nezer-conspicuous over all-for let all men speak as they think or feel-but how gentle in all his noblest inspirations was Robin! He did not shun sins or sorrows; but he told the truth of the poor man's life, when he showed that it was, on the whole, virtuous and happy -bear witness those immortal strains, "The Twa Dogs," "The Vision," "The Cottar's "The Cottar's Saturday night," the sangs voiced all braid Scotland thorough by her boys and virgins, say rather her lads and lassies-while the lark | sings aloft and the linnet below, the mavis in the golden broom accompanying the music in the golden cloud. We desire not in wilful delusion-but in earnest hope-in devout trust | --that poetry shall show that the paths of the peasant poor are paths of pleasantness and peace. If they should seem in that light even pleasanter and more peaceful than they ever now can be below the sun, think not that any evil can arise "to mortal man who liveth here by toil" from such representations-for imagination and reality are not two different things -they blend in life; but there the darker shadows do often, alas! prevail-and sometimes may be felt even by the hand; whereas in poetry the lights are triumphant-and gazing on the glory men's hearts burn within them and they carry the joy in among their own griefs, till despondency gives way to exultation, and the day's darg of this worky world is lightened by a dawn of dreams. than the same order in any other country; but in no other country are such interests given to that order in trust-and as they attend to that trust is the glory or the shame-the blessing or the curse-of their high estate. But let us retrace our footsteps in moralizing mood, not unmixed with sadness-to the Mausoleum of Burns. Scotland is abused by England for having starved Burns to death, or for having suffered him to drink himself to death, out of a cup filled to the brim with bitter disappointment and black despair. England lies. There is our gage-glove, let her take it up, and then for mortal combat with sword and spear-only not on horseback-for, for reasons on which it would be idle to be more explicit, we always fight now on foot, and have sent our high horse to graze all the rest of his life on the mountains of the moon. Well then, Scotland met Burns, on his first sun-burst, with one exulting acclaim. Scotland bought and read his poetry, and Burns, for a poor man, became rich-rich to his heart's desire-and reached the summit of his ambition, in the way of this world's life, in a Farm. Blithe Robin would have scorned "an awmous" from any hands but from those of nature; nor in those days needed he help from woman-born. True, that times begun by and by to go rather hard with him, and he with them; for his mode of life was not once he makes a confession, and we then know that he has been long numbered among the most wretched of the wretched-the slave of his own sins and sorrows-or thralled beneath those of another, to whom fate may have given sovereign power over his whole life. Well, then-or rather ill, then-Burns behaved as most men do in misery-and the farm going to ruin-that is, crop and stock to pay the rent "Such as grave livers do in Scotland use," This is the effect of all good poetry-accord- and as we sow we must reap. His day of life ing to its power-of the poetry of Robert began to darken ere meridian-and the darkBloomfield as of the poetry of Robert Burns.ness doubtless had brought disturbance before John Clare, too, is well entitled to a portion of it had been perceived by any eyes but his own such praise; and therefore his name deserves for people are always looking to themselves to become a household word in the dwellings and their own lot; and how much mortal of the rural poor. Living in leisure among misery may for years be daily depicted in the the scenes in which he once toiled, may he face, figure, or manners even of a friend, withonce more contemplate them all without dis-out our seeing or suspecting it! Till all at turbance. Having lost none of his sympathies, he has learnt to refine them all and see into their source-and wiser in his simplicity than they who were formerly his yokefellows are in theirs, he knows many things well which they know imperfectly or not at all, and is privileged therein to be their teacher. Surely in an age when the smallest contribution to science is duly estimated, and useful knowledge not only held in honour but diffused, poetry ought not to be despised, more especially when emanating from them who belong to the very condition which they seek to illustrate, and whose ambition it is to do justice to its natural enjoyments and appropriate virtues. In spite of all they have suffered, and still suffer, the peasantry of England are a race that may be regarded with better feelings than pride. We look forward confidently to the time when education-already in much good-Burns then was made what he desired to beand if the plans of the wisest counsellors pre- what he was