which were at that time the models of taste in the school of Blair. They thought they had caught the making of a laureate in whose future odes, epodes, and epics, the world was to recognize the forming hands of teachers, as illustrious in their pupil's reflected brilliancy as the pupil himself. Hence came those uneasy efforts at genteel satire, at tragedy, and at classic odewriting, in strophe and antistrophe, which appear among Burns' poems, like so many fops among young country fellows at a game at football. Such an incongruity we find in that band of genii introduced by Coila in the "Vision." Coila, herself the local Muse, is stated by Burns to have been imagined on the idea of Ross's Scotia ; but the introduction of such a being has from time immemorial been privileged in the machinery of pieces of this kind. Probably the more immediate hint for the details of Coila's appearance-her wondrous robe, luminous with seas and rivers, and shadowy with waving woods and dusky mountains, as well as for the tone of mingled rebuke and encouragement in which she addresses the poet, was taken from the opening of Hector Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy," a work of which several translations were then, and still are, accessible to reading men throughout Scotland.

We will not spoil the "eximia latinitas" of Boethius by attempting to render his musical periods in our dissonant English; but we will afford the reader, who possibly does not often look into the "Consolations," the pleasure of weighing one or two of those melodious sentences in his tuneful ear:

"Hæc dum mecum tacitus ipse reputarem querimoniamque lacrymabilem styli officio designarem, astitisse mihi supra verticem visa est mulier reverendi admodum vultus, oculis ardentibus, et ultra communem hominum valentiam perspicacibus, colore vivido atqua inex hausti vigoris.

Vestes erant tenuissimis filis, subtili artficio, indissolubilique materia perfectæ. Quarum speciem veluti fumosas imagines solet caligo quædam neglectæ vetustatis obduxerat. Harum in extrema margine II, in suprema vero legi batur intextum; atque inter utrasque literas in scalarum modum gradus quidam insigniti videbantur, quibus ab inferiori ad superius elementum esset

In like manner POESY, in the person of Coila, the local Muse of Ayr, breaks in on the desponding solitude of Burns, just as he is about to make the rash vow of abjuring those pursuits which had brought him so much intellectual and so little worldly reward. But how different the manner of their introduction: the Roman, without more preface than the tears and groans of a wounded spirit, all at once aware of the presence of Philosophy standing by his bed-head; the Scot, painting every thing ad unguem-the fatigue of his body after a day's wielding of the "thresher's weary flinging-tree"—the discomfort of the poor apartmentthe restless rats squeaking in the thatch-the pungent smoke spewing from the fire-place, till the atmosphere of the spense was all one "misty, mottie clime"-and the succession of desponding thoughts and galling comparisons between his own poverty and insignificance and the purse-proud ease and consequence of the world's minions, till, in the bitterness of his spirit, he has heaved up his hand to swear the impious vow—

When click the string the sneck did draw,

And jee! the door gaed to the wa',
And by my ingle-lowe I saw,
Now blazing bright,
A tight, outlandish hizzie braw
Come full in sight.

This is the Muse. The abruptness of her entrance, and its agreement, in all respects, with that of an ordinary earthly visitant, strikes the reader, perhaps, as inconsistent with the dignity of the occasion. But consider how such a mood of mind as Burns had then fallen into lowers the standard of every thing. He was about to abjure the dominion of mind, and swear allegiance to the world. He saw every

With musing, deep, astonished stare,
I viewed the heavenly seeming fair;
A whisp'ring throb did witness bear
Öf kindred sweet;
When, with an elder sister's air,
She did me greet.

The Muse has come to rebuke her recreant son, to remind him of the dignity of his calling, of the rewards he has already obtained in the promotion of virtue, and the friendship and applause of the good, and of the exquisite delights of which his youthfulspirit had been made a partaker, through her means, when otherwise his soul would have hardened and grown callous to every purer enjoyment in the sordid routine of daily labour. This is a noble design, and full of the deepest philosophy; and we like the way in which Burns carries it out, even more than we do the ostentatiously didactic, though beautiful and true, sonnet to the same effect by Wordsworth: "The world is too much VOL. XXV.-No. 145.

with us." Burns asks for no classical recollections, no associations of learning: enough for him to have been blest with the happiness of feeling natureenough for him to have experienced the sweetness of love, the glow of patriotism, the aspirations after fame. No man whose breast has ever owned a spark of poetic feeling, can read this exposition of Burns' youthful raptures, without being thrilled to the soul with keen delight:

With future hope I oft would gaze,
Fond, on thy little early ways;
Thy rudely-carolled chiming phrase,
In uncouth rhymes;
Fired at the simple, artless lays
Of other times.

I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar,
Or, when the North his fleecy store
Drove through the sky,

I saw grim nature's visage hoar
Struck thy young eye.

Or, when the deep green-mantled earth
Warm cherished every flowret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth,
In every grove,

I saw thee eye the general mirth
With boundless love.

When ripened fields and azure skies
Called forth the reaper's rustling noise,
I saw thee leave their evening joys
And lonely stalk,

To vent thy bosom's swelling rise
In pensive walk.

When youthful love, warm-blushing, strong,

Keen-shivering, shot thy nerves along,
Those accents, grateful to the tongue,
The adored name,

I taught thee how to pour in song,
To soothe thy flame.

I saw thy pulse's maddening play,
Wild, send thee pleasure's devious way;
Misled by fancy's meteor-ray,
By passion driven;

And yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.

I taught thy manners-painting strains
The loves, the songs of simple swains,
Till now, o'er all my wide domains
Thy fame extends,
And some, the pride of Coila's plains,
Become thy friends.

To give my counsels all and one, Thy tuneful flame still careful fan;

G

In these delightful stanzas, rising and culminating as they proceed, until, towards the conclusion, they attain a pitch of beauty as lofty, perhaps, as any other poet has ever risen to in the English language, Burns rapidly sweeps away all the gloomy impressions made by his earlier reflectionsthe atmosphere grows clear around us-the walls of the spense spread and widen the roof springs aloft-and, when at last the Muse binds the holly round his beaming brows, we see before us, instead of the weary and careworn thresher, eaten up with indigence and self-censure, the poet, conscious of the dignity of his office, rich in the rewards of enthusiasm, and radiant with the light of pride and joy,

“Etherial, flushed, and like a throbbing star,

Seen through the sapphire heaven's deep repose!"

Moments like these repay years of anxiety and toil; sentiments like these retrieve heaps of folly and piles of irreverence. Minute criticism may quarrel with some inelegances of the expression, and an exacting logic may discover some wants of complete sequence in the construction; but the ever-recurring, happy thought, brought directly home to the breast, in simple, manly language, cures every thing.

The perfection of eloquence is fervid thought in direct language; of poetry, fervid thought in language at once direct and harmonious. The man who has heart and downrightness cannot fail to be eloquent. He who has heart and downrightness, and an harmonious ear, if he but deal sincerely with himself, will sing sweetly and truly the songs that come home to the human breast. If to these be added imagination and learning, he will not only touch the hearts, but will

sway the minds, and inflame to noble aspirations the spirits and the souls of men. Whether from between the stilts of the plough, or from behind the weaver's beam, or from the desk of the poor mechanical clerk or schoolmaster-whoever feels the generous emotion, and is conscious of the perception of rhythmical harmony, and will suffer his thoughts, without fear or question, to clothe themselves in whatever utterances they may find at hand, may send them forth with this fearless certainty, that if they fail to reach the hearts and souls of men, it is neither because he wants wealth, nor station, nor influence, but because either they want argument, for which his reasoning faculty must bear the blame, or harmony, for which his own ear is answerable, or vividness, of which a weak imagination has been the cause; for if they be not defective in these points, and have sincerity and fervour, they must succeed.

There is

no common hall in the world where such universal equality, in every thing but song, is recognised, as in the court of Apollo. The highest seat here is occupied by the blind Ionian beggar— princes and nobles content to sit immeasurably below-kingdoms and nations proud, from generation to generation, of having sent forth a single occupant of a place at his feet. Low. down, far below the feet of Homer, and the feet of those who sit at Homer's feet, Burns has got his place; but Scotland now would not, for millions of money, abandon her proud privilege of pointing to her son sitting

even there.

If, then, it need but this to be a poet, how comes it, you will say, that so few have been deemed worthy of the name, and that even in the rank occupied by Burns, he sits with a band of not more than two or three companions? Is it not, then, a simple thing to be good?-and yet how few attain to virtue!-a simple thing to be as little children?-yet how few are real followers of Christ! Truly, it would appear that in the very simplicity of both lies that which makes both so very hard of attainment; for society sits round a man, looking at him on every side; this may make him odious, that ridiculous; whatever he says or does out of the common, will be scrutinized by the rules of a jealous,

exacting, and form-serving system. To speak freely in the face of such an audience, a man must be both singlehearted and courageous-confident that what he says is for the promotion of something good, and conscious, in his utterance of it, of no cowardly compromise with his own spirit; and to this he must add the vividness of bold or beautiful imagery, the charm of melodious numbers, the fruit of knowledge, and, above all, the form and sequence of just argument, or he will be no poet. Poets therefore are, and ever will be, few in number, though the number of those who possess some or other of the poetic faculties be very great, and to all men the field is open to run the glorious

race.

