66 My ness of the genius that had been given him to idealize it. heart rejoiced in Nature's joy" he says, remembering the beautiful happiness of a summer day reposing on the woods; and from that line we know how intimate had been his communion with Nature long before he had indited to her a single lay of love. And still as he wandered among her secret haunts he thought of her poets-with a fearful hope that he might one day be of the number—and most of all of Ferguson and Ramsay, because they belonged to Scotland, were Scottish in all their looks, and all their language, in the very habits of their bodies, and in the very frames of their souls-humble names now indeed compared with his own, but to the end sacred in his generous and grateful bosom; for at "The Farmer's Ingle" his imagination had kindled into the "Cottar's Saturday Night;" in the "Gentle Shepherd" he had seen many a happy sight that had furnished the matter, we had almost said inspired the emotion, of some of his sweetest and most gladsome songs. In his own every-day working world he walked as a man contented with the pleasure arising in his mere human heart; but that world the poet could purify and elevate at will into a celestial sphere, still lightened by Scottish skies, still melodious with Scottish streams, still inhabited by Scottish life-sweet as reality dear as truth-yet visionary as fiction's dream, and felt to be in part the work of his own creation. Proudly, therefore, on that poorest soil the peasant poet bade speed the plough-proudly he stooped his shoulders to the sack of corn, itself a cart-load— proudly he swept the scythe that swathed the flowery herbage -proudly he grasped the sickle-but tenderly too he "turned the weeder clips aside, and spared the symbol dear." Well was he entitled to say to his friend Aiken, in the dedica. tory stanza of the Cottar's Saturday Night: "My loved, my honored, most respected friend! No mercenary bard his homage pays; With honest pride I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise." All that he hoped to make by the Kilmarnock edition was twenty pounds to carry him to the West Indies, heedless of the yellow fever. At Edinburgh fortune hand in hand with fame descended on the bard in a shower of gold; but he had not courted “the smiles of the fickle goddess," and she soon wheeled away with scornful laughter out of his sight for ever and a day. His poetry had been composed in the fields, with not a plack in the pocket of the poet; and we verily believe that he thought no more of the circulating medium than did the poor mouse in whose fate he saw his own-but more unfortunate! "Still thou art blest compared wi' me! On prospects drear! An' forward, though I canna see, I guess and fear." At Ellisland his colley bore on his collar, "Robert Burns, poet;" and on his removal to Dumfries, we know that he indulged the dream of devoting all his leisure time to poetry-a dream how imperfectly realized! Poor Johnson, an old Edinburgh friend, begged in his poverty help to his " Museum," and Thomson, not even an old Edinburgh acquaintance, in his pride -no ignoble pride-solicited it for his "Collection ;" and fired by the thought of embellishing the body of Scottish song, he spurned the gentle and guarded proffer of remuneration in money, and set to work as he had done of yore in the spirit of love, assured from sweet experience that inspiration was its own reward. Sell a song! as well sell a wild-flower plucked from a spring-bank at sun-rise. The one pervading feeling does indeed expand itself in a song, like a wild flower in the breath and dew of morning, which before was but a bud, and we are touched with a new sense of beauty at the full disclosure. As a song should always be simple, the flower we liken it to is the lily or the violet. The leaves of the lily are white, but it is not a monotonous whiteness-the leaves of the violet, sometimes "dim as the lids of Cytherea's eyes "-for Shakspeare has said soare, when well and happy, blue as her eyes themselves, while they looked languishingly on Adonis. Yet the exquisite color seems of different shades in its rarest richness; and even so as lily or violet shiftingly the same, should be a song in its simplicity, variously tinged with fine distinctions of the one color of that pervading feeling-now brighter, now dimmer, as open and shut the valve of that mystery, the heart. Sell a song! Nono-said Burns-" You shall have hundreds for nothing-and we shall all sail down the stream of time together, now to merry, and now to sorrowful music, and the dwellers on its banks, as we glide by, shall bless us by name, and call us of the Immortals." It was in this way that Burns was beguiled by the remem. brance of the inspirations of his youthful prime, into the belief that it would be absolutely sordid to write songs for money; and thus he continued for years to enrich others by the choicest products of his genius, himself remaining all the while, alas! too poor. The richest man in the town was not more regular in the settlement of his accounts, but sometimes on Saturday nights he had not wherewithal to pay the expenses of the week's subsistence, and had to borrow a pound note. He was more ready to lend one, and you know he died out of debt. But his family suffered privations it is sad to think of-though to be sure the children were too young to grieve, and soon fell asleep, and Jean was a cheerful creature, strong at heart, and proud of her famous Robin, the