fit for-though you are not-and vail, about to become altogether good-will what was in itself respectable-an Exciseman. raise at once their condition and their charac- His salary was not so large certainly as that ter. The Government has its duties to dis- of the Bishop of Durham-or even of London charge-clear as day. And what is not in the-but it was certainly larger than that of many power of the gentlemen of England? Let a curate at that time doing perhaps double or them exert that power to the utmost-and then indeed they will deserve the noble name of Aristocracy." We speak not thus in reproach-for they better deserve that name he desired to be-and was made-an Exciseman. And for that-you ninny-you are whinnying scornfully at Scotland! Many a better man than yourself-beg your pardonhas been, and is now, an Exciseman. Nay, to be plain with you-we doubt if your education has been sufficiently intellectual for an Exciseman. We never heard it said of you, "And even the story ran that he could gauge.' treble duty in those dioceses, without much audible complaint on their part, or outcry from Scotland against blind and brutal English bishops, or against beggarly England, for starving her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or | fess that it was pitiful. At least, if she will no. erudition adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, hang down her head in humiliation for her own it is true, at the age of thirty-seven; on the neglect of her own "poetic child," let her not same day died an English curate we could hold it high over Scotland for the neglect of name, a surpassing scholar, and of stainless hers-palliated as that neglect was by many virtue, blind, palsied, "old and miserably things-and since, in some measure, expiated poor"-without as much money as would bury by a whole nation's tears shed over her great him; and no wonder, for he never had the poet's grave. salary of a Scotch Exciseman. What! not a word for Allan Ramsay? Theocritus was a pleasant Pastoral, and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls together are not equal in worth to the singl Gentle Shepherd. Habbie's How is a hallowed place now among the green airy Pentlands. Sacred for ever the solitary murmur of that waterfa'! "A flowerie howm, between twa verdant braes, Two blacks-nay twenty-won't make a white. True-but one black is as black as another-and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse with impunity the Northern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield? He was not in genius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns-but he was beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker that ever handled an awl. The Farmer's Boy is a wonderful poem-and will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield in comfort," About them and siclike," is the whole poem. and scatter flowers along the smooth and sunny path that led him to the grave? No. He had given him, by some minister or other, we believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other-most uncongenial with all his hature and all his habits-of which the shabby salary was insufficient to purchase for his family even the bare necessàries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be made by narrowest circumstances-and all the while Englishmen were scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that, at his own earnest desire, made Burns an Exciseman. Nay, when Southey, late in Bloomfield's life, and when it was drawing mournfully to a close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five pounds, how many purse-strings were untied? how much fine gold was poured out for the indigent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles the sum out of sight-for it was not sufficient to have bought the manumission of an old negro slave. Yet "faithful loves shall memorize the song." Without any scenery but that of rafters, which overhead fancy may suppose a grove, 'tis even yet sometimes acted by rustics in the barn, though nothing on this earth will ever persuade a low-born Scottish lass to take a part in a play; while delightful is felt, even by the lords and ladies of the land, the simple Drama of humble life; and we ourselves have seen a high-born maiden look "beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the kirtle of a Shepherdess. We have been gradually growing national overmuch, and are about to grow even more so, therefore ask you to what era, pray, did Thomson belong? To none. Thomson had no precursor-and till Cowper no follower. He effulged all at once sunlike-like Scotland's storm-loving, mist-enamoured sun, which till you have seen on a day of thunder, you cannot be said ever to have seen the sun. Cowper followed Thomson merely in time. We should have had the Task, even had we never had the Seasons. These two were "Heralds of a mighty train ensuing;" add them, then, to It was no easy matter to deal rightly with the worthies of our own age, and