a feasible-enough-looking story regarding it. One day, when the poet was at Brownhill, in Nithsdale, a friend read some verses composed after the pattern of Pope's song by a person of quality, and said: "Burns, this is beyond you. The Muse of Kyle cannot match the Muse of London city." The poet took the paper, hummed the verses over, and then recited Delia, an Ode. There is not anything in this anecdote inconsistent with the fact, that Burns sent the ode for insertion in a London newspaper. The journal so honoured was the Star, the first of our daily evening papers, set on foot very recently in consequence of the facilities afforded by the new mail-system of Mr Palmer. The publisher was Mr Peter Stuart, who had formed an acquaintance with Burns some years ago, and was the correspondent who addressed him in February 1787 with some absurd vituperation of the Canongate magistrates for their alleged neglect of Fergusson.1

'MR PRINTER-If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with Sylvester Otway, and the other favourites of the Muses who illuminate the Star with the lustre of genius, your insertion of the enclosed trifle will be succeeded by future communications from yours, &c.

ELLISLAND, near Dumfries,

R. BURNS.

18th May 1789.

DELIA.

Fair the face of orient day,
Fair the tints of op'ning rose;
But fairer still my Delia dawns,
More lovely far her beauty shews.

Sweet the lark's wild warbled lay,
Sweet the tinkling rill to hear;
But, Delia, more delightful still,
Steal thine accents on mine ear.

The flower-enamoured busy bee
The rosy banquet loves to sip;
Sweet the streamlet's limpid lapse
To the sun-browned Arab's lip.

But, Delia, on thy balmy lips
Let me, no vagrant insect, rove;
O let me steal one liquid kiss,

For, oh! my soul is parched with love!

1 See Volume II., p. 35.

The poem on the Hare had been also sent by him to Dr Gregory of Edinburgh, for whose critical judgment and general character Burns, as we have seen, entertained a high veneration. He who had been so lenient with Clarinda's versicles chose to be strict with this piece of Burns.

TO MR ROBERT BURNS.

EDINBURGH, 2d June 1789. DEAR SIR-I take the first leisure hour I could command to thank you for your letter, and the copy of verses enclosed in it. As there is real poetic merit-I mean both fancy and tendernessand some happy expressions in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them carefully, and polish them to the utmost. This I am sure you can do if you please, for you have great command both of expression and of rhymes: and you may judge, from the two last pieces of Mrs Hunter's poetry1 that I gave you, how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of such compositions. As you desire it, I shall with great freedom give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. I wish you would give me another edition of them, much amended, and I will send it to Mrs Hunter, who, I am sure, will have much pleasure in reading it. Pray give me likewise for myself, and her too, a copy-as much amended as you please-of the Water-fowl on Loch Turit.

The Wounded Hare is a pretty good subject, but the measure or stanza you have chosen for it is not a good one: it does not flow well; and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed close rhymes. If I were you, I would put it into a different stanza yet.

Stanza 1.-The execrations in the first two lines are too strong or coarse, but they may pass. Murder-aiming' is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible. 'Blood-stained,' in stanza iii. line 4, has the same fault: bleeding bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written : Why that blood-stained bosom gored,' how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, nor a plain common word: it is a mere sportsman's word-unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry.

'Mangled' is a coarse word. 'Innocent,' in this sense, is a nursery word; but both may pass.

Stanza 4.- Who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow?' will not do at all: it is not grammar-it is not intelligible. Do you mean 'provide for that life which the mother had bestowed and used to provide for?'

1 The wife of the celebrated surgeon, John Hunter. Many of her fugitive poems enjoyed at that time a considerable reputation,

There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, 'Feeling,' I suppose, for 'Fellow,' in the title of your copy of verses; but even fellow' would be wrong-it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. Shot' is improper too. On seeing a person or a sportsman-wound a hare; it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say with a fowling-piece.

Let me see you when you come to town, and I will shew you some more of Mrs Hunter's poems.

