and skill of the excellent Dr. Maxwell do? There were struggling thoughts tearing that poor frame to pieces. His wife expected her confinement every day; there were four helpless children; there was poverty all round and in front-and what could medicine avail? Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased, At that moment there was not a cottage in Scotland where there was not a copy of his poems. Country lasses in all the Lowland counties could sing his beautiful ballads; and fine ladies, perhaps, while that great struggle was going on in the cheerless chamber at Dumfries, were bending over harps or pianos, and enchanting old and young with "Auld Rob Morris," or "Lassie o' the Lint-white Locks." If he thought of this at all, it could only be with gratification at the reflection that he had been the diffuser of so much innocent enjoyment. But the contrast was great between the poet, the delight of hamlet and hall, and the poor exhausted exciseman, "drawing his breath in this harsh world with pain," thanking and immortalizing Jessie Lewars with his last song, and writing his last note of gratitude to Mrs. Dunlop. "Your friendship, with which for many years you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my soul, your conversation and your correspondence were at once highly entertaining and instructive. With what pleasure did I use to break up the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor palpitating heart. Farewell." That heart was now soon to cease its beating, and on the 21st of July, 1796, having lived a little more than seven-and-thirty years, in darkness and penury, his eye closed for ever. There let him lie, the man of strong passions, of social indulgence, and occasionally of evil life, to be a warning to such as think that genius carries an excuse for breaches of the moral law, and perhaps indemnity against the fearful retribution which ill-regulated desires are certain to entail. His genius and his life were quite distinct. His excesses, such as I have described them, did not depend upon his genius, for we may learn by every day's experience that it is possible to break almost all the commandments without a spark of talent; and the example of Walter Scott, of Tennyson, and of Wordsworth will suffice to show us that genius in its highest development is perfectly consistent with the most blameless conduct. Therefore it is that, while neither denying nor extenuating the faults of Burns as a man, it is safe—and certainly it is delightful— to turn to his intellectual qualities, and look upon him as the possessor of marvellous gifts, of purest fancies, and, in spite of all that has been said against him, of many virtues. Is love of country a virtue? Is constancy in friendship a virtue? Is indignation at injustice a virtue? Nay, is love to wife and child a virtue? In all these qualities he was as strong as the most immaculate of men. He was, indeed, a bad accountant-probably a bad flax-dresser, a bad farmer, and it is difficult to believe, in spite of the testimonials of his superiors, that he was a good exciseman. But he need not be a bad man for all these drawbacks. A man may be a good father, a true friend, a warm patriot, though ignorant of Cocker's arithmetic, and the routine of crops, and the mysteries of small stills and concealed hoards of malt. On these points the decision is of no great consequence; but of this we are quite sure, that, whether farming was illmanaged, or flax ill-carded, or whisky manufactures ill hunted out, he was not a bad poet, and it is with him in that character we have now to do. It seemed, indeed, as if the moment the man died the poet came into stronger life; for instantly the sympathies of the nation were roused, when it was too late. The old epigram came once more into play— The poet's fate is here in emblem shown; He asked for bread, and he received a stone. There was a public funeral of the author of the "Cotter's Saturday Night," though the little room in the Vennel was deserted when it was occupied by the living man. Many years ago, whoever visited Dumfries made it a point to be introduced to the widow of Robert Burns. With what interest they looked in the face of the bonny Jean of other days! The writer of these pages now only remembers that she was a kind, pleasant-looking old lady, whose conversation was chiefly about her husband, and this was all he wished. The voice was very sweet, even in ordinary talk, and as the poet was no practical musician himself, he used to make his wife try over all his words to the tunes they were written for, and judged, according as they adapted themselves to her pure and natural style, whether they required alteration or not. But the proud wife had reason to be as proud a mother. Three of her sons are still alive; two of them of colonel's rank in the India Company's service, and it is often said by those who have had the pleasure of meeting them, that there is no greater treat than to hear the sons of Burns talking about their father, and one of them, who inherits his mother's music, singing his father's songs. Enthusiasm, in fact, became universal, as soon as assistance was no longer required. People could now applaud with generosity and economy combined, for the very act of clapping their hands so heartily prevented them from putting them into their pockets. As fame grew, respect to the dead increased. He was lifted from his originally humble grave, and placed within a splendid monument; and the zeal of cheap admiration carried some of his countrymen into what to ordinary eyes appears profanation. They stole into the tomb, broke open the coffin, and carried away the head, to have a cast of it to place upon their library tables. They were disciples of a new theory called phrenology, by which the shape and indentations of a skull show the mental power, and they were anxious to see to how many bumps the songs and ballads were due. When the plaster mould was finished, the sacrilege was compounded for by the transmission of the head in an elegant wooden box, and science had obtained the gratification of its curiosity and the contempt and execration of mankind. Here, then, we have followed this extraordinary man throughout his short career, from the cradle to the grave, and it is time to proceed to a criticism of the works which have made him so illustrious. But criticism on Burns would be something like a criticism on the |