of matured powers; and his songs evince a conscious mastery of the art and materials of composition. His Vision of Liberty at Lincluden is a great and splendid fragment. The reflective spirit evinced in his early epistles is found, in his Lines written in Friars Carse Hermitage, to have settled into a vein of moral philosophy, clear and true as the lines of Swift, and informed with a higher wisdom. It cannot be said that Burns absolutely fails in any kind of composition, except in his epigrams; these are coarse without being pointed or entertaining. Nature, which had lavished on him such powers of humour, denied him wit.

In reviewing the intellectual career of the poet, his correspondence must not be overlooked. His prose style was more ambitious than that of his poetry. In the latter he followed the dictates of nature, warm from the heart, whereas in his letters he aimed at being sentimental, peculiar, and striking; and simplicity was sometimes sacrificed for effect. As Johnson considered conversation to be an intellectual arena, wherein every man was bound to do his best, Burns seems to have regarded letter-writing in much the same light, and to have considered it necessary at times to display all his acquisitions to amuse, gratify, or astonish his admiring correspondents. Considerable deductions must, therefore, be made from his published correspondence, whether regarded as an index to his feelings and situation, or as models of the epistolary style. In subject, he adapted himself too much to the character and tastes of the person he was addressing, and in style he was led away by a love of display. A tinge of pedantry and assumption, or of reckless bravado, was thus at times superinduced upon the manly and thoughtful simplicity of his natural character, which sits as awkwardly upon it as the intrusion of Jove or Danaë into the rural songs of Allan Ramsay.* Burns's letters, however, are valu

* The scraps of French in his letters to Dr Moore, Mrs Riddel, &c. have an unpleasant effect. If he had an affectation in anything,' says Dugald Stewart, 'it was in introducing occasionally [in conversation] a word or phrase from that language.' Campbell makes a similar statement, and relates the following anecdote: 'One of his friends, who carried him into the company of a French lady, remarked, with surprise, that he attempted to converse with her in her own tongue. Their French, however, was mutually unintelligible. As far as Burns could make himself understood, he unfortunately offended the foreign lady. He meant to tell her that she was a charming person, and delightful in conversation, but expressed himself so as to appear to her to mean that she was fond of speaking: to which the Gallic dame indignantly replied, that it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent as for women to be loquacious.' The friend who introduced Burns on this occasion (and who herself related the anecdote to Mr Campbell) was Miss Margaret Chalmers, afterwards Mrs Lewis Hay, who died in 1843. The wonder is, that the dissipated aristocracy of the Caledonian Hunt, and the buckish tradesmen of Edinburgh,' left any part of the original plainness and simplicity of his manners. Yet his learned friends saw no change in the proud

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able as memorials of his temperament and genius. He was often distinct, forcible, and happy in expression-rich in sallies of imagination and poetical feeling-at times deeply pathetic and impressive. He lifts the veil from the miseries of his latter days with a hand struggling betwixt pride and a broken spirit. His autobiography, addressed to Dr Moore, written when his mind was salient and vigorous, is as remarkable for its literary talent as for its modest independence and clear judgment; and the letters to Mrs Dunlop-in whom he had entire confidence, and whose ladylike manners and high principle rebuked his wilder spirit-are all characterised by sincerity and elegance. One beautiful letter to this lady we are tempted to copy; it is poetical in the highest degree, and touches with exquisite taste on the mysterious union between external nature and the sympathies and emotions of the human frame:

bell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities-a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.

In another of his letters we have this striking autobiographical fragment:

I have been this morning taking a peep through, as Young finely says, 'the dark postern of time long elapsed; and you will easily guess 'twas a rueful prospect what a tissue of thoughtlessness, weakness, and folly! My life reminded me of a ruined temple; what strength, what proportion in some parts! what unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruins in others! I kneeled down before the Father of Mercies, and said: "Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' I rose eased and strengthened. I despise the superstition of a fanatic, but I love the religion of a man.

