“There's not a bonnie flower that springs "O blaw ye westlin winds, blaw saft Wi' gentle gale, fra muir and dale, "And bring the lassie back to me Perhaps a still more exquisite and impassioned expression of the same feeling, is shown in a couple of verses to be found in Johnson's Museum— "Out over the Forth, I look to the north, But what is the north and its Highlands to me? "But I look to the west, when I gae to rest, That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be; The lad that is dear to my babie and me." Never, surely, was the religion of devoted love more truly, more warmly expressed than in these few but magical lines. We may observe, by the way, that, although furnished less formally and less responsibly, the contributions of Burns to the Museum were often more racy and more spirited than those which were written for Mr. Thomson's Collection. In the Museum, for instance, appeared the noble song which we are about to quote, and of which one half stanza would of itself have preserved the name of Burns throughout all time; and would more than compensate, not only for the inequalities of the other lines, though they had been infinitely greater, but for all the commonplaces which Mr. Thomson was fain to accept as true poetry : "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever! Ae fareweel, alas, for ever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, "I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, We had ne'er been broken-hearted. "Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, In the Museum, also, we have "The Posie," which was adopted by Thomson; and which, for its union of the two best and purest affections of the heart-the love of woman and of rural nature-deserves all the praise it has ever received "O luve will venture in where it daurna weel be seen, "The primrose I will pu,' the firstling of the year, And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer: And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May. "I'll pu' the budding rose, when Phœbus peeps in view, "The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair, "The hawthorn I will pu' wi' its locks o' siller gray, "The woodbine I will pu' when the evening star is near, "I'll tie the posie round wi' the silken bands o' luve, The last, it would appear, of Burns's communications to the Museum, was the song of "Mally's meek, Mally's sweet," which, in some respects homely enough, has yet much to recommend it. The idea in the last stanza might have been better brought out, but it has the fire of genius "Her yellow hair, beyond compare, Comes trinkling down her swan-white neck; Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck.” Is not this a vivid expression of the power of beauty over the darkness and the storms of life? Do we not here see at a glance, as in a dream not difficult to be interpreted, a tempestuous sea, and a labouring vessel with despairing mariners; and then, amidst the severing clouds, a vision of those "lucida sidera," those Ledæan twins, It would extend this article beyond the length of a midsummer's day, if we were to review all the songs of Burns which are entitled to admiration. Why should we set down the imperishable verses of" Auld Langsyne," which every reader worth addressing can repeat, as if they were printed before his eyes? or why add a "perfume to the violet," by bestowing on them a vague and unmeaning praise, or attempting to point out beauties that are obvious to all? Why should we notice many other songs to which the observations we have already made may with suitable changes be easily transferred?—some of them being almost unexceptionably beautiful, but the most part chequered with a mixture of error and defect amidst their pervading excellences. We have always greatly admired the comic songs of Burns, but it is not our intention to enter here on a detailed examination of them. Such compositions do not equally challenge or call for criticism as more serious attempts, and it would not be so easy to find room for observation upon them. Burns's genius was as well adapted for the ludicrous as for the pathetic, and his command of appropriate vernacular language for ludicrous subjects was peculiarly great. Instead of offering the commonplace observations that could alone occur to us here, we shall conclude this article by laying before our readers some of the poet's comic effusions in a foreign dress, which may at once amuse by its novelty, and help us to judge of their intrinsic merits, and to form a conjecture as to the ideas regarding them which may be acquired by those who are total strangers to the language in which they are written. Our extracts are taken from a small and rather scarce volume, published at Paris in 1826, and bearing the fol lowing title: "Morceaux Choisis de Burns, Poète Ecossais; Traduits par MM. James Aytoun et J. B. Mesnard." The Monsieur James Aytoun who has a share in these translations is no other, we believe than the very amiable person with whom our townsmen are well acquainted as a member of the Scottish Bar, and as having on at least one occasion come forward as a candidate for the representation of Edinburgh. The work contains translations, all of them in prose, of several of Burns's best pieces, both serious and comic, including "The Cottar's Saturday Night," and "Tam o' Shanter." But we confine our quotations to one or two of the comic songs, as most in accordance with our own plan, and most likely to interest and amuse our readers. We refrain from making any comment whatever on the translations, except here and there to print in italics some of the passages which appear the most striking. We place the original and the translation opposite to each other in the following pages: |