“What if they are our Siamese ? "One look for her's, for Mary's sake!” He thought, and pushing through the press— Reader, yourself the rest may guess! But know, in short, the fees were paid; And not your interests keen to starve, I Must add, the Twins were home convey'd, In the cool shelter of a Jarvey! This kindness done, his way once more To his lone room he pass'd; and o'er His knit and gloomy visage wore That which ye would have feared to see. Something there is in man's despair, He sate him down; and quietly Cast round a dim, half-unconscious eye. There left, as when they last addrest Of the great Dead walk gloriously; The stately Arks that from the deep And with their glorious burthen, sweep Amid less lovely lore, the page Lay open where the Ploughman's Song O'er the slight tricks of worldly gaud; In life's vexed atmosphere of fraud; Casts out the broad and generous glow, Where Nature shames Art's garish seeming; Yet, while it shames, doth still bestow Not more a shame than a redeeming. Shedding a glory round their urns, Who breath'd the air that breath'd for BURNS. Oh! wise-wise fools, whose tender art So coldly probed each fault that dyed With its own blood that generous heart;- Of right, unto the humblest clay.* * All mankind, to whom, even mediately and through unseen channels, the glorious verse of Robert Burns can reach, have incurred a debt of gratitude, and that no slight one, to Mr. Lockhart, who has honoured literature (in his Biography of that illustrious Poet) with a work full of just, and manly, and noble sentiment. It is difficult, indeed, to command one's indignation, when one hears fine gentlemen critics, who sin delicately, and grow elevate on Chambertin—and to whom we owe no earthly gratitude, and no earthly indulgence—talk, between snuff-takings, of the immoralities of Burns. Every country 'squire, and city clerk, and puny dandyling, may enjoy in quiet his loves and his intoxications; they are but the proofs of his spirit, or obediences to the manners of his time. But if Burns, the benefactor of the world, (for whom reverence should induce indulgence,) does what they do who are its drones ;-then come pages of sermons, and mawkish lecturings, and judgments righteously severe. Every sword of the Pharisees leaps out of its scabbard. One would think to hear them, that it is a great pity a man of genius should not be born without flesh and blood. Say-would it not thy heart relieve, But He, who serves all earth,-whose mind spy. Each heart he cheered hath grown his For him alone no shrine to shield: * Between the publicity of rank and that of genius, there is this difference the former has its consolation in a thousand luxuries-the home revealed is a palace; but genius, often girt with want, mortification, privation, disease, beholds its frailties, and its secrets dragged to light, and looking within for comfort, views but the scene of struggles, and the wit. ness of humiliation. Nay, round the altar where he flieth, Not these the thoughts that o'er the soul And his heart was dull'd and blind. I have thought that those who live I have thought that these obey Whose earthly shapes Fate never brings, Only in that mystic time Of the green youth's teeming prime, * Hobbes. |