cited them till they grew popular, and were on every lip. Even "Holy Willie's Prayer" was countenanced by the New Light pastors. Among the Poet's papers was found an epistle to the Rev. John Mac Math, enclosing a copy of the Prayer which he had requested; the date of this communication, Sept. 17, 1785, fixes the season of this western dispute. It seems, however, to approach the close; the Poet is grown weary of his work, as well he might :—

"My musie, tir'd with mony a sonnet,

On gown, and band, and douce black bonnet,
Is grown right eerie now she's done it,

Lest they should blame her,

An' rouse their holy thunder on it,

And anathem her."

Burns, during this drudgery, was strengthening his hands for higher and purer duties. In labouring to accommodate his thoughts, and

"Riving the words to gar them clink,"

in unison with the technicalities of mystical controversy, he was acquiring an almost audacious vigour of expression, and a ready skill in handling subjects either of fact or of fancy. It is true that he learned to speak profanely, but then this was in the service of the kirk; he learned something more when he dined with drunken lawyers, and grew tipsy among godly priests. The muse of Kyle helped to extinguish the Old Light, but she left predestination where

she found it. A Mauchline mason said to the

Poet, when he read him "Holy Willie's Prayer," "It's a very weel and very witty, and I have laughed that shouldna have laughed; but ye'll no hinder me from thinking that Providence kenn'd weel what he was doing when he made man-foresaw the upshot-wha was to be good and wha was to be bad; and knowing this, and making man a fallible creature still, looks as like predestination as ought I ever heard of."

These satiric rhymes established the fame of Burns in his native place; his company was now courted by country lairds, village lawyers, and parish school-masters, and by all persons who had education above common, or kept some state in their households. He was always welcome to Gavin Hamilton and his family; equally so to Robert Aiken, a worthy writer in Ayr; and now he became so to all who had any relish for wit, or any soul for poetry. He was at once the companion of the grave and of the giddy ; now dining with the minister and a douce friend or two at the manse; then presiding in a Masonmeeting, chanting songs, and pushing about the punch with the "brethren of the mystic level," or communing on the severity of the excise laws with a "blackguard smuggler," or some Highland envoy from the dominions of Ferintosh, whose "cousin did as good as keep a small still." When he appeared in company

he was expected to say something clever or shrewd; he was pointed out at church and at market, and peasant spoke of him to peasant as a wild, witty lad, who lived at Mossgiel, and had all the humour of Ramsay, and more than the spirit of Fergusson.

It is humiliating to think that works which Burns seemed willing to forget brought him first into notice. Some of the most exquisite lyrics ever said or sung failed to do for him what "The Holy Tuilzie" and "The Ordination" accomplished at once: and there can be no question that " Holy Willie's Prayer" and the "Epistle to Goudie" prepared the minds of the people around him for admiring his “ Halloween" and his "Cotter's Saturday Night." ments and feelings common to our nature, canIn truth, poetry, which only embodies sentinot compete, in the race of immediate fame, with verse appealing to our passions and our prejudices, and glowing with the heat of a passing true Florimel is found to be of delicate flesh dispute. Time settles and explains all. The and blood, breathing of loveliness and attraction, and adorned by nature; while the false Dessa, is discovered to be a thing of shreds and patches, with jewels of glass, and an artificial complexion. Nature and truth finally triumph, and to He left the agitated puddles of mysticism to nature and truth Burns accordingly returned. drink at the pure springs with the muse of love, and joy, and patriotism.

Of the person and manners of the Poet, at this important period of his life, we have various accounts; but the portraits, although differing in posture as well as in light and shade, all express the same sentiment. He was now grown up to man's estate, and had taken his station as such in society: he was the head, too, of his father's house, and though his expenses were regulated upon a system of close economy, his bargains, as a farmer, controlled by his brother Gilbert, and his demeanour at the fire-side under the mild influence of his mother, he had in all other matters his own will. He has recorded much of himself at this period both in verse and prose, nor can this be set down to egotism: from all the world, save the little community of Kyle, he was completely shut out, and he turned his eyes on himself, and wrote down his own hopes and aspirations. He has even recorded his stature in rhyme :—

"O! why the deuce should I repine,

Or be an ill foreboder?

I'm twenty-three, and five feet nine,
I'll go and be a sodger."

