MOSSGEIL FARM. 31 give a picture, at once humorous and elevated, of tipsy ness: "The clachan yill had made me canty, I was na fou, but just had plenty; I stachered whyles, but yet took tent aye An' hillocks, stanes, and bushes kenned aye "The rising moon began to glower But whether she had three or four, The most propitious era of the poet's life was that portion of it spent at the Mossgeil Farm. The cottage, with its few acres, had been taken by the two brothers, with the dutiful and affectionate purpose of providing a shelter for their parents and the determination of earning their subsistence by manly labour. It was there made manifest that Scotland was in possession of a great national poet. The early inspirations of the Scottish Muse had been given to the indwellers of a palace,—the ancient King James Stuart; and, after poetry had declined with the decline of the national spirit, in consequence of the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, after the lapse of centuries it was reanimated in the humble clay cottage of Mossgeil Farm. The poet's life was the outdoor-life of a labourer in the fields; he was in perpetual and quickly-sensitive communion with nature; and here especially was gained the glory of the peasantpoet of Scotland. The poetry of Burns was as indige nous as the thistle; it was a pure native growth, as different as possible from the trim, unnatural exotics which had been cultivated with hothouse temperature and method. The freshness of old Chaucer's genius seemed to be breathing again upon British poetry. The longlost honours given by the chief of the early poets to the lowliest flower of the field, as I noticed in a former lecture, was now restored, when Burns suddenly checked his plough at the sight of the mountain-daisy looking up to him from the mid-furrows. It was a moment of genuine poetic inspiration; for, while actually holding the plough, his imagination fashioned itself into musical words: "Wee, modest, crimson-tippéd flower, To spare thee now is past my power, "Alas! it's no' thy neebor sweet, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet "Cauld blew the bitter-biting North Scarce reared above the parent-earth OL. II. THE MOUNTAIN-DAISY. "The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield; O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, "There, in thy scanty mantle clad, But now the share up-tears thy bed, "Such is the fate of artless maid, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred: Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, "Such fate to suffering worth is given, To misery's brink, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, "Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight 3 33 Who can fail to feel that this was "Indeed a genuine birth, Of poetry:-a bursting forth Of genius from the dust ?" What a strain of truth and imagination, manly and tender-hearted! Compare Burns with Pope in descriptive poetry,-comparison in other departments would be ill-judged, the grotto at Twickenham with the bleak Mossgeil mountain-side; and how redolent of nature is this little poem! It has the freshness and grateful odour that arises from the new furrows of a ploughed field. In that singular collection, the "Medical Remains of the great Lord Bacon," one of the fanciful prescriptions for the prolongation of life and the renewing of health was, in an early hour, after the sun is risen, to take an air from some high and open place with a ventilation of roses and fresh violets, and to stir the earth with infusion of wine and mint. Poetry in the eighteenth century seemed to need some such renovation; and, after her long confinement in the close air of an artificial system, the peasantpoet of Scotland ministered to her health. When Burns, in the rapt mood of inspiration, was standing with his hand on the plough, how little could he have dreamed that the music thus rising in his heart would wing its flight as far as the English language, the spirit of every true Scotsman, whether in the centre of British India or at the farthest west of the wilds of America, kindling at the recollection of that one mountain-daisy! The criticism which more than any other delights me is that which may sometimes, though rarely, be discovered in the response made by the imagination of one poet to that WORDSWORTH'S LINES. 35 of another. Some seven or eight years ago a great poet was travelling through that region of country which has earned even the title of The Land of Burns, and one of those itinerary records which the imagination of Wordsworth has scattered in every land he has visited is in these lines: "There!' said a stripling, pointing with meet pride Another poem, composed under the same circumstances as the "Mountain-Daisy," was that on turning up, with the plough, the nest of a field-mouse. It is conceived in the same vein of imagination, and of feeling the association of the mishaps of his own life with that of the little creature: "I'm truly sorry man's dominion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion |