thought very hospitable unless the majority of his male guests, at a regular party, were at least half intoxicated. Burns was invited and importuned to those scenes of dissipation; and beset, at least as much by the desire of others to enjoy his society when he was exhilarated, as by his own facility to lend it. He probably deluded his own reflections, by imagining, that in every fresh excess, he was acquiring a new friend, or attaching one already acquired. But with all the admiration and declarations of personal friendship which were lavished on him, the only appointment that could be obtained for him, was that of an officer of excise. In the mean time he had acquired a relish for a new and over-excited state of life. He had been expected to shine in every society; and, to use his own phrase, "had been too often "obliged to give his company a slice of his constitu"tion." At least he was so infatuated as to think so. He had now to go back to the sphere of society from which he had emerged, with every preparatory circumstance to render him discontented with it, that the most ingenious cruelty could have devised.

After his appointment to the office of a gauger, he took a farm at Ellisland, on the banks of the Nith, and settled in conjugal union with his Jane. But here his unhappy distraction between two employments, and his mode of life as an exciseman, which made the public-house his frequent abode, and his fatigues a temptation to excesses, had so bad an influence on his affairs, that at the end of

three years and a half, he sold his stock, and gave up his farm. By promotion in the excise, his income had risen to £70 a year, and with only this income in immediate prospect, he repaired to Dumfries, the new place of duty that was assigned to him by the board of commissioners. Here his intemperate habits became confirmed, and his conduct and conversation grew daily more unguarded. Times of political rancour had also arrived, in which he was too ardent a spirit to preserve neutrality. He took the popular side, and became exposed to charges of disloyalty. He spurned, indeed, at those charges, and wrote a very spirited explanation of his principles. But his political conversations had been reported to the Board of Excise, and it required the interest of a powerful friend to support him in the humble situation which he held. It was at Dumfries that he wrote the finest of his songs for Thomson's "Musical Collection," and dated many of the most eloquent of his letters.

In the winter of 1795 his constitution, broken by cares, irregularities, and passions, fell into a rapid decline. The summer returned; but only to shine on his sickness and his grave. In July his mind wandered into delirium; and, in the same month, a fever, on the fourth day of its continuance, closed his life and sufferings, in his thirty-eighth year.

Whatever were the faults of Burns, he lived unstained by a mean or dishonest action. To have died without debt, after supporting a family on £70

a year, bespeaks, after all, but little of the spendthrift. That income, on account of his incapacity to perform his duty, was even reduced to one half of its amount, at the period of his dying sickness; and humiliating threats of punishment, for opinions uttered in the confidence of private conversation, were among the last returns which the government of Scotland made to the man, whose genius attaches agreeable associations to the name of his country.

His death seemed to efface the recollection of his faults, and of political differences, still harder to be forgotten. All the respectable inhabitants of Dumfries attended his funeral, whilst the volunteers of the city, and two regiments of native fencibles, attended with solemn music, and paid military honours at the grave of their illustrious countryman.

Burns has given an elixir of life to his native dialect. The Scottish "Tam o’Shanter” will be read as long as any English production of the same century. The impression of his genius is deep and universal; and, viewing him merely as a poet, there is scarcely any other regret connected with his name, than that his productions, with all their merit, fall short of the talents which he possessed. That he never attempted any great work of fiction or invention, may be partly traced to the cast of his genius, and partly to his circumstances and defective education. His poetical temperament was that of fitful transports, rather than steady inspiration.

Whatever he might have written, was likely to have been fraught with passion. There is always enough of interest in life to cherish the feelings of a man of genius; but it requires knowledge to enlarge and enrich his imagination. Of that knowledge which unrolls the diversities of human manners, adventures, and characters to a poet's study, he could have no great share; although he stamped the little treasure which he possessed in the mintage of sovereign genius. It has been asserted, that he received all the education which is requisite for a poet: he had learned reading, writing, and arithmetic; and he had dipped into French and geometry. To a poet, it must be owned, the three last of those acquisitions were quite superfluous. His education, it is also affirmed, was equal to Shakspeare's; but, without intending to make any comparison between the genius of the two bards, it should be recollected that Shakspeare lived in an age within the verge of chivalry, an age overflowing with chivalrous and romantic reading; that he was led by his vocation to have daily recourse to that kind of reading; that he dwelt on the spot which gave him constant access to it, and was in habitual intercourse with men of genius. Burns, after growing up to manhood under toils which exhausted his physical frame, acquired a scanty knowledge of modern books, of books tending for the most part to regulate the judgment more than to exercise the fancy. In the whole tract of his reading, there seems to be

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little that could cherish his inventive faculties. One material of poetry he certainly possessed, independent of books, in the legendary superstitions of his native country. But with all that he tells us of his early love of those superstitions, they seem to have come home to his mind with so many ludicrous associations of vulgar tradition, that it may be doubted if he could have turned them to account in an elevated work of fiction. Strongly and admirably as he paints the supernatural in “Tam o’ Shanter," yet there, as every where else, he makes it subservient to comic effect. The fortuitous wildness and sweetness of his strains may, after all, set aside every regret that he did not attempt more superb and regular structures of fancy. He describes, as he says, the sentiments which he saw and felt in himself and his rustic compeers around him. His page is a lively image of the contemporary life and country from which he sprung. He brings back old Scotland to us with all her homefelt endearments, her simple customs, her festivities, her sturdy prejudices, and orthodox zeal, with a power that excites, alternately, the most tender and mirthful sensations. After the full account of his pieces which Dr. Currie has given, the English reader can have nothing new to learn respecting them. On one powerfully comic piece Dr. Currie has not disserted, namely, "The Holy Fair." It is enough, however, to mention the humour of this production, without recommending its subject. Burns, indeed,