disliked puns, and was seldom civil to those who uttered them.-" After all, a pun is an innocent thing,” said one of his companions."Innocent!" said Burns, "no, Sir; it is committing a deed without a name' with the language." He disliked to hear great people talked about more than they deserved. One who was in his company kept saying, the Earl of such a place said this, and Duke so-and-so said that." Be silent, Sir!" exclaimed the Poet; "you are stopping our mouths by a royal proclamation." He loved praise-and loved it not the less when it came from the lips of an accomplished lady.-" Madam," said he to Mrs. M'Murdo, "your praise has ballooned me up Parnassus."-"My merit is not all my own," he said to Robert Aiken of Ayr, "for you have read me into reputation." He called once on a certain Lord, in Edinburgh, and was shewn into the library. To amuse himself till his Lordship was at leisure, he took down a volume of Shakspeare, splendidly bound, and on opening it, discovered, from the gilding, that it had never been read; also, that the worms were eating it through and through. Some dozen years afterwards, another visiter took down the same volume, and found the following lines pencilled by Burns on the first page: - and said, "Young man, you have begun to consider these things early." He paused on seeing Scott's flushing face-shook him by the¦ hand, saying in a deep tone, "This boy will be heard of yet." Speaking one day of his own poetry, Burns said, "I have much to answer for: my success in rhyme has produced a shoal of ill-spawned monsters who imagine, because they make words clink, they are poets. It requires a will-o'wisp to pass over the quicksands and quagmires of the Scottish dialect. I am spunkie-they follow me, and sink." On hearing a gentleman sneering at the Solemn League and Covenant, and calling it ridiculous and fanatical, the Poet eyed him across the table, and exclaimed, "The Solemn League and Covenant Cost Scotland blood-cost Scotland tears-- If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers." "Through and through the inspired leaves, Ye maggots, make your windings; But, oh respect his lordship's taste, And spare his golden bindings." ["Even to the ladies," says Lockhart, "when he suspected them of wishing to make a show of him, he could not help administering a little of his village discipline. A certain stately Peeress sent to invite him, while in Edinburgh, to her assembly, without, as he fancied, having sufficiently cultivated his acquaintance beforehand. His answer was:- Mr. Burns will do himself the honour of waiting on the Countess ofprovided her Lordship will invite also the learned Pig.'-Such an animal was then exhibiting in the Grass-market of Edin-ington in Clydesdale, he went to church, but burgh."] was so little pleased with the preacher and the place, that he left the following poetic record on Burns paid little deference to the artificial distinctions of society. On his way to Leith, one morning, he met a man in hoddin' grey-a west-country farmer; he shook him earnestly by the hand, and stopt and conversed with him. All this was seen by a young Edinburgh blood, who took the poet roundly to task for this defect of taste." Why, you fantastic gomeral," said Burns, "it was not the grey coat, the scone-bonnet, and the Sanquhar boot-hose spoke to, but the man that was in them; and the man, Sir, for true worth, would weigh you and me, and ten more such, down any day." His discernment was great: when Scott was quite a lad he caught the notice of the Poet, by naming the author of some verses describing a soldier lying dead on the snow. Burns regarded the future minstrel with sparkling eyes, the "What of earls with whom you have supt, And of dukes that you dined with yestreen? church-window :- "As cauld a wind as ever blew, ["Sir Walter Scott," says Lockhart, “possessed a tumbler, on which were the following | friend, Mr. W. Stewart, factor to a gentleman verses, written by Burns on the arrival of a of Nithsdale. The landlady being very wroth glass, a gentleman present appeased her by at what she considered the disfigurement of her paying down a shilling, and carried off the relic: : "You're welcome, Willie Stewart, You're welcome, Willie Stewart ; There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May "Come, bumpers high, express your joy, The bowl we maun renew it; The tappit-hen gae bring her ben To welcome Willie Stewart. "May foes be straing, and friends be slack, May woman on him turn her back That wrangs thee, Willie Stewart!"'] was a merry husbandman of his own acquaintance; and even the "De'il himself" was familiar to all, and had often alarmed, by his eldritch croon, and the marks of his cloven foot, the pastoral people of Kyle. Burns was the first who taught the world that in lowly subjects high poetry resided. Touched by him, they were lifted at once into the regions of in"I dined with Burns," said Mrs. Basil Montagu, spiration. His spirit ascended into an humble "at Arbigland: he was witty; drank as others topic, as the sap of spring ascends a tree to endrank; and was long in coming to the tea-dow it with beauty and fragrance. table. It was then the fashion for young ladies to be busy about something I was working a flower. The Poet sat down beside me, talked of the beauty of what I was imitating, and put his hand so near the work, that I said, Well, take it, and do a bit yourself.'