fully into God's earth, despite kings, priests, or louts.-SARAH CAMERON, New Zealand (Grand-daughter of the Poet). I have met a man from London who tells me he would never grudge a journey to Scotland, had it done nothing but made him acquainted with Burns's poems.-Mrs DUNLOP of Dunlop. The most royally courteous of all mankind.-Mrs BASIL MONTAGU. If others have climbed more successfully to the heights of Par nassus, none certainly ever outshone Burns in the charms-the sorcery, I would almost call it-of fascinating conversation, the spontaneous eloquence of social argument, or the unstudied poignancy of brilliant repariee. Mrs MARIA RIDDELL. Burns was a fine haun' at pleasing bairns ; mony's the time I have seen him tak' them on his knee and tell them a story. -Mrs HUTCHISON (Janet Meikle). Burns micht be a very clever lad, but he certainly was regardless; as to the best of my belief he never took three half-mutchkins in my house all his life.-NANSE TINNOCK. Burns has looked at Nature, in her wild and rustic operations, with his own eyes, and he is particularly happy in his winter landscapes. -ANNA SEWARD. I have been much pleased with the poems of the Scottish ploughman. -Mrs BARBAULD. Scotia from rude affliction shield thy Bard, His heaven-taught numbers fame herself will guard. -HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS. To hear thy song all ranks desire, Sae weel you strike the dormant lyre; Apollo with poetic fire Thy breast does warm, And critics silently admire Thy art to charm. -JANET LITTLE ("The Scottish Milkmaid "). Than all the wealth of either India's coast. -Mrs GRANT of Laggan. We talked of Burns and of the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions, indulging ourselves in the fancy that we might have been personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those obiects with more pleasure for our sakes.-DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. PRAISE OF QUEENS. The Queen [Victoria] sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel, while I read Burns to her-" Tam o' Shanter " and "A Man's a Man for a' That," her favourite.-Letters of NORMAN MACLEOD. Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, -CARMEN SYLVA (Queen of Roumania). 66 IRISH TRIBUTES. How little did the exhausted mother, when she thanked God that a man was born into the world," imagine what a strong yet tender heart beat within the shelter of that little bosom, or what fearful throes and lofty imaginings were cradled in the head that nestled on her bosom !-Mrs S. C. HALL. 66 They [the lines of Ae Fond Kiss" are the Alpha and Omega of feeling, and contain the essence of an existence of pain and pleasure distilled into one burning drop.-Mrs ANNA JAMESON. Ah! who would say the minstrel failed his mission to fulfil— He laid him with the early dead, for brief his span of life, Yet stored the world with deathless song whilst battling midst its strife. -SARAH PARKer Douglas ("The Irish Girl "). FRENCH WOMEN'S PRAISE. In the whole of English literature there is no more beautiful tribute than his rendered to the virtues of the peasant, nor any finer description of labour's rewards.-Mme. P. Julette Adams. What higher place can we give to Robert Burns than that which he occupies by divine right in every heart in which the love of nature and the sense of song are present ?-LOUISE DE LA RAMEE (“ Ouida "). I set your Burns with Milton as the two greatest poets of Great Britain.-M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. AMERICAN TRIBUTES. Since Adam, there has been none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than Robert Burns; but there was a serpent in his field also !— MARGARET FULLER (Countess Ossoli). The bold lyric of Burns [" Scots Wha Hae "] is but an inspired kind of version of the real address which Bruce is said to have made to his followers; and whoever reads it will see that its power lies not in appeal to brute force, but to the highest elements of our nature— the love of justice, the sense of honour, and to disinterestedness, selfsacrifice, courage unto death.-HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. In the villages where he dwelt there seems to be no man, no child, who does not apparently know every detail of the life he lived there, nearly a hundred years ago.-HELEN HUNT JACKSON. We saw him as from Nature's soul His own drew draughts of joy o'erflowing; The plover's voice, the briar-rose, The tiny hare bell lightly growing, The wounded hare that passed him by, The dying sheep her sorrow telling- The poetry that waits the seeing. -AGNES MAULE MACHAR. Nearly a century has elapsed since the Peasant Poet was laid in his last resting-place, yet to-day the interest in his tomb is world-wide, and up to the present time great men are writing of his life and lamenting his untimely death.-Mrs A. A. WELLINGTON. CENTENARY VERSES. We hail this morn A century's noblest birth A Poet, peasant-born, Who more of Fame's immortal dower Unto his country brings Than all her kings -ISA CRAIG KNOX (Prize Poem). No sweeter music poet's hand hath wrung -Mrs JANET HAMILTON (The Blind Poetess). But Master still of Time dead BURNS shall be, -HON. CAROLINE NORTON His lays are now a nation's wealth, as "household words " they seem, They sing them in their festal hours-through young love's rosy dream— The very soil is classic ground where once his footsteps trod ; Still rests the shadow of his soul on Ayr's poetic sod; Still through the lapse of misty years the admiring spirit turns, ENGLISH TRIBUTES. Read Burns ! No one ever compressed so much meaning into so few words. EASTLAKE. Truth is better than art. Epics.-CHARLOTTE BRONTE. Burns's Songs are better than Bulwer's The sweetest, the sublimest, the most tricksy poet who has blest this nether world since the days of Shakespeare !—MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. And Burns, with pungent passionings Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs Are of the fire-mount's issuings. 66 -ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. In Scotland Burns is a name to conjure with."-Mrs NEWTON CROSLAND. It is the strong, clear truthfulness of Burns which gives such powerful reality to every varied expression of feeling in his poems, and which carries his lyrics into the very hearts of his readers.— ANNA BUCKLAND. Mute is thy wild harp now, O Bard sublime ! -CHARLOTTE SMITH. |