POEMS AND SONGS. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. "The Poetic Genius of my country. . . whispered me to come to this ancient metropolis of Caledonia, and lay my songs under your honoured protection."-Dedication to the Noblemen and Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt. The contents of the preceding volume brought the reader down to about the close of September 1786. On the third day of that month, Jean Armour's safe delivery of twin-children, and the happy domestic arrangement that followed, seemed to cause matters to flow more smoothly with the forlorn poet. On the following day, a poet of a different stamp, the venerable Dr Blacklock of Edinburgh, who was regarded as the centre of a literary circle in that city, wrote to his friend, the Rev. Dr Lawrie, parish minister of Loudoun, a letter which is supposed to have had considerable effect on the after career of Burns. Its subject was the wonderful volume of poetry that had issued from the Kilmarnock Press about five weeks previously, and which Dr Lawrie had transmitted to Edinburgh to excite the blind bard's astonishment, and elicit his opinion of its contents. That letter concluded with an expression of the writer's regret that although another copy of Burns's poems had been "sought with diligence and ardour,” it could not be procured because the whole impression was exhausted. "It were therefore," he added, "much to be wished, for the sake of the young man, that a second edition more numerous than the former could immediately be printed." Burns, at the date we speak of (Sept. 4th, 1786), had no personal acquaintance with Dr Lawrie, who, on receipt of Blacklock's letter, appears to have made no immediate movement in the poet's behalf. After the lapse of a week or two, however, he forwarded the communication to Mr Gavin Hamilton, who placed it in the poet's hands. Burns's own account of this transaction forms the concluding portion of his very condensed narrative in the famous autobiographical letter to Dr Moore. After stating his deplorable condition at the close of July and during a great part of August, "skulking from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail," he says, "I had taken the last farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed a song "The gloomy night is gathering fast,' which was to be the last effort of my muse in Caledonia, when a letter from Dr Blacklock to a friend of mine, overthrew all my schemes by rousing my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a class of critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope. His idea that I would meet with every encouragement for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted to Edinburgh without a single acquaintance in town, or a single letter of recommendation in my pocket." In this account, allowance must be made for the artistic license to soften hard facts for the sake of pictorial effect. The harvest of 1786 was an uncommonly late one, as may be inferred from some remarks in a letter of Burns to his cousin in Montrose, dated from Mossgiel on 26th September of that year:-"My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I shall be on very short allowance indeed, if I do not comply with your friendly invitation," [to visit the poet's relations in Forfar and Kincardine.] The song referred to in the autobiography as having been composed when his chest was on the road to Greenock, was in fact, as we learn from another source, suggested to him on Galston moors while returning to Mossgiel, after a night spent under Dr Lawrie's roof; and the season is thus marked as October : "The Autumn mourns her rip'ning corn By early Winter's ravage torn." On the second week of that month, he thus narrates in a letter to Mr Aiken of Ayr:-"I was with Wilson my printer t'other day, and settled all our bygone matters between us. After I had paid all demands, I made him the offer of the second edition, on the hazard of being paid out of the first and readiest, which he declines." From this we may conclude that the poet's first step, after receiving Dr Blacklock's letter, was to proceed to Kilmarnock, doubtless paying his respects by the way to the minister of Loudoun, whose manse at Newmilns was in that neighbourhood. There, and in that vicinity, he seems to have passed the time during the first half of October, till harvest operations at Mossgiel may have called him home. Disappointed of a second Ayrshire edition, through want of a little ready money to allay the fears of his printer with the "no soul," he intimated, in the letter to Aiken just referred to, that the "settled tenor of his resolution" was to go abroad, rather than close with the kind offers of his friends to get him an Excise appointment. Thus we find that Blacklock's letter was neither the immediate nor the sole cause of the final determination of Burns to go to Edinburgh. His epistle to Major Logan shews, that on 30th October he was still bound for the West Indies. But about the middle of the following month, other circumstances must have occurred which induced him to announce to Robert Muir his resolution to proceed to Edinburgh on the 27th or 28th current. In the letter to Aiken already quoted, he says, "There is scarcely anything hurts me so much in being disappointed of my second edition, as not having it in my power to shew my gratitude to Mr Ballantine, by publishing my poem of 'The Brigs of Ayr.'" That poem was therefore composed about the close of September or the early part of October 1786; and with it accordingly opens our second volume. THE simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough, The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush, Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn bush; The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill, Or deep-ton'd plovers grey, wild-whistling o'er the hill ; Shall be―nurst in the peasant's lowly shed, To hardy independence bravely bred, By early poverty to hardship steel'd, And train'd to arms in stern Misfortune's field Shall he be guilty of their hireling crimes, With all the venal soul of dedicating prose? "Twas when the stacks get on their winter hap,a * covering. b thatch and straw-rope. heaps. с d harm. e smothered. |