-'O, ho!' said he, you think my hand is unsteady with wine. I cannot work a flower, madam; but-' he pulled the thread out of the needle, and rethreaded it in a moment-can a tipsy man do that?' He talked to me of his children, more particularly of his eldest son, and called him a promising boy-'And yet, madam,' he said, with a sarcastic glance of his eye, 'I hope he will turn out a glorious blockhead, and so make his fortune." Burns assumed, as well he might, the title of Poet: he was none of those who insult the taste of their admirers by depreciating the merit of their own works: on one of his books, in my possession, there is written, in his own rough, free, manly hand, "Robert Burns, Poet;" an imitation of this is added to the admirable portrait which embellishes this edition. On the collar of a favourite dog he had the same words engraven. As a poet, Burns stands in the first rank: his conceptions are original; his thoughts new and weighty; his manner unborrowed; and even his language is his own. He owes no honour to his subjects, for they are all of an ordinary kind, such as humble life around him presented he sought neither in high station nor in history for matter to his muse, and yet all his topics are simple, natural, and to be found without research. The Scottish bards, who preceded him, selected subjects which obtained notice from their oddity, and treated them in a way singular and outré. The verses of the first and fifth James, as well as those of Ramsay and Fergusson, are chiefly a succession of odd and ludicrous pictures, as true as truth itself, and no more. To their graphic force of delineation Burns added sentiment and passion, and an elegant tenderness and simplicity. He took topics familiar to all; the Daisy grew on the lands he ploughed; the Mouse built her nest on his own stubble-field; the Haggis smoked on his own board; the Scotch Drink which he sung was distilled on the banks of Doon; the Dogs that conversed so wittily and wisely were his own collies; Tam O'Shanter Burns is our chief national Poet; he owes nothing of the structure of his verse or of the materials of his poetry to other lands—he is the offspring of the soil; he is as natural to Scotland as the heath is to her hills, and all his brightness, like our nocturnal Aurora, is of the north. Nor has he taken up fleeting themes; his song is not of the external manners and changeable affectations of man-it is of the human heart-of the mind's hopes and fears, and of the soul's aspirations. Others give us the outward form and pressure of society-the court-costume of human nature-the laced lapelle and the epauletted shoulder. He gives us flesh and blood; all he has he holds in common with mankind, yet all is national and Scottish. We can see to whom other bards have looked up for inspiration-like fruit of the finest sort, they smack of the stock on which they were grafted. Burns read Young, Thomson, Shenstone, and Shakspeare; yet there is nothing of Young, Thomson, Shenstone, or Shakspeare about him; nor is there much of the old ballad. His light is of nature, like sunshine, and not reflected. When, in after life, he tried imitation, his "Epistle to Graham of Fintray' shewed satiric power and polish little inferior to Dryden. He is not only one of the truest and best of Scottish Poets, but, in ease, fire, and passion, he is second to none save Shakspeare. I know of no one besides, whose verse flows forth so sparkling and spontaneous. On the lines of other bards we see marks of care and studynow and then they are happy, but they are as often elaborated out and brightened like a key by frequent handling. Burns is seldom or never so he wrote from the impulse of nature-he wrote because his passions raged like so many demons till they got vent in rhyme. Others sit and solicit the muse, like a coy mistress, to be kind; she came to Burns "unsent for," like the "bonnie lass" in the song, and showered her favours freely. The strength was equal to the harmony; rugged westlin words were taken from the lips of the weaver and the ploughman, and adorned with melody and feeling; and familiar phrases were picked up from shepherds and mechanics, and rendered as musical as Apollo's lute." I can think of no verse since Shakspeare's," said Pitt to Henry Addington, "which comes so sweetly and at once from nature. Out of the eater came forth meat:"" -but the premier praised whom he starved. Burns was not a Poet by fits and starts; the mercury of his genius stood always at the inspired point; like the fairy's drinking-cup, the fountain of his fancy was ever flowing and ever full. He had, it is true, set times and seasons when the fruits of his mind were more than usually abundant; but the songs of spring were equal to those of summer-those of summer were not surpassed by those of autumn; the quantity might be different, the flavour and richness were ever the same. His variety is equal to his originality. His humour, his gaiety, his tenderness, and