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land, near Dumfries, and entered the Excise. The rest of his story may be soon told. His conduct was not wise, nor was his life happy. Could we unveil all the struggles of remorse, pride, shame, and despair, in that heart so essentially noble, all the agony, in the latter years of life, of that mind so indefeasibly great, what a lesson it were of wisdom and warning!

Look on that brow!-the laurel-wreath
Beam'd on it like a wreath of fire:

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Look on that brow!-the lowest slave,
The veriest wretch of want and care,
Might shudder at the lot that gave

His genius, glory and despair!

Burns died on the 21st of July, 1796, at his house in Dumfries, in his thirty-eighth year, having, beyond any preceding Scotsman, extended and refined the intellectual pleasures of his country. His fame will ever remain an illustrious portion of her literary honours-his misfor tunes an indelible disgrace to some of her institutions. "A life of literary leisure," he says in one of his letters-and he often repeated the same thing-" with a decent competence, is the summit of my wishes."-This he never found; and his notions of competence were certainly far from extravagant.

When the faults of Burns are dwelt upon with a seeming zest even by the warmest admirers of his genius, it ought ever to be kept in remembrance, that the boy who did a man's office for his parents, and the man who divided his little fortune with his brother, lived with his infant family, and with all his imputed reckless improvidence, on an income varying from £50 to £80 a year, and died without once incurring the burden of pecuniary obligation, or owing any man a shilling!-His manly, independent spirit, and almost savage pride, prevented him at least

from the debasing consequences which pecuniary involvement entails on the finest minds; from all the pitiful shifts, subterfuges, expedients, and complicated meannesses which degrade a man in the eyes of his fellows, while they corrode his own heart, and ultimately destroy all delicacy of character, and completely undermine that self-respect which is the prop of so many virtues. The faults of Burns have often been held out in warning to young men of talent. They were great and lamentable, though none of them were those of a cold, an ostentatious, or a mean nature. Let the warning be coupled with his example in this important point. Neither vanity, nor self-indulgence, nor that contempt of future consequences, which is sometimes senselessly arrogated as matter of poetical privilege and the mark of a high spirit, betrayed him, surrounded as he ever was with manifold temptation, into the dishonesty and meanness of living beyond his scanty income. In some points of pecuniary interest he indeed showed a spirit of poetic chivalry which his critics are well entitled, if they please, to call Quixotic. While a herd of inferior writers, noble or gentle, are every day gaining hundreds and thousands by their productions, Burns declined receiving any remuneration whatever for his unrivalled lyrics!-But a few years have passed since it was thought shabby for a gentleman in Scotland to sell the fruits of his garden, or to farm out the game on his estate; and Burns probably had the idea, that to sell songs was equally discreditable to the honour of the Muses. "A nation of shopkeepers" has very properly dismissed this superstition. There is no disgrace now except in getting too little.

The social eloquence of Burns-his conversational talents, and power over the feelings of those with whom he associated-have often been described as more astonishing than even the written records of his genius; and this appears to have been true. He obtained an influence for the time which we hear of nothing resembling, save

some few moments of the life of Rousseau, when Parisian saloons were deluged with genuine tears. One of the most eminent of his critics attributes the bold development of the genius of Burns to the lowness of his origin. However this may be, it is fair to suppose, that a young man, trained in the frigid circles of persiflage and civil sneer, however great his genius and vehement his natural sensibility, would have been scared from the betrayal of his feelings, where the rustic gave his impetuous impulses unbounded sway, with consequences which startle belief.

