concluding stanza of the poem, in which pity for the fate of Satan is blended with a forlorn hope for his ultimate salvation, is inimitable.

"But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben!

O wad ye tak a thought an' men'
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken —
Still hae a stake:

I'm wae to think upo' yon den,
Ev'n for your sake!"

Well might stout John Knox have arisen wrathfully from his grave to cuff the ears of this recreant Presbyterian (as he is said to have done those of his beautiful, contumacious queen, Mary of Scotland) for this stretch of "effectual calling."

And we must not forget those verses suggested by a certain unique decoration on a "Lady's Bonnet" (which shall be nameless). What a world of sharpened, sly philosophic inspection is contained in this last oftenquoted stanza,

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us

And foolish notion:

What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us
And ev'n devotion!"

No truer poetry than Burns's songs and ballads exists in any country. They are always the expression of real feeling and passion, never labored and ingenious performances, like some of the English lyrics, but simple and natural as a shout of laughter or a gush of tears, the poet's thought at the moment finding vent in musical words.

Moore informs us that he became a writer of lyrics that he might express what music conveyed to himself. Burns

is said to have had no technical knowledge of music, and the pleasure he derived from his native airs (some of which are conjectured to have been preserved in the wilds and mountains of Scotland with the native race, and to have descended from remote ages) was mainly the result of association.

The Scottish peasantry had long been in possession of many songs composed in their native dialect, and sung to these ancient airs. These songs, though rustic, have been commended for truth of character, the language of Nature, and as pictures of real Arcadian life. "Though Knox and his disciples," as has been said, "might influence the Scottish Parliament, with her rural muse they contended in vain." Clear Highland voices still woke the wild echoes, and the plaintive melodies of love, sweet as the south wind sighing amid the silver birks, went singing softly among the Lowland homes. "These airs were not all plaintive; many of them were lively and humorous, suited to an energetic and sequestered people in their hours of mirth and festivity, though to us some of them might appear coarse and indelicate."

Burns, whose soul was of finest harmony and easily stirred into lyric melody, has by his compositions in this line immortalized some of his native airs. Lyric composition was peculiarly suited to his genius; and in his songs his language and imagery, always the most appropriate, musical, and graceful, has been deemed "a greater marvel than the creations of Handel or Mozart." Of these songs, universally familiar, "Highland Mary" may perhaps be considered most excellent. Though not of the smoothest versification, every line and cadence of this poem is steeped in inimitable pathos, and it has the rare merit of being addressed from the heart to the real object of the poet's tender and undying regret. The song "To Mary

in Heaven," as a simple, natural outburst of tenderness, has never been excelled.

The songs written in honor of bonnie Jean are all admirable and familiar. Of the truest lyric ring is "Their Groves of Sweet Myrtle." This one inimitable stanza one could fancy not to have been framed of mere words, but of the viewless vibrations of harmonious sound:

"Their groves o' sweet myrtle, let foreign lands reckon,
Where bright beaming summers exalt the perfume,
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan,
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom:
Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers,
Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk lowly unseen:
For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers,
A-listening the linnet, aft wanders my Jean."

Of these songs, of which Burns has written above two hundred, among the best are "John Anderson," "Mary Morrison," "Sweet Afton," "Bonnie Doon," and the far-famed "Bannockburn," the noblest heroic ode in the Scottish language. We must not forget "Bonnie Leslie," "which contains in one verse," observes Walter Scott, "the essence of a thousand love-tales."

"But to see her is to love her,

And love but her forever;

For nature made her what she is
And ne'er made sic anither."

And there, too, is "Green Grow the Rashes, O," in which Burns has thus given us his very self,

"The warly race may riches chase,
And riches still will fly them, 0;
An' tho' at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O!

"There's nought but care on every han',
In ev'ry hour that passes, O;

What signifies the life o' man,
An' 't were na for the lasses, O!”

The influence of such a poet on the popular mind of Scotland cannot be estimated.

"The tendency of some things," observes Craik, “both in the character of the people and their peculiar institutions, demanded such a check or counteraction as was supplied by this frank, generous, reckless poetry, springing so singularly out of the iron-bound Calvinistic Presbyterianism of the country, like the flowing water from the rock in Horeb. In any country, among any people, such a poet would help to sustain whatever nobleness of character belonged to them, - for whatever there may be to disapprove of in the license or indecorum of some things that Burns has written, there is at least nothing meansouled in his poetry any more than there was in the man. It is never for a moment even vulgar or low in expression or manner; it is wonderful how a native delicacy of taste and elevation of spirit in the poet has sustained him here, with a dialect so soiled by illiterate lips, and often the most perilous subject."

In his songs especially has the genius of Burns interwoven itself with every fibre of the national heart. Among Scotland's heathery hills and flowery wilds his memory is still green as the slopes

"Where summer first unfolds her robes."

To his countrymen, estranged from their native soil and toiling in foreign wilds, or trafficking with keen "inspection " in alien marts of trade, his ballads come singing in the dear old idiom, welcome as a breath of their native air, and sweet as the sound of "burnies wimpling through the glens" of their native land. Let them ever bless and commemorate the day that gave to Scotland Robert Burns, one who though not immaculate (the sun himself hath shown us spots upon his golden disk) was true bard and every inch a man.

CHAPTER XIV.

WORDSWORTH AND THE LAKE SCHOOL.

FROM

ROM the Queen Anne poets grew up that taint in our diction which has been denounced as "technically poetic language," sound without sense, signifying nothing. Although the poets of this age corrected the indecency of the vicious school introduced at the Restoration, they were deficient in force and greatness of fancy, had little real pathos or enthusiasm, and as philosophers no comprehensiveness, depth, or originality.

Cowper, at the close of the eighteenth century, had begun the work of bringing back poetry to the channels of truth and Nature. In April, 1800, he ceased from his labors, and Wordsworth undertook to complete what he had only begun. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, in 1770. His father was a solicitor in the town, and the poet received a good education. In early life he was left an orphan. Placed at a grammar school

in the antique village of Hawkshead, he there spent nine years of his life in almost primitive seclusion, lodging in a country cottage, and "haunting the tall rock and sounding cataract" until his whole being identified itself with external Nature. Here the inner Wordsworth was formed, and his genius here took its peculiar bent.

In 1787 Wordsworth was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge. There he spent three years, broken by visits to Hawkshead, and by a bold, and almost literally pedes