shakes hands with deep tragedy. Vice seems almost to be virtue's sister. The names and the natures of things are changed, and all that is most holy, and most holily cherished by us strange mortal creatures-for which thousands of men and women have died at the stake, and would die again rather than forfeit itvirgin love, and nuptial faith, and religion itself that saves us from being but as the beasts that perish, and equalizes us with the angels that live for ever—all become for a time seeming objects of scoff, derision, and merriment. But it is not so, as God is in heaven it is not so; there has been a flutter of strange dancing lights on life's surface, but that is all, its depths have remained undisturbed in the poor man's nature; and how deep these are you may easily know by looking, in an hour or two, through that small shining pane, the only one in the hut, and beholding and hearing him, his wife and children, on their knees in prayer-(how beautiful in devotion that same maiden now!) not unseen by the eye of Him who, sitting in the heaven of heavens, doth make our earth his footstool.

And thus the many broad-mirth songs, and tales, and ballads arose, that enliven Scotland's antique minstrelsy.

To Burns's ear all these lowly lays were familiar, and most dear were they all to his heart: nor less so the airs in which they have as it were been so long embalmed, and will be imperishable, unless some fatal change should ever be wrought in the manners of our people. From the first hour, and indeed long before it, that he composed his rudest verse, often had he sung aloud "old songs that are the music of the heart ;" and some day or other to be able himself to breathe such strains, had been his dearest, his highest ambition. His "genius and his moral frame" were thus imbued with the spirit of our old traditionary ballad poetry; and as soon as all his manifold passions were ripe, and his whole glorious being in full maturity, the voice of song was on all occasions of deepest and tenderest human interest, the voice of his daily, his nightly speech. He wooed each maiden in song that will, as long as our Doric dialect is breathed by love in beauty's ears, be murmured close to the cheek of Innocence trembling in the arms of Passion. It was in some such dream of delight that, wandering all by himself to seek the

66

muse by some trotting burn's meander," he found his face breathed upon by the wind, as it was turned toward the region of the setting sun; and in a moment it was as the pure breath of his beloved, and he exclaimed to the conscious stars,

"Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,

I dearly like the west;

For there the bonny lassie lives,

The lass that I lo'e best!"

How different, yet how congenial to that other strain, which ends like the last sound of a funeral bell, when the aged have been buried:

"We'll sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my joe !"

These old songs were his models, because they were models of certain forms of feeling having a necessary and eternal existence. Feel as those who breathed them felt, and if you utter your feelings, the utterance is song. Burns did feel as they felt, and looked with the same eyes on the same objects. So entirely was their language his language, that all the beautiful lines, and half lines, and single words, that, because of something in them more exquisitely true to nature, had survived all the rest of the compositions to which they had long ago belonged, were sometimes adopted by him, almost unconsciously it might seem, in his finest inspirations; and oftener still sounded in his ear like a key-note, on which he pitched his own plaintive tune of the heart, till the voice and language of the old and new days were but as one; and the maiden who sung to herself the song by her wheel, or on the brae, quite lost in a wavering world of phantasy, could not, as she smiled, choose but also weep!

So far from detracting from the originality of his lyrics, this impulse to composition greatly increased it, while it gave to them a more touching character than perhaps ever could have belonged to them, had they not breathed at all of antiquity. Old but not obsolete, a word familiar to the lips of human beings who lived ages ago, but tinged with a slight shade of strangeness as

it flows from our own, connects the speaker, or the singer, in a way, though "mournful, yet pleasant to the soul," with past generations, and awakens a love at once more tender and more imaginative towards "auld Scotland." We think, even at

times when thus excited, of other Burnses who died without their fame; and, glorying in him and his name, we love his poetry the more deeply for the sake of him whose genius has given our native land a new title of honor among the nations. Assuredly Burns is felt to be a Scotchman intus et in cute in all his poetry; but not more even in his "Tam o'Shanter" and "Cottar's Saturday night," his two longest and most elaborate compositions, than in one and all of his innumerable and inimitable songs, from "Daintie Davie," to "Thou lingering star." We know too that the composition of songs was to him a perfect happiness that continued to the close of life—an inspiration that shot its light and heat, it may be said, within the very borders of his grave.