they belong such a man as Burns. In those disturbed and to it—and all the rest of the poetry of the modistracted times, still more difficult was it to dern world-to which add that of the ancientcarry into execution any designs for his good-if multiplied by ten in quantity-and by twenty and much was there even to excuse his countrymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy, indeed, would it have been to make him happy-but he was as much forgotten as if he had been dead; and when he died-did England mourn over him—or, after having denied him bread, give him so much as a stone? No. He dropt into the grave with no other lament we ever heard of but a few copies of poorish verses in some of the Annuals, and seldom or never now does one hear a whisper of his name. O fie! well may the white rose blush red-and the red rose turn pale. Let England then leave Scotland to her shame about Burns; and, thinking of her own treatment of Bloomfield, cover her own face with both her hands, and con in quality-would not so variously, so vigorously, and so truly image the form and pressure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all Nature. Are then the Seasons and the Task Great Poems? Yes,-Why? What! Do you need to be told that that Poem must be great, which was the first to paint the rolling mystery of the year, and to show that all its Seasons are but the varied God? The idea was original and sublime; and the fulfilment thereof so complete, that some six thousand years having elapsed between the creation of the world and of that poem, some sixty thousand, we prophesy, will elapse between the appearance of that poem and the publication of another equally great, on a subject external to the mind, equally magnificent. We further presume, that you hold sacred the Hearth. Now, in the Task, the Hearth is the heart of the poem, just as it is of a happy house. No other poem is so full of domestic happinesshumble and high; none is so breathed over by the spirit of the Christian religion. Poetry, which, though not dead, had long been sleeping in Scotland, was restored to waking life by THOMSON. His genius was national; and so, too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and passionate, and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its power lay in the heart. The Castle of Indolence is distinguished by purer taste and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that poem is but the vision of a dream. The Seasons are glorious realities; and the charm of the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its truth. But what mean we by saying that the Seasons are a national subject?—do we assert that they are solely Scottish? That would be too bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, to the rest of the globe. His suns rise and set in Scottish heavens; his "deep-fermenting tempests are brewed in grim evening" Scottish skies; Scottish is his thunder of cloud and cataract; his "vapours, and snows, and storms" are Scottish; and, strange as the assertion would have sounded in the ears of Samuel Johnson, Scottish are his woods, their sugh, and their roar; nor less their stillness, more awful amidst the vast multitude of steady stems, than when all the sullen pine-tops are swinging to the hurricane. A dread love of his native land was in his heart when he cried in the solitude "Hail, kindred glooms! congenial horrors hail!"' The genius of HOME was national-and so, too, was the subject of his justly famous Tragedy of Douglas. He had studied the old Ballads; their simplicities were sweet to him as wall-flowers on ruins. On the story of Gill Morice, who was an Earl's son, he founded the Tragedy, which surely no Scottish eyes ever witnessed without tears. Are not these most Scottish lines? "Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom Accords with my soul's sadness!" And these even more so "Red came the river down, and loud and oft The angry Spirit of the water shriek'd!” The Scottish Tragedian in an evil hour crossed the Tweed, riding on horseback all the way to London. His genius got Anglified, took a consumption, and perished in the prime of life. But nearly half a century afterwards, on seeing the Siddons in Lady Randolph, and hearing her low, deep, wild, wo-begone voice exclaim, My beautiful! my brave!" "the aged harper's soul awoke," and his dim eyes were again lighted up for a moment with the fires of genius-say rather for a moment bedewed with the tears of sensibility re-awakened from decay and dotage. The genius of Beattie was national, and so was the subject of his charming song-The Minstrel. For what is its design? He tells us, o trace the progress of a poetical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of reason and fancy, till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a Scottish Minstrel; that is, as an itinerant poet and musician-a character which, according to the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred. "There lived