poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands | rise up lovely in their own silent domains, will see how noble was once the degenerated before the dreaming fancy of the tender-hearted race that may then be looking down disconso- Shepherd. The still green beauty of the paslately on the dim grass of Scotland with the toral hills and vales where he passed all his unuplifted eyes of cowards and slaves. days, inspired him with ever-brooding visions The truth ought always to be spoken; and of Fairy Land, till, as he lay musing on the therefore we say that in fancy James Hogg-brae, the world of shadows seemed, in the clear in spite of his name and his teeth-was not depths, a softened reflection of real life, like inferior to Robert Burns-and why not? The the hills and heavens in the water of his native Forest is a better school-room for Fancy than lake. When he speaks of Fairy Land, his ever Burns studied in; it overflowed with language becomes aerial as the very voice of poetical traditions. But comparisons are the fairy people, serenest images rise up with always odious; and the great glory of James the music of the verse, and we almost believe is, that he is as unlike Robert as ever one poet in the being of those unlocalized realms of was unlike another. peace, and of which he sings like a native minstrel.

And what can surpass many of the Shepherd's songs? The most undefinable of all undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are surely-Songs. They seem to start up indeed from the dew-sprinkled soil of a poet's soul, like flowers; the first stanza being root, the second leaf, the third bud, and all the rest blossom, till the song is like a stalk laden with It is here where Burns was weakest, that the its own beauty, and laying itself down in Shepherd is strongest-the world of shadows. languid de'nt on the soft bed of moss-song The airy beings that to the impassioned soul and flow alike having the same “dying of Burns seemed cold, bloodless, unattractive, | fall!"

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A fragment! And the more piteous because saw or heard a jewel or a tune of a thought or a fragment. Go in search of the pathetic, and a feeling, but he immediately made it his own you will find it tear-steeped, sigh-breathed, that is, stole it. He was too honest a man moan-muttered, and groaned in fragments. to refrain from such thefts. The thoughts and The poet seems often struck dumb by wo- feelings-to whom by divine right did they behis heart feels that suffering is at its acme-long? To Nature. But Burns beheld them and that he should break off and away from a "waif and stray," and in peril of being lost for sight too sad to be longer looked on-haply ever. He seized then on those "snatches of too humiliating to be disclosed. So, too, it old songs," wavering away into the same obsometimes is with the beautiful. The soul in livion that lies on the graves of the nameless its delight seeks to escape from the emotion bards who first gave them being; and now, that oppresses it-is speechless-and the song spiritually interfused with his own lays, they falls mute. Such is frequently the character are secured against decay-and like them im—and the origin of that character-of our auld mortal. So hath the Shepherd stolen many Scottish Sangs. In their mournfulness are of the Flowers of the Forest-whose beauty they not almost like the wail of some bird dis- had breathed there ever since Flodden's fatal tracted on the bush from which its nest has overthrow; but they had been long fading and been harried, and then suddenly flying away pining away in the solitary places, wherein so for ever into the woods? In their joyfulness, many of their kindred had utterly disappeared, are they not almost like the hymn of some and beneath the restoring light of his genius bird, that love-stricken suddenly darts from the their bloom and their balm were for ever retree-top down to the caresses that flutter through newed. But the thief of all thieves is the Nithsthe spring? And such, too, are often the airs dale and Galloway thief-called by Sir Walter to which those dear auld sangs are sung. most characteristically, "Honest Allan!" Thief From excess of feeling-fragmentary; or of and forger as he is-we often wonder why he one divine part to which genius may be defied is permitted to live. Many is the sweet stanza to conceive another, because but one hour in he has stolen from Time-that silly old carle who kens not even his own-many the all time could have given it birth. lifelike line-and many the strange single word that seems to possess the power of all the parts of speech. And, having stolen them, to what use did he turn the treasures? Why, unable to give back every man his own-for they were all dead, buried, and forgotten-by a potent prayer he evoked from his Pool-Palace, overshadowed by the Dalswinton woods, the Genius of the Nith, to preserve the gathered flowers of song for ever unwithered, for that they all had grown ages ago beneath and around the green shadows of Criffel, and longed now to be Scotland sees flowing in unsullied silver to the embalmed in the purity of the purest river that sea. But the Genius of the Nith-frowning and in anger, love, and pride-refused the votive smiling as he looked upon his son alternately offering, and told him to be gone; for that he

