He, with the generous rustics, sate
On Uri's rocks in close divan;
And wing'd that arrow sure as fate,
Which ascertain'd the sacred rights of man.

STROPHE,

Arabia's scorching sands he cross'd, Where blasted nature pants supine, Conductor of her tribes adust,

To freedom's adamantine shrine;

And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast!
He snatch'd from under fell oppression's wing;
And taught amidst the dreary waste
The all-cheering hymns of liberty to sing.
He virtue finds, like precious ore,
Diffused through every baser mould,

Even now he stands on Calvi's rocky shore,
And turns the dross of Corsica to gold;
He, guardian genius, taught my youth
Pomp's tinsel livery to despise :
My lips by him chastised to truth,

Ne'er paid that homage which the heart denies.

ANTISTROPHE

Those sculptured halls my feet shall never tread, Where varnish'd Vice and Vanity combined, To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread; And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind. While Insolence his wrinkled front uprears, And all the flowers of spurious fancy blow; And Title his ill-woven chaplet wears, Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow; Where ever-dimpling Falsehood, pert and vain, Presents her cup of stale profession's froth;

And pale Disease, with all his bloated train, Torments the sons of gluttony and sloth.

STROPHE.

In Fortune's car behold that minion ride, With either India's glittering spoils opprest: So moves the sumpter-mule, in harness'd pride, That bears the treasure which he cannot taste. For him let venal bards disgrace the bay, And hireling minstrels wake the tinkling string; Her sensual snares let faithless Pleasure lay; And all her jingling bells fantastic Folly ring; Disquiet, Doubt, and Dread shall intervene; And Nature, still to all her feelings just, In vengeance hang a damp on every scene, Shook from the baleful pinions of Disgust.

ANTISTROPHE

Nature I'll court in her sequester'd haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell, Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And Health, and Peace, and Contemplation dwell.

There Study shall with Solitude recline;
And Friendship pledge me to his fellow-swains;
And Toil and Temperance sedately twine
The slender cord that fluttering life sustains:
And fearless Poverty shall guard the door;
And Taste unspoil'd the frugal table spread;
And Industry supply the humble store;
And Sleep unbribed his dews refreshing shed:
White-mantled Innocence, etherial sprite,
Shall chase far off the goblins of the night:
And Independence o'er the day preside,
Propitious power! my patron and my pride.

THIS nobleman's public and private virtues, and his merits as the historian of Henry II., will be remembered when his verses are forgotten. By a felicity very rare in his attempts at poetry, the kids and fawns of his Monody do not entirely extinguish all appearance of that sincere feeling with which it must have been composed. Gray, in a letter to Horace Walpole, has justly remarked the beauty of the stanza beginning "In vain I look around." "If it were all like this stanza,"

he continues, "I should be excessively pleased. Nature, and sorrow, and tenderness are the true genius of such things, (monodies,) and something of these I find in several parts of it (not in the orange-tree.) Poetical ornaments are foreign to the purpose, for they only show a man is not sorry; and devotion is worse, for it teaches him that he ought not to be sorry, which is all the pleasure of the thing."*

FROM THE MONODY.

AT length escaped from every human eye,

From every duty, every care,

That in my mournful thoughts might claim a share,
Or force my tears their flowing stream to dry;
Beneath the gloom of this embowering shade,
This lone retreat, for tender sorrow made,
I now may give my burden'd heart relief;
And pour forth all my stores of grief;
Of grief surpassing every other woe,
Far as the purest bliss, the happiest love
Can on th' ennobled mind bestow,
Exceeds the vulgar joys that move
Our gross desires, inelegant and low.

And saw our happiness unchanged remain:
Still in her golden chain
Harmonious concord did our wishes bind:
Our studies, pleasures, taste, the same.

O fatal, fatal stroke,

That all this pleasing fabric love had raised
Of rare felicity,

On which ev'n wanton vice with envy gazed,
And every scheine of bliss our hearts had form'd,
With soothing hope, for many a future day,
In one sad moment broke!

