PEGGY. NOW WESTLIN WIN'S.

"Not vernal showers to budding flowers,

Not autumn to the farmer,

So dear can be as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely charmer."

THIS is one of the earliest of the Poet's lyrics, and its heroine was one of the earliest of his mistresses; the song mingles true love with true landscape, and entwines very gracefully the emotions of his youthful heart round the beautiful in external nature. Burns felt-for he was a farmer-the joy of the season; and he knew the pleasure of a twilight walk with one who shared in his feelings, for he was an ardent lover: yet he was less lucky in his wooing than in his song. To this person he addressed some very sensible and beautiful letters, several of which were published, and then withdrawn, by Currie; and to her he dedicated four lyrics, of which the one beginning "Now westlin win's" is the best. She was alarmed, it is said, when one or two of the poet's epistles to her appeared in print; more so at the allusions in his account of himself to Moore: nor was it to be wondered at; for the free life which he led, as well as his unceremonious language, alarmed the delicacy of many ladies who admired his genius.

It appears that "Montgomery's Peggie," as he calls her in one of his songs, was a young woman well educated, and of a higher station than himself; she was handsome

too, and had the merit of knowing it; and, pleased with the eloquence and with the incense offered her in song, she permitted Burns to indulge in his dream of love for some six or eight months, and then informed him that she had promised her hand to another, at which he was as sorrowful as he was exasperated. Perhaps her decision was influenced by the darkening fortunes of the farmer ; the clouds of misfortune were gathering round his father's head, and bankruptcy and death were at hand. “To crown my distresses," he says, in his letter to Moore, “a belle fille, whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matrimony, jilted me with peculiar circumstances of mortification." These peculiar circumstances of mortification did not however hinder him afterwards from wishing her well in a song.

"Ye powers of honor, love, and truth,
From every ill defend her;
Inspire the highly-favored youth

The destinies intend her:

Still fan the sweet connubial flame
Responsive in each bosom,
And bless the dear parental name

With many a filial blossom."

These are but cold lines: how different is the rapture of the verse dedicated to her beauty, when her refusal was unspoken, and hope was high.

"Ilk care and fear, when thou art near,

I ever mair defy them;

Young kings upon their hansel throne
Are no sae blest as I am.

When in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,
I clasp my countless treasure,
I seek nae mair, O heaven! to share,
Than sic a moment's pleasure."

In an equally ardent, but in a more respectful strain, Burns celebrates, in the song of "Westlin win's" before us, the delight which he experienced when straying with his Montgomery's Peggie among the fields of ripening grain, or musing on her loveliness in the light of the moon.

"Now westlin win's and slaughtering guns

Bring autumn's pleasant weather;
The moorcock springs on whirring wings,
Among the blooming heather:

Now waving grain wide o'er the plain

Delights the weary farmer,

And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night

To muse upon my charmer."

In sober prose he relates the upshot of his musing and his courting. "My Montgomery's Peggie was my deity for six or eight months: she had been bred in a style of life rather elegant; but, as Vanbrugh says, 'My damned star found me out there too;' I began the affair merely in a gaieté de cœur, or to tell the truth, which will scarcely be believed-a vanity of showing my parts in courtshipparticularly my abilities in a billet doux, on which I always piqued myself; and when, as I always do in my foolish gallantries, I had battered myself into a very warm affection for her, she told me, in a flag of truce, that her fortress had been for some time the rightful property of another. It cost me some heart-aches to get rid of the affair." These light words of the poet seem well suited to the character of a lady who could listen to the addresses, and saunter beneath the moon, with one man, while she was the "rightful property" of another.

LAMENT FOR JAMES, EARL OF

GLENCAIRN.

"The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen:
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour has been,
The mother may forget the child

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,

And a' that thou hast done for me?"

"SURELY," says Dryden, when speaking of the little patronage which the poetical genius of this country has met with, "it is enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley, and to have starved Mr. Butler." He might have added—to have let Otway die with hunger. For our own age, it is a sufficient disgrace that Chatterton and Burns were left to die neglected the one a youth of some sixteen, the other of six and thirty; the one a mere boy, the other at an age when the majority of the great men of our nation were but opening into blossom, and had given but slender promise of what was to come.

Burns had but one true patron, and death removed that one almost as soon as he was found. This was James Cunningham, Earl of Glencairn, a nobleman whose descent and title were his least recommendations to notice, and whose name will live imperishably in the works of one whose genius he was among the first to perceive, and whose welfare he was the most active and eager to promote.

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At his first visit to Edinburgh, Burns was introduced through Dalrymple, of Orangefield, in Ayrshire, to the Earl of Glencairn; a man," says the bard, "whose worth and brotherly kindness to me I shall remember when time shall be no more." By his interest, the noblemen and gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, to the number of one hundred, took one and all a copy of the first Edinburgh edition of his poems, for which they paid a guinea each, while the price to the other subscribers was but six shillings. The Earl himself, though far from rich, took twenty-four. "The baneful star," the poet writes to Dr. Moore, "that had so long shed its blasting influence in my zenith, for once made a revolution to the nadir; and a kind Providence placed me under the patronage of one of the noblest of men, the Earl of Glencairn."

To this generous Earl there are, in the letters of Burns, very frequent and gratifying allusions. Invariably is he spoken of as the one by whose patronage and goodness he had been rescued from obscurity, from wretchedness, and from exile; as his best friend—his first and dearest

patron and benefactor. "The generous patronage of your late illustrious brother," he writes to the last Earl of Glencairn, "found me in the lowest obscurity: he introduced my rustic muse to the partiality of my country, and to him I owe all." This is the language of one obliged. "Nor shall my gratitude perish with me!" he assures Lady Betty Cunningham. "If among my children I shall have a son that has a heart, he shall hand it down to his child as a family honor and a family debt, that my dearest existence I owe to the noble house of Glencairn."

When the poet was ornamenting his farm-house at