fusions. Burns knew that he was now engaged on a work destined for the eye and ear of refinement; he laboured throughout, under the salutary feeling, "virginibus puerisque canto" and the consequences have been happy indeed for his own fame-for the literary taste, and the national music, of Scotland; and, what is of far higher importance, the moral and national feelings of his countrymen. In almost all these productions-certainly in all that deserve to be placed in the first rank of his compositions-Burns made use of his native dialect. He did so, too, in opposition to the advice of almost all the lettered correspondents he had-more especially of Dr. Moore, who, in his own novels, never ventured on more than a few casual specimens of Scottish colloquy -following therein the example of his illustrious predecessor Smollett; and not foreseeing that a triumph over English prejudice, which Smollett might have achieved, had he pleased to make the effort, was destined to be the prize of Burns's perseverance in obeying the dictates of native taste and judgment. Our poet received such suggestions, for the most part, in silence-not choosing to argue with others on a matter which concerned only his own feelings; but in writing to Mr. Thomson, he had no occasion either to conceal or disguise his sentiments. "These English songs," says he, "gravel me to death. I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue ;" and again, "so much for nambypamby. I may, after all, try my hand at it in Scots verse. There I am always most at home." +-He, besides, would have considered it as a sort of national crime to do any thing that must tend to divorce the music of his native land from her peculiar idiom. The "genius loci" was never worshipped more fervently than by Burns. "I am such an enthusiast," says he, that in the course of my several peregrinations through Scotland, I made a pilgrimage to the individual spot from which every song took its rise, Lochaber and the Braes of Ballenden excepted. So far as the locality, either from the title of the air or the tenor of the song, could be ascertained, I have paid my devotions at the particular shrine of every Scottish Muse." With such feelings, he was not likely to touch with an irreverent hand the old fabric of our national song, or to meditate a lyrical revolution for the pleasure of strangers. "There is," says he, "a naiveté, a pastoral simplicity in a slight intermixture of Scots words and phraseology, which is more in unison (at least to my taste, and I will add, to every genuine Caledonian taste), with the simple pathos or rustic sprightliness of our native music, than any English verses whatever. One hint more let me give you :-Whatever Mr. Pleyel does, let him not alter one iota of the original airs; I mean in the song department; but let our Scottish national music preserve its native features. They are, I own, frequently wild and irreducible to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect." § 86 Of the delight with which Burns laboured for Mr. Thomson's Collection, his letters contain some lively descriptions. "You cannot imagine," says he, 7th April 1793, "how much this business has added to my enjoyments. What with my early attachment to ballads, your book and ballad Correspondence with Mr. Thomson, p. 111. + Ibid. p. 80. Ibid. p. 38. § It may amuse the reader to hear, that in spite of all Burns's success in the use of his native dialect, even an eminently spirited bookseller to whom the manuscript of Waverley was submitted, hesitated for some time about publishing it, on account of the Scots dialogue interwoven in the novel. making are now as completely my hobbyhorse as ever fortification was Uncle Toby's; so I'll e'en canter it away till I come to the limit of my race, (God grant I may take the right side of the winning-post), and then, cheerfully looking back on the honest folks with whom I have been happy, I shall say or sing, Sae merry as we a' hae been,' and raising my last looks to the whole human race, the last words of the voice of Coila shall be Good night, and joy be wi' you, a"." "Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is, I can never," says Burns, " compose for it. My way is this: I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression, -then choose my theme,-compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then,-look out for objects in nature round me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy, and workings of my bosom,-humming every now and then the air, with the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen goes. Seriously, this, at home, is almost invariably my way. What cursed egotism !" + In this correspondence with Mr. Thomson, and in Cromek's later publication, the reader will find a world of interesting details about the particular circumstances under which these immortal songs were severally written. They are all, or almost all, in fact, part and parcel of the poet's personal history. No man ever made his muse more completely the companion of his own individual life. A new flood of light has just been poured on the same subject, in Mr. Allan Cunningham's " Collection of Scottish Songs;" unless, therefore, I were to transcribe volumes, and all popular volumes too, it is impossible to go into the details of this part of the poet's history. The reader must be contented with a few general memoranda ; e. g. "Do you think that the sober gin-horse routine of existence could inspire a man with life, and love, and joy,-could fire him with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos equal to the genius of your book? No, no. Whenever I want to be more than ordinary in song-to be in some degree equal to your divine airs-do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation? Tout au contraire. I have a glorious recipe, the very one that for his own use was invented by the Divinity of healing and poetry, when erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus,-I put myself on a regimen of admiring a fine woman.” ‡ "I can assure you I was never more in earnest.