1 This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench, 2 "I lastly was with Curtis among the floating batt'ries, When the t'other bag I sell, and the t'other bottle tell, I could meet a troop of hell at the sound of the drum." What different ideas of low life one forms even from reading the works of men who paint it admirably. Had Crabbe, for instance, undertaken to represent the carousal of a troop of Beggars in a hedge alehouse, how unlike would his production have been to this Cantata? He would have painted their rags and their dirt with the accuracy of a person who is not used to see rags and dirt very often; he would have seized the light careless swing of their easy code of morality, with the penetration of one who has long been a Master-Anatomist of the manners and the hearts of men. But I doubt very much, whether any one could enter into the true spirit of such a meeting, who had not been, at some period of his life, a partaker in propriâ personâ, and almost par cum paribus, in the rude merriment of its constituents. I have no doubt that Burns sat for his own picture in the Bard of the Cantata, and had often enough in some such scene as Poosie Nansie's "Rising, rejoicing Between his twa Deborahs, Looked round him, and found them It is by such familiarity alone that the secret and essence of that charm, which no groupe of human companions entirely wants, can be fixed and preserved even by the greatest of poetsMr Crabbe would have described the Beggars like a firm though humane Justice of the Peace poor Robert Burns did not think himself entitled to assume any such airs of superiority. The consequence is, that we would have understood and pitied the one groupe, but that we sympathize even with the joys of the other. We would have thrown a few shillings to Mr Crabbe's Mendicants, but we are more than half inclined to sit down and drink them ourselves along with the "orra duds" of those of Burns, I myself will you believe it?-was one of those who insisted upon disturbing the performance of this glorious Cantata with my own dissonant voice. In plain truth, I was so happy, that I could not keep silence, and such was the buoyancy of my enthusiasm, that nothing could please me but singing a Scottish song. I believe, after all, I got through it pretty well; at least, I did well enough to delight my neighbours. My song was that old favourite of your's "My name it is Donald Macdonald, One of the best songs, I must think, that our times has produced; and, indeed, it was for many years one of the most popular. I had no idea who wrote the words of my song, and had selected it merely for its own merit, and my own convenience; but I had no sooner finished, than Mr Hogg stretched his hand to me, across two or three that sat between us, and cried out with an air of infinite delight, 66 Od', sir-Doctor Morris"-(for he had heard my name,)—“ od, sir,-I wrote that sang when I was a herd on Yarrow, and little did I think ever to live to hear an English gentleman sing it." From this moment there was no bound to the warmth of our affection for each other; in order to convince you of which, in so far as I myself was concerned, I fairly deserted my claret for the sake of joining in the jug party of the Shepherd. Nor, after all, was this quite so mighty a sacrifice as you may be inclined to imagine. I assure you, there are worse things in life than whiskytoddy; although I cannot go the same length with Mr Hogg, who declared over and over that there is nothing so good. A man may now and then, adopt a change of liquor with advantage; but, upon the whole, I like better to see people "stick to their vocation." I think nothing can be a more pitiable sight than a French count on his travels, striving to look pleased over a bumper of strong Port; and an Oxford doctor of divinity looks almost as much like a fish out of water, when he is constrained to put up with the best Claret in the world. In like manner, it would have tended very much to disturb my notions of propriety, had I found Hogg drinking Hock. It would have been a sin against keeping with such a face as he has. Although for some time past he has spent a considerable portion of every year in excellent, even in refined so ciety, the external appearance of the man can have undergone but very little change since he was "a herd on Yarrow." His face and hands are still as brown as if he lived en tirely sub dio. His very hair has a coarse stringiness about it, which proves beyond dispute its utter ignorance of all the arts of the friseur; and hangs in playful whips and cords about his ears, in a style of the most perfect innocence imaginable. His mouth, which, when he smiles, nearly cuts the totality of his face in twain, is an object that would make the Chevalier Ruspini die with indignation; for his teeth have been allowed to grow where they listed, and as they listed, presenting more resemblance, in arrangement, (and colour too,) to a body of crouching sharp-shooters, than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead, towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and of an eye that illuminates their surface with the genuine lightnings of genius, an eye that, under brows Shaggy and deep, has meanings, which are brought these are things which I cannot so easily trans |