I saw him in the banquet hour To seek his favourite minstrel's haunt, He loved that spell-wrought strain Then seemed the bard to cope with Time, While horse and foot-helm, shield, and lance, But battle shout and waving plume, It was the hour of deep midnight, When, with sable cloak and 'broidered pall, Dull and sad fell the torches' glare On many a stately crestThey bore the noble warrior king To his last dark home of rest. The Convict Ship. [By T. K. Hervey.] Morn on the waters! and, purple and bright, And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale; Night on the waves!-and the moon is on high, Look to the waters !-asleep on their breast, 'Tis thus with our life, while it passes along, As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears; And the withering thoughts which the world cannot know, Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below; Prayer. [By W. Beckford, author of "Vathek.'"] Like the low murmur of the secret stream, In the recesses of the forest vale, On the wild mountain, on the verdant sod, Where the fresh breezes of the morn prevail, I wander lonely, communing with God. When the faint sickness of a wounded heart I turn to thee that holy peace impart, O all-pervading Spirit! sacred beam! Grant me through obvious clouds one transient gleam Sonnet written on the Burial-ground of his Ancestors. [By Walter Paterson.] Never, O never on this sacred ground Can I let fall my eye, but it will gaze, That lies on those who lived in earliest days, 478 Ode on the Duke of Wellington, 1814. Victor of Assaye's orient plain, Welcome! from dangers greatly dared; Unconquered! yet thy honours claim Thy generous soul had blushed: The blood-the tears the world has shedThe throngs of mourners-piles of deadThe grief-the guilt-are on his head, The tyrant thou hast crushed. Thine was the sword which Justice draws; The impious thrall to burst; And we, who in the eastern skies His proud meridian height. [The November Fog of London.] [By Henry Luttrel.] First, at the dawn of lingering day, It rises of an ashy gray; Then deepening with a sordid stain Of yellow, like a lion's mane. Vapour importunate and dense, It wars at once with every sense. The ears escape not. All around Returns a dull unwonted sound. Loath to stand still, afraid to stir, The chilled and puzzled passenger, Oft blundering from the pavement, fails To feel his way along the rails; Or at the crossings, in the roll Of every carriage dreads the pole. Scarce an eclipse, with pall so dun, Blots from the face of heaven the sun. But soon a thicker, darker cloak Wraps all the town, behold, in smoke, Which steam-compelling trade disgorges From all her furnaces and forges In pitchy clouds, too dense to rise, Descends rejected from the skies; Till struggling day, extinguished quite, At noon gives place to candle-light. O Chemistry, attractive maid, Descend, in pity, to our aid: Come with thy all-pervading gases, Thy crucibles, retorts, and glasses, Thy fearful energies and wonders, Thy dazzling lights and mimic thunders; Let Carbon in thy train be seen, Dark Azote and fair Oxygen, And Wollaston and Davy guide The car that bears thee at thy side. If any power can, any how, O join (success a thing of course is) In this period many translations from classic and foreign poets have appeared, at the head of which stands the version of Dante by the REV. H. F. CARY -universally acknowledged to be one of the most felicitous attempts ever made to transfuse the spirit and conceptions of a great poet into a foreign tongue. The third edition of this translation was published in 1831. Versions of Homer, the Georgics of Virgil, and the Oberon of the German poet Wieland, have been published by WILLIAM SOTHEBY, whose original poems have already been noticed. The comedies of Aristophanes have been well translated, with all their quaint drollery and sarcasm, by MR MITCHELL, late fellow of Sidney-Sussex college, Cambridge. LORD STRANGFORD has given translations from the Portuguese poet Camoens; and DR JOHN BOWRING, specimens of Russian, Dutch, ancient Spanish, Polish, Servian, and Hungarian poetry. A good translation of Tasso has been given by J. H. WIFFEN, and of Ariosto by MR STEWART ROSE. LORD FRANCIS EGERTON, MR BLACKIE, and others, have translated the Faust of Goëthe; and the general cultivation of the German language in England has led to the translation of various imaginative and critical German works in prose. MR J. G. LOCKHART's translation of Spanish ballads has enriched our lyrical poetry with some romantic songs. The ballads of Spain, like those of Scotland, are eminently national in character and feeling, and bear testimony to the strong passions and chivalrous imagination of her once high-spirited people. SCOTTISH POETS. ROBERT BURNS. After the publication of Fergusson's poems, in a collected shape, in 1773, there was an interval of about thirteen years, during which no writer of eminence arose in Scotland who attempted to excel in the native language of the country. The intellectual taste of the capital ran strongly in favour of metaphysical and critical studies; but the Doric muse was still heard in the rural districts linked to some popular air, some local occurrence or favourite spot, and was much cherished by the lower and middling classes of the people. In the summer of 1786, ROBERT BURNS, the Shakspeare of Scotland, issued his first volume from the obscure press of Kilmarnock, and its influence was immediately felt, and is still operating on the whole imaginative literature of the kingdom.