in Gothic days, as legends tell, A shepherd swain, a man of low degree; Whose sires perchance in Fairyland might dwell, Sicilian groves and vales of Arcady; But he, I ween, was of the North Countrie; A nation famed for song and beauty's charms; Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free; Patient of toil, serene amid alarms; Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms. "The shepherd swain, of whom I mention made, On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock; The sickle, scythe, or plough he never sway'd; An honest heart was almost all his stock; His drink the living waters from the rock; The milky dams supplied his board, and lent Their kindly fleece to baffle winter's shock; And he, though oft with dust and sweat besprent, Did guide and guard their wanderings, wheresoe'er they went." Did patriotism ever inspire genius with sentiment more Scottish than that? Did imagination ever create scenery more Scottish, Manners, Morals, Life? "Lo! where the stripling wrapt in wonder roves Beattie chants there like a man who had been but at times, when the fit was on him, he wrote at the Linn of Dee. He wore a wig, it is true; like the unshorn Apollo. The genius of Grahame was national, and so too was the subject of his first and best poem -The Sabbath. "How still the morning of the hallow'd day!" is a line that could have been uttered only by what is indeed Sabbath silencea holy Scottish heart. For we alone know what is indeed Sabbath silence-an earnest of everlasting rest. To our hearts, the very birds smile is on the dewy flowers. The lilies look of Scotland sing holily on that day. A sacred whiter in their loveliness; the blush-rose red dens in the sun with a diviner dye; and with a more celestial scent the hoary hawthorn sweetens the wilderness. Sorely disturbed of yore, over the glens and hills of Scotland, was the Day of Peace! "Oh, the great goodness of the Saints of Old !” the Covenanters. Listen to the Sabbath bard"With them each day was holy; but that morn On which the angel said, 'See where the Lord Was laid,' joyous arose; to die that day Was bliss. Long ere the dawn by devious ways, O'er hills, through woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought The upland muirs where rivers, there but brooks, Dispart to different seas. Fast by such brooks A little glen is sometimes scoop'd, a plat With greensward gay, and flowers that strangers seem Amid the heathery wild, that all around Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foil'd There, leaning on his spear, (one of the array A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws. Whose gleam, in former days, had scathed the rose On England's banner, and had powerless struck The infatuate monarch, and his wavering host!) The lyart veteran heard the word of God By Cameron thunder'd, or by Renwick pour'd In gentle stream: then rose the song, the loud Her plaint; the solitary place was glad; Acclaim of praise. The wheeling plover ceased And on the distant cairn the watcher's ear Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne note. Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce, Not a few other sweet singers or strong, native to this nook of our isle, might we now in these humble pages lovingly commemorate; and "four shall we mention, dearer than the rest," for sake of that virtue, among many virtues, which we have been lauding all along, their nationality;-These are AIRD and MOTHERWELL, (of whom another hour,) MOIR and POLLOK. of Time," for so young a man, was a vast achievement. The book he loved best was the Bible, and his style is often scriptural. Of our poets, he had studied, we believe, but Milton, Young, and Byron. He had much to learn in composition; and, had he lived, he would have looked almost with humiliation on much that is at present eulogized by his devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is there, though often dimly developed, and many passages there are, and long ones too, that heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine enthusiasm. "His ears he closed, to listen to the strains That Sion's bards did consecrate of old, And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon.” Let us fly again to England, and leaving for another hour Shelley and Hunt and Keates, and Croly and Milman and Heber, and Sterling and Milnes and Tennyson, with some younger aspirants of our own day; and Gray, Collins, and Goldsmith, and lesser stars of that constellation, let us alight on the verge of that famous era when the throne was occupied by Dryden, and then by Pope-searching still for a Great Poem. Did either of them ever write one? No-never. Sir Walter says finely of glorious John, "And Dryden in immortal strain, Had raised the Table Round again, Of Moir, our own "delightful Delta," as we love to call him--and the epithet now by right appertains to his name we shall now say simply this, that he has produced many original pieces which will possess a permanent