than he has done, or than that other passionate pilgrim of the realm of song, Byron, has done, to Milton or Shakespeare. His nearest approach to Shakespeare and Milton must be held to be that he wrote for the same theatre as they-not for an age, but for all time. If only because the essential passions of human nature are so peculiarly and exclusively the sphere in which his genius moves, the question whether on the whole the influence of his poetry is wholesome, is a question touching the perpetuity of his fame. It is the native sphere of morality and religion in which his genius disports itself, and hence, though it cannot be required of poetry that it should directly inculcate virtue and piety, yet poetry like his has only the choice of recognising at their proper value the highest instincts and feelings of human nature, or ensuring its own consignment to neglect and oblivion by clashing with them. For, as critics have at length discovered, poetry is not meant for critics but for mankind. If it is of use to mankind it has a chance of life; if not it must die. On these terms, like other poets, Burns is a competitor for immortality, and on these terms, though his claim has been variously judged, it is now generally admitted to be strong. It is true, as has been already acknowledged, that touches of grossness and obscenity disfigure some of his best pieces, and are the execrable characteristics of some of his worst. It is true also that religious people have had much fault to find with The Holy Fair and Holy Willie, and other satires of his in which religious, or rather ecclesiastical things and personages, have been held up to ridicule and But the one fault he shares with many of his brother poets whose immortality is not doubtful; the other to most persons is rendered venial by a doubt as to whether it is not rather a capital merit than an unpardonable sin. His morality is not always perfect; sometimes it sanctions or applauds what cannot be defended. But he never ridicules religion except when the religion in question is in the nature of things ridiculous, and only not so by an accident of time or place. On the other hand, it is a world from which virtue and piety are not absent into which he habitually escapes from scenes in the actual world in which, with most of his generation, he was tempted to linger too long and too agreeably. Sordid and even revolting as some of these scenes are, they are yet to the reader of all that he has written only grotesque openings into a world beyond and above them in which everything fair and good has its own place-love and truth, joy in all that is pure and high, sorrow over all that is weak and low and scorn. sad, in the life of man. Hypocrisy, superstition, fanaticism owe him a heavy grudge. But in Scotland at least, and where The Holy Fair is remembered and Holy Willie is not unknown, spiritual religion owes him little but thanks. On this subject only a word more need be said. Burns lives above all, and is destined to live, in his songs. In them, at any rate, he lives for an infinitely larger public than knows much of him as the author of Halloween or The Jolly Beggars. By his songs, though they too furnish his more austere censors with complaint, the service which he rendered to morality and religion is one the value of which can hardly be over-estimated. It is a remarkable fact that a country, the history of which is so much, as that of Scotland is, a history of religious or at any rate ecclesiastical events, especially battles, a country too which has not been unprolific in poetical talent, should have given birth to almost no religious poetry worth the name. Yet hardly is religious poetry a more prolific crop in the country of Dunbar and Burns and Scott than figs or peaches or bananas. It may be after all that other passions than those spiritual ones which find expression for themselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, have been chiefly concerned in those religious movements of which Scottish history is a tedious record. But be that as it may, Burns inherited from his poetical ancestry a wealth not of hymns but of songs and ballads, chiefly of course amatory. They inspired him with harmonies compared with which they are themselves harsh and out of tunethe inimitable airs to which they were sung were reverberated from his mind in words in which there is the very soul of melody. In this process of transmitting what he received from the past to the future to which he looked forward as a better day for all mankind, he changed, as regards morality, silver into gold, dirt into the fragrance of lilies and violets, foul dirt into the breath of meadows and of shady paths through woods and by the banks of murmuring streams. As a reformer of one branch of literature, when centuries that are centuries still have dwindled into years, he may perhaps be named along with John Knox and Walter Scott in the history of the Scottish Reformation. Anyhow, judged by his songs, Burns' fame has little to fear from any question being raised as to whether the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the instance of his poetry is really what it seems-a tree that is good for food and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. JOHN SERVICE. MARY MORISON. TUNE-Bide ye yet.' O Mary, at thy window be, It is the wished, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see, That make the miser's treasure poor; How blithely wad I bide the stoure', A weary slave frae sun to sun; Could I the rich reward secure, The lovely Mary Morison. Yestreen, when to the trembling string The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw; Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, And yon the toast of a' the town, I sigh'd, and said amang them a', 'Ye are na Mary Morison.' O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? A thought ungentle canna be MY NANIE, O. Behind yon hills where Lugar flows, ' dust. The westlin wind blaws loud an' shill: The night's baith mirk and rainy, O! My Nanie's charming, sweet, an' young; A country lad is my degree, An' few there be that ken me, O; But what care I how few they be? I'm welcome ay to Nanie, O. My riches a's my penny-fee, An' I maun guide it cannie, O: But warl's gear ne'er troubles me, My thoughts are a', my Nanie, O. Our auld Guidman delights to view His sheep an' kye thrive bonie, O; But I'm as blythe that hauds his pleugh, An' has nae care but Nanie, O. Come weal, come woe, I care na by, I'll tak what Heaven will sen' me, O; Nae ither care in life have I, But live, an' love my Nanie, O. GREEN GROW THE RASHES. A FRAGMENT. Chorus. Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, There's nought but care on ev'ry han', But gie me a cannie hour at e'en, For you sae douce, ye sneer at this, Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS OF POOR MAILIE, THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE. 1 hoof. AN UNCO MOURNFU' TALE, 2 As Mailie an' her lambs thegither Wi' glowrin een, an' lifted han's, 3 loop. wrestled. A neibor herd-callan about three-fourths as wise as other folk. |