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better, and the peculiar species of his glory will depart. Give him better, and it may be, that he achieves no more glory of any kind. For nothing is more uncertain than the effects of circumstances on character. Some men, we know, are specially adapted to adverse circumstances, rising thereby as the kite rises to the adverse breeze, and falling when the adversity ceases. Such was probably Burns's nature—his genius being piqued to activity by the contradictions of his fortune.

Suppose that some generous rich man had accidentally become acquainted with the lad Robert Burns, and grieving to think that such a mind should continue boorish among boors, had, much to his credit, taken him from the plough, sent him to College, and given him a complete education. Doubtless he would have excelled; for he was "quick to learn, and wise to know." But he would not have been SCOTLAND'S BURNS. The prodigy had not been exhibited of a poet of the first order in that rank of life. It is an instructive spectacle for the world, and let the instruction take effect by the continuance of the spectacle for its natural period. Let the poet work at that calling which is clearly meant for him-he is "native and endued to the element" of his situation-there is no appearance of his being alien or strange to it—he professes proudly that his ambition is to illustrate the very life he exists in-his happiest moments are in doing so and he is reconciled to it by its being thus blended with the happiest exertions of his genius. We must look at his lot as a whole-from beginning to end—and so looked at it was not unsuitable-but the reverse; for as to its later afflictions they were not such as of necessity belonged to it, were partly owing to himself, partly to others, partly to evil influences peculiar not to his calling, but to the times.

If Burns had not been prematurely cut off, it is not to be doubted that he would have got promotion either by favor, or in the ordinary course; and had that happened, he would not have had much cause for complaint, nor would he have complained that like other men he had to wait events, and reach competence or affluence by the usual routine. He would, like other men, have then looked back on his narrow circumstances, and their privations, as conditions which, from the first, he knew

must precede preferment, and would no more have thought such hardships peculiar to his lot, than the first lieutenant of a frigate, the rough work he had had to perform, on small pay, and no delicate mess between decks, when he was a mate, though then perhaps a better seaman than the Commodore.

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With these sentiments we do not expect that all who honor this Memoir with a perusal will entirely sympathize; but imperfect as it is, we have no fear of its favorable reception by our friends, on the score of its pervading spirit. As to the poor creatures who purse up their unmeaning mouths, trying too without the necessary feature to sport the supercilious-and instead of speaking daggers, pip pins against the "Scotch "they are just the very vermin who used to bite Burns, and one would pause for a moment in the middle of a sentence to impale a dozen of them on one's pen, if they happened to crawl across one's paper. But our Southern brethren-the noble Englishwho may not share these sentiments of ours-will think “ in sorrow than in anger" of Burns's fate, and for his sake will be loth to blame his mother land. They must think with a sigh of their own Bloomfield, and Clare! Our Burns indeed was a greater far; but they will call to mind the calamities of their men of genius, of discoverers in science, who advanced the wealth of nations, and died of hunger-of musicians who taught the souls of the people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven, and dropt unhonored into a hole of earth—of painters who glorified the very sunrise and sunset, and were buried in places for a long time obscure as the shadow of oblivion-and surpassing glory and shame of all—

"OF MIGHTY POETS IN THEIR MISERY DEAD."

We never think of the closing years of Burns's life, without feeling what not many seem to have felt, that much more of their unhappiness is to be attributed to the most mistaken notion he had unfortunately taken up, of there being something degrading in genius in writing for money, than perhaps to all other causes put together, certainly far more than to his professional calling, however unsuitable that may have been to a poet. By

persisting in a line of conduct pursuant to that persuasion, he kept himself in perpetual poverty; and though it is not possible to blame him severely for such a fault, originating as it did in the generous enthusiasm of the poetical character, a most serious fault it was, and its consequences were most lamentable. So far from being an extravagant man, in the common concerns of life he observed a proper parsimony; and they must have been careless readers indeed, both of his prose and verse, who have taxed him with lending the colors of his genius to set off with a false lustre that profligate profuseness, habitual only with the selfish, and irreconcileable with any steadfast domestic virtue.

