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I would have taken the poet, had Schiller's Works: Lockhart's Life of Burns, &c. farmed, and he married; he saw a family grow country farmer of the old Scotch school, i. e. distinction, and shone a brilliant star; he I not known what he was, for a very sagacious OUR last notice of this varied publication led around him, and he still cultivated the muse; none of your modern agriculturists, who keep as to its sixteenth No., since which five more he fell too soon into the sere and yellow leaf; labourers for their drudgery, but the douce have appeared; and one, the most interesting he was unfortunate in worldly affairs, and he gudeman who held his own plough. There of the whole, will be published within a few became careless of the world; he sought refuge was a strong expression of sense and shrewddays. We allude to a life of the Scots poet in inferior pleasures, he struggled, and he died. ness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I Burns, by his eminent countryman, John We will not follow the historical account of think, indicated the poetical character and Gibson Lockhart, whose own productions both his various poetical productions, but select such temperament. It was large, and of a dark in prose and verse well entitle him to sit in miscellaneous matter as appears to us to be cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) the biographer's and critic's chair upon this most new and interesting. when he spoke with feeling or interest. Í ccasion. But before applying to an examinaIt was in 1786 that Burns visited the never saw such another eye in a human head, tion of his volume, which has been thus early Scottish capital; and respecting this important though I have seen the most distinguished put into our hands, we wish to direct attention epoch in his life, the following is an extract men of my time. His conversation expressed to the immediately preceding parts of the Mis- from a letter of Sir Walter Scott: perfect self-confidence, without the slightest mlary. a "As for Burns, I may truly say, Virgilium presumption. Among the men who were the Of the early life of Burns, it would be a vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, most learned of their time and country, he rk of supererogation to say much. Currie when he came first to Edinburgh, but had expressed himself with perfect firmness, but and Walker have left so little unexplored, and sense and feeling enough to be much interested without the least intrusive forwardness; and their publications are so generally familiar to in his poetry, and would have given the world when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate maders, that Mr. Lockhart could only tread to know him; but I had very little acquaintance to express it firmly, yet at the same time with over the same ground in a rapid manner. A with any literary people, and still less with the modesty. I do not remember any part of his similar remark, indeed, may apply to the cri- gentry of the west country, the two sets that conversation distinctly enough to be quoted; dial department of his memoir; as here also, he most frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson nor did I ever see him again, except in the at only Currie and Walker, but Mackenzie, was at that time a clerk of my father's. He street, where he did not recognise me, as Heron, Scott, Jeffrey, Wordsworth, Campbell, knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his I could not expect he should. He was much Wils, and others, have largely anticipated lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity to caressed in Edinburgh, but (considering what hit: but still there are passages in this portion keep his word; otherwise I might have seen literary emoluments have been since his day) his essay which have afforded us both much more of this distinguished man. As it was, the efforts made for his relief were extremely delight and interesting grounds for reflection. I saw him one day at the late venerable Pro- trifling. I remember on this occasion I'menBarns was born on the 25th of January, 1759, fessor Fergusson's, where there were several tion, I thought Burns's acquaintance with A day-built cottage, about two miles to the gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom English poetry was rather limited, and also, wth of the town of Ayr, and in the immediate I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. that having twenty times the abilities of Allan inity of the Kirk of Alloway, and the "Auld Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked, Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them Brigo Doon." About a week afterwards, part and listened. The only thing I remember with too much humility as his models: there the frail dwelling, which his father had con- which was remarkable in Burns's manner, was was, doubtless, national predilection in his ced with his own hands, gave way at mid- the effect produced upon him by a print of estimate. This is all I can tell you about sight; and the infant poet and his mother Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead Burns. I have only to add, that his dress es carried through the storm, to the shelter on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one corresponded with his manner. He was like dawighbouring hovel. During his boyhood side, on the other, his widow with a child in farmer dressed in his best to dine with the be displayed no precocious indications of poetic her arms. These lines were written beneath: laird. I do not speak in malam partem, when p; on the contrary, his elder brother