in 1801, at Glasgow, under the title of "Poems ascribed to Robert Burns, the Ayr-shire Bard." It is founded on the Poet's observation of an actual scene which one night met his eye, when, in company with his friends John Richmond, and James Smith, he dropped accidentally, at a late hour, into a very humble inn, in Mauchline, the landlady of which was a Mrs. Gibson,-more familiarly named Poosie Nancy. After witnessing much jollity amongst a company, who by day appeared abroad as miserable beggars, the three young men came away; Burns professing to have been greatly delighted with the scene, but particularly with the gleesome behaviour of an old maimed soldier. In the course of a few days, he recited a part of the poem to Richmond, who has stated that, to the best of his recollection, it contained, in its original complete form, songs by a sweep and a sailor, which do not now appear. The landlady of the house was mother to Racer Jess, alluded to in the Holy Fair, and her house was at the left hand side of the opening of the Cowgate, mentioned in the same poem, and opposite to the church. "The original manuscript was long in the hands of John Richmond of Mauchline, and he remembers taking the song of Sir Wisdom's a fool when he's fou," with him to Edinburgh, in 1786; it was given by the poet himself to Mr. Woodburn, factor to the laird of Craigengillan. It afterwards came into the possession of Thomas Stewart, of Greenock, bookseller, by whom a fac-simile of it was published. Mr. Stewart died in November, 1824, and the MS. then became the property of Mr. Lumsden, of Glasgow. The song of 'For a' that, an' a' that," sung by the bard, is inserted, with some slight modifications, in Johnson's Musical Museum. "The change-house of Poosie Nansie, where the scene is laid, stood in Mauchline, and was the favourite resort of lame sailors, maimed soldiers, wandering tinkers, travelling balladsingers, and all such loose companions as hang about the skirts of society. Smith, the 'slee and pawkie thief' of the Epistle, accompanied Burns into Nansie's howff one night, and saw the scene, which the Poet has rendered immortal.-ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.” "The Jolly Beggars, for humorous description and nice discrimination of character, is inferior to no poem of the same length in the whole range of English poetry. The scene, indeed, is laid in the very lowest department of low life, the actors being a set of strolling vagrants, met to carouse and barter their rags and plunder for liquor in a hedge ale-house. Yet, even in describing the movements of such a group, the native taste of the Poet has never suffered his pen to slide into anything coarse or disgusting. The extravagant glee and outrageous frolic of the beggars are ridiculously contrasted with their maimed limbs, rags and crutches; the sordid and squalid circumstances of their appearance are judiciously thrown into the shade. "Nor is the art of the Poet less conspicuous in the individual figures than in the general mass. The festive vagrants are distinguished from each other by personal appearance and character, as much as any fortuitous assembly in the higher orders of life. The group, it must be observed, is of Scottish character: yet the distinctions are too well marked to escape even the southron. The most prominent persons are a maimed soldier and his female companion, a hackneyed follower of the camp; a stroller, late the consort of a Highland ketterer or sturdy beggar, but weary fa' the waefu' woodie! Being now at liberty, she becomes an object of rivalry between a 'pigmy scraper with his fiddle' and a strolling tinker. The latter, a desperate bandit, like most of his profession, terrifies the musician out of the field, and is preferred by the damsel, of course. A wandering balladsinger, with a brace of doxies, is last introduced upon the stage. Each of these mendicants sing a song in character; and such a collection of humorous lyrics, connected with vivid poetical description, is not, perhaps, to be parallelled in the English language. The concluding ditty, chaunted by the ballad-singer at the request of the company, whose mirth and fun have now grown fast and furious,' and set them above all sublunary terrors of jails, and whipping-posts, is certainly far superior to any thing in the Beggar's Opera, where alone we could expect to find its parallel ! "In one or two passages of the Jolly Beggars, the muse has slightly trespassed on decorum, where, in the language of Scottish song, 'High kilted was she, As she gaed owre the lea.' Something, however, is to be allowed to the nature of the subject, and something to the education of the poet and if from veneration to the names of Swift and Dryden, we tolerate the grossness of the one, and the indelicacy of the other, the respect due to that of Burns may surely claim indulgence for a few light strokes of broad humour."