distrust in the warmth of his attachment; and he addressed to her a little poem, in which, tenderly alluding to Meta, he assures Dona that she is not less dear to him or less necessary to his happi

ness

And such is man's fidelity!

This intended marriage never took place.

Twenty-five years afterwards, when Klopstock was in his sixtieth year, he married Johanna von Wentham, a near relation of his Meta; an excellent and amiable woman, whose affectionate attention cheered the remaining years of his life.

Klopstock died at Hamburg in 1813, at the age of eighty his remains were attended to the grave by all the magistrates, the diplomatic corps, the clergy, foreign generals, and a concourse of about fifty thousand persons. His sacred poems were

* Du zweifelst dass ich dich wie Meta liebe?

Wie Meta lieb' Ich Done dich !

Dies, saget dir mein hertz liebe vol

Mein ganzes hertz! &c.

placed on his coffin, and in the intervals of the chanting, the ministering clergyman took up the book, and read aloud the fine passage in the Messiah, describing the death of the righteous.Happy are they who have so consecrated their genius to the honour of Him who bestowed it, that the productions of their early youth may be placed without profanation on their tomb!

He was buried under a lime-tree in the churchyard of Ottensen, by the side of his Meta and her infant,--

Seed sown by God, to ripen for the harvest.

182

songs,

CHAPTER XI.

CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED.

BONNIE JEAN.

It was as Burns's wife as well as his early love, that Bonnie Jean lives immortalized in her poet's and that her name is destined to float in music from pole to pole. When they first met, Burns was about six-and-twenty, and Jean Armour "but a young thing,"

Wi' tempting lips and roguish e'en,

the pride, the beauty, and the favourite toast of the village of Mauchline, where her father lived. To an early period of their attachment, or to the fond recollection of it in after times, we owe some of Burns's most beautiful and impassioned

songs,-as

Come, let me take thee to this breast,

And pledge we ne'er shall sunder!

And I'll spurn as vilest dust,

The world's wealth and grandeur, &c.

"O poortith cold and restless love;" "the kind love that's in her e'e;" "Lewis, what reck I by thee;" and many others. I conjecture, from a passage in one of Burns's letters, that Bonnie Jean also furnished the heroine and the subject of that admirable song, "O whistle, and I'll come to thee, my lad," so full of buoyant spirits and artless affection: it appears that she wished to have her name introduced into it, and that he afterwards altered the fourth line of the first verse to please her thus,

:

Thy Jeanie will venture wi' ye, my lad;

but this amendment has been rejected by singers and editors, as injuring the musical accentuation : the anecdote, however, and the introduction of the name, give an additional interest and a truth to the sentiment, for which I could be content to sacrifice the beauty of a single line; and methinks Jeanie had a right to dictate in this instance.*

* "A Dame whom the graces have attired in witchcraft, and whom the loves have armed with lightning-a fair oneherself the heroine of the song, insists on the amendmentand dispute her commands if you dare !"-Burns's Letters.

With regard to her personal attractions, Jean was at this time a blooming girl, animated with health, affection, and gaiety: the perfect symmetry

of her slender figure; her light step in the dance; the "waist sae jimp," "the foot sae sma," were no fancied beauties:-she had a delightful voice, and sung with much taste and enthusiasm the ballads of her native country; among which we may imagine that the songs of her lover were not forgotten. The consequences, however, of all this dancing, singing, and loving, were not quite so poetical as they were embarrassing.

O wha could prudence think upon,

And sic a lassie by him?

O wha could prudence think upon,
And sae in love as I am?

Burns had long been distinguished in his rustic neighbourhood for his talents, for his social qualities and his conquests among the maidens of his own rank. His personal appearance is thus described from memory by Sir Walter Scott:-"His form was strong and robust, his manner rustic, not clownish; with a sort of dignified simplicity, which