I sing if these mortals, the critics, should

:

bustle,

I care not, not I; let the critics go whistle.

But now for a Patron, whose name and whose glory

At once may illustrate and honour my story.

Thou first of our orators, first of our wits, Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits;

With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so

strong,

No man with the half of 'em e'er went far

wrong;

With passions so potent, and fancies so bright, No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite

right;

A sorry, poor misbegot son of the Muses,

For using thy name offers fifty excuses.1

[Good L-d, what is man? for as simple he looks,

Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks;

With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,

All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil.

1 The verses following within brackets were added afterwards.

On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely

labours,

That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats

up its neighbours :

Mankind are his show-box

you know him?

a friend, would

Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will shew him.

What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, Truth, should have missed

him;

For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.

Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you found this or t'other! there's more in the wind,

As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find.

But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan, In the make of that wonderful creature called

Man,

No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, Nor even two different shades of the same, Though like as was ever twin-brother to brother, Possessing the one shall imply you've the other.1

1 The verses following this line were first printed from a manuscript of Burns, in Pickering's edition.

But truce with abstraction, and truce with the

Muse,

Whose rhymes you'll perhaps, sir, ne'er deign to peruse:

Will you leave your justings, your jars, and your quarrels,

Contending with Billy for proud-nodding laurels? My much-honoured Patron, believe your poor Poet,

Your courage much more than your prudence you shew it.

In vain with Squire Billy for laurels you struggle,

He'll have them by fair trade, if not he will smuggle;

Not cabinets even of kings would conceal 'em, He'd up the back-stairs, and by G- he would steal 'em!

Then feats like Squire Billy's you ne'er can achieve 'em :

It is not, out-do him—the task is, out-thieve

him!]

4th April, 1789.

ON A WOUNDED HARE.

"One morning lately, as I was out pretty early in the fields, sowing some grass-seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them have young ones."-Burns to Mr. Cunningham, 4th May, 1789.

INHUMAN man! curse on thy barbarous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye!
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!

Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field,
The bitter little that of life remains:
No more the thickening brakes or verdant
plains

To thee a home, or food, or pastime yield.

Seek, mangled innocent, some wonted form;
That wonted form, alas! thy dying bed!

The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, The cold earth with thy blood-stained bosom

Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its wo;

The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side; Ah! helpless nurslings, who will now provide That life a mother only can bestow?

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait

The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn, And curse the ruthless wretch, and mourn thy hapless fate.

DELIA.

There is usually printed in Burns's works a little ode, entitled Delia, which, from its deficiency of force and true feeling, some have suspected to be not his composition. Allan Cunningham tells a feasibleenough-looking story regarding it. "One day, when the poet was at Brownhill, in Nithsdale, a friend read some verses composed after the pattern of Pope's song by a person of quality, and said: 'Burns, this is beyond you. The Muse of Kyle cannot match the Muse of London city.' The poet took the paper, hummed the verses over, and then recited Delia, an Ode." There is not anything in this anecdote inconsistent with the fact, that Burns sent the ode for insertion in a London newspaper. (?)