And again in a similar strain :

ELLISLAND, New-year-day Morning, 1789. This, dear madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description!-the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. În that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings; everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self-enjoyment should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence-I do not know if I should call it pleasure-but someto a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some thing which exalts me, something which enraptures me minds, to a state very little better than mere machinery. -than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue- plantation in a cloudy winter-day, and hear the stormy skied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary wind howling among the trees, and raving over the morning and calm sunny day about the end of autumn; plain! It is my best season for devotion: my mind these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of is wrapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, in holiday. the wings of the wind.' pompous language of the Hebrew bard, 'walks on

I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the Spectator-the Vision of Mirza-a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: 'On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer.'

par

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be ticularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which on minds of a different cast, makes no extra ordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the hare

self-sustained and self-measuring poet. He kept his ground, and he asked no more.

A somewhat clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their characters,' says the quaint but true and searching Thomas Carlyle, this winter in Edinburgh did afford him; but a sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it also left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in which the powerful are born to play their parts; nay, had himself stood in the midst of it; and he felt more bitterly than ever that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this time a jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes possession of him; and perverts, so far as aught could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could he but have rightly willed this. It was clear also that he willed something far different, and therefore could not make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one and reject the other, but must halt for ever between two opinions, two objects; making hampered advancement towards either. But so it is with many men: "we long for the merchandise, yet would fain keep the price;" and so stand

chaffering with Fate, in vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is over!'

the

To the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, Burns seems to have clung with fond tenacity; it survived the wreck or confusion of his early impressions, and formed the strongest and most soothing of his beliefs. In other respects, his creed was chiefly practical. Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,' he says, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.' The same feeling he had expressed in one of his early poems:

But deep this truth impressed my mind,
Through all his works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind

The most resembles God.

Conjectures have been idly formed as to the probable effect which education would have had on the mind of Burns. We may as well speculate on the change which might be wrought by the engineer, the planter, and agriculturist, in assimilating the wild scenery of Scotland to that of England. Who would wish-if it were possible-by successive graftings, to make the birch or the pine approximate to the oak or the elm? Nature is various in all her works, and has diversified genius as much as she has done her plants and trees. In

Burns we have a genuine Scottish poet: why should we wish to mar the beautiful order and variety of nature by making him a Dryden or a Gray? Education could not have improved

Burns's songs, his Tam o Shanter, or any other of his great poems. He would never have written them but for his situation and feelings as a peasant -and could he have written anything better? The whole of that world of passion and beauty which he has laid open to us might have been hid for ever; and the genius which was so well and worthily employed in embellishing rustic life, and adding new interest and glory to his country, would only have placed him in the long procession of English poets, stripped of his originality, and bearing, though proudly, the ensign of conquest and submission.

From the Epistle to James Smith.
This while my notion 's ta'en a sklent
To try my fate in guid black prent;
But still the mair I'm that way bent,
Something cries 'Hoolie !
I red you, honest man, tak tent!
Ye'll shaw your folly.

"There's ither poets, much your betters,
Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,
Hae thought they had insured their debtors
A' future ages;

Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages.'

Then farewell hopes o' laurel-boughs,
To garland my poetic brows!
Henceforth I'll rove where busy ploughs
Are whistling thrang,

An' teach the lanely heights an' howes
My rustic sang.

I'll wander on, with tentless heed
How never-halting moments speed,
Till fate shall snap the brittle thread;
Then, all unknown,

I'll lay me with the inglorious dead,
Forgot and gone!

But why o' death begin a tale?
Just now we're living sound and hale,
Then top and maintop crowd the sail,
Heave care o'er side!

And large before enjoyment's gale,
Let's tak the tide.

This life, sae far's I understand,
Is a' enchanted fairy land,

Where pleasure is the magic wand,

That, wielded right,

Maks hours like minutes, hand in hand, Dance by fu' light.

