before the capricious fair one will obey the summons. But if she favors his addresses, she escapes unobserved, and receives the vows of her lover under the gloom of twilight, or the deeper shades of night." The whole dissertation is one continued picture; but the hand which delineated it was soon to become cold, like the poet whose works it illustrates: after repeated attacks of a pulmonary complaint, Currie sank to the grave in the fiftieth year of his age, leaving a son, who has done justice to his father's merits in an excellent memoir, and a name which will be dear to Scotland while her language lasts.

ADDRESS TO THE DEIL.

"O Thou! whatever title suit thee,
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie,
Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie,
Clos'd under hatches,

Spairges about the brunstane cootie,

To scaud poor wretches."

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"I HAVE bought," says Burns to one of his fair correspondents, "a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with me in order to study the sentiments— the dauntless magnanimity, the intrepid unyielding independence, the desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship-in that great personage Satan." Afterwards, to the same lady, but in something of an apologetical mood, expresses the same opinion of the same terrible perMy favorite feature in Milton's Satan is his manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be remedied —in short, the wild broken fragments of a noble exalted mind in ruins." In these words, one of his critics, and a not unkindly one, sees the stubborn resolution of Burns —rather to endure with patience the consequences of error, than to own and avoid it in future; but this seems judging too sternly of a man who indulged in inconsiderate sayings, and wrote down the feelings of the moment. Besides, these sentiments were uttered when the poet had been long enough in Edinburgh to perceive that he had little chance of rising, through the sympathy or the justice of those who dispensed the patronage of the

kingdom, above the servile toil and abasing humility of his condition; they must be regarded rather as words forced from Burns by the bitterness of disappointment, than the offspring of a settled purpose of soul.

Yet Satan was a personage on whom his youthful mind often brooded: like a painter contemplating his canvas, or a sculptor his block of marble, he regarded the arch-fiend as a fine subject for the varying colors of his fancy he thought of him too, like the peasantry of the land, with wonder as well as fear, and now and then with a familiarity less akin to dislike than to good-will. He had heard legends of all hues, and stories of all complexions, in which the fiend, perplexed by the subtle wit of one, and dismayed by the devotional spirit of another, fled from the land; leaving, like Aubrey's ghost, an odor, which no one mistook for frankincense, behind him. He had heard too of sounds in lonely glens, and voices in desert places, and other murmurings of nature, all of which were placed to the dark account of Satan; and out of those discordant and strange materials he proceeded to create a work at once fanciful and original; and so he wrote the "Address to the Deil." Concerning its origin Gilbert Burns says: "It was, I think, in the following winter, 1785, as we were going together for coals to the family fire, (and I could point out the particular spot,) that the author first repeated to me the "Address to the Deil." The curious idea of such an address was suggested to him by running over in his mind the many ludicrous accounts and representations we have from various quarters of this august personage."

The "Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie," of Burns, is the fiend of the popular belief of the North, rather than a being on whom, like Milton, he lavished the beauty of

form and fortitude of an archangel. He has not indeed painted the horns, hoofs, and tail, with which vulgar fancy has equipped this personation of the principle of evil: he saw that these coarse material things would interrupt the stream of his humor: he has therefore kept them out of sight while he relates his ancient and modern atrocities and in this he has obeyed popular belief; for though some of the old peasants aver that they have as good as heard him, no one has yet seen Satan face to face. The poet reproaches the Fiend with the ruin which he wrought in Eden in the first moments of new-born love, and with his bitter experiment on the patience of Job; but his happiest touches are those which belong to later experiences:- with what fine seriousness and humor he inti-` mates those of his own house!

"I've heard my reverend graunie say,
In lanely glens ye like to stray;
Or where auld ruined castles gray

Nod to the moon,

Ye fright the nightly wanderer's way,
Wi' eldrich croon.

"When twilight did my graunie summon
Το
say her prayers, douce, honest woman!
Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin,
Wi' eerie drone,

Or, rustling, through the boortries comin,

Wi' heavy groan."

To the Spirit of Evil, too, he imputes the squattering and quacking which affrighted himself by a lake side one dreary windy winter night; also the wicked wanderings of warlocks and witches on Halloween, and the refusal of the toiling housewife's cream to yield its butter, and of "dawtit twal-pint Hawkie" to let down

her milk. Amid all his humor there is seriousness, and with his seriousness there are touches of a tender and relenting nature; of which the concluding verse contains a fine example.

"But, fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben!

O wad ye tak a thought an' men!
Ye aiblins might - I dinna ken-
Still hae a stake

I'm wae to think upo' yon den,

Ev'n for your sake!"