Yet, O my soul, thy rising murmurs stay;
Nor dare the all-wise Disposer to arraign,
Or against his supreme decree
With impious grief complain,

That all thy full-blown joys at once should fade; Was his most righteous will-and be that will obey'd.

PROLOGUE TO CORIOLANUS.*

I COME not here your candour to implore For scenes whose author is, alas! no more; He wants no advocate his cause to plead ; You will yourselves be patrons of the dead. No party his benevolence confined, No sect-it flow'd alike to all mankind. He loved his friends-forgive this gushing tear: Alas! I feel I am no actor here.

He loved his friends with such a warmth of heart
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,
Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it, but our tears may tell.
Oh candid truth, Oh faith without a stain,
Oh manners greatly firm and nobly plain,
Oh sympathizing love of others' bliss,
Where will you find another breast like his?
Such was the man,-the Poet well you know:
Oft has he touch'd your hearts with tender woe:
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause
You heard him teach fair Virtue's purest laws;
For his chaste muse employ'd her heav'n-taught
lyre

None but the noblest passions to inspire:
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which dying he could wish to blot.
Oh may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add to grace his tomb!
Whilst he superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
Yet if to those, whom most on earth he loved,
From whom his pious care is now removed,
With whom his liberal hand and bounteous heart
Shared all his little fortune could impart;
If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from him receive,
That, that, even now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.

THIS unfortunate young man, who died in a mad-house at the age of twenty-four, left some pieces of considerable humour and originality in the Scottish dialect. Burns, who took the hint of his Cotter's Saturday Night from Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle, seems to have esteemed him with an exaggerated partiality, which can only be accounted for by his having perused him in his youth. On his first visit to Edinburgh, Burns traced out the grave of Fergusson, and placed a head-stone over it at his own expense, inscribed with verses of appropriate feeling.

Fergusson was born at Edinburgh, where his father held the office of accountant to the British Linen-hall. He was educated partly at the highschool of Edinburgh, and partly at the grammarschool of Dundee, after which a bursary, or exhibition, was obtained for him at the university of St. Andrew's, where he soon distinguished himself as a youth of promising genius. His

[* Thomson's posthumous play, and spoken by Quin. This is among the best prologues in our language: and is excelled only by Pope's before Cato, and Johnson's Drury Lane opening.]

[† Burns in one place prefers him to Allan Ramsay; "the excellent Ramsay," he says, "and the still more excellent Fergusson." But he has found no follower. Burns' obligations to Fergusson are certainly greater

eccentricity was, unfortunately, of equal growth with his talents; and on one occasion, having taken part in an affray among the students, that broke out at the distribution of the prizes, he was selected as one of the leaders, and expelled from college; but was received back again upon promises of future good behaviour. On leaving college he found himself destitute, by the death of his father; and after a fruitless attempt to obtain support from an uncle at Aberdeen, he returned on foot to his mother's house at Edinburgh, half dead with the fatigue of the journey, which brought on an illness that had nearly proved fatal to his delicate frame. On his recovery he was received as a clerk in the commissary's clerk's office, where he did not continue long, but exchanged it for the same situation in the office of the sheriff clerk, and there he remained as long as his health and habits admitted of any application to business. Had he possessed ordinary

than to Ramsay, and gratitude for once warped his generally good, sound, and discriminating taste in poetic cri ticism.]

[No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
No storied urn nor animated bust;
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way,
To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust.]

prudence, he might have lived by the drudgery of copying papers; but the appearance of some of his poems having gained him a flattering notice, he was drawn into dissipated company, and became a wit, a songster, a mimic, and a free liver; and finally, after fits of penitence and religious despondency, went mad. When committed 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 dismal man-. sion, and left an impression of inexpressible horror on the friends who had the task of attending him. His mother, being in extreme 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.*

THE FARMER'S INGLE.

Et multo imprimis hilarans convivia Baccho,
Ante focum, si frigus erit.-VIRG.

