Currie, to make the letter agree with the legend, altered yesternight's evening walk into solitary wanderings. Burns was indeed a remarkable man, and yielded no doubt to strange impulses; but to compose a song 'in thunder, lightning, and in rain,' intimates such self-possession as few possess.' We can more readily believe that Burns wrote "yesternight's evening walk," to save himself the trouble of entering into any detail of his previous study of the subject, than that Syme told a downright lie. As to composing a song in a thunder-storm, Cuninghame-who is himself "a remarkable man," and has composed some songs worthy of being classed with those of Burns, would find it one of the easiest and pleasantest of feats; for lightning is among the most harmless vagaries of the electric fluid, and in a hilly country, seldom singes but worsted stockings and sheep. Burns sent the Address in its perfection to George Thomson— recommending it to be set to the old air-" Hey tuttie taittie according to Tradition, who cannot, however, be reasonably expected "to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"-Robert Bruce's march at the Battle of Bannockburn. A committee of taste sat on "Hey tuttie taittie," and pronounced it execrable. "I happened to dine yesterday," says Mr. Thomson, "with a party of your friends, to whom I read it. They were all charmed with it; entreated me to find out a suitable air for it, and reprobated the idea of giving it a tune so totally devoid of interest or grandeur as 'Hey tuttie taittie.' Assuredly your partiality for this tune must arise from the ideas associated in your mind by the tradition concerning it, for I never heard any person and I have conversed again and again with the greatest enthusiasts for Scottish airs-I say, I never heard any one speak of it as worthy of notice. I have been running over the whole hundred airs-of which I have lately sent you the list—and I think Lewie Gordon is most happily adapted to your ode, at least with a very slight alteration of the fourth line, which I shall presently submit to you. Now the variation I have to suggest upon the last line of each verse, the only line too short for the air, is as follows: Verse 1st, Or to glorious victory. 2d, Chains -chains and slavery. 3d, Let him, let him turn and flee. 4th, Let him bravely follow me. 5th, But they shall, they shall be free. 6th, Let us, let us do or die." "Glorious" and "bravely," bad as they are, especially "bravely," which is indeed most bitter bad, might have been borne; but just suppose for a moment, that Robert Bruce had, in addressing his army "on the morning of that eventful day," come over again in that odd way every word he uttered, "chains-chains;" "let him-let him;" "they shall they shall;" "let us-let us;" why the army would have thought him a Bauldy! Action, unquestionably, is the main point in oratory, and Bruce might have imposed on many by the peculiar style in which it is known he handled his battle-axe, but we do not hesitate to assert that had he stuttered in that style, the English would have won the day. Burns winced sorely, but did what he could to accommodate Lewie Gordon. "The only line," said Mr. T., "which I dislike in the whole of the song is 'Welcome to your gory bed.' Would not another word be preferable to 'welcome?" " Mr. T. proposed "honor's bed;" but Burns replied, "Your idea of 'honor's bed' is, though a beautiful, a hackneyed idea; so if you please we will let the line stand as it is." But Mr. T. was tenacious-" One word more with regard to your heroic ode. I think, with great deference to the poet, that a prudent general would avoid saying anything to his soldiers which might tend to make death more frightful than it is. Gory' presents a disagreeable image to the mind; and to tell them, 'Welcome to your gory bed,' seems rather a discouraging address, notwithstanding the alternative which follows. I have shown the song to three friends of excellent taste, and each of them objected to this line, which emboldens me to use the freedom of bringing it again under your notice. I would suggest 'Now prepare for honor's bed, or for glorious victory."" Quoth Burns grimly-" My ode pleases me so much that I cannot alter it. Your proposed alteration would, in my opinion, make it tame. I have scrutinized it over and over again, and to the world some way or other it shall go, as it is.” That four Scotsmen, taken seriatim et separatim—in the martial ardor of their patriotic souls should object to "Welcome to your gory bed," from an uncommunicated apprehension common to the nature of them all and operating like an instinct, that it was fitted to frighten Robert Bruce's army, and make it take to its heels, leaving the cause of Liberty and Independence to shift for itself, is a coincidence that sets at defiance the doctrine of chances, proves history to be indeed an old almanack, and national character an empty name. "Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Or