second mother, to whom he has written two beautiful poems. I will give you the sonnet-one can hardly read it without tears: 'Mary, I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new But thou hast little need. There is a Book, And since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine." A pension of three hundred pounds from the king comforted his declining days, which were clouded by the old sorrow. Kind friends drew around him in those last sad years, which he described as a universal blank." 66 SO On the morning of April 25, 1800, he expired peacefully that, though surrounded by friends, no one perceived the moment of his departure. The last expression on his countenance was that of calmness and composure, mingled with holy surprise. Death seemed a blessed release to the lifelong sufferer; all doubts removed-safe home at last "Secure in Jesus' love." I cannot close this sketch more appropriately than with these words from Collier: "If we compare our English literature to a beautiful garden, where Milton lifts his head to heaven in the spotless chalice of the tall white lily, and Shakespeare scatters his dramas round him in beds of fragrant roses, blushing with a thousand various shades-some stained to the core as if with blood, others unfolding their fair pink petals with a lovely smile to the summer sun-what shall we find in shrub or flower so like the timid, shrinking spirit of William Cowper, as that delicate sensitive-plant, whose leaves, folding up at the slightest touch, cannot bear even the brighter rays of the cherishing sun?" THE greatest poet, beyond all comparison, that Scotland has produced, was ROBERT BURNS, born on the 25th of January, 1759, in a clay-built cottage, raised by his father's own hands, on the banks of the Doon, at the hamlet of Alloway, in Ayrshire. His father, though a hardhanded peasant-farmer of the humblest class, was every inch a man, an earnest Christian, and fully impressed with the importance of an education for his children. Yet his life was not a sunny one; cramped by poverty, and made despondent by ill-luck, there was an almost habitual gloom on his brow. Mighty events turn on a straw; the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the world. Had this William Burns's small seven acres of nursery-ground any wise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent to school, had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some university; come forth not a rustic wonder, but as a regular, well-trained, intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of British literature, for it lay in him to have done this! But the nursery did not prosper; poverty sank his whole family below the help of even our cheap school system; Burns remained a hard-worked ploughboy, and British literature took its own course." He did, however, attend school for a few years, and made good use of his time. His teacher tells us that he excelled all boys of his own age, and took rank above several who were his seniors. The New Testament, the Bible, the English Grammar, and Mason's "Collection of Verse and Prose," laid the foundation of devotion and knowledge. He says of himself: "At those years I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot. piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar, and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were the 'Life of Hannibal,' and the 'History of Sir William Wallace.' Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures after the recruiting-drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along them, till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.” Those who are familiar with "Bruce's Address" (and who is not?) will see how those early influences became a part of himself. Carlyle says: "Why should we speak of 'Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled,' since all know it from the king to the meanest of his subjects? This dithyrambic was composed on horseback, in riding in the middle of tempests, over the wildest Galloway moor, in company with a friend, who, observing the poet's looks, forbore to speak-judiciously enough-for a man composing 'Bruce's Address' might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this stern hymn was singing itself as he formed it, through the soul of Burns, but, to the external ear, it should be sung with the throat of the whirlwind. So long as there is warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will move in fierce thrills under this war-ode, the best, we believe, that was ever written by any pen." But by far the greater part of Burns's education was gained at home. His mother, a truly religious woman, with a warm heart and remarkably even temper, was devoted to her son Robbie," who inherited her large, lustrous eyes, black as the night and brilliant as its stars. The sweet old ballads she used to chant for him, all wore a religious hue, and from them he learned the art of adding a moral to his verses in a way unobtrusive and graceful. And an ignorant, superstitious old woman, who lived in their family, furnished him another school of poetry. He says: "She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poesie, but had so strong an effect upon my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a lookout in suspicious places." |