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 ecstacy 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:

"With future hope I oft would gaze
Fond on thy little early ways,
Thy rudely carolled, chiming phrase,
In uncouth rhymes,

Fired at the simple, artless lays,
Of other times.

I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
Or when the north his fleecy store
Drove through the sky,
I saw grim nature's visage hoar

Strike thy young eye.

Or when the deep green-mantled earth Warm cherished every flowret's birth, And joy and music pouring forth

In every grove,

I saw thee eye the general mirth
With boundless love.

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 show,
To paint with Thomson's landscape glow;
Or wake the bosom-melting throe,

With Shenstone's art;

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

Yet, all beneath the unrivalled rose,
The lowly daisy sweetly blows;
Though large the forest's monarch throws
His army shade,

Yet green the juicy hawthorn grows
Adown the glade.

Then never murmur nor repine;
Strive in thy humble sphere to shine;
And trust me, not Potosi's mine,
Nor king's regard,
Can give a bliss o'ermatching thine,
A rustic bard.

To give my counsels all in one-
Thy tuneful flame still careful fan;
Preserve the dignity of man,

With soul erect;

And trust, the universal plan
Will all protect.

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 deep 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 patronising 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, and 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 Danae into the rural songs of Allan Ramsay.*

*The scraps of French in his letters to Dr Moore, Mrs Riddell, &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

Burns's letters, however, are valuable 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 :

much.

'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 In 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 life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little better than mere machinery.

This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue-skied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end of autumn; these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday. I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the

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 trades men of Edinburgh,' left any part of the original plainness and simplicity of his manners. Yet his learned friends saw no change in the proud 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 charac

ters,' 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!'

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.” 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 particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, 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 Eolian 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 wo beyond death and the grave.'

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

reason 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 swelled the long procession of English poets, stript of his originality, and bearing, though proudly, the ensign of conquest and sub

mission.

[From Burns's Epistles.]

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,
Or 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!

Oh 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!

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

And teach the lanely heights and 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 cild,

Wi' wrinkled face,
Comes hostin', hirplin' owre the field,
Wi' creepin' pace.

When ance life's day draws near the gloamin',
Then fareweel vacant careless roamin';
And fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin',
And social noise;

And fareweel dear, deluding woman!
The joy of joys!

Oh Life! how pleasant in thy morning,
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning!
Cold-pausing caution's lesson scorning,
We frisk away,

Like schoolboys, at the expected warning,
To joy and play.

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.

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 bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet!
Wi' speckled 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:
But thou, beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

There in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flowret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven
To misery's brink,
Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!

Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, That fate is thine-no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight, Shall be thy doom.

On Captain Matthew Henderson.

A gentleman who held the patent for his honours immediately from Almighty God.

'Should the poor be flattered ?'-Shakspeare.

But now his radiant course is run,

For Matthew's course was bright;
His soul was like the glorious sun,

A matchless heavenly light!

Oh 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 neibors o' the starns,
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,

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!

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.

1 Eagles.

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!

Oh, rivers, forests, hills, and plains!
Oft have ye heard my canty strains:
But now, what else for me remains
But tales of wo?

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.

Oh, 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!
But by thy honest turf I'll wait,
Thou man of worth!
And weep the ae best fellow's fate
E'er lay in earth.

[Songs.]

Macpherson's Farewell.

Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong,
The wretch's destinie!

Macpherson's time will not be long

On yonder gallows-tree.

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he;

He played a spring, and danced it round,
Below the gallows tree.

Oh, what is death but parting breath!
On many a bloody plain
I've dared his face, and in this place
I scorn him yet again!

Untie these bands from off my hands,
And bring to me my sword;
And there's no a man in all Scotland,
But I'll brave him at a word.

I've lived a life of sturt and strife;

I die by treacherie;

It burns my heart I must depart
And not avenged be.

Now farewell light-thou sunshine bright,
And all beneath the sky!

May coward shame distain his name,
The wretch that dares not die!

Menie.

Again rejoicing nature sees

Her robe assume its vernal hues, Her leafy locks wave in the breeze, All freshly steeped in morning dews. In vain to me the cowslips blaw,

In vain to me the violets spring; In vain to me, in glen or shaw,

The mavis and the lintwhite sing. The merry ploughboy cheers his team, Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks; But life to me's a weary dream,

A dream of ane that never wauks. The wanton coot the water skims, Amang the reeds the ducklings cry, The stately swan majestic swims,

And everything is blessed but I. The shepherd steeks his faulding slap, And owre the moorland whistles shrill; Wi' wild, unequal, wandering step,

I meet him on the dewy hill.

And when the lark, 'tween light and dark,
Blithe waukens by the daisy's side,
And mounts and sings on flittering wings,
A wo-worn ghaist I hameward glide.
Come, Winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging bend the naked tree:
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When nature all is sad like me!

Ae Fond Kiss.

These exquisitely affecting stanzas contain the essence of a thousand love tales.'-Scott.]

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas! for ever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.
I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae farewell, alas! for ever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!
My Bonnie Mary.

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine,

And fill it in a silver tassie;

That I may drink, before I

go,

A service to my bonnie lassie; The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith,

Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the Ferry; The ship rides by the Berwick-law,

And I maun leave my bonnie Mary. The trumpets sound, the banners fly, The glittering spears are ranked ready; The shouts o' war are heard afar,

The battle closes thick and bloody;

But it's not the roar o' sea or shore
Wad make me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shouts o' war that's heard afar-
It's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.
Mary Morison.

[One of my juvenile works.'-Burns. Of all the produc tions of Burns, the pathetic and serious love songs which he has left behind him in the manner of old ballads, are perhaps those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines of Mary Morison, &c.'-Hazlitt.] Oh Mary, at thy window be,

It is the wished, the trysted hour!
Those smiles and glances let me see,
That make the miser's treasure poor:
How blithely wad I bide the stoure,
A weary slave frae sun to sun,
Could I the rich reward secure,
The lovely Mary Morison.
Yestreen when to the trembling string
The dance gaed through the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,

I sat, but neither heard nor saw.
Though this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a' the town,
I sighed, and said amang them a',
Ye are na Mary Morison.'

Oh Mary, canst thou wreck his peace,
Wha for thy sake wad gladly die?
Or canst thou break that heart of his,
Whase only faut is loving thee?
If love for love thou wilt na gie,
At least be pity to me shown;
A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o' Mary Morison.

Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour;

See approach proud Edward's power-
Chains and slavery !

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa',
Let him follow me!

By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do, or die!

ALEXANDER WILSON.

ALEXANDER WILSON, a distinguished naturalist, was also a good Scottish poet. He was a native of Paisley, and born July 6, 1766. He was brought up to the trade of a weaver, but afterwards preferred that of a pedlar, selling muslin and other wares. In 1789 he added to his other commodities a prospectus of a volume of poems, trusting, as he said,

If the pedlar should fail to be favoured with sale, Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.