* Burns was The edition consisted of 600 copies. A second was published in Edinburgh in April 1787, no less than 2800 copies being subscribed for by 1500 individuals. After his unexampled popularity in Edinburgh, Burns took the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries, married his 'bonny Jean,' and entered upon his new occupation at Whitsunday 1788. He had obtained an appointment as an exciseman, but the duties of this office, and his own convivial habits, interfered with his management of the farm, and he was glad to abandon it. In 1791 he removed to the town of Dumfries, subsisting entirely on his situation in then in his twenty-seventh year, having been born in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, on the 25th of January 1759. His father was a poor farmer, a man of sterling worth and intelligence, who gave his son what education he could afford. The whole, however, was but a small foundation on which to erect the miracles of genius! Robert was taught By Robert Robert Burns. We see him in the veriest shades of obscurity toiling, when a mere youth, like a galley-slave,' to support his virtuous parents and their household, yet grasping at every opportunity of acquiring knowledge from men and books-familiar with the history of his country, and loving its very soil-worshipping the memory of Scotland's ancient patriots and defenders, and exploring every scene and memorial of departed greatness-loving also the simple peasantry around him, 'the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers.' Burning with a desire to do something for old Scotland's sake, with a heart beating with warm and generous emotions, a strong and clear understanding, and a spirit abhorring all meanness, insincerity, and oppression, Burns, in his early days, might have furnished the subject for a great and instructive moral! poem. The true elements of poetry were in his life, as in his writings. The wild stirrings of his ambition (which he so nobly compared to the 'blind, gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave'), the precocious maturity of his passions and his intellect, his manly frame, that led him to fear, no competitor at the plough, and his exquisite sensibility and tenderness, that made him weep over even the destruction of a daisy's flower or a mouse's nest, these are all moral contrasts and blendings that seem to belong to the spirit of romantic poetry. His writings, as we now know, were but the fragments of a great mind-the hasty outpourings of a full heart and intellect. After he had become the fashionable wonder and idol of his day-soon to be cast into cold neglect and poverty!-some errors and frailties threw a shade on the noble and affecting image, but its higher lineaments were never destroyed. The column was defaced, not broken; and now that the mists of prejudice have cleared away, its just proportions and exalted symmetry are recognised with pride and gratitude by his admiring countrymen. English well, and 'by the time he was ten or eleven years of age, he was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles.' He was also taught to write, had Burns came as a potent auxiliary or fellow-worker a fortnight's French, and was one summer-quarter with Cowper, in bringing poetry into the channels of at land-surveying. He had a few books, among truth and nature. There were only two years between which were the Spectator, Pope's Works, Allan Ram- the Task and the Cotter's Saturday Night. No say, and a collection of English songs. Subsequently poetry was ever more instantaneously or univer(about his twenty-third year) his reading was en- sally popular among a people than that of Burns in larged with the important addition of Thomson, Shen- Scotland. It seemed as if a new realm had been stone, Sterne, and Mackenzie. Other standard works added to the dominions of the British muse-a new soon followed. As the advantages of a liberal edu- and glorious creation, fresh from the hand of nature. cation were not within his reach, it is scarcely to be There was the humour of Smollett, the pathos and regretted that his library was at first so small. What tenderness of Sterne or Richardson, the real life of books he had, he read and studied thoroughly-Fielding, and the description of Thomson-all united his attention was not distracted by a multitude of volumes-and his mind grew up with original and robust vigour. It is impossible to contemplate the life of Burns at this time, without a strong feeling of affectionate admiration and respect. His manly integrity of character (which, as a peasant, he guarded with jealous dignity), and his warm and true heart, elevate him, in our conceptions, almost as much as the native force and beauty of his poetry. the excise, which yielded L.70 per annum. Here he published, in 1793, a third edition of his poems, with the addition of Tam o'Shanter, and other pieces composed at Ellisland. He died at Dumfries on the 21st of July 1796, aged thirty-seven years and about six months. The story