most heart-rending letter, in which the dying Burns in terror of a jail implores the loan of five pounds-and the well-known reply. "Ever since I received your melancholy letter by Mrs Hyslop, I have been ruminating in what manner I could endeavour to alleviate your sufferings," and so on. Shorter rumination than of three months might, one would think, have sufficed to mature some plan for the alleviation of such sufferings, and human ingenuity has been more severely taxed than it would have been in devising means to carry it into effect. The recollection of a letter written three years before, when the Poet was in high health and spirits, needed not to have stayed his hand. "The fear of offending your independent spirit seems a bugbear indeed. "With great pleasure I enclose a draft for the very sum I had proposed sending!! Would I were CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER but for one day for your sake!!!"

Josiah Walker, however, to whom Mr Thomson gratefully refers, says, "A few days before Burns expired he applied to Mr Thomson for a loan of £5, in a note which showed the irritable and distracted state of his mind, and his commendable judgment instantly remitted the precise, sum, foreseeing that had he, at that moment, presumed to exceed that request, he would have exasperated the irritation and resentment of the haughty invalid, and done him more injury, by agitating his passions, than could be repaired by administering more largely to his wants." Haughty invalid! Alas! he was humble enough now. "After all my boasted independence, stern necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds!" Call not that a pang of pride. It is the outcry of a wounded spirit shrinking from the last worst arrow of affliction. one breath he implores succour and forgiveness from the man to whom he had been a benefactor. 66 Forgive me this earnestness—but the horrors of a jail have made me half-distracted. FORGIVE ME! FORGIVE ME !" He asks no gift—he but begs to borrow-and trusts to the genius God had given him for ability to repay the loan; nay, he encloses his last song, "Fairest Maid on Devon's Banks," as in part payment! But oh! save Robert Burns from dying in prison. What hauteur! And with so "haughty an invalid" how shall a musical brother deal, so as not "to exasperate his irritation and resentment," and do him "more injury, by agitating his

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passions, than could be repaired by administering more largely to his wants?" More largely! Faugh! faugh! Foreseeing that he who was half-mad at the horrors of a jail, would go wholly mad were ten pounds sent to him instead of five, which was all "the haughty invalid" had implored, "with commendable judgment," according to Josiah Walker's philosophy of human life, George Thomson sent "the precise sum!" And supposing it had gone into the pocket of the merciless haberdasher, on what did Josiah Walker think would "the haughty invalid” have subsisted then-how paid for lodging without board by the melancholy Solway-side?

He

Mr Thomson's champion proceeds to say-" Burns had all the unmanageable pride of Samuel Johnson, and if the latter threw away with indignation the new shoes which had been placed at his chamber door, secretly and collectively by his companions, the former would have been still more ready to resent any pecuniary donation with which a single individual, after his peremptory prohibition, should avowedly have dared to insult him with." In Boswell we read-" Mr Bateman's lectures were so excellent that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme, that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that his humiliating condition was perceived by the Christ-Church men, and he came no more. was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation." Hall, Master of Pembroke, in a note on this passage, expresses strong doubts of Johnson's poverty at college having been extreme; and Croker, with his usual accuracy, says, "Authoritatively and circumstantially as this story is told, there is good reason for disbelieving it altogether. Taylor was admitted Commoner of Christ-Church, June 27, 1730; Johnson left Oxford six months before." Suppose it true. Had Johnson found the impudent cub in the act of depositing the eleemosynary shoes, he infallibly would have knocked him down with fist or folio as clean as he afterwards did Osborne. But Mr Thomson was no such cub, nor did he stand relatively to Burns in the same position as such cub to Johnson. He owed Burns much money-though Burns would not allow himself to think so; and had he expostulated, with open heart and hand, with the Bard on his obstinate-he

might have kindly said foolish, and worse than foolish disregard, not only of his own interest, but of the comfort of his wife and family-had he gone to Dumfries for the sole purpose-who can doubt that "his justice and generosity" would have been crowned with success? Who but Josiah Walker could have said that Burns would have then thought himself insulted? Resent a "pecuniary donation" indeed! What is a donation? Johnson tells us, in the words of South: "After donation there is an absolute change and alienation made of the property of the thing given; which being alienated, a man has no more to do with it than with a thing bought with another's money." It was Burns who made a donation to Thomson of a hundred and twenty songs.

