The strength was equal to the harmony; rugged westlin words were taken from the lips of the weaver and the ploughman, and adorned with melody and feeling; and familiar phrases were picked up from shepherds and mechanics, and rendered as musical as is Apollo's lute. "I can think of no verse since Shakspeare's," said Pitt to Henry Addington, "which comes so sweetly and at once from nature." "Out of the eater came forth meat:"-the premier praised whom he starved. Burns was not a poet by fits and starts; the mercury of his genius stood always at the inspired point; like the fairy's drinking cup, the fountain of his fancy was ever flowing and ever full. He had, it is true, set times and seasons when the fruits of his mind were more than usually abundant; but the songs of spring were equal to those of summer-those of summer were not surpassed by those of autumn; the quantity might be different, the flavor and richness were ever the same.

His variety is equal to his originality. His humor, his gayety, his tenderness, and his pathos, come all in a breath; they come freely, for they come of their own accord; nor are they huddled together at random, like doves and crows in a flock; the contrast is never offensive; the comic slides easily into the serious, the serious into the tender, and the tender into the pathetic. The witch's cup, out of which the wondering rustic drank seven kinds of wine at once, was typical of the muse of Burns. It is this which has made him welcome to all readers. "No poet," says Scott, "with the exception of Shakspeare, ever possessed the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions."

Notwithstanding the uncommon ease and natural elegance of his musings-the sweet and impassioned tone of his verse-critics have not been wanting who perceived in his works the humility of his origin. His poems, I remember well enough, were considered by many, at first, as the labors of some gentleman who assumed the rustic for the sake of indulging in satire; their knowledge was reckoned beyond the reach, and their flights above the power, of a simple ploughman. Something of this belief may be seen in Mrs. Scott of Wauchope's letter: and when it was known for a truth that the author was a ploughman, many lengthy discussions took place concerning the way in which the Poet had acquired his knowledge. Ayr race-course was pointed out as the likely scene. of his studies of high life, where he found what was graceful and elegant. When Jeffrey wrote his depreciating criticism, he forgot that Burns had studied politeness in the very school where he himself was polished:

"I've been at drunken writers' feasts,"

claims a scholarship which the critic might have respected. If sharp epigrams, familiar gallantry, love of independence, and a leaning to the tumid be, as that critic assures us, true symptoms of vulgar birth, then Swift was a scavenger, Rochester a coalheaver, Pope a carman, and Thomson a boor. He might as well see lowness of origin in the James Stuart who wrote "Christ's Kirk on the Green," as in the Robert Burns who wrote "Tam O'Shanter." The nature which Burns infused into all he wrote deals with internal emotions: feeling is no more vulgar in a ploughman than in a prince.

In all this I see the reluctance of an accomplished scholar to admit the merits of a rustic poet who not only claimed, but took, the best station on the Caledonian Parnassus. It could be no welcome sight to philosophers, historians, and critics, to see a peasant, fragrant from the furrow, elbowing his way through their polished ranks to the highest place of honor, exclaiming

"What's a' your jargon o' your schools ?"

Some of them were no doubt astonished and incensed; nature was doing too much: they avenged themselves by advising him to leave his vulgar or romantic fancies and grow classical. His best songs they called random flights; his happiest poems the fruit of a vagrant impulse; they accounted him an accident-"a wild colt of a comet"-a sort of splendid error: and refused to look upon him as a true poet, raised by the kindly warmth of nature; for they thought nothing beautiful which was not produced or adorned by learning.

Burns is a thorough Scotchman: his nationality, like cream on milk, floats on the surface of all his works; it mingles in his humor as well as in his tenderness; yet it is seldom or never offensive to ar. English ear; there is nothing narrow-souled in it. He rejoices in Scotland's ancient glory and in her present strength; he bestows his affection on her heathery mountains, as well as on her romantic vales; he glories in the worth of her husbandmen, and in the loveliness of her maidens. The brackeny glens and thistly brae-sides of the North are more welcome to his sight than are the sunny dales of Italy, fragrant with ungathered grapes; its men, if not quite divinities, are more than mortal; and the women are clothed in beauty, and walk in a light of their own creating; a haggis is food fit for gods; brose is a better sort of ambrosia; "wi' twopenny we fear nae evil;" and whiskey not only makes us insensible of danger, but inspires noble verse and heroic deeds. There is something at once ludicrous and dignified in all this: to excite mingled emotions was the aim of the Poet. Besides a love

of country, there is an intense love of freedom about him: not the savage joy in the boundless forest and the unlicensed range, but the calm determination and temperate delight of a reflecting mind. Burns is the bard of liberty-not that which sets fancy free and fetters the body; he resists oppression-he covets free thought and speech-he scorns slavish obedience to the mob as much as he detests tyranny in the rulers. He spoke out like a bold-inspired person; he knew his word would have weight with the world, and sung his "Man's a man for a' that," as a watchword to future generations-as a spell against slavery.

