SECOND EPISTLE TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET. "But tent me, Davie, ace o' hearts! (To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, And flattery I detest,) This life has joys for you and I, And joys that riches ne'er could buy, To David Sillar, schoolmaster and poet, Burns addressed two of his best verse epistles. The two bards were comrades and confidants, both in rhyme and love: but how different has been their share of fame! The Schoolmaster, probably encouraged by the success of the Ploughman, published his Poems in 1789, at Kilmarnock: they are on various subjects, and all alike cold and common-place. One of them is addressed to Burns, of whom he can find nothing better to say than this : -- "I ne'er was muckle gien to praisin, Plays sweet as Robin Furgusson, "Great numbers on this earthly ba', As soon as death gies them a ca', And straught forgot. Forbid that this should ever fa' To be your lot." But while the honest schoolmaster of Tarbolton expresses some fears for the fate of the Ploughman as a poet, he gently insinuates his own hopes of perpetual fame. "I ever had an anxious wish, Forgive me, Heav'n, if 'twas amiss, It from the cruel tyrant's crush Beyond the grave." Sometimes Fame in a freak saves strange verse from oblivion: the poetry of Sillar is redeemed from darkness by the reflected light of one, whom, after all, honest Davie seems not to have thought much of as a poet. It is probably to both the bards of Tarbolton and Muirkirk that Burns alludes, when he complains that his success brought forth from obscurity such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters, as had put Scottish poetry into disgrace. Both of these Epistles are early compositions, and were written before the publication of the Kilmarnock edition of the poems of Burns. The first is altogether beautiful, both in its sadness and its joy: in the second verse, he quietly declares, "It's hardly in a body's pow'r To keep, at times, frae being sour, How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And ken na how to wair't." In the fourth verse, he lifts up his voice, and while he cheers his own heart, he infuses joy into the hearts of all. "What though like commoners of air, Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, In days when daisies deck the ground, The Second Epistle is in another strain free, care less and happy, but without the high philosophy of its elder brother: Burns was at that time preparing his poems for the press. "For me, I'm on Parnassus' brink, Rivin the words to gar them clink, Whyles daez't it wi' love, whyles daez't it wi' drink, Wi' jads or masons; An' whyles, but ay owre late, I think When Professor Walker prepared his life of Burns, David Sillar supplied some happy and interesting particulars. The Ploughman Poet, he said, wore a fillemot plaid; had the only tied hair in the parish; was fond of reading while he walked, and fonder still of conversing with the ladies; loved to infuse a certain sarcastic seasoning into his talk with the rougher sex; and it was said by the old man, that he had ay owre much to say for himself, and that they suspected his principles. Sillar was a kind and a good man; lived to an advanced age; became ambitious, "in some bit burgh, to represent a bailie's name," and obtained that distinction in the town of Irvine. INTERIOR OF THE BIRTH-PLACE OF BURNS. "The gossip keekit in his loof, Quo' she, wha lives will see the proof, I think we'll ca' him Robin. "He'll hue misfortunes great an' sma', But ay a heart aboon them a'; He'll be a credit till us a, - We'll a' be proud o' Robin." So sang the Bard of Coila, concerning his own birthday; he lived to fulfil so fully the prophecy of his verse, that he is a credit to his country; and all the sons of Scotland rejoice in the Patriot and the Poet. The exterior of the cottage in which he was born, where his mother, in the words of the old strain, “dreed the birth-time pang," ," has been already described. It has now become a place of entertainment for travellers, and offers the allurement of good ale, and anecdotes of Burns. This little hovel has been delineated by the pencil, carved by the chisel, described in prose, and eulogized in rhyme : it has been lectured upon, preached upon, and prayed upon; princes have paused to gaze at it as they passed; poets have mused there, in the hope of catching some yet lingering inspiration; and composers of tours and biographies have wandered about it, to pick up crumbs of intelligence, and lay down the points and bearings of northern genius. Still, for all this, the popular taste is unsatisfied: when all is seen that can be seen, and all described that can be described, the public fancy has imagined a scene of its own, with too much of poetry and paradise in it for the most romantic of all the real places consecrated by the genius of Burns. The sunniness, and sweetness, and elegance of the Poet's songs, contrast strangely, sometimes, with the scenes where they are laid, as well as with the now faded and wrinkled dames which they celebrate. Ten thousand times ten thousand travellers might pass the humble shealing nigh the Doon, without suspecting that they trod on classic ground, or inhaled empyrean air. "The whole land of Burns," says a bard, and a high one, “is beautiful; but much of the beauty is the work of the Poet; the daisy was but a weed, and the mouse but worthy of the pettle, till he invested them with moral and sublime attributes. The Banks of Doon, the Braes of Ballochmyle, and the Moors of the Lugar, would receive from us but a glance of hurried pleasure, did we not know that there the muse has left her footsteps, and consecrated all that she touched. Kirk Alloway would be a rude ruin; the cottage where Burns was born, a tinker's hovel; the Doon, a stream of no note; and the Ayr remarkable only for the whetstones, did not a halo, brighter than that of nature, hung like a light round the brow of some dusky apostle, steep them in the hues of heaven." The birth-day of Burns is regularly celebrated, we are told, in his birth-place, by a few of the true spirits of the Doon and the Ayr; but it is not by his native streams alone that rejoicings take place on the twenty-fifth day of January; the Tweed, the Clyde, the Yarrow, and the Nith, have also their festivities; and their example has extended to the Thames, the Tees, the Tyne, the Severn, the Mersey, and the Ouse; the Green Isle too shares with |