only at a general and characteristic sketch. A few words more, then, on the moral and religious spirit of his poetry, and we have done. Strong charges have been brought against the general character of his writings, and by men who, being ministers of the Christian religion, may be supposed well imbued with its spirit. They have decreed the poetry of Burns to be hostile to morality and religion. Now, if this be indeed the case, it is most unaccountable that such compositions should have become universally popular among a grave, thoughtful, affectionate, and pious peasantry and that the memory of Burns, faulty and frail as his human character was, should be cherished by them with an enthusiastic fondness and admiration, as if they were all bound to him by ties strong as those of blood itself. The poems of Burns do in fact form a part of the existence of the Scottish peasantry-the purest hearts and the most intelligent minds are the best acquainted with them and they are universally considered as a subject of rejoicing pride, as a glory belonging to men in low estate, and which the peasant feels to confer on him the privilege of equality with the highest in the land. It would be a gross and irrational libel on the national character of our people to charge Robert Burns with being an immoral and irreligious poet. Christianity, to the endless and gro tesque varieties of professional vice and folly exhibited in the hypocritical pretenders to sanctity, and the stronglunged bellowers who laid claim to the gifts of grace. In all this mad and mirthful wit, Burns could hardly fail of sometimes unintentionally hurting the best of the pious, while he was in fact seeking to lash only the worst of the profane; and as it is at all times dangerous to speak lightly about holy things, it is not to be denied, that there are in his poems many most reprehensible passages, and that the ridicule of the human sometimes trespasses with seeming irreverence on the divine. An enemy of Burns might doubtless select from his writings a pretty for midable list of delinquencies of this kind-and by shutting his heart against all the touching and sublime poetry that has made Burns the idol of his countrymen, and brooding with a gloomy malignity on all his infirmities thus brought into one mass, he might enjoy a poor and pitiable triumph over the object of his unchristian scorn. This has been more than once attempted-but without much effect; and nothing can more decidedly prove that the general spirit of Burns' poetry is worthy of the people among whom he was born, than the forgiveness which men of austerest principles have been willing to extend to the manifold errors both of his genius and his life. It is, however, perfectly true, that Burns was led, by accidental and local circumstances, perhaps too fre- But, while we hold ourselves justi quently to look, in a ludicrous point of fied in thus speaking of some of his stern view, on the absurdities, both of doc and rancorous accusers, we must not trines and forms, that degraded the shut our eyes to the truth-nor deny, most awful rites of religion and like that though Burns has left to us much wise on the follies and hypocrisies that poetry which sinks, with healing and disgraced the character of some of its cheering influence, into the poor man's most celebrated ministers. His quick heart-much that breathes a pure and keen sense of the ludicrous could spirit of piety and devotion, he might not resist the constant temptations have done far more good than he has which assailed it in the public exhibi- done-had he delighted less in painting tions of these mountebanks; and the corruptions of religion, than in dehence, instead of confining himself to lineating her native and indestructible the happier and nobler task of describ- beauty. "The Cottar's Saturday ing religious Observances and Institu- Night" shews what he could have tions as they might be, he rioted in done-had he surveyed, with a calm the luxury of an almost licentious ri- and untroubled eye, all the influences dicule of the abject, impious, and hu- of our religion, carried as they are inmiliating fooleries which, in too many to the inmost heart of society by our cases, characterized them as they were simple and beautiful forms of worship -while his imagination was thus with--had marriage-baptism-that other drawn from the virtues and piety of more awful sacrament-death-and the truly enlightened ministers of funeral-had these and the innumera ble themes allied to them, sunk into the depths of his heart, and images of them reascended thence into living and imperishable light. There is a pathetic moral in the imperfect character of Burns, both as a poet and a man; nor ought they who delight both in him and his works, and rightly hold the anniversary of his birth to be a day sacred in the calendar of genius-to forget, that it was often the consciousness of his own frailties that made him so true a painter of human passions-that he often looked with melancholy eyes to that pure and serene life from which he was, by his own imprudence, debarred -that innocence, purity, and virtue, were to him, in the happiest