of his life is so well known, that even this brief statement of dates seems unnecessary. In 1798 a fourth edition of his works was published in Edinburgh. in delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by an Ayrshire ploughman! The volume contained matter for all minds-for the lively and sarcastic, the wild and the thoughtful, the poetical enthusiast and the man of the world. So eagerly was the book sought after, that, where copies of it could not be obtained, many of the poems were transcribed and sent round in manuscript among admiring circles. The subsequent productions of the poet did not materially affect the estimate of his powers formed from his first volume. His life was at once too idle and too busy for continuous study; and, alas! it was too brief for the full maturity and development of his talents. Where the intellect predominates equally with the imagination (and this was the case with Burns), increase of years generally adds to the strength and variety of the poet's powers; and we have no doubt that, in ordinary circumstances, Burns, like Dryden, would have improved with age, and added greatly to his fame, had he not fallen at so early a period, before his imagination could be enriched with the riper fruits of knowledge and experience. He meditated a national drama; but we might have looked with more Two years afterwards, in 1800, appeared the valuable and complete edition of Dr Currie, in four volumes, containing the correspondence of the poet, and a number of songs, contributed to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, and Thomson's Select Scottish Melodies. The editions of Burns since 1800 could with difficulty be ascertained; they were reckoned a few years ago at about a hundred. His poems circulate in every shape, and have not yet' gathered all their fame.' confidence for a series of tales like Tam o' Shanter, which (with the elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson, one of the most highly finished and most precious of his works) was produced in his happy residence at Ellisland. Above two hundred songs Burns's House, Dumfries. overpowering feeling takes possession of the imagination. The susceptibility of the poet inspired him with real emotions and passion, and his genius reproduced them with the glowing warmth and truth of nature. Tam o' Shanter' is usually considered to be Burns's masterpiece: it was so considered by himself, and the judgment has been confirmed by Campbell, Wilson, Montgomery, and almost every critic. It displays more various powers than any of his other productions, beginning with low comic humour and Bacchanalian revelry (the dramatic scene at the commencement is unique, even in Burns), and ranging through the various styles of the descriptive, the terrible, the supernatural, and the ludicrous. The originality of some of the phrases and sentiments, as Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious- the felicity of some of the similes, and the elastic But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! were, however, thrown off by Burns in his latter years, and they embraced poetry of all kinds. Mr Moore became a writer of lyrics, as he informs his readers, that he might express what music conveyed to himself. Burns had little or no technical knowledge of music. Whatever pleasure he derived from it, was the result of personal associations-the words to which airs were adapted, or the locality with which they were connected. His whole soul, however, was full of the finest harmony. So quick and genial were his sympathies, that he was easily stirred into lyrical melody by whatever was good and beautiful in nature. Not a bird sang in a bush, nor a burn glanced in the sun, but it was eloquence and music to his ear. He fell in love with every fine female face he saw; and thus kindled up, his feelings took the shape of song, and the words fell as naturally into their places as if prompted by the The Jolly Beggars is another strikingly original most perfect knowledge of music. The inward production. It is the most dramatic of his works, melody needed no artificial accompaniment. An and the characters are all finely sustained. Of the attempt at a longer poem would have chilled his Cotter's Saturday Night, the Mountain Daisy, or the ardour; but a song embodying some one leading Mouse's Nest, it would be idle to attempt any idea, some burst of passion, love, patriotism, or eulogy. In these Burns is seen in his fairest colours humour, was exactly suited to the impulsive nature-not with all his strength, but in his happiest and of Burns's genius, and to his situation and circumstances. His command of language and imagery, always the most appropriate, musical, and graceful, was a greater marvel than the creations of a Handel or Mozart. The Scottish poet, however, knew many old airs-still more old ballads; and a few bars of the music, or a line of the words, served as a keynote to his suggestive fancy. He improved nearly all he touched. The arch humour, gaiety, simplicity, and genuine feeling of his original songs, will be felt as long as 'rivers roll and woods are green.' They breathe the natural character and spirit of the country, and must be coeval with it in existence. Wherever the words are chanted, a picture is