All mankind must agree with Mr Lockhart when he saysWhy Burns, who was of opinion, when he wrote his letter to Mr Carfrae, that no profits were more honourable than those of the labours of a man of genius,' and whose own notions of independence had sustained no shock in the receipt of hundreds of pounds from Creech, should have spurned the suggestion of pecuniary recompence from Mr Thomson, it is no easy manner to explain; nor do I profess to understand why Mr Thomson took so little pains to argue the matter in limine with the poet, and convince him that the time which he himself considered as fairly entitled to be paid for by a common bookseller, ought of right to be valued and acknowledged by the editor and proprietor of a book containing both songs and music." We are not so much blaming the backwardness of Thomson in the matter of the songs, as we are exposing the blather of Walker in the story of the shoes. Yet something there is in the nature of the whole transaction that nobody can stomach. We think we have in a great measure explained how it happened that Burns "spurned the suggestion of pecuniary recompence;" and bearing our remarks in mind, look for a moment at the circumstances of the case. Mr Thomson, in his first letter, September 1792, says, "Profit is quite a secondary consideration with us, and we are resolved to spare neither pains nor expense on the publication." " "We shall esteem your poetical assistance a particular favour, besides paying any reasonable price you shall please to demand for it." And would Robert Burns condescend to receive money for his contributions to a work in honour of Scotland,

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undertaken by men with whom "profit was quite a secondary consideration?" Impossible. In July 1793, when Burns had been for nine months enthusiastically co-operating in a great national work, and had proved that he would carry it on to a triumphant close, Mr Thomson writes: I cannot express how much I am obliged to you for the exquisite new songs you are sending me; but thanks, my friend, are a poor return for what you have done. As I shall be benefited by the publication, you must suffer me to enclose a small mark of my gratitude, and to repeat it afterwards when I find it convenient. Do not return it-for BY HEAVEN if you do, our correspondence is at an end." A bank-note for five pounds! "In the name

of the prophet-FIGS!" Burns, with a proper feeling, retained the trifle, but forbade the repetition of it; and everybody must see, at a glance, that such a man could not have done otherwise for it would have been most degrading indeed had he shown himself ready to accept a five-pound note when it might happen to suit the convenience of an Editor. His domicile was not in Grub Street.

Mr Walker, still further to soothe Mr Thomson's feelings, sent him an extract from a letter of Lord Woodhouselee's: "I am glad that you have embraced the occasion which lay in your way of doing full justice to Mr George Thomson, who I agree with you in thinking, was most harshly and illiberally treated by an anonymous dull calumniator. I have always regarded Mr Thomson as a man of great worth and most respectable character; and I have every reason to believe that poor Burns felt himself as much indebted to his good counsels and active friendship as a man, as the public is sensible he was to his good taste and judgment as a critic." Mr Thomson, in now giving, for the first time, this extract to the public, says: "Of the unbiassed opinion of such a highly respectable gentleman and accomplished writer as Lord Woodhouselee, I certainly feel not a little proud. It is of itself more than sufficient to silence the calumnies by which I have been assailed, first anonymously, and afterwards, to my great surprise, by some writers who might have been expected to possess sufficient judgment to see the matter in its true light." He has reason to feel proud of his Lordship's good opinion, and on the ground of his private character he deserved it. But the assertions contained in the extract have no bearing whatever on the

question, and they are entirely untrue. Lord Woodhouselee could have had no authority for believing 66 that poor Burns felt himself indebted to Mr Thomson's good counsels and active friendship as a man.” Mr Thomson, a person of no influence or account, had it not in his power to exert any "active friendship" for Burns; and as to "good counsels," it is not to be believed for a moment that a modest man like him, who had never interchanged a word with Burns, would have presumed to become his Mentor. This is putting him forward in the high character of Burns's benefactor, not only in his worldly concerns, but in his moral well-being; a position which of himself he never could have dreamt of claiming, and from which he must, on a moment's consideration, with pain inexpressible recoil. Neither is "the public sensible" that Burns was "indebted to his good taste and judgment as a critic." The public kindly regard Mr Thomson, and think that in his correspondence with Burns he makes a respectable figure. But Burns repudiated most of his critical strictures; and the worthy Clerk of the Board of Trustees does indeed frequently fall into sad mistakes, concerning alike poetry, music, and painting. Lord Woodhouselee's "unbiassed opinion," then, so far from being of itself "sufficient to silence the calumnies of ignorant assailants, &c.," is not worth a straw.

Mr Thomson, in his five-pound letter, asks-" Pray, my good sir, is it not possible for you to muster a volume of poetry?" Why, with the assistance of Messrs Johnson and Thomson, it would have been possible; and then Burns might have called in his "Jolly Beggars." "If too much trouble to you," continues Mr Thomson, " in the present state of your health, some literary friend might be found here who would select and arrange your manuscripts, and take upon him the task of editor. In the mean time it could be advertised to be published by subscription. Do not shun this mode of obtaining the value of your labour; remember Pope published the Iliad by subscription." Why, had not Burns published his own poems by subscription! All this seems the strangest mockery ever heard of; yet there can be no doubt that it was written not only with a serious face, but with a kind heart. But George Thomson at that time was almost as poor a man as Robert Burns. Allan Cunningham, a man of genius and virtue, in his interesting Life of Burns, has, in his characteristic straight