"The letters of Burns may on the whole be regarded as a valuable offering to the public. They are curious, as evidences of his genius, and interesting, as keys to his character; and they can scarcely fail to command the admiration of all who do not measure their pretensions by an unfair standard."

These remarks we look upon as peculiarly just and pertinent; other critics, however, express themselves in a somewhat different strain. Of these, we think the most unjust has been Jeffrey, in his review of Cromek's Reliques of Burns, where he says "The prose works of Burns consist almost entirely of his letters. They bear, as well as his poetry, the seal and the impress of his genius; but they contain much more bad taste, and are written with far more apparent labour. His poetry was almost all primarily from feeling, and only secondarily from ambition. His letters seem to have been nearly all composed as exercises, and for display. There are few of them written with simplicity or plainness; and, though natural enough as to the sentiment, they are generally very strained and elaborate in the expression. A very great proportion of them too, relate neither to facts nor feelings peculiarly connected with the author or his correspondent—but are made up of general declamation, moral reflections, and vague discussions, all evidently composed for the sake of effect, and frequently introduced with long complaints of having nothing to say, and of the necessity and difficulty of letterwriting." In this opinion, so unqualifiedly given by one of our first arbiters of taste in matters literary, we are not aware that many have concurred; and we believe a larger proportion will subscribe to the more mild judgment pronounced by Sir Walter Scott. "The letters of Burns,"

says he," although containing passages of great eloquence, bear occasionally strong marks of affectation, with a tincture of pedantry rather foreign to the Bard's character and education. They are written in various tones of feeling and moods of mind: in some instances exhibiting all the force of the writer's talents, in others only valuable because they bear his signature."

And are they not valuable inasmuch as they do bear that signature? The devotion with which the memory of Burns is cherished by his countrymen has rendered the meanest trifle which he penned inestimable in their eyes, and the same may be said with regard to the lightest and most careless effusions of the gifted spirit whom we have quoted, now since he has been called to mingle with ancestral dust within the hallowed precincts of Dryburgh abbey.

We conclude our extracts on this subject with what Professor Wilson, in an eloquent article on Lockhart's Life of Burns, has delivered as his deliberate sentiments regarding the Poet's correspondence :—“ Not a few absurd things,” says the noble-hearted author of the Isle of Palms, “ have in our opinion been said of Burns' epistolary composition. His letters are said to be too elaborate, the expression more studied and artificial than belongs to that species of composition. Now the truth is, that Burns never considered letter-writing a species of composition,' subject to certain rules of taste and criticism. That had never Accordingly his

occurred to him-and so much the better.

letters are often full of all sorts of rant and rhodomontade, which to us, reading them coldly in our closets, and but little acquainted, and still less perhaps, sympathising with the facetious persons to whom they were written, not unfrequently appear too extravagant for common use,

and not even either humorous or witty. But such strange stuff suited those to whom it was sent ; and Burns, with all his own true and genuine humour and wit, enjoyed—and it is a proof of his original genius that he did so— -whatever sort of absurdity happened to be popular among his friends and boon companions. Besides, there can be no doubt that he was often tipsy when engaged in penning epistles, and, we do not fear to say it, intoxicated; on one occasion we know—the letter we believe is to Nicol, that strong inknee'd soul of a schoolmaster'-perfectly drunk. Vast numbers of his letters were after-dinner effusions-many after-supper ones; and we beg that our forenoon and small-beer critical brethren will, if possible, attend to that peculiarity in Burns' character as a complete letter-writer in all their future octavos. But hundreds even of his most familiar letters are perfectly artless, though still most eloquent compositions. Simple we may not call them, so rich they are in fancy, so overflowing in feeling, and dashed off, every other paragraph, with the easy boldness of a great master conscious of his strength, even at times when, of all things in the world, he was least solicitous about display. While some there are so solemn—so sacred-so religious—that he who can read them with an unstirred heart, as he knows that they were written in the prospect of near and certain death, can have no trust―no hope of the immortality of the soul."

The exhibition of the conflicting opinions expressed by various distinguished literary characters regarding the merits of Burns' epistolary writings, if not altogether satisfactory, is at least useful in directing the attention of the general reader to a more minute and careful consideration of those material points, upon which doctors have chosen

to disagree, and thereafter to decide for themselves. Controversy about matters of taste is endless, and seems never destined to be governed by any fixed rules, or decided by reference to any generally acknowledged or indisputable standard of truth and purity.-M.

No. I.

TO WILLIAM BURNESS.*

HONOURED SIR,

IRVINE, Dec. 27th, 1781.

I HAVE purposely delayed writing, in the hope that I should have the pleasure of seeing you on New-Year's day; but work comes so hard upon us, that I do not

At the time Burns wrote this melancholy letter, he had begun the world as a flaxdresser in Irvine, along with another young man, and four days afterwards their whole worldly means were accidentally destroyed by fire, an event in the life of the Poet alluded to in a preceding volume. Burns, like most poets, inherited with his genius constitutional hypochondriasm, and this showed itself at a very early period, and clouded his mind with many gloomy presentiments of the future, in his case too truly fulfilled. In the scanty praise bestowed generally on the poet's correspondence by the Edinburgh Reviewer, the above letter comes in for a special notice, and, we think, with great justice. "One of the most striking letters in the Collection," (Cromek's Reliques of Burns,) says Mr Jeffrey, "and to us, one of the most interesting, is the earliest of the whole' series; being addressed to his father in 1781, six or seven years before his name had been heard out of his own family. The author was then a common flaxdresser, and his father a poor peasant;-yet there is not one trait of vulgarity, either in the thought or expression; but on the contrary, a diguity and elevation of sentiment, which must have been considered as of good omen in a youth of much higher condition."

"This letter," says Dr Currie, "written several years before the publication of his poems, when his name was as obscure as his condition was humble, displays the philosophic melancholy which so generally forms the poetical temperament, and that buoyant and ambitious spirit, which indicates a mind conscious of its strength. At Irvine, Burns at this time possessed a single room for his lodgings, rented perhaps at the rate of a shilling a-week. He passed his days in constant labour, as a flaxdresser, and his food consisted chiefly of oatmeal, sent to him from his father's family. The store of this humble though wholesome nutriment, it appears, was nearly exhausted, and he was about to borrow till he should obtain a supply. Yet even in this situation his active imagination had formed to itself pictures of eminence and distinction. His despair of making a figure in the world, shows how ardently he wished for honourable fame;