You may call this pure nonsense-but 'tis so pure that you need not fear to swallow it. All great song-writers, nevertheless, have been great thieves. Those who had the blessed fate to flourish first-to be born when "this auld cloak was new,"-the cloak we mean which nature wears-scrupled not to creep upon her as she lay asleep beneath the shadow of some single tree among

"The grace of forest-woods decay'd,

And pastoral melancholy,”

and to steal the very pearls out of her hair out of the silken snood which enamoured Pan himself had not untied in the Golden Age. Or if she ventured, as sometimes she did, to walk along the highways of the earth, they robbed her in the face of day of her dew-wrought reticule—without hurting, however, the hand from which they brushed that net of gossamer.

Then came the Silver Age of Song, the age in which we now live-and the song-singers were thieves still-stealing and robbing from them who had stolen and robbed of old; yet, how account you for this phenomenonall parties remain richer than ever-and Nature, especially, after all this thieving and robbery, and piracy and plunder, many million times richer than the day on which she received her dowry,

"The bridal of the earth and sky;"

and with "golden store" sufficient in its scatterings to enable all the sons of genius she will ever bear, to "set up for themselves" in poetry, accumulating capital upon capital, till each is a Croesus, rejoicing to lend it out without any other interest than cent per cent, paid in sighs, smiles, and tears, and without any other security than the promise of a quiet eye,

"That broods and sleeps on its own heart!" Amongst the most famous thie es in our time have been Rob, James, and Allan. Burns never

the Genius-was not a Cromek-and could distinguish with half an eye what belonged to antiquity, from what had undergone, in Allan's hands, change into "something rich and rare;" and above all, from what had been blown to life that very year by the breath of Allan's own genius, love-inspired by "his ain lassie," the "lass that he loe'd best," springing from seeds itself had sown, and cherished by the dews 'of the same gracious skies, that filled with motion and music the transparency of the river god's never-failing urn.

It beats

We love Allan's "Maid of Elvar." with a fine, free, bold, and healthful spirit. Along with the growth of the mutual love of Eustace and Sybil, he paints peasant-life with a pen that reminds us of the pencil of Wilkie. He is as familiar with it all as Burns; and Burns would have perused with tears many of these pictures, even the most cheerful-for the flood-gates of Robin's heart often suddenly flung themselves open to a touch, while a rushing gush-wondering gazers knew not whybedimmed the lustre of his large black eyes. Allan gives us descriptions of Washings and

Watchings o' claes, as Homer has done before | eyes as the golden grain, ebbing like tide of him in the Odyssey, and that other Allan in sea before a close long line of glancing sickles the Gentle Shepherd-of Kirks, and Christen--no sound so sweet as, rising up into the ings, and Hallowe'ens, and other Festivals. pure harvest-air, frost-touched though sunny Nor has he feared to string his lyre-why-beneath the shade of hedge-row-tree, after should he?-to such themes as the Cottar's their mid-day meal, the song of the jolly reapSaturday Night-and the simple ritual of our ers. But are not his pictures sometimes too faith, sung and said

crowded? No. For there lies the power of the pen over the pencil. The pencil can do much, the pen every thing; the Painter is imprisoned within a few feet of canvas, the Poet commands the horizon with an eye that circumnavigates the globe; even that glorious pageant, a painted Panorama, is circumscribed by bounds, over which imagination, feeling them all too narrow, is uneasy till she soars; but the Poet's Panorama is commensurate with the soul's desires, and may include the Universe.

This Poem reads as if it had been written during the "dewy hour of prime." Allan must be an early riser. But, if not so now, some forty years ago he was up every morning with the lark,

"Walking to labour by that cheerful song,"

