"For weel she trows, that fiends and fairies be

Sent frae the deil to fleetch us to our ill,

That kye hae tint their milk wi' evil ee,

And corn been scowder'd on the glowin' kill.
O mock na this, my friends, but rather mourn,
Ye in life's brawest spring, wi' reason clear;
Wi' eild our idle fancies a' return,

And dim our dolefu' days wi' bairnly fear;

The mind's aye cradled when the grave is near.'

The poems, it will be noted, are in the same measure -no common one. They open each with a corresponding look out on external nature they close each with a patriotic apostrophe. As palpably "The Holy Fair was suggested by "Leith Races." The measure is again the same-they open not unlike, and the main idea in each bears striking features of relationship. Compare these two verses:

(Burns.)

My name is Fun-your cronie dear,

The nearest friend ye hae;

An' this is Superstition here,

An' that's Hipocrisy.

I'm gaun to Mauchline 'holy fair'

To spend an hour in daffin;
Gin ye'll go there, you runkl'd pair,
We will get famous laughin
At them this day."

(Fergusson.)

"I dwall amang the caller springs
That weet the Land o' Cakes,
And aften tune my canty strings
At bridals and late-wakes;

They ca' me Mirth; I ne'er was ken'd

To grumble or look sour,

But blyth wad be a lift to lend,

Gif ye wad sey my power

An' pith this day."

Of course, we are referring here particularly to the matter of hint, or suggestion. Burns's poem fills by far the greater space, and discharges by a long way the larger function. FERGUSSON's is a mere fragment of idle rhyme by comparison. Then further in the way of suggestion-and suggestion merely-the immortal "Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson" bears quite evident traces of being moulded on the "Elegy on the Death of Scots Music," as no less The Brigs of Ayr" appear to have been suggested by "The Mutual Complaint of Plain-Stanes and Causey." Burns, in addition, received many minor hints, in familiar words and phrases from FERGUSSON. But for all, surely no poet was ever more grateful, and no writer in the world ever put his borrowings to better It has all along been allowed to FERGUSSON, as the highest compliment the critic could pay him, that he handed Burns his poetical impulse, and that Burns took hints from him, and was ready on every suitable occasion to acknowledge him his peer in the realm of vernacular verse.

use.

He was certainly not Burns's peer-in one realm or another. And though it may be pled for him that he died young, it is doubtful yet, although he had lived to be a hundred, whether he could ever have filled anything like the space in the heart and the mind of humanity that has been occupied for more than a century by the one and only singer entitled to the honourable designation of Scotland's National Poet.

While saying so, however, William Pitt's characterisation of Burns applies not inappropriately to FERGUSSON- if his Scots poems only are kept in view; and I lift it and lay it to his credit here without

reserve, and say: "I can think of no verse since Shakespeare's that has so much the appearance of coming sweetly from Nature." Of no poet anywhere may it be said with more truth that "he did but sing because he must, and piped but as the linnet sang." His verse gushed from him, indeed, without effort. And how marvellously ripe was his thought for his years how wide his range of knowledge-and with what magical effect did he conjure with Edinburgh's "brave metropolitan utterance." He says himself, referring to his muse:-

"At times when she may lowse her pack,
I'll grant that she can find a knack

auld-warld wordies clack

To

gar

In hamespun rhyme;

While ilk ane at his billy's back
Keeps gude Scots time."

His knack, forsooth, was the gift of true genius. Hence the influence of his verse on Burns, as well as, perhaps, on Scott and Leyden and Hogg; though on the three latter in lighter measure than on the first; and hence its continuing power to charm and delight the minds of the poet's not too susceptible countrymen.

Mention has been made of the ripeness of his thought, together with the wideness of his knowledge. It has been common to remark on FERGUSSON as if he saw Nature only from some lofty garret window; but such as rate him so narrowly surely write without the volume of his poems at their elbow. He was very emphatically a city poet, to be sure the laureate of Auld Reekie but he looked at nature and country life, nevertheless, with an intimate and loving eye. His poem of "The Farmer's Ingle "--the best rounded and

most complete picture from his pen-is swelling in every line with the very air of country life, and is embued from first to last with genuine country thought and feeling. Two particular stanzas have already been quoted; but when outside of these one lights on phrases like "divots theekit frae the weet and drift "—" wi' butter'd bannocks now the girdle reeks -"the cheering bicker gars them glibly gash "—“ in its auld lerroch yet the deas remains "-and, "lang may his sock and cou'ter turn the glebe, and bauks o' corn bend down wi' laded ear "it is realized that the subject is in the hands of one entirely to the manner born. And his knowledge of and sympathy with country life, and its ways and manners, are not manifest only in "The Farmer's Ingle," but are revealed quite as conspicuously in the odes to the Bee and to the Gowdspink, and in the "Eclogue to the Memory of Dr. William Wilkie," every line of which is marked with a Burns-like familiarity with all the objects of farm-life. Take but two brief examples from the Eclogue:

And:

"Though Summer's gane and we nae langer view
The blades o' clover wat wi' pearls o' dew,
Cauld winter's bleakest blast we'll eithly cowr,
Our eldin's driven, an' our hairst is owre.
Our rucks fu' thick are stackit i' the yard,
For the Yule feast a sautit mart's prepared."

"Ye saw yoursel' how weel his mailin thrave,
Aye better faugh'd an' snodit than the lave;
Lang had the thristles an' the dockens been
In use to wag their taps upon the green,
Where now his bonny rigs delight the view,
An' thrivin' hedges drink the caller dew."

Then, as to the ripeness of his thought, one is struck with admiration when lighting on such lines as—

and

"Till death slip sleely on and gie the hindmost wound,"

"The mind's aye cradled when the grave is near.'

Or, by finding such luminous pictures in a few words

as

and

or

"Upon the tap o' ilka lum

The sun began to keek,"

"Now morn, wi' bonnie purpie-smiles,
Kisses the air-cock o' St. Giles;"

"Cauld blaws the nippin' north wi' angry sough,
And showers his hailstanes frae the castle cleugh
Owre the Greyfriars."

It needs only to be asked for FERGUSSON that he be read. So long as he is read he will surely not lack for ardent admirers. And Edinburgh people, above and beyond all, should cherish their laureate, for the grand old grey capital of the North has bred no more devoted son; and none, assuredly, who has so eloquently set in moving verse the love he bore for the town and her citizens. To him the city was not merely his own romantic town." She was "the canty hole," and

"Auld Reekie! wale o' ilka toun

That Scotland kens beneath the moon."

Following here is the epitaph which his much esteemed and admiring friend, William Woods, the actor, composed for the poet immediately on hearing of his death. It has neither the melting fervour nor