to victory. "Now's the day, and now's the hour; See approach proad Edward's power- "Wha will be a traitor knave? "Wha for Scotland's king and law "By oppression's woes and pains! "Lay the proud usurpers low! All Scotsmen at home and abroad swear this is the Grandest Ode out of the Bible. What if it be not an Ode at all? An Ode, however, let it be; then, wherein lies the power it possesses of stirring up into a devouring fire the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum? The two armies suddenly stand before us in order of battle-and in the grim repose preceding the tempest we hear but the voice of Bruce. The whole Scottish army hears it-now standing on their feet-risen from their knees as the abbot of Inchchaffray had blessed them and the Banner of Scotland At the first six words a hollow murmur with its roots of Stone. is in that wood of spears. "Welcome to your gory bed!" a shout that shakes the sky. Hush! hear the King. At Edward's. name what a yell! "Wha will be a traitor knave ?" Muttering thunder growls reply. The inspired Host in each appeal anticipates the Leader-yet shudders with fresh wrath, as if each reminded it of some intolerable wrong. "Let us do or die "-the English are overthrown-and Scotland is free. That is a very Scottish critique indeed-but none the worse for that; so our English friends must forgive it, and be consoled by Flodden. The Ode is sublime. Death and Life at that hour are one and the same to the heroes. So that Scotland but survive, what is breath or blood to them? Their being is in their country's liberty, and with it secured they will live for ever. Our critique is getting more and more Scottish still; so to rid ourselves of nationality, we request such of you as think we overlaud the Ode to point out one word in it that would be better away. You cannot. Then pray have the goodness to point out one word missing that ought to have been there-please to insert a desiderated stanza. You cannot. Then let the bands of all the Scottish regiments play "Hey tuittie taiție ;" and the two DunEdins salute one another with a salvo that shall startle the echoes from Berwick-Law to Benmore. Of the delight with which Burns labored for Mr. Thomson's Collection, his letters contain some lively description. "You cannot imagine," says he, 7th April, 1793, "how much this business has added to my enjoyment. What with my early attachment to ballads, your book and ballad-making are now as completely my hobby as ever fortification was my 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 with you a'!'" James Gray was the first, who independently of every other argument, proved the impossibility of the charges that had too long been suffered to circulate without refutation against Burns's character and conduct during his later years, by pointing to these almost daily effusions of his clear and unclouded genius. His innumerable Letters furnish the same best proof; and when we consider how much of his time was occupied by his professional duties, how much by perpetual interruption of visitors from all lands, how much by blameless social intercourse with all classes in Dumfries and its neighborhood, and how frequently he suffered under constitutional ailments affecting the very seat and source of life, we cannot help despising the unreflecting credulity of his biographers who with such products before their eyes, such a display of feeling, fancy, imagination and intellect continually alive and on the alert, could keep one after another for twenty years in doleful dissertations deploring over his habits-most of them at the close of their wearisome moralizing anxious to huddle all up, that his countrymen might not be obliged to turn away their faces in shame from the last scene in the Tragedy of the Life of Robert Burns. During the four years Burns lived in Dumfries he was never known for one hour to be negligent of his professional duties. We are but imperfectly acquainted with the details of the business of a gauger, but the calling must be irksome; and he was an active, steady, correct, courageous officer-to be relied on equally in his conduct and his accounts. Josiah Walker, who was himself, if we mistake not, for a good many years in the Customs or Excise at Perth, will not allow him to have been a good gauger. In descanting on the unfortunate circumstances of his situation, he says with a voice of authority, "his superiors were bound to attend to no qualification, but such as was conducive to the benefit of the revenue; and it would have been equally criminal in them to pardon any incorrectness on account of his literary genius, as on account of his dexterity in ploughing. The merchant or attorney who acts for himself alone, is free to overlook some errors of his clerk, for the sake of merits totally unconnected with business; but the Board of Excise had no power to indulge their poetical taste, or their tenderness for |
