gant; but altogether, it has too much of the florid luxury of the East. His taste would appear, in his latter years, to have fallen into a state of Brahminical idolatry, when he recommends to our particular admiration, and translates, in pompous lyrical diction, the Indian description of Cumara, the daughter of Ocean, riding upon a peacock; and enjoins us to admire, as an allegory equally new and beautiful, the unimaginable conceit of Camdeo, the Indian Cupid, having a bow that is made of flowers, and a bowstring which

is a string of bees. Industrious as he was, his history is full of abandoned and half-executed projects. While his name reflects credit on poetical biography, his secondary fame as a composer, shows that the palm of poetry is not likely to be won, even by great genius, without exclusive devotion to the pursuit.*

̓Αλλὰ οὔπω ἅμα πάντα δυνήσεαι αὐτὸς ἑλέσθαι ;
Αλλῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκε θεὸς πολεμήτα ἔργα,
*Αλλῳ δὲ ὀρχηστὴν, ἑτέρω κίθαριν καὶ ἀοιδήν.
ILIAD, XIV. 729.

A PERSIAN SONG OF HAFIZ.

SWEET maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bokhara's vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.

Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate'er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bower so sweet as Mosellay.

Oh! when these fair perfidious maids,
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest,
Their dear destructive charms display;
Each glance my tender breast invades,
And robs my wounded soul of rest,
As Tartars seize their destined prey.

In vain with love our bosoms glow:
Can all our tears, can all our sighs,
New lustre to those charms impart?
Can cheeks, where living roses blow,
Where nature spreads her richest dyes,
Require the borrow'd gloss of art?

Speak not of fate: ah! change the theme,
And talk of odours, talk of wine,

Talk of the flowers that round us bloom:
'Tis all a cloud, 'tis all a dream;
To love and joy thy thoughts confine,
Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom.

Beauty has such resistless power,
That even the chaste Egyptian dame
Sigh'd for the blooming Hebrew boy:
For her how fatal was the hour,
When to the banks of Nilus came
A youth so lovely and so coy!
But, ah! sweet maid, my counsel hear
(Youth should attend when those advise
Whom long experience renders sage ;)
While music charms the ravish'd ear;
While sparkling cups delight our eyes,
Be gay; and scorn the frowns of age.
What cruel answer have I heard?
And yet, by Heaven, I love thee still:
Can aught be cruel from thy lip?

Yet say, how fell that bitter word
From lips which streams of sweetness fill,
Which nought but drops of honey sip?
Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung:
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say;
But, oh! far sweeter, if they please
The nymph for whom these notes are sung.

AN ODE.

IN IMITATION OF ALCEUS.

WHAT constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlement or labour'd mound, Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown'd;
Not bays and broad-arm'd ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starr'd and spangled courts,
Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No:-men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men, who their duties know,

But know their rights,and, knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long-aim'd blow,

And crust the tyrant while they rend the chain: These constitute a state,

And sovereign Law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill;
Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Discretion like a vapour sinks,
And e'en th' all-dazzling Crown
Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.
Such was this heaven-loved isle,

Than Lesbos fairer than the Cretan shore !
No more shall Freedom smile?
Shall Britons languish, and be men no more!
Since all must life resign,

Those sweet rewards, which decorate the brave, "Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave.

[* It is not Sir William Jones's poetry that can perpetu ate his name.-SOUTHEY, Quarterly Review, vol. xi. p. 502.]

SAMUEL BISHOP was a clergyman, and for many years the head master of Merchant Tailors' school. He wrote several essays and poems for the Public Ledger, and published a volume of

Latin pieces, entitled "Feriæ Poetica." A volume of his sermons, and two volumes of his poetry, were published after his death.

TO MRS. BISHOP.

WITH A PRESENT OF A KNIFE.

may

"A KNIFE," dear girl, "cuts love," they say!
Mere modish love, perhaps
-For any tool, of any kind,
Can separate what was never join'd.

The knife, that cuts our love in two,
Will have much tougher work to do;
Must cut your softness, truth, and spirit,
Down to the vulgar size of merit;
To level yours, with modern taste,
Must cut a world of sense to waste;
And from your single beauty's store,
Clip, what would dizen out a score.

That self-same blade from me must sever
Sensation, judgment, sight, for ever:
All memory of endearments past,
All hope of comforts long to last ;-
All that makes fourteen years with you,
A summer; and a short one too;-
All, that affection feels and fears,
When hours without you seem like years.

Till that be done, (and I'd as soon
Believe this knife will chip the moon,)
Accept my present, undeterr'd,
And leave their proverbs to the herd.

If in a kiss-delicious treat!-
Your lips acknowledge the receipt,
Love, fond of such substantial fare,
And proud to play the glutton there,
All thoughts of cutting will disdain,
Save only cut and come again."

TO THE SAME

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HER WEDDING-DAY, WHICH WAS ALSO HER BIRTH-DAY, WITH A RING

"THEE, Mary, with this ring I wed"So, fourteen years ago, I said.Behold another ring! for what?" "To wed thee o'er again ?"-Why not?

With that first ring I married youth, Grace, beauty, innocence, and truth; Taste long admired, sense long revered, And all my Molly then appear'd.

If she, by merit since disclosed, Prove twice the woman I supposed,

I plead the double merit now,
To justify a double vow.

Here then to-day, (with faith as sure,
With ardour as intense, as pure,
As when, amidst the rites divine,
I took thy troth, and plighted mine,)
To thee, sweet girl, my second ring
A token and a pledge I bring:
With this I wed, till death us part,
Thy riper virtues to my heart;
Those virtues, which before untried,
The wife has added to the bride:
Those virtues, whose progressive claim,
Endearing wedlock's very name,
My soul enjoys, my song approves,
For conscience' sake, as well as love's.

And why?-They show me every hour, Honour's high thought, Affection's power, Discretion's deed, sound Judgment's sentence,And teach me all things-but repentance.

EPIGRAM.

QUOD PETIS, HIC EST.

No plate had John and Joan to hoard,
Plain folk, in humble plight;
One only tankard crown'd their board;
And that was fill'd each night;—
Along whose inner bottom sketch'd,
In pride of chubby grace,

Some rude engraver's hand had etch'd
A baby angel's face.

John swallow'd first a moderate sup;

But Joan was not like John;
For when her lips once touch'd the cup,
She swill'd, till all was gone.

John often urged her to drink fair;
But she ne'er changed a jot;
She loved to see the angel there,
And therefore drain'd the pot.
When John found all remonstrance vain,
Another card he play'd;

And where the Angel stood so plain,

He got a Devil portray'd.

Joan saw the horns, Joan saw the tail,
Yet Joan as stoutly quaff'd;
And ever, when she seized her ale,
She clear'd it at a draught.-

SONNET.

As when, to one, who long hath watch'd the morn Advancing, slow forewarns th' approach of day, (What time the young and flow'ry-kirtled May Decks the green hedge, and dewy grass unshorn With cowslips pale, and many a whitening thorn ;) And now the sun comes forth, with level ray Gilding the high wood-top, and mountain gray; And, as he climbs, the meadows 'gins adorn; The rivers glisten to the dancing beam,

Th' awaken'd birds begin their amorous strain, And hill and vale with joy and fragrance teem; Such is the sight of thee; thy wish'd return

To eyes, like mine, that long have waked to

mourn,

That long have watch'd for light, and wept in vain!

SONNET.

TO THE REDBREAST.

WHEN that the fields put on their gay attire, Thou silent sitt'st near brake or river's brim, Whilst the gay thrush sings loud from covert dim; But when pale Winter lights the social fire,

* Censura Literaria, vol. iv. p. 301. [See a very interesting account of Bampfylde, in a letter from Mr. Southey to Sir Egerton Brydges, printed in Brydges' Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 257, and in Mr. Dyce's Specimen Sonnets, p. 217.]'

And meads with slime are sprent and ways with mire,

Thou charm'st us with thy soft and solemn hymn,

From battlement or barn, or hay-stack trim; And now not seldom tunest, as if for hire,

Thy thrilling pipe to me, waiting to catch The pittance due to thy well-warbled song;

Sweet bird, sing on! for oft near lonely hatch, Like thee, myself have pleased the rustic throng, And oft for entrance 'neath the peaceful thatch, Full many a tale have told and ditty long.

SONNET.

ON A WET SUMMER.

ALL ye, who far from town, in rural hall, Like me, were wont to dwell near pleasant field, Enjoying all the sunny day did yield,

With me the change lament, in irksome thrall, By rains incessant held; for now no call

From early swain invites my hand to wield The scythe; in parlour dim I sit conceal'd, And mark the lessening sand from hour-glass fall; Or 'neath my window view the wistful train Of dripping poultry, whom the vine's broad leaves Shelter no more.-Mute is the mournful plain,

Silent the swallow sits beneath the thatch, And vacant hind hangs pensive o'er his hatch, Counting the frequent drop from reeded eaves.

