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Transtweeddalecarlians, cannot feel the works of those worthies as we do―the racy flavour of the Scottish spirit either produces no impression on their palate, (the organ of taste,) or an unpleasant one-like the breath of the heather bloom in the dark delicious Highland honey—like the twang of the peat-reek in the mountain dew, when it rejoices in those tempting tryssyllables, Farintosh and Glenlivet. Still the Southrons suck the one and sip the other with wry faces; and they were wont to be curious exceedingly about the Great Unknown. We have, however, among us poets and poetesses, who-God bless them -though far from anti-national, are Scottish chiefly by birth; not but that a fine, free, pure Caledonian air hovers around their genius-not but that its bright consummate flower blushes, to our eyes at least, as if coloured by the boreal morn.

LIE.

Of such high and clear class, look at two glorious living specimens-THOMAS CAMPBELL and JOANNA BAILIn his boyhood, Campbell wandered "to distant isles that hear the wild Corbrechtan roar," and sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool; the sound is as of the wheels of many chariots. Yes-happy was it for the author of the Pleasures of Hope, that in his youth he "walked in glory and in joy," along the many-mountainbased, hollow-rumbling western coast of that unaccountable county, Argyllshire. The sea-sound cultivated his naturally fine musical car, and it sank, too, into his heart. Hence, in his prime poem a glad, sad, sweet, solemn, grave, and glorious production, bright with hope as is the sunny sea, when sailors' sweethearts on the shore are looking out for ships, and from a foreign station, lo! down before the wind comes the fleet, and the very shells on the sand beneath their footsteps seem to sing aloud for joy. As for Joanna, she is our tragic queen; but she belongs to all place as to all time; and Scott hath saidlet them who dare gainsay it-that he saw her genius, in a similar fair shape, sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna loves to touch the pastoral reed; and then we think of the tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, past among the hanging cliffs

of the silvan Calder, and in the lonesome heart of the dark Strathaven muirs.

Not a few other sweet singers or strong, native to this nook of our isle, might we now in these humble pages lovingly commemorate; and "two shall we mention, dearer than the rest," for sake of that virtue, among many virtues, which we have been lauding all along, their nationality; these are MOIR and POLLOK.

Of our own" delightful Delta," as we once called him -and the epithet now by right appertains to his namewe shall now say simply this, that he has produced many original pieces which will possess a permanent place in the poetry of Scotland. Delicacy and grace characterize his happiest compositions; some of them are beautiful in a cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy; and others breathe the simplest and purest pathos. His scenery, whether sea-coast or inland, is always truly Scottish; and at times his pen drops touches of light on minute objects, that till then had slumbered in the shade, but now "shine well where they stand" or lie, as component and characteristic parts of our lowland landscapes. Let others labour away at long poems, and for their pains get neglect or oblivion; Moir is immortalized in many short ones, which the Scottish muses may "not willingly let die." And that must be a pleasant thought when it touches the heart of the mildest and most modest of men, as he sits by his family-fire, beside those most dear to him, after a day past in smoothing, by his skill, the bed and the brow of pain, in restoring sickness to health, in alleviating sufferings that cannot be cured, or in mitigating the pangs of death.

Pollok had great original genius, strong in a sacred sense of religion. Such of his short compositions as we have seen, written in early youth, were but mere copies of verses, and gave little or no promise of power. But his soul was working in the green moorland solitudes round about his father's house, in the wild and beautiful parishes of Eaglesham and Mearns, separated by thee, O Yearn! sweetest pastoral streams that murmur through the west, as under those broomy and birchen banks and

trees, where the gray-linties sing, is formed the clear junction of the rills, issuing, the one from the hill spring far above the Black-waterfall, and the other from the Brotherloch. The poet in prime of youth (he died in his twentyseventh year) embarked on a high and adventurous emprise, and voyaged the illimitable deep. His spirit expanded its wings, and in a holy pride felt them to be abroad, as it hovered over the dark abyss. The "Course of Time," for so young a man, was a vast achievement. The book he loved best was the Bible, and his style is often scriptural. Of our poets he had studied, we believe, but Young, Milton, and Byron. He had much to learn in composition; and, had he lived, he would have looked almost with humiliation on much that is at present eulogized by his devoted admirers. But the soul of poetry is there though often dimly enveloped, and many passages there are, and long ones too, that heave, and hurry, and glow along in a divine enthusiasm.

"His ears he closed, to listen to the strains
That Sion bards did consecrate of old,

And fix'd his Pindus upon Lebanon."