place in the poetry of Scotland. Delicacy and grace characterize his happiest compositions; some of them are beautiful in a cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy; and others breathe the simplest and purest pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast or inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times his pen drops touches of light on minute ob- But why, we ask, did Dryden suffer a ribald jects, that till then had slumbered in the shade, king and court to debase and degrade him, and but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, strangle his immortal strain? Because he as component and characteristic parts of our was poor. But could he not have died of cold, lowland landscapes. Let others labour away thirst, and hunger-of starvation? Have not at long poems, and for their pains get neglect millions of men and women done so, rather or oblivion; Moir is seen as he is in many than sacrifice their conscience! And shall we short ones, which the Scottish Muses may "not grant to a great poet that indulgence which willingly let die." And that must be a pleasant many an humble hind would have flung with thought when it touches the heart of the mild- scorn in our teeth, and rather than hav⭑ est and most modest of men, as he sits by his availed himself of it, faced the fagot, or the family-fire, beside those most dear to him, halter, or the stake set within the sea-flood? after a day past in smoothing, by his skill, the But it is satisfactory to know that Dryden, bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness though still glorious John, was not a Great to health, in alleviating sufferings that cannot Poet. He was seldom visited by the pathetic be cured, or in mitigating the pangs of death. or the sublime-else had his genius held fast Pollok had great original genius, strong in its integrity-been ribald to no ribald-and a sacred sense of religion. Such of his short indignantly kicked to the devil both court and compositions as we have seen, written in early king. But what a master of reasoning in youth, were but mere copies of verses, and verse! And of verse what a volume of gave little or no promise of power. But his fire! "The long-resounding march and enersoul was working in the green moorland soli- gy divine." Pope, again, with the common tudes round about his father's house, in the frailties of humanity, was an ethereal creature wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and -and played on his own harp with finest taste, Mearns, separated by thee, O Yearn! sweetest and wonderful execution. We doubt, indeed, of pastoral streams, that murmur through the if such a finished style has ever been heard west, as under those broomy and birken banks since from any one of the King Apollo's muand trees, where the gray-linties sing, is formed sicians. His versification may be monotothe clear junction of the rills, issuing, the one nous, but without a sweet and potent charm from the hill-spring above the Black-waterfall, only to ears of leather. That his poetry and the other from the Brother-loch. The has no passion is the creed of critics "of poet in prime of youth (he died in his twenty- Cambyses' vein ;" Heloise and the Unfortunate seventh year) embarked on a high and adven- Lady have made the world's heart to throb. turous emprise, and voyaged the illimitable | As for Imagination, we shall continue till such Deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in time as that faculty has been distinguished a holy pride felt them to be broad, as they from Fancy, to see it shining in the Rape of hovered over the dark abyss. The "Course the Lock, with a lambent lustre; if high intel lect be not dominant in his Epistles and his Essay on Man, you will look for it in vain in the nineteenth century; all other Satires seem complimentary to their victims when read after the Dunciad-and could a man, whose heart was not heroic, have given us another Iliad, which, all unlike as it is to the Greek, may be read with transport, even after Homer's? done for the least deformed of the tragedies of the Old English Drama that humanity could do, enlightened by the Christian religion; but Nature has risen up to vindicate herself against such misrepresentations as they afford; and sometimes finds it all she can do to stomach Shakspeare. But the monstrosities we have mentioned are We have not yet, it would seem, found the not the worst to be found in the Old English objects of our search-a Great Poem. Let us Drama. Others there are that, till civilized extend our quest into the Elizabethan age. We Christendom fall back into barbarous Heathenare at once sucked into the theatre. With the dom, must for ever be unendurable to human whole drama of that age we are conversant ears, whether long or short-we mean the oband familiar; but whether we understand it or scenities. That sin is banished for ever from not, is another question. It aspires to give our literature. The poet who