His large dark expressive eyes; his swarthy visage; his broad brow, shaded with black waving hair; his melancholy look, and his well-knit frame, vigorous and active-all united to draw men's eyes upon him. He affected, too, a certain oddity of dress and manner.

He

was clever in controversy; but obstinate, and even fierce, when contradicted, as most men are who have built up their opinions for themselves. He used with much taste the common pithy saws and happy sayings of his country, and invigorated his eloquence by apt quotations from old songs or ballads. He courted controversy, and it was to this period that Murdoch, the accomplished mechanic, referred, when he told me that he once heard Burns haranguing his fellow-peasants on religion at the door of a change-house, and so unacceptable were his remarks that some old men hissed him away. Nor must it be supposed that, even when listened to, he was always victorious.-"Burns, sir," said one of his old opponents, "was a 'cute chield and a witty ane, but he didna half like to have my harrow coming owre his new-fangled notions." The early companions of the Poet were men above the common mark. Smith, to whom he addressed some of his finest poetic epistles, was a person of taste and sagacity; David Sillar, a good scholar, and something of a poet; Ranken, an out-spoken, ready-witted man, and a little of a scoffer; Lapraik lived at a distance; he had written at least one song worthy of notice. Hamilton was open-hearted and open-handed, and of a good family; Aiken seems to have abounded in good sense and good feeling; Ballantyne was much of a gentleman; Parker, kind and generous; Mackenzie, of Irvine, a skilful surgeon and a good scholar, who introduced the Poet to Dugald Stewart, Whiteford, Erskine, and Blair;-but his chief comrade and confidant was his brother Gilbert, who at an early age distinguished himself for sense and discernment.

"Gilbert," says Mackenzie, "partook more of the manner and appearance of the father, and Robert of the mother. In the first interview I had with him at Lochlea, he was frank, modest, well-informed, and communicative. The Poet seemed distant, suspicious, and without any wish to interest or please. He kept himself very silent in a dark corner of the room, and, before he took any part in conversation, I frequently observed him scrutinizing me, while I conversed with his father and his brother. From the period of which I speak, I took a lively interest in Robert Burns. Even then his conversation was rich in well-chosen figures, animated and energetic. Indeed, I have always thought that no person could have a just idea of the extent of Burns' talents who had not heard him converse. His discrimination of character was greatly beyond that of any person I ever knew, and I have often observed to him that it seemed to be intuitive. I seldom ever knew him make a false estimate of character when he formed the opinion from his own observation." The sketch drawn by Sillar is of another kind:-"Robert Burns was some time in the parish of Tarbolton, prior to my acquaintance

with him. His social disposition easily procured him acquaintance; but a certain satirical seasoning with which he and all poetical geniuses are in some degree influenced, while it set the rustic circle in a roar, was not unaccompanied with suspicious fear. I recollect hearing his neighbours observe, he had a great deal to say for himself, but that they suspected his principles. He wore the only tied hair in the parish; and in the church his plaid, which was of a particular colour (I think fillemot), he wrapped in a peculiar manner round his shoulders. These surmises, and his exterior, made me solicitous of his acquaintance. I was introduced by Gilbert not only to his brother, but to the whole of that family, where, in a short time, I became a frequent, and, I believe, not unwelcome, visitant. After the commencement of my acquaintance with the bard, we frequently met upon Sundays at church; when, between sermons, instead of going with our friends or our lasses to the inn, we often took a walk in the fields. In these walks, I have often been struck with his facility in addressing the fair sex: many times when I have been bashfully anxious how to express myself, he would have entered into conversation with them, with the greatest ease and freedom; and it was generally a death-blow to our conversation, however agreeable, to meet a female acquaintance. Some of the few opportunities of a noon-tide walk that a country life allows her laborious sons, he spent on the banks of the river, or in the woods, in the neighbourhood of Stair. Some book or other he always carried, and read, when not otherwise employed; it was likewise his custom to read at table.”

A third hand completes the sketch:—“Though Burns," says Professor Walker, "was still unknown as a Poet, he already numbered several clergymen among his acquaintance: one of these communicated to me a circumstance which conveyed, more forcibly than many words, an idea of the impression made upon his mind by the powers of the Poet. This gentleman had repeatedly met Burns in company, when the acuteness and originality displayed by the latter, the depth of his discernment, the force of his expressions, and the authoritative energy of his understanding, had created in the former a sense of his power, of the extent of which he was unconscious till revealed to him by accident. The second time that he appeared in the pulpit, he came with an assured and tranquil mind; and though a few persons of education were present, he advanced some length in the service with his confidence and self-possession unimpaired. But when he observed Burns, who was of a different parish, unexpectedly enter the church, he was instantly affected with a tremour and embarrassment, which apprized him of the impression his mind, unknown to itself, had previously received."

