terviews, he had been gradually and imperceptibly measuring the strength of that intellectual giant, before whom he was now to exhibit his own. When it is added, that the person thus affected had good abilities, improved by a careful education, and that he had also more than the ordinary portion of constitutional firmness, we may be able to conceive the degree of respect which was inspired by the talents of the unlettered ploughman, before he had been advanced to precedency by any public honours.

concern.

Though the farm of Mossgeill had been taken in the name of the two brothers, it was a family It was stocked from the common capital, and the nominal tenants received only the scantiest wages of labourers. On his entry to this new situation, there were many circumstances by which Burns was called to serious and thoughtful reflection. Hitherto, as a member of the family, and in his individual character, all his schemes had misgiven, and no provision had been made to serve beyond the day. The farm with which he had engaged, was in a situation which rendered its produce precarious, and to force from it a comfortable subsistence, after paying the rent, would require the most steady attention and persevering industry. These considerations seem to have touched the mind of Burns with suitable force in the seasons of reflection. To use his own words: "I entered on this farm

with a full resolution, come, go to, I will be wise! I read farming books; I calculated crops; I attended markets." These resolutions were as meritorious as they probably were sincere, while the subject had possession of his thoughts. But in a mind where every successive impression was so powerful, the very strength of the resolution contributed to its breach. It begot an easy and self-approving security, which, by tranquillizing his feelings, rendered them more open to the assaults of the next temptation. His satisfaction in the consciousness that the first step to amendment had been taken, made him careless about the rest.

It is curious to observe, that the period when his agricultural operations commenced, and which was to be also the commencement of a new tenor of life, was that when he devoted most time to poetical avocations, when his amours increased both in number and violence, and when his visits to the scenes and the votaries of lawless merriment, became most frequent and most seducing. That he was an able workman is not to be doubted, but his constancy at work may fairly be questioned. When a portion of the night is claimed by pleasure, it is impossible but that a corresponding portion of the day must be taken from business. He who mingles mental and corporeal labour, or the pursuits of diligence and dissipation, can scarcely be supposed to do

equal justice to both. The occupation which is least engaging will be most neglected. Tho' bad seed and backward seasons, therefore, may have been, in part, the cause that the farm of Mossgiell did not fulfil the expectations of the brothers, there is ground for suspecting that the irregularities of the elder were also to blame.

It deserves however to be particularly remembered, that during the two first years of this unfortunate concern, which appear to be so exclusively filled with the tumults of hilarity, and the toils of the field, with the anguish of love and the anxiety of care, the mind of Burns produced those admirable poems, which have placed his name at a height to which few generations. are destined to contain a single individual entitled to aspire. It is not in its most quiescent state that the mind makes its noblest efforts. Many of the finest works have been produced in the intervals of anguish, in the pauses of agitation, in the intermissions of alarm. It is not during a permanent exemption, but in the moment of relief from pain, that the body enjoys the most delicious sensations, and the mind its greatest alertness: Nor is it less true of intellectual than of material light, that the flash is most resplendent, when the cloud is darkest. If this remark be just, it may lessen our surprise that Burns, while agonised by the consequences of his imprudent conduct, and daily drawing near

er to the brink of ruin, should, in those intervals, when the mind compensates for a long depression, by an excessive elevation of spirits, have risen to the exalted strains of the Vision, or the Cotter's Saturday Night, or burst out in the lively sallies of the Holy Fair, or the Address to the De'il.

None of the poems, which are now in the hands of the public, had been written before the year 1784, except a few songs, Winter, a dirge, and the Dying Words of Poor Mailie. His first production after that period, was an Epistle to Davie, which he communicated to his brother Gilbert; and their mutual approbation of it rose so high, as to make them think it worthy of appearing in a magazine. In the course of the years 1784 and 1785, different incidents and situations led him to compose almost all those pieces on which his celebrity is founded. When any circumstance suggested an idea suited to poetry, it seems to have laid hold of his mind with unusual tenacity, and to have made him begin a composition in order to introduce it. He could keep his thoughts directed to it, when engaged in the solitary labours of the field; for it was during the coarse and fatiguing occupation of holding the plough, that he executed those master-pieces of genius which the regular author, in the warmth and quiet of his study, would vainly try to equal. Nothing can better

prove that habit is a second nature, than such a fact. It is not more surprising that Bloomfield should carry on the most elegant mental process on the bench of the shoemaker, or Burns, when struggling in the clayey furrow, than that the ship-boy should compose himself to sleep on the mast, or the soldier, within sight of the battery which he is afterwards to storm.

Death

The powerful memory of Burns enabled him, without the aid of writing, to carry his compositions in his mind, until they had received his last improvements; after which he would seldom listen to any proposal for their alteration. In many cases, however, the time which he bestowed upon them was extremely short. and Dr Hornbook was the work of a walk home from a mason meeting. The Petition of Bruar Water was finished, in its present state, during a drive in a post-chaise with a loquacious companion. And the noble Pindaric, "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," was produced on horseback in a stormy evening, with a fellow-traveller, who abstained from interrupting the deep abstraction, through which he perceived all the mental energies of the poet to be deeply engaged, and in the act of giving form to some new creation. But though the genius of Burns, in its propitious moments, could dash off an occasional performance with such rapid felicity, and give existence in a few hours to objects which