hours of his inspiration, the fair images of beings whose living presence he had too often shunned and that the sanctities of religion itself seem still more, sanctified, when they rise before us in the poetry of a man who was not always withheld from approaching with levity, if not with irreverence, her most holy and mysterious altars. We should be afraid of turning from so great a national poet as Burns, to a living genius, also born like him in the lower ranks of life, were we not assured that there is a freshness and originality in the mind of the Ettrick' Shepherd, well entitling him to take his place immediately after "Him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough upon the mountain side." The truth is, that the respective characters of their poetry are altogether separate and distinct ;-and there can be nothing more delightful than to see these two genuine children of Nature following the voice of her inspiration into such different haunts, each happy in his own native dominions, and powerful in his own legitimate rule. And, in the first place, our admirable Shepherd is full of that wild enthusiasm towards external nature, which would seem to have formed so small a part of the poetical character of Burns-and he has been led by that enthusiasm to acquire a far wider and far deeper knowledge of her in exhaustible wonders. He too passed a youth of poverty and hardship-but it was the youth of a lonely shepherd among the most beautiful pastoral vallies in the world, and in that so VOL. IV. litary life in which seasons of spiritstirring activity are followed by seasons of contemplative repose, how many years passed over him rich in impressions of sense and in dreams of fancy. His haunts were among scenes "The most remote, and inaccessible By shepherds trod ;" And living for years in the solitude, he unconsciously formed friendships caves-the hills-and with all the more with the springs-the brooks-the fleeting and faithless pageantry of the sky, that to him came in the place of those human affections from whose indulgence he was debarred by the necessities that kept him aloof from the cottage fire, and up among the mists on the mountain-top. His mind, therefore, is stored with images of nature dear to him for the recollections which they bring-for the restoration of his earlier life. These images he has, at all times, a delight in pouring outvery seldom, it is true, with much se◄ lection, or skill in the poet's art-so that his pictures in landscape are generally somewhat confused-but in them all darkness, that at once take the imagithere are lines of light, or strokes of nation, and convince us that before a poet's eye had travelled the sunshine or the shadow. Burns-and then one of the Ettrick Open a volume of Shepherd-and we shall see how seldom the mind of the one was visited by those images of external nature which in that of the other find a constant and chosen dwelling-place.. Secondly, We shall find, that in his delineations of human passions, Burns. drew from himself, or immediately. from the living beings that were toiling and moiling" around him; and hence, their vivid truth and irresistible energy. But the Ettrick Shepherd is, clearly, a man rather of kind and gentle affections than of agitating passions and his poetry, therefore, when it is a delineation of his own feelings, is remarkable for serenity and repose. When he goes out of himselfand he does so much more than Burns— he does not paint from living agents in the transport of their passions-from the men who walk around him in this our every-day world; but he rather loves to bring before him, as a shepherd still in his solitude, the far-off images of human life, dim and shadowy as dreams-and to lose himself 3 X in a world of his own creation, filled with all the visionary phantoms of poetical tradition. Accordingly, in his poetry, we have but few complete pictures of which the intensity of mere human passions or feelings constitutes the merit and the charm-as in so many of the compositions of Burns; and, therefore, he never can become so popular a poet, nor does he deserve to be so. The best poetry of Burns goes, sudden as electricity, to the heart. Every nerve in our frame is a conductor to the fluid. The best poetry of the Ettrick Shepherd rather steals into our souls like music; and, as many persons have no ear for music, so have many persons no soul for such kind of poetry. Burns addressed himself almost exclusively to the simplest and most elementary feelings of our nature, as they are exhibited in social and domestic life ;he spoke of things familiar to all, in language familiar to all-and hence his poetry is like "the casing air," breathed and enjoyed by all. No man dares to be sceptical on the power of his poetry, for passages could be recited against him that would drown the unbeliever's voice in a tumult of acclamation. But we doubt if, from the whole range of the Ettrick Shepherd's writings, one such triumphant and irresistible passage could be produced--one strain appealing, without possibility of failure, to the universal feelings of men's hearts. But it is equally certain that many