Chorus.-A fig for those by law protected!
Liberty's a glorious feast!
Courts for cowards were erected.
Churches built to please the priest.

What is title? what is treasure?
What is reputation's care?
If we lead a life of pleasure,
'Tis no matter how or where!
A fig, &c.

With the ready trick and fable,
Round we wander all the day;
And at night, in barn or s able,
Hug our doxies on the hay.-
A fig, &c.

It

We are at a loss to conceive any good reason why Dr Currie did not introduce this singular and humorous cantata into his collection. is true, that in one or two passages the muse has trespassed slightly upon decorum, where, in the language of Scottish song,

"High kilted was she

As she gaed ower the lea."

Something, however, is to be allowed to the nature of the subject, and something to the education of the poet; and if, from veneration to the names of Swift and Dryden, we tolerate the grossness of the one, and the indelicacy of the other, the respect due to that of Burns may surely claim indulgence for a few slight strokes of broad humour. The same collection contains "Holy Willie's Prayer," a piece of satire more exquisitely severe than any which Burns afterwards wrote, but unfortunately cast in a form too daringly profane to be received into Dr Currie's collection.

Knowing that these, and hoping that other compositions of similar spirit and tenor might yet be recovered, we were induced to think, that some of them, at least, had found a place in the collection now given to the public by Mr Cromek; but he has neither risked the censure, nor laid claim to the applause, which might have belonged to such an undertaking. The contents of the volume before us are more properly gleanings than relics-the refuse and sweepings of the

Yet even these scraps and remnants contain articles of curiosity and value, tending to throw light on the character of one of the most singular men by whose appearance our age has been distinguished.

The first portion of the volume contains nearly two hundred pages of letters, addressed by Burns to various individuals, written in various tones of feeling and modes of mind-in some instances exhibiting all the force of the writer's talents, in others only valuable because they bear his signature. The avidity with which the reader ever devours this species of publication, has been traced to the desire of seeing the mind and opinions of celebrated men in their open and undisguised moments, and of perusing and appreciating their thoughts while the gold is yet rude ore, ere it is refined and manufactured into polished sentences or sounding stanzas. But, notwithstanding these fair pretences, we doubt if this appetite can be referred to any more honourable source than the love of anecdote and private history. In fact, letters-at least those of a general and miscellaneous kind-very rarely contain the real opinions of the writer. If an author sits down to the task of formally composing a work for the use of the public, he has previously considered his subject, and made up his mind both on the opinions he is to express, and on the mode of supporting them. But the same man usually writes a letter only because the letter must be written-is probably never more at a loss than when looking for a subject--and treats it, when found, rather so as to gratify his correspondent, than communicate his own feelings. The letters of Burns, although containing passages of great eloquence, and expressive of the intense fire of his disposition, are not exceptions from this general rule. They bear occasionally strong marks of affectation, with a tinge of pedantry rather foreign from the bard's character and education. The following paragraphs illustrate both the excellencies and faults of his epistolary composition. Nothing can be more humorously imagined and embodied than the sage group of Wisdom and Prudence in the first, while the affectation of the second amounts to absolute rant.

"Do tell that to Lady M'Kenzie, that she may give me credit for a little wisdom. I Wisdom dwell with Prudence.' what a blessed fire-side!-How happy should I be to pass a winter evening under their venerable roof! and smoke a pipe of tobacco, or drink watergruel with them! What solemn, lengthened, laughter-quashing gravity of phiz! What sage remarks on the good-for nothing sons and daughters of indiscretion and folly!-and what frugal lessons, as we straitened the fire-side circle, on the uses of the poker and tongs!"

"Miss N. is very well, and begs to be remembered in the old way to you. I used all my eloquence, all the persuasive flourishes of the hand, and heart melting modulation of periods in my power, to arge her out to Herveiston, but all in vain. My rhetoric seems quite to have lost its effect on the lovely half of mankind. I have seen the day-but that is a tale of other years'-in my conscience I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified. I look on the sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky in a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship; I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of their motions, and -wish them good night. I mean this with respect to a certain passion dont j'ai eu l'honneur d'être un misérable esclave: as for friendship, you and Charlotte have given me pleasure, permanent pleasure," which the world cannot give, nor take away' I hope; and which

In the same false taste, Burns utters such tirades as this:

"Whether in the way of my trade, I can be of any service to the Rev. Doctor, is I fear very doubtful. Ajax's shield consisted, I think, of seven bull hides and a plate of brass, which altogether set Hector's utmost force at defiance. Alas! I am not a Hector, and the worthy Doctor's foes are as securely armed as Ajax was. Ignorance, superstition, bigotry, stupidity, malevolence, self-conceit, envy-all strongly bound in a massive frame of brazen impudence. Good God, sir! to such a shield, humour is the peck of a sparrow, and satire the pop gun of a school-boy. Creation-disgracing scélérats such as they, God only can mend, and the devil only can punish. In the comprehending way of Caligula, I wish they had all but one neck. I feel impotent as a child to the ardour of my wishes! O for a withering curse to blast the germins of their wicked machinations. O for a poisonous Tornado, winged from the Torrid Zone of Tartarus, to sweep the spreading crop of their villanous contrivances to the lowest hell!"

These passages, however, in which the author seems to have got the better of the man, in which the desire of shining, and blazing, and thundering, supersedes the natural expressions of feeling, and passion, are less frequent in the letters of Burns than perhaps of any other professed writer. Burns was, in truth, the child of passion and feeling. His character was not simply that of a peasant exalted into notice by uncommon literary attainments, but bore a stamp which must have distinguished him in the highest as in the lowest situation in life. To ascertain what was his natural temper and disposition, and how far it was altered or modified by the circumstances of birth, education, and fortune, might be a subject for a long essay; but to mark a few distinctions is all that can be here expected from us.

