has he said too much. He never flags in his progress, but, like a true poet of Nature's making, kindles in his course. His beginning is simple and modest, as if distrustful of the strength of his pinion; only I do not altogether like 'Truth, The soul of every song that's nobly great.' Fiction is the soul of many a song that is nobly great. Perhaps I am wrong: this may be but a prose criticism. Is not the phrase in line 7, page 6, 'Great lake,' too much vulgarised by every-day language for so sublime a poem ? 'Great mass of waters, theme for nobler song,' is perhaps no emendation. His enumeration of a comparison with other lakes is at once harmonious and poetic. Every reader's ideas must sweep the 'Winding margin of an hundred miles.' The perspective that follows mountains blue-the imprisoned billows beating in vain-the wooded isles-the digression on the yewtree-Benlomond's lofty, cloud-enveloped head,' &c. are beautiful. A thunder-storm is a subject which has been often tried, yet our poet in his grand picture has interjected a circumstance, so far as I know, entirely original :— 'The gloom Deep seam'd with frequent streaks of moving fire.' In his preface to the storm, the glens how dark between,' is noble Highland landscape! The 'rain ploughing the red mould,' too, is beautifully fancied. 'Benlomond's lofty, pathless top,' is a good expression; and the surrounding view from it is truly great: the 'silver mist, Beneath the beaming sun,' is well described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry 'some faint idea of the vision bright,' to entertain her 'partial listening ear,' is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful passages in the whole poem are the fowls crowding, in wintry frosts, to Lochlomond's 'hospitable flood;' their wheeling round, their lighting, mixing, diving, &c., and the glorious description of the sportsman. This last is equal to anything in the Seasons. The idea of the floating tribes distant seen, far glistering to the moon,' provoking his eye as he is obliged to leave them, is a noble ray of poetic genius. The howling winds,' the 'hideous roar' of 'the white cascades,' are all in the same style. I forget that while I am thus holding forth with the heedless warmth of an enthusiast, I am perhaps tiring you with nonsense. I must, however, mention that the last verse of the sixteenth page is one of the most elegant compliments I have ever seen. I must JACOBITICAL LETTER ON THE REVOLUTION. 293 likewise notice that beautiful paragraph beginning 'The gleaming lake,' &c. I dare not go into the particular beauties of the last two paragraphs, but they are admirably fine, and truly Ossianic. I must beg your pardon for this lengthened scrawl. I had no idea of it when I began-I should like to know who the author is; but whoever he be, please present him with my grateful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me. A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books— Letters on the Religion Essential to Man, a book you sent me before; and The World Unmasked, or the Philosopher the Greatest Cheat. Send me them by the first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant: I only wish it had been in two volumes. R. B. The approach of the centenary of the landing of King William at Torbay was now exciting some sensation in the country. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was pleased to appoint Wednesday, the 5th of November, to be observed as 'a day of solemn thanksgiving for that most glorious event, the Revolution;' and it was so observed accordingly. In Burns's parish, Dunscore, the clergyman was a zealous Whig in the sense of the word in that day, sympathising strongly on religious grounds with the doings of 1688-9. The poet, whose leanings, as we have seen, were in the opposite direction, disliked the Calvinism of Mr Kirkpatrick, and was particularly wroth with the discourse which he uttered on this occasion. So earnestly did he feel upon the subject, that he sent a letter in the contrary spirit to the Star (London) newspaper, which was then partly conducted by John Mayne, a native of Dumfriesshire: TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. November 8, 1788. SIR-Notwithstanding the opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature -the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us-still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shews that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who is undone-the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes-who but sympathises with the miseries of this ruined profligate brother? We forget the injuries, and feel for the man. I went, last Wednesday, to my parish church, most cordially to join in grateful acknowledgment to the Author of all Good for the consequent blessings of the glorious Revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no less than our liberties, civil and religious; to it we are likewise indebted for the present royal family, the ruling features of whose administration have ever been mildness to the subject and tenderness of his rights. Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made my heart revolt at the harsh, abusive manner in which the reverend gentleman mentioned the House of Stuart, and which, I am afraid, was too much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past evils without cruelly raking up the ashes of those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the authors of those evils; and we may bless God for all his goodness to us as a nation, without at the same time cursing a few ruined, powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas and made attempts that most of us would have done had we been in their situation. "The bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart' may be said with propriety and justice, when compared with the present royal family, and the sentiments of our days; but is there no allowance to be made for the manners of the times? Were the royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more attentive to their subjects' rights? Might not the epithets of 'bloody and tyrannical' be, with at least equal justice, applied to the House of Tudor, of York, or any other of their prede cessors. The simple state of the case, sir, seems to be this :-At that period the science of government, the knowledge