-SIR WALTER SCOTT.] "Such a motley group of vagrants as Burns has so happily described may yet be found in many districts of Scotland. There are houses of rendezvous where the maimed, supplicating soldier-the travelling, ballad-singing fiddler-the sturdy wench, with hands ever ready to steal the pittance which is not bestowed-the rough, black-bearded tinker, with his soldering-irons and pike-staff-and other children of real or pretended misfortune, assemble on a Saturday night to pawn their stolen clothes, dispose of their begged meal, and on their produce to hold merriment and revelry."-CROMEK. I set mysel; I was come round about the hill, "One of that sturdy class of mendicants, so well painted by both poet and annotator, is still But whether she had three or four, remembered in Nithsdale by the name of Auld I cou'd na tell. Penpont.' This provincial worthy was a fellow of infinite drollery and rustic talent: he had a grave speech for the serious-could sing a psalm or pray upon occasion with the devout; but when he met with the young and the thoughtless, he was another man. He told wild stories, chanted wilder songs, and sometimes laid his wallets aside and performed a sort of rustic interlude, called Auld Glenae,' with no little spirit and feeling."-CUNNINGHAM. Death and Doctor Hornbook. A TRUE STORY.* SOME books are lies frae end to end, A rousing whid, at times,† to vend, And nail't wi' Scripture. But this that I am gaun to tell, An' hillocks, stanes, and bushes, kenn'd ay The rising moon began to glow'r [In a note to the copy of his works presented to Dr. Geddes, the Poet says, "the hero of the poem is John Wilson, schoolmaster, in Tarbolton. This gentleman, Dr. Hornbook, is professionally a brother of the sovereign order of the ferula, but by intuition and inspiration, he is at once apothecary, surgeon, and physician. "R. B. "Death and Dr. Hornbook, though not published in the Kilmarnock edition, was produced early in the year 1785. The schoolmaster of Tarbolton parish, to eke out the scanty subsistence allowed to that useful class of men, set up a shop of grocery goods. Having accidentally fallen in with some medical books, and become most hobby-horsically attached to the study of medicine, he had added the sale of a few medicines to his little trade. He had got a shop-bill printed, at the bottom of which, overlooking his own incapacity, he had advertised that advice would be given, in common disorders, at the shop, gratis. Robert was at a mason-meeting in Tarbolton, when the Dominie made too ostentatious a display of his medical skill. As he parted in the evening from this mixture of pedantry and physic, at the place where he describes his meeting with Death, one of those floating ideas of apparitions mentioned in his letter to Dr. Moore, crossed his mind; this set him to work for the rest of his way home. These circumstances he related when he repeated To keep me sicker : I there wi' something did forgather, the verses to me the next afternoon, as I was holding the plough, and he was letting the water off the field beside me." GILBERT BURNS. [On his way home, it is said, the Poet found a neighbour lying tipsy by the road-side: the idea of Death flashed on his fancy, and, seating himself on the parapet of a bridge, he composed the Poem, fell asleep, and, when awakened by the morning sun, he recollected it all, and wrote it down on reaching Mossgiel. This took place in the seed-season of 1785, and an epidemical disorder was then raging in the country. Wilson soon afterwards quitted Tarbolton, and repairing to Glasgow engaged in mercantile pursuits, and achieved a moderate independence. He is much respected for his religious feelings and his private worth.] [VAR. Great lies and nonsense baith.-MS.] [Tarbolton Mill, situated on the rivulet Faile, about two hundred yards to the east of the village, on the road to Mossgiel; then occupied by William Muir, an intimate friend of the Burns family-hence called Willie's mill. "Mr. William Muir, Tarbolton Mill," appears amongst the subscribers to the Edinburgh edition of the poems, in which the above piece first appeared.] [This rencounter happened in seed-time, 1785.