Your criticisms, my honoured benefactress, are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the pro and con of an author's merits; they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I am just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning by three o'clock; for between my wife and my farm is just forty-six miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit, as follows:

"Mrs Ferguson of Craigdarroch's lamentation for the death of her son; an uncommonly promising youth of eighteen or nineteen years of age.

"Fate gave the word-the arrow sped,

And pierced my darling's heart."*

You will not send me your poetic rambles, but, you see, I am no niggard of mine. I am sure your impromptus give me double pleasure; what falls from your pen can neither be unentertaining in itself, nor indifferent to me.

The one fault you found is just; but I cannot please myself in an emendation.

What a life of solicitude is the life of a parent! You interested me much in your young couple.

I would not take my folio paper for this epistle, and now I repent it. I am so jaded with my dirty long journey that I was afraid to drawl into the essence of dulness with any thing larger than a quarto, and so I must leave out another rhyme of this morning's manufacture.

I will pay the sapientipotent George most cheerfully, to hear from you ere I leave Ayrshire.

* See Vol. II. p. 140.

R. B.t

+ From a letter which is printed in Dr Currie's collection, it appears that Burns entertained no great respect for what may be styled technical criticism. He loved the man who judged of poetical compositions from the heart-but looked with an evil

No. CXXXI.

TO MR PETER HILL.

MAUCHLINE, 1st October, 1788.

I HAVE been here in this country about three days, and all that time my chief reading has been the Address to Lochlomond' you were so obliging as to send to me. Were I impannelled one of the author's jury, to determine his criminality respecting the sin of poesy, my verdict should be "guilty! A poet of nature's making!" It is an excellent method for improvement, and what I believe every poet does, to place some favourite classic author in his own walks of study and composition, before him, as a model. Though your author had not mentioned the name, I could have, at half a glance, guessed his model to be Thomson. Will my brother-poet forgive me, if I venture to hint that his imitation of that immortal bard is in two or three places rather more servile than such a genius as his required:-e. g.

eye upon those who decided by the cold decisions of the head. This is evinced by the following anecdote.

At a private breakfast, in a literary circle at Edinburgh, to which he was invited, the conversation turned on the poetical merit and pathos of Gray's Elegy,—a poem of which he was enthusiastically fond. A clergyman present, remarkable for his love of paradox, and for his eccentric notions on every subject, distinguished himself by an injudicious and ill-timed attack on this exquisite poem, which Burns, with a generous warmth for the reputation of Gray, manfully defended. As this gentleman's re

marks were rather general than specific, Burns urged him to bring forward the passages which he thought exceptionable. He made several attempts to quote the poem, but always in a blundering, inaccurate manner. Burns bore all this for a considerable time with his usual good-nature and forbearance, till, at length, goaded by the fastidious criticisms and wretched quibblings of his opponent, he roused himself, and with an eye flashing contempt and indignation, and with great vehemence of gesticulation, he thus addressed the cold critic: " Sir,-I now perceive a man may be an excellent judge of poetry by square and rule, and after all be a dd blockhead !"- Cromek.

"To soothe the maddening passions all to peace."

ADDRESS.

"To soothe the throbbing passions into peace."

THOMSON.

I think the Address' is in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of versification, fully equal to the Seasons.' Like Thomson, too, he has looked into nature for himself: you meet with no copied description. One particular criticism I made at first reading; in no one instance has he said too much. He never flags in his progress, but, like a true poet of nature's making, kindles in his course. His beginning is simple and modest, as if distrustful of the strength of his pinion; only, I do not altogether like—

"Truth,

The soul of every song that's nobly great."

Fiction is the soul of many a song that is nobly great. Perhaps I am wrong: this may be but a prose criticism. Is not the phrase, in line 7, page 6, “Great lake,” too much vulgarized by every-day language for so sublime a poem ?

"Great mass of waters, theme for nobler song,"

is perhaps no emendation. His enumeration of a comparison with other lakes is at once harmonious and poetic, Every reader's ideas must sweep the

"Winding margin of an hundred miles."

The perspective that follows mountains blue-the imprisoned billows beating in vain-the wooded isles-the digression on the yew-tree-" Benlomond's lofty, cloudenvelop'd head," &c. are beautiful. A thunder-storm is a subject which has been often tried, yet our poet in his grand picture has interjected a circumstance, so far as I know, entirely original :

"the gloom

Deep seam'd with frequent streaks of moving fire."

In his preface to the Storm, "the glens how dark between," is noble highland landscape! The "rain plough

"Ben

ing the red mould," too, is beautifully fancied. lomond's lofty, pathless top," is a good expression; and the surrounding view from it is truly great : the

"silver mist,

Beneath the beaming sun,"

66

is well described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her" partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But, in my opinion, the most beautiful passages in the whole poem are the fowls crowding, in wintry frosts, to Lochlomond's "hospitable flood;" their wheeling round, their lighting, mixing, diving, &c.; and the glorious description of the sportsman. This last is equal to any thing in the 'Seasons.' The idea of "the floating tribes distant seen, far glistering to the moon," provoking his eye as he is obliged to leave them, is a noble ray of poetic genius. "The howling winds," the "hideous roar" of "the white cascades," are all in the same style.

I forget that while I am thus holding forth with the heedless warmth of an enthusiast, I am perhaps tiring you with nonsense. I must, however, mention that the last verse of the sixteenth page is one of the most elegant compliments I have ever seen. I must likewise notice that beautiful paragraph beginning " The gleaming lake," &c. I dare not go into the particular beauties of the last two paragraphs, but they are admirably fine, and truly Ossianic.

I must beg your pardon for this lengthened scrawl. I had no idea of it when I began—I should like to know who the author is; but, whoever he be, please present him with my grateful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me.

A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books, Letters on the Religion essential to Man,' a book you sent me before; and ‘The World Unmasked, or the Philosopher the greatest Cheat.' Send me them by the

first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant ; I only wish it had been in two volumes.

R. B.*

No. CXXXII.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.'+

SIR,

November 8th, 1788.

NOTWITHSTANDING the opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature—the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us; still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shows that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who is undone, the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes, who but sympathizes with the miseries

*The poem, entitled An Address to Lochlomond,' is said to be written by a gentleman, now one of the masters of the Highschool at Edinburgh, and the same who translated the beautiful story of the Paria,' as published in the 'Bee' of Dr Anderson. -Currie.

This letter, says Dr Currie, was sent to the publisher of some newspaper, probably the publisher of the Edinburgh Evening Courant; but Mr Cunningham alleges that it was despatched to the editor of the London Star.' "One of the conductors of the London Star,'" says he, "at that period, and for many years afterwards, was John Mayne, a warm-hearted Dumfriesian, and author of Logan braes,' and a lyric more touching still, The Muffled Drum.' His poem of Glasgow' has been several times reprinted, and his Siller Gun' is about to come out in a fourth edition with notes and embellishments." Thus far Mr Cunningham, who, from his local knowledge of Dumfries, and personal acquaintance with Mr Mayne, has every chance of being right in stating that it was sent to the 'London Star.'

The preacher alluded to in the above letter, says the same authority, was "Mr Kirkpatrick, a man equally stern and worthy. He got a harmonious call to a parish with a smaller stipend than Dunscore, and he accepted it."-M.