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THE AYRSHIRE PLOUGHMAN.

ROBERT BURNS, the sweet singer of AVT, was born on the 25th of January, 1759. His father was a poor farmer in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, but a man of considerable information and sound moral character. He gave his son such an education as his means warranted; so that by the time he was ten or eleven years of age, he was a critic in substantives, verbs, and participles. He was likewise instructed in writing, had a fortnight's French, and one quarter's land surveying.

It was not to be expected that an Ayrshire ploughman would have any great stock of books. The Bible and the old Scotch version of the Psalms, together with the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, formed the generality of a Scottish peasant's library. Burns was richer than this. He had Pope's works-those wondrously polished verses; Allan Ramsay, and a collection of English songs, besides the Spectator. His book-treasury was afterwards better filled by the important addition of the works of Thomson, Shenstone, Sterne, and Mackenzie. Other standard books soon followed. Burns was one of those great minds that, like Descartes, can study hard without books; whose minds are aroused by the unwritten book of nature who find

success at Edinburgh, Burns took the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries. Shortly after this he married, and entered upon his new occupation at Whitsuntide, 1788. He obtained an appointment as an exciseman; but this farming speculation he did not long continue. His own convivial habits destroyed his prospects. He was a man of uncommon intellectual stamina, but ruined by intemperance. In 1791 he removed to the town of Dumfries, subsisting entirely on his situation in the excise, which yielded £70 per annum. In 1793 he published a third edition of his poems, with the addition of Tam O'Shanter.

This latter work is considered to have been Burns's masterpiece. It takes a wide range— the descriptive, the terrible, the supernatural, the ludicrous. Burns's pictures of human life and of the world are of a mental as well as of a national kind. His "Twa Dogs" prove that happiness is not unequally diffused. "Scotch Drink" gives us his notion of fireside enjoyment. The Earnest Cry and Prayer" shows the keen eye which humble people cast on their rulers. The "Auld Mare," and the "Address to Maillie," enjoin, by the most simple and touching examples, kindness and mercy to dumb creatures. The "Holy Fair" desires to curb the licentiousness of those who seek amusement instead of holiness in religious exercises. "Man was made to Mourn" exhorts the strong and the wealthy to be mindful of the weak and the poor. "Hallowe'en" shows us superstition in a domestic aspect. "Tam O'Shanter" adorns popular belief with humorous terror, Mouse," in its weakness, contrasts with man in "The and helps us to laugh old dreads away. his strength, and preaches to us the instability of happiness on earth: while the "Mountain Daisy" pleads with such moral pathos the cause of the flowers of the field, sent by God to adorn the earth for man's pleasure, that our feet have pressed less ungraciously on the ". wee modest crimson-tipped flower," since his song was written. Others of his poems have a still "The Vision" reveals the grander reach.

Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. And though his literary stock was poor and scanty, his own resources were great, and his mind grew up with original and robust vigour. He never enjoyed the happy shades of academic bowers, but from a mere youth had to toil like a galley slave to support his parents. Seizing every moment which offered itself for improvement, he made the best of the little time he possessed. His heart beat with love for old Scotland. The wild stirrings of his ambition, which he so nobly compared to the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave, raised him above the common level. His story is a melancholy one. His early days dark and clouded; his life a hard battle for bread; his glory gained and acknowledged; his presence sought by the great and the wise; he, the idol of the day, the lion of the time, by-and-by cast away as a broken toy or a faded flower; his end in cold neglectful and poverty. All this is very touching; and considering the gigantic intellect of the man, and the wants of mankind, it seems a strange matter that England could afford him no better occupation than that of beer-gauging.

In the summer of 1786 he issued his first volume, from Kilmarnock. The edition consisted of 600 copies. A second edition was issued in 1787, the edition this time consisting of 2,800 copies. He became wondrously popular. There was a novelty-Ayrshire had produced its wonder; everybody talked about and praised the peasant poet. Elated with his

poet's plan of Providence; proves the worth of eloquence, bravery, honesty, and beauty;

and that even the rustic bard himself is a use

and ornamental link in the great chain of being. "The Cottar's Saturday Night" connects us with the invisible world, and shows

that domestic peace, faithful love, and patriotic feeling are, of earthly things, most akin to the joys of heaven, while the "Elegy of Matthew Henderson" "unites human nature in a bond of sympathy with the stars of the sky, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, the flowery vales and the lonely mountain."* The "Jolly Beggars" is a strikingly original poem, the most dramatic of his works, and one in which the characters are ably sustained.