But there now arises before us such a brotherhood of bards as could have been born and bred-nay, frown not, fair or gallant Southron-only in Scotland. The bards belonging by divine right to the people-the household bards of hut and shieling, dear to the dwellers on the hill and river sides, and to those who, like the cushats, have their nests in the woods. Allan Ramsay, Michael Bruce, Robert Fergusson, ROBERT BURNS, James Hogg, and though last, not least, Allan Cunningham-the barber, the schoolmaster, the sheriff's clerk engrosser, the ploughman, the shepherd, the stone-mason! And has not Scotland reason to be proud of her wigs, her taws, her very charges of horning, her plough-coulters and the teeth of her harrows, her gimmers and her "tarry woo," her side walls and her gable-ends-seeing that the same minds that were busied with such matters, for sake of a scanty and precarious subsistence, have been among the brightest on the long roll which Fame, standing on the mountains,

unfolds to the sunshine and the winds, inscribed with the names of some of the wide world's most prevailing poets?

Theocritus was a pleasant pastoral, and Sicilia sees him among the stars. But all his dear Idyls together are not equal in worth to the single Gentle Shepherd. Habbie's Howe is a hallowed place now among the green airy Pentlands. Sacred for ever the solitary murmur of that waterfa'!

"A flowerie howm, between twa verdant braes,
Where lasses use to wash and spread their claes;
A trotting burnie, wimpling through the ground,
It's channel pebbles, shining, smooth, and round:
Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear,
"Twill please your eye, then gratify your ear;
While Jenny, what she wishes discommends,
And Meg, with better sense, true love defends!"

Yet

"About them, and siclike," is the whole poem. "faithful loves shall memorize the song. Without any scenery but that of rafters, which overhead fancy may suppose a grove, 'tis even yet sometimes acted by rustics in the barn, though nothing on this earth will ever persuade a humble Scottish lass to take a part in a play; while delightful is felt, even by the lords and ladies of the land, the simple drama of lowly life; and we ourselves have seen a high-born maiden look" beautiful exceedingly" as Patie's Betrothed, kilted to the knee in the kirtle of a shepherdess.

FERGUSSON'S glory lies in his Farmer's Ingle being the rude prototype of the Cottar's Saturday Night. It suggested the theme to Burns, and from his genius came forth that heart-born poem in its perfection. Poor Fergusson! he grew mad! When committed-says Campbell, following Irvine to the receptacle of the insane, a consciousness of his dreadful fate seemed to come over him. At the moment of his entrance, he uttered a wild cry of despair, which was re-echoed by a shout from all the inmates of the dreadful mansion, and left an impression of inexpressible horror on the friends who had the task of attending him. His mother, being in extreme

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poverty, had no other mode of disposing of him. A remittance, which she received a few days after from a more fortunate son, who was abroad, would have enabled her to support the expense of affording him attendance in her own house; but the aid did not arrive till the poor maniac had expired. On his first visit to Edinburgh, Burns traced out the grave of Fergusson, and placed a monument over it at his own expense, inscribed with verses of appropriate feeling. And thus honoured, his name, though somewhat dim now, survives, nor ever will wane away utterly the melancholy light.

Like a strong man, rejoicing to run a race, we behold BURNS, in his golden prime; and glory beams from the peasant's head, far and wide over Scotland. See the shadow tottering to the tomb! frenzied with fears of a prison-for some five pound debt-existing, perhaps, but in his diseased imagination-for, alas! sorely diseased it was, and he too, at last, seemed something insane,—he escapes that disgrace in the grave. Buried with his bones be all remembrances of his miseries! But the spirit of song, which was his true spirit, unpolluted and unfallen, lives, and breathes, and has its being, in the peasant-life of Scotland; his songs, which are as household and sheepfold words, consecrated by the charm that is in all the heart's purest affections, love and piety, and the joy of grief, shall never decay, till among the people have decayed the virtues which they celebrate, and by which they were inspired; and should some dismal change in the skies ever overshadow the sunshine of our national character, and savage storms end in sullen stillness, which is moral death, in the poetry of Burns the natives of happier lands will see how noble was once the degenerated race that may then be looking down disconsolately on the dim grass of Scotland with the unuplifted eyes of cowards and slaves.

Among hills that once were a forest, and still bear that name, and by the side of a river not unknown in song, lying in his plaid on a brae among the "woolly people,' see another true son of genius-THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. We are never so happy as in praising James; but pas

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