Fate still has blest me with a friend,

In

every care and ill;

And oft a more endearing band,

A tie more tender still.

It lightens, it brightens
The tenebrific scene,

To meet with, and greet with
My Davie or my Jean!

Oh how that name inspires my style!

The words come skelpin', rank and

file,

Amaist before I ken!

The ready measure rins as fine

As Phoebus and the famous Nine

Were glowrin' owre my pen.

My spaviet Pegasus will limp,

thronging

staring

Till ance he's fairly het;

And then he'll hilch, and stilt, and jimp, hobble

And rin an unco fit:

But lest then, the beast then

Should rue this hasty ride,
I'll light now, and dight now
His sweaty, wizened hide.

at a good pace

wipe withered

DEATH AND DR. HORNBOOK:

A TRUE STORY.

In the seed-time of 1785- the date is from the poet's own authority-Burns attended a masonic meeting at Torbolton, when there chanced to be also present the schoolmaster of the parish, a man with as powerful a self-esteem as the poet himself, though of a different kind, or manifested differently. This personage, John Wilson by name, to eke out a scanty subsistence, as Gilbert tells us, "had set up a shop of grocery goods." Having accidentally fallen in with some medical books, and become most hobby-horsically attached to the study of medicine, he had added the sale of a few medicines to his little trade. He had got a shop-bill printed, at the bottom of which, overlooking his own incapacity, he had advertised that "Advice would be given in common disorders at the shop gratis." On this occasion he made a somewhat too ostentatious display of his medical attainments. It is said that Burns and he had a dispute, in which the poor dominie brought forward his therapeutics somewhat offensively. Be this as it may, in going home. that night, Burns conceived, and partly composed, his poem of Death and Dr. Hornbook. "These circumstances," adds Gilbert," he related when he repeated the verses to me next afternoon, as I was holding the plough, and he was letting the water off the field beside me."

This, then, as far as we can see, is, next to the Epistle to Davie, the first considerable poem by Burns manifesting anything like the vigor which is charac teristic of his principal pieces.

SOME books are lies frae end to end,
And some great lies were never penned :
Ev'n ministers they hae been kenned,
In holy rapture,

A rousing whid at times to vend,
And nail't wi' Scripture.

But this that I am gaun to tell,
Which lately on a night befell,
Is just as true's the deil's in hell,
Or Dublin city:

That e'er he nearer comes oursel'
'S a muckle pity.

The clachan yill had made me canty

I was na fou, but just had plenty ;

fib

gcing

village ale

I stachered whyles, but yet took tent aye staggered
To free the ditches;

And hillocks, stanes, and bushes kenn'd aye
Frae ghaists and witches.

The rising moon began to glow'r
The distant Cumnock hills out-owre:
To count her horns, wi' a' my power,
I set mysel';

stare

But whether she had three or four,
I could na tell.

I was come round about the hill,
And todlin' down on Willie's mill,1
Setting my staff wi' a' my skill,

To keep me sicker;

sure

Though leeward whyles, against my will, sometimes I took a bicker.

I there wi' Something did forgather,

short race

That put me in an eerie swither; dismal hesitation An awfu' scythe, out-owre ae shouther,

Clear-dangling, hang;

A three-taed leister on the ither

Lay, large and lang.

Its stature seemed lang Scotch ells twa,
The queerest shape that e'er I saw ;

For fient a wame it had ava;

And then, its shanks,

They were as thin, as sharp and sma',
As cheeks o' branks.2

fish-spear

belly-at all

"Guid e'en," quo' I; "friend, hae ye When ither folk are busy sawin'?"

been mawin',

1 Torbolton Mill, then occupied by William Muir, an intimate friend of the Burns family-from him it was called Willie's Mill.

2 Branks a kind of wooden frame, forming, with a rope bridle for troublesome horses or cows.

It seemed to mak a kind o' stan',

But naething spak;

At length says I: "Friend, whare ye gaun? Will ye go back?"

It spake right howe: "My name is Death, hollow But be na fley'd." Quoth I: "Guid frightened

faith,

Ye're maybe come to stap my breath;

But tent me, billie

I red ye weel, tak care o' scaith,

See, there's a gully!"

friend

advise harm

clasp-knife

"Guidman," quo' he, "put up your whittle,

I'm no designed to try its mettle;

But if I did, I wad be kittle

To be mislear'd; 1

I wadna mind it, no that spittle

Out-owre my beard."

difficult

"Weel, weel!" says I, "a bargain be't; Come, gie's your hand, and say we're gree't; We'll ease our shanks and tak a seat

Come, gie's your news;

1 To be put out of my art. This is not the usual sense of the word, which Burns himself interprets in his glossary into mischievous, unmannerly; but the sense of the passage can only be so understood.

2 Both in the scythe and in this feature of the beard, which, as connected with a skeleton, is in plain prose a solecism, the poet appears to have had the ordinary figure of Time in view,

rather than that of Death.