voluptuous Apollo, and the Venus who from the sky ravished the imagination.

Virgil makes us accompany his hero into Elysium; to converse with the sages of the primeval ages; or leads us down to Tartarus to wander amongst unhappy ghosts.

Ariosto decoys us by the truth of his realities into all the wildness of magic and chivalry.

Tasso martials "helm and hauberk," knight and steed, Saracen and Christian, on the hill of Calvary, or parades them in the garden of Gethsemane: thus engrafting religious faith upon heroic emprize.

Milton compasses all space, and demands the universe for the scene of his mighty drama. His personages are nothing less than the Godhead, the Savior, archangels, burning seraphims, myriads of angels; the arch destroyer and his legions; and man, such as we cannot now behold him.

Shakspeare peoples the air, the water, and the earth, with fantastic forms and shapes, engendered by his fancy;-from the tiny gossamer fairy, as big as agate on alderman's forefinger, to the heavy, huge, creeping Caliban; subjects them to laws of his own framing, and fills the mind of man with sage aphorisms drawn from the conduct of "airy nothings;" or, arising in tragic majesty, selects some mighty lord of the earth, sitting in the chair of power, nodding command to his satraps, and folding his arms in security and self-sufficiency-him he pinions by the Titanian force of some masterpassion; poisons his food, snatches from him "nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," and fills his imagination with hideous phantasms, until, like the wild beast in the toils, he rushes with his eyes wide open into the world of spirits. In all these instances, common affairs of wassailing and the wine cup, the scented rose, the soft madrigal, and the "lascivious pleasing of a lute;" the sounds of the sackbut and "dulcimer" are left far behind in the blue and fading distance. To make our claims to greatness solid, we must, it appears, either cast into a new mould, and intensely elevate what we

see around us, cover the "thick rotundity o' the globe" with imaginary creations, or go into other spheres in search of new modes of being.

If such are the indispensable conditions to the occupancy of the first rank among poets, many besides Burns, for whom it has been claimed, must be content to be established in the second: and it is there we place him.

It remains to speak of Mr. Lockhart's execution of his task. There appears to be a singularity of character and arrangement about these successive biographies of Burns. It has been thought necessary that each of them should be complete in itself. Hence the reader has to travel over some old ground, in order to get at the new parts of the road. Mr. Lockhart has himself evidently been conscious of this in the following passage:

"As to the earlier part of Burns' history, Currie and Walker appear to have left little unexplored: it is chiefly concerning the incidents of his closing years, that their accounts have been supposed to admit of a supplement." (Prefatory notice, page 22.) Hence some of the matter found in Currie's Life of Burns, owing to the plan of the work being as above described, is repeated in the beginning of Mr. Lockhart's new biography: still, however, justice requires that it be stated, that by the side of this, even in the earlier pages of the new life, is found novel matter, and sometimes an enlargement of the old. In the advanced pages, the freshness and excellent quality of the materiel are every where discernible and Mr. Lockhart's distinguishing trait, as Burns' biographer, appears to be, that he was not of the opinion that,

"The social condition of the individual of whom he was treating, could seem to place him at such a distance from the exalted reader, that ceremony might be discarded with him, and his memory sacrificed as it were almost without compunction." And accordingly his approaches towards, and handling of, Burns' vulnerable points, are evidently made

with the tenderness and forbearance of a brother; indeed, he exhibits more delicacy than even Burns' brother Gilbert.

Station in life may perhaps partly account for this, and it may be in part accounted for from the period of time elapsed, which, as it goes on to leave the peculiarities of the man further in the distance, increases the delight and estimation entertained for the poet. The letters of Burns interspersed in this volume, are, if there were no other attraction, invaluable.

The universally desired information respecting the family of Burns, is in this work furnished, up to the year 1827.(Page 295.) Many will, doubtless, wish it had been more ample.

Amidst the cravings of a depraved literary appetite for exaggerated situation, extraordinary incident, and exciting climaxes, which constitute the features of the greater part of the works of imagination of the day, it is pleasing to be enabled to record, that this volume, presenting a very different bill of fare, has had such an extensive circulation in Great Britain, as to determine the publishers on bringing it before the American public, to whom, it is confidently believed, their selection will prove acceptable.

PREFATORY NOTICE.

SOME apology must be deemed necessary for any new attempt to write the LIFE of BURNS. The present adventurer on that field has only this to offer that Dr. Currie's Memoir cannot be, with propriety, detached from the collection of the Poet's works, which it was expressly designed to accompany; and the regretted projector of Constable's Miscellany sought in vain for any other narrative sufficiently detailed to meet the purposes of this publication.

The last reprint of Dr. Currie's Edition had the advantage of being supperintended by Mr. Gilbert Burns; and that excellent man, availing himself of the labors of Cromek, Walker, and Peterkin, and supplying many blanks from the stores of his own recollection, produced at last a book, in which almost every thing that should be (and some things that never should have been) told, of his brother's history, may be found. There is however, at least for indolent readers, no small inconvenience in the arrangement which Currie's Memoir, thus enlarged, presents. The frequent references to notes, appendices, and Letters not included in the same vo