Authorities such as these confute the inconsiderate assertions of Heron, respecting the "opening character" of the Poet. We have no proof that he became discontented in early life with the humble labours to which he saw himself confined, and with the poor subsistence he was able to earn by them-that he could not help looking upon the rich and great whom he saw around, with an emotion between envy and contempt, as if something had still whispered to his heart that there was injustice in the external inequality between his fate and theirs. The early injuries of fortune oppressed him at times; but, till he was thirty years old, his spirit was buoyant and unbroken, and he looked with an unclouded brow on the world around him.

In "The Holy Fair," the Poet, accidentally or purposely, rose out of the lower regions of personal invective into the purer air of true poetry, and gave us a picture of singular breadth and beauty. The aim of the poem is chiefly to reprehend, by means of wit and humour, those almost indecent festivities which, in many western parishes, accompany the administration of the sacrament. Instead of preaching to the staid and the pious under the roof of the kirk, the scene is transferred to the open church-yard, where a tent or pulpit is erected for the preachers; while, all around, the people of the parish seat themselves on graves or grave-stones, decorously to look and listen. In the earlier days of the church, when men were more in earnest, there is no doubt that a scene such as this in the open air was attended with nothing of an objectionable nature; nay, at present, the thoughtful and the serious contemplate it as something edifying and impressive; but with the pious and the orderly come swarms of the idle and the profligate; bevies of lads and lasses keep moving about, in search of better seats or finer points of view, and tiring, or affecting to tire, of the sermon, which is sometimes of the longest, retire to a neighbouring change-house, or to the open door of an ale-booth, where, as they empty the glass, they may hear the voice of the preacher. There is no doubt that these "Holy Fairs," as they were scoffingly called, afforded scenes more than justifying serious as well as sarcastic reproof. In the poem, Burns here and there shews he had been reading other poets. His allegorical personages are partly copied from Fergusson, and the hares that hirpled down the furs did the same for Montgomery. "The farcical scene the Poet there describes," says Gilbert, "was often a favourite field for his observation, and most of the incidents he mentions had actually passed before his eyes."

Burns now openly took upon himself the name of Poet; he not only wrote it in his books, but wrought it into his rhymes, and began to entertain hopes of distinction in the realms of song. But nothing, perhaps, marks

the character of the man more than the alteration which he made in his own name. He had little relish for by-gone things; there are few gazings back at periods of honour or of woes in all his strains. The name he had hitherto borne was of old standing, the Poet sat in judgment upon it, concluded that it had a barbarous sound, and threw away Burness-a name two syllables long, and adopted that of Burns in its stead. Had his father been alive, this might not have happened. On the 20th of March, 1786, he says to one of his Correspondents:-"I hope some time before we hear the gouk, to have the pleasure of seeing you at Kilmarnock, when I intend having a gill between us in a mutchkin stoup, which will be a great comfort and consolation to, dear Sir, your humble servant, Robert Burness."-This is the latest time that I find his original name in his own hand-writing; it is plain, that up to this period, he imagined he had achieved nothing under that of his father deserving to live. On the 20th of April he wrote his name "Burns" in a letter enclosing to his friend Kennedy that beautiful poem the "Mountain Daisy," headed "The Gowan." This was with the Poet a season of changes.

Burns commenced emblazoning his altered name with all that is bright and lasting in verse. From the day that he entered upon Mossgiel with the resolution of becoming rich, till the dark hour on which he quitted it, reduced well nigh to beggary, he continued to pour forth poem after poem, and song succeeding song, with a variety and rapidity truly wonderful. His best poems are the offspring of those four unfortunate years, and the history of each has something in it of the curious or the romantic. "The Death and dying words of poor Mailie," and, better still, "Poor Mailie's Elegy," suggested to him probably by "The Ewie wi' the crooked horn" of Skinner, were written before the death of his father--at least the former was. The Poet had, it seems, bought a ewe with two lambs from a neighbour, and tethered her in a field at Lochlea. I," says Gilbert, "were going out with our teams, and our two younger brothers to drive for us, at mid-day, when Hugh Wilson, a curious-looking awkward boy, clad in plaiding, came to us with much anxiety in his face, with the information that the ewe had entangled herself in the tether, and was lying in the ditch."

