assigns him a place among the ancient British chieftains of Strathclyde.

1. 12. to fish for cod. Newfoundland is meant.

1. 22. And snuff'd at stanes. This is weak comparatively with the suppressed original. Burns's descriptions are no less realistic than the pictures of Wilkie. (Sc. 'Collessie Fair.')

1. 24. A rhyming, ranting, roving billie. This, of course, is the ploughman. It is Burns himself, who really owned a 'collie,' or sheep-dog, to which he had given the name of Luath,—after (as he tells us himself) Cuchullin's dog in Ossian's Fingal.' Cp. the song, Rantin', rovin', Robin.

1. 62. the ha' folk. The servants' hall.

11. 65, 66. wee blastit wonner... it eats a dinner. A diminutive meagre huntsman, a wonder to see. The dog's use of 'it' is here to be noted. So men speak of a dog: so Cæsar speaks of a man.

1. 78. in thack an' rape. Said primarily of stacks of corn in a stack-yard,covered and secured from the weather. Applied to a household the expression means shelter, clothing, food—in short, the necessaries of life.

11. 81, 82. a wee touch langer an' they maun starve. Cp. the common expression 'A word more, and I have done.'

1. 96. thole a factor's snash. A recollection of the farm life at Mount Oliphant: 'My indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoundrel factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears.'-Burns's Letter to Dr. Moore, Aug. 1787. 1. 115. twalpennie-worth o' nappy. A quart of ale. A shilling Scots was only a penny sterling; a pound Scots, one-and-eightpence. Scottish coins were withdrawn early last century, but money long continued to be calculated in the old way in Scotland. 1. 119. patronage and priests. Right of appointing ministers to parishes (then, and indeed till 1874, exercised by a landholder known as 'the patron'); and clergymen. Patronage was very unpopular in some quarters-it was a vexed question, often discussed, nearly everywhere.

1. 123. bleak-faced Hallowmas.

See Halloween, p. 34.

1. 148. his saul indentin'. Dedicating his whole heart and life; Luath does not finish the sentence.

1. 162. fecht wi' nowt. Bull-fighting is referred to. The language is, of course, that kind of sarcasm which calls a spade a spade.

1. 165. drumly German water. The German spas are referred to,

then becoming fashionable. Mineral waters are not usually quite

clear.

1. 192. grips an' granes, gripes and groans.

11. 193, 194. sic fools for a' their colleges. Cp.

"They gang in stirks an' come out asses,
Plain truth to speak.'

(First) Epistle to Lapraik, 11. 69, 70.

1. 202. Her dizzens done. So many dozens of hanks of thread, spun by her.

1. 225. a farmer's stackyard. The whole year's crop on a farm. 1. 231. The bum-clock hummed wi' lazy drone. Cp. Gray's line'The beetle wheels his droning flight.'-Elegy.

The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer.

Early in 1786 the Excise laws were being enforced with a rigour which alarmed the Scottish distillers, and those of the community who loved a dram. Burns joined in the outcry. His motto was 'Freedom and Whisky gang thegither.' The poem should be read after the verses in praise of Scotch Drink. It would be quite wrong to argue from these poems that Burns was an immoderate drinker. His brother Gilbert's testimony is that he was never intoxicated, nor at all given to drinking,' during the seven years of his early manhood, ending at his 28th birthday (Jan. 1786).

11. 1, 2. Ye Irish lords . wha represent our brughs, &c. The eldest sons of Scottish peers were ineligible for election to the House of Commons.

1. 13. yon Premier youth. Pitt-he was born in the same year as Burns, 1759.

1. 17. blaw ye south, i. e. out of Scotland, not again to represent that country.

1. 68. Her lost Militia fired her bluid. The reference is to the Scottish Militia Bill,-rejected by the Whigs because of the conditions with which it was burdened.

1. 81. the muckle house. Of Parliament,-called elsewhere in this poem 'St. Stephen's,' and 'St. Jamie's.'

1. 91. Ye chosen Five-and-forty. The number of representatives assigned to Scotland by the Articles of the Union, 1707.

1. 122. Clap in his cheek a Highland gill. That is, a gill of Highland whisky. The principal distillery in Scotland for several

years was at Ferintosh in Cromartyshire. This distillery was exempt from duty-a privilege which Government bought back (in 1783) by paying the proprietor a sum of over £20,000.

1. 135. causes seek. To account, that is, for bravery.

Epistle to James Smith.

In 1786, when this

He died,

Smith was one of Burns's intimate friends. letter was addressed to him, he was a shopkeeper (a draper) in Mauchline. His portrait is drawn in the third stanza. even before Burns, in the West Indies, after an unsuccessful attempt to carry on business as a calico-printer in West Lothian. This poem is rich in revelation of the writer's natural disposition, his prospects, and his aims: it presents also his view of human nature, and of human life.