his pathos come all in a breath; they come freely, for they come of their own accord; nor are they huddled together at random, like doves and crows in a flock; the contrast is never offensive; the comic slides easily into the serious, the serious into the tender, and the tender into the pathetic. The witch's cup, out of which the wondering rustic drank seven kinds of wine at once, was typical of the muse of Burns. It is this which has made him welcome to all readers." No poet," says Scott, "with the exception of Shakspeare, ever possessed the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions." Notwithstanding the uncommon ease and natural elegance of his musings-the sweet and impassioned tone of his verse, critics have not been wanting who perceived in his works the humility of his origin. Yet his poems, I remember well enough, were considered by many, at first, as the labours of some gentleman who assumed the rustic for the sake of indulging in satire; their knowledge was reckoned beyond the reach, and their flights above the power, of a simple ploughman. Something of this belief may be seen in Mrs. Scott of Wauchope's letter; and when it was known for a truth that the author was a ploughman, many lengthy discussions took place concerning the way in which the Poet had acquired his knowledge. Ayr race-course was pointed out as the likely scenes of his studies of high life, where he found what was graceful and elegant! When Jeffrey wrote his depreciating criticism, he forgot that Burns had studied politeness in the very school where he himself was polished. The stanza, in the lines on meeting with Lord Daer, commencing :— "I've been at drunken writers' feasts," claims a scholarship which the critic might have respected. If sharp epigrams, familiar gallantry, love of independence, and a leaning to the tumid be, as that critic assures us, true symptoms of vulgar birth, then Swift was a scavenger, Rochester a coalheaver, Pope a carman, and Thomson a boor. He might as well see lowness of origin in the James Stuart who wrote "Christ's Kirk on the green," as in the Robert Burns who wrote "Tam O'Shanter." The nature which Burns infused into all he wrote deals with internal emotions: feeling is no more vulgar in a ploughman than in a prince. In all this I see the reluctance of an accomplished scholar to admit the merits of a rustic poet who not only claimed, but took, the best station on the Caledonian Parnassus. It could be no welcome sight to philosophers, historians, and critics to see a peasant, fragrant from the furrow, elbowing his way through their polished ranks to the highest place of honour, exclaiming, "What's a' your jargon o' your schools?" Some of them were no doubt astonished and incensed; nature was doing too much: they avenged themselves by advising him to leave his vulgar or romantic fancies and grow classical. His best songs they called random flights; his happiest poems the fruit of a vagrant impulse; they accounted him an accident-“a! wild colt of a comet' -a sort of splendid error; and refused to look upon him as a true poet, raised by the kindly warmth of nature: for they thought nothing beautiful which was not produced or adorned by learning. "What would Burns have been if a Patrician?" said Lord Byron. "We should have had more polish--less force-just as much verse, but no immortality!" Burns is a thorough Scotchman; his nationality, like cream on milk, floats on the surface of all his works; it mingles in his humour as well as in his tenderness; yet it is seldom or never offensive to an English ear; there is nothing narrow-souled in it. He rejoices in Scotland's ancient glory and in her present strength; he bestows his affection on her heathery mountains, as well as on her romantic vales; he glories in the worth of her husbandmen, and in the loveliness of her maidens. The brackeny glens and thistly brae-sides of the North are more welcome to his sight than the sunny dales of Italy, fragrant with ungathered grapes; its men, if not quite divinities, are more than mortal; and the women clothed in beauty, and walk in a light of their own creating; a haggis is food fit for gods; brose is a better sort of ambrosia; "wi twopenny we fear nae evil;" and whiskey not only makes us insensible of danger, but inspires noble verse and heroic deeds. There is something at once ludicrous and dignified in all this: to ex-| cite mingled emotions was the aim of the Poet. Besides a love of country, there is an intense love of freedom about him; not the savage joy in the boundless forest and the unlicensed range, but the calm determination and temperate delight of a reflecting mind. Burns is the bard of liberty-not that which sets fancy free and are fetters the body; he resists oppression-he covets free thought and speech-he scorns slavish obedience to the mob as much as he detests tyranny in the rulers. He spoke out like a bold-inspired person; he knew his word would have weight with the world, and sung his "A man's a man for a' that," as a watch-word to future generations-as a spell against slavery. The best poems of Burns relate to rural and pastoral life, and describe the hopes, the joys, and aspirations of