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Such was the advice he gave to a young friend in 1786, and in 1789, in a letter to Robert Ainslie, he says, "Your poets, spendthrifts, and other fools of that kidney pretend, forsooth, to crack their jokes on prudence-but 'tis a squalid vagabond glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. I have no objections to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances: but I appeal to your own observation if you have not often met with the same disingenuousness, the same hollowhearted insincerity, and disintegrative depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony." Similar sentiments will recur to every one familiar with his writings-all through them till the very end. His very songs are full of them—many of the best impressively preaching in sweetest numbers industry and thrift. So was he privileged to indulge in poetic transports-to picture, without reproach, the genial hours in the poor man's life, alas! but too unfrequent, and therefore to be enjoyed with a lawful revelry,

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at once obedient to the iron-tongued knell that commands it to So was he justified in scorning the close-fisted niggard. liness that forces up one finger after another, as if chirted by a screw, and then shows to the pauper a palm with a doit. "Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves," is an excellent maxim; but we do not look for illustrations of it in poetry; perhaps it is too importunate in prose. Full-grown moralists and political economists, eager to promote the virtue and the wealth of nations, can study it scientifically in Adam Smith-but the boy must have two buttons to his fob and a clasp, who would seek for it in Robert Burns. The bias of poor human nature seems to lean sufficiently to self, and to require something to balance it the other way; what more ef fectual than the touch of a poet's finger? We cannot relieve every wretch we meet-yet if we "take care of the pennies,' how shall the hunger that beseeches us on the street get a bap? If we let "the pounds take care of themselves," how shall we answer to God at the great day of judgment-remembering how often we had let "unpitied want retire to die—” the whitefaced widow pass us unrelieved, in faded weeds that seemed as if they were woven of dust?

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In his poetry, Burns taught love and pity; in his life he practised them. Nay, though seldom free from the pressure of poverty, so ignorant was he of the science of duty, that to the very last he was a notorious giver of alms. Many an impostor must have preyed on his meal-girnel at Ellisland; perhaps the old sick sailor was one, who nevertheless repaid several weeks' board and lodging with a cutter one-foot keel, and six pound burthen, which young Bobby Burns-such is this uncertain word -grat one Sabbath to see a total wreck far off in the mid-eddies of the mighty Nith. But the idiot who got his dole from the poet's own hand, as often as he chose to come churming up the Vennel, he was no impostor, and though he had lost his wits, retained a sense of gratitude, and returned a blessing in such phrase as they can articulate "whose lives are hidden with God."

How happened it, then, that such a man was so neglectful of his wife and family, as to let their hearts often ache while he

was in possession of a productive genius that might so easily have procured for them all the necessaries, and conveniences, and some even of the luxuries of life? By the Edinburgh edition of his poems, and the copyright to Creech, he had made a little fortune, and we know how well he used it. From the day of his final settlement with that money-making, story-telling, magisterial bibliopole, who rejoiced for many years in the name of Provost-to the week before his death, his poetry, and that too sorely against his will, brought him in―ten pounds! Had he thereby annually earned fifty-what happy faces at that fireside! how different that household! comparatively how calm that troubled life!

All the poetry, by which he was suddenly made so famous, had been written, as you know, without the thought of money having so much as flitted across his mind. The delight of embodying in verse the visions of his inspired fancy-of awakening the sympathies of the few rustic auditors in his own narrow circle, whose hearts he well knew throbbed with the same emotions that are dearest to humanity all over the wide world—that had been at first all in all to him—the young poet exulting in his power and in the proof of his power-till as the assurance of his soul in its divine endowment waxed stronger and stronger he beheld his country's muse with the holly-wreath in her hand, and bowed his head to receive the everlasting halo. "And take thou this she smiling said"-that smile was as a seal set on his fame for everand "in the old clay biggin " he was happy to the full measure of his large heart's desire. His poems grew up like flowers before his tread-they came out like singing-birds from the thickets-they grew like clouds on the sky-there they were in their beauty, and he hardly knew they were his ownso quiet had been their creation, so like the process of nature among her material loveliness, in the season of spring when life is again evolved out of death, and the renovation seems as if it would never more need the Almighty hand, in that immortal union of earth and heaven.

You will not think these words extravagant, if you have well considered the ecstasy in which the spirit of the poet was lifted up above the carking cares of his toilsome life, by the conscious

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