When Shelburne meek held up his cheek, An' bore him to the wa', man. VII. Then clubs an' hearts were Charlie's cartes, On Chatham's boy did ca', man; An' Scotland drew her pipe, an' blew, 'Up, Willie, waur them a', man!' VIII. Behind the throne then Grenville's gone, Be-north the Roman wa', man: An' Chatham's wraith, in heav'nly graith, (Inspired Bardies saw, man;) Wi' kindling eyes cry'd Willie, rise! Would I hae fear'd them a', man!' IX. But, word an' blow, North, Fox, and Co., An' did her whittle draw, man; ["The page of Burns," says Campbell, “contains a lively image of contemporary life, and the country from which he sprung." Dr. Blair remarked of this poem, "Burns's politics always smell of the smithy." To understand this allusion the reader would require to be acquainted with the scene which a country smithy presents, "When ploughmen gather wi' their graith," and ale, politics, and parish scandal are all alike carefully discussed. The allusions in this fragment will be generally understood. The verses are curious for the lively idea they convey of the direct and familiar manner in which high military and political matters are considered amongst the peasantry.] The Dean of Faculty. A NEW BALLAD. Tune." The Dragon of Wantley." I. DIRE was the hate at old Harlaw, The Hen. Henry Erskine. † Robert Dundas, Esq. Arniston. Mr. ["The Hon. Henry Erskine was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1786, and unanimously re-elected every year till 1796, when it was resolved by some members of the Tory party, at the Scottish bar, to oppose his in consideration of his having re-election, aided in getting up a petition against the passing of the well-known sedition bills. Erskine's appearance at the Circus (now the Adelphi Theatre) on that occasion was designated by those gentlemen (among whom were Charles Hope and David Boyle, now respectively Lord President and Lord Justice-Clerk,) as "agitating the giddy and ignorant multitude, and cherishing such humours and dispositions as directly tend to overturn the laws." They brought forward Mr. Robert Dundas of Arniston, Lord Advocate, in opposition to Mr. Erskine; and at the election, January 12, 1796, [This additional stanza is now restored from the original MS. in the Poet's own hand-writing.] the former gained the day by 123 against 38 votes. The above verses by Burns describe the keenness of the contest. The mortification of the displaced dean was so extreme that he that evening, with a coal-axe, hewed off, from his door in Prince's Street, a brass-plate on which his designation as Dean of Faculty was inscribed. It is not impossible that, in characterising Mr. Dundas so opprobriously, and we may add unjustly, Burns might recollect the slight with which his elegiac verses on the father of that gentleman had been treated eight years before." -CHAMBERS.] [The poem was first published in the Reliques of Burns. It explains itself. It was any thing but graciously received by the two competitors, Hal and Bob.] To Clarinda.* WITH A PRESENT OF A PAIR OF DRINKING-GLASSES. FAIR Empress of the Poet's soul, This humble pair of glasses, And fill them high with generous juice, "To those who love us!"-second fill; [Long may we live! long may we love! Well charg'd with generous nappy! †] * Of the numerous fair dames who were the objects of Burns's admiration, none were more distinguished than the beautiful Clarinda. The maiden name of this lady was Agnes Craig, a cousin of the late Lord Craig, one of the Lords of Session in Scotland. She made the poet's acquaintance in Edinburgh in the winter of 1787, and was then the wife of Mr. M'Lehose. A Platonic attachment ensued-the result was the series of eloquent prose letters, which he addressed to this celebrated lady. Clarinda still lives (1840) at the advanced age of eighty-two. Besides great personal attractions Mrs M'Lehose was an ardent follower of the muses, and Burns thus alludes to one of her productions :-" Your last verses to me have so delighted me that I have got an excellent old Scots air that suits the measure, and you shall see them in print in the Scots' Musical Museum, a work publishing by a friend of mine in this town. The air is The Banks of Spey, and is most beautiful. I want four stanzas-you gave me but three, and one of them alluded to an expression in my former letter: so I have taken your first two verses, with a slight alteration in the second, and have added a third; but you must help me to a fourth. Here they are; the latter half of the first stanza would have been worthy of Sappho; I am in raptures with it : To the same. ON THE POET'S LEAVING EDINBURGH, The measur'd time is run! To what dark cave of frozen night We part-but, by these precious drops She, the fair sun of all her sex, The bard had recovered from his fall, and was contemplating his departure from Edinburgh, when he wrote these verses to "Clarinda." "I enclose you," says he, "a few lines I composed on a late melancholy occasion. I will not give above five or six copies of them in all, and I would be hurt if any friend should give away copies without my consent." He sent her a copy of the sketch which he gave of himself to Dr. Moore, and added, “I do not know if you have a just idea of my character; but I wish you to see me, as I am. I am, as most people of my trade are, a strange will-o'wisp being; the victim, too frequently, of much imprudence and many follies. My two great constituent elements are pride and passion: the first I have endeavoured to humanize into integrity and honour; the last makes me a devotee to the warmest degree of enthusiasm, in love, religion, or friendship-either of them, or altogether, as I happen to be inspired. Talk not of Love, it gives me pain, Your Friendship much can make be blest, PS. What would you think of this for a fourth Stanza? Nor cause me from my bosom tear The very friend I sought. These verses are inserted in the second volume of the Musical Museum. [From the original MS. in Burns's own hand, this additional verse is given.] "Devotion is the favourite employment of your heart; so is it of mine: what incentives then to, and powers for, reverence, gratitude, faith, and hope, in all the fervours of adoration and praise to that Being, whose unsearchable wisdom, power, and goodness, so pervaded, so inspired, every sense and feeling! "What a strange mysterious faculty is that thing called imagination! We have no ideas almost at all, of another world; but I have often amused myself with visionary schemes of what happiness might be enjoyed by small alterations -alterations that we can fully enter into, in this present state of existence. For instance, suppose you and I, just as we are at presentthe same reasoning powers, sentiments, and even desires; the same fond curiosity for knowledge and remarking observation in our minds; and imagine our bodies free from pain, and the necessary supplies for the wants of nature, at all times, and easily within our reach imagine, farther, that we were set free from the laws of gravitation which bind us to this globe, and could at pleasure fly, without inconvenience, through all the yet unconjectured bounds of creation-what a life of bliss would we lead in our mutual pursuit of virtue and knowledge, and our mutual enjoyment of friendship and love! By all on High adoring mortals know! [The above impassioned Lines were written in 1788, during the period of the Poet's celebrated Correspondence with Clarinda, and appear in one of his letters to that lady.] To the same. BEFORE I saw Clarinda's face, Clarinda proves unkind; In plaintive notes my tale rehearses But she, ungrateful, shuns my sight, Ah, though my looks betray, I envy your success; "I see you laughing at my fairy fancies, and calling me a voluptuous Mahometan, but I am certain I would be a happy creature, beyond anything we call bliss here below; nay, it would be a paradise congenial to you, too. Don't you see us, hand-in-hand, or rather, my arm about your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, the nearest of the fixed stars; or surveying a Comet, flaming innoxious by us, as we just now would mark the passing pomp of a travelling monarch, or in a shady bower of Mercury or Venus, dedicating the hour to love, WRITTEN in mutual converse, relying honour, and revelling endearment, while the most exalted strains of poesy and harmony would be the ready and spontaneous language of our souls ?"-BURNS. To the same. "I BURN, I burn, as when thro' ripen'd corn, Verses UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF FERGUSSON, THE CURSE on ungrateful man, that can be pleas'd, [This apostrophe to Fergusson bears a striking affinity to one in the Epistle to William Simpson." It was written before Burns visited the Scottish capital. Even without a poet's susceptibility, we may feel how this prophetic parallel of Fergusson's case with his own must have pressed on the memory of our bard, when he paid this second tribute of affection to his "elder brother in misfortune."