* Allan Cunningham.

Above two hundred songs were thrown off by Burns in his latter years, embracing poetry of all kinds. No poetry was so instantaneously and universally received. There was the humour of Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne or Richardson, the real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson- all united in delineations of Scottish manners, and sung by the Ayrshire ploughman.

If he had affectation in anything it was in introducing occasionally (in conversation) a word, or phrase, from the French. And there is an anecdote related of him meeting with a French lady, with whom he attempted to converse in her own tongue. His French was unintelligible to her; her French unintelligible to him. He meant to tell her that she was a charming person, and possessed delightful conversational powers, but really said, and so the lady understood him, that she was fond of talking, which occasioned great offence; she indignantly replied, that it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent, as for ladies to be loquacious.

Among the literary works of Burns his epistolary correspondence must not be overlooked. One beautiful letter addressed to Mrs. Dunlop is worth repeating. It is a new year's letter, and is a fair specimen of his correspondence.

66

Ellesland, New Year's Morning, 1789. "This, dear madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description- The prayer of a righteous man availeth_much. In that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings: everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self-enjoyment should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times, and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habitual routine of life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little better than mere machinery. This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue-skied noon sometime about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end of autumn, these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday. I believe I owe this to the glorious paper in the Spectator, 'The Vision of Mirza,' a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables:'On the 5th day of the moon, which according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high

hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer!' We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot accourt for these seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which on minds of a different cast makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the harcbell, the foxglove, the wildbriar rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of wild plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devction or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery which, like the Eolian harp, passively takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities-a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave."

Poor Burns, his mind was ill at rest amid the changing scenes of his life. He was in the gay and gorgeous circles of society, but he had no lasting place there. He mingled with men who had fortunes, but he had no fortune at all. His time was spent among those who had no real care about him but as the curiosity of the day. Fortune showered her favours on those about him, but he got nothing save her angry looks. His spent time was irremediably gone, and he confessed that by dint of dining out he ran the risk of dying by starvation at home. For a long time he worked at copying music. His melancholy life, with its flashes of brightness here and there, could not last long.

Such is the fate of simple bard,

On life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card

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THE BOY'S RECITER.

4. ODE ON THE PASSIONS. (Collins.)

The style of this piece is vividly expressive. The successive passions, in the ecstasy of lyric excitement, must not only be delineated, by voice and action, but, to a great extent, personated by the reciter. This is no arbitrary prescription of the elocutionist. It is the working of Nature; as we may observe in the daily scenes of actual life. When we become intensely interested, in narrating or describing, we instinctively represent what strikes the imagination. The genuine poet, the true reciter, and the unperverted child, are all, in this respect, under one influence. Man, in these circumstances, becomes, and, by the inevitable law of sympathy, presents what he sees.

WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse's painting;
By turns, they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined:
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round,
They snatched her instruments of sound;
And, as they oft had heard apart,
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each, for madness ruled the hour,
Would prove his own expressive power.
First, Fear, his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid;
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
Even at the sound himself had made.
Next Anger rushed;-his eyes on fire,

In lightnings owned his secret stings,
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,

And swept with hurried hand the strings.
With woful measures wan Despair-

Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled,— A solemn, strange, and mingled air;

'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild. But thou, O Hope! with eyes so fair,

What was thy delighted measure? Still it whispered promised pleasure, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail! Still would her touch the strain prolong:

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, She called on Echo still through all her song; And where her sweetest theme she chose,

A soft responsive voice was heard at every close

And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair.

And longer had she sung :-but, with a frown, Revenge impatient rose :

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,

And with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,
And blew a blast so loud and dread,
Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe;
And, ever and anon, he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat: And though, sometimes, each dreary pause between,

Dejected Pity at his side,

Her soul-subduing voice applied,
Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien,
While each strained ball of sight seemed burst-
ing from his head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed;
Sad pooof of thy distressful state:
Of differing themes the veering song was
mixed;

And, now it courted Love; now, raving,
called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sat retired;

And from her wild sequestered seat,

In notes, by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul;

And, dashing soft from rocks around,
Bubbling runnels joined the sound:
Through glades and glooms, the mingled mea-
sures stole,

Or o'er some haunted streams with fond delay,
(Round an holy calm diffusing,
Love of peace, and lonely musing,)
In hollow murmurs died away.