GilI say I never saw a man in company with his bet was, at school, his superior in intelligence superiors in station and information, more and talent. The early youth of both brothers perfectly free from either the reality or the ww spent in rural toils; and, at the age of affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but Spring love for a bonnie lass, with did not observe it, that his address to females he was engaged in the labours of har-Burns seemed much affected by the print, or was extremely deferential, and always with w the first inspiration of Robert Burns. rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind. a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, Ang her other love-inspiring qualities," He actually shed tears. He asked whose the which engaged their attention particularly. le tell us," she sung sweetly; and it was her lines were, and it chanced that nobody but I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon frite reel, to which I attempted giving an myself remembered that they occur in a half- remark this. I do not know any thing I can mbodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so pre- forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the add to these recollections of forty years' since." uptons as to imagine that I could make unpromising title of The Justice of Peace." "Darkly (observes Mr. Lockhart upon this like printed ones, composed by men who I whispered my information to a friend present, period) as the career of Burns was destined to Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me terminate, there can be no doubt that he made which was said to be composed by a with a look and a word, which, though of his first appearance at a period highly favourcountry laird's son, on one of his father's mere civility, I then received, and still recol-able for his reception as a British, and espe, with whom he was in love; and I saw lect, with very great pleasure. His person cially as a Scottish poet. Nearly forty years on why I might not rhyme as well as was strong and robust; his manners rustic, had elapsed since the death of Thomson :le; for, excepting that he could smear sheep not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and at peats, his father living in the moor- simplicity, which received part of its effect, ds, he had no more scholar-craft than myself. perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraorTha with me began love and poetry." dinary talents. His features are represented His local celebrity, in the course of time, in Mr. Nasmyth's picture; but to me it concating up our columns, we find this must be deveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his, countenance dipext Saturday. Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, • The eye is indeed the feature by which genius is most truly asserted; or rather, it is the feature from which genius cannot be excluded. We have seen every other part of the human face divine without indications of the spirit within-the mouth which spoke not of the talent possessed, and the brow that indicated no powers of the capacious mind;-but we never knew a superior nature which the eye did not proclaim.Ed. L. G. always, that he may at proper seasons come Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, had successively from public view. He will not affect to shine "The poet (says Mr. L.) visited, in the disappeared :-Dr. Johnson had belied the rich course of his tour, Sir James Hall of Dunglas, promise of his early appearance, and confined author of the well-known Essay on Gothic himself to prose; and Cowper had hardly beArchitecture, &c.; Sir Alexander and Lady gun to be recognised as having any considerHarriet Don, (sister to his patron, Lord Glenable pretensions to fill the long-vacant throne This is, indeed, sound counsel; but the evil cairn,) at Newton-Don; Mr. Brydone, the in England. At home without derogation most likely to disturb the successful author's author of Travels in Sicily; the amiable and from the merits either of Douglas or the peace, if not wisely met, is not so much the learned Dr, Somerville of Jedborough, the Minstrel, be it said-men must have gone envy by which he must expect to be assailed, historian of Queen Anne, &c.: and, as usual, back at least three centuries to find a Scottish as the gradual and certain decline of that recorded in his journal his impressions as to poet at all entitled to be considered as of that intoxicating admiration which attended his their manners and characters. His reception high order to which the generous criticism of earlier efforts. It requires strength of mind was every where most flattering," Mackenzie at once admitted the Ayrshire to feel the true reason why the wide halo- We have extracted this passage with emoPloughman.' Of the form and garb of his circle contracts and disperses. We impute it to tions of peculiar interest. The earliest recolcomposition, much, unquestionably and avow. ourselves and to other annoying causes, and welections of life, by the writer of this review, are edly, was derived from his more immediate are pained at the thoughts. The real cause, the ascent of Lunardi, and the sight of Burns. predecessors, Ramsay and Ferguson; but there however, lies in the vanity, the caprice, and This juxta-position of very different circum. was a bold mastery of hand in his picturesque unworthiness of human nature. Every one stances has, to his mind, nothing of the lu descriptions, to produce any thing equal to flatters his own vanity by being, or pre- dicrous in it; but it is, perhaps, worth a which it was necessary to recall the days of tending