SONNET.

COLD is the senseless heart that never strove, With the mild tumult of a real flame; Rugged the breast that beauty cannot tame, Nor youth's enlivening graces teach to love The pathless vale, the long forsaken grove, The rocky cave that bears the fair one's name, With ivy mantled o'er-For empty fame,

Let him amid the rabble toil, or rove In search of plunder far to western clime.

Give me to waste the hours in amorous play With Delia, beauteous maid, and build the rhyme Praising her flowing hair, her snowy arms, And all that prodigality of charms

Form'd to enslave my heart and grace my lay.ji

ROBERT BURNS was born near the town of Ayr, within a few hundred yards of "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," in a clay cottage, which his father, who was a small farmer and gardener, had built with his own hands. A part of this humble edifice gave way when the poet was but a few days old; and his mother and he were carried, at midnight, through the storm, to a neighbour's house, that gave them shelter. After having received some lessons in his childhood, from the schoolmaster of the village of Alloway, he was, at seven years of age, put under a teacher of the name of Murdoch, who instructed him in reading and English grammar. This good man, who is still alive, and a teacher of languages in London, boasts, with a very natural triumph, of having accurately instructed Burns in the first principles of composition.* At such an age, Burns's study of principles could not be very profound; yet it is due to his early instructor to observe that his prose style is more accurate than we should expect even from the vigour of an untutored mind, and such as would lead us to suppose that he had been early initiated in the rules of grammar. His father's removal to another farm in Ayrshire, at Mount Oliphant, unfortunately deprived him of the benefit of Murdoch as an instructor, after he had been about two years under his care; and for a long time he received no other lessons than those which his father gave him in writing and arithmetic, when he instructed his family by the fireside of their cottage in winter evenings. About the age of thirteen he was sent, during a part of the summer, to the parish-school in Dalrymple, in order to improve his hand-writing. In the following year he had an opportunity of passing several weeks with his old friend Murdoch, with whose assistance he began to study French with intense ardour and assiduity. His proficiency in that language, though it was wonderful considering his opportunities, was necessarily slight; yet it was in showing this accomplishment alone, that Burns's weakness ever took the shape of vanity.

One of his friends, who carried him into the company of a French lady, remarked, with sur

[* Murdoch died about the year 1822, respected and poor.]

prise, that he attempted to converse with her in her own tongue. Their French, however, was soon found to be almost mutually unintelligible. As far as Burns could make himself understood, he unfortunately offended the foreign lady. He meant to tell her, that she was a charming person, and delightful in conversation; but expressed himself so as to appear to her to mean, that she was fond of speaking; to which the Gallic dame indignantly replied, that it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent, as for women to be loquacious.†

At the age of nineteen he received a few months' instruction in land surveying. Such is the scanty history of his education, which is interesting simply because its opportunities were so few and precarious, and such as only a gifted mind could have turned to any account.

Of his early reading, he tells us, that a life of Hannibal, which Murdoch gave him when a boy, raised the first stirrings of his enthusiasm; and, he adds, with his own fervid expression, that the life of Sir William Wallace poured a tide of Scottish prejudices into his veins, which would boil along there till the floodgates of life were shut in eternal rest." In his sixteenth year he had read some of the plays of Shakspeare, the works of Pope and Addison, and of the Scottish poets Ramsay and Fergusson. From the volumes of Locke, Ray, Derham, and Stackhouse, he also imbibed a smattering of natural history and theology; but his brother assures us, that until the time of his being known as an author, he continued to be but imperfectly acquainted with the most eminent of our English writers. Thanks to the songs and superstition of his native country, his genius had some fostering aliments, which perhaps the study of classical authors might have led him to neglect. His inspiration grew up like the flower, which owes to heaven, in a barren soil, a natural beauty and wildness of fragrance that would be spoiled by artificial culture. He learned an infinite number of old ballads, from hearing his mother sing them at her wheel; and he was instructed in all the venerable heraldry

[t This story is in no account of Burns's life that we have ever seen, before or since Mr. Campbell wrote.] From his letter to Dr. Moore.