"He and

The "Elegy" has much of the Poet's latter freedom and force. He had caressed this fourfooted favourite till she followed at his heels like a dog :

:

"Through a' the town she trotted by him,
A lang half-mile she could descry him,
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed;

A friend mair faithfu' ne'er come nigh him,
Than Mailie dead."

One of the rejected verses ought to be remem

bered in Kyle, were it but for the honour done to the lambs of Fairlee :

"She was nae get o' runted rams,

Wi' woo' like goats, an' legs like trams,
She was the flower o' Fairlee lambs,
A famous breed ;

Now Robin, greetin' chews the hams
O' Mailie dead."

The image in the two last lines is out of harmony with the sentiment of the poem; and Burns, whose taste was born with him, omitted the verse in consequence.

The "Epistle to David Sillar was written some time in the summer of 1784. Burns was in the habit of composing verse at the plough or the harrow-he turned it over in his mind for several days, and when he had polished it to his satisfaction, or found a moment's leisure, he committed it to paper. Gilbert relates that he was weeding with Robert in the kail-yard, when he repeated the principal part of the Epistle. The first idea of his becoming an author was then started. "I was much pleased," says his brother, "with the Epistle, and said to him that I was of opinion it would bear being printed, and that it would be well received by people of taste: that I thought it at least equal, if not superior, to many of Allan Ramsay's epistles, and that the merit of these, and much other Scottish poetry, seemed to consist principally in the knack of the expression; but here there was a train of interesting sentiment, and the Scotticism of the language scarcely seemed affected, but appeared to be the natural language of the poet; that, besides, there was certainly some novelty in a poet pointing out the consolations that were in store for him when he should go a-begging. Robert seemed pleased with my criticism, and we talked of sending it to some magazine."

If we credit the accuracy of the verse, and the memory of Gilbert, the Poet was, in 1784, acquainted with Jean Armour, and had become her admirer and lover. But it is more likely that the verse in which her name occurs was added afterwards, unless we believe that he had made an inroad among the "Mauchline belles," almost as soon as he went to Mossgiel. His Epistles are of high merit. They are, perhaps, the finest compositions of the kind in the language-airy, elegant, and philosophic-with more nature than Prior's Epistle to Fletwood Shepherd," and equal power of illustration. He had already begun to take those serious looks at human life of which his poems are full; nor did he fail to perceive how unequally the gifts of fortune, as well as those of genius, are divided.

"It's hardly in a body's power, To keep at times from being sour, To see how things are shar'd;

How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant,

And kenna how to wair't."

He lived long enough to think more deeply and more darkly on this topic. At present the world was brightening before him-the mist seemed rolling away from his path, and he felt disposed to enjoy life without murmuring.

The epistolary form was a favourite way with Burns of giving air to his opinions and feelings; when he had doubts of fame-was o'ermastered with his passions-or disgusted with

"The tricks of knaves and fash of fools,"

he lifted the pen and indited an epistle to a friend, and poured out the loves, the cares, the sorrows, the joys, the hopes. and fears of the passing moment. It is truly wonderful with what ease and felicity-nay, with what elegance, he twines the garlands of his fancy round a barren topic. Much of his history may be sought for in these compositions. In his "Epistle to James Smith," he alludes to his Poems: intimates that he had thoughts of printing them, pretends to take alarm at the sight of moths of authors :revelling on the pages

"Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters."

and philosophically exclaims, as well as poetically

"Then farewell hopes o' laurel-boughs
To garland my poetic brows:
Henceforth I'll rove where busy plough
Are whistling thrang,

An' teach the lonely heights an' howes
My rustic sang."

Burns takes a loftier view of the matter in his epistle to Lapraik, written on the first of April, 1785. He intimates that he is no poet, in the high acceptation of the word; but a rhymer, who deals in homely words, and has no pretence to learning. He pulls himself down, but he refuses to let any one else up; he prefers a spark of nature's fire to all the artificial heat of education, and speaks contemptuously of "critic folk," and learned judges:

"What's a' your jargon o' your schools,
Your Latin names for horns an' stools;
If honest Nature made you fools,

What sairs your grammars?
Ye'd better ta'en up spades and shools,
Or knappin-hammers.

