cocious than himself. Fergusson's achievements in verse are the starting-points of Burns' triumphs. He who opens Fergusson's volume in the expectation of finding another Burns is destined to be disappointed. But he is likely to be consoled for this disap pointment by the discovery that not a few of the marked qualities of the poetry of the later singer characterise, as if in immature form, the verse of his predecessor. There are present in the poems of each the same easy artless versification, the same love of nature and of human nature, the same humour, the same philosophy of common sense applied to social life, the same lively imagination; only what is ripe incomparable genius in the one is no more than precocious and surprising talent in the other. In this light it is fair to Fergusson as well as to Burns, and not injurious to the reputation of the younger poet, to compare Braid Claith (p. 505) with The Epistle to a Young Friend, or the Ode to the Gowdspink with The Mouse or The Mountain Daisy. Between Burns and his predecessor too there is this link of connection-the English poems of the one are of as little account as those of the other. Precocity, which is usually a disease accompanying other diseases and symptomatic of them, from the first marked Fergusson for its own. All through his school and university course he was sickly, gentle and amiable, surprisingly quick and clever, a prodigy destined to an early grave. At twenty-one he is the most famous Scotch poet of his day, and his poems, apart from some pastorals which had served the purpose of poetical exercises, are chiefly short pieces in which he celebrates the life which he knows best, that of an Edinburgh clerk, and the life which he loves best, that of country swains. It is with much of the grace and gaiety of Horace growing old and mellow, secure of fame and wine and friendship and mastery of his art, that the starved young Edinburgh clerk sings of scenes of gaiety and mild dissipation, in which his part was more fatal to his health than discreditable to his character, and from these noctes ambrosianae turns to the farmer's ingle, and the frolic and innocent and healthy life of the denizens of meadows and uplands remote from towns. As if he were old before his time, he is little inspired by the passion from which the Greek dramatist was happy to be delivered by age, and from which Burns had no wish ever to escape. Similarly he is a city spark and a satirist of the city magistrates and the city guard, rather in the genial, reflective, humorous mood of the decline of life than with the passionateness of youth. His range of subjects is narrowed by the narrow space of a career which began at twenty-one and was finished at twenty-four. He had a keen enjoyment of city life, with its clubs for a little dissipation, and its bailies and its 'black banditti' for a constant occasion of laughter. Still more keen on his part was that enjoyment of the country, the pleasures of which he seldom tasted except in imagination, but which supplies the inspiration of some of his most touching verses, as well as of some of his admirable mock heroics. We alternate in his verse between these two sets of themes, and in his treatment of both we meet with the same vein of pure pathos, and its almost unfailing accompaniment of genuine humour. JOHN SERVICE. THE DAFT DAYS. [Corresponding in Scotland to Christmas holidays in England.] Now mirk1 December's dowie 2 face Glowrs 3 owr the rigs wi' sour grimace, While, thro' his minimum of space, Wi' blinkin light and stealing pace, From naked groves nae birdie sings; 4 And dwyning Nature droops her wings, Mankind but scanty pleasure glean Sends drift owr a' his bleak domain, And guides the weir. Auld Reikie! thou'rt the canty hole, 6 Wha snugly at thine ingle loll, Baith warm and couth; When merry Yule-day comes, I trow, And kickshaws, strangers to our view, 1 brewer. Ye browster' wives! now busk ye bra, Mair precious than the Well of Spa, Then, tho' at odds wi' a' the warl', As lang's there's pith into the barrel Fiddlers! your pins in temper fix, From out your quorum, Nor fortes wi' pianos mix Gie's Tullochgorum". For nought can cheer the heart sae weel As can a canty Highland reel; It even vivifies the heel To skip and dance: Lifeless is he wha canna feel Its influence. Let mirth abound; let social cheer Nor envy, wi' sarcastic sneer, Our bliss destroy. And thou, great god of aqua vitæ! Wha sways the empire of this city- To hedge us frae that black banditti, The City Guard. 2 Printed four years before Skinner's 'Tullochgorum' (p. 491). 3 ill-tempered. BRAID CLAITH. Ye wha are fain to hae your name To laurel'd wreath, But hap1 ye weel, baith back and wame, He that some ells o' this may fa'2, 4 Whan bienly clad wi' shell fu' braw Waesuck for him wha has nae fek' o't! While he draws breath, Till his four quarters are bedeckit Wi' gude Braid Claith. On Sabbath-days the barber spark, Gangs trigly, faith! Or to the Meadow or the Park, In gude Braid Claith. Weel might ye trow, to see them there, i1 That they to shave your haffits bare, Or curl an' sleek a pickle hair, Wud be right laith12, When pacing wi' a gawsy air 13 |