- CUNNINGHAM.] Prologue SPOKEN BY MR. WOODS ON HIS BENEFIT NIGHT. MONDAY, APRIL 16TH, 1787. WHEN by a generous Public's kind acclaim, more. [land! An' first could thresh the barn Or haud a yokin' at the pleugh; An' tho' forfoughten sair eneugh, Yet unco proud to learn: When first amang the yellow corn A man I reckon'd was, An' wi' the lave ilk merry morn Could rank my rig and lass, Still shearing, and clearing, The tither stooked raw, Wi' claivers, an' haivers, Wearing the day awa. Ev'n then, a wish (I mind its pow'r), A wish, that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breastThat I for poor auld Scotland's sake Some usefu' plan or beuk could make, Or sing a sang at least. The rough bur-thistle, spreading wide I turn'd the weeding-heuk aside, My envy e'er could raise, I knew nae higher praise. She rous'd the forming strain: At every kindling keek, I feared aye to speak. Health to the sex! ilk guid chiel says, Wi' merry dance in winter-days, An' we to share in common: The saul o' life, the heav'n below, The gust o' joy, the balm of woe, Is rapture-giving woman. Ye surly sumphs, who hate the name, Be mindfu' o' your mither: She, honest woman, may think shame That ye're connected with her, Ye're wae men, ye're nae men That slight the lovely dears; To shame ye, disclaim ye, Ilk honest birkie swears. "May Eve, or Kate of Aberdeen," in his Remarks on Scottish Song, Burns relates an anecdote of Cunningham, the Actor: adding, "This Mr. Woods, the Player, who knew Cunningham well, and esteemed him much, assured me was true."] Henry Mackenzie, in "The Man of Feeling." For you, no bred to barn and byre, March, 1787. "Oh! that he, the prevailing poet," says a kindred spirit, speaking of the aspirations of his youth, "could have seen this light breaking in upon the darkness that did too long and too deeply overshadow his living lot! Some glorious glimpses of it his prophetic soul did see-witness The Vision,' or that somewhat humbler, but yet high, strain-in which, bethinking him of the undefined aspirations of his boyish genius that had bestirred itself in the darkness, as if the touch of an angel's hand were to awaken a sleeper in his cell-he said to himself: 'Ev'n then a wish, (I mind its pow'r,) A wish that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast; That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some usefu' plan, or beuk, could make, Or sing a sang at least.' "Such hopes were in him, in his bright and shining youth,' surrounded as it was with toil and trouble, that could not bend down the brow of Burns from its natural upright inclination to the sky and such hopes, let us doubt it not, were with him in his dark and faded prime, when life's lamp burned low indeed, and he was willing at last, early as it was, to shut his eyes on this dearly beloved, but sorely distracting, world."-PROFESSOR WILSON. The lady to whom this epistle is addressed was endowed with taste and talent. She was a painter and poetess: her sketches with the pencil were very beautiful; of her skill in verse the reader may judge from the following: [The eminent bookseller to whom this epistle is addressed was a very singular person: he was the son of the minister of Newbattle, and, by his mother, connected with a noble family in Devonshire. He was a good classical scholar; was educated for the medical profession, but finally resolving to be a bookseller, apprenticed himself to Kincaid of Edinburgh. He forsook, however, the business for a time, and went on a tour to the continent, with Lord Kilmaurs, afterwards Earl of Glencairn. On his return, he became partner with Kincaid, who soon retired, leaving Creech in sole possession of the business, which he carried on for forty-four years with great success. He was not only the most popular bookseller in the north, but he published the writings of That ye between the stilts was bred, Than theirs, who sup sour milk an' parritch, An' bummil through the single Carritch Could tell gif Homer was a Greek? As get a single line of Virgil. An' then sae slee ye crack your jokes O' Willie Pitt and Charlie Fox: 'Twad haud your shouthers warm an' braw, An' douce at kirk, or market shaw; Far south, as weel as north, my lad, E. S." Mrs. Scott of Wauchope was niece to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of a beautiful variation of "The Flowers of the Forest." Epistle to William_Creech,* WRITTEN AT SELKIRK. AULD chuckie Reekie's† sair distrest, Her darling bird that she lo'es best, almost all the distinguished men who adorned Scottish literature towards the close of the eighteenth century. His shop occupied a conspicuous place in the centre of the Old Town, and it was his pleasure to give breakfasts to his authors: these meetings were called Creech's levees. Burns enumerates, as attending them, Dr. James Gregory, Tytler, of Woodhouselee, Dr. William Greenfield, Henry Mackenzie, and Dugald Stewart. He not only encouraged authors, but he wrote prose himself; he published a volume of trifles under the name of Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces," which was reprinted in 1815. "Mr. Creech's style of composition," says Robert Cham† Edinburgh. T |