presented to the mind; and whether the tone be plaintive and sad, or joyous and exciting, one most heartfelt inspiration-his brightest sunshine and his tenderest tears. The workmanship of these leading poems is equal to the value of the materials. The peculiar dialect of Burns being a composite of Scotch and English, which he varied at will (the Scotch being generally reserved for the comic and tender, and the English for the serious and lofty), his diction is remarkably rich and copious. No poet is more picturesque in expression. This was the result equally of accurate observation, careful study, and strong feeling. His energy and truth stamp the highest value on his writings. He is as literal as Cowper. The banks of the Doon are described as faithfully as those of the Ouse; and his views of human life and manners are as real and as finely moralised. His range of subjects, however, was 481 73 infinitely more diversified, including a varied and romantic landscape, the customs and superstitions of his country, the delights of good fellowship and boon society, the aspirations of youthful ambition, and, above all, the emotions of love, which he depicted with such mingled fervour and delicacy. This ecstacy of passion was unknown to the author of the Task. Nor could the latter have conceived anything so truly poetical as the image of Coila, the tutelar genius and inspirer of the peasant youth in his clay-built hut, where his heart and fancy overflowed with love and poetry. Cowper read and appreciated Burns, and we can picture his astonishment and delight on perusing such strains as Coila's address: "With future hope I oft would gaze Fired at the simple, artless lays, I saw thee seek the sounding shore, Strike thy young eye. Or when the deep green-mantled earth I saw thee eye the general mirth When ripened fields and azure skies, To vent thy bosom's swelling rise When youthful love, warm-blushing, strong, I taught thee how to pour in song, I saw thy pulse's maddening play, By passion driven; But yet the light that led astray I taught thy manners-painting strains, And some, the pride of Coila's plains, Thou canst not learn, nor can I show, Yet, all beneath the unrivalled rose, Yet green the juicy hawthorn grows Then never murmur nor repine; Can give a bliss o'ermatching thine, To give my counsels all in one- And trust, the universal plan And wear thou this'-she solemn said, And, like a passing thought, she fled Burns never could have improved upon the grace and tenderness of this romantic vision-the finest revelation ever made of the hope and ambition of a youthful poet. Greater strength, however, he undoubtedly acquired with the experience of manhood. His Tam o' Shanter, and Bruce's Address, are the result of matured powers; and his songs evince a conscious mastery of the art and materials of composition. His Vision of Liberty at Lincluden is a great and splendid fragment. The reflective spirit evinced in his early epistles is found, in his Lines Written in Friars' Carse Hermitage, to have settled into a deep vein of moral philosophy, clear and true as the lines of Swift, and informed with a higher wisdom. It cannot be said that Burns absolutely fails in any kind of composition, except in his epigrams; these are coarse without being pointed or entertaining. Nature, which had lavished on him such powers of humour, denied him wit. In reviewing the intellectual career of the poet, his correspondence must not be overlooked. His prose style was more ambitious than that of his poetry. In the latter he followed the dictates of nature, warm from the heart, whereas in his letters he aimed at being sentimental, peculiar, and striking; and simplicity was sometimes sacrificed for effect. As Johnson considered conversation to be an intellectual arena, wherein every man was bound to do his best, Burns seems to have regarded letter-writing in much the same light, and to have considered it necessary at times to display all his acquisitions to amuse, gratify, or astonish his patronising correspondents. Considerable deductions must, therefore, be made from his published correspondence, whether regarded as an index to his feelings and situation, or as models of the epistolary style. In subject, he adapted himself too much to the character and tastes of the person he was addressing, and in style, he was led away by a love of display. A tinge of pedantry and assumption, and of reckless bravado, was thus at times superinduced upon the manly and thoughtful simplicity of his natural character, which sits as awkwardly upon it as the intrusion of Jove or Danae into the rural songs of Allan Ramsay.* The scraps of French in his letters to Dr Moore, Mrs Riddell, &c. have an unpleasant effect. If he had an affectation in anything,' says Dugald Stewart, it was in introducing occasionally [in conversation] a word or phrase from that language. Campbell makes a similar statement, and relates the following anecdote :-- One of his friends, who carried him into the company of a French lady, remarked, with surprise, that he attempted to converse with her in her own tongue. Their French, however, was mutually unintelligible. As far as Burns could make himself understood, he unfortunately offended the foreign lady. He meant to tell her that she was a |