Our fathers' bluid the kettle bought, Fall de rall, &c. The wretch that wad a tyrant own, And the wretch his true-born brother, This ballad appears in the Dumfries Journal of 5th May, whence it was quickly transferred into other newspapers. So decided a declaration in behalf of order, joined with so guarded, yet so felicitous an assertion of popular principles, ought to have secured some share of government favour for Burns. In the same spirit, and in much the same phraseology, was an epigram which he is said to have given forth at a festive meeting to celebrate Rodney's victory of the 12th of April. TOAST FOR THE 12TH OF APRIL. Instead of a song, boys, I'll give you a toast— Here's the memory of those on the twelfth that we lost!— Cunningham says of the invasion-song, that it hit the taste and suited the feelings of the humbler classes, who added to it the Poor and Honest Sodger, the Song of Death, and Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled. Hills echoed with it; it was heard in every street, and did more to right the mind of the rustic part of the population than all the speeches of Pitt and Dundas, or the chosen Five-and-Forty.' Assuming this to have been the case, it 150 LIFE AND WORKS OF BURNS. might well seem strange that the Scottish minister who has been named, in his abundant benevolence towards Scotland, never extended the slightest patronage towards one from whom Scotland derived more honour than from any other of her living sons. We do not find, indeed, that from the first to last of Burns's career, any movement was made in high quarters to distinguish him by state patronage. We have no trace of his ever having No attracted the slightest attention from the royal family. minister smiled upon him. Scarcely a single Tory noble or gentleman granted him further grace than a subscription for his Poems. All his active patrons among the great were of the Whig party, men destitute of the power of advancing him beyond the humble function to which the favour of one of them had condemned him. His receiving no ray of state favour is the more remarkable, since it appears that Mr Addington entertained a most earnest feeling of interest in the poetry of the Scottish ploughman, and that his strains had touched even the temperate bosom of Mr Pitt. Mr Lockhart had learned, apparently on good authority, that the latter statesman spoke thus of the productions of Burns, at the table of Lord Liverpool, not long after the death of the hapless bard: 'I can think of no verse since Shakspeare's that has so much the appearance of coming sweetly from nature." Allan Cunningham had learned that Mr Addington reminded Pitt of the deservings of the poet in his lifetime; but Pitt 'pushed the Mr Lockhart adds bottle to Lord Melville, and did nothing." very justly: 'Had Burns put forth some newspaper squibs upon Lepaux and Carnot, or a smart pamphlet "On the State of the Country," he might have been more attended to in his lifetime. It is common to say: "What is everybody's business is nobody's business;" but one may be pardoned for thinking that, in such cases as this, that which the general voice of the country does admit to be everybody's business, comes, in fact, to be the business of those whom the nation intrusts with national concerns.' The fact is, that no man allying himself to the Whigs could Burns, though in those days be tolerated by the ministry. practically demonstrating his attachment to the general fabric of the constitution, made no secret at the same time of his wishing to see it in other hands than those in which it now rested. This 1 Lockhart's Life of Burns, p. 227. 2 Cunningham's Life of Burns, p. 262. was enough. We see the earnestness of his sentiments, even in the volunteering crisis, in a letter which has come down to us without any address, but which seems to have enveloped the election-ballads to some Whig gentleman-probably Mr Oswald of Auchincruive, a young Ayrshire squire of great wealth, now living near Dumfries, and whom he had lately met:1 TO [RICHARD A. OSWALD, ESQ.] DUMFRIES, 23d April 1795. SIR-You see the danger of patronising the rhyming tribe: you flatter the poet's vanity-a most potent ingredient in the composition of a son of rhyme-by a little notice; and he, in return, persecutes your good-nature with his acquaintance. In these days of volunteering, I have come forward with my services, as poet-laureate to a highly respectable political party, of which you are a distinguished member. The enclosed are, I hope, only a beginning to the songs of triumph which you will earn in that contest.-I have the honour to be, sir, your obliged and devoted humble servant, R. BURNS. About the same time, he wrote a song upon the beautiful young wife of Mr Oswald, and sent it to Mr Syme, enclosed in the following letter: TO JOHN SYME, ESQ. You know that, among other high dignities, you have the honour to be my supreme court of critical judicature, from which there is no appeal. I enclose you a song which I composed since I saw you, and I am going to give you the history of it. Do you know that among much that I admire in the characters and manners of those great folks whom I have now the honour to call my acquaintances, the Oswald family, there is nothing charms me more than Mr Oswald's unconcealable attachment to that incomparable woman? Did you ever, my dear Syme, meet with a man who owed more to the Divine Giver of all good things than Mr O.? A fine fortune; a pleasing exterior; self-evident amiable dispositions; and an ingenuous, upright mind, and that informed, too, much beyond the usual run of young fellows of his rank and fortune: and to all this, such a woman!—but of her I shall say nothing at all, in despair of saying anything adequate. In my song, I have endeavoured to do justice to what would be his feelings, on seeing, in the scene I have drawn, the habitation of his Lucy. As I am a good deal pleased with my performance, I in my first fervour thought of The letter has lately been found among the papers of the Auchincruive family. sending it to Mrs Oswald, but on second thoughts, perhaps what I offer as the honest incense of genuine respect, might, from the well-known character of poverty and poetry, be construed into some modification or other of that servility which my soul abhors. Do let me know some convenient moment, ere the worthy family leave the town, that I, with propriety, may wait on them. In the circle of the fashionable herd, those who come either to shew their own consequence, or to borrow consequence from the visit—in such a mob I will not appear; mine is a different errand.-Yours, ROBT. BURNS. The song enclosed was that which follows. It is curious that, when lately commenced, he had assigned the name Jeanie to the heroine, apparently having a totally different person in his eye. We have seen that it was no unusual thing with him to shift the devotion of verse from one person to another, or to make one poem serve as a compliment to more than one individual. OH, WAT YE WHA'S IN YON TOWN? TUNE—We'll gang nae mair to yon Town. Oh, wat ye wha's in yon town, Now haply down yon gay green shaw, How blest ye birds that round her sing, And doubly welcome be the spring, The sun blinks blithe on yon town, And dearest bliss,' is Lucy fair. Without my love, not a' the charms 1 In original manuscript, 'joy.' Lucy Johnston, daughter of Wynne Johnston, Esq., of Hilton, was married 23d April 1793 to Richard Alexander Oswald, Esq., of Auchincruive, in the county of Ayr. A portrait of the lady adorns the work entitled The Land of Burns, where a brief notice of her is wound up as follows: 'Alas for beauty, fortune, affection, and hopes! This lovely and accomplished woman had not blessed Mr Oswald above a year beyond this period, when she fell into pulmonary consumption. A removal to a warmer climate was tried, in the hope of restoring health, but she died at Lisbon, in January 1798, at an age little exceeding thirty.' We have already seen, on several occasions, the curious light that arises regarding Burns's history and character from merely tracing his course from day to day, and shewing incidents and emotions in a chronological connection. We see him, during this spring, fighting for a liberal in an election, striving to prove his substantial devotion to the British constitution by appearing as a volunteer soldier in its behalf, and at the same time, and all through, maintaining the activity of his exertions for Scottish song. He has to be contemplated at this very crisis in still another light-namely, that of a humble Excise-officer, trying, by respectful explanations, to ward off censure for some miserable irregularity in a matter of wine-barrels. This appears in his letter to the proper officer, which is given here, of course, purely on account of its presenting Burns in his |