11. 37-42. This while my notion's ta'en a sklent, &c. In the spring of 1786 Burns issued Proposals for publishing a volume of Scottish poems by subscription. The diffidence expressed in this stanza appears in his correspondence: 'Remember a poor poet militant in your prayers. He looks forward with fear and trembling to that (to him) important moment which stamps the die with-withwith, perhaps, [his] eternal disgrace.'—(Letter, of date 17th April, 1786.)

1. 133. A title, Dempster merits it. George Dempster, M.P., patriotic Scotsman.

The Vision.

a

'The Vision' is of unequal merit. Some of the stanzas of which it consists Burns had the good taste to keep in manuscript. Many of the stanzas which he printed are here suppressed. It is divided into Duans in imitation of Macpherson's 'Ossian's Cath-loda.' It begins in Scotch, but the change from Scotch to English is skilfully effected before the first Duan ends. The whole of the second Duan is in English. The key upon which the poem ends is in remarkable contrast in its supernatural solemnity to the homely realistic strain with which it opens.

'The Vision' is to be regarded as a poetical representation of a great decision at which after full deliberation Burns arrives, to consecrate his hopes and energies-his whole soul-to poetry. The Muse' is his own nobler nature; the 'guid advice' of the fifth stanza is the expression of a mere worldly desire to be rich, to

be, or to seem independent.

'It was not necessary,' says Carlyle, 'for Burns to be rich, to be, or to seem independent; but it was necessary for him to be at one with his own heart; to place what was highest in his nature highest also in his life. . . . Both poet and man of the world he must not be.' If he had acted consistently with this decision, it would have been well.

1. 2. their roaring play. Curling is often referred to as 'the roaring game.' Cp.

11. 3, 4. hunger'd maukin ta’en her way to kailyards green. Thomson's Winter :

'The foodless wilds

Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Tho' timorous of heart, and hard beset

By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
And more unpitying man, the garden seeks,' &c.

11. 92-96. many a light aërial band. This idea of guardian spirits is a common one in poetry. It is a leading feature of Ramsay's Vision, with which Burns was doubtless acquainted. Milton imports it from classical mythology into his Comus. The name of the Muse,' Coila, was suggested to Burns by Ross, author of The Fortunate Shepherdess, who had named his muse 'Scota.' (See Burns's Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 7 Mar. 1788.)

1. III. Campbells, chiefs of fame. The Loudon branch of that family.

1. 121. I saw thee seek the sounding shore. At Mount Oliphant as a boy he was daily in sight of the sea. But Burns makes little reference to the sea, even in his songs. Perhaps his most effective use of sea imagery is in the lines

'The wan moon is setting ayont the white wave,

And time is setting with me O.'

11. 139-144. When youthful love, &c. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet.'-(Autobiographical Letter to Dr. Moore.)

11. 153, 154. o'er all my wide domains thy fame extends. He had yet published nothing, but his poems, passed about in MS., were already much talked of in the district of Kyle.

11. 158-160. paint with Thomson's landscape glow &c. The landscape glow may be allowed to Thomson; but Gray is not usually credited with 'warmth,' nor Shenstone with the power of 'melt

ing.' In a letter to Dr. Moore, of date Jan. 1787, Burns repeats his criticism:-'In a language where Pope and Churchill have raised the laugh, and Shenstone and Gray drawn the tear, where Thomson and Beattie have painted the landscape, I am not vain enough to hope for distinguished poetic fame.' 1. 171. not Potosi's mine. Silver to the value of hundreds of millions of pounds sterling has been extracted from the mines in the mountains of Bolivia near the town of Potosi. (Bollaert's Antiq. of S. America.)

Address to the Unco Guid.

The 'Unco Guid' are those who never deviate from the path of rectitude, and never neglect duty. They are compared to a wellgoing mill, which never gets out of gear, does an immense amount of grinding, and is ready to do any amount more.

ll. 10-14. counsel... propone defences. Legal expressions. He will advocate their case, and advance a plea or two in their behalf. 1. 21. what scant occasion gave. Viz. 'the purity they pride in.' They were never assailed by temptation.

1. 48. Ye're aiblins nae temptation. In effect, you are never likely to be tempted, being without attractions.

1. 49 to the end. These generous lines express the various reasons that make charitable judgment even in the mind a duty. Cp. Gray's Elegy,

'No farther seek

To draw his frailties from their dread abode,

The bosom of his Father and his God.'

1. 64. know not what's resisted. We are ignorant of the strength of the temptation.

The Holy Fair.

'Holy Fair,' says Burns, 'is a common phrase in the west of Scotland for a sacramental occasion.' The institution known by this name was a particular method, confined to rural districts, of celebrating the Lord's Supper. The celebration was annual, on a Sunday in summer; the religious services were partly conducted in the open air, in the neighbourhood of the church; several clergymen, four or five, came to assist the local minister; and