from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas-these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith." The man of wit —ay, even Harry Erskine himself-and a wittier than he never charmed social life-was nothing loth, with his delightful amenity, to cease for a while the endless series of anecdotes so admirably illustrative of the peculiarities of nations, orders, or individuals, and almost all of them created or vivified by his own genius, that the most accomplished companies might experience a new pleasure from the rich and racy humour of a natural converser fresh from the plough. 1 And how did Burns bear all this, and much besides even more trying? For you know that a duchess declared that I she had never before in all her life met with a man who so fairly carried her off her feet. Hear Professor Stewart : "The attentions he received during his stay in town, from all ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind. He retained the same simplicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance." In many passages of his letters to friends who had their fears, Burns expressed entire confidence in his own self-respect, and in terms the most true and touching; as, for example, to Dr Moore: "The hope to be admired for ages is, in by far the greater part of those who even were authors of repute, an unsubstantial dream. For my part, my first ambition was, and still is, to please my compeers, the rustic inmates of the hamlet, while ever-changing language and manners shall allow me to be relished and understood." And to his venerated friend Mrs Dunlop he gives utterance, in the midst of his triumphs, to dark forebodings, some of which were but too soon fulfilled! "You are afraid that I shall grow intoxicated with my prosperity as a poet. Alas! Madam, I know myself and the world too well. I assure you, Madam, I do not dissemble, when I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages which are reckoned necessary for that character, at least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public notice which has borne me to a height where I am feeling abse lutely certain my abilities are inadequate to support me: and too surely do I see that time, when the same tide wi leave me, and recede, perhaps, as far below the mark truth. I do not say this in ridiculous affectation of sel abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the worl may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my ow opinion in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of preperty. I mention this to you once for all, to disburthen my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more abou it. But 'When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,' you will bear me witness, that, when my bubble of fame was at the highest, I stood, unintoxicated with the inebriating cu in my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the haster! ing time when the blow of Calumny should dash it to the ground with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph." to Such equanimity is magnanimous; for though it is easy declaim on the vanity of fame, and the weakness of them whe are intoxicated with its bubbles, the noblest have still longe for it, and what a fatal change it has indeed often wrought on the simplicity and sincerity of the most gifted spirits! Ther must be a moral grandeur in his character who receives sedately the unexpected, though deserved ratification of hi title to that genius whose empire is the inner being of his race, from the voice of his native land uttered aloud through all her regions, and harmoniously combined of innumerable tones all expressive of a great people's pride. Make what deductions you will from the worth of that "All hail!" and still it must have sounded in Burns's ears as a realisation d that voice heard by his prophetic soul in "The Vision." "ALL HAIL! MY OWN INSPIRED BARD! Robert Burns was not the man to have degraded himsel everlastingly, by one moment's seeming slight or neglect d riends, new or old, belonging either to his own condition, or o a rank in life somewhat higher perhaps than his own, Although not exactly to that "select society" to which the wonder awakened by his genius had given him a sudden inroduction. Persons in that middle or inferior rank were his natural, his best, and his truest friends; and many of them, here can be no doubt, were worthy of his happiest companionhip either in the festal hour or the hour of closer communion. He had no right, with all his genius, to stand aloof from hem, and with a heart like his he had no inclination. Why hould he have lived exclusively with lords and ladies-paper ›r landlords—ladies by descent or courtesy-with aristocratic dvocates, philosophical professors, clergymen, wild or modeate, Arminian or Calvinistic? Some of them were among the irst men of their age; others were doubtless not inerudite, nd a few not unwitty in their own esteem; and Burns greatly njoyed their society, in which he met with an admiration hat must have been to him the pleasure of a perpetual triimph. But more of them were dull and pompous; incapable f rightly estimating or feeling the power of his genius; and vhen the glitter and the gloss of novelty was worn off before heir shallow eyes, from the poet who bore them all down into nsignificance, then no doubt they began to get offended and hocked with his rusticity or rudeness, and sought refuge in he distinctions of rank, and the laws, not to be violated with impunity, of "select society." The