either of the genius or the character of this extraordinary man. We have done so on many former and fitting occasions, and we trust that we too have always spoken of Burns in the right spirit, as indeed, we boldly say it, we have ever done of all true men. Yet a few words will be allowed us, if merely to bring before our readers some of the very fine things contained in this most interesting and instructive volume.

The life of Burns divides itself into five eras-that passed beneath his father's roof at Mount Oliphant and Lochlea; the years he lived with his brother Gilbert at Mossgiel; his visit to Edinburgh; his residence at Ellisland; and, finally, his closing years in Dumfries.

Of the first period, Mr. Lockhart gives such memorials both in prose and verse- it would be hard to say which the more beautiful-furnished by the bard himself and his brother, as best illustrate the nature of their life. But they need not be quoted here, for they are familiar to all who know anything about Burns. His youth was full of hidden poetry and passion, but as yet the one had but rarely burst forth into the forms of genius, the other had not overflowed his life with any disastrous influence. His love in those days was ardent, but it was pure. Notwithstanding the luxurious tone of some of his pieces produced in those times, we are assured by himself that no positive "vice mingled in any of his loves." "His numerous connections," says Gilbert, "were governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty, from which he never deviated till his twenty-third year, when he became anxious to marry."

Long before the earliest of Burns's productions were known beyond the domestic circle, the strength of his understanding and the keenness of his wit, as displayed in his ordinary conversation, and more particularly at masonic meetings and debating clubs (of which he formed one in Mauchline, on the Tarbolton model, immediately on his removal to Mossgiel), has made his name known to some considerable extent in the country about Tarbolton,

Mauchline, and Irvine. He was known to be a genius. Every Scotch peasant who makes any pretensions to understanding is a theological critic-at least such was the case --and Burns, no doubt, had long ere this time "distinguished himself considerably among those hard-headed groups that may be usually seen gathered together in the churchyard after the sermon is over." It may be

guessed, from the time of his residence in Irvine, his strictures were too often delivered in no reverent vein. The bard himself, in his famous letter to Dr. Moore, tells us that Polemical Divinity was about that time putting the country half-mad, and that he was ambitious of shining—and all who ever heard him speak know how he shone in conversation parties on Sundays, at funerals, &c., puzzling Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that he raised against himself a loud and lasting hue and cry of heresy. But, to understand Burns's situation at this time, at once patronised-which he was by a number of clergymen, and attended with a hue and cry of heresy, we must remember these his own words, that "Polemical Divinity was putting the country half-mad."

No wonder that Burns under such causes of excitement overstepped the bounds of propriety and decency in his satirical pictures of what he considered superstition; that he was not sensible of the dangerous ground on which he was recklessly treading; and that with a deep sense of religion and a habitual reverence of its most sacred institutions, whether public or private, he should have written much that must shock the best and highest feelings of the religious mind.

In conversational powers, it is universally allowed that Burns, fresh from the plough-tail and the ingle-reek, far excelled all the most distinguished persons in Edinburgh, whether professors, ministers, or advocates, and that, too, in all kinds of company, mixed or unmixed, select or miscellaneous, principally male or principally female, sacred or profane. The reason is plain. He possessed ten times the genius of any one among them all; his reading of good prose and poetry had been extensive; his

heart and his soul, as well as his mind, were in all he had ever read; his feelings, impulses, passions all were vivid, untamed, and triumphant. The worst miseries of his life were for a while suddenly flung by him into oblivion, and hope, joy, and glory claimed him for their own. The power of poetry within him nothing had as yet cowed. That new world, whose false glitter he had not had time to see through and thoroughly to despise, was set before his eyes in dazzling and attractive beauty, and woman appeared before his senses and his imagination in more than the ideal loveliness that had ever haunted his dreams, while many a fairest idol smiled, delighted to receive his fervent and impassioned worship. One of the poet's remarks, as Cromek tells us, "when he first came to Edinburgh was, that between the men of rustic life and the polite world he observed little difference. That in the former, though unpolished by fashion and unenlightened by science, he had found much observation and much intelligence; but a refined and accomplished woman was a thing almost new to him, and of which he formed but a very inadequate idea." Hence, as the late beautiful and fascinating Duchess of Gordon said, "his conversation carried her off her feet!"