to be, the patron of rising merit; record, that so wonderful a thing as the ascent Christ's Kirk on the Green, and Peebles to the but of this there is a continual succession, of a balloon was in those days, and the appear. Play: and in his more solemn pieces, a depth and caprice is prone to fly from novelty to ance of a mere stranger, should have produced of inspiration, and a massive energy of lan-novelty; and in the third act, when merit has nearly an equally strong effect upon the imagina. guage, to which the dialect of his country had raised itself to its just and natural elevation, tion and memory of a child of three or four been a stranger, at least since Dunbar the the patron of its first uprising either cools years old. For once, suffer us, reader, to mingle Mackar.' The muses of Scotland had never towards its mounting speed, or becomes the private feelings with our literary philosophy: indeed been silent; and the ancient minstrelsy envious detractor of its superior rank. This - the same parental hand which fired the of the land, of which a slender portion had as is life; and it is well when genius can ap. signal for the intrepid aeronaut to pursue his yet been committed to the safeguard of the preciate it, rely on its own energies and re- path towards heaven, placed our little fingers press, was handed from generation to gene. sources, nor fancy the desertion of the fickle, in the grasp of that glorious Peasant who had ration, and preserved, in many a fragment, or the malice of the paltry erowd worth one already made the heaven of immortality his faithful images of the peculiar tenderness, moment's regret.* own. Well do we remember the two events, and peculiar humour, of the national fancy Among the enlarged enjoyments which his at small distance of time between, when the and character-precious representations, which first success afforded to Burns, was an oppor- village churchyard was the strange spot on Burns himself never surpassed in his happiest tunity of travelling over many parts of his which, for us, memorable deeds were done,efforts. But these were fragments; and with native country. He went to the Southern the mouldering Abbey was covered with spec a scanty handful of exceptions, the best of Border, where every hill is sacred to the Muse, tators to witness the daring profanation of the them, at least of the serious kind, were very and every stream made sacred by song. He skies (for so it was by many considered at the ancient. Among the numberless effusions of was, it may well be supposed, delighted with time), and the child was called from play the Jacobite Muse, valuable as we now con- the picturesque and memorable scenes offered on a curious division of the ground we cannot sider them for the record of manners and to his imagination; and we are told that he tell why untroubled with a grave to be told events, it would be difficult to point out half-ranged with pleasure through the localities by the father who now sleeps there," My boy, a-dozen strains worthy, for poetical excellence celebrated by the old minstrels, of whose works this is Robert Burns, the poet and the glory of alone, of a place among the old chivalrous he was a passionate admirer; and of whom, by his country." ballads of the Southern, or even of the High- the way, one of the last appears to have been land Border. Generations had passed away all but a namesake of his own."+ since any Scottish poet had appealed to the sympathies of his countrymen in a lofty Scottish strain. # * "It was reserved for Burns to interpret the inmost soul of the Scottish peasant in all its moods, and in verse exquisitely and intensely Scottish, without degrading either his sentiments or his language with one touch of vulgarity. Such is the delicacy of native taste, and the power of a truly masculine genius," But genius is beset with many mortifications and many dangers. The ever-active soul and the sensitive temperament must be fed with unceasing food, or they stagnate, yield to melancholy regrets, or recoil and prey upon for him. He visited and revisited a farm,-talked and Later times may have riveted this impression, but it is vivid upon our souls to this day. Other balloons have effaced or disturbed the remembrance of Lunardi, but no bard has arisen to weaken in our imagination the recol. lection of Burns. "Methinks I see him now." This is illustrated by what the biographer says of the poet; who, in his fits of hypochrondiasm, writes, horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an "There are just two creatures that I would envy-a oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one Of some of the persons named in our has not a wish without enjoyment; the other has neither last extract, too, something might be said weeks. Anguish and low spirits have made me unfit to The late Sir Alexander Don, son of the Si wish nor fear." • * These have been six horrible read, write, or think. I have a hundred times wished Alexander therein mentioned, inherited from that one could resign life as an officer does a commission; his mother a most interesting series of th for I would not take in any poor ignorant wretch by selling out. Lately, I was a sixpenny private, and God Poet's MSS., addressed to his aunt, Lady Glen knows a miserable soldier enough: now I march to the cairn. We have understood from him, the campaign a starving cadet, a little more conspicuously they included poems in their original state wretched. I am ashamed of all this; for though I do not want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like letters, and many other remains of inestimab some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning value: what has become of them we know no possible to doubt that Burns had in fact lingered in as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice.' It seems im- since the recent death of their accomplish Edinburgh, in the vague hope that, to use a vague but possessor. We believe his friend, Sir Walt their possessor. There can be no monotony insufficiently expressive phrase, something would be done Scott, must have seen some, if not all, of then a poet's life; perhaps no real continued hap- wrote scholarly and wisely about having a fortune at the and if they are what we have reason to belie piness. The fibre is too fine for this world's plough-tail,' and so forth; but all the while nourished, they are, surely they ought not to be lost uses. It was on an occasion of only slight dis-and assuredly it would have been most strange if he had the public. But we must turn from a digressi satisfaction that Dr. Blair wrote thus sensibly would ere long present itself in some solid and tangible so mixed with personal sentiments, that we b to our bard:-"There is, no doubt, a gloss of shape, His illness and confinement gave him leisure to fear its public interest may not be commen novelty which time wears off. As you very pro- prospects; and the letters which we have quoted may concentrate his imagination on the darker side of his rate with our partial view of it. perly hint yourself, you are not to be surprised teach those who envy the powers and the fame of genius, if, in your rural retreat, you do not find yourself think what superior capabilities of misery have been, to pause for a moment over the annals of literature, and surrounded with that glare of notice and ap- in the great majority of cases, interwoven with the pos: plause which here shone upon you. No man session of those very talents, from which all but their can be a good poet without being somewhat of possessors derive unmingled gratification." a philosopher. He must lay his account, that any one who exposes himself to public observa. tion will occasionally meet with the attacks of illiberal censure, which it is always best to overlook and despise. He will be inclined sometimes to court retreat, and to disappear not, the fond dream that the admiration of his country tNicoll Burn, supposed to have lived towards the Speaking of Burns's mode of admiring jects, or passing them in silence, Mr. Lockh gives us a characteristic trait, which will howms of Yarrow, The bird that flees thro' Reedpath trees, and Gleds And Drygrange, wi' the milk-white ewes, 'twixt Tweed With Homes that dwelt on Leader side, and Scots and Leader standing, acknowledged by all sight-seers, whether they pretend to genius or not. At some place of ine scenery, whither the poet was taken for the express purpose of being charmed, he was extremely calm and quiet. Upon this Dr. Carrie "enters into a little dissertation on the subject, shewing that a man of Burns's lively imagination might probably have formed anticipations which the realities of the prospect might rather disappoint." But Mr. L. more justly observes: This is possible enough; but I suppose few will take it for granted that Burns surveyed any scenes either of beauty or of grandeur without emotion, merely because he did not choose to be ecstatic for the benefit of a company of young ladies. He was, in deed, very impatient of interruption on such ccasions. I have heard, that riding one dark might near Carron, his companion teased him with noisy exclamations of delight and wonder, whenever an opening in the wood permitted them to see the magnificent glare of the furaces: Look, Burns! Good Heaven! look! ack! what a glorious sight!'-'Sir,' said Burns, clapping spurs to Jenny Geddes, 'I would not look at your bidding, if it were the mouth of hell.'"* ex was, moreover, wherever he went, exposed to means of attack, while analysing those of the Be ours this night-who knows what comes to-morrow?' was the language of every eye in the circle that welcomed him. The stateliest gentry of the county, whenever they had especial merriment in view, called in the wit and eloquence of Burns to enliven their carousals." Here let us drop the curtain. After life's Upon compulsion, in sooth, we know not the fitful fever, he sleeps well. An hour, a day, thing on earth that can command admiration and such as the stern and illiberal, who conthe free will is essential to this high attribute. demned him, such as the gay and careless, who But we will not prolong our own comments: joined in his revels, such as the unthinking e quotation more, and we have done all we and proud, who heeded not his fate, such as un for this small but very interesting volume. the generous, who pitied his errors, and the The reader must be sufficiently prepared enlightened, who gloried in his genius,—all hear, that, from the time when he entered shall be alike, and, like him, in the dust. Let The Roué. 3 vols. London, 1828. Colburn. The commencement is so spirited as to tempt us at the outset. "How many of the genuine feelings of human nature have been repressed and spoiled by the coldness of those outward forms which constitute so great a proportion of our education! We enter into the world with buoyant feelings, fresh and thick-coming fancies,' enthusiastic anticipation-with hearts and hands open to the impression and impulses of love, friendship, and generosity, and with a multitude of senses and passions, all promising pleasure in their pursuit and their gratification. We feel the genuine tears of sympathy spring into our eyes at a tale of distress; and while The world to our unpractised hearts at the sight