"Mourn, spring, thou darling of the year!
Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear:
Thou, simmer, while each corny spear
Shoots up its head,

Thy gay, green, flow'ry tresses shear
For him that's dead.

"Thou, autumn, wi' thy yellow hair,
In grief thy sallow mantle tear!
Thou, winter, hurling thro' the air
The roaring blast,

Wide o'er the naked world declare

The worth we've lost!

"Mourn him, thou sun, great source of light!
Mourn, empress of the silent night!
And you, ye twinkling starnies bright,
My Matthew mourn!

For through your orbs he's ta'en his flight,
Ne'er to return."

Of all Burns's friends, the most efficient was Graham of Fintry. To him he owed Exciseman's diploma-settlement as a gauger in the District of Ten Parishes, when he was gudeman at Ellisland-translation as gauger to Dumfries-support against insidious foes despicable yet not to be despised with rumor at their head-vindication at the Excise Board-pro loco et tempore supervisorship—and though he knew not of it, security from dreaded degradation on his deathbed. "His First Epistle to Mr. Graham of Fintry" is in the style, shall we say it, of Dryden and Pope? It is a noble composition; and these fine, vigorous, rough, and racy lines truly and duly express at once his independence and his gratitude :

"Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace;
Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes!
Prop of my dearest hopes for future times.
Why shrinks my soul half blushing, half afraid,
Backward, abash'd, to ask thy friendly aid?

I know my need, I know thy giving hand,
I crave thy friendship at thy kind command;
But there are such who court the tuneful nine-
Heavens should the branded character be mine!

Whose verse in manhood's pride sublimely flows,
Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose.
Mark, how their lofty independent spirit
Soars on the spurning wing of injur'd merit!
Seek not the proofs in private life to find;
Pity the best of words should be but wind!
So to heaven's gates the lark's shrill song ascends,
But groveling on the earth the carol ends.

In all the clam'rous cry of starving want,
They dun benevolence with shameless front
Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays,
They persecute you all their future days!
Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain,
My horny fist assume the plough again;
The pie-bald jacket let me patch once more;
On eighteen-pence a-week I've liv'd before.
Tho' thanks to heaven, I dare even that last shift
I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift:
That, plac'd by thee upon the wish'd-for height,
Where, man and nature fairer in her sight,

My muse may imp her wing for some sublimer flight."

Read over again the last three lines! The favor requested was removal from the laborious and extensive district which he surveyed for the Excise at Ellisland to one of smaller dimensions at Dumfries! In another Epistle, he renews the request, and says most affectingly

"I dread thee, fate, relentless and severe,

With all a poet's, husband's, father's fear!
Already one strong hold of hope is lost,
Glencairn, the truly noble, lies in dust
(Fled, like the sun eclips'd at noon appears,
And left us darkling in a world of tears);
Oh! hear my ardent, grateful, selfish prayer!--
Fintry, my other stay, long bless and spare!
Thro' a long life his hopes and wishes crown;
And bright in cloudless skies his sun go down!
May bliss domestic smoothe his private path,
Give energy to life, and soothe his latest breath,
With many a filial tear circling the bed of death?"

The favor was granted-and in another Epistle was requited with immortal thanks.

"I call no goddess to inspire my strains,

A fabled muse may suit a bard that feigns;
Friend of my life! my ardent spirit burns,
And all the tribute of my heart returns,
For boons accorded, goodness ever new,
The gift still dearer, as the giver, you.

"Thou orb of day! thy other paler light!
And all ye many sparkling stars of night;
If aught that giver from my mind efface,
If I that giver's bounty e'er disgrace;

Then roll to me, along your wandering spheres,
Only to number out a villain's years!"