patronage he received vas honourable, and he felt it to be so; but it was still atronage; and had he, for the sake of it or its givers, forotten for a day the humblest, lowest, meanest of his friends, Fr even his acquaintances, how could he have borne to read is own two bold lines "The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that”? Besides, we know from Burns's poetry what was then the chaacter of the people of Scotland, for they were its materials, ts staple. Her peasantry were a noble race, and their virtues aoralised his song. The inhabitants of the towns were of the ame family-the same blood-one kindred-and many, most of them, had been born, or in some measure bred, in the country. Their ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, were 66 much alike; and the shopkeepers of Edinburgh and Glasgo were as proud of Robert Burns, as the ploughmen and shep herds of Kyle and the Stewartry. He saw in them friere and brothers. Their admiration of him was, perhaps, ful more sincere and heartfelt, nor accompanied with less unde standing of his merits, than that of persons in higher places and most assuredly among the respectable citizens of Edin burgh Burns found more lasting friends than he ever d among her gentry and noblesse. Nor can we doubt th then, as now, there were in that order great numbers of me. of well cultivated minds, whom Burns, in his best hours, di right to honour, and who were perfectly entitled to seek b society, and to open their hospitable doors to the brillian stranger. That Burns, whose sympathies were keen a wide, and who never dreamt of looking down on others as bej neath him, merely because he was conscious of his own vas superiority to the common run of men, should have shunne or been shy of such society, would have been something alt gether unnatural and incredible; nor is it at all wonderful blamable that he should occasionally even have much pr ferred such society to that which has been called mo select," and therefore above his natural and proper conditio Admirably as he in general behaved in the higher circles, those humbler ones alone could he have felt himself co pletely at home. His demeanour among the rich, the grea the learned, or the wise, must often have been subject to so little restraint, and all restraint of that sort is ever painfu or, what is worse still, his talk must sometimes have partak of display. With companions and friends, who claimed superiority in anything, the sensitive mind of Burns must har been at its best and happiest, because completely at its eas and free movement given to the play of all its feelings a faculties; and in such companies we cannot but believe th his wonderful conversational powers shone forth in their me various splendour. He must have given vent there to a the sand familiar fancies, in all their freedom and all their fore which, in the fastidious society of high life, his imagination must have been too much fettered even to conceive; an which, had they flowed from his lips, would either not ha been understood, or would have given offence to that delica of breeding which is often hurt even by the best manners those whose manners are all of nature's teaching, and unsubjected to the salutary restraints of artificial life. Indeed, we know that Burns sometimes burst suddenly and alarmingly the restraints of "select society;" and that on one occasion he called a clergyman an idiot for misquoting Gray's Elegy— a truth that ought not to have been promulgated in presence of the parson, especially at so early a meal as breakfast: and he confesses in his most confidential letters, though indeed he was then writing with some bitterness, that he never had been truly and entirely happy at rich men's feasts. If so, then never could he have displayed there his genius in full power and lustre. His noble rage must in some measure have been repressed—the genial current of his soul in some degree frozen. He never was, never could be, the free, fearless, irresistible Robert Burns that nature made him—no, not even although he carried the Duchess of Gordon off her feet, and silenced two Ex-Moderators of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Burns, before his visit to Edinburgh, had at all times and places been in the habit of associating with the best men of his order-the best in everything, in station, in manners, in moral and intellectual character; such men as William Tell and Hofer, for example, associated with in Switzerland and the Tyrol. Even the persons he got unfortunately too well acquainted with (but whose company he soon shook off), at Irvine and Kirkoswald-smugglers and their adherents, were, though a lawless and dangerous set, men of spunk, and spirit, and power, both of mind and body; nor was there anything the least degrading in an ardent, impassioned, and imaginative youth becoming for a time rather too much attached to such daring and adventurous, and even interesting characters. They had all a fine strong poetical smell of the sea, mingled to precisely the proper pitch with that of the contraband. As a poet Burns must have been much the better of such temporary associates; as a man, let us hope, notwithstanding Gilbert's fears, not greatly the worse. The passions that boiled in his blood would have overflowed his life, often to disturb, and finally to help to destroy him, had there never been an Irvine and its seaport. But Burns's friends, up to the time he visited Edinburgh, had been chiefly his admirable brother, a few of the ministers round about, |