that portion of the people falsely called the humble, as if grandeur of soul were a thing "born in the purple," and not the free gift and bounty of heaven. The passions and feelings of man are disguised, not changed, in polished society; flesh and blood are the same beneath hoddin' grey as beneath three- piled velvet. This was what Burns alluded to when he said he saw little in the splendid circles of Edinburgh which was new to him. His pictures of human life and of the world are of a mental as well as a national kind. His "Twa Dogs" prove that happiness is not unequally diffused: "Scotch Drink" gives us fire-side enjoyments; the "Earnest Cry and Prayer" shews the keen eye which humble people cast on their rulers; the "Address to the Deil" indulges in religious humanities, in which sympathy overcomes fear; "The Auld Mare," and "The Address to Mailie," enjoin, by the most simple and touching examples, kindness and mercy to dumb creatures; "The Holy Fair" desires to curb the licentiousness of those who seek amusement, instead of holiness, in religion; "Man was made to Mourn" exhorts the strong and the wealthy to be mindful of the weak and the poor; "Hallowe'en" shews us superstition in a domestic aspect; "Tam O'Shanter" adorns popular belief with humorous terror, and helps us to laugh old dreads away; "The Mouse," in its weakness, contrasts with man in his strength, and preaches to us the instability of happiness on earth; while "The Mountain Daisy" pleads with such moral pathos the cause of the flowers of the field sent by God to adorn the earth for man's pleasure, that our feet have pressed less ungraciously on the "wee modest crimson - tipped flower" since his song was written. Others of his poems have a still grander reach. "The Vision" reveals the Poet's plan of Providence, proves the worth of eloquence, bravery, honesty, and beauty, and that even the rustic bard himself is an useful and ornamental link in the great chain of being. "The Cotter's Saturday Night" connects us with the invisible world, and shews that domestic peace, faithful love, and patriotic feelings, are of earthly things most akin to the joys of heaven; while the divine "Elegy on Matthew Henderson" unites human nature in a bond of symthy with the stars of the sky, the fowls of fib air, the beasts of the field, the flowery vale, and the lonely mountain. effusions has a wise aim; Curran perceived when he lime morality of Burns." The hastiest of his this the eloquent spoke of the "sub Had Burns, in his poems, preached only so many moral sermons, his audience might have been a select, but it would have been a limited, one. The sublimest truths, like the surest medicines, are sometimes uneasy to swallow for this the Poet provided an effectual remedy; he associated his moral counsel with so much tenderness and pathos, and garnished it all about with such exquisite humour, that the public, like the giant drinking the wine in Homer, gaped, and cried, "More! this is divine!" If a reader has such a limited soul as to love humour only, why Burns is his man-he has more of it than any modern poet: should he covet tenderness, he cannot read far in Burns without finding it to his mind; should he desire pathos, the Scottish Peasant has it of the purest sort; and if he wished for them mingled, let him try no other bard-for in what other poet will he find them woven more naturally into the web of song? It is by thus suiting himself to so many minds and tastes that Burns has become such a favourite with the world; if, in a strange company, we should chance to stumble in quoting him, an English voice, or an Irish one, corrects us; much of the business of life is mingled with his verse; and the lover, whether in joy or in sorrow, will find that Burns has anticipated every throb of his heart: "Every pulse along his veins, And every roving fancy." 66 ["Burns," says Professor Wilson, was in many respects born at a happy time; happy for a man of genius like him, but fatal and hopeless to the more common mind, a whole world of life lay before him, whose inmost recesses, and darkest nooks, and sunniest eminences, he had familiarly trodden from his childhood. All that world he felt could be made his own. No conqueror had overrun its fertile provinces, and it was for him to be crowned supreme over all the 'Lyric singers of that high-soul'd land.' The crown that he has won can never be removed from his head. Much is yet left for other poets, even among that life where his spirit delighted to work, but he has built monuments on all the high places, and they who follow can only hope to leave behind them some far humbler memorials."] He was the first of our northern poets who brought deep passion and high energy to the service of the muse, who added sublimity to simplicity, and found loveliness and elegance dwelling among the cottages of his native land. His simplicity is graceful as well as strong; he is never mean, never weak, never vulgar, and but seldom coarse. All he says is above the mark of other men his language is familiar, yet dignified; careless, yet concise; and he touches on the most ordinary-nay, perilous themes, with a skill so rare and felicitous that good