His other comic songs are of equal merit. In the rural songs of Scotland, whether humorous or tender, the sentiments are given to particular characters, and very generally the incidents are referred to particular scenery. This last circumstance may be considered as the distinguishing feature of the Scottish songs, and on it a considerable part of their attraction depends. On all occasions the sentiments, of whatever nature, are delivered in the character of the person principally interested. If love be described, it is not as it is observed, but as it is felt; and the passion is delineated under a particular aspect. Neither is it the fiercer impulse of desires that are expressed, as in the celebrated ode of Sappho, the model of so many modern songs, but those gentler emotions of tenderness and affection, which do not entirely absorb the lover, but permit him to associate his emotions with the charms of external nature, and breathe the accents of purity and innocence as well as of love. In these respects the love songs of Scotland are honourably distinguished from the most admired classical compositions of the same kind; and by such associations a variety, as well as liveliness, is given to the representation of this passion, which are not to be found in the poetry of Greece or Rome, or perhaps of any other nation. Many of the love songs of Scotland describe scenes of rural courtship; many may be considered as invocations from lovers to their mistresses. On such occasions a degree of interest and reality is given to the sentiments by the spot destined to these happy interviews being particularised. The lovers perhaps meet at the Bush aboon Traquair, or on the Banks of Ettrick; the nymphs are invoked to wander among the wilds of Roslin or the woods of Invermay. Nor is the spot merely pointed out; the scenery is often desribed as well as the characters, so as to present a complete picture to the fancy.* Thus the maxim of Horace ut pictura poesis is

* One or
two examples may illustrate this observation. A
Scottish song, written about a hundred years ago, begins thus:-

On Ettrick banks, on a summer's night
At gloaming, when the sheep drove hame,

I met my lassie, braw and tight,

Come wading barefoot a' her lane:

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faithfully observed by those rustic bards, who are guided by the same impulse of nature and sensibility which influenced the father of epic poetry, on whose example the precept of the Roman poet was, perhaps, founded. By this means the imagination is employed to interest the feelings. When we do not conceive distinctly, we do not sympathise deeply in any human affection; and we conceive nothing in the abstract. Abstraction, so useful in morals and so essential in science, must be abandoned when the heart is to be subdued by the powers of poetry or of eloquence. The bards of a ruder condition of society paint individual objects; and hence, among other causes, the easy access they obtain to the heart. Generalisation is the vice of poets whose learning overpowers their genius, of poets of a refined and scientific age.

My heart grew light, I ran, I flang

My arms about her lily neck,

And kiss'd and clasped there fu' lang,

My words they were na mony feck.*

The lover, who is a Highlander, goes on to relate the language he employed with his Lowland maid to win her heart, and to persuade her to fly with him to the Highland hills, there to share his fortune. The sentiments are in themselves beautiful. But we feel them with double force while we conceive that they were addressed by a lover to his mistress, whom he met all alone, on a summer's evening, by the banks of a beautiful stream, which some of us have actually seen, and which all of us can paint to our imagination. Let us take another example. It is now a nymph that speaks. Hear how she expresses herself

How blythe each morn was I to see

My swain come o'er the hill!

He skipt the burn, and flew to me,

I met him with guid will.

Here is another picture drawn by the pencil of Nature. We see a shepherdess standing by the side of a brook, watching her lover as he descends the opposite hill. He bounds lightly along; he approaches nearer and nearer; he leaps the brook, and flies into her arms. In the recollection of these circumstances, the surrounding scenery becomes endeared to the fair mourner, and she bursts into the following exclamation:

O the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom,

The broom of the Cowdenknowes;

I wish I were with my dear swain,
With his pipe and my ewes.

Thus the individual spot of this happy interview is pointed out, and the picture is completed.

* Mony feck, not very many.

The dramatic style which prevails so much in the Scottish songs, while it contributes greatly to the interest they excite, also shows that they have originated among a people in the earlier stages of society. Where this form of composition appears in songs of a modern date, it indicates that they have been written after the ancient model.* The Scottish songs are of very unequal poetical merit, and this inequality often extends to the different parts of the same song. Those that are humorous or characteristic of manners have in general the merit of copying nature; those that are serious are tender and often sweetly interesting, but seldom exhibit high powers of imagination, which, indeed, do not easily find a place in this species of composition. The alliance of the words of the Scottish songs with the music has, in some instances, given to the

*That the dramatic form of writing characterises the productions of an early, or, what amounts to the same thing, of a rude stage of society, may be illustrated by a reference to the most ancient compositions that we know of, the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of Homer. The form of dialogue is adopted in the old Scottish ballads even in narration, whenever the situations described become interesting. This sometimes produces a very striking effect, of which an instance may be given from the ballad of Edom o' Gordon, a composition apparently of the sixteenth century. The story of the ballad is shortly this:-The castle of Rhodes, in the absence of its lord, is attacked by the robber Edom o' Gordon. The lady stands on her defence, beats off the assailants, and wounds Gordon, who, in his rage, orders the castle to be set on fire. That his orders are carried into effect, we learn from the expostulation of the lady, who is represented as standing on the battlements and remonstrating on this barbarity. She is interrupted—

O then bespake her little son,

Sate on his nourice knee;

Says, "Mither dear, gi' owre this house,
For the reek it smithers me."