In his "Common-place or Scrap Book, begun in April, 1783," there are many fine reflections on Song-writing, besides that exquisite invocation-showing how early Burns had studied it as an art. We have often heard some of his popular songs found fault with for their imperfect rhymes-so imperfect, indeed, as not to be called rhymes at all; and we acknowledge that we remember the time when we used reluctantly to yield a dissatified assent to such objections. Thus in "Highland Mary" -an impassioned strain of eight quatrains-strictly speaking there are no rhymes-Montgomery, drumlie; tarry, Mary; blossom, bosom; dearie, Mary; tender, asunder; early, Mary; fondly, kindly; dearly, Mary. It is not enough to say that here, and in other instances, Burns was imitating the manner of some of the old songs-indulging in the same license; for he would not have done so, had he thought it an imperfection. He felt that there must be a reason in nature why this was sometimes so pleasing--why it sometimes gave a grace beyond the reach of art. Those minnesingers had all musical ears, and were right in believing them. Their ears told them that such words as these-meeting on their tympana under the modifying influence of tune, were virtually rhymes; and as such they "slid into

their souls."

"There is," says Burns in a passage unaccountably omitted by Currie, and first given by Cromek-"a great irregularity in the old Scrich songs—a redundancy of syllables with respect to that exactness of accent and measure that the English poetry requires-but which glides in most melodiously with the respective tunes to which they are set. For instance, the fine old song of The mill, mill O—to give it a plain prosaic reading-it halts prodigiously out of measure. On the other hand, the song set to the same tune in Bremner's Collection of Scotch songs, which begins, To Fanny fair could I impart, &c.it is most exact measure; and yet, let them both be sung before a real critic, one above the biases of prejudice, but a thorough judge of nature, how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite and lamely methodical, compared with the wild, warbling cadence -the heart-moving melody of the first. This is particularly the case with all those airs which end with a hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of wild irregularity in many of the compositions and fragments which are daily sung to them by my compeers-the common people—a certain happy arrangement of old Scotch syllables, and yet very frequently nothing—not even like rhyme or sameness of jingle, at the end of the lines. This has made me sometimes imagine that perhaps it might be possible for a Scotch poet, with a nice judicious ear, to set compositions to many of our most favorite airs-particularly the class of them mentioned above-independent of rhyme altogether."

It is a common mistake to suppose that the world is indebted for most of Burns's songs to George Thomson. He contributed to that gentleman sixty original songs, and a noble contribution it was; besides hints, suggestions, emendations, and restorations innumerable; but three times as many were written by him, emended or restored, for Johnson's Scots' MUSICAL MUSEUM. He began to send songs to Johnson, with whom he had become intimately acquainted on his first visit to Edinburgh, early in 1787, and continued to send them till within a few days of his death. In November, 1788, he says to Johnson, "I can easily see, my dear friend, that you will probably have four volumes. Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively in this business; but you are a patriot for the music of your country, and I

am certain posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted to your public spirit. Be not in a hurry; let us go on correctly, and your name will be immortal.” On the 4th of July, 1796— he died on the 21st-he writes from Dumfries to the worthy music-seller in Edinburgh: "How are you, my dear friend, and how comes on your fifth volume? You may probably think that for some time past I have neglected you and your work; but, alas! the hand of pain, sorrow, and care, has these many months lain heavy on me. Personal and domestic affliction have almost entirely banished that alacrity and life with which I used to woo the rural muse of Scotia. You are a good, worthy, honest fellow, and have a good right to live in this world—because you deserve it. Many a merry meeting the publication has given us, and possibly it may give us more, though, alas! I fear it. This protracting, slow, consuming illness which hangs over me, will, I doubt much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before he has well reached his middle career, and will turn over the poet to far more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit, or the pathos of sentiment. However, hope is the cordial of the human heart, and I endeavor to cherish it as well as I can. Let me hear from you as soon as convenient. Your work is a great

one, and now that it is finished, I see, if I were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended; yet I will venture to prophesy, that to future ages your publication will be the textbook and standard of Scottish song and music. I am ashamed to ask another favor of you, because you have been so very good already; but my wife has a very particular friend of hers-a young lady who sings well-to whom she wishes to present the Scots' Musical Museum. If you have a spare copy, will you so obliging as to send it by the first Fly, as I am anxious to have it soon.

be

Turn from James Johnson and his Scots' Musical Museum for a moment to George Thomson and his Collection. In September, 1792, Mr. Thomson-who never personally knew Burns -tells him "for some years past I have, with a friend or two, employed many leisure hours in selecting and collating the most. favorite of our national melodies for publication ;" and says"We will esteem your poetical assistance a particular favor;