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synonymous expressions for poetical words, and to supply all the ellipses. These, you know, are the means of knowing that the pupil understands his author. These are excellent helps to the arrangement of words in sentences, as well as to a variety of expression." In the remainder of the letter the writer gives a very interesting account of the manner in which he and his pupil, at a future period, commenced and carried on their French studies. When Robert Burns was about thirteen years of age, Murdoch had been appointed parish schoolmaster of Ayr, upon which, as we have already mentioned, Burns was sent for a few weeks to attend his school. He was now with me," says Murdoch, day and night, in school, at all meals, and in all my walks. At the end of one week I told him, that, as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, &c., I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation; that when he should meet with the name of a French town, ship, officer, or the like, in the newspapers, he might be able to pronounce it something like a French word. Robert was glad to hear this proposal, and immediately we attacked the French with great courage. Now there was little else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the conjugation of verbs, &c. When walking together, and even at meals, I was constantly telling him the names of different objects, as they presented themselves, in French; so that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we began to read a little of the Adventures of Telemachus,' in Fenelon's own words."

Another week, however, was hardly over, when

the young student was obliged to leave school for the labours of the harvest. I did not, however," says Murdoch, "lose sight of him, but was a frequent visitant at his father's house, when I had my half-holiday; and very often went, accompanied by one or two persons more intelligent than myself, that good William Burns might enjoy a mental feast. Then the labouring oar was shifted to some other hand. The father and the son sat down with us, when we enjoyed a conversation, wherein solid reasoning, sensible remark, and a moderate seasoning of jocularity, were so nicely blended, as to render it palatable to all parties. Robert had a hundred questions to ask me about the French, &c.; and the father, who had always rational information in view, had still some question to propose to my more learned friends upon moral or natural philosophy, or some such interesting subject." It is delightful to contemplate such scenes of humble life as theseshewing us, as they do, what the desire of intellectual cultivation may accomplish in any circumstances, and with how much genuine happiness it will irradiate the gloom even of the severest poverty.

We shall not pursue farther the history of Robert Burns. All know his sudden blaze of popularity— the misfortunes and errors of his short life-and the immortality which he has won by his genius. It is plain, from the details that we have given, that, even had he never been a poet, he would have grown up to be no common man. Whatever he owed to nature, it was to his admirable father, and his own zealous exertions, that he was indebted at least for that education of his powers, and that storing of his mind with knowledge, which, in so great a degree, contributed to make him what he afterwards became. It is an error to regard either Burns or Shakspeare as simply a poet of Nature's making.

If learning be taken to include knowledge in general, instead of being restricted merely to an acquince, with the ancient languages, it may be rather said that, they were both learned poets-as, indeed, every great poet must be. Their minds, that of Shakspeare especially, were full of multifarious knowledge, which was the fruit both of vigilant observation and extensive reading, and was perpetually entering into, and, in some degree regulating, the spirit or form of their poetry. The wonder in the case of each was, not that he produced poetical compositions of transcen-. dant excellence without any acquaintance with litera-, ture, but that he acquired his literary knowledge in the face of difficulties which would have discouraged, most men from making the attempt to gain it. Such. minds, too, learn a great deal from a few books, deriving both information and rules of taste from the writers they peruse, with a rapidity and felicity of apprehension which people of inferior endowments. cannot comprehend.

GILBERT BURNS, the younger brother of Robert, had no turn for poetry; but he, too, derived infinite benefit from those studies which were intermixed, as we have seen, with the labours of his early days. To this excellent man, who died only a few years ago, literature was the solace of a life of hardships. He never became a scholar in the ordinary sense of the word; his situation, that of a small farmer, did not require that he should give himself to the study of Greek or Latin; but he obtained an extensive acquaintance with the best books in his native language, and learned to write English in a manner that would not have done discredit to a scholar. Some of his letters, indeed, which Dr. Currie has printed, would be ornaments to any collection of epistolary compositions-especially a long one, dated October, 1800, which

appeared first in Dr. Currie's second edition of the poet's works; and which contains a disquisition on the education of the humble classes, abounding in valuable remarks, and characterized by no ordinary powers, both of expression and thought.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Gifford; Holcroft. Conclusion.

AMONG narratives which illustrate the power of the Love of Knowledge in overcoming the opposition of circumstances, there are few more interesting than that which has been given us of his early life by the late WILLIAM GIFFORD. Mr. Gifford was born in 1755 at Ashburton, in Devonshire. His father, although the descendant of a respectable and even wealthy family, had early ruined himself by his wildness and prodigality; and even after he was married had run off to sea, where he remained serving on board a man-of-war for eight or nine years. On his return home, with about a hundred pounds of prize-money, he attempted to obtain a subsistence as a glazier, having before apprenticed himself to that business; but in a few years he died of a broken-down constitution before he was forty, leaving his wife with two children, the youngest only about eight months old, and with no means of support except what she might make by continuing the business, of which she was quite ignorant. In about a twelvemonth she followed her husband to the grave. "I was not quite thirteen," says her son, "when this happened; my little brother was hardly two; and we had not a relation nor a friend in the world."

His brother was now sent to the workhouse, and he was himself taken home to the house of a person named Carlile, who was his godfather, and had seized upon whatever his mother had left, under the pretence of repaying himself for money which he had