'It must be admitted,' says Dr Currie, 'that this criticism is not more distinguished by its good sense, than by its freedom from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at the manner in which the poet may be supposed to have received it. In fact, it appears, as the sailors say, to have thrown him quite aback. In a letter which he wrote soon after, he says: "Dr Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me." And again: "I believe in the iron justice of Dr Gregory; but, like the devils, I believe and tremble." However, he profited by these criticisms, as the reader will find by comparing this first edition of the poem with that elsewhere published.' The piece, as the poet finally left it, is as follows :—

ON SEEING A WOUNDED HARE LIMP BY ME,
WHICH A FELLOW HAD JUST SHOT.

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!

Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field!
The bitter little that of life remains :

No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.

Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait

The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,

And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.'

1 Allan Cunningham mentions that the poor animal whose sufferings excited this burst of indignation on the part of the poet, was shot by a lad named James Thomson, son of a farmer near Ellisland. Burns, who was near the Nith at the moment, execrated the young man, and spoke of throwing him into the water. We see here the same feeling at work which dictated his rebuke of John Blane, on his running after the dislodged mouse.

If any further criticism might be tolerated on so unimportant a composition, we would express our dissent from the poet regarding the second last verse of the first edition, and our regret that he omitted it, as it appears to us that the image of the young ones crowding round their wounded dam is one of the finest, if not the only very fine one, in the poem.

LETTER TO JAMES TENNANT, OF GLENCONNER.'

Auld comrade dear, and brither sinner,
How 's a' the folk about Glenconner?
How do you, this blae eastlin wind,
That's like to blaw a body blind?
For me, my faculties are frozen,
And ilka member nearly dozen'd.
I've sent you here, by Johnnie Simson,
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on :
Smith, wi' his sympathetic feeling,
And Reid, to common-sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
And meikle Greek and Latin mangled,
Till, wi' their logic jargon tir'd,
And in the depth of science mir'd,
To common-sense they now appeal,
What wives and wabsters see and feel.
But, hark ye, friend! I charge you strictly,
Peruse them, and return them quickly,
For now I'm grown sae cursed douce,
I pray and ponder butt the house;
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin',
Perusing Bunyan, Brown, and Boston;
Till by and by, if I haud on,
I'll grunt a real gospel groan:
Already I begin to try it,
To cast my e'en up like a pyet,
When by the gun she tumbles o'er,
Flutt'ring and gasping in her gore:
Sae shortly you shall see me bright,
A burning and a shining light.

My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,
The ace and wale o' honest men:

stupified

choice

When bending down wi' auld gray hairs,
Beneath the load of years and cares,

1 An old friend of the poet and his family, who assisted him in his choice of the farm of

May He who made him still support him,
And views beyond the grave comfort him;
His worthy fam'ly far and near,
and gear!

God bless them a' wi' grace

My auld school-fellow, Preacher Willie,
The manly tar, my Mason Billie,
And Auchenbay, I wish him joy;
If he's a parent, lass or boy,

May he be dad, and Meg the mither,
Just five-and-forty years thegither!
And no forgetting Wabster Charlie,
I'm told he offers very fairly.

And, Lord, remember Singing Sannock
Wi' hale breeks, saxpence, and a bannock;1
And next my auld acquaintance Nancy,
Since she is fitted to her fancy;

And her kind stars hae airted till her

A good chiel wi' a pickle siller.

My kindest, best respects I sen' it,
To Cousin Kate and Sister Janet;

Tell them, frae me, wi' chiels be cautious,

For, faith, they'll aiblins fin' them fashious.
And lastly, Jamie, for yoursel',

May guardian angels tak a spell,

And steer you seven miles south o' hell:

But first, before you see heaven's glory,
May ye get monie a merry story;
Monie a laugh, and monie a drink,
And aye eneugh o' needfu' clink.

directed

lads

possibly

money

ROB THE RANTER.

1 Fortune, if thou 'll but gie me still
Hale breeks, a scone, and whisky gill,' &c.

-Scotch Drink.