strains and those continued and sustained strains too-might be produced from the writings of this extraordinary person, which in the hearts and souls of all men of imagination and fancy-of all men who understand the dim and shadowy associations of recollected feelings-and who can feel the charm of a poetical language, occasionally more delicate and refined, than perhaps was ever before commanded by an uneducated mind would awaken emotions, if not so strong, certainly finer and more ethereal than any that are inspired by the very happiest compositions of the Bard of Coila. Indeed we should scarcely hesitate to say that the Ettrick Shepherd had more of pure fancy than Burns. When the latter relinquished his strong grasp of men's passions-or suffered the vivid images of his own experience of life to fade away, he was any thing but a great poet-and nothing entirely out of himself had power brightly to kindle his imagination, unless, indeed, it were some mighty national triumph or calamity, events that appealed rather to his patriotism than his poetry. But the Shepherd dreams of the days of old, and of all their dim and wavering traditions. Objects dark in the past distance of time have over him a deeper power than the bright presence of realities-and his genius loves better to lift up the veil which forgetfulness has been slowly drawing over the forms, the scenes, the actions, and the characters of the dead, than to gaze on the motions of the living. Accordingly, there are some imagessome strains of feeling in his poetry, more mournful and pathetic-at least, full of a sadness more entrancing to the imagination than any thing we recollect in Burns-but, at the same time, we are aware, that though a few wild airs, from an Eolian harp, perhaps more profoundly affect the soul, at the time when they are swelling, than any other inusic-yet have they not so permanent a dwelling-place in the memory as the harmonious tunes of some perfect instrument. But, thirdly, we have to remind such of our readers as are well acquainted with the poetry of the Ettrick Shepherd, that to feel the full power of his genius we must go with him 66 .." Beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and walk through the shadowy world of the imagination. It is here, where Burns was weakest, that he is most strong. The airy beings that to the impassioned soul of Burns seemed cold-bloodless-and unattractiverise up in irresistible loveliness in their own silent domains, before the dreamy fancy of the gentle-hearted Shepherd. The still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed his youth, inspired him with ever-brooding visions of fairy-landtill, as he lay musing in his lonely sheiling, the world of phantasy seemed, in the clear depths of his imagination, a lovelier reflection of that of nature-like the hills and heavens more softly shining in the water of his native lake. Whenever he treats of fairy-land, his language insensibly becomes, as it were, soft, wild, and aerial-we could almost think that we heard the voice of one of the fairy folk-still and serene images seem to In this department of pure poetry, the Ettrick Shepherd has, among his own countrymen at least, no competitor. He is the poet laureate of the Court of Faery-and we have only to hope he will at least sing an annual song as the tenure by which he holds his deserved honours. The few very general observations which we have now made on the genius of this truly original Poet are intended only as an introduction to our criticisms on his works. It is not uncommon to hear intelligent persons very thoughtlessly and ignorantly say, that the Ettrick Shepherd no doubt writes very good verses-but that Burns has preoccupied the ground, and is our only great poet of the people. We have perhaps said enough to shew that this is far from being the case-that the genius of the two poets is as different as their life-and that they have, generally speaking, delighted in the delineation of very different objects. If we have rightly distinguished and estimated the peculiar genius of the "author of the Queen's Wake," we think that he may benefit by attending to some conclusions which seem to flow from our remarks. He is certainly strongest in description of nature-in the imitation of the ancient ballad-and in that wild poetry which deals with imaginary beings. He has not great knowledge of human nature nor has he any profound insight into its passions. Neither does he possess much ingenuity in the contrivance of incidents, or much plastic power in the formation of a story emblematic of any portion of human life. He ought, therefore, in our opinion, not to attempt any long poem in which a variety of characters are to be displayed acting on the theatre of the world, and of which the essential merit must lie in the exhibition of those passions that play their parts there; he ought, rather, to bring before us shadowy beings moving across a shadowy distance, and rising up from that world with whose objects he is so familiar, but of which ordinary minds know only enough to regard, with a delightful feeling of surprise and novelty, every indistinct and fairy image