gave place to the spinning-wheel, the phrase came to be used by both sexes on social occasions, and men talk of going with their rocks as well as women. It was at one of these rockings at our house, when we had twelve or fifteen young people with their rocks, that Lapraik's song, beginning"When I upon thy bosom lean," was sung, and we were informed who was the author. Upon this Robert wrote his first epistle to Lapraik; and his second in reply to his answer. The verses to the Mouse and Mountain Daisy were composed on the occasions mentioned, and while the author was holding the plough; I could point out the particular spot where each was composed. Holding the plough was a favourite situation with Robert for poetic compositions, and some of his best verses were produced while he was at that exercise. Several of the poems were produced for the purpose of bringing forward some favourite sentiment of the author. He used to remark to me, that he could not well conceive a more mortifying picture of human life than a man seeking work. In casting about in his mind how this sentiment might be brought forward, the elegy, Man was made to Mourn, was composed. Robert had frequently remarked to me, that he thought there was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, "Let us worship God," used by a decent sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this sentiment of the author the world is indebted for The Cottar's Saturday Night. The hint of the plan, and title of the poem, were taken from Ferguson's Farmer's Ingle. When Robert had not some pleasure in view, in which I was not thought fit to participate, we used frequently to walk together, when the weather was favourable, on the Sunday afternoons, (those precious breathing-times to the labouring part of the community), and enjoyed such Sundays as would make one regret to see their bumber abridged. It was in one of these walks that I first had the pleasure of hearing the author repeat The Cottar's Saturday Night. I do not recollect to have read or heard any thing by which I was more highly electrified. The fifth and six stanzas, and the eighteenth, thrilled with peculiar ecstacy through my soul." The poems mentioned by Gilbert Burns in the above extract, are among the most popular of his brother's performances; and there may be a time for recurring to some of their peculiar merits as works of art. It may be mentioned here, that John Wilson, alias Dr. Hornbook, was not merely compelled to shut up shop as an apothecary, or druggist rather, by the satire which bears his name; but so irresistible was the tide of ridicule, that his pupils, one by one, deserted him, and he abandoned his schoolcraft also. Removing to Glasgow, and turning himself successfully to commercial pursuits, Dr. Hornbook survived the local storm which he could not effectually withstand, and was often heard in his latter days, when waxing cheerful and communicative over a bowl of punch," in the Saltmarket," to bless the lucky hour in which the dominie of Tarbolton provoked the castigation of Robert Burns. In those days the Scotch universities did not turn out doctors of physic by the hundred; Mr. Wilson's was probably the only medicine-chest from which salts and senna were distributed for the benefit of a considerable circuit of parishes; and his advice, to say the least of the matter, was perhaps as good as could be had, for love or money, among the wise women who were the only rivals of his practice. The poem which drove him from Ayrshire was not, we may believe, either expected or de signed to produce any such serious effect. Poor Hornbook and the poet were old acquaintances, and in some sort rival wits at the time in the ma son lodge. In Man was made to Mourn, whatever might be the casual idea that set the poet to work, it is but too evident, that he wrote from the habitual feelings of his own bosom. The indignation with which he through life contemplated the inequality of human condition, and particularly, the contrast between his own worldly circumstances and intellectual rank, was never more bitterly, nor more loftily expressed, than in some of those "I had an old grand-uncle," says the poet, in one of his letters to Mrs. Dunlop, "with whom my mother lived in her girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was blind long ere he died; during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of The Life and Age of Man." In Man was made to Mourn, Burns appears to have taken many hints from this ancient ballad, which begins thus: "Upon the sixteen hundred year of God, and fifty-three, Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear, as writings testifie; On January, the sixteenth day, as I did lie alone, With many a sigh and sob did say-Ah! man is made to moan !" The Cottar's Saturday Night is, perhaps, of all Burns's pieces, the one whose exclusion from the collection, were such things possible now-a-days, would be the most injurious, if not to the genius, at least to the character, of the man. In spite of many feeble lines, and some heavy stanzas, it appears to me, that even his genius would suffer more in estimation, by being contemplated in the absence of this poem, than of any other single performance he has left us. Loftier flights he certainly has made, but in these he remained but a short while on the wing, and effort is too often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle, placidly