of the adjoining land, for liberty to rebuild it, and raised by subscription a sum for enclosing this ancient cemetery with a wall; hence he came to consider it as his burial place, and we learned that reverence for it people generally have for the burial-place of their ancestors. My brother was living in Ellisland, when Captain Grose, on his peregrinations through Scotland, staid some time at Carse-house in the neighbourhood, with Captain Robert Riddel of Glenriddel, a particular friend of my brother's. The Antiquarian and the Poet were "Unco pack and thick thegither." Robert requested of Captain Grose, when he should come to Ayrshire, that he would make a drawing of Alloway-Kirk, as it was the burial-place of his father, and where he himself had a sort of claim to lay down his bones when they should be no longer serviceable to him; and added, by way of encouragement, that it was the scene of many a good story of witches and apparitions, of which he knew the Captain was very fond. The Captain agreed to the request, provided the poet would furnish a witch story, to be printed along with it. "Tam o' Shanter" was produced on this occasion, and was first published in "Grose's Antiquities of Scotland."

The poem is founded on a traditional story. The leading circumstances of a man riding home very late from Ayr, in a stormy night, his seeing a light in Alloway Kirk, his having the curiosity to look in, his seeing a dance of witches, with the devil playing on the bag-pipe to them, the scanty covering of one of the witches, which made him so far forget himself as to cry-" Weel loupen, short sark!"-with the melancholy catastrophe of the piece; it is all a true story, that can be well attested by many respectable old people in that neighbourhood.

I do not at present recollect any circumstances respecting the other poems, that could be at all interesting; even some of those have mentioned, I am afraid, may appear trifling enough, but you will only make use of what appears to you of consequence.

The following poems in the first Edinburgh edition were not in that published in Kilmarnock. "Death and Dr Hornbook; "The Brigs of Ayr;" "The Calf;" (the poet had been with Mr Gavin Hamilton in the morning, who said jocularly to him when he was going to church, in allusion to the injunction of some parents to their children, that he must be sure to bring a note of the sermon at mid-day; this address to the Reverend Gentleman on his text was accordingly produced ;) "The Ordination;" "The Address to the Unco Guid;" "Tam Samson's Elegy;" "A Winter Night;" "Stanzas on the same occasion as the preceding prayer;" "Verses left at a Reverend Friend's house;" "The first Psalm;" "Prayer under the pressure of violent anguish; "The first six Verses of the ninetieth Psalm ;" "Verses to Miss Logan, with Beattie's Poems" "To

a Haggis ;"" Address to Edinburgh;" " John Barleycorn;" "When Guildford Guid;" "Behind yon hills where Stinchar flows;" "Green grow the Rashes;" "Again rejoicing Nature sees;" "The gloomy Night;" "No Churchman am I."

If you have never seen the first edition, it will, perhaps, not be amiss to transcribe the preface, that you may see the manner in which the Poet made his first awe-struck approach to the bar of public judgment.

Preface to the first Edition of Burns' Poems, published at Kilmarnock.

"The following Trifles are not the production of the poet, who with all the advantages of learned art, and perhaps, amid the elegances and idlenesses of upper life, looks down for a rural theme, with an eye to Theocritus or Virgil. To the author of this, these and other celebrated names, their countrymen, are, at least in their original language, "a fountain shut up, and a book sealed." Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing poet by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners, he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, in his and their native language. Though a rhymer from his earliest years, at least from the earliest impulses of the softer passions, it was not till very lately that the applause, perhaps the partiality of friendship, awakened his vanity so far as to make him think any thing of his worth showing; and none of the following works were composed with a view to the press. To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and fatigues of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears, in his own breast: to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind-these were his motives for courting the muses, and in these he found poetry to be its own reward."

Now that he appears in the public character of an author, he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small consequence forsooth!

"It is an observation of that celebrated poet Shenstone, whose divine elegies do honour to our language, our nation, and our species, that Humility has depressed many a genius to a hermit, but never raised one to fame!' If any critic catches at the word "genius," the author tells him once for all, that he certainly looks upon himself as possessed of some poetic abili. ties, otherwise his publishing in the manner he has done, would be a manoeuvre below the

wórst character, which he hopes his worst enemy will ever give him. But to the genius of a Ramsay, or the glorious dawnings of the poor unfortunate Fergusson, he, with equal unaffected sincerity, declares, that even in his highest pulse of vanity, he has not the most distant pretensions. These two justly admired Scotch poets he has often had in his eye in the following pieces; but rather with a view to kindle at their flame, than for servile imitation.

"To his Subscribers the Author returns his most sincere thanks. Not the mercenary bow over a counter, but the heart-throbbing gratitude of the bard, conscious how much he owes to benevolence and friendship, for gratifying him, if he deserves it, in that dearest wish of every poetic bosom-to be distinguished. He begs his readers, particularly the learned and the polite, who may honour him with a perusal, that they will make every allowance for education and circumstances of life; but, if after a fair, candid, and impartial criticism,

he shall stand convicted of dulness and non

sense, lets him be done by as he would in that case do by others-let him be condemned, without mercy, to contempt and oblivion."

I am, dear Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant, GILBERT BURNS.

DR CURRIE, Liverpool.