that is brought from its invisible recesses. There indeed seems to be a field spread out for him, that is almost all his own. The pastoral vallies of the south of Scotland look to him as their best-beloved poet;—all their mild and gentle superstitions have blended with his being;-he is familiar too with all the historical traditions that people them with the "living dead;" and surely, with all the inestimable advantages of his early shepherd-life, and with a genius so admirably framed to receive and give out the breath of all its manifold inspirations, he may yet make pastoral poetry something more wild and beautiful than it has ever been-and leave behind him a work in which the feelings and habits-the very heart and soul of a shepherd-life, are given to us all breathed over and coloured by the aerial tints of a fairy fancy. The love of poetry is never bigotted and exclusive, and we should be strongly inclined to suspect its sincerity, if it did not comprehend within the range of its enthusiasm many of the fine productions of the Ettrick Shepherd. We believe that his countrymen are becoming every day more and more alive to his manifold merits and it would be indeed strange if they who hold annual or triennial festivals in commemoration of their great dead poet should be cold to the claims of the gifted living. It cannot but be deeply interesting to all lovers of genius-and more especially to all proud lovers of the genius of their own Scotland, to see this true poet assisting at the honours paid to the memory of his illustrious predecessor. He must ever be, on such high occasions, a conspicuous and honoured guest; and we all know, that it is impossible better to prove our admiration and love of the character and genius of Burns, than by the generous exhibition of similar sentiments towards the Ettrick Shepherd. THE EXMOOR COURTSHIP, From the best Editions, illustrated and compared, with Notes, critical, historical, philosophical and classical; TO WHICH IS ADDED, A PARAPHRASE IN MODERN ENGLISH VERSE. THE Exmoor Courtship is a dramatic pastoral, well known in the west of England, and, in all probability, as ancient as the time of Henry VII. Warton is of opinion that the " origin of the Bucolic might be discovered in the ancient Greek comedy, while the latter was in its most rude and unpolished state." The same may be affirmed of our own pastoral poetry. This union in our rude drama is apparent in Gammer Gurton's Needle, which was probably written towards the conclusion of Queen Mary's reign; at least, we know that it was exhibited at Oxford, in the year 1661, the third of Queen Elizabeth. It is chiefly composed, like the "Exmoor Courtship," in the west country dialect, which may be styled the English Doric. The characters are almost entirely pastoral, and Hodge, the hero of the drama, is most decidedly a genuine bucolic. In the succeeding reign of Queen Elizabeth, or rather towards its conclusion, this union no longer existed; and the Pastorals of Spencer, though they exhibit more of character than modern poems of that kind, are totally distinct from the dramas in her days. This singular composition is invaluable to those whose intimate acquaintance with the provincial dialect in which it is written, renders its meaning easy and familiar. But to most readers of poetry it must be as a sealed fountain; and it it therefore hoped that the accompanying translation will enable them to penetrate and enjoy the spirit of the original. The Translator has converted the Moor-drivers and milk-maids of the forest into such nymphs and swains as whilom "roamed over Lyæus and Cyllene hoar," and dwelt beside the banks of the "Lilied Ladon." For, so capricious is modern taste, the same person will look with disgust on the representation of a Margery or Thomasin carrying a pitcher of water on her head from the Mole or the Linn, and with delight on a Galatea, or a Dione, or any of those pastoral nymphs who, in days of old, "Were wont to bring The weight of water from Hyperia's spring." This literary metamorphosis was, however, undertaken chiefly with a view to entertain the classical reader, who will doubtless be no less pleased than surprised at perceiving the great similarity between the inhabitants of the Moor and the Grecian shepherds, as depicted by Theocritus; and he trusts the conjecture will be readily admitted, that our bard considered him as his model, and copied his beauties in the same manner as Rowley did those of Homer, as appeared to general satisfaction from the parallel passages adduced by some learned and dignified critics to ascertain that extraordinary circumstance. The language of our bard corresponds with the Doric dialect, in which the Idyllia of Theocritus were principally written; and which, as his translator justly observes, was, of all others, best adapted to the subject, the characters, and simplicity of sentiment." "It possesses an inimitable charm that can never be transfused into the most happy translation; it has a modulated sweetness which melts upon the ear, at the same time that its wildness and rusticity often characterize the personages who use it." TRANSLATOR.] |