But oh! how altered was its sprightlier
tone,

When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,

Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung!

The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known.

The oak-crowned Sisters, and their chaste-eyed
Queen,

Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen,
Peeping from forth their alleys green:
Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leaped up and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial;

He, with viny crown advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addressed; But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best,

They would have thought, who heard the strain,

They saw in Tempe's vale, her native maids, Amid the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing;

While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round:

Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound;

And he, amid his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings. 5. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. (Gray.)

This piece furnishes a perfect example for the cultivation of the tones of grave and noble sentiment, mingling with pathos. It requires attention, principally, to sustained "orotund" quality, of the deeper range, full but subdued force, slow and uniform utterance, yet free from monotony, the swelling tones of strong and profound emotion, moulded by chastened sympathy, and by dignity of manner.

THE curfew tolls, the knell of parting day;The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary

way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds; Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,

The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient, solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged clms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow, twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

Nor more shall rouse them from their lowly

bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield:

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:

How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike, the inevitable hour;—

The paths of glory lead but to the grave,

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where, through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault,

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

Perhaps, in this neglected spot, is laid

Some heart, once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er
unroll;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,

The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind; The struggling pangs of conscious Truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous Shame; Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray: Along the cool, sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet even these bones from insult to protect, Some frail memorial, still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply; And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies; Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries;

And in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead,

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate, If, chance, by lonely Contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, Haply, some hoary-headed swain may say, "Oft have we seen him, at the peep of dawn,

Brushing, with hasty steps, the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old, fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling, as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would

rove;

Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

"One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite tree: Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he: "The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne.

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH.

HERE rests his head upon the lap of earth

A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown: Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere: Heaven did a recompense as largely send :-He gave to misery all he had,-a tear;

He gained from heaven,-'twas all he wished, a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they, alike, in trembling hope, repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

6. THE COUP D'ETAT OF DECEMBER, 1851. Preserve an undisturbed simplicity of manner, apparently unconscious of equivoque. O, MARY ANN! O, Mary Ann!

Well may you bless your stars, You're living in a quiet land, Away from Coodytars.

You'd never sneer at home, and wish
That
If you only knew what petty pangs
Is a Frenchman's daily bread.

you was here instead,

Oh! when I think what foolish folk
This city do contain,

I can't quite fathom why it's called
Department of the Sane.

They've been and filled the streets with troops,
With Marshal Lor to lead 'em;

And you may guess them soldiers take
Great liberties with freedom.

For 'twixt the Assembly and the Prince
There's been a final fight;

And he has changed the Law of May
Into the Law of Might.

Long while, it seems, these silly men
Did nothing but dispute;
But finding talking did no good,

Resolved to have a Mute (emeute).

So, at the house of Mister Baze
These foolish plotters met;
(We've got green Baize at home, you know,
But none so green, as yet.)

Their schemes the Prince don't tell us yet,
For fear we should abhor 'em;

But says they meant to break the law,
And so he broke it for 'em.

And one John Darms they sent to seek
The plotters far and near;
And took 'em all away in vans,

With bag'nets in their rear.

And Tears, the cause of all his woe,
He managed to secure;
And sent him safe away to Ham,

His wicked tongue to cure.
And then to lessen our alarm,

He made a proclamation, A-bidding all the army rise,

And calm our hagitation.

"These fellows said you should be slaves,«And I've got fifty thousand men, I say you shan't," says he;

Who'll force you to be free."

Now what will be the hend of this
There's no one here can tell;

For some folks think they'll make the Prince
An Emperor as well.

"For isn't he as good," they say,

"As him we had before? If he was a Napoleon,

This one's a Louis Dor."

Some thinks the Socialists will rise
And end his troubled days;
And send him in a chaise and pair
Away to Pare la shays.

Some wish the Orlines party back,
Some hope they may miscarry,
And in their love for Henry Sink
Quite sink the Count de Parry.
But as for me I've seen enough,
Nor longer wish to roam;
And while they make so free abroad,
I'll be a slave at home.

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