Of the faculties requisite to success in poetry, that of just reasoning is the one most frequently found wanting; but Burns in this had no deficiency. His thoughts succeed one another in just and logical series, in the midst of his most fervid sentiments and most vivid imaginations. Reasoning on the social anomalies which he bravely protests against, you find his views distinguished by strong mother-wit, and brought home by unimpeachable arguments. This is the faculty which we would wish to see chiefly cultivated among those on whom the furnishing of a future poet for this country will probably be cast-the middle classes of the Irish. Judging from the specimens of native song and satire, of which we are acquainted with a great abundance, we incline to believe this the main desideratum. There certainly is no want of fervid feeling, nor of musical or rythmical perception. Neither courage nor sincerity are deficient. But imagination halts-probably for want of knowledge-and the just sequence of thought is not there. Therefore, these pieces generally want variety and intellectual force. speak now of the native remains in the Irish language; but if we extend our observations to those beautiful and spirited effusions, in which the same mind has expressed itself in English, we perceive a great and most cheering difference. Probably no more just se

We

No

quences of thought are to be found in the whole round of lyrical literature than in the Melodies of Moore. orator, with all the art of rhetoric, could build up a more perfect fabric of thought than the Harp of Tara. In the compass of two stanzas, it unites the demonstrative, the reflective, and the illustrative elegancies of rhetoric, and brings all home to the breast of the reader with a combination and completeness equal, in its way, to the peroration of a speech of Demosthenes. In some other lyrics, too, not unworthy of Moore, which the vehement agitation of the minds of men during the last two years has called forth in The Nation newspaper, a fervour even more glowing than Moore's own has been combined with an almost equal eloquence and justness of arrangement. In the great majority of the latter pieces, however, the prevalent fault of the older Irish effusions is glaringly conspicuous, and in too many of them the bloodthirstiness combines with the barbarism of 1641. Still, some of them are finer than any thing in the same style since Campbell; and the prospect of our at length seeing an Irish bard equal to those who sustain the lyrical honours of the sister country grows clearer and nearer in their lustre.

If any, either of these or of the other gifted youth of Ireland, feel the strength and sincerity that is needed for the attempt, let them not be frightened back by the terrorism of Swift and the satirists. We have seen Robert Burns, the example generally selected of all that is most calculated to deter genius from the pursuit of poetic fame, happier in the little smoky spense of Mossgiel than God suffers most mortals to be in the world's loftiest stations. We shall pursue the subject to the end, and hope to show the ingenuous young men on whom we depend in our ef forts for the literary advancement and renown of the country, that even in Burns' days of deepest degradation, it was not his genius that brought the misery, that ought to bear the blame, or that should now deter others from emulating his unaffected and manly

strains.

MADELEINE DILLON O'MOORE, (for Carleton had not forsaken his first love,) had not knelt for one agitated minute—the beating of her heart was not still, nor had her quivering lips yet acquired the mastery of speech, when, with a faint sound, the door of a small aperture was withdrawn, and, separated still by a grating, the austere visage of the confessor became visible, almost touching the face of the young penitent, and exhibiting a character of grave, passionless attention.

What

subject for a picture, if the painter's art could describe it!-the two countenances that then met together. One, upon which every passion, every attainable enjoyment, and almost every endurable sorrow, had left a witness of its presence and over which penances almost commensurate, were human satisfaction possible, to the sins for which they were to satisfy, had drawn the semblance of an enforced composure; this, seen through the little wicket bars, in a dim recess, enlightened, one might say, by the lustre of eyes, on which mortification had exercised its power in vain ;-the other, marked by agitation which had never before been experienced-a countenance framed for gentle joys, and which it would be hardly too much to say, felicity itself had fashioned-a face, whose serene and joyous character, care, or disappointment, or grief had never clouded and which, now, in the first anguish of a young life, received, and manifested in its complex expression, notices of all that the

WORDSWORTH.

heart which looked through it was capable of experiencing. In the face of the priest were the traces of a stormy life past, and of the rigid repose which waited on the season of its decline; in the maiden's, there was the prophecy of a troubled life to come-it seemed as if retaining the last looks of happy girlhood, and suffering to mingle with them notices of coming disaster and passion, and of the struggles in which virtuous principles triumph.

There was a pause of silence while the lady strove for power to speakand the confessor, who saw the effort she made, waited until it was successful. At length, she spoke, faintly indeed but with the distinctness which, whether the intonation be rapid or slow, often characterises profound emotion. "Pardon, father," she said, "I do not come to you to confess, I come for counsel-rebuke-and, oh, for protection."

The wise ecclesiastic saw that this case was to be no ordinary and formal interchange of confession and absolution; and he, at once, adapted himself to the emergency. Without expostulating against the irregularity with which the young penitent addressed him, or using any expression which might disturb the connection of her thoughts or feelings, he paused for a moment after she had ceased, and finding her silence continue, he said, in a manner to invite further confidence

"Proceed, my daughter-from what do you desire protection?"