"Childe Harold" as well as "Don Juan." The spirit of both these poems is selfish; although in the one it is sublimated, and in the other, slipshod and sneering, selfishness. But the spirit of "The Cottars' Saturday Night" is almost scriptural in its holiness and simplicity; while that of many of his poems and songs is intensely and grossly sensual. The fact is, Burns-more than almost any celebrated man-wanted stability. He was everything by turns, and nothing long. He yielded to all impulses, good or bad-high or low-that assailed him. He was at the mercy of innumerable moods, as diverse from each other as heaven from hell. He began life as a Jacobite in politics; he ended it as a Jacobin. He often loved several fernales at the same time; and no sooner had one forsaken him, than he had another ready to supply her place. His opinions of men, too, were continually fluctuating. His genius partook of the same uncertainty, and so did his taste and his moral frame. From divinest poetry to sheer doggrel, how frequently did he descend, within the compass of a single page! He often began his letters with flights of sentiment, which were proved sincere by their exquisite truth and tenderness, and closed them with verses disgustingly obscene. A bundle of these unpublished letters Byron saw, and the perusal of them led him to call Burns a compound of "dirt and deity." All the critics who have tried to find out unity in Burns' character have failed. He was

"A glorious chaos

Of mind and dust, of passions and pure thoughts."

Nothing too high, and nothing too low, could be believed or asserted concerning him. He was a living antithesis—a magnificent weathercock-a striking and awful witness to that shock, which has crossed and shattered humanity, to the Scripture doctrine of a Fall.

If these remarks seem to cast no new light on Burns' character and history, it is partly because on such an inconsistent and anomalous character little satisfactory light can be cast; its contradictions were never reconciled, its controversies raged on till the very hour of death, and despair over the unresolved and unresolvable problem of

his history, will always mingle with, and shade, the delight with which we peruse the miracles of his genius. Much of this inconsistency may, indeed, be traced to his irregular education, and his poverty-stricken circumstances, as well as to his want of sound, solid Christian principle. But whatever the cause, the effect is certain. He had no leading principle or guiding star:-not conscience, for that was often asleep; not benevolence, for his humane feelings, though sincere, were fluctuating and uncertain; not religion, for although not an infidel, neither was he a firm believer; not a high ideal of art, for to this he had never risen; not even his boasted independence, for no man, at times, descended, although it was with reluctance, to more servile flatteries. Impulse was his idol, and this acting on a nature in which the passions were greater than even the powers, made wild work, strengthened what in him was low and animal, weakened what in him was high and noble—infuriated his passions and degraded his genius. Indeed, why have critics and moralists wasted so much time in discussing the moral character of Burns? He saw it, at an early period, with his own inevitable eye, and in his "Bard's Epitaph," has, in living colours, at once painted his character, and predicted his fate. In it we see the prophet as well as the poet.

BURNS' POEMS.

THE TWA DOGS: A TALE.

'Twas in that place o' Scotland's isle
That bears the name o' Auld King Coil,1
Upon a bonnie day in June,

When wearing through the afternoon,
Twa dogs that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather'd ance upon a time.

The first I'll name, they ca'd him Cæsar,
Was keepit for his honour's pleasure ;
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Show'd he was nane o' Scotland's dogs,
But whalpit some place far abroad,
Where sailors gang to fish for cod.

His locked, letter'd, braw brass collar
Show'd him the gentleman and scholar;
But though he was o' high degree,
The fient a pride-na pride had he;
But wad hae spent an hour caressin',
Ev'n wi' a tinkler-gypsy's messan.
At kirk or market, mill or smiddie,
Nae tawted tyke, though e'er sae duddie,
But he wad stan't, as glad to see him,
And stroan't on stanes an' hillocks wi' him

'Auld King Coil:' the ancient King of the Picts.

A

10

20