We have said that Robert Burns was the child of impulse and feeling. Of the steady principle which cleaves to that which is good, he was unfortunately divested by the violence of those passions which finally wrecked him. It is most affecting to add, that while swimming, struggling, and finally yielding to the torrent, he never lost sight of the beacon which ought to have guided him to land, yet never profited by its light.

We learn his opinion of his own temperament in the following emphatic burst of passion :

God have mercy on me! a poor d-d, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! The sport, the miserable victim, of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility, and bedlam passions!"

"Come, stubborn pride and unshrinking resolution, accompany me through this to me miserable world!" In such language did this powerful but untamed mind express the irritation of prolonged expectation and disappointed hope, which slight reflection might have pointed out as the common fate of mortality. Burns neither acknowledged adversity as the "tamer of the human breast," nor knew the golden curb which discretion hangs upon passion. He even appears to have felt a gloomy pleasure in braving the encounter of evils which prudence might have avoided, and to have thought that there could be no pleasurable existence between the extremes of licentious frenzy

*Dr M'Gill, of Ayr. The poet gives the best illustration of this letter in one addressed

and of torpid sensuality. "There are two only creatures that I would envy. A horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia,—and an oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment; the other has neither wish nor fear." When such a sentiment is breathed by such a being, the lesson is awful and if pride and ambition were capable of being taught, they might hence learn that a well-regulated mind and controlled passions are to be prized above all the glow of imagination, and all the splendour of genius.

We discover the same stubborn resolution rather to endure with patience the consequences of error, than to own and avoid it in future, in the poet's singular choice of a pattern of fortitude.

"I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with me, in order to study the sentiments-the dauntless magnanimity, the intrepid, unyielding independence, the desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in that great personage, SATAN."

Nor was this a rash or precipitate choice, for in a more apologetic mood he expresses the same opinion of the same personage.

"My favourite feature in Milton's Satan is his manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be remedied-in short, the wild, broken fragments of a noble, exalted mind in ruins. I meant no more by saying he was a favourite hero of mine."

With this lofty and unbending spirit were connected a love of independence and a hatred of control amounting almost to the sublime rant of Almanzor.

"He was as free as Nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began.
When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

In general society Burns often permitted his determination of vindicating his personal dignity to hurry him into unjustifiable resentment of slight or imagined neglect. He was ever anxious to maintain his post in society, and to extort that deference which was readily paid to him by all from whom it was worth claiming. This ill-judged jealousy of precedence led him often to place his own pretensions to notice in competition with those of the company who, he conceived, might found theirs on birth or fortune. On such occasions it was no easy task to deal with Burns. The power of his language, the vigour of his satire, the severity of illustration with which his fancy instantly supplied him, bore down all retort. Neither was it possible to exercise over the poet that restraint which arises from the chance of further personal consequences. The dignity, the spirit, the indignation of Burns was that of a plebeian, of a high-souled plebeian indeed, of a citizen of Rome or Athens, but still of a plebeian untinged with the slightest shade of that spirit of chivalry which, since the feudal times, has pervaded the higher ranks of European society. This must not be imputed to cowardice, for Burns was no coward. But the lowness of his birth, and habits of society, prevented rules of punctilious

seem, see any thing so rational in the practice of duelling, as afterwards to adopt or to affect the sentiments of the higher ranks upon that subject. A letter to Mr Clarke, written after a quarrel upon political topics, has these remarkable, and we will add manly expressions.

"From the expressions Capt. made use of to me, had I nobody's welfare to care for but my own, we should certainly have come, according to the manners of the world, to the necessity of the murdering one another about the business The words were such as, generally, I believe, end in a brace of pistols; but I am still pleased to think that I did not ruin the peace and welfare of a wife and a family of children in a drunken squabble."

In this point, therefore, the pride and high spirit of Burns differed from those of the world around him. But if he wanted that chivalrous sensibility of honour which places reason upon the sword's point, he had delicacy of another sort, which those who boast most of the former do not always possess in the same purity. Although so poor as to be ever on the very brink of absolute ruin, looking forwards now to the situation of a foot-soldier, now to that of a common beggar, as no unnatural consummation of his evil fortune, Burns was, in pecuniary transactions, as proud and independent as if possessed of a prince's revenue. Bred a peasant, and preferred to the degrading situation of a common exciseman, neither the influence of the lowminded crowd around him, nor the gratification of selfish indulgence, nor that contempt of futurity, which has characterised so many of his poetical brethren, ever led him to incur or endure the burden of pecunairy obligation. A very intimate friend of the poet, from whom he used occasionally to borrow a small sum for a week or two, once ventured to hint that the punctuality with which the loan was always replaced at the appointed time was unnecessary and unkind. The consequence of this hint was the interruption of their friendship for some weeks, the bard disdaining the very thought of being indebted to a human being one farthing beyond what he could discharge with the most rigid punctuality. It was a less pleasing consequence of this high spirit that Burns was utterly inaccessible to all friendly advice. To lay before him his errors, or to point out their consequences, was to touch a string that jarred every feeling within him. On such occasions, his, like Churchill's, was

"The mind which, starting, heaves the heartfelt groan,
And hates the form she knows to be her own."

It is a dreadful truth, that when racked and tortured by the wellmeant and warm expostulations of an intimate friend, he at length started up in a paroxysm of frenzy, and drawing a sword cane, which he usually wore, made an attempt to plunge it into the body of his adviser-the next instant he was with difficulty withheld from suicide.

Yet this ardent and irritable temperament had its periods, not