half-lines, and single words that, because of something in them most exquisitely true to nature, had survived the rest of the compositions to which they had long ago belonged, were sometimes adopted by him, almost unconsciously it might seem, in his finest inspirations; and oftener still sounded in his ear like a key-note, on which he pitched his own plaintive tune of the heart till the voice and language of the old and new days were but as one.' He never failed to surpass what he imitated; he added fruit to the tree and fragrance to the flower. That his songs are a solace to Scottish hearts in far lands we know from many sources; the poetic testimony of an inspired witness is all we shall call for at present:

'Encanip'd by Indian rivers wild,
The soldier, resting on his arms,
In Burns's carol sweet recalls

The scenes that bless'd him when a child,
And glows and gladdens at the charms
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls.'

A want of chivalry has been instanced as a radical fault in the lyrics of Burns. He certainly is not of the number who approach beauty with much awe or reverence, and who raise loveliness into an idol for man to fall down and worship. The polished courtesies and romantic affectations of high society had not found their way among the maidens of Kyle; the midnight tryste, and the stolen interview-the rapture to meet-and the anguish to part-the secret vow, and the scarce audible whisper, were dear to their bosoms; and they were unacquainted with moving in parallel lines, and breathing sighs into roses, in the affairs of the heart. To draw a magic circle of affection round those he loved, which could not be passed without lowering them from the station of angels, forms no part of the lyrical system of Burns' poetic wooing: there is no affectation in him; he speaks like one unconscious of the veneered and varnished civilities of artificial life; he feels that true love is unacquainted with fashionable distinctions, and in all he has written has thought but of the natural man and woman, and the uninfluenced emotions of the heart. Some have charged him with a want of delicacy-an accusation easily answered: he is rapturous, he is warmed, he is impassioned-his heart cannot contain its ecstasies; he glows with emotion as a crystal goblet

with wine; but in none of his best songs is there the least indelicacy. Love is with him a leveller; passion and feeling are of themselves as little influenced by fashion and manners as the wind is in blowing, or the sun is in shining; chivalry, and even notions of delicacy, are changeable things; our daughters speak no longer with the free tongues of their great-grandmothers, and young men no longer challenge wild lions, or keep dangerous castles, in honour of their ladies' eyes.

The prose of Burns has much of the original merit of his poetry; but it is seldom so pure, so natural, and so sustained. It abounds with bright bits, fine out-flash. ings, gentle emotions, and uncommon warmth and ardour. It is very unequal; sometimes it is simple and vigorous; now and then inflated and cumbrous; and he not seldom labours to say weighty and decided things, in which a double double toil and trouble' sort of labour is visible. 'But hundreds even of his most familiar letters'-I adopt the words of Wilson-' are perfectly artless, though still most eloquent compositions. Simple we may not call them, so rich are they in fancy, so overflowing in feeling, and dashed off in every other paragraph with the easy boldness of a great master, conscious of his strength even at times when, of all things in the world, he was least solicitous about display; while some there are so solemn, so sacred, so religious, that he who can read them with an unstirred heart can have no trust, no hope, in the immortality of the soul.' Those who desire to feel him in his strength must taste him in his Scottish spirit. There he spoke the language of life: in English, he spoke that of education; he had to think in the former before he could express himself in the latter. In the language in which his mother sung and nursed him he excelled; a dialect reckoned barbarous by scholars, grew classic and elevated when uttered by the tongue of ROBERT BURNS.

Of the family and fame of the Poet something should be said. Good and active friends bestirred themselves after his death: Currie munificently wrote his life and edited his works: Robert, his eldest son, was placed in the Stamp-office by Lord Sidmouth: cadetships in India were generously obtained for William and James by Sir James Shaw, who otherwise largely befriended the family and Lord Panmure nobly presented one hundred

pounds annually to his widow, till the success of her sons in India enabled them to interpose, and take-not without remonstrance-that pious duty on themselves. The venerable Mrs. Burns lives in the house where her eminent husband died: all around her has an air of comfort, and she has been enabled to save a small sum out of her annual income: her brother, a London merchant of much respectability, has long interested himself in her affairs: and her brother in-law, Gilbert, died lately, after having established his family successfully in the world.

The citizens of my native Dumfries feel the honour which the Poet's ashes confer on them: Mill-hole-brae has been named Burns-street: the walks are reverenced where he loved to muse; and this grave may be traced by the well-trodden pathways which pass the unnoticed tombs of the learned, the pious, the brave, and the fardescended, and lead to that of the inspired Peasant. Honours have elsewhere been liberally paid to his name: a fair monument is raised to him on the Doon : a noble statue, from the hand of Flaxman, stands in Edinburgh; and Burns-clubs celebrate his birth-day in the chief towns and cities of Britain. On the banks of the Amazons, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Indus, and the Ganges, his name is annually invoked and his songs sung: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Campbell, have celebrated him in verse; statues are made from his chief characters; pictures painted from his vivid delineations; and even the rafters of Alloway-kirk have been formed into ornaments for the necks of ladies, and quaighs for the hands of men. Such is the influence of genius!