undulating. There is more of the conscious security of power, than in any other of his serious pieces of considerable length; the whole has the appearance of coming in a full stream from the fountain of the heart-a stream that soothes the ear, and has no glare on the surface. It is delightful to turn from any of the pieces which present so great a' genius as writhing under an inevitable burden, to this, where his buoyant energy seems not even to feel the pressure. The miseries of toil and penury, who shall affect to treat as unreal? Yet they shrunk to small dimensions in the presence of a spirit thus exalted at once, and softened, by the pieties of virgin love, filial reverence, and domestic devotion. • Cromek's Scottish Songs. The Cottar's Saturday Night and the Holy Fair have been put in contrast, and much marvel made that they should have sprung from the same source. "The annual celebration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the rural parishes of Scotland, has much in it," says the unfortunate Heron, " of those old popish festivals, in which superstition, traffic, and amusement, used to be strangely intermingled. Burns saw and seized in it one of the happiest of all subjects to afford scope for the display of that strong and piercing sagacity, by which he could almost intuitively distinguish the reasonable from the absurd, and the becoming from the ridiculous; of that picturesque power of fancy which enabled him to represent scenes, and persons, and groups, and looks, and attitudes, and gestures, in a manner almost as lively and impressive, even in words, as if all the artifices and energies of the pencil had been employed; of that knowledge which he had necessarily acquired of the manners, passions, and prejudices of the rustics around him-of whatever was ridiculous, no less than whatever was affectingly beautiful in rural life." This is very good, but who ever disputed the exquisite graphic truth of the poem to which the critic refers? The question remains as it stood; is there then nothing besides a strange mixture of superstition, traffic, and amusement, in the scene which such an annual celebration in a rural parish of Scotland presents? Does nothing of what is "affectingly beautiful in rural life," make a part in the original which was before the poet's eyes? Were "Superstition," "Hypocrisy," and "Fun," the only influences which he might justly have impersonated? It would be hard, I think, to speak so even of the old popish festivals to which Mr. Heron alludes; it would be hard, surely, to say it of any festival in which, mingled as they may be with sanctimonious pretenders, and surrounded with giddy groups of onlookers, a mighty multitude of devout men are assembled for the worship of God, beneath the open heaven, and above the tombs of their fathers. Let us beware, however, of pushing our censure of a young poet, mad with the inspiration of the moment, from whatever source derived, too far. It can hardly be doubted that the author of The Cottar's Saturday Night had felt, in his time, all that any man can feel in the contemplation of the most sublime of the religious observances of his country; and as little, that had he taken up the subject of this rural sacrament in a solemn mood, he might have produced a piece as gravely beautiful, as his Holy Fair is quaint, graphic, and picturesque. A scene of family worship, on the other hand, I can easily imagine to have come from his hand as pregnant with the ludicrous as that Holy Fair itself. The family prayers of the Saturday's night, and the rural celebration of the Eucharist, are parts of the same system-the system which has made the people of Scotland what they areand what, it is to be hoped, they will continue to be. And when men ask of themselves what this great national poet really thought of a system in which minds immeasurably inferior to his can see so much to venerate, it is surely just that they should pay most attention to what he has delivered under the gravest sanction. The Reverend Hamilton Paul does not desert his post on occasion of The Holy Fair; he defends that piece as manfully as Holy Willie; and, indeed, expressly applauds Burns for having endeavoured to explode "abuses discountenanced by the General Assembly." Hallowe'en, a descriptive poem, perhaps even more exquisitely wrought than the Holy Fair, and containing nothing that could offend the feelings of anybody, was pro duced about the same period. Burns's art had now reached its climax ; but it is time that we should revert more particularly to the personal history of the poet. He seems to have very soon perceived, that the farm of Mossgiel could at the best furnish no more than the bare means of existence to so large a family; and wearied with "the prospects drear," from which he only escaped in occasional intervals of social merriment, or when gay flashes of solitary fancy, for they were no more, threw sunshine on every thing, he very naturally took up the notion of quitting Scotland for a time, and trying his fortune in the West Indies, where, as is well known, the managers of the plantations are, in the great majority of cases, Scotchmen of Burns's own rank and condition. His letters show, that on two or three different occasions, long before his poetry had excited any attention, he had applied for, and nearly obtained appointments of this sort, through the intervention of his acquaintances in the sea-port of