"A set o' dull, conceited hashes,
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak:

An' syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o'Greek!"

in a second epistle to the same person, Burns claims for "the ragged followers of the Nine" a life of immortal light, and presents to their contemplation the sordid sons of Mammon suffering under the transmigration of souls:

In a poetic letter to another of his companions, while exulting in the idea of making the rivers and rivulets of Kyle flow bright in future song, he lets us into the secret of his own mode of musing:

"The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel' he learned to wander
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
An' no think lang!

O! sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder
A heartfelt sang!"

Of these poems, we are informed that the first epistle to John Lapraik was written in consequence of a clever song, which that indifferent rhymer had made, under the inspiration of adversity. The epistle to Ranken carries its own explanation with it: we may allow it to remain half concealed in the thin mist of allegory. The epistle to Smith is perhaps the very best of all these compositions: the singular ease of the verse; the moral dignity of one passage; the wit and humour of a second; the elegance of compliment in a third; and the life which animates the whole, must be felt by the most ordinary mind. One of the verses was frequent on the lips of Byron during the darkening down of his own day:

"When ance life's day draws near the gloamin,'
Then fareweel vacant, careless roamin,'
An' fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin,'

An' social noise;

An' fareweel, dear, deluding woman!
The joy of joys!"

In the winter of 1785, Burns composed his "Address to the Deil." His sable majesty is familiar to the imagination of every Scottish peasant, and there are few wild glens in which he has not been heard or seen. The Satan of Milton was a favourite with the Poet; he admired his fortitude in enduring what could not be remedied, and pitied a noble and exalted mind in ruins. This feeling he united to the traditions of shepherds and husbandmen, and treated the Evil Spirit with much of the respect due to fallen royalty. "It was, I think," says Gilbert, "in the winter, as we were going together with carts for coal to the family fireand I could yet point out the particular spot that the author first repeated to me the Address to the Deil.'" That Burns was now acquainted with Jean Armour, the variations of this poem sufficiently prove :—

"Lang syne, in Eden's happy scene,

When strappin' Adam's days were green,
And Eve was like my bonny Jean,
My dearest part,

A dancin', sweet, young, handsome quean,
Wi' guileless heart."

The evil spirit of religious controversy was now fairly out of him: he makes no allusions, though the temptation was great, to the clergy, but treats the subject with natural truth and vigour. All northern natures sympathize in the following fine stanza :—

"I've heard my reverend grannie say,
In lanely glens ye like to stray;
Or where auld ruin'd castles gray,
Nod to the moon,

Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way
Wi' eldritch croon."

There is something of serious jocularity in the verse which expresses the Poet's fears and hopes of futurity :

"An' now, auld Cloots, I ken y're thinkin,'
A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',
Some luckless hour will send him linkin'
To your black pit;

But, faith! he'll turn a corner, jinkin',
An' cheat you yet."

In the contemplated repentance of Satan, Burns seems to hint at universal redemption-a finishing touch of fine and unexpected tenderness. The "Halloween" is a happy mixture of the dramatic and the descriptive, and bears the impress of the manners, customs, and superstitions familiar with the actors; we not only see them of the people. We see the scene, and are made busied in the mysteries of the night, but we hear their remarks; nor can we refrain from accompanying them on their solitary and perilous errands to "winnow wechts of naething, sow hemp-seed, pull kale-stocks, eat apples at the glass;" or, more romantic still, "wet the left sleeve of the shirt where three lairds' lands meet at a burn." The whole poem hovers between the serious and the ludicrous: in delineating the superstitious beliefs and mysterious acts of the evening, Burns keeps his own opinion to himself. The scene is laid in the last night of harvest, as the name implies, at a husbandman's fire-side, whose corn is gathered into the stackyard and the barn; and the hands which aided in the labour are met

"To burn their nits, an' pou their stocks,
An' haud their Halloween."

They seem not unaware that while they are merry, or looking into futurity, fairies are dancing on Cassilis-Downans, and witches are to some wild rendezvous, or concerting, with mounted on their "rag-weed nags," hurrying the author of mischief, fresh woes for man. It is the most equal of all the Poet's compositions.

A singular poem, and in its nature personal, was also the offspring of the same year. This is "Death and Doctor Hornbook." The hero of the piece was John Wilson, school-master of the parish of Tarbolton: a person of blameless life, fond of argument, opinionative, and