The magic wand then let us wield; For, ance that five-and-forty's speeled, See, crazy, weary, joyless eild,

Wi' wrinkled face,

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We wander there, we wander here, We eye the rose upon the brier, Unmindful that the thorn is near, Among the leaves !

And though the puny wound appear, Short while it grieves.

From the Epistle to W. Simpson.
We'll sing auld Coila's plains and fells,
Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells,
Her banks and braes, her dens and dells,
Where glorious Wallace
Aft bure the gree, as story tells,
Frae southron billies.

At Wallace' name what Scottish blood
But boils up in a spring-tide flood!
Oft have our fearless fathers strode
By Wallace' side,

Still pressing onward, red-wat shod,
Ör glorious died!

Oh, sweet are Coila's haughs and woods,
When lintwhites chant amang the buds,
And jinkin' hares in amorous whids,
Their loves enjoy,

While through the braes the cushat croods With wailfu' cry!

Even winter bleak has charms to me When winds rave through the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree

Are hoary gray:

Or blinding drifts wild furious flee,
Darkening the day!

O Nature! a' thy shows and forms
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms!
Whether the summer kindly warms,
Wi' life and light,

Or winter howls in gusty storms
The lang, dark night!

The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel he learned to wander,
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
And no think lang;

Oh, sweet to stray, and pensive ponder A heart-felt sang!

To a Mountain Daisy,

On turning one down with the plough in April 1786.
Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gem.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonny lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
Wi' spreckled breast,

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east!

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield:

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run,

But now his radiant course is
For Matthew's course was bright;
His soul was like the glorious sun,
A matchless, heavenly light!

O Death! thou tyrant fell and bloody!
The meikle devil wi' a woodie
Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,
O'er hurcheon hides,

And like stock-fish come o'er his studdie
Wi' thy auld sides!

He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn,
The ae best fellow e'er was born!
Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn
By wood and wild,
Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,
Frae man exiled!

Ye hills, near neebors o' the starns,
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,1
Where Echo slumbers !

Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns,
My wailing numbers!

Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens!
Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens !
Ye burnies, wimpling down your glens
Wi' toddlin' din,

Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,
Frae lin to lin!

1 Eagles.

Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea;
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see;
Ye woodbines hanging bonnilie
In scented bowers;

Ye roses on your thorny tree,
The first o' flowers.

At dawn, when every grassy blade
Droops with a diamond at its head,
At even, when beans their fragrance shed,
I' the rustling gale,

Ye maukins, whiddin' through the glade,
Come join my wail.

Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood;
Ye grouse that crap the heather bud;
Ye curlews calling through a clud;
Ye whistling plover;

And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood!
He's gane for ever!

Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals,
Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels
Circling the lake;

Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Rair for his sake.

Mourn, clamering craiks at close o' day,
'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay;
And when ye wing your annual way
Frae our cauld shore,

Tell thae far worlds wha lies in clay,
Wham we deplore.

Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower,
In some auld tree, or eldritch tower,
What time the moon, wi' silent glower
Sets up her horn,
Wail through the dreary midnight hour
Till waukrife morn!

O rivers, forests, hills, and plains!
Oft have ye heard my canty strains :
But now, what else for me remains
But tales of woe?
And frae my een the drapping rains
Maun ever flow.

Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year,
Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear:
Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear
Shoots up its head,

Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear
For him that 's dead.

Thou, Autumn, wi' thy yellow hair,
In grief thy sallow mantle tear!
Thou, Winter, hurling through the air
The roaring blast,

Wide o'er the naked world declare
The worth we've lost!

Mourn him, thou sun, great source of light!
Mourn, empress of the silent night!
And you, ye twinkling starnies bright,
My Matthew mourn!

For through your orb he's ta'en his flight,
Ne'er to return.

O Henderson! the man-the brother!
And art thou gone, and gone for ever?
And hast thou crossed that unknown river,
Life's dreary bound?

Like thee, where shall we find another,
The world around?

Go to your sculptured tombs, ye great, In a' the tinsel trash o' state!

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