The ladies' hearts he did trepan, Sing, hey, my braw John Highlandman, Was match for my John Highlandman.” And that fine Penseroso close, "But oh! they catch'd him at the last, And bound him in a dungeon fast; My curse upon them every one, They've hang'd my braw John Highlandman. And now, a widow, I must mourn Departed joys that ne'er return; No comfort-but a hearty can, When I think on John Highlandman.” The Little Fiddler, who (in vain, alas !) offers his services to console her, is conceived in the most happy taste. But the finest part of the whole, is the old Scottish Soldier's ditty. Indeed, I think there is no question, that half of the best ballads Campbell has written are the legitimate progeny of some of these lines. 1 "I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, My prenticeship I passed where my leader breathed his last, 2 "I lastly was with Curtis among the floating batt'ries, When the t'other bag I sell, and the t'other bottle tell, I could meet a troop of hell at the sound of the drum." What different ideas of low life one forms even from reading the works of men who paint it admirably. Had Crabbe, for instance, undertaken to represent the carousal of a troop of beggars in a hedge alehouse, how unlike would his production have been to this Cantata? He would have painted their rags and their dirt with the accuracy of a person who is not used to see rags and dirt very often; he would have seized the light careless swing of their easy code of morality, with the penetration of one who has long been a Master-Anatomist of the manners and the hearts of men. But I doubt very much, whether any one could enter into the true spirit of such a meeting, who had not been, at some period of his life, a partaker in propria persona, and almost par cum paribus, in the rude merriment of its constituents. I have no doubt that Burns sat for his own picture in the Bard of the Cantata, and had often enough in some such scene as Poosie Nansie's "Rising, rejoicing Between his twa Deborahs, Looked round him, and found them . Impatient for his chorus." It is by such familiarity alone that the secret and essence of that charm, which no group of human companions entirely wants, can be fixed and preserved even by the greatest of poets-Mr. Crabbe would have described the Beggars like a firm, though humane, Justice of the Peace-poor Robert Burns did not think himself entitled to assume any such airs of superiority. The consequence is, that we would have understood and pitied the one group, but that we sympathize even with the joys of the other. We would have thrown a few shillings to Mr. Crabbe's Mendicants, but we are more than half inclined to sit down and drink them ourselves along with the "orra duds" of those of Burns. I myself will you believe it?-was one of those who insisted upon disturbing the performance of this glorious Cantata with my own dissonant voice. In plain truth, I was so happy, that I could not keep silence, and such was the buoyancy of my enthusiasm, that nothing could please me but singing a Scottish song. I believe, after all, I got through with it pretty well; at least, I did well enough to delight my neighbours. My song was that old favourite of your's "My name it is Donald Macdonald, I live in the Hielands sae grand." One of the best songs, I must think, that our times has produced; and, indeed, it was for many years one of the most popular. I had no idea who wrote the words of my song, and had selected it merely for its own merit, and my own convenience; but I had no sooner finished, than Mr. H stretched his hand to me, across two or three that sat between us, and cried out with an air of infinite delight, "Od', sir— 'Doctor Morris'-(for he had heard my name)-" od', sir-I wrote that sang when I was a herd on Yarrow-and little did I think ever to live to hear an English gentleman sing it." From this moment there was no bound to the warmth of our affection for each other; in order to convince you of which, in so far as I myself was concerned, I fairly deserted my claret for the sake of joining in the jug-party of the Shepherd. Nor, after all, was this quite so mighty a sacrifice as you may be inclined to imagine. I assure you, there are worse things in life than whisky toddy; although I cannot go the same A man may, now and then, adopt a change of liquor with advantage; but, upon the whole, I like better to see people "stick to their vocation." I think nothing can be a more pitiable sight than a French count on his travels, striving to look pleased over a bumper of strong port; and an Oxford doctor of divinity looks almost as much like a fish out of water, when he is constrained to put up with the best claret in the world. In like manner, it would have tended very much to have disturbed my notions of propriety, had I found the Ettrick Shepherd drinking Champaigne or Hock, It would have been a sin against keeping with such a face as he has. Although for some time past he has spent a considerable portion of every year in excellent, even in refined society, the external appearance of the man can have undergone but very little change since he was "a herd on Yarrow." His face and hands are still as brown as if he lived entirely sub dio. His very hair has a coarse stringiness about it, which proves beyond dispute its utter ignorance of all the arts of the friseur; and hangs in playful whips and cords about his ears, in a style of the most perfect innocence imaginable. His mouth, which, when he smiles, nearly cuts the the totality of his face in twain, is an object that would make the Chevalier Ruspini die with indignation; for his teeth have been allowed to grow where they listed, and as they listed, presenting more resemblance, in arrangement (and colour too,) to a body of crouching sharp-shooters, than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead, towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and of an eye that illuminates their surface with the genuine lightnings of genius, -"an eye that, under brows Shaggy and deep, has meanings which are brought From years of youth, these are things which I cannot so easily transfer to my paper. Upon the whole, his exterior reminded me very much of some of Wordsworth's descriptions of his pedlar : "plain his garb, Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared Whom no one could have passed without remark. And his whole figure breathe intelligence." Indeed, I can scarcely help suspecting, that that great poet, who has himself thought so much "On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, must have thought more than once of the intellectual history of the Ettrick Shepherd when he drew that noble sketch, which no man can ridicule, unless from a vicious want of faith in the greatness of human nature. Neither is there any thing unlikely in the supposition in another point of view, for W tells me the two poets have often met, and always expressed the highest admiration for each other. He says, "From his sixth year, the boy of whom I speak, In summer tended cattle on the hills.' I believe poor H-tended them in winter also. "From that bleak tenement, He many an evening to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the hills Grow larger in the darkness, all alone Beheld the stars come out above his head, And travelled through the wood, with no one near |