-Conjugal love is a passion which I deeply feel, and highly venerate; but, somehow, it does not make such a figure in poesy as that other species of the passion, "Where love is liberty, and nature law." Musically speaking, the first is an instrument, of which the gamut is scanty and confined, but the tones inexpressibly sweet; while the last has powers equal to all the intellectual modulations of the human soul. Still I am a very poet in my enthusiasm of the passion. The welfare and happiness of the beloved object is the first and inviolate sentiment that pervades my • Correspondence with Mr. Thomson, p. 57. + Ibid. p. 119. soul; and-whatever pleasures I might wish for, or whatever raptures they might give me yet, if they interfere with that first principle, it is having these pleasures at a dishonest price; and justice forbids, and generosity disdains the purchase." * Of all Burns's love songs, the best, in his own opinion, was that which begins, "Yestreen I had a pint o' wine, Mr. Cunningham says, "if the poet thought so, I am sorry for it;" while the Reverend Hamilton Paul fully concurs in the author's own estimate of the performance. There is in the same collection a love song, which unites the suffrages, and ever will do so, of all men. It has furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott has said that that motto is "worth a thousand romances." "Had we never loved sae kindly, We had ne'er been broken-hearted." There are traditions which connect Burns with the heroines of these bewitching songs. 66 I envy no one the task of inquiring minutely in how far these traditions rest on the foundation of truth. They refer at worst to occasional errors. Many insinuations," says Mr. Gray, "have been made against the poet's character as a husband, but without the slightest proof; and I might pass from the charge with that neglect which it merits; but I am happy to say that I have in exculpation the direct evidence of Mrs. Burns herself, who, among many amiable and respectable qualities, ranks a veneration for the memory of her departed husband, whom she never names but in terms of the profoundest respect and the deepest regret, to lament his misfortunes, or to extol his kindnesses to herself, not as the momentary overflowings of the heart in a season of penitence for offences generously forgiven, but an habitual tenderness, which ended only with his life. I place this evidence, which I am proud to bring forward on her own authority, against a thousand anonymous calumnies." + Among the effusions, not amatory, which our poet contributed to Mr. Thomson's Collection, the famous song of Bannockburn holds the first place. We have already seen in how lively a manner Burns's feelings were kindled when he visited that glorious field. According to tradition, the tune played when Bruce led his troops to the charge, was "Hey tuttie tattie;" and it was humming this old air as he rode by himself through Glenken, a wild district in Galloway, during a terrific storm of wind and rain, that the poet composed his immortal lyric in its first and noblest form. This is one more instance of his delight in the sterner aspects of nature. "Come, winter, with thine angry howl, And raging bend the naked tree-" "There is hardly," says he in one of his letters, "there is scarcely any earthly object gives me more-I do not know if I should call it pleasure Correspondence with Mr. Thomson, p. 191. + Letter in Gilbert Burns's Edition, vol. I. Appendix, p. 437. --but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me-than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season for devotion: my mind is wrapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, to use the pompous language of the Hebrew Bard, walks on the wings of the wind."-To the last, his best poetry was produced amidst scenes of solemn desolation. CHAPTER IX. CONTENTS.-The poet's mortal period approaches-His peculiar temperament-Symptoms of premature old age-These not diminished by narrow circumstances, by chagrin from neglect, and by the death of a Daughter-The poet misses public patronage: and even the fair fruits of his own genius—the appropriation of which is debated for the casuists who yielded to him merely the shell-His magnanimity when death is at hand; his interviews, conversations, and addresses as a dying man—Dies, 21st July 1796—Public funeral, at which many attend, and amongst the rest the future Premier of England, who had steadily refused to acknowledge the poet, living-His family munificently provided for by the public-Analysis of character-His integrity, religious state, and genius-Strictures upon him and his writings by Scott, Campbell, Byron, and others. "I dread thee, Fate, relentless and severe, We are drawing near the close of this great poet's mortal career; and I would fain hope the details of the last chapter may have prepared the humane reader to contemplate it with sentiments of sorrow, pure and undebased with any considerable intermixture of less genial feelings. For some years before Burns was lost to his country, it is sufficiently plain that he had been, on political grounds, an object of suspicion and distrust to a large portion of the population that had most opportunity of observing him. The mean subalterns of party had, it is very easy to suppose, delighted in decrying him on pretexts, good, bad, and indifferent, equally— to their superiors; and hence, who will not willingly believe it? the temporary and local prevalence of those extravagantly injurious reports, the essence of which Dr. Currie, no doubt, thought it his duty, as a biographer, to extract and circulate. A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me, that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dumfries one fine summer's evening, about this time, to attend a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, " Nay, nay, my young friend,-that's all over now;" and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's pathetic ballad, "His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new: |