-R. B.] "Weel, weel!" says I, "a bargain be't; Come, gies your hand, an' sae we're gree't; We'll ease our shanks an' tak a seat, Come, gies your news; This while ye hae been mony a gate, "Ay, ay!" quo' he, an shook his head, An' choke the breath: "Sax thousand years are near hand fled To stap or scar me; Till ane Hornbook's ta'en up the trade, "Ye ken Jock Hornbook i' the Clachan, The weans haud out their fingers laughin' And pouk my hips. "See, here's a scythe, and there's a dart, They hae pierc'd mony a gallant heart; But Doctor Hornbook, wi' his art And cursed skill, Has made them baith no worth a Damn'd haet they'll kill. ""Twas but yestreen, nae farther gaen But did nae mair. "Hornbook was by, wi' ready art, Fient haet o't wad hae pierc'd the heart "I drew my scythe in sic a fury, Withstood the shock; "Ev'n them he canna get attended, [An epidemical fever was then raging in that country. R. B.] ↑ [Buchan's Domestic Medicine.] R. B. "And then a' doctor's saws and whittles, "Calces o' fossils, earths, and trees; He has't in plenty; Aqua-fortis, what you please, He can content ye. "Forbye some new, uncommon weapons, Or mite-horn shavings, filings, scrapings, Sal-alkali o' midge-tail clippings, "Waes me for Johnny Ged's Hole now," Nae doubt they'll rive it wi' the plew; The creature grain'd an eldritch laugh, They'll a' be trench'd wi' mony a sheugh "Whare I kill'd ane a fair strae death, That Hornbook's skill "An honest wabster to his trade, When it was sair; The wife slade cannie to her bed, But ne'er spak mair. "A countra laird had ta'en the batts, "A bonnie lass, ye kenn'd her name,§ [The grave-digger.] R. B. [She was an inn-keeper's daughter.] "That's just a swatch o' Hornbook's way; Yet stops me o' my lawfu' prey, Wi' his damn'd dirt: "But, hark! I'll tell you of a plot, As dead's a herrin': But just as he began to tell, The auld kirk-hammer strak' the bell Which rais'd us baith: I took the way that pleas'd mysel', And sae did Death. ["At Glasgow I heard that the hero of this exquisite satire was living; Hamilton managed to introduce me to him-we talked of almost all subjects save the poems of Burns. Dr. Hornbook is above the middle size, stout made, and inclining to corpulency. His complexion is swarthy, his eye black and expressive: he wears a brown wig and dresses in black. There is little or nothing of the pedant about him: I think a man who had never read the poem would scarcely discover any. Burns, I am told, had no personal enmity to Wilson." CROMEK.] ["When Burns wrote his story of Death and Dr. Hornbook,' he had very rarely been intoxicated, or perhaps much exhilarated by liquor. Yet how happily does he lead his reader into that track of sensations! and with what lively humour does he describe the disorder of his senses and the confusion of his understanding, put to test by his deliberate attempt to count the horns of the moon! 'But whether she had three or four Behold a sudden apparition which disperses this disorder, and in a moment chills him into possession of himself! Coming upon no more important mission than the grisly phantom was charged with, what mode of introduction could have been more efficient or appropriate?" WORDSWORTH.] ["In the neighbourhood of Tarbolton is situated the farm of Lochlea, where the Poet Burns composed or completed this poem in Dumfriesshire, about August 1789, with reference to a case then pending in the church courts of his native district. Dr. William M Gill, one of the two ministers conjoined in the parochial charge of Ayr, had published, in 1786, A Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ, in two parts, containing, 1, the History, 2, the Doctrine of his Death, which was supposed to inculcate principles of both Arian and Socinian character, and provoked many severe censures from the more rigid party of the church. M'Gill remained silent lived, as a humble denizen of his father's household, from the seventeenth to the twenty-fourth year of his age. This, of course, was the clachan to which at that period he resorted for the pleasures of society. He formed here, in 1780, a club of young men, who met monthly, for mutual improvement and entertainment, and of which he and his brother poet, David Sillar, were the leading members: the utmost extent of expenditure