of beauty, and experience a thousand sensations which impel us to an intimate intercourse of hearts with our fellow-creatures; and the first thing we are taught in life, is to unlearn these early lessons of our nature: to repress these delightful springings of the heart To shut up all the passages of joy his excise duties, the poet more and more this teach us charity to our fellow-mortals; we find our young pulses bounding with delight neglected the concerns of his farm. Occa- and let us honour in them those gifts which donally he might be seen holding the plough, can never die. an exercise in which he excelled, and was proud of excelling, or stalking down his furrows, with the white sheet of grain wrapt about him, a tenty seedsman; but he was more commonly occupied in far different pursuits. I am now, says he, in one of his letters, a poor rascally pager, condemned to gallop two hundred miles ery week, to inspect dirty bonds and yeasty barrels. Both in verse and in prose he has orded the bitter feelings with which he first showed his new vocation. His jests on the bject are uniformly bitter. I have the same solation,' he tells Mr. Ainslie, which I once band a recruiting serjeant give to his audience in the streets of Kilmarnock: Gentlemen, for ur further encouragement, I can assure you, that ours is the most blackguard corps under be crown, and, consequently, with us an honest ow has the surest chance of preferment.' He winds up almost all his statements of his fings on this matter in the same strain. Ihae a wife and twa wee laddies, They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies. Ye sen yourself, my heart right proud is, But I'll sped besoms thraw saugh-woodies, Before they want.' THE title of this book combines attraction and repulsion: attraction for those who do not fear to see a knowledge of the world and its vices vividly displayed; and repulsion for those who and to substitute the coldness of educated cere dread that the exposure of these vices cannot be mony for these bursts of genuine feelings. We effected without wounding purity, and even are taught to repress our generosity, to steel tainting morals. Being uncertain whether the our hearts against the influence of beauty, and Roué is yet in the hands of the public, we shall to admit friendship and love only where they not discuss this question;. -but content our- are compatible with our interest :-interest, that selves with stating, that the writer has steered mainspring of human nature, as it is called, at very clear of many of the difficulties which whose shrine all our best feelings are sacrificed, beset him in painting unprincipled men and and to which our young hearts are directed in yielding women; and that in the end he has school-days, at college, and through the world, rendered poetical justice both to folly and de- as the only god that should be worshipped. linquency. Of course, it is impossible but The whole of our early life seems to be spent that the Roué should employ language some-in getting rid of nature, and in the acquiretimes warm, when applied to sensual indul-ment of artifice, till our hearts and minds are gences—and sometimes lax, when addressed to no more like that for which they were first graver questions: but it must ever be con- intended, than the tree, which some laborious sidered from whose mouth these expressions Cincinnatus of a cit has trimmed into the shape come; and if we admit of the character being of a peacock, is like that which has grown up in drawn at all, we must admit that the author all the unconfined and vigorous luxuriance of has not transgressed the bounds of fidelity in its native forest. All the first feelings of our On me occasion, however, he takes a higher his portraiture. The first volume, in parti-nature in early life become the subjects of There is a certain stigma,' says he to cular, is a proof of Mr. Beazley's high talents punishment or reproof: the buoyancy of our Baby Geddes, in the name of exciseman; and convinces us, that in this class of writing youthful spirit is curbed, because it encroaches I do not intend to borrow honour from any he may become extremely popular. It is only on the conventional forms of society. Natural dessin, which may, perhaps, remind the after the introduction of his principal per- enthusiasm is repressed and shamed with the der of Gibbon's lofty language, on finally sonage (at the end of it), that we doubt his stigma of eccentricity; and the whole system ting the learned and polished circles of being found so agreeable. Moral anatomy may of our education is an attempt to put the heart London and Paris, for his Swiss retirement: be as useful as physical, but just as detestable in an ice-pail, and to treat it as we do our I am too modest, or too proud, to rate my for close inspection. A lover who enacts the Champagne, without considering that, though ale by that of my associates.' Burns, in his engineer, a Vauban of the heart-one who coldness may improve the wine, it is certain to petual perambulations over the moors of calculates his own feelings, resources, and deteriorate the man. All our first lessons of Dumfries-shire, had every temptation to en"These particulars are from a letter of David Mac-life come upon the heart, as the rude hand upon the leaf of the sensitive plant. It shrinks within itself, ashamed of the feelings which it is thus compelled to bury within its own limits; and, finding no outlet for them, they perish, in I needna vaunt; ter which bodily fatigue, the blandish- culloch, Esq., who, being at this period a very young of hosts and hostesses, and the habitual gentleman, a passionate admirer