Tavern-life was then in full vigour in Edinburgh, and there can be no doubt that Burns rapidly familiarised himself with it during his residence. He had, after all, tasted but rarely of such excesses in Ayrshire. His nocturnal revels, like those of our own Noctes Ambrosiana, were not wholly indeed of the imagination, but fancy poured out many an airy brimmer; and it has been long well known that "Auld Nanse Tinnock," or "Poosie Nancie," the Mauchline landlady, declared that "Robert Burns might be a very clever lad, but he certainly, to the best of her belief, had never taken three half-mutchkins in her house in all his life." In addition, too, to Gilbert's testimony to the same purpose, we have on record that of Mr. Archibald Bruce (qualified by Heron as a gentleman of great worth and discernment), that he had observed Burns closely during that period of his life, and seen him

steadily resist such solicitations and allurements to excessive convivial enjoyment as hardly any other person could have withstood. That in Edinburgh he indulged in dissipation is certain; and it would, as Mr. Lockhart allows, "be idle now to attempt passing over these things in silence"; but that his indulgences were grossly exaggerated we also know, and most shamefully bruited abroad by the voice of the public, who, then-a-days as now, thinks herself entitled to make free with the fair fame of every one who delights and astonishes her, more especially if he be, as Burns was, a peasant and a prodigy.

The spirit of these remarks of Mr. Lockhart's is excellent, but they might have been even more strongly expressed. Robert Burns was not the man to have degraded himself everlastingly by one moment's seeming slight or neglect of friends, new or old, belonging either to his own condition, or to a rank in life somewhat higher, perhaps, than his own, although not to that "select society" to which the wonder awakened by his genius had given him a sudden introduction. Persons in that middle or inferior rank were his natural and his best and his truest friends; and many of them, there can be no doubt, were worthy of his happiest companionship, either in the festal hour or the hour of closer communion. He had no right, with all his genius, to stand aloof from them; and with a heart like his he had no inclination. Why should he have lived exclusively with lords and ladies-paper or land lords, ladies by descent or courtesy-with aristocratic advocates, philosophical professors, clergymen, wild or moderate, Arminian or Calvinistic? A few of such persons were doubtless not inerudite, and a few not unwitty in their own esteem; and Burns greatly enjoyed their society, in which he met with an admiration that must have been to him the pleasure of a perpetual triumph. But more of them were dull and pompous, we must believe, incapable of rightly estimating or feeling the power of his transcendent genius; and when the glitter and the gloss of novelty were worn off, to their shallow eyes, from the Genius who bore them all down into insignificance by the ceaseless cataract of his eloquence,

then, no doubt, they got offended and shocked with his rusticity or rudeness, and sought refuge in the distinction of ranks and the laws, not to be violated long with impunity, of "select society." Burns rejoiced in admiration, as a great poet, bright from and with nature, should do; but he had too much pride to love being gazed at, when roaring or feeding, as a lion. The patronage he received was honourable, and he felt it to be so, but it was still patronage; and had he, for the sake of it or its givers, forgotten for a day the humblest, lowest, meanest of his friends, or even his acquaintances, how could he have read, when written, his own two bold lines

The rank is but the guinea stamp;

The man's the gowd for a' that?

Besides, we know from Burns's poetry what was then the character of the people of Scotland, for they were its materials--its staple. Her peasantry were a noble race, and their virtues moralised his song. The inhabitants of the towns were of the same family, the same blood, one kindred, and many-most of them-had been born, or in some measure bred, in the country. Their ways of

thinking, feeling, and acting were much alike; and the shopkeepers of Edinburgh and Glasgow were as proud of Robert Burns as the ploughmen and shepherds of Ayrshire and Galloway. He saw in them friends and brothers. Their admiration of him was perhaps fully more sincere and heartfelt, nor accompanied with less understanding of his merits, than that of persons in higher place; and most assuredly among the respectable citizens of Edinburgh Burns found more lasting friends than he ever did among her gentry or noblesse. Nor can we doubt that then, as now, there were in that order great numbers of men of well-cultivated minds whom Burns, in his best hours, did right to honour, and who were perfectly entitled to seek his society, and to open their hospitable doors to the brilliant stranger. That Burns, whose sympathies were keen and wide, and who never dreamt of looking down on others as beneath him merely because he was conscious of his own vast superiority to the common run of men in