WHAN gloamin grey out owre the welkin keeks;"
Whan Batie ca's his owsen' to the byre;
Whan Thrasher John, sair dung, his barn-door
steeks,

An' lusty lasses at the dightin' tire; What bangs fu' leal the e'enin's coming cauld, An' gars snaw-tappit Winter freeze in vain; Gars dowie mortals look baith blithe an' bauld, Nor fley'd' wi' a' the poortith o' the plain; Begin, my Muse! and chaunt in hamely strain.

Frae the big stack, weel winnow't on the hill, Wi' divots theekit frae the weet an drift; Sods, peats, and heathery turfs the chimley fill, An' gar their thickening smeek* salute the lift. The gudeman, new come hame, is blithe to find, Whan he out owre the hallan' flings his een, That ilka turn is handled to his mind;

That a' his housie looks sae cosh" an' clean; For cleanly house lo'es he, though e'er sae

mean.

Weel kens the gudewife, that the pleughs require
A heartsome meltith," an' refreshin' synd
O' nappy liquor, owre a bleezin' fire:

Sair wark an' poortith downa" weel be join'd.
Wi' butter'd bannocks now the girdle? reeks;
I' the fair nook the bowie" briskly reams;
The readied kail' stands by the chimley cheeks,
An' haud the riggin' het wi' welcome streams,
Whilk than the daintiest kitchen' nicer seems.

Frae this, lat gentler gabs" a lesson lear:

Wad they to labouring lend an cident" hand, They'd rax fell strang upo' the simplest fare, Nor find their stamacks ever at a stand. Fu' hale an' healthy wad they pass the day; At night, in calmest slumbers dose fu' sound; Nor doctor need their weary life to spae,"

[0 thou my elder brother in misfortune,
By far my elder brother in the muses,
With tears I pity thy unhappy fate -BURNS.]

a Peeps. Oxen.-c Fatigued.-d Shuts.-e Winnowing.What bangs fu leal-what shuts out most comfortably.6 Makes.- Frightened.-iThatched with turf.—Chimney Smoke. the inner wall of a cottage.-m Comfortable. - Meal.- Drink.-p Should not.-9 A flat iron for toast

Nor drogs their noddle and their sense confound, Till death slip sleely on, an' gie the hindmost wound.

On sicken food has mony a doughty deed By Caledonia's ancestors been done; By this did mony a wight fu' weirlike bleed In brulzies frae the dawn to set o' sun. 'Twas this that braced their gardies stiff an' strang;

That bent the deadly yew in ancient days; Laid Denmark's daring sons on yird" alang; Garr'd Scottish thristles bang the Roman bays; For near our crest their heads they dought na raise.

The couthy cracks" begin whan supper's owre;
The cheering bicker' gars them glibly gash
O' Simmer's showery blinks, an' Winter's sour,
Whase floods did erst their mailin's produce

hash.

'Bout kirk an' market eke their tales gae on; How Jock woo'd Jenny here to be his bride; An' there, how Marion, for a bastard son,

Upo' the cutty-stool was forced to ride;

The waefu' scauld o' our Mess John to bide.

The fient a cheep 's amang the bairnies now; For a' their anger's wi' their hunger gane: Ay maun the childer, wi' a fastin' mou,

Grumble an' greet, an' mak an unco maen In rangles round, before the ingle's low, Frae gudame's mouth auld warld tales they hear,

O' warlocks loupin round the wirrikow:

O' ghaists, that win' in glen an kirkyard drear, Whilk touzles a' their tap, an' gars them shake wi' fear!

For weel she trows, that fiends an' fairies be
Sent frae the deil to fleetch* us to our ill;
That ky hae tint' their milk wi' evil ee;

An' corn been scowder'd" on the glowin' kiln.

ing cakes.- Beer-barrel.- Broth with greens.- Kitchen here means what is eaten with bread: there is no English word for it; obsonium is the Latin.- Palates.- Assiduous. Foretell. In contests.y Arms.-z Earth.a Pleasant talk. The cup.- Chat.-d Destroy the produce of their farms.-e Not a whimper.-f Moan.- Circles. - Grandame.- Scare-crow.- Abide. Entice. Lost. -m Scorched.