of Burns, and a capital warn of those who acted along with him in singer of many of his serious songs, used often, in his duties of the excine, could present, He excursions, enthusiasm, to accompany the post on his professional 210 "The poet (says Mr. L.) visited, in the Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, had successively from public view. He will not affect to shine He author of the well-known Essay on Gothio disappeared :-Dr. Johnson had belied the rich always, that he may at proper seasons come course of his tour, Sir James Hall of Dunglas, promise of his early appearance, and confined forth with more advantage and energy. Harriet Don, (sister to his patron, Lord Glenhimself to prose; and Cowper had hardly be- will not think himself neglected if he be not Architecture, &c.; Sir Alexander and Lady gun to be recognised as having any consider. always praised." This is, indeed, sound counsel; but the evil cairn,) at Newton-Don; Mr. Brydone, the able pretensions to fill the long-vacant throne in England. At home without derogation most likely to disturb the successful author's author of Travels in Sicily; the amiable and from the merits either of Douglas or the peace, if not wisely met, is not so much the learned Dr. Somerville of Jedborough, the Minstrel, be it said-men must have gone envy by which he must expect to be assailed, historian of Queen Anne, &c.: and, as usual, back at least three centuries to find a Scottish as the gradual and certain decline of that recorded in his journal his impressions as to poet at all entitled to be considered as of that intoxicating admiration which attended his their manners and characters. His reception We have extracted this passage with emohigh order to which the generous criticism of earlier efforts. It requires strength of mind was every where most flattering." Mackenzie at once admitted the Ayrshire to feel the true reason why the wide haloPloughman.' Of the form and garb of his circle contracts and disperses. We impute it to tions of peculiar interest. The earliest recolcomposition, much, unquestionably and avow. ourselves and to other annoying causes, and we lections of life, by the writer of this review, are edly, was derived from his more immediate are pained at the thoughts. The real cause, the ascent of Lunardi, and the sight of Burns. Every one stances has, to his mind, nothing of the lu predecessors, Ramsay and Ferguson; but there however, lies in the vanity, the caprice, and This juxta-position of very different circum. was a bold mastery of hand in his picturesque unworthiness of human nature. descriptions, to produce any thing equal to flatters his own vanity by being, or pre- dicrous in it; but it is, perhaps, worth a which it was necessary to recall the days of tending to be, the patron of rising merit; record, that so wonderful a thing as the ascent Christ's Kirk on the Green, and Peebles to the but of this there is a continual succession, of a balloon was in those days, and the appear. Play: and in his more solemn pieces, a depth and caprice is prone to fly from novelty to ance of a mere stranger, should have produced of inspiration, and a massive energy of lan-novelty; and in the third act, when merit has nearly an equally strong effect upon the imagina. guage, to which the dialect of his country had raised itself to its just and natural elevation, tion and memory of a child of three or four been a stranger, at least since Dunbar the the patron of its first uprising either cools years old. For once, suffer us, reader, to mingle This the same parental hand which fired the Mackar.' The muses of Scotland had never towards its mounting speed, or becomes the private feelings with our literary philosophy: indeed been silent; and the ancient minstrelsy envious detractor of its superior rank. of the land, of which a slender portion had as is life; and it is well when genius can ap. signal for the intrepid aeronaut to pursue his yet been committed to the safeguard of the preciate it, rely on its own energies and re- path towards heaven, placed our little fingers press, was handed from generation to gene. sources, nor fancy the desertion of the fickle, in the grasp of that glorious Peasant who had Well do we remember the two events, ration, and preserved, in many a fragment, or the malice of the paltry crowd worth one already made the heaven of immortality his faithful images of the peculiar tenderness, moment's regret.* Among the enlarged enjoyments which his at small distance of time between, when the and peculiar humour, of the national fancy and character-precious representations, which first success afforded to Burns, was an oppor- village churchyard was the strange spot on Burns himself never surpassed in his happiest tunity of travelling over many parts of his which, for us, memorable deeds were done,-He went to the Southern the mouldering Abbey was covered with spec efforts. But these were fragments; and with native country. a scanty handful of exceptions, the best of Border, where every hill is sacred to the Muse, tators to witness the daring profanation of the -and the child was called from play them, at least of the serious kind, were very and every stream made sacred by song. He skies (for so it was by many considered at the ancient. Among the numberless effusions of was, it may well be supposed, delighted with time), the Jacobite Muse, valuable as we now con- the picturesque and memorable scenes offered on a curious division of the ground-we cannot sider them for the record of manners and to his imagination; and we are told that he tell why untroubled with a grave to be told events, it would be difficult to point out half- ranged with pleasure through the localities by the father who now sleeps there," My boy, a-dozen strains worthy, for poetical excellence celebrated by the old minstrels, of whose works this is Robert Burns, the poet and the glory of alone, of a place among the old chivalrous he was a passionate admirer; and of whom, by his country." ballads of the Southern, or even of the High- the way, one of the last appears to have been land Border. Generations had passed away all but a namesake of his own."