His

Love, Friendship, Independence, Patriotism-these were the perpetual inspirers of his genius, even when they did not form the theme of his effusions. His religious feelings, his resentment against hypocrisy, and other occasional inspirations, availed only to the occasion on which they appear. But these influence him at all times, even while there is not a whisper about them, and when himself is unconscious of their operation. Everything most distinctive of his character will be found to appertain to them, whether we regard him as a poet or a man. Patriotism was of the true poetic kind-intense-exclusive; Scotland and the climate of Scotland were in his eyes the dearest to nature-Scotland and the people of Scotland the mother and the children of liberty. In his exultation, when a thought of foreign lands crossed his fancy, he asked, "What are they? the haunts of the tyrant and slave." This was neither philosophical nor philanthropical; in this Burns was a bigot. And the cosmopolite may well laugh to hear the cottager proclaiming that "the brave Caledonian views with disdain" spicy forests and gold-bubbling fountains with their ore and their nutmegsand blessing himself in scant apparel on "cauld Caledonia's blast on the wave." The doctrine will not stand the scrutiny of judgment; but with what concentrated power of poetry does the prejudice burst forth? Let all lands have each its own prejudiced, bigoted, patriotic poets, blind and deaf to what lies. beyond their own horizon, and thus shall the whole habitable world in due time be glorified. Shakspeare himself was never

so happy as when setting up England in power, in beauty, and in majesty above all the kingdoms of the earth.

In times of national security the feeling of Patriotism among the masses is so quiescent that it seems hardly to exist—in their case national glory or national danger awakens it, and it leaps up armed cap-a-pie. But the sacred fire is never extinct in a nation, and in tranquil times it is kept alive in the hearts of those who are called to high functions in the public service-by none is it beeted so surely as by the poets. It is the identification of individual feeling and interest with those of a community; and so natural to the human soul is this enlarged act of sympathy, that when not called forth by some great pursuit, peril, or success, it applies itself intensely to internal policy; and hence the animosities and rancor of parties, which are evidences, nay forms, though degenerate ones, of the Patriotic Feeling; and this is proved by the fact that on the approach of common danger, party differences in a great measure cease, and are transmuted into the one harmonious elemental Love of our Native Land. Burns was said at one time to have been a Jacobin as well as a Jacobite; and it must have required even all his genius to effect such a junction. He certainly wrote some so-so verses to the Tree of Liberty, and like Cowper, Wordsworth, and other great and good men, rejoiced when down fell the Bastille. But when there was a talk of taking our Island, he soon evinced the nature of his affection for the French.

"Does haughty Gaul invasion threat?

Then let the loons beware, Sir,
There's wooden walls upon our seas,
And volunteers on shore, Sir.
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,
And Criffel sink in Solway,

Ere we permit a foreign foe
On British ground to rally.

Fall de rall, &c.

"O let us not like snarling tykes
In wrangling be divided;
Till slap come in an unco loon

And wi' a rung decide it.

Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;

For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted.
Fall de rall, &c.

"The kettle o' the kirk and state,
Perhaps a claut may fail in 't;
But deil a foreign tinker loun
Shall ever ca' a nail in 't.
Our fathers' bluid the kettle bought,'
And wha wad dare to spoil it;
By heaven the sacrilegious dog

Shall fuel be to boil it.

Fall de rall, &c.

"The wretch that wad a tyrant own,

And the wretch his true-born brother,
Who would set the mob aboon the throne,
May they be damn'd together!

Who will not sing, 'God save the King,'
Shall hang as high 's the steeple;

But while we sing, 'God save the King,'
We'll ne'er forget the People."

These are far from being "elegant" stanzas-there is even a rudeness about them-but 't is the rudeness of the Scottish Thistle —a paraphrase of "nemo me impune lacesset." The staple of the war-song is home-grown and home-spun. It flouts the air like a banner not idly spread, whereon "the ruddy Lion ramps in gold." Not all the orators of the day, in Parliament or out of it, in all their speeches put together embodied more political wisdom, or appealed with more effective power to the noblest principles of patriotism in the British heart.

"A gentleman of birth and talents" thus writes, in 1835, to Allan Cunninghame: "I was at the play in Dumfries, October, 1792, the Caledonian Hunt being then in town-the play was As you like it '-Miss Fontenelle, Rosalind-when 'God save the king' was called for and sung; we all stood up uncovered, but Burns sat still in the middle of the pit, with his hat on his head. There was a great tumult, with shouts of 'turn him out' and 'shame Burns!' which continued a good while; at last he