to picturesque crowds in the open air, grouped on rocks by the glittering sea, in the mountain bays of a longwithdrawing loch. But the vulgar and rabid fanaticism, by which the poet was surrounded, had taken out of Religion the beauty and the love. Her clothing was not "of wrought gold," and she never appeared in raiment of needle-work, nor in the company of beautiful attendants.

Perhaps in no man of his age would the religious life, fitly planted and nurtured, have found a fruitfuller home. The soil was rich and deep. He wrote "My great constituent elements are pride and passion. The first I have endeavoured to humanize into integrity and honour; the last makes me a devotee, to the warmest degree of enthusiasm, in love, religion, or friendship,—either of them, or all together, as I happen to be inspired." The organ was there, and the anthem slept. How majestic are the thoughts into which his devotional feelings are occasionally breathed ;-scattered, but solemn notes of a mind seldom tuned or played upon, but wonderful in its various and swelling music! Read this confession “I have been, this morning, taking a peep through, as Young finely says, 'The dark postern of time long elapsed.' '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."

He approved of “set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion;" and he had certain Saints'days in his poetical calendar. These were New Year's Day; the first Sunday of May; "a breezy, blue-skied noon, sometime about the beginning, and a hoary morning, and a calm sunny day, about the end of autumn.” With these holidays of the mind he associated particular

sounds and flowers; and especially in spring, he delighted to look upon the mountain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn." He said "I have various sources of pleasure and enjoyment, which are, in a manner, peculiar to myself; or some here or there such other out-ofthe-way person. Such is the peculiar pleasure I take in the season of winter, more than the rest of the year. This, I believe, may be partly owing to my misfortunes giving my mind a melancholy cast; but there is something even

in

The mighty tempest, and the hoary waste
Abrupt and deep, stretch'd o'er the buried earth,

which raises the mind to a serious sublimity, favourable to everything great and noble. There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more-I do not know if I should call it pleasure-but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me,—than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season for devotion; my mind is wrapped up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him who, in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, walks on the wings of the wind.'"

mons.

A poet seldom keeps his fame with his tongue; but the conversation of Burns was marked by the strong features of his genius: brilliant, sarcastic, tender, and fluent, the roar and the tears of the table were obedient to his sumAn inhabitant of Dumfries gave a lively impression of his manner by saying, that he seemed to be desperately in earnest. He did not always pick his subjects or his words. The schoolmaster of Dumfries, indeed, put in a claim on his behalf for unblemished language and thought; and declared that he had seen Burns dazzling and delighting a party during a long evening by the brightness and rapidity of his flashes, "without even an allusion" that could offend the most delicate hearer. I am

unable to reconcile the panegyric with the confession of a biographer, who found the poet's festive sayings quite unpresentable; but he knew his company, and had jests for Nicol, ballads for Stewart, and ribaldry for the bowl.

The accounts of his voice are contradictory. I have seen it called untunable and harsh. Mr. Allan Cunningham once heard Burns read Tam O'Shanter with harmony and skill, following all the undulations of the sense, and expressing the humour and the awfulness of the story. Although he never advanced into England beyond Carlisle and Newcastle, we are told by Currie that he had less of the Scottish dialect than Hume, who was polished by the fashion and literature of London and Paris; or Robertson, whose purity and elegance of composition are his chief characteristics.

Burns came before the world as the "Ayrshire Ploughman;" but a mere farm-servant he never was; and in no sense of the word could he be styled an uneducated poet. We must go to Suffolk, or Northamptonshire, to seek real ploughboys bursting into song. Bloomfield has told his tale; and the painful struggles of Clare are freshly remembered. He paid for such teaching as he got, by extra work in the field or the barn. The toil of eight weeks provided schooling for four. A kind neighbour taught him to write. He was ignorant of grammar, and he had no books; but the appetite was strong.

In his fourteenth year, a boy showed to him the "Seasons ;" and Clare, having saved up a shilling, set off to Stamford, in the dawn of a spring morning, to purchase a copy, and reached the town before a shop was open.

Now look at Burns,-over-worked, yet rejoicing in the pleasant scholarship of home; by the time that he was ten or eleven years old, quite a critic in substantives and verbs; improving his handwriting, or giving his manners a brush in the dancing-school; within-doors finding a teacher in his father, a poetic nurse in his mother ;-one

strengthening his judgment with good books and arithmetic, and the other charming his young fancy with legends and ballads of the country-side. He was probably a better English scholar than most boys of his age who were then at Eton; and his skill and power of composition might hardly be equalled by the lads who had passed into King's.

In the history of every poet we read a new version of the "Faery Queen" found by Cowley in the parlourwindow. Ramsay was the Spenser of Burns—“ Green be the pillow," Scott said, "of honest Allan, at whose lamp Burns lighted his brilliant torch." Fergusson shared the honour of kindling it, and the later minstrel borrowed from the elder the plan and the measure of several poems; but he justly claimed the name of a disciple, not a copyist, for he repaid his debts with lavish interest. The one flower-seed sprang up a cluster of bloom.

66

His earliest compositions were satirical; and the first of his poetic offspring, as he informs us, that saw the light, was the ludicrous portraiture of two ministers as “Twa Herds;" "Holy Willie's Prayer" followed it, with "The Ordination," and "The Kirk's Alarm." Probably the 'Epistle to Davie" preceded them. Burns was weeding in the kail-yard when he repeated some of the lines to his brother, who thought it equal to Ramsay, and worthy of being printed. Robert was then twenty-five. "Death and Dr. Hornbook" he also recited to Gilbert holding the plough, while the poet was letting the water off the field beside him.

66

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 lovesong, 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 those 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 English 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