"In some small kirk upon the sunny brae, That stands all by itself on some sweet Sabbath-day." Ay, many are the merits of this "Rustic Tale." To appreciate them properly, we must carry along with us, during the perusal of the poem, a right understanding and feeling of that pleasant epithet-Rustic. Rusticity and Urbanity are polar opposites-and there lie between many million modes of Manners, which you know are Minor Morals. But not to puzzle a subject in itself sufficiently simple, the same person may be at once rustic and urbane, and that too, either in his character of man or of poet, or in his twofold capacity of both; for observe that though you may be a man without being a poet, we defy you to be a poet without being a man. A Rustic is a clodhopper; an Urbane is a paviour. But it is obvious that the pa- away up the Nith, through the Dalswinton viour in a field hops the clod; that the clodhopper woods; or, for any thing we know to the in a street paces the pavêe. At the same time, contrary, intersecting with stone-walls, that it is equally cbvious that the paviour, in hop- wanted not their scientific coping, the green ping the clod, performs the feat with a sort of pastures of Sanquhar. Now he is familiar city smoke, which breathes of bricks; that the with Chantry's form-full statues; then, with clodhopper, in pacing the pavêe, overcomes the the shapeless cairn on the moor, the rude difficulty with a kind of country air, that is headstone on the martyr's grave. And thus redolent of broom. Probably, too, Urbanus it is that the present has given him power through a deep fallow is seen ploughing his over the past-that a certain grace and deliway in pumps; Rusticus along the shallow cacy, inspired by the pursuits of his prime, stones is heard clattering on clogs. But to blend with the creative dreams that are peocease pursuing the subject through all its vari- pled with the lights and shadows of his youth ations, suffice it for the present (for we per--that the spirit of the old ballad breathes still ceive that we must resume the discussion in its strong simplicity through the composianother time) to say, that Allan Cunningham tion of his "New Poem"-and that art is seen is a living example and lively proof of the truth harmoniously blending there with nature. of our Philosophy-it being universally allowed in the best circles of town and country, that he is an URBANE RUSTIC.

Now, that is the man for our love and money, when the work to be done is a Poem on

Scottish Life.

"far from the pasture moor

He comes; the fragrance of the dale and wood Is scenting all his garments, green and good.” The rural imagery is fresh and fair; not copied Cockney-wise, from pictures in oil or water-colours-from mezzotintoes or lineengravings—but from the free open face of day, or the dim retiring face of eve, or the face, "black but comely," of night-by sunlight or moonlight, ever Nature. Sometimes he gives us-Studies. Small, sweet, sunny spots of still or dancing day-stream-gleam grove-glow-sky-glympse or cottage-roof, in the deep dell sending up its smoke to the high heavens. But usually Allan paints with a sweeping pencil. He lays down his landscapes, stretching wide and far, and fills them with woods and rivers, hills and mountains, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle; and of all sights in life and nature, none so dear to his

We have said already that we delight in the story; for it belongs to an "order of fables gray," which has been ever dear to Poets. Poets have ever loved to bring into the pleasant places and paths of lowly life, persons (we eschew all manner of personages and heroes and heroines, especially with the epithet “our” prefixed) whose native lot lay in a higher sphere: For they felt that by such contrast, natural though rare, a beautiful light was mutually reflected from each condition, and that sacred revelations were thereby made of human character, of which all that is pure and profound appertains equally to all estates of this our mortal being, provided only that happiness knows from whom it comes, and that misery and misfortune are alleviated by religion. Thus Electra appears before us at her father's Tomb, the virgin-wife of the peasant Auturgus, who reverently abstains from the intact body of the daughter of the king. Look into Shakspeare. Rosalind was not so loveable at court as in the woods. Her beauty might have been more brilliant, and her conversation too, among lords and ladies; but more touching both, because true to tenderer nature, when we see and hear her in dialogue with the neat-herdess-ROSALIND and Audrey !

And trickles not the tear down thy cheek, fair | that ground-as if nature were not at liberty reader-burns not the heart within thee, when to find her own level. Flat indeed! So is the thou thinkest of Florizel and Perdita on the Farm in the Forest?

Nor from those visions need we fear to turn to Sybil Lesley. We see her in Elvar Tower, a high-born Lady-in Dalgonar Glen, an humble bondmaid. The change might have been the reverse-as with the lassie beloved by the Gentle Shepherd. Both are best. The bust that gloriously set off the burnishing of the rounded silk, not less divinely shrouded its enchantment beneath the swelling russet. Graceful in bower or hall were those arms, and delicate those fingers, when moving white along the rich embroidery, or across the strings of the sculptured harp; nor less so when before the cottage door they woke the homely music of the humming wheel, or when on the brae beside the Pool, they playfully intertwined their softness with the new-washed fleeces, or when among the laughing lasses at the Linn, not loath were they to lay out the coarse linen in the bleaching sunshine, conspicuous She the while among the rustic beauties, as was Nausicaa of old among her nymphs at the Fountain.