+ since any Scottish poet had appealed to the sympathies of his countrymen in a lofty Scottish strain. "It was reserved for Burns to interpret the inmost soul of the Scottish peasant in all its moods, and in verse exquisitely and intensely Scottish, without degrading either his sentiments or his language with one touch of vulgarity. Such is the delicacy of native taste, and the power of a truly masculine genius." for I would not take in any poor ignorant wretch by own. Later times may have riveted this impres sion, but it is vivid upon our souls to this day. Other balloons have effaced or disturbed the This is illustrated by what the biographer says of remembrance of Lunardi, but no bard has the poet; who, in his fits of hypochrondiasm, writes, arisen to weaken in our imagination the recol"There are just two creatures that I would envy-a lection of Burns. "Methinks I see him now." horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an Of some of the persons named in our oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment; the other has neither last extract, too, something might be said. wish nor fear." These have been six horrible The late Sir Alexander Don, son of the Sir weeks. Anguish and low spirits have made me unfit to read, write, or think. I have a hundred times wished Alexander therein mentioned, inherited from that one could resign life as an officer does a commission; his mother a most interesting series of the selling out. Lately, I was a sixpenny private, and God Poet's MSS., addressed to his aunt, Lady Glenknows a miserable soldier enough: now I march to the cairn. We have understood from him, that wretched. I am ashamed of all this; for though I do not campaign a starving cadet, a little more conspicuously they included poems in their original state, want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like letters, and many other remains of inestimable some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning value: what has become of them we know not, as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice. It seems im- since the recent death of their accomplished possible to doubt that Burns had in fact lingered in Edinburgh, in the vague hope that, to use a vague but possessor. We believe his friend, Sir Walter sufficiently expressive phrase, something would be done Scott, must have seen some, if not all, of them; wrote scholarly and wisely about having a fortune at the and if they are what we have reason to believe plough-tail,' and so forth; but all the while nourished, they are, surely they ought not to be lost to and assuredly it would have been most strange if he had the public. But we must turn from a digression would ere long present itself in some solid and tangible so mixed with personal sentiments, that we half shape, His illness and confinement gave him leisure to fear its public interest may not be commensu concentrate his imagination on the darker side of his rate with our partial view of it. prospects; and the letters which we have quoted may teach those who envy the powers and the fame of genius, to pause for a moment over the annals of literature, and think what superior capabilities of misery have been, in the great majority of cases, interwoven with the session of those very talents, from which all but their possessors derive unmingled gratification." for him. He visited and revisited farm,-talked and not, the fond dream that the admiration of his country But genius is beset with many mortifications and many dangers. The ever-active soul and the sensitive temperament must be fed with unceasing food, or they stagnate, yield to melancholy regrets, or recoil and prey upon their possessor. There can be no monotony in a poet's life; perhaps no real continued happiness. The fibre is too fine for this world's uses. It was on an occasion of only slight dissatisfaction that Dr. Blair wrote thus sensibly to our bard: There is, no doubt, a gloss of novelty which time wears off. As you very properly hint yourself, you are not to be surprised if, in your rural retreat, you do not find yourself surrounded with that glare of notice and apNo man plause which here shone upon you. can be a good poet without being somewhat of a philosopher. He must lay his account, that any one who exposes himself to public observa tion will occasionally meet with the attacks of illiberal censure, which it is always best to" overlook and despise. He will be inclined sometimes to court retreat, and to disappear "Nicoll Burn, supposed to have lived towards the close of the 16th century, and to have been among the last of the itinerant minstrels. He is the author of Leader of which his own name and designation are introduced. laughs and Yarrow, a pathetic ballad, in the last verse Sing Erlington and Cowden knowes, where Homes had ance cominanding; And Drygrange, wl the milk-white ewes, 'twixt Tweed and Leader standing, Speaking of Burns's mode of admiring ob jects, or passing them in silence, Mr. Lockhart gives us a characteristic trait, which will be howms of Yarrow, The bird that flees thro' Reedpath trees, and Gledswood |