ations of a busy or studious life! The finest of these few have been gracefully and gaily thrown off, in some mirthful minute, by Shakspeare and Ben Jonson and "the Rest," inebriating the mind as with "divine gas" into sudden exhilaration that passes away not only without headache, but with heartache for a time allayed by the sweet afflatus. In our land, too, as in Greece of old, genius has imbibed inspiration from the wine-cup, and sung of human life in strains befitting poets who desired that their foreheads should perpetually be wreathed with flowers. But putting aside them and their little lyres, with some exceptions, how nauseous are the bacchanalian songs of Merry England! On this topic we but touch; and request you to recollect, that there are not half a dozen, if so many, drinking songs in all Burns. "Willie brewed a peck o' maut," is, indeed, the chief; and you cannot even look at it without crying, “O rare Rob Burns!" So far from inducing you to believe that the poet was addicted to drinking, the freshness and fervor of its glee convince you that it came gushing out of a healthful heart, in the exhilaration of a night that needed not the influence of the flowing bowl, which friendship, nevertheless, did so frequently replenish. Wordsworth, who has told the world that he is a water drinker, and in the lake country he can never be at a loss for his favorite beverage, regards this song with the complacency of a philosopher, knowing well that it is all a pleasant exaggeration; and that had the moon not lost patience and gone to bed, she would have seen "Rob and Allan" on their way back to Ellisland, along the bold banks of the Nith, as steady as a brace of bishops. Of the contest immortalized in the "Whistle," it may be observed, that in the course of events it is likely to be as rare as enormous; and that as centuries intervened between Sir Robert Laurie's victory over the Dane in the reign of James VI., and Craigdarroch's victory over Sir Robert Laurie in that of George III., so centuries, in all human probability, will elapse before another such battle will be lost and won. It is not a little amusing to hear good Dr. Currie on this passage in the life of Burns. In the text of his Memoir he says, speaking of the poet's intimacy with the best families in Nithsdale, "Their so cial parties too often seduced him from his rustic labors and his rustic fare, overthrew the unsteady fabric of his resolutions, and inflamed those propensities which temperance might have weakened, and prudence ultimately suppressed." In a note he adds in illustration, "The poem of the Whistle celebrates a bacchanalian event among the gentlemen of Nithsdale, where Burns appears as umpire. Mr. Riddell died before our bard, and some elegiac verses to his memory will be found in Volume IV. From him and from all the members of his family, Burns received not kindness, but friendship; and the society he met with in general at Friar's Carse was calculated to improve his habits, as well as his manners, Mr. Fergusson of Craigdarroch, so well known for his eloquence and social habits, died soon after our poet. Sir Robert Laurie, the third person in the drama, survives; and has since been engaged in contests of a bloodier nature-long may he live to fight the battles of his country! (1799)." Three better men lived not in the shire; but they were gentlemen, and Burns was but an exciseman; and Currie, unconsciously influenced by an habitual deference to rank, pompously moralizes on the poor poet's "propensities, which temperance might have weakened, and prudence ultimately suppressed;" while in the same breath, and with the same ink, he eulogises the rich squire for "his eloquence and social habits," so well calculated to "improve the habits, as well as the manners," of the bard and gauger! Now suppose that "the heroes" had been not Craigdarroch, Glenriddel, and Maxwelton, but Burns, Mitchell, and Findlater, a gauger, a supervisor, and a collector of excise, and that the contest had taken place not at Friar's-Carse, but at Ellisland, not for a timehonored hereditary ebony whistle, but a wooden ladle not a week old, and that Burns the Victorious had acquired an implement more elegantly fashioned, though of the same materials, than the one taken from his mouth the moment he was born, what blubbering would there not have been among his biographers! James Currie, how exhortatory! Josiah Walker, how lachrymose ! "Next uprose our Bard like a prophet in drink: 'Craigdarroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink! 66 But if thou would flourish immortal in rhyme, Come-one bottle more-and have at the sublime! Thy line, they have struggled for Freedom with Bruce, So thine be the laurel, and mine be the bay; The field thou hast won, by yon bright god of day!" How very shocking! Then only hear in what a culpable spirit Burns writes to Riddel, on the forenoon of the day of battle! "Sir, Big with the idea of this important day at Friar's-Carse, I have invoked the elements and skies in the fond persuasion that they would announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena of terrific import. Yester-night, until a very late hour, did I wait with anxious horror for the appearance of some comet firing half the sky; or aerial armies of conquering Scandinavians, darting athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury nations. The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly; they did not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood, symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of the day. For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm, I shall Hear astonished, and astonished sing.' To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of prose, I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Laurie, to post the two inclosed covers for me, the one of them to Sir William Cunninghame, of Robertland, Bart., Kilmarnockthe other to Mr. Allen Masterton, writing-master, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir Robert, as being a brother baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite; the other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius; so allow me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them franked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post to-night. I shall send a servant again for them in the evening. Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from aches to-morrow, I have the honor to be, sir, your deeply-indebted and obedient servant, R. B." Why, you see that this "Letter," and "The Whistle "-perhaps an improper poem in priggish eyes, but in the eyes of Bacchus the best of triumphal odesmake up the whole of Burns's share in this transaction. He was not at the Carse. The "three potent heroes" were too thoroughly gentlemen to have asked a fourth to sit by with an empty bottle before him as umpire of that debate. Burns that evening was sitting with his eldest child on his knee, teaching it to say Dad—that night he was lying in his own bed, with bonnie Jean by his side—and "yon bright god of day" saluted him at morning on the Scaur above the glittering Nith. Turn to the passages in his youthful poetry, where he speaks of himself or others "wi' just a drappie in their ee." Would you that he had never written Death and Dr. Hornbook? "The clachan yill had made me canty, I stacher'd whyles, but yet took tent ay To free the ditches; An' hillocks, stanes, an' bushes, kenn'd ay "The rising moon began to glow'r The distant Cumnock hills out-owre: But whether she had three or four, "I was come round about the hill, To keep me sicker: Tho' leeward whyles, against my will, I took a bicker. "I there wi' SOMETHING did forgather," &c. Then and there, as you learn, ensued that "celestial colloquy divine," which being reported drove the doctor out of the country, by unextinguishable laughter, into Glasgow, where half a century afterwards he died universally respected. SOMETHING had more to say, and long before that time Burns had been sobered. "But just as he began to tell, The auld kirk-hammer strak the bell Which rais'd us baith: I took the way that pleas'd myseľ, And sae did Death." In those pregnant Epistles to his friends, in which his generous and noble character is revealed so sincerely, he now and then alludes to the socialities customary in Kyle; and the good people of Scotland have always enjoyed such genial pictures. When promising himself the purest pleasures society can afford, in company with "Auld Lapraik," whom he warmly praises for the tenderness and truthfulness of his " sangs "There was ae sang, amang the rest, To some sweet wife : It thirl'd the heart-strings thro' the breast, A' to the life;" and when luxuriating in the joy of conscious genius holding communion with the native muse, he exclaims "Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire, Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire At pleugh or cart, My muse, though hamely in attire, May touch the heart;" where does Burns express a desire to meet his brother-bard? Where but in the resorts of their fellow-laborers, when released from toil, and flinging weariness to the wind, they flock into the heart of some holiday, attired in sunshine, and feeling that life is life? "But Mauchline race, or Mauchline fair, I should be proud to meet you there; If we forgather, An' hae a swap o' rhymin-ware Wi' ane anither. |