Poet of Scotland, whom the whole world admired, but she alone loved, and so far from ever upbraiding him, welcomed him at all hours to her arms and to her heart. It is all very fine talking about the delight he enjoyed in the composition of his matchless lyrics, and the restoration of all those faded and broken songs of other ages, burnished by a few touches of his hand to surpassing beauty; but what we lament is, that with the Poet it was not "No song, no supper," but "No supper for any song "—that with an infatuation singular even in the history of the poetic tribe, he adhered to what he had resolved, in the face of distress which, had he chosen it, he could have changed into comfort, and by merely doing so as all others did, have secured a competency to his wife and children. Infatuation! It is too strong a word-therefore substitute some other weaker in expression of blame-nay, let it be if so you will-some gentle term of praise and of pity; for in this most selfish world, 'tis so rare to be of self utterly regardless, that the scorn of pelf may for a moment be thought a virtue, even when indulged to the loss of the tenderly beloved. Yet the great natural affections have their duties superior over all others between man and man; and he who sets them aside, in the generosity or the joy of genius, must frequently feel that by such dereliction he has become amenable to conscience, and in hours when enthusiasm is tamed by reflection, cannot escape the tooth of remorse. How it would have kindled all his highest powers, to have felt assured that by their exercise in the Poet's own vocation he could not only keep want from his door "with stern alarum banishing sweet sleep," but clothe, lodge, and board "the wife and weans, as sumptuously as if he had been an absolute supervisor! In one article alone was he a man of expensive habitsit was quite a craze with him to have his Jean dressed genteelly -for she had a fine figure, and as she stepped along the green, you might have taken the matron for a maid, so light her foot, so animated her bearing, as if care had never imposed any burden on her not ungraceful shoulders heavier than the milk-pail she had learned at Mossgiel to bear on her head. 'Tis said that she was the first in her rank at Dumfries to sport a gingham gown, and Burns's taste in ribands had been instructed by the rainbow. To such a pitch of extravagance had he carried his craze that when dressed for church, Mrs. Burns, it was conjectured, could not have had on her person much less than the value of two pounds sterling money, and the boys, from their dress and demeanor, you might have mistaken for a gentleman's sons. Then he resolved they should have the best education going; and the Hon. the Provost, the Bailies, and Town Council, he petitioned thus: "The literary taste and liberal spirit of your good town have so ably filled the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very great object for a parent to have his children educated in them; still, to me a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the high school fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me. Some years ago your good town did me the honor of making me an honorary burgess, will you then allow me to request, that this mark of distinction may extend so far as to put me on a footing of a real freeman in the schools?" Had not "his income been so stinted," we know how he would have spent it. Then the world-the gracious and grateful world" wondered and of wondering found no end," how and why it happened that Burns was publishing no more poems. What was he about? Had his genius deserted him? Was the vein wrought out? of fine ore indeed, but thin, and now there was but rubbish. His contributions to Johnson were not much known, and but some six of his songs in the first half part of Thomson appeared during his life. But what if he had himself given to the world, through the channel of the regular trade, and for his own behoof, in Parts, or all at once, THOSE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY SONGS-new and old-original and restored-with all those disquisitions, annotations, and ever so many more, themselves often very poetry indeed-what would the world have felt, thought, said, and done then? She would at least not have believed that the author of the Cottar's Saturday Night was—a drunkard. And what would Burns have felt, thought, said, and done then? He would have felt that he was turning his divine gift to a sacred purpose he would have thought well of himself, and in that just appreciation there would have been peace-he would have said thousands on thousands of high and noble sentiments in discourses and in letters, with an untroubled voice and a steady pen, the sweet persuasive eloquence of the happy-he would have done greater things than it had before entered into his heart to conceive his drama of the Bruce would have come forth magnificent from an imagination elevated by the joy that was in his heart-his Scottish Georgics would have written themselves, and would have been pure Virgilian-Tale upon Tale, each a day's work or a week's, would have taken the shine out of Tam o' Shanter. And here it is incumbent on us to record our sentiments regarding Mr. Thomson's conduct towards Burns in his worst extremity, which has not only been assailed by "anonymous scribblers," whom perhaps he may rightly regard with contempt; but as he says in his letter to our esteemed friend, the ingenious |