"It was in female circles," says a generous admirer and excellent judge, "that his powers of expression displayed their utmost fascination. In such, where the respect demanded by rank was readily paid as due to beauty or accomplishment, where he could resent no insult, and vindicate no claim of superiority, his conversation lost all its harshness, and often became so energetic and impressive as to dissolve the whole circle into tears. The traits of sensibility which, told of another, would sound like instances of gross affectation, were so native to the soul of this extraordinary man, and burst from him so involuntarily, that they not only obtained full credence as the genuine feelings of his own heart, but melted into unthought-of sympathy all who witnessed them. In such a mood they were often called forth by the slightest and most trifling occurrences; an ordinary engraving, the wild turn of a simple Scottish air, a line in an old ballad, were, like the field mouse's nest' and 'the uprooted daisy,' sufficient to excite the sympathetic feelings of Burns. And it was wonderful to see those, who, left to themselves, would have passed over such trivial circumstances without a moment's reflection, sob over the picture, when its outline had been filled up by the magic art of his eloquence."

Reflections on the life and fortunes of this extraordinary man, must, for a long while to come, be mingled with pain and indignation; but in passing to his works all is

nearly unmixed pleasure. He has produced a few poems of equivocal tendency, and some of a trivial wit; but they are comparatively few; and so rich was the ore of his vein, that even in the rubbish thrown carelessly out the pure metal is continually glancing forth. If Burns has not reached the highest heaven of invention, it may have been because he has never aimed his flight thither; for whatever he fairly attempted he has done better than any other man. His songs, the species of composition to which he gave most attention, are, taken as a whole, the finest in the world-in spirit-in nationality-in beautyin simplicity-and in the most exquisite tenderness. It has become fashionable of late, even in Scotland, to compare Burns with more polished lyrists: all such comparison is as senseless as invidious. In the wide dominion of imagination and poetry there is room for all adventurers, and even for a few squatters, with questionable charter; nor need they with such ample verge encroach on the domains of each other; or, like the petty German. principalities, contend which shall be paramount. A singer, with a nicely-cultivated ear and fine taste, must occasionally use a little ungraceful force in drilling in the refractory syllables of Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and in bending their stubborn sense to certain musical pauses and cadences; but we can have no unmixed good, and this fault most frequently arises when the verse, as it were, o'er-informs the music, and the sound has not body sufficient to sustain the sentiment; like richlyfreighted vessels which draw too much water, and lag ungracefully, where the little airy, nicely-trimmed bark will swim like a halcyon. Besides, many of those polished strains which go so "softly, sweetly" to the music, are in fact, in reading, more rugged to the ear tha the worst adapted lines of Burns. In the modern popular lyrics, the music and the verse reflect and support each other; they mutually perform as it were a waltz

to the ear, dancing on together, gracefully intertwined, throughout their light and airy, or languid and voluptuous movements. With the harsher and worse accented strains of our national bard, the music may lag and lose. in expression; but the tears gush forth-the touched heart murmurs its low under-song. The love-verses of Burns, by those who bring no objection to their lack of musical smoothness, are charged with the want of that tone of gallantry which distinguishes the productions of higher-born men. It is certain that his manly mind knew nothing of feelings merely factitious, however elevated; and it does not appear to have been his hard fortune ever to encounter stony-hearted maidens." He never dreamt of extolling the charms of his mistress from vain-glory in their brilliancy. He poured forth the praises of the fair idols of his fancy from the exuberant delight with which their real or ideal charms enraptured his own spirit. Like Julie's lover, the fair being he admired became exalted above humanity by the prerogatives of his passion and his genius ; and her nominal rank in life had no power over those precious immunities. But if Burns' songs want the tone of chivalry, the same fault may be found with the finest writers of love-verses in the language. Surrey-for the authenticity of whose passion it would not be very safe to swear-is indeed very doleful; but the love-strains of Sydney show no puling sentiment nor sophisticated feeling of any kind. If they want the beauty and tenderness of the love-songs of Burns, they equal them in nature and in warmth. This is their praise. The love-verses of Herrick, Carew, Ben Jonson, Shakspeare, and Suckling, have nothing of this " tone of chivalry." Those of Lovelace have an exquisite delicacy and sweetness peculiar to themselves; but their sentiment is as natural as it is refined. It is not easy to tell where we are to look for the tone of chivalry in love-songs, unless in such inditings as

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