history of his country, and loving its very soil-worshipping the memory of Scotland's ancient patriots and defenders, and exploring every scene and memorial of departed greatness-loving also the simple peasantry around him, 'the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers.' Burning with a desire to do something for old Scotland's sake, with a heart beating with warm and generous emotions, a strong and clear understanding, and a spirit abhorring all meanness, insincerity, and oppression, Burns, in his early days, might have furnished the subject for a great and instructive moral poem. The true elements of poetry were in his life, as in his writings. The wild stirrings of his ambition-which he so nobly compared to the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave'-the precocious maturity of his passions and his intellect, his manly

frame, that led him to fear no competitor at the plough, and his exquisite sensibility and tenderness, that made him weep over even the destruction of મ daisy's flower, or a mouse's nest, these are all moral contrasts or blendings that seem to belong to the spirit of romantic poetry. His writings, as we now know, were but the fragments of a great mindthe hasty outpourings of a full heart and intellect. After he had become the fashionable wonder and idol of his day-soon to be cast into cold neglect and poverty!-some errors and frailties threw a shade on the noble and affecting image, but its higher lineaments were never destroyed. The column was defaced, not broken; and now that the mists of prejudice have cleared away, its just proportions and symmetry are recognised with pride and gratitude by his admiring countrymen. Burns came as a potent auxiliary or fellow-worker

with Cowper, in bringing poetry into the channels of truth and nature. There were only two years between the Task and the Cotter's Saturday Night. No poetry was ever more instantaneously or universally popular among a people than that of Burns in Scotland. It seemed as if a new realm had been added to the dominions of the British muse-a new and glorious creation, fresh from the hand of nature. There was the humour of Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne or Richardson, the real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson-all united in delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by an Ayrshire ploughman! The volume contained matter for all minds-for the lively and sarcastic, the wild and the thoughtful, the poetical enthusiast and the man of the world. So eagerly was the book sought after, that, where copies of it could not be obtained, many of the poems were transcribed and sent round in manuscript among admiring circles. The subsequent productions of the poet did not materially affect the estimate of his powers formed from his first volume. His life was at once too idle and too busy for continuous study; and, alas! it was too brief for the full maturity and development of his talents. Where the intellect predominates equally with the imagination

and this was the case with Burns-increase of years generally adds to the strength and variety of the poet's powers; and we have no doubt that, in ordinary circumstances, Burns, like Dryden, would have improved with age, and added greatly to his fame, had he not fallen at so early a period, before his imagination could be enriched with the riper fruits of knowledge and experience. He meditated a national drama; but we might have looked with more confidence for a series of tales like Tam o' Shanter, which-with the elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson, one of the most highly finished and most precious of his works-was produced in his happy residence at Ellisland. Above two hundred songs were, however, thrown off by Burns in his latter years, and they embraced poetry of all kinds. Mr Moore became a writer of lyrics, as he informs his readers, that he might express what music conveyed to himself. Burns had little or no technical knowledge of music. Whatever pleasure he derived from it, was the result of personal associations-the words to which airs were adapted, or the locality with which they were connected. His whole soul, however, was full of the finest harmony. So quick and genial were his sympathies, that he was easily stirred into lyrical melody by whatever was good

and beautiful in nature. Not a bird sang in a bush, nor a burn glanced in the sun, but it was eloquence and music to his ear. He fell in love with every fine female face he saw; and thus kindled up, his feelings took the shape of song, and the words fell as naturally into their places as if prompted by the most perfect knowledge of music. The inward melody needed no artificial accompaniment. An attempt at a longer poem would have chilled his ardour; but a song embodying some one leading idea, some burst of passion, love, patriotism, or humour, was exactly suited to the impulsive nature

of Burns's genius, and to his situation and circumstances. His command of language and imagery, always the most appropriate, musical, and graceful, was a greater marvel than the creations of a Handel or Mozart. The Scottish poet, however, knew many old airs-still more old ballads; and a few bars of the music, or a line of the words, served as a key-note to his suggestive fancy. He improved nearly all he touched. The arch humour, gaiety, simplicity, and genuine feeling of his original songs, will be felt as long as 'rivers roll and woods are green.' They breathe the natural character and

spirit of the country, and must be coeval with it in existence. Wherever the words are chanted, a picture is presented to the mind; and whether the tone be plaintive and sad, or joyous and exciting, one overpowering feeling takes possession of the imagination. The susceptibility of the poet inspired him with real emotions and passion, and his genius reproduced them with the glowing warmth and truth of nature.

Tam o' Shanter is usually considered to be Burns's master-piece: it was so considered by himself, and the judgment has been confirmed by Campbell, Wilson, Montgomery, and almost every critic. It displays more various powers than any of his other productions, beginning with low comic humour and Bacchanalian revelry-the dramatic scene at the commencement is unique, even in Burns-and ranging through the various styles of the descriptive, the terrible, the supernatural, and the ludicrous. The originality of some of the phrases and sentiments, as

Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious→
O'er a' the ills of life victorious!

the felicity of some of the similes, and the elastic force and springiness of the versification, must also be considered as aiding in the effect. The poem reads as if it were composed in one transport of inspiration, before the bard had time to cool or to slacken in his fervour; and such we know was actually the case. Next to this inimitable 'tale of truth' in originality, and in happy grouping of images, both familiar and awful, we should be disposed to rank the Address to the Deil. The poet adopted the common superstitions of the peasantry as to the attributes of Satan; but though his Address is mainly ludicrous, he intersperses passages of the highest beauty, and blends a feeling of tenderness and compunction with his objurgation of the Evil One. The effect of contrast was never more happily displayed than in the conception of such a being straying in lonely glens and rustling among treesin the familiarity of sly humour with which the poet lectures so awful and mysterious a personage -who had, as he says, almost overturned the infant world, and ruined all; and in that strange and inimitable outbreak of sympathy in which a hope

But fare-you-weel, auld Nickie-ben!
Oh! wad ye tak a thought and men'!
Ye aiblins might-I dinna ken-
Still hae a stake;

I'm wae to think upo' yon den,

Even for your sake!

The Jolly Beggars is another strikingly original production. It is the most dramatic of his works, and the characters are all finely sustained. Of the Cotter's Saturday Night, the Mountain Daisy, or the Mouse's Nest, it would be idle to attempt any eulogy. In these Burns is seen in his fairest colours

most heart-felt inspiration-his brightest sunshine and his tenderest tears. The workmanship of these leading poems is equal to the value of the materials. The peculiar dialect of Burns being a composite of Scotch and English, which he varied at will-the Scotch being generally reserved for the comic and tender, and the English for the serious and loftyhis diction is remarkably rich and copious. No poet is more picturesque in expression. This was the result equally of accurate observation, careful study, and strong feeling. His energy and truth stamp the highest value on his writings. He is as literal as Cowper. The banks of the Doon are described as faithfully as those of the Ouse; and his views of

human life and manners are as real and as finely moralised. His range of subjects, however, was 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 ecstasy 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 caroled, 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,

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 letterwriting 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, or 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 Danaë into the rural songs of Allan Ramsay.*

* The scraps of French in his letters to Dr Moore, Mrs Riddel, &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 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 tradesmen 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 characters,' 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!'