"I wad gie a' my gowd, my childe,

Sae wad I a' my fee,

For ae blast o' the westlin' wind,
To blaw the reek frae thee."

The circumstantiality of the Scottish love songs, and the dramatic form which prevails so generally in them, probably arises from their being the descendants and successors of the ancient ballads. In the beautiful modern song of Mary of Castle-Cary, the dramatic form has a very happy effect. The same may be said of Donald and Flora, and Come under my Plaidie, by the same author, Mr. Macniel.

former a popularity which otherwise they would not have obtained.

The association of the words and the music of these songs with the more beautiful parts of the scenery of Scotland contributes to the same effect. It has given them not merely popularity but permanence; it has imparted to the works of man some portion of the durability of the works of nature. If, from our imperfect experience of the past, we may judge with any confidence respecting the future, songs of this description are of all others least likely to die. In the changes of language they may, no doubt, suffer change, but the associated strain of sentiment and of music will perhaps survive while the clear stream sweeps down the vale of Yarrow, or the yellow broom waves on Cowdenknowes.

The first attempts of Burns in song-writing were not very successful. His habitual inattention to the exactness of rhymes and to the harmony of numbers, arising probably from the models on which his versification was formed, were faults likely to appear to more disadvantage in this species of composition than in any other, and we may also remark that the strength of his imagination and the exuberance of his sensibility were with difficulty restrained within the limits of gentleness, delicacy, and tenderness, which seemed to be assigned to the love songs of his nation. Burns was better adapted by nature for following in such compositions the model of the Grecian than that of the Scottish muse. By study and practice he, however, surmounted all these obstacles. In his earlier songs there is some ruggedness, but this gradually disappears in his successive efforts, and some of his later compositions of this kind may be compared in polished delicacy with the finest songs in our language, while in the eloquence of sensibility they surpass them all.

The songs of Burns, like the models he followed and excelled, are often dramatic, and, for the greater part, amatory, and the beauties of rural nature are everywhere associated with the passions and emotions of the mind. Disdaining to copy the works of others, he has not,

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like some poets of great name, admitted into his descriptions exotic imagery. The landscapes he has painted, and the objects with which they are embellished, are, in every single instance, such as are to be found in his own country. In a mountainous region, especially when it is comparatively rude and naked, the most beautiful scenery will always be found in the valleys and on the banks of the wooded streams. Such scenery is peculiarly interesting at the close of a summer day. As we advance northward the number of the days of summer, indeed, diminishes; but from this cause, as well as from the mildness of the temperature, the attraction of the season increases, and the summer night becomes still more beautiful. The greater obliquity of the sun's path on the ecliptic prolongs the grateful season of twilight to the midnight hours, and the shades of evening seem to mingle with the morning's dawn. The rural poets of Scotland, as may be expected, associate in their songs the expressions of passion with the most beautiful of their scenery in the fairest season of the year, and generally in those hours of the evening, when the beauties of nature are most interesting.*

* A lady, of whose genius the editor entertains high admiration (Mrs. Barbauld), has fallen into an error in this respect. In her prefatory address to the works of Collins, speaking of the natural objects that may be employed to give interest to the descriptions of passion, she observes, They present an inexhaustible variety, from the Song of Solomon, breathing of cassia, myrrh, and cinnamon, to the Gentle Shepherd of Ramsay, whose damsels carry their milking-pails through the frosts and snows of their less genial, but not less pastoral country." The damsels of Ramsay do not walk in the midst of frost and snow. Almost all the scenes of the Gentle Shepherd are laid in the open air, amidst beautiful natural objects, and at the most genial season of the year. Ramsay introduces all his acts with a prefatory description to assure us of this. The fault of the climate of Britain is not that it does not afford us the beauties of summer, but that the season of such beauties is comparatively short, and even uncertain. There are days and nights, even in the northern division of the island, which equal, or, perhaps, surpass, what are to be found in the latitude of Sicily or of Greece. Buchanan, when he wrote his exquisite Ode to May, felt the charm as well as the transientness of these happy days

Salve fugacis gloria seculi,

Salve secunda digna dies nota,
Salve vetustæ vitæ imago,

Et specimen venientis Evi.