driven across the sky, and cold pelting showers, at intervals, added discomfort of body to cheerlessness of mind. His recitation was plain, slow, articulate, and forcible, but without any eloquence of art. He did not always lay the emphasis with propriety, nor did he humour the sentiment by the variations of his voice." As Heron a man who rose by the force of his talents, and fell by the keenness of his passions is the least favourable to the Poet of all his biographers, we may quote him without fear. The conversation of Burns was, in comparison with the formal and exterior circumstances of his education, perhaps even more wonderful than his poetry. He affected no soft airs or graceful motions of politeness, which might have ill accorded with the rustic plainness of his native manners. Conscious superiority of mind taught him to associate with the great, the learned, and the gay, without being over-awed into any such bashfulness, as might have made him confused in thought, or hesitating in elocution. In conversation, he displayed a sort of intuitive quickness and rectitude of judgment upon every subject that arose; the sensibility of his heart and the vivacity of his fancy, gave a rich colouring to whatever reasoning he was disposed to advance, and his language in conversation was not at all less happy than his writings; for these reasons he did not fail to please immediately after having been first seen. I remember that the late Dr. Robertson once observed to me, that he had scarcely ever met with any man whose conversation discovered greater vigour and activity of mind than that of Burns." [The recollections of Mr. John Richmond, writer in Mauchline, respecting Burns' arrival, and the earlier period of his residence, in Edinburgh, are curious. Mr. Richmond, who had been brought up in the office of a country writer, or attorney, and was now perfecting his studies in that of a metropolitan practitioner, occupied a room in the Lawnmarket, at the rent of three shillings a-week. His circumstances, as a youth just entering the world, made him willing to share his apartment and bed with any agreeable companion, who might be disposed to take part in the expense. These terms suited his old Mauchline acquaintance, Burns, who accordingly lived with him, from his arrival in November till his leaving town in May, on his southern excursion. Mr. Richmond mentions that the poet was so knocked up, by his walk from Mauchline to Edinburgh, that he could not leave his room for the next two days. During the whole time of his residence there, his habits were temperate and regular. Much of his time was necessarily occupied in preparing his poems for the press a task in which, as far as transcription was concerned, Mr. Richmond aided him, when not engaged in his own office duties. Burns, though frequently invited out into com pany, usually returned at good hours, and went soberly to bed, where he would prevail upon his companion, by little bribes, to read to him till he fell asleep. Mr. Lockhart draws an unfavourable inference from his afterwards removing to the house of his friend Nicol: but for this removal Mr. Richmond supplies a reason which exculpates the bard. During Burns' absence in the south and at Mauchline, Mr. Richmond took in another fellow-lodger; so that, when the poet came back, and applied for re-admission to Mrs. Carfrae's humble menage, he found his place filled up, and was compelled to go elsewhere. The exterior of Burns, for some time after his arrival in Edinburgh, was little superior to that of his rustic compeers. "What a clod-hopper!” was the descriptive exclamation of a lady to whom he was abruptly pointed out one day in the Lawnmarket. In the course of a few weeks, he got into comparatively fashionable attirea blue coat with metal buttons, a yellow and blue striped vest (being the livery of Mr. Fox), a pair of buckskins, so tight that he seemed to have grown into them, and top-boots, meeting the buckskins under the knee. His neckcloth, of white cambric, was neatly arranged, and his whole appearance was clean and respectable, though the taste in which he was dressed was still obviously a rustic taste. Mr. Though his habits during the winter of 1786-7 were upon the whole good, he was not alto- i gether exempt from the bacchanalianism which at this period reigned in Edinburgh. William Nicol of the High School, and Mr. John Gray, City-clerk, were among his most intimate convivial friends. Nicol lived in the top of a house over what is called Buccleuch Pend, in the lowest floor of which there was a tavern, kept by a certain Lucky Pringle, having a back entry from the pend, through which visiters could be admitted, unwotted of by a censorious world. There Burns was much with Nicol, both before and after his taking up his abode in that gentleman's house. He also attended pretty frequently the meetings of the Crochallan Fencibles, at their howff in the Anchor Close; and of Johnnie Dowie's tavern, in Libberton's Wynd, he was also a frequent visiter. Mr. Alexander Cunningham, jeweller, and Mr. Robert Cleghorn, farmer at Saughton Mills, may be said to complete the list of Burns's convival acquaintance in Edinburgh. The intimacy he formed with Mr. Robert Ainslie, then a young writer's apprentice, appears to have been of a different character. Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, and the Hon. Henry Erskine, may be mentioned as individuals who exerted themselves in behalf of Burns, immediately after his arrival in Edinburg. Dr. Adam Fergusson, author of the History of the Roman Republic, may also be added to Dr. Currie's list of his literary and ་ philosophical patrons. At the house of the lat- drudgery, but the douce gudeman who held his ter gentleman, Sir Walter Scott met with Burns, own plough. There was a strong expression of whom he has given his recollections in the of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; following interesting letter to Mr. Lockhart :- the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical "As for Burns, I may truly say, Virgilium character and temperament. It was large, and vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. and feeling enough to be much interested in his I never saw such another eye in a human head, poetry, and would have given the world to though I have seen the most distinguished know him; but I had very little acquaintance men of my time. His conversation expressed with any literary people, and still less with the perfect self-confidence, without the slightest gentry of the west country, the two sets whom presumption. Among the men who were the he most frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was most learned of their time and country, he exat that time a clerk of my father's. He knew pressed himself with perfect firmness, but withBurns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings out the least intrusive forwardness; and when to dinner, but had no opportunity to keep his he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to word; otherwise I might have seen more of express it firmly, yet, at the same time, with this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him modesty. I do not remember any part of his one day at the late venerable Professor Fer- conversation distinctly enough to be quoted; nor gusson's, where there were several gentlemen did I ever see him again, except in the street, of literary reputation, among whom I remem- where he did not recognize me, as I could not ber the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of expect he should. He was much caressed in course, we youngsters sate silent, looked, and Edinburgh, but (considering what literary emolistened. The only thing I remember, which luments have been since his day) the efforts was remarkable in Burns's manner, was the made for his relief were extremely trifling. effect produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side,the other, his widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : -on "Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slainBent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery baptized in tears." "Burns seemed much affected by the print, or, rather, the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered, that they occur in a halfforgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising title of "The Justice of Peace.' I whispered my information to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect, with very great pleasure. "His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture; but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school; i. e. none of your modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their "I remember, on this occasion, I thought Burns's acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited, and also, that having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson, he talked of them with too much humility as his models: there was, doubtless, national predilection in his estimate. "This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak in malam partem, when I say, I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station and information, more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this.-I do not know any thing I can add to these recollections of forty years since."] Í The more generous looked with wonder on the bold Peasant, who had claimed and taken place with the foremost, and who seemed to have endowments of every kind equal to his ambition; while other geniuses, raised by the artificial heat of colleges and schools, glanced with scorn or envy on one who had sprung into fame, through the genial warmth of nature. Henry Mackenzie was not of the latter; as soon as he read the poems of Burns, he perceived that the right inspiration was in them, and recommended them and their author to public notice, in a paper in "The Lounger," written with feeling and truth. His poems discover a tone of feeling, a power and energy of expression, particularly and strongly charac teristic of the mind and voice of a poet. The critic perceives, too, passages solemn and sublime, touched, and that not slightly, with a rapt and inspired melancholy: together with sentiments tender, and moral, and elegiac. Of "The Daisy," he says, "I have seldom met with an image more truly pastoral than that of the lark in the second stanza. Such strokes as these mark the pencil of the poet, which delineates nature with the precision of intimacy, yet with the delicate colouring of beauty and of taste. Burns possesses the spirit as well as the fancy of a poet; that honest pride and independence of soul, which are sometimes the muses' only dower, break forth on every occasion in his works." The criticism struck the true note of his peculiar genius, and, with something like prescience, claimed the honours of "National Poet," which have since been so strongly conceded." and polite observation, with all my imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude unpolished ideas on my head-I assure you, madam, I do not dissemble when I tell you, I tremble for the consequences. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and, however a friend, or the world, may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own opinion, in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention this to you once for all to disburthen my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about it.-But "When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,” you will bear me witness, that when my bubble of fame was at the highest, I stood unintoxicated, with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward, with rueful resolve, to the hastening time, when the blow of calumny should dash it to the ground with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph." The Poet speaks, about the same time, in a similar strain to the Rev. Mr. Laurie, who, it seems had warned him to beware of vanity, and of prosperity's spiced cup. A tone of de This was regarded by some as not a little rash, on the part of Mackenzie; the rustic harp of Scotland had not been for centuries swept by a hand so forcible and free; the language was that of humble life, the scenes were the clay-cottage, the dusty barn, and the stubble-spondency, too, is visible in his letters to Dr. field, and the characters the clouterly children of the penfold and the plough. There was