Irvine. Petty accidents, not worth describing, interfered to disappoint him from time to time; but at last a new burst of misfortune rendered him doubly anxious to escape from his native land; and but for an accident, his arrangements would certainly have been completed. But we must not come quite so rapidly to the last of his Ayrshire love-stories. How many lesser romances of this order were evolved and completed during his residence at Mossgiel, it is needless to inquire; that they were many, his songs prove, for in those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary Heroines. Mary Morison-Behind yon hills where Stinchar flows-On Cessnock bank there lives a lass-belong to this period; and there are three or four inspired by Mary Campbell-the object of by far the deepest passion that ever Burns knew, and which he has accordingly immortalized in the noblest of his elegiacs. In introducing to Mr. Thomson's notice the song, "Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, Burns says, "In my early years, when I was thinking of going to the West Indies, I took this farewell of a dear girl;" afterwards, in a note on "Ye banks, and braes, and streams around The Castel o' Montgomerie; Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, he adds," After a pretty long trial of the most ardent reciprocal affec tion, we met by appointment on the second Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot by the banks of Ayr, where we spent a day in taking a farwell before she should embark for the West Highlands, to arrange matters among her friends for our projected change of life. At the close of the autumn following she crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock, where she had scarce landed when she was seized with a malignant fever, which hurried my dear girl to her grave in a few days, before I could even hear of her illness;" and Mr. Cromek, speaking of the same "day of parting love," gives some further particulars. "This adieu,” says that zealous inquirer into the details of Burns's story," was performed with all those simple and striking ceremonials, which rustic sentiment has devised to prolong tender emotions, and to impose awe. The lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook -they laved their hands in the limpid stream-and, holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other. They parted-never to meet again." It is proper to add, that Mr. Cromek's story has recently been confirmed very strongly by the accidental discovery of a Bible presented by Burns to Mary Campbell, in the possession of her still surviving sister at Ardrossan. Upon the boards of the first volume is inscribed, in Burns's hand-writing,-" And ye shall not swear by my name falsely-I am the Lord."-Levit. chap. xix. v. 12. On the second volume, -"Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oath."-St. Matth. chap. v., v. 33. And, on a blank leaf of either,” Robert Burns, Mossgiel." How lasting was the poet's remembrance of this pure love, and its tragic termination, will be seen hereafter. Highland Mary seems to have died ere her lover had made any of his more serious attempts in poetry. In the Epistle to Mr. Sillar, (as we have already hinted), the very earliest, according to Gilbert, of these attempts, the poet celebrates his Davie and his Jean." This was Jean Armour, a young woman, a step, if any thing, above Burns's own rank in life, the daughter of a respectable man, a master-mason, in the village of Mauchline, where she was at the time the reigning toast, and who still survives, as the respected widow of our poet. There are numberless allusions to her maiden charms in the best pieces which he produced at Mossgiel; amongst others is the six Belles of Mauchline, at the head of whom she is placed. "In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a'; "Miss Millar is fine, Miss Markland's divine, Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw; The time is not yet come,, in which all the details of this story can be expected. Jean Armour found herself pregnant. Burns's worldly circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was informed of Miss Armour's condition; and the first announcement of it staggered him like a blow. He saw nothing for it but to fly the country at once; and, in a note to James Smith of Mauchline, the confidant of his amour, he thus wrote:-" Against two things I am fixed as fate-staying at home, and owning her conjugally. The first, by Heaven, I will not do! -the last, by hell, I will never do!-A good God bless you, and make you happy, up to the warmest weeping wish of parting friendship. . . . . . If you see Jean, tell her I will meet her, so help me God, in my hour of need." The lovers met accordingly; and the result of the meeting was what was to be anticipated from the tenderness and the manliness of Burns's feelings. All dread of personal inconvenience yielded at once to the tears of the woman he loved, and, ere they parted, he gave into her keeping a written acknowledgment of marriage. This, under the circumstances, and produced by a person in Miss Armour's condition, according to the Scots. law, was to be accepted as legal evidence of an irregular marriage having really taken place; it being of course understood that the marriage was to be formally avowed as soon as the consequences of their imprudence could no longer be concealed from her family. The disclosure was deferred to |