LESLEY BAILLIE A FELICITOUS and much-esteemed song of Burns's is that beginning "O saw ye bonnie Lesley," which, he tells, was written to celebrate Miss Lesley Baillie, the daughter of Mr. Baillie of Mayfield in Ayrshire, and was a burst of the purest admiration. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, written on the 22nd August, 1792, he tells how, a few days before, Mr. Baillie, with his two daughters, had paid him the honour of a visit at Dumfries while on their way to England. He took his horse and accompanied them a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles. He fell, as he tells, at once deeply in love with Miss Lesley-yea-“ souse over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean "—and, on the way riding home, in the dark, did “justice to the sacred purity of his attachment" by composing the ballad:— O saw ye bonnie Lesley As she gaed o'er the Border? She's gane, like Alexander, To spread her conquests farther. To see her is to love her, And love but her for ever; For Nature made her what she is, Years before the occasion of this tribute, however, the poet had been struck by the charms of Lesley Baillie and her sister as well, for in July, 1788, he had written referring to both. "I declare one day I had the honour of dining at the Baillie's, I was almost in the predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on Moses' face for the glory that shone on it when he descended from Mount Horeb." Miss Lesley, in 1799, became the wife of Robert Cumming of Logie, and she died in Edinburgh in July, 1843. A year after "Bonnie Lesley" was written, Burns celebrated her again, in the song beginning: "Blythe hae I been on yon hill, As the lambs before me," which, sending to George Thomson, he says, " is one of the finest songs ever I made in my life; and besides is composed on a young lady, positively the most beautiful, lovely woman in the world." One sees from these outbursts that, however happy and contented the poet might be with his ain Jean, he could never look unmoved on the lovely faces and forms of other women. And while writing in the above all-captivated fashion about Lesley Baillie, he was confessing himself about the same time no less the slave of the bewitching "Chloris." But to believe that he would have abandoned the wife of his bosom for either would be an utterly unwarranted assumption. These were song-loves; song-loves, and no more. It has never been even hinted, of course, that Lesley Baillie was aught else. If she was not, then neither surely was Jean Lorimer, nor Deborah Davies, and many besides, whom he addressed in the most love-impassioned strains. Had Burns written love-songs only of women with whom he was really in love, instead of being ready always to laud in melting measures any lass he admired, the action-field of his muse had been so restricted that our song-book had lacked much of the variety and charm it possesses. Indeed, the joy is ours, and it is the delight of the nations to-day, that he could, in response to the glint of a lovely eye, throw himself into the position of the ardent lover, and sing with all the passion he did. When he affects to be complimentary merely, he seldom succeeds. JESSIE LEWERS LASTLY, and fittingly so, for the last should always be best, we come to the most charming of all Burns's song heroines -she to whom he dedicated, even on his deathbed, some of his tenderest and sweetest lyrics-Miss Jessie Lewers. Jessie was the sister of John Lewers, the poet's fellowexciseman, an amiable young woman, and a particular friend of Mrs. Burns, and, during the brief period of the bard's final distress, she acted the part of a ministering angel in the Burns household. From about the middle of April, 1796, the poet was rarely able to leave his room. His wife was in a delicate condition-approaching her confinement-and Jessie Lewers was much about the house, with a kind word, a sweet smile, and a tender and ready hand. Sometimes she played his favourite airs to him on the piano. And one morning the poet offered, if she would play any tune of which she was herself fond, and for which she desired new verses, that he would gratify her wish to the best of his ability. She accordingly played the air of an old nursery ditty, "The Wren's Nest," beginning: "The robin cam' to the wren's nest with which Mrs. Burns was wont to divert her children by singing. The result was that tenderest of all his lyrics, "O, wert Thou in the Cauld Blast," which was produced in a few minutes. They were minutes of Divine inspiration, for there are no verses within the whole realm of song-land more tenderly beautiful; and tenderness and beauty are the two words which alone can be applied to them. They express not the love of man for woman, as we generally find, but something more like what one might fancy to be the love of angel for child, it is so pure: O, wert thou in the cauld blast, On yonder lea, on yonder lea, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee. Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, The bield should be my bosom, Or were I in the wildest waste, Of earth and air, of earth and air, The desert were a paradise, If thou wert there, if thou wert there. Or were I monarch o' the globe, Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, The only jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen. He made several complimentary versicles on Jessie, one in the form of a toast, which he inscribed with his diamond on a crystal goblet : Fill me with the rosy wine, Mr. Brown, the surgeon, on one of his visits, brought an advertising sheet describing the contents of a menagerie of wild beasts then being exhibited in Dumfries. Burns, |