rows - the orchards and gardens of the Nith, as clear as crystal, sweeping past Isle — and the are all at hand; while in the distance the Carse, where the Danish whistle was contended for Dalswinton, where the Comyns lived of old, and where steam navigation had its origin― the tower of the Isle rising old and gray amid its fruittrees, and round which the remains of the moat are still visible, connect it with the history of the land, as well as with the poetry. The criticisms which Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh ventured to make on the poem, were more severe than just, and irritated the poet worse than any other experiments which the professors of " the ungentle craft" hazarded on his patience. "The Wounded Hare," thus wrote the critic, "is a pretty good subject; but the measure you have chosen is not a good one; it does not flow well. The execrations in the first stanza are too strong or coarse; 'murder-aiming' is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible; blood-stained' in stanza third has the same fault; bleeding bosom' is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy and tender sentiments. 'Mangled' is a coarse word; innocent' is a nursery word, but both may pass. In the title of your copy of verses you use the word 'fellow;' it is a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your " sentiments. Shot' is improper too : on seeing a person wound a hare, it is needless to say with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say, with a fowling-piece." When Burns was asked whether the Edinburgh literati had mended his poems by their criticisms, "Sir," said he, "these gentlemen are like some spinsters in my country, who spin their thread so fine, that it is neither fit for weft nor woof." And of the criticisms of Gregory on "The Wounded Hare," he said, "He is a good man, but he crucifies me. I believe in the iron justice of Dr. Gregory; but like the devils, I believe and tremble." NAEBODY. "I hae a penny to spend There thanks to naebody: I hae nothing to lend I'll borrow frae naebody. I am naebody's lord, I'll be a slave to naebody: I hae a gude braid sword, I'll tak dunts frae naebody." ENJOYMENT always called on the muse of Burns for the sanction of song: he wrote- or rather poured out, for it was unpremeditated-the free, the happy, and forcible strain of "I hae a penny to spend," on his first coming to Ellisland. "Pleased," says Currie, "with surveying the grounds he was about to cultivate, and with the rearing of a building which should give shelter to his wife and children, and, as he fondly hoped, to his own gray hairs, sentiments of independence buoyed up his mind, pictures of domestic peace and content rose on his imagination, and a few days passed away, as he himself informs us, the most tranquil, if not the happiest which he had ever experienced." The poet gave voice to these feelings in this clever song: and it was probably on the day he composed it that he put a fox-skin cap on his head, buckled a claymore to his side, and walked down to the Nith, where he was found angling in that strange trim by some southern visiters. The place is yet pointed out where this interview took place, and the walk by the river-side where he loved to stroll when the muse possessed him. Yet, with youth and hope before him, and a kind wife and a fair farm, Burns, even in his earliest days of possession, was unsettled and uneasy; he rode, and he ran; now he might be seen looking at the rising walls of his new onstead of houses; then putting his ploughshare into the soil, and-turning a furrow: or mounted on his horse and riding through the Nith, to seek the company which he thought was slow in seeking him. It was some time before he even settled down seriously into song, or got into full friendship with his neighbors. "I am here," he said, speaking of Nithsdale, “at the very elbow of existence; the only things that are to be found in perfection in this country are stupidity and canting; prose they only know in graces and prayers, and the value of these they estimate as they do their plaiden-webs-by the ell; as for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as a poet." In a similar strain, and perhaps with more bitterness, he thus writes in verse to his friend Hugh Parker. He at that time occupied the old smoky farm-house of Ellisland; low miserable abode, with a floor of earth, a roof of sooty rafters and turf, without a window that would open, or a chimney equal to the wants of the hearth fire. "In this strange land, this uncouth clime A land unknown to prose or rhyme: Where words ne'er crossed the Muses' heckles, Nor limpit in poetic shackles; A land that Prose did never view it Except when drunk he stachered through it. Here ambushed by the chimla cheek, Hid in an atmosphere of reek, I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk, I hear it for in vain I, leuk. a Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures Wi' nae ken'd face but Jenny Geddes." The old smoky farm-house infected but for a short while the atmosphere of the poet's mind; song soon cleared it up; and the intercourse which ensued with the Maxwells, the Kirkpatricks, the Dalzells, and the M'Murdos, made him aware that the land had high-souled men and spirits approaching to his own mental stamp. The old air of "Naebody," to which the song of Burns was composed, had till his day been encumbered with idle and ridiculous verses; yet frequently to such snatches as the following the poet was indebted for his inspiration. "I hae a wife o'my ain,' I'll be hadden to naebody; I'll borrow frae naebody." It would appear, too, that he thought, while he wrote, of the independent and jolly miller of Dee, the burthen of whose song was, that he cared for nobody. Burns concludes his song in almost similar words: "I'll be merry and free, I'll be sad for naebody: I'll care for naebody." The task would be endless and unprofitable to trace the Scottish muse through the wilderness of song, and intimate where she has imitated and borrowed; it may be said with safety, that she has seldom condescended to |