The best poems of Burns are about rural and pastoral life, and relate the hopes, joys, and aspirations, of that portion of the people falsely called the humble, as if grandeur of soul were a thing "born in the purple," and not the free gift and bounty of heaven. The passions and feelings of man are disguised, not changed, in polished society; flesh and blood are the same beneath hoddin' gray as beneath three-piled velvet. This was what Burns alluded to when he said he saw little in the splendid circles of Edinburgh which was new to him. His pictures of human life and of the world are of a mental as well as national kind. His "Twa Dogs" prove that happiness is not unequally diffused: "Scotch Drink" gives us fireside enjoyments; the "Earnest Cry and Prayer" shows the keen eye which humble people cast on their rulers; the "Address to the Deil" indulges in religious humanities, in which sympathy overcomes fear; "The Auld Mare," and "The Address to Mailie," enjoin, by the most simple and touching examples, kindness and mercy to dumb creatures; "The Holy Fair" desires to curb the licentiousness of those who seek amusement instead of holiness in religion; "Man was made to Mourn" exhorts the strong and the wealthy to be mindful of the weak and the poor; "Halloween" shows us superstition in a domestic aspect; "Tam O'Shanter" adorns popular belief with humorous terror, and helps us to laugh old dreads away; "The Mouse," in its weakness, contrasts with man in his strength, and preaches to us the instability of happiness on earth; while "The Mountain Daisy" pleads with such moral pathos the cause of the flowers of the field sent by God to adorn the earth for man's pleasure, that our feet have pressed less ungraciously on the " modest, crimson-tipped flower," since his song was written. Others of his poems have a still grander reach. "The Vision" reveals the Poet's plan of Providence, proves the worth of eloquence, bravery, honesty, and beauty, and that even the rustic bard himself is a useful and ornamental link in the great chain of being. "The Cotter's Saturday Night" connects us with the invisible world, and shows that domestic peace, faithful love, and patri

wee,

otic feelings are of earthly things most akin to the joys of heaven; while the divine "Elegy on Matthew Henderson" unites human nature in a bond of sympathy with the stars of the sky, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, the flowery vale, and the lonely mountain. The hastiest of his effusions has a wise aim; and the eloquent Curran perceived this when he spoke of the "sublime morality of Burns."

Had Burns, in his poems, preached only so many moral sermons, his audience might have been a select, but it would have been a limited, one. The sublimest truths, like the surest medicines, are sometimes uneasy to swallow: for this the Poet provided an effectual remedy: he associated his moral counsel with so much tenderness and pathos, and garnished it all about with such exquisite humor, that the public, like the giant drinking the wine in Homer, gaped, and cried, "More! this is divine!" If a reader has such a limited soul as to love humor only, why Burns is his man-he has more of it than any modern poet; should he covet tenderness, he cannot read far in Burns without finding it to his mind; should he desire pathos, the Scottish Peasant has it of the purest sort; and if he wish for them altogether let him try no other bard-for in what other poet will he find them woven more naturally into the web of song? It is by thus suiting himself to so many minds and tastes, that Burns has become such a favorite with the world; if, in a strange company, we should chance to stumble in quoting him, an English voice, or an Irish one, corrects us; much of the business of life is mingled with his verse; and the lover, whether in joy or sorrow, will find that Burns has anticipated every throb of his heart :—

"Every pulse along his veins,

And every roving fancy."

He was the first of our northern poets who brought deep passion and high energy to the service of the muse, who added sublimity to simplicity, and found loveliness and elegance dwelling among the cottages of his native land. His simplicity is graceful as well as strong; he is never mean, never weak, never vulgar, and but seldom coarse. All he says is above the mark of other men: his language is familiar, yet dignified; careless, yet concise; and he touches on the most ordinary-nay, perilous themes, with a skill so rare and felicitous, that good fortune seems to unite with good taste in helping him through the Slough of Despond, in which so many meaner spirits have wallowed. No one has greater power in adorning the humble, and dignifying the plain-no one else has so happily picked the sweet fresh flowers of poesy from among the thorns and brambles of the ordinary paths of existence.

"The excellence of Burns," says Thomas Carlyle, a true judge, "is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or prose; but at the same time it is plain and easily recognized-his sincerity-his indisputable air of truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wire-drawn refinings either in thought or feeling: the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience: it is the scenes he has lived and labored amidst that he describes; those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it, too, with such melody and modulation as he can-in homely rustic jingle— but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers, and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself."

It must be mentioned, in abatement of this high praise, that Burns occasionally speaks with too little delicacy. He violates without necessity the true decorum of his subject, and indulges in hidden meanings and allusions, such as the most tolerant cannot applaud. Nor is this the worst: he is much too free in his treatment of matters holy. He ventures to take the Deity to task about his own passions, and the order of nature, in a way less reverent than he employs when winning his way to woman's love. He has, in truth, touches of profanity which make the pious shudder. In the warmth of conversation such expressions might escape from the lips; but they should not have been coolly sanctioned in the closet with the pen. These deformities are not, however, of frequent occurrence; and, what is some extenuation, they are generally united to a noble or natural sentiment. He is not profane or indecorous for the sake of being so: his faults, as well as his beauties, come from an overflowing fulness of mind.

His songs have all the beauties, and none of the faults, of his poems. As compositions to be sung, a finer and more scientific harmony, and a more nicely-modulated dance of words were required, and Burns had both in perfection. They flow as readily to the music as if both the air and verse had been created together, and blend and mingle like two uniting streams. The sentiments are from nature; and they never, in any instance, jar or jangle with the peculiar feeling of the music. While humming the air over during the moments of composition, the words came and took their proper places, each according to the meaning of the air: rugged