nothing in the new prodigy which could be called classic, little which those who looked through the vista of a college reckoned poetical; and his verses were deemed rather the effusions of a random rhymer than a true poet. Speaking from his heart, Mackenzie spoke right; and, in claiming for Burns the honours due to the elect in song, he did a good deed for genius. The Poet now stood at the head of northern song, and with historians, and philosophers, and critics applauding, he looked upon himself as "owned" by the best judges of his country. The well-timed kindness of Mackenzie was never forgotten by Burns; from this time he prized the "Man of Feeling" as a book next in worth to the Bible; he never mentioned the author save in terms of affectionate admiration, and ranked him among his benefactors:- "Mackenzie, Stewart, sic a brace, He felt his high, and, to his fancy, dangerous Moore:-"Not many months ago," he observes, "I knew no other employment than following the plough, nor could boast anything higher than a distant acquaintance with a country clergyman. Mere greatness never embarrasses me; I have nothing to ask from the great, and I do not fear their judgment; but genius, polished by learning, and at its proper point of elevation in the eye of the world, this, of late, I frequently meet with, and tremble at its approach. I scorn the affectation of seeming modesty to cover self-conceit. That I have some merit I do not deny; but I see, with frequent wringings of heart, that the novelty of my character, and the honest national prejudice of my countrymen, have borne me to a height altogether untenable to my abilities." Burns indicates the station to which he must soon descend, still more plainly to another correspondent. The Earl of Buchan had advised him to visit the battle-fields of Caledonia, and, firing his fancy with deeds wrought by heroes, pour their deathless names in song. When the prophet retired to meditate in the desert, he was miraculously fed by ravens; but the peer forgot to say how the poet was to be fed when musing on the fields of Stirling, Falkirk, and Bannockburn. That Heaven would send food while he produced song seems not to have entered into his mind: for he says "My Lordin the midst of these enthusiastic reveries, a long-visaged, dry, moral-looking, phantom strides across my imagination, and pronounces these emphatic words: I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence. Friend, I do not come to open the ill-closed wounds of your follies and misfortunes, merely to give you pain. I have given ין found you line upon line, and precept upon precept; and while I was chalking out to you the straight way to wealth and character, with audacious effrontery you have zig-zagged across the path, contemning me to my face. You know the consequences. Now that your dear-loved Scotia puts it in your power to return to the situation of your forefathers, will you follow these will-o'-the wisp meteors of fancy and whim, till they bring you once more to the brink of ruin? I grant that the utmost ground you can occupy is but half a step from the veriest poverty-still it is half a step from it. You know how you feel at the iron-gripe of ruthless oppression-you know how you bear the galling sneer of contumelious greatness. I hold you out the conveniences, the comforts of life, independence, and character, on the one hand; I tender you servility, dependence, and wretchedness, on the other. I will not insult your understanding by bidding you make a choice."" He intimated his intention of returning to the plough still more publicly, when, in the new edition of his works, April, 1787, he thus addressed the noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland: "The poetic genius of my country me, as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha -at the plough-and threw her inspiring She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of mny natal soil, in my native tongue. I tuned my wild, artless notes, as she inspired. She whispered me to come to this ancient metropolis of Caledonia, and lay my songs under your honoured protection. I do not approach you, my lords and gentlemen, in the usual style of dedication, to thank you for past favours; that path is so hackneyed, by prostituted learning, that honest rusticity is ashamed of it. Nor do present this address with the venal soul of a servile author, looking for a continuation of those favours. I was bred to the plough, and am independent." This bold language sounded strangely in noble ears. It was set down by some as approaching to arrogance-was regarded by others as the cant of independence; or considered by a few as rude and vulgar, and remembered, when the Poet looked for some better acknowledgment of his genius than a six-shilling subscription, or an invitation to dine. Silence, perhaps, would have been best; but if it were necessary to speak, I cannot see that he could have spoken better. mantle over me. I The Poet spent the winter and spring of 1787, in Edinburgh, much after his own heart; he loved company, and was not unwilling to shew that nature sometimes bestowed gifts, against which rank and education could scarcely make good their station. This was, perhaps, the unwisest course he could have pursued: a man with ten thousand a year will always be considered, by the world around, superior to a man whose wealth lies in his genius; the dullest can estimate what landed property is worth, but who can say what is the annual value of an estate which lies in the imagination? In fame there was no rivalry; and in station, what hope had a poet with the earth of his last turned furrow still red on his shoon, to rival the Montgomerys, the Hamiltons, and the Gordons, with counties for estates, and the traditional éclat of a thousand years accompanying them? In the sight of the great and the far-descended, he was still a farmer, for whom the Grass-market was the proper scene of action, and the husbandmen of the land the proper companions; his company was sought, not from a sense that genius had raised him to an equality with lords and earls, but from a wish to see how this wild man of the west would behave himself, in the presence of ladies, plumed