of devils and witches by an ancient woman in the neighbourhood, "the Sybilline nurse of his Muse," who probably first imparted to him the story of Tam o' Shanter. "Song was his favourite and first pursuit." "The Song-book," he says, "was my Vade Mecum: I pored over it constantly, driving my cart, or walking to labour." | It would be pleasing to dwell on this era of his youthful sensibility, if his life had been happy; but it was far otherwise. He was the eldest of a family, buffetted by misfortunes, toiling beyond their strength, and living without the support of animal food. At thirteen years of age he used to thresh in his father's barn; and, at fifteen, was the principal labourer on the farm. After the toils of the day, he usually sunk in the evening into dejection of spirits, and was afflicted with dull headaches, the joint result of anxiety, low diet, and fatigue. "This kind of life," (he says) "the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year, when love made me a poet." The object of his first attachment was a Highland girl, named Mary Campbell, who was his fellowreaper in the same harvest-field. She died very young; and when Burns heard of her death, he was thrown into an ecstasy of suffering much beyond what even his keen temperament was accustomed to feel. Nor does he seem ever to have forgotten her. His verses "To Mary in Heaven;" his invocation to the star that rose on the anniversary of her death; his description of the landscape that was the scene of their day of love and parting vows, where "flowers sprang wanton to be press'd;" the whole luxury and exquisite passion of that strain, evince that her image had survived many important changes in himself.

From his seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year he lived, as an assistant to his father, on another farm in Ayrshire, at Lochlea, to which they had removed from Mount Oliphant. During that period his brother Gilbert and he, besides labouring for their father, took a part of the land on their own account, for the purpose of raising flax; and this speculation induced Robert to attempt establishing himself in the business of flax-dressing, in the neighbouring town of Irvine. But the unhealthiness of the business, and the accidental misfortune of his shop taking fire, induced him, at the end of six months, to abandon it. Whilst his father's affairs were growing desperate at Lochlea, the poet and his brother had taken a different farm on their own account, as an asylum for the family in case of the worst ; but, from unfavourable seasons and a bad soil, this speculation proved also unfortunate, and was given up. By this time Burns had formed his connection with Jean Armour, who was afterward his wife, a connection which could no longer be concealed, at the moment when the ruinous state of his affairs had determined him

[* Mr. Campbell is mistaken in this: Burns's first love was his handsome Nell; his Mary Campbell an after acquaintance.]

to cross the Atlantic, and to seek his fortune in Jamaica. He had even engaged himself as assistant overseer to a plantation. He proposed, however, to legalise the private contract of marriage which he had made with Jean; and, though he anticipated the necessity of leaving her behind him, he trusted to better days for their being reunited. But the parents of Jean were unwilling to dispose of her to a husband who was thus to be separated from her, and persuaded her to renounce the informal marriage. Burns also agreed to dissolve the connection, though deeply wounded at the apparent willingness of his mistress to give him up, and overwhelmed with feelings of the most distracting nature. He now [1786] prepared to embark for Jamaica, where his first situation would, in all probability, have been that of a negro-driver, when, before bidding a last adieu to his native country, he happily thought of publishing a collection of his poems. By this publication he gained about £20, which seasonably saved him from indenting himself as a servant, for want of money to procure a passage. With nine guineas out of this sum he had taken a steerage passage in the Clyde for Jamaica; and, to avoid the terrors of a jail, he had been for some time skulking from covert to covert. He had taken a last leave of his friends, and had composed the last song which he thought he should ever measure to Caledonia,† when the contents of a letter, from Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh, to one of his friends, describing the encouragement which an edition of his poems would be likely to receive in the Scottish capital, suddenly lighted up all his prospects, and detained him from embarking. I immediately posted," he says, "to Edinburgh, without a single acquaintance or letter of introduction. The baneful star, which had so long shed its blasting influence on my zenith, for once made a revolution to the nadir."

Though he speaks of having had no acquaintance in Edinburgh, he had been previously introduced in Ayrshire to Lord Daer, to Dugald Stewart, and to several respectable individuals, by the reputation which the first edition of his poems had acquired. He arrived in Edinburgh in 1786, and his reception there was more like an agreeable change of fortune in a romance, than like an event in ordinary life. His company was every where sought for; and it was soon found that the admiration which his poetry had excited, was but a part of what was due to the general eminence of his mental faculties. His natural eloquence, and his warm and social heart expanding under the influence of prosperitywhich, with all the pride of genius, retained a quick and versatile sympathy with every variety of human character-made him equally fascinating in the most refined and convivial societies. For a while he reigned the fashion and idol of his native capital.

The profits of his new edition enabled him in the succeeding year, 1787, to make a tour through

"The gloomy night is gathering fast."