of the true relation between king and subject, was, like other sciences and other knowledge, just in its infancy, emerging from dark ages of ignorance and barbarity. The Stuarts only contended for prerogatives which they knew their predecessors enjoyed, and which they saw their contemporaries enjoying but these prerogatives were inimical to the happiness of a nation and the rights of subjects. In this contest between prince and people, the consequence of that light of science which had lately dawned over Europe-the monarch of France, for example, was victorious over the struggling liberties of his people: with us, luckily, the monarch failed, and his unwarrantable pretensions fell a sacrifice to our rights and happiness. Whether it was owing to the wisdom of leading individuals, or to the justling of parties, I cannot pretend to determine; but, likewise, happily for us, the kingly power was shifted into another branch of the family, who, as they owed the throne solely to the call of a free people, could claim nothing inconsistent with the covenanted terms which placed them there. The Stuarts have been condemned and laughed at for the folly and impracticability of their attempts in 1715 and 1745. That they failed, I bless God, but cannot join in the ridicule against them. Who does not know that the abilities or defects of leaders and commanders are often hidden until put to the touchstone of exigency; and that there is a caprice of fortune, an omnipotence in particular accidents and conjunctures of circumstances, which exalt LETTER TO MRS DUNLOP. 295 us as heroes, or brand us as madmen, just as they are for or against us? Man, Mr Publisher, is a strange, weak, inconsistent being: who would believe, sir, that in this our Augustan age of liberality and refinement, while we seem so justly sensible and jealous of our rights and liberties, and animated with such indignation against the very memory of those who would have subverted them-that a certain people under our national protection should complain, not against our monarch and a few favourite advisers, but against our whole legislative body, for similar oppression, and almost in the very same terms, as our forefathers did of the House of Stuart? I will not, I cannot enter into the merits of the case; but I daresay the American Congress in 1776 will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; and that their posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the wrongheaded House of Stuart. To conclude, sir; let every man who has a tear for the many miseries incident to humanity feel for a family illustrious as any in Europe, and unfortunate beyond historic precedent; and let every Briton (and particularly every Scotsman) who ever looked with reverential pity on the dotage of a parent, cast a veil over the fatal mistakes of the kings of his forefathers. R. B. TO MRS DUNLOP, AT MOREHAM MAINS. MAUCHLINE, 13th November 1788. MADAM-I had the very great pleasure of dining at Dunlop yesterday. Men are said to flatter women because they are weak-if it be so, poets must be weaker still; for Misses R. and K. and Miss G. M'K. with their flattering attentions and artful compliments, absolutely turned my head. I own that they did not lard me over as many a poet does his patron; but they so intoxicated me with their sly insinuations and delicate inuendos of compliment, that if it had not been for a lucky recollection how much additional weight and lustre your good opinion and friendship must give me in that circle, I had certainly looked upon myself as a person of no small consequence. I dare not say one word how much I was charmed with the major's friendly welcome, elegant manner, and acute remark, lest I should be thought to balance my orientalisms of applause overagainst the finest quey1 in Ayrshire which he made me a present of to help and adorn my farm-stock. As it was on Hallow-day,2 I am determined annually as that day returns, to decorate her horns with an ode of gratitude to the family of Dunlop. So soon as I know of your arrival at Dunlop, I will take the first conveniency to dedicate a day, or perhaps two, to you and friendship, 2 All Saints' Day, old style. 1 A young heifer. under the guarantee of the major's hospitality. There will soon be threescore and ten miles of permanent distance between us; and now that your friendship and friendly correspondence is entwisted with the heartstrings of my enjoyment of life, I must indulge myself in a happy day of the feast of reason and the flow of soul.' R. B. TO DR BLACKLOCK. MAUCHLINE, November 15, 1788. REVEREND AND DEAR SIR-As I hear nothing of your motions, but that you are or were out of town, I do not know where this may find you, or whether it will find you at all. I wrote you a long letter, dated from the land of matrimony, in June; but either it had not found you, or, what I dread more, it found you or Mrs Blacklock in too precarious a state of health and spirits to take notice of an idle packet. I have done many little things for Johnson since I had the pleasure of seeing you; and I have finished one piece in the way of Pope's Moral Epistles;1 but from your silence I have everything to fear, so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble lest they should too well suit the tone of your present feelings. In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale; till then, my direction is at this place; after that period it will be at Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me were it but half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are. indifferent to the fate of a man to whom I owe so much-a man Can I be whom I not only esteem but venerate? My warmest good wishes and most respectful compliments to Mrs Blacklock and Miss Johnson, if she is with you. I cannot conclude without telling you that I am more and more pleased with the step I took respecting 'my Jean.' Two things, from my happy experience, I set down as apophthegms in life—A wife's head is immaterial compared with her heart; and-‘Virtue's (for wisdom, what poet pretends to it?) ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.' Adieu! R. B. One of the pieces enclosed was The Mother's Lament for the Death of her Son. The other was THE LAZY MIST. TUNE-The Lazy Mist. The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill, 1 The First Epistle to Mr Graham of Fintry. |