fortune seems to unite with good taste, in helping him through the Slough of Despond, in which so many meaner spirits have wallowed. No one has greater power in adorning the humble, and dignifying the plain-no one else has so happily picked the sweet fresh flowers of poesy from among the thorns and brambles of the ordinary paths of existence. ["The excellence of Burns," says Thomas Carlyle-a true judge, “is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or prose; but at the same time it is plain and easily recognised-it is his sincerity-his indisputable air of truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wire-drawn refinings either in thought or feeling: the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience: they are the scenes that he has lived and laboured amidst that he decribes; those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul,-noble thoughts and definite resolves-and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it, too, with such melody and modulation as he can, and though but in homely rustic jingle, it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers, and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. "But independently of this essential gift of true poetic feeling, there is a certain rugged, sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written. A virtue, as of green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry,-it is redolent of natural life, and of handy, natural men. There is a decisive strength in him, and yet frequently a sweet native gracefulness. He is tender, and he is vehement; yet without constraint, or any visible effort. He melts the heart, or inflames it with a power which seems habitual and familiar to him. We see in him the gentleness, though trembling pity, of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and passionate ardour, of the hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire, as lightning, lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a consonance, in his bosom, for every note of human feeling; the high and the low, the sad and the ludicrous,-the mournful and the joy ful, are welcome in their turns, to his all-conceiving spirit. And then, with what a prompt and eager force he grasps his subject, be it what it may! How he fixes, as it were, the full image of the matter in his eye, full and clear in every lineament, and catches the real type and essence of it, among a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances,―no one of which misleads him! If there is aught of reason or truth to be discovered, there is no sophistry, no vain, surface logic detains him :-quick, reso- | lute, unerring, he pierces into the marrow of the question, and speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten. Is it of description? some visual object to be represented? No poet, of any age or nation, is more graphic than Burns. The characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance. Three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness,— and in that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward metre, so clear and definite a likeness that it seems like a master limner working with a burnt stick, and yet the burin of a Retsch is not more expressive or exact. "This clearness of sight we may call the foundation of all talent. Homer surpasses all men in this quality; but strangely enough, at no great distance below him, are Richardson and Defoe. It belongs in truth to what is called a lively mind, and gives no sure indication of the higher endowments that may exist along with it. In all the three cases mentioned, it is combined with great garrulity,-their descriptions are detailed, ample, and tediously exact. Homer's fire bursts through from time to time as by accident; but Defoe and Richardson have no fire, only a clear insight into the goings on of nature. Burns, again, is not more distinguished by the clearness than by the impetuous force of his conceptions,-of the strength, the piercing emphasis, with which he thought, his emphasis of expression may give a humble, but the readiest, proof. Who ever uttered sharper sayings than his? who ever uttered words— words more memorable, either by their burning vehemence, their cool vigour, or their laconic pith? A single phrase depicts a whole subjecta whole scene. Our Scottish forefathers, he says, struggled forward in the battle field, redwat shod, giving in this one term a full vision of horror and carnage, perhaps too frightfully accurate for art. In fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is this vigour of his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute force is ever visible in his judgments, as in his feelings and volitions; and this is at all times the very essence of a truly poetical endowment. "He was born a poet; poetry was the celestial element of his being, and should have been the soul of his whole endeavours. Lifted into that serene ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he would have needed no other elevation. Poverty, neglect, and all evil, ye the desecration of himself and his art, were small matter to him. The pride and passio of the world lay far beneath his feet,—and |