We are in love with Sybil Lesley. She is full of spunk. That is not a vulgar word; or if it have been so heretofore, henceforth let it cease to be so, and be held synonymous with spirit. She shows it in her defiance of Sir Ralph on the shore of Solway-in her flight from the Tower of Elvar; and the character she displays then and there, prepares us for the part she plays in the peasant's cot in the glen of Dalgonar. We are not surprised to see her take so kindly to the duties of a rustic service; for we call to mind how she sat among the humble good-folks in the hall, when Thrift and Waste figured in that rude but wise Morality, and how the gracious lady showed she sympathized with the cares and contentments of lowly life.

England has singled out John Clare from among her humble sons, (Ebenezer Elliot belongs altogether to another order)-as the most conspicuous for poetical genius, next to Robert Bloomfield. That is a proud distinction-whatever critics may choose to say; and we cordially sympathize with the beautiful expression of his gratitude to the Rural Muse, when he says

sea. Wait till you have walked a few miles. in among the Fens-and you will be wafted along like a little sail-boat, up and down undulations green and gladsome as waves. Think ye there is no scenery there? Why, you are in the heart of a vast metropolis !—yet have not the sense to see the silent city of mole-hills sleeping in the sun. Call that pond a lake-and by a word how is it transfigured Now you discern flowers unfolding on its low banks and braes-and the rustle of the rushes is like that of a tiny forest-how appropriate to the wild! Gaze-and to your gaze what colouring grows! Not in green only—or in russet brown doth nature choose to be apparelled in this her solitude-nor ever again will you call her dreary here-for see how every one of those fifty flying showers lightens up its own line of beauty along the plain-instantaneous as dreams-or stationary as waking thought-till, ere you are aware that all was changing, the variety has all melted away into one harmonious glow, attempered by that rainbow.

Let these few words suffice to show that we understand and feel the flattest-dullest—tamest places, as they are most ignorantly called that have yet been discovered in England. Not in such did John Clare abide-but many such he hath traversed; and his studies have been from childhood upwards among scenes which to ordinary eyes might seem to afford small scope and few materials for contemplation. But his are not ordinary eyes-but gifted; and in every nook and corner of his own county the Northamptonshire Peasant has, during some two score years and more, every spring found without seeking either some lovelier aspect of "the old familiar faces," or some new faces smiling upon him, as if mutual recognition kindled joy and amity in their hearts.

John Clare often reminds us of James Grahame. They are two of our most artless poets. Their versification is mostly very sweet, though rather flowing forth according to a certain fine natural sense of melody, than constructed on any principles of music. So, too, with their imagery, which seems seldom selected with much care; so that, while it is always true to nature, and often possesses a charm from its appearing to rise up of itself, and with little or no effort on the poet's part to form a picture, it is not unfrequently chargeable with repetition

"Like as the little lark from off its nest,
Beside the mossy hill, awakes in glee,
To seek the morning's throne, a merry guest-
So do I seek thy shrine, if that may be,
To win by new attempts another simile from thee."-sometimes, perhaps, with a sameness which,

Now, England is out of all sight the most beautiful country in the whole world-Scotland alone excepted-and, thank heaven, they two are one kingdom-divided by no line either real or imaginary-united by the Tweed. We forget at this moment-if ever we knew it the precise number of her counties; but we remember that one and all of them-" alike, but oh! how different”—are fit birth-places and abodes for poets. Some of them we know vell, are flat-and we in Scotland, with hills or mountains for ever before our eyes, are sometimes disposed to find fault with them on

but for the inherent interest in the objects themselves, might be felt a little wearisome— there is so much still life. They are both most affectionately disposed towards all manner of birds. Grahame's "Birds of Scotland" is a delightful poem; yet its best passages are not superior to some of Clare's about the same charming creatures-and they are both ornithologists after Audubon's and our own heart. Were all that has been well written in English verse about birds to be gathered together, what a sweet set of volumes it would make! And how many, think ye-three, six, twelve? That would be indeed an aviary—