on any night was threepence. Here, also, was a lodge of freemasons, which he delighted to attend, and to whom he wrote a farewell, incorporated in his poems. The lodge still exists, and possesses among its records many letters from Burns, some written long after he was locally dissevered from the association, but still breathing an intense interest in its concerns. It was after attending a meeting of this lodge that he wrote his poem entitled 'Death and Doctor Hornbook,' the object of which was to burlesque the schoolmaster, who had offended him that night in the course of argument. "Hornbook is said to have been a man of ability and education superior to his situation, and his services as a dispenser of medicines must have been useful, as there was then no professional man in the village, nor within many miles of it. He afterwards left the place, in consequence of a dispute about salary with the heritors, and settled in Glasgow, where he rose to be session-clerk of the Gorbals, and is still (1838) alive. He has often been heard over his bowl of punch in the Salt-market to bless the day on which he provoked the castigation of Burns. He was for a long while much missed at Tarbolton, there not being another vender of salts and senna-leaves in the whole country round, nor any medical advice, whatThere are now three regular doctors in Tarbolton."-CHAMBERS.] ever. The Kirk's Alarm.* A SATIRE. A BALLAD TUNE.-PUSH ABOUT THE BRISK BOWL. I. ORTHODOX, Orthodox,† Wha believe in John Knox, Let me sound an alarm to your conscience, There's a heretic blast Has been blawn i' the wast, That what is not sense must be nonsense. under the attacks of his opponents, till Dr. William Peebles of Newton-upon-Ayr, a neighbour, and hitherto a friend, in preaching a centenary sermon on the Revolution, November 5, 1788, denounced the Essay as heretical, and the author as one who with one hand received the privileges of the church, while, with the other, he was endeavouring to plunge the keenest poignard into her heart." M'Gill published a defence, which led, in April 1789, to the introduction of the † VAR. Brother Scots, brother Scots.-MS. It was case into the presbyterial court of Ayr, and subsequently into that of the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr. Meanwhile, the public out of doors was agitating the question with the keenest interest, and the strife of the liberal and zealous parties in the church had reached a painful extreme. now that Burns took up the pen in behalf of M'Gill, whom, it is probable, he sincerely looked on as a worthy and enlightened person suffering an unworthy persecution. The war raged, till, in April 1790, the case came on for trial before the synod, when M'Gill stopped further procedure, by giving in a document expressive of his deep regret for the disquiet he had occasioned, explaining the challenged passages of his book, and declaring his adherence to the standards of the church on the points of doctrine in question. Dr. M'Gill died March 30, 1807, at the age of seventy-six, and in the forty-sixth year of his ministry.-Murray's Literary History of Galloway. Dr. M'Gill. † VAR. Wicked writers. [When Dr. M'Gill's case came before the Synod, the magistrates of Ayr published an advertisement in the newspapers, bearing a warm testimony in favour of the Doctor's character, and their appreciation of his services as a Pastor.] [John Ballantine, Esq., provost of Ayr, the same individual to whom the Twa Brigs is dedicated.] [Mr. Robert Aiken, writer in Ayr, to whom the Cotter's Saturday Night is inscribed. He exerted his powerful oratorical talents as agent for Dr. M'Gill in the presbytery and synod.] The Rev. Dr. William Dalrymple, senior minister of the Collegiate church of Ayr-a man of extraordinary meekness and worth. It is related of him, that one day meeting an ¶¶¶ The Rev. Dr. Peebles of Newton-upon-Ayr. He had excited some ridicule by a line in a poem on the Centenary of the Revolution : "And bound in Liberty's endearing chain." The poetry of this gentleman is said to have been indifferent. He translated the Davideis of Cowley, which some of his brethren, not exactly understanding what was meant, took the liberty of calling Dr. Peeble's Daft Ideas. **** VAR. Ye only stood by where he --MS. tttt Dr. Andrew Mitchell, Monkton. He was so rich as to be able to keep his carriage. Extreme love of money, and a strange confusion of ideas, characterised this presbyter. In |