The following beautiful tribute to the memory of Burns is by Mr. Roscoe :

Rear high thy bleak majestic hills,

Thy shelter'd valleys proudly spread,
And, Scotia, pour thy thousand rills,

And wave thy heaths with blossoms red:

But, ah! what poet now shall tread

Thy airy heights, thy woodland reign,

Since he, the sweetest bard, is dead,
That ever breathed the soothing strain!

Mrs. Burns died 1834.

As green thy towering pines may grow,
As clear thy streams may speed along,
As bright thy summer suns may glow,

As gaily charm thy feathery throng;
But now, unheeded is the song,

And dull and lifeless all around,
For his wild harp lies all unstrung,
And cold the hand that waked its sound.

What though thy vigorous offspring rise,
In arts, in arms, thy sons excel;
Though beauty in thy daughters' eyes,
And health in every feature dwell;
Yet who shall now their praises tell,

In strains impassion'd, fond, and free,
Since he no more the song shall swell
To love, and liberty, and thee!

With step-dame eye and frown severe
His hapless youth why didst thou view?
For all thy joys to him were dear,

And all his vows to thee were due:
Nor greater bliss his bosom knew,

In opening youth's delightful prime,
Than when thy favouring ear he drew
To listen to his chanted rhyme.
Thy lonely wastes and frowning skies
To him were all with rapture fraught;
He heard with joy the tempest rise

That waked him to sublimer thought;
And oft thy winding dells he sought,

Where wild flowers pour'd their rathe perfum

And with sincere devotion brought

To thee the summer's earliest bloom.

But ah! no fond maternal smile
His unprotected youth enjoy'd;
His limbs inured to early toil,

His days with early hardships tried!
And more to mark the gloomy void,
And bid him feel his misery,
Before his infant eyes would glide
Day-dreams of immortality.
Yet, not by cold neglect depress'd,
With sinewy arm he turn'd the soil,
Sunk with the evening sun to rest,

And met at morn his earliest smile.
Waked by his rustic pipe meanwhile
The powers of fancy came along,

And sooth'd his lengthen'd hours of toil
With native wit and sprightly song.

-Ah! days of bliss too swiftly fled,

When vigorous health from labour springs,

And bland Contentment sooths the bed,

And Sleep his ready opiate brings;

And hovering round on airy wings
Float the light forms of young Desire,

That of unutterable things

The soft and shadowy hope inspire.
Now spells of mightier power prepare,
Bid brighter phantoms round him dance;
Let Flattery spread rer viewless snare,
And Fame attract his vagrant glance;

Let sprightly Pleasure too advance,
Unveil'd her eyes, unclasp'd her zone,
Till lost in love's delirious trance,

He scorn the joys his youth has known.

Let Friendship pour her brightest blaze,
Expanding all the bloom of soul;

And Mirth concentre all her rays,

And point them from the sparkling bowl; And let the careless moments roll

In social pleasures unconfined,

And confidence that spurns control
Unlock the inmost springs of mind!
And lead his steps those bowers among,
Where elegance with splendour vies,
Or Science bids her favour'd throng
To more refined sensations rise:
Beyond the peasant's humbler joys,
And freed from each laborious strife,
There let him learn the bliss to prize
That waits the sons of polish'd life.

Then, whilst his throbbing veins beat high
With every impulse of delight,
Dash from his tips the cup of joy,

And shroud the scene in shades of night;
And let Despair with wizard light
Disclose the yawning gulf below,

And pour incessant on his sight

Her spectred ills and shapes of woe:

And shew beneath a cheerless shed,

With sorrowing heart and streaming eyes
In silent grief where droops her head,
The partner of his early joys;

And let his infants' tender cries
His fond parental succour claim,
And bid him hear in agonies

A husband's and a father's name.

'Tis done, the powerful charm succeeds;
His high reluctant spirit bends;

In bitterness of soul he bleeds,
Nor longer with his fate contends.
An idiot laugh the welkin rends
As Genius thus degraded lies;
Till pitying Heaven the veil extends
That shrouds the Poet's ardent eyes.

Rear high thy bleak majestic hills,
Thy shelter'd valleys proudly spread,
And, Scotia, pour thy thousand rills,
And wave thy heaths with blossoms red;

But never more shall poet tread

Thy airy heights, thy woodland reign, Since he, the sweetest bard, is dead

That ever breathed the soothing strain.