To this history of the poems which are contained in this volume, it may be added, that our author appears to have made little alteration in them after their original composition, except in some few instances, where considerable additions have been introduced. After he had attracted the notice of the public by his first edition, various criticisms were offered him on the peculiarities of his style, as well as of his sentiments, and some of these which remain among his manuscripts, are by persons of great taste and judgment. Some few of these criticisms he adopted, but the far greater part he rejected; and, though something has by this means been lost in point of delicacy and correctness, yet a deeper impression is left of the strength and originality of his genius. The firmness of our poet's character, arising from a just confidence in his own powers, may, in part, explain his tenaciousness of his peculiar expressions; but it may be in some degree accounted for also, by the circumstances under which the poems were composed. Burns did not, like men of genius born under happier auspices, retire, in the moment of inspiration, to the silence and solitude of his study, and commit his verses to paper as they arranged themselves in his mind. Fortune did not afford him this indulgence. It was during the toils of daily labour that his fancy exerted it

self; the muse, as he himself informs us, found him at the plough. In this situation, it was necessary to fix his verses on his memory, and it was often many days, nay weeks, after a poem was finished, before it was written down. During all this time, by frequent repetition, the association between the thought and the expression was confirmed, and the impartiality of taste with which written language is reviewed and retouched after it has faded on the memory, could not in such instances be exerted. The original manuscripts of many of his poems are preserved, and they differ in nothing material from the last printed edition. Some few variations may be noticed.

In The Author's earnest Cry and Prayer, after the stanza, p. 93, beginning,

Erskine, a spunkie Norland Billie,

there appears, in his book of manuscripts, the following:

Thee, sodger Hugh, my watchman stented
If Bardies e'er are represented:
I ken if that your sword were wanted
Ye'd lend your hand,
But when there's ought to say anent it.
Ye're at a stand.

Sodger Hugh is evidently the present Earl of Eglinton, then Colonel Montgomery of Coilsfield, and representing in Parliament the county of Ayr. Why this was left out in printing, does not appear. The noble Earl will not be sorry to see this notice of him, familiar though it be, by a bard whose genius he admired, and whose fate he lamented.

2. In The Address to the Deil, the seventh stanza, in page 49, ran originally thus: Lang syne in Eden's happy scene, When strappin' Adam's days were green, And Eve was like my bonnie Jean,

My dearest part,

A dancin', sweet, young, handsome quean,
Wi' guiltless heart.

3. In The Elegy on Poor Mailie, the second stanza, in page 105, beginning,

She was nae get o' moorland tips,
was, at first, as follows:
She was nae get o' runted rams,
Wi, woo' like goats, and legs like trams
She was the flower o' Fairlie lambs,
Now Robin, greetin, chows the hams
O' Mailie dead.

A famous breed:

It were a pity that the Fairlie lambs should lose the honour once intended them.

4. But the chief variations are found in the poems introduced, for the first time, in the edition in two volumes small octavo, published in 1792. Of the poem written in Friars Carse Hermitage there are several editions,

and one of these has nothing in common with | the printed poem but the four first lines The poem that is published, which was his second effort on the subject, received considerable alterations in printing.

Instead of the six lines beginning,

Say man's true genuine estimate, in manuscript the following are inserted,

Say the criterion of their fate,
Th' important query of their state,
Is not, art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?
Wert thou cottager or king?
Prince or peasant ?-no such thing.

5. The Epistle to R. G. of F. Esq. that is, to R. Graham of Fintry, Esq. also underwent considerable alterations, as may be collected from the volume of Correspondence. This style of poetry was new to our poet, and though he was fitted to excel in it, it cost him more trouble than his Scottish poetry. On the contrary, Tam o' Shanter seems to have issued perfect from the author's brain. The only considerable alteration made on reflection, is the omission of four lines, which had been inserted after the poem was finished, at the end of the dreadful catalogue of the articles found on the "haly table," and which appeared in the first edition of the poem, printed separately. They came after the eighteenth line, page 147,

Which even to name would be unlawfu', and are as follows:

*This is given in the Correspondence.

Three lawyers' tongues turn'd inside out,
Wi' lies seam'd like a beggar's clout,
And priests' hearts, rotten, black as muck;
Lay stinking vile in every neuk.

These lines, which, independent of other objections, interrupt and destroy the emotions of terror which the preceding description had excited, were very properly left out of the printed collection, by the advice of Mr Fraser Tytler; to which Burns seems to have paid some deference.

6. The Address to the Shade of Thomson, page 148, began in the first manuscript copy in the following manner:

While cold-eyed Spring, a virgin coy,
Unfolds her verdant mantle sweet,

Or pranks the sod in frolic joy,

A carpet for her youthful feet:
While Summer, with a matron's grace,
Walks stately in the cooling shade,
And oft delighted loves to trace
The progress of the spiky blade:
While Autumn, benefactor kind,

With age's hoary honours clad,
Surveys, with self-approving mind,

Each creature on his bounty fed, &c.

By the alteration in the printed poem, it may be questioned whether the poetry is much imintroduce the shades of Dryburgh, the residence proved; the poet however has found means to of the Earl of Buchan, at whose request these

verses were written.

These observations might be extended, but what are already offered will satisfy curiosity, and there is nothing of any importance that could be added.