and jewelled, and lords, clothed in all the terrors of their wealth and titles. The beautiful Duchess of Gordon was, in those days, at the head of fashion in Edinburgh; a wit herself, with some taste for music and poetry; she sought the acquaintance of Burns, and invited him to her parties. Lord Monboddo, equally accomplished and whimsical, gave parties, after what he called the classic fashion; he desired to revive the splendid suppers of the ancients, and placed on his tables the choicest wines, in decanters of a Grecian pattern, adorned with wreaths of flowers: painting lent its attraction as well as music, while odours of all kinds were diffused from visible or invisible sources. Into scenes of this kind, and into company coldly polite and sensitively ceremonious, the brawny Bard of Doon, equally rash of speech and unceremonious in conduct, precipitated himself; but rich wines and lovely women, like the touch of the goddess which rendered Ulysses acceptable in the sight of a princess, brightened up the looks of the Poet, and inspired his tongue with that conquering eloquence which pleased fastidious ladies. In fine company, where it was imagined he would have failed, he triumphed. The fame of all these doings flew into Ayrshire. "There is a great rumour here," said one of his friends, "concerning your intimacy with the Duchess of Gordon; I am really told that Latin verse. The beauty of his daughter is celebrated by Burns both in prose and poetry "Fair Burnet strikes th' adoring eye, "I enclose you," he says to his friend Chalmers, "two poems which I have carded and spun since I passed Glenbuck. One blank in the Address to Edinburgh, fair B is the heavenly Miss Burnet, daughter of Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have had the honour to be more than once. There has not been any thing nearly like her in all the combinations of beauty, grace, and goodness, the great Creator has formed since Milton's Eve, on the first day of her existence." Those who were afraid that amid feasting and flattery-the smiles of ladies and the applauding nods of their lords-Burns would forget himself, and allow the mercury of vanity to rise too high within him, indulged in idle fears. When he dined or supped with the magnates of the land, he never wanted a monitor to warn him of the humility of his condition. When the company arose in the gilded and illuminated rooms, some of the fair guests-perhaps "Her grace, Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies, of genius and literature." In these words he expressed his fears: they were prophetic. While his volume was passing through the press, he added "The Brigs of Ayr," the "Address to Edinburgh," and one or two songs and small pieces. The first poem, "The Brigs of Ayr," seems to have been written for the twofold purpose of giving a picture of old times befriended him on the banks of Doon; and, new, and honouring in rhyme those who like Ballantyne, to whom it is inscribed, had and "Handed the rustic stranger up to fame." There were two poems which some of his friends begged him to exclude from his new volume. On the score of delicacy, they re-l quested the omission of "The Louse ;" and on that of loyalty and propriety, "The Dream." | He defended the former, because of the moral with which the poem concludes, and maintained the propriety of the latter with such wit and indiscretion that cautious divines and cool professors shrugged their shoulders, and talked of the folly of the sons of song. Mrs. Dunlop seems to have taken the matter much to heart. In this sarcastic Dream, there was much to advice as little as he did contradiction. The amuse and more to incense a king, who endured life of George the Third was pure and blameless; but the young princes of his house had already commenced their gay and extravagant the two elder ones :The song of the Bard is prophetic of courses. "Your criticisms, madam," says the Poet, i nettled a little by her remonstrance, "I understand very well, and could have wished to have pleased you better. You are right in your guess that I am not very amenable to counsel; I set as little by princes, lords, clergy, and critics, as all those respective gentry do by my took the hesitating arm of the Bard; went world by-and-bye-illiberal abuse, and, perbardship. I know what I may expect from the smiling to her coach, waved a graceful good-haps, contemptuous neglect." night with her jewelled hand, and, departing to her mansion, left him in the middle of the street to grope his way through the dingy alleys of the " gude town to his obscure lodging, with his share of a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteen pence a week. That his eyes were partly open to this, we know ; but he did not perceive that these invitations arose from a wish to relieve the ennui of a supper-table, where the guests were all too well-bred to utter any thing strikingly original or boldly witty. Had Burns beheld the matter in this light, he would have sprung up like Wat Tinlinn, when touched with the elfin bodkin; and, overturning silver dishes, garlanded decanters, and shoving opposing ladies and staring lords aside, made his way to the ploughtail, and recommenced turning the furrows upon his cold and ungenial farm of Mossgiel.-"I have formed many intimacies and friendships here," he observes, in a letter to Dr. Moore; "but I am afraid they are all of too tender a construction to bear carriage a hundred and fifty miles. To the rich, the great, the fashionable, the polite, I have no equivalent to offer; and I am afraid my meteor appearance will by no means entitle me to a settled correspondence with any of you, who are the permanent lights "For you, young Potentate o' Wales, I tell your Highness fairly, Down pleasure's stream, wi' swelling sails, I'm tauld ye're driving rarely; But some day ye may gnaw your nails, An' curse your folly sairly, "For you, Right Rev'rend Osnaburg, Nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter, Wad been a dress completer: Or, trouth! ye'll stain the mitre." The "Address to Edinburgh" contains some noble verses. I have heard the description of the castle praised by one, whose genius all but exempted him from error: |