the only one we can think of with pleasure- It is not to be thought, however, that the out of the hedge-rows and the woods. Tories Northamptonshire Peasant does not often treat as we are, we never see a wild bird on the earnestly of the common pleasures and pains, wing without inhaling in silence "the Cause the cares and occupations of that condition of of Liberty all over the world!" We feel then life in which he was born, and has passed all that it is indeed "like the air we breathe his days. He knows them well, and has illuswithout it we die." So do they. We have trated them well, though seldomer in his later been reading lately, for a leisure hour or two than in his earlier poems; and we cannot help of an evening-a volume by a worthy German, thinking that he might greatly extend his popuDoctor Bechstein-on Cage Birds. The slave-larity, which in England is considerable, by dealer never for a moment suspects the wicked- devoting his Rural Muse to subjects lying ness of kidnapping young and old-crimping within his ken, and of everlasting interest. them for life-teaching them to draw water- Bloomfield's reputation rests on his "Farmer's and, oh nefas! to sing! He seems to think Boy". He seems to think Boy"-on some exquisite passages on News that only in confinement do they fulfil the ends from the Farm"-and on some of the tales and of their existence-even the skylark. Yet he pictures in his-" May-day with the Muses." His sees them, one and all, subject to the most smaller poems are very inferior to those of miserable diseases-and rotting away within Clare-But the Northamptonshire Peasant has the wires. Why could not the Doctor have written nothing in which all honest English taken a stroll into the country once or twice a-hearts must delight, at all comparable with week, and in one morning or evening hour those truly rural compositions of the Suffolk laid in sufficient music to serve him during shoemaker. It is in his power to do so-would the intervening time, without causing a single bosom to be ruffled for his sake? Shoot them -spit them-pie them-pickle them-eat them -but imprison them not; we speak as Conservatives-murder rather than immure them | -for more forgivable far it is to cut short their songs at the height of glee, than to protract them in a rueful simulation of music, in which you hear the same sweet notes, but if your heart thinks at all, "a voice of weeping and of loud lament" all unlike, alas! to the congratulation that from the free choirs is ringing so exultingly in their native woods. How prettily Clare writes of the "insect youth.

"These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,
And happy units of a numerous herd
Of playfellows the laughing Summer brings,
Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose ;
And where they fly for dinner no one knows—
The dewdrops feed them not-they love the shine
Of noon, whose sons may bring them golden wine.
All day they're playing in their Sunday dress-
When night repose, for they can do no less;
Then to the heath-bell's purple hood they fly,
And like to princes in their slumbers lie,
Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all,
In silken beds and roomy painted hall.
So merrily they spend their summer-day,

he but earnestly set himself to the work. He must be more familiar with all the ongoings of rural life than his compeer could have been; nor need he fear to tread again the same ground, for it is as new as if it had never been touched, and will continue to be so till the end of time. The soil in which the native virtues of the English character grow, is unexhausted and inexhaustible; let him break it up on any spot he chooses, and poetry will spring to light like clover from lime. Nor need he fear being an imitator. His mind is an original one, his most indifferent verses prove it; for though he must have read much poetry since his earlier day-doubtless all our best modern poetry -he retains his own style, which though it be not marked by any very strong characteristics, is yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it belongs to himself, and is a natural gift. Pastorals-eclogues-and idyls-in a hundred forms -remain to be written by such poets as he and his brethren; and there can be no doubt at all, that if he will scheme something of the kind, and begin upon it, without waiting to know fully or clearly what he may be intending, that before three winters, with their long nights, are gone, he will find himself in possession of more than mere materials for a

Now in the corn-fields, now in the new-mown hay. volume of poems that will meet with general

One almost fancies that such happy things,

With colour'd hoods and richly-burnish'd wings,
Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade

Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid.

Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still, Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill." Time has been-nor yet very long agowhen such unpretending poetry as this-humble indeed in every sense, but nevertheless the product of genius which speaks for itself audibly and clearly in lowliest strains-would not have passed by unheeded or unbeloved; nowa-days it may to many who hold their heads high, seem of no more worth than an old song. But as Wordsworth says,

"Pleasures newly found are sweet, Though they lie about our feet;" and if stately people would but stoop and look about their paths, which do not always run along the heights, they would often make discoveries of what concerned them more than speculations among the stars.

acceptation, and give him a permanent place by the side of him he loves so well-Robert Bloomfield.

Ebenezer Elliot (of whom more another day) claims with pride to be the Poet of the Poorand the poor might well be proud, did they know it, that they have such a poet. Not a few of them know it now-and many will know it in future; for a muse of fire like his will yet send its illumination "into dark deep holds." May it consume all the noxious vapours that infest such regions-and purify the atmosphere-till the air breathed there be the breath of life. But the poor have other poets besides him-Crabbe and Burns. We again mention their names-and no more. Kindly spirits were they both; but Burns had experi enced all his poetry-and therefore his poetry is an embodiment of national character. say it not in disparagement or reproof of Ebe

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