might dare to representations of Human Life in all its in- commit it, would be immediately hooted out of finite varieties, and inconsistencies, and con- society, and sent to roost in barns among the flicts, and turmoils produced by the Passions. owls. But the Old English Drama is stuffed Time and space are not suffered to interpose with ineffable pollutions; and full of passages their unities between the Poet and his vast that the street-walker would be ashamed to design, who, provided he can satisfy the spec- read in the stews. We have not seen that tators by the pageant of their own passions volume of the Family Dramatists which contains moving across the stage, may exhibit there Massinger. But if made fit for female readwhatever he wills from life, death, or the grave. ing, his plays must be mutilated and mangled 'Tis a sublime conception-and sometimes out of all likeness to the original wholes. has given rise to sublime performance; but To free them even from the grossest impurihas been crowned with full success in no hands ties, without destroying their very life, is imbut those of Shakspeare. Great as was the possible; and it would be far better to make a genius of many of the dramatists of that age, selection of fine passages, after the manner of not one of them has produced a Great Tragedy. Lamb's Specimens-but with a severer eyeGreat Tragedy indeed! What! without harmo-than to attempt in vain to preserve their chany or proportion in the plan-with all puzzling racter as plays, and at the same time to expunge perplexities and inextricable entanglements in all that is too disgusting, perhaps, to be dangerthe plot, and with disgust and horror in the catas-ous to boys and virgins. Full-grown men may trophe? As for the characters, male and female read what they choose-perhaps without suf-saw ye ever such a set of swaggerers and ran-fering from it; but the modesty of the young tipoles as they often are in one act-Methodist clear eye must not be profaned-and we canpreachers and demure young women at a love-not, for our own part, imagine a Family Old feast in another-absolute heroes and heroines English Dramatist. of high calibre in a third-and so on, changing and shifting name and nature, according to the laws of the Romantic Drama forsooth-but in hideous violation of the laws of nature-till the curtain falls over a heap of bodies huddled together, without regard to age or Sex, as if they had been overtaken in liquor! We admit that there is gross exaggeration in the picture; but there is always truth in a tolerable caricature -and this is one of a tragedy of Webster, Ford, or Massinger. And here again bursts upon us the glory of the Greek Drama. The Athenians were as wicked, as licentious, as polluted, and much more so, we hope, than ever were the English; but they debased not with their gross vices their glorious tragedies. Nature in her higher moods alone, and most majestic aspects, trod their stage. Buffoons, and ribalds, and zanies, and "rude indecent clowns," were confined to comedies; and even there they too were idealized, and resembled not the obscene samples It is satisfactory to know that the good sense, that so often sicken us in the midst of "the actand good feeling, and good taste of the people ing of a dreadful thing" in our old theatre. of England, will not submit to be belaboured They knew that "with other ministrations, thou, by editors and critics into unqualified admira- O Nature!" teachest thy handmaid Art to tion of such enormities. The Old English soothe the souls of thy congregated children— Drama lies buried in the dust with all its trage- congregated to behold her noble goings-on, and dies. Never more will they move across the to rise up and depart elevated by the transcenstage. Scholars read them, and often with de- dent pageant. The Tragic muse was in those light, admiration, and wonder; for genius is a days a Priestess-tragedies were religious strange spirit, and has begotten strange children ceremonies; for all the ancestral stories they on the body of the Tragic Muse. In the closet celebrated were under consecration—the spirit it is pleasant to peruse the countenances, at of the ages of heroes and demigods descended once divine, human, and brutal, of the incom-over the vast amphitheatre; and thus were prehensible monsters--to scan their forms, powerful though misshapen--to watch their movements, vigorous though distorted-and to hold up one's hands in amazement on hearing them not seldom discourse most excellent music. But we should shudder to see them on the stage enacting the parts of men and woinen-and call for the manager. All has been Eschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, the guardians of the national character, which we all know, was, in spite of all it suffered under, for ever passionately enamoured of all the forms of greatness. Forgive us-spirit of Shakspeare! that seem'st to animate that high-brow'd bust-if indeed we have offered any show of irreve |