How genius, th' illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction I sing: if these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I-let the critics go whistle! But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory At once may illustrate and honour my story. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; [strong, With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; With passions so potent, and fancies so bright, No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right; A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses, Good L-d, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develope his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil; All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely* labours, [up its neighbours; That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats Mankind are his show-box-at friend, would you know him? [shew him. Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, [him; Mankind is a science defies definitions. edition of the Poet's works, revised by himself. For these lines we are indebted to the beautiful edition of the Poetic Works of Burns, published by Mr. Pickering in 3 Vols. London, 1839.] In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, dated Ellisland, 4th April, 1789, the Poet says, "I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe, to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines I have just rough sketched." [This poem, like must of the productions of Burns, is founded on fact. James Thomson, whose father occupied a farm adjoining to that of Ellisland, has stated that once in the gloaming he shot at, and hurt, a hare, which, like that of Gay, had come forth "To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn." 66 Burns was walking on Nithside, the hare ran bleeding by him; upon which," said Thomson, "he cursed me, and said he would not mind throwing me into the water; and I'll warrant he could hae don't, though I was both young and strong." Burns copied out these verses, and laid them before the critical eye of Dr. Gregory. The boor of Nithside hardly used the hare worse than the critic of Edinburgh used the poem :"The wounded hare,' ," said he, "is a pretty good subject; but the measure or stanza you have chosen for it is not a good one-it does not flow well, and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed close rhymes. If I were you, I would put it into a different stanza yet. pass. "Stanza 1.-The execrations in the first two lines are too strong or coarse; but they may Murder - aiming is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible; blood-stained in the third stanza, line 4, has the same fault; bleeding-bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written, "Why that blood-stained bosom gored?" how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, nor a plain common word: it is a mere sportsman's word-unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry. "Mangled is a coarse word. Innocent, in this sense, is a nursery word; but both may pass. Stanza 4. "Who will now provide That life a mother only can bestow?” will not do at all: it is not grammar: it is not intelligible. Do you mean, 'provide for that life which the mother has bestowed, and used to provide for?' "There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, feeling (I suppose) for fellow, in the title of your copy [The exertions of this gentleman in favour of the Poet prevented his exiling himself to Jamaica at the commencement of his career. Dr. Blacklock was an enthusiast in his admiration of an art which he had practised himself with applause. He felt the claims of a poet with paternal sympathy; and he had in his constitution a tenderness and sensibility that would have engaged his beneficence for a youth in the circumstances of Burns, even though he had not been indebted to him for the delight which he received of verses; but even fellow' would be wrong: it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. Shot is improper too. On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare, it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say, with a fowling-piece." "It must be admitted," says Dr. Currie, "that this criticism is not more distinguished by its good sense than by its freedom from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at the manner in which the poet may be supposed to have received it. In fact it appears, as the sailors say, to have thrown him quite aback. In a letter which the Poet wrote soon after, he says, Dr. Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me: I believe in his iron justice; but, like the devils, I believe and tremble.' However, he profited by these criticisms, as the reader will find, by comparing this first edition of the poem with that subsequently published." "From the feelings expressed in this little piece for the wounded hare, and the indignant terms in which the Poet rates its ruthless assailant, it is evident that he was not like the keen sportman, who, while defending the humanity of hunting, coolly maintained that it being as much the nature of a hare to run away, as of a dog to run after her, consequently the hare must receive as much pleasure from being coursed as the dog from coursing; but this was not the philosophy of the Poet: like the prioress of Chaucer, he felt for all inferior animals."MOTHERWELL.] But aiblins honest Master Heron, And holy study; But what d'ye think, my trusty fier, Ye'll now disdain me! Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies, That strang necessity supreme is ’Mang sons o men. I hae a wife and twa wee laddies, But I'll sned besoms-thraw saugh woodies, Lord, help me thro' this world o' care! I'm weary sick o't late and air! Not but I hae a richer share Than mony ithers; Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van, Wha does the utmost that he can, But to conclude my silly rhyme, To weans and wife; My compliments to sister Beckie; Ås e'er tread clay! ROBERT BURNS. [The letter which called forth these verses from Burns was in rhyme, and dated from Edinburgh, 24th August, 1789. It is here subjoined: "DEAR BURNS, thou brother of my heart. If art it may be call'd in thee, Which nature's bounty large and free With pleasure in thy breast diffuses, How keeps thy much lov'd Jean her health? "There was never, perhaps," says Heron, one among all mankind whom you might more truly have called an angel upon earth than Dr. Blacklock. He was guileless and innocent as a child, yet endowed with manly sagacity and penetration. His heart was a perpetual spring of benignity. His feelings were all tremblingly alive to the sense of the sublime, the beautiful, the tender, the pious, the virtuous. Poetry was to him the dear solace of perpetual blindness. Such was the amiable old man whose life Mackenzie has written, and on whom Johnson 'looked with reverence.' This morning,' says !! the great lexicographer, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, dated August 17, 1773, 'I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor scholar, in Latin, Greek, and French. He was, originally, a poor scholar himself. I looked on him with reverence." "The writings of Blacklock," says Lockhart, with great eloquence, "are forgotten, though some of his songs in the Museum deserve another fate; but the memory of his virtues will not pass away, until mankind shall have ceased to sympathise with the misfortunes of genius, and to appreciate the poetry of Burns.” The unfortunate Heron, of whom such unceremonious mention is made in this epistle of Burns, after undergoing great privations, sought shelter in London, and died there in misery in 1807. His own "unmerited sorrows and sufferings," says Lockhart, "would not have left so dark a stain on the literary history of Scotland, had the kind spirit of Blacklock been common among his lettered countrymen." Delta. AN ODE. FAIR the face of orient day, Sweet the lark's wild-warbled lay, But, Delia, on thy balmy lips For, oh! my soul is parch'd with love! To John M'Murdo, Esq. O, COULD I give thee India's wealth But golden sands did never grace Then take what gold could never buy— To the Same. BLEST be M'Murdo to his latest day! [John M'Murdo, Esq., was steward to the Duke of Queensberry, and the faithful friend of Burns during the whole period of his residence in Nithsdale. At his fireside he enjoyed many happy hours. The daughters of his friend were beautiful and accomplished, and inspired some exquisite lyrics. The first two verses accompanied a present of books or verse. One day when the Poet was at Brownhill, in Nithsdale, a friend read some verses, composed after the pattern of Pope's song, by a person of quality, and said, "Burns, this is beyond you; the muse of Kyle cannot match the muse of London City." The Poet took the paper, hummed the verses over for a minute or two, and then recited, "Delia, an Ode." He afterwards, when on a visit, he took out a diamond, wards sent the MS. to the Publisher of the and wrote the additional six lines on a pane London Star-in which paper it first appeared, of glass.] with the following characteristic letter: "Mr. Printer,-If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with Sylvester Otway, and the other favourites of the Muses, who illuminate the Star with the lustre of genius, your insertion of the enclosed trifle will be succeeded by future communications from, Yours, &c. ROBERT BURNS. Ellisland, near Dumfries, May 18th, 1789. ["The inn of Brownhill, in the parish of Closeburn, was a favourite resting-place for Burns. Dalgarnock, where the heroine of one of his songs went on a tryste, forms part of the parish, and its old burial ground has since become famous as the place where Old Mortality employed his chisel: Creehope-Lynn, too, where the Cameronians sought shelter, is in the neighbourhood; moreover, the landlord, Mr. Bacon, was a well-informed and very facetious person -loved a dram and a joke, and had the art of making his presence acceptable to very polite visiters. The diamond of the Poet had not been idle on the windows; but accident and curiosity have now removed all marks of his hand." CUNNINGHAM.] The assumed name of a Mr. Oswald, an Officer of the Prologue, After SPOKEN AT THE THEATRE, DUMFRIES, No song nor dance I bring from yon great city Tho', by-the-bye, abroad why will you roam? I come to wish you all a good new-year! You're one year older this important day." Ye sprightly youths, quite flushed with hope Who think to storm the world by dint of merit, army, who frequently contributed verses to the Star newspaper. He bids you mind, amid your thoughtless rattle, Last, tho' not least in love, ye faithful fair, NOW! To crown your happiness he asks your leave, For our sincere, tho' haply weak, endeavours, [Burns at one period turned his thoughts on the drama, and even went so far as to select a subject, and compose some verses. To enable him to give a proper effect to his musings, he visited sometimes the Dumfries theatre, even while he lived at Ellisland, and appeared to take pleasure in the performances. On the 11th of January, 1790, he thus writes to his brother Gilbert: "We have gotten a set of very decent players here just now: I have seen them an evening or two. David Campbell, in Ayr, wrote to me by the manager of the company, a Mr. Sutherland, who is a man of apparent worth. On New-year's-day I gave him the above prologue, which he spouted to his audience with applause." And on the 9th of February following, he said, "I have given Mr. Sutherland two prologues, one of which was delivered last week." The theatre of Dumfries is small and neat, and there is not a little taste for the drama among the people of the vale of Nith.] Scots Prologue, FOR MR. SUTHERLAND'S BENEFIT NIGHT, DUMFRIES. WHAT needs this din about the town o' Lon'on, Is there nae poet, burning keen for fame, A fool and knave are plants of every soil; Where are the muses fled that could produce 'Gainst mighty England and her guilty lord; And after mony a bloody, deathless doing, Wrench'd his dear country from the jaws of ruin? O for a Shakespeare or an Otway scene, One Douglas lives in Home's immortal page, |