We'll sculpture the marble, we'll measure the lay;
Here Vanity strums on her idiot lyre;
There keen Indignation shall dart on her prey,
Which spurning Contempt shall redeem from his ire.

THE EPITAPH.

Here lies, now a prey to insulting neglect,
What once was a butterfly, gay in life's beam :
Want only of wisdom, denied her respect,
Want only of goodness, denied her esteem.

In this sharp lampoon, Burns satirizes a lady, young, beautiful, much of a wit, and something of a poetessMrs. Riddel of Woodlee-Park, now Goldielee. How she incurred his displeasure has been variously related: the all but general opinion is, that she smiled on those whom the Poet contemptuously called " epauletted coxcombs," more than he thought respectful to his own deserts, and he was not one likely to let neglect pass unnoticed. The copy of this lampoon, which Burns sent to John M'Murdo of Drumlanrig, is now before me the name is written Maria, it differs in nothing save a single word from the common copy. The lady lived to forgive and forget the bitterness of the Bard: she had a fine library and lent him books; she was a fair scholar and sometimes translated from French or Italian, or Latin verse for his amusement, nor was she unwilling to write rhymes, and it must be confessed that she sometimes merited praise both for harmony and elegance. In the Inscription which she wrote for a hermitage in one of

the West India isles, of which she was a native, there are many pretty lines :—

"Soon as Aurora wakes the dawn,

I press with nimble feet the lawn,
Eager to deck the favourite bower,
With every opening bud and flower;
Explore each shrub and balmy sweet,
To scatter o'er my mossy seat;
And teach around in wreaths to stray,
The rich pomegranates pliant spray;
At noon reclined in yonder glade,
Panting beneath the tamarind's shade;
Or where the palm-trees nodding head,
Guards from the sun my verdant bed.
I quaff to slake my thirsty soul,
The cocoa's full nectareous bowl.
At eve beneath some spreading tree,
I read the inspired poesie

Of Milton, Pope, or Spenser mild,

And Shakspeare, Fancy's brightest child;
To tender Sterne I lend an ear,

Or drop o'er Héloise the tear:
Sometimes with Anna tune the lay,

And doze in song the cheerful day."

That Mrs. Riddel lamented deeply the death of Burns, we have other evidence than the following verses, dated Nithside, 1796; which point to his grave :

"Despairing I rove by this still running stream,

While Corin's sad fate is for ever my theme;

For 'twas here we oft wander'd the long summer days,
And each vale then harmonious re-echoed his lays;
The woods with delight bowed their tops to his song,
While the streamlet responsive ran murmuring along:
The songsters were mute when he tuned his soft reed,
And fays danc'd round on the green chequer'd mead."

EPISTLE

FROM

ESOPUS TO MARIA.

FROM those drear solitudes and frowsy cells,
Where infamy with sad repentance dwells;
Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast,
And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin,
Blush at the curious stranger peeping in ;
Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar,
Resolve to drink, nay half to whore no more;
Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing,
Beat hemp for others, riper for the string:
From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date,
To tell Maria her Esopus' fate.

"Alas! I feel I am no actor here!"

'Tis real hangmen, real scourges bear!

Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale

Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale;

Will make thy hair, tho' erst from gipsy polled, By barber woven, and by barber sold,

Though twisted smooth with Harry's nicest care,

Like hoary bristles to erect and stare.

The hero of the mimic scene, no more

I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar ;

Or haughty Chieftain, 'mid the din of arms,
In Highland bonnet woo Malvina's charms;

While sans culottes stoop up the mountain high,
And steal from me Maria's prying eye.

Blest Highland bonnet! Once my proudest dress,
Now prouder still, Maria's temples press.
I see her wave thy towering plumes afar,
And call each coxcomb to the wordy war.
I see her face the first of Ireland's sons,*
And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze;
The crafty colonel † leaves the tartaned lines,
For other wars, where he a hero shines;
The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred,
Who owns a Bushby's heart without the head;
Comes, 'mid a string of coxcombs to display,
That veni, vidi, vici, is his way;

The shrinking bard adown an alley skulks,
And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks;
Though there, his heresies in church and state
Might well award him Muir and Palmer's fate :
Still she undaunted reels and rattles on,

And dares the public like a noontide sun.
(What scandal called Maria's janty stagger,
The ricket reeling of a crooked swagger?

Whose spleen e'en worse than BURNS' venom when
He dips in gall unmixed his eager pen,—

And pours his vengeance in the burning line,
Who christened thus Maria's lyre divine;
The idiot strum of vanity bemused,

And even th' abuse of poesy abused!

Who called her verse, a parish workhouse made For motley, foundling fancies, stolen or strayed?)

A workhouse! ah, that sound awakes my woes,
And pillows on the thorn my rack'd repose!
In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowzy couch in sorrow steep;
That straw where many a rogue has lain of yore,
And vermined gipsies littered heretofore.

Why, Lonsdale thus, thy wrath on vagrants pour,
Must earth no rascal save thyself endure?
Must thou alone in guilt immortal swell,

And make a vast monopoly of hell?

Thou know'st, the virtues cannot hate thee worse,
The vices also, must they club their curse?
Or must no tiny sin to others fall,
Because thy guilt's supreme enough for all?

Maria, send me too thy griefs and cares;
In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares.
As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls,
Who on my fair one satire's vengeance hurls?
Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain coquette,
A wit in folly, and a fool in wit.