peasant who had received it from nature as his patrimony, Burns felt it to be nowise inconsistent with the stubbornest independence that ever supported a son of the soil in his struggles with necessity, reverently to doff his bonnet, and bow his head in their presence with proud humility. Jeffrey did himself honor by acknowledging that he had been at first misled by occasional splenetic passages, in his estimation of Burns's character, and by afterwards joining, in eloquent terms, in the praise bestowed by other kindred spirits on the dignity of its independence. "It is observed," says Campbell with his usual felicity, "that he boasts too much of his independence; but in reality this boast is neither frequent nor obtrusive; and it is in itself the expression of a noble and laudable feeling. So far from calling up disagreeable recollections of rusticity, his sentiments triumph, by their natural energy, over those false and artificial distinctions which the mind is but too apt to form in allotting its sympathies to the sensibilities of the rich and poor. He carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make us dole out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers and cottagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, to make us enter into their passions and interests, and share our hearts with them as brothers and sisters of the human species."

In nothing else is the sincerity of his soul more apparent than in his Friendship. All who had ever been kind to him he loved till the last. It mattered not to him what was their rank or condition-he returned, and more than returned their affection—he was, with regard to such ties, indeed of the family of the faithful. The consciousness of his infinite superiority to the common race of men, and of his own fame and glory as a Poet, never for a moment made him forget the humble companions of his obscure life, or regard with a haughty eye any face that had ever worn towards him an expression of benevolence. The Smiths, the Muirs, the Browns, and the Parkers, were to him as the Aikens, the Ballantynes, the Hamiltons, the Cunninghams, and the Ainslies-these as the Stewarts, the Gregorys, the Blairs and the Mackenzies these again as the Grahams and the Erskines→→→ and these as the Daers, the Glencairns, and the other men of rank who were kind to him-all were his friends-his benefac

tors.

His heart expanded towards them all, and throbbed with gratitude. His eldest son-and he has much of his father's intellectual power-bears his own Christian name-the others are James Glencairn, and William Nicol-so called respectively after a nobleman to whom he thought he owed all-and a schoolmaster to whom he owed nothing-yet equally entitled to bestow or receive that honor.

There is a beautiful passage in his Second Common Place Book, showing how deeply he felt, and how truly he valued, the patronage which the worthy alone can bestow. "What pleasure is in the power of the fortunate and happy, by their notice and patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the heart of depressed worth! I am not so angry with mankind for their deaf economy of the purse. The goods of this world cannot be divided without being lessened; but why be a niggard of that which bestows bliss on a fellow creature, yet takes nothing from our own means of enjoyment? Why wrap ourselves in the cloak of our own better fortune, and turn away our eyes lest the wants and cares of our brother mortals should disturb the selfish apathy of our souls ?" What was the amount of all the kindness shown him by the Earl of Glencairn? That excellent nobleman at once saw that he was a great genius,―gave him the hand of friendship—and in conjunction with Sir John Whiteford got the members of the Caledonian Hunt to subscribe for guinea instead of six shilling copies of his volume. That was all-and it was well. For that Burns was as grateful as for the preservation of life.

"The bridegroom may forget the bride

Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour hath been;

The mother may forget the child

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,

And a' that thou hast done for me."

He went into mourning on the death of his benefactor, and desired to know where he was to be buried, that he might attend the funeral, and drop a tear into his grave.

The "Lament for Glencairn" is one of the finest of Ele

gies. We cannot agree with those critics-some of them of deserved reputation-who have objected to the form in which the poet chose to give expression to his grief. Imagination, touched by human sorrow, loves to idealize; because thereby it purifies, elevates, and ennobles realities, without impairing the pathos belonging to them in nature. Many great poets-nor do we fear now to mention Milton among the number-have in such strains celebrated the beloved dead. They have gone out, along with the object of their desire, from the real living world in which they had been united, and shadowed forth in imagery that bears a high similitude to it, all that was most spiritual in the communion now broken in upon by the mystery of death. So it is in the Lycidas-and so it is in this "Lament." Burns imagines an aged Bard giving vent to his sorrow for his noble master's untimely death, among the "fading yellow woods, that wav'd o'er Lugar's winding stream." That name at once awakens in us the thought of his own dawning genius; and though his head was yet dark as the raven's wing, and "the locks were bleached white with time" of the Apparition evoked with his wailing harp among the "winds lamenting thro' the caves," yet we feel on the instant that the imaginary mourner is one and the same with the real-that the old and the young are inspired with the same passion, and have but one heart. We are taken out of the present time, and placed in one far remote-yet by such removal the personality of the poet, so far from being weakened, is enveloped in a melancholy light that shows it more endearingly to our eyes-the harp of other years sounds with the sorrow that never dies-the words heard are the everlasting language of affection-and is not the object of such lamentation aggrandized by thus being lifted into the domain of poetry?

"I've seen sae mony changefu' years,

On earth I am a stranger grown;
I wander in the ways of men,
Alike unknowing and unknown;
Unheard, unpitied, unreliev'd:

I bear alane my lade o' care,

For silent, low, on beds of dust,

Lie a' that would my sorrows share.

"And last (the sum of a' my griefs!)

My noble master lies in clay;

THE FLOW'R AMANG OUR BARONS BOLD,

HIS COUNTRY'S PRIDE, HIS COUNTRY'S STAY ""

We go along with such a mourner in his exaltation of the cha racter of the mourned-great must have been the goodness to generate such gratitude-that which would have been felt to be exaggeration, if expressed in a form not thus imaginative, is here brought within our unquestioning sympathy-and we are prepared to return to the event in its reality, with undiminished fervor, when Burns re-appears in his own character without any disguise, and exclaims

"Awake thy last sad voice, my harp,

The voice of wo and wild despair;
Awake, resound thy latest lay,

Then sleep in silence evermair!
And thou, my last, best, only friend,
That fillest an untimely tomb,
Accept this tribute from the bard

Thou brought from fortune's mirkest gloom.

"In poverty's low, barren vale,

Thick mists, obscure, involv'd me round;
Though oft I turned the wistful eye,

Nae ray of fame was to be found:

Thou found'st me, like the morning sun,
That melts the fogs in limpid air,
The friendless bard and rustic song

Became alike thy fostering care."

The Elegy on ແ Captain Matthew Henderson "—of whom little or nothing is now known-is a wonderfully fine flight of imagination, but it wants, we think, the deep feeling of the "Lament." It may be called a Rapture. Burns says, "It is a tribute to a man I loved much ;" and in "The Epitaph" which follows it, he draws his character-and a noble one it is-in many points resembling his own. With the exception of the opening and concluding stanzas, the Elegy consists entirely of a supplication to Nature to join with him in lamenting the death of the "ae best fellow e'er was born ;" and though to our ears

there is something grating in that term, yet the disagreeableness of it is done away by the words immediately following:

The poet is no sooner on the wing, than he rejoices in his strength of pinion, and with equal ease soars and stoops. We know not where to look, in the whole range of poetry, for an Invocation to the great and fair objects of the external world, so rich and various in imagery, and throughout so sustained; and here again we do not fear to refer to the Lycidas—and to say that Robert Burns will stand a comparison with John Milton.

"But oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,
With wild thyme, and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn :

The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen,

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,

When first the white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues,
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rath primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The growing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,