"Then sad dispersed,

not been so, he had not cried, "Baffle the raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurd expression. We, therefore, trust you are inspired-and if so, why, it must have been with reading our Rhapsody.

Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet. People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. A line -two words-may shew that they are the Muses' sons. How exquisitely does Burns picture to our eyes moonlight-water undergoing an ice-change! "The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam,

of snow."

For as they disperse, they do look very sad-and no doubt are so-but had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and uniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging-but whole flocks had perished.

You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines that occur soon after, and which are a glorious example of the sweeping style of description which, we said above, characterised the genius of this sublime poet :

"From the bellowing east, In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing

Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains

At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless

flocks,

Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,

The billowy tempest whelms; till upwards urged

The valley to a shining mountain swells, Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky."

Well might the bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, address them in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast. "Shepherds," says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why, merely by filling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up

"Far off its coming groaned,"

"The whole imprison'd river growls below."

Here again, how pleasant to see the ed with that of Thomson. The gentle peculiar genius of Cowper contrastCowper delighting-for the most part-in tranquil images-for his life was past amidst tranquil nature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power. Cowper says, "On the flood,

Indurated and fix'd, the snowy weight Lies undissolved, while silently beneath, And unperceived, the current steals away.” How many thousand times the lines we are now going to quote have been quoted, nobody can tell; but we quote them once more for the purpose of asking you, if you think have written them-could have chillthat any one poet of this age could ed one's very soul as well as body, with such intense feeling of cold?

Not one.

The oftener-the more we read the "Winter"—especially the last two or three hundred lines-the angrier is our wonder with Wordsworth for asserting that Thomson owed the national popularity that his "Winter" immediately won, to his commonplace sentimentalities, and his vicious style! Yet true it is, that he was sometimes guilty of both; and, but for his transcendent genius, they might have obscured the lustre of his fame. But such sins are not very frequent in the "Seasons," and were all committed in the glow of that fine and bold enthusiasm, which, to his imagination, arrayed all things, and all words, in a light that seemed to him at the time to be poetry-though sometimes it was but "false glitter." Besides, he was but young; and his Great Work was his first. He had not philosophized his language into poetry, as Wordsworth himself has done, after long years of profoundest study of the laws of thought and speech. But in such study, while much is gained, is not something lost? And is there not a charm in the free, flowing, chartered libertinism of the diction and versification of the "Seasons"above all, in the closing strains of the "Winter," and in the whole of the "Hymn," which inspires a delight and wonder that is seldom breathed upon us-glorious poem, on the whole, as it is-from the more measured march of the "Excur

The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze, Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey ;

But if, apprized of the severe attack,

The country be shut up, lured by the scent Of churchyard drear, (inhuman to relate!) The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig. The shrouded body from the grave, o'er which,

Mix'd with foul shades and frighten'd ghosts, they howl."

Wild beasts do not like the look of the human eye-they think us ugly customers-and sometimes stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in an awkward but alarming attitude, of hunger mixed with fear. A single wolf seldom or never attacks a man. He cannot stand the face. But a person would need to have a godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an army of wolves some thousand strong. It would be the height of presumption in any man, though beautiful as Moore thought Byron, to attempt it. If so, then

"The godlike face of man avails him not,"

is, under these circumstances, ludi

crous. Still more so is the trash about beauty, force divine! It is too much to expect of an army of wolves ten thousand strong," and hungry as the grave," that they should all fall down on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh and blood, merely because the young lady was so beautiful that she might have sat to Sir Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr Watts's Souvenir. 'Tis all stuff, too, about the generous lion standing in softened gaze at beauty's bright glance. True, he has been known to look with a certain sort of soft surliness upon a pretty Caffre girl, and to walk past without eating her-but simply because, an hour or two before, he had dined on a Hottentot Venus. The secret lay not in his heart, but in his stomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely has Spencer changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of the attendant lion of

"Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb!"

But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it, in this passage, has vulgarized and blurred by it, the natural and inevitable emotion of terror and

pity. Famished wolves howking up the dead is a dreadful image-but "inhuman to relate," is not an expression heavily laden with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel, unnatural introduction of ideas, purely superstitious, at the close, is most revolting, and miserably mars the terrible truth.

"Mix'd with foul shades and frighten'd

ghosts they howl."

Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts only frightened? And wherein lies the specific difference between a shade and a ghost? Besides, if the ghosts were frightened, which they had good reason to be, why were not they off? We have frequently read of their wandering far from home, on occasions when they had no such excellent excuse to offer. This line, therefore, we have taken the liberty to erase from our pocket-copy of the Seasons-and to draw a few keelavine strokes over the rest of the passage-beginning with man's godlike face.

But here is a passage which will live for ever-in which not one word could be altered for the better-not one omitted but for the worse-not one added that would not be superfluous-a passage that proves that fiction is not the soul of poetry, but truth-but then such truth as was never spoken before on the same subject-such truth as shews that while Thomson was a person of the strictest veracity, yet was he very far indeed from being a matter-of-fact

Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour

forth

In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!

What black despair, what horror fills his heart!

When for the dusky spot, which Fancy His tufted cottage rising through the snow, feign'd

He meets the roughness of the middle waste,

Far from the track and blest abode of man; While round him night resistless closes fast,

And every tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is

land, unknown,

What water, of the still unfrozen spring, In the loose marsh or solitary lake, Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils,

These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks

Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots

Through the wrung bosom of the dying

man,

His wife, his children, and his friends

unseen.

In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment

warm;

In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,

With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold;

Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every

nerve

The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense; And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse!"

Who wrote the affecting ballad-song called Donocht-head?" It is not mine," said Burns; "I would give ten pounds it were. It appeared first in the Edinburgh Herald, and came to the editor of that paper with the Newcastle post-mark on it." If we mistake not, Allan Cunninghame tells us that it was written by an unfortunate of the name of Picken, who lived, suffered, and died in or about the town to which it would be a

escape from the emotion that oppresses it-is speechless-and the song falls mute. Such is frequently the character-and the origin of that character-of our auld Scottish Sangs. In their mournfulness are they not almost like the wail of some bird distracted on the bush from which its nest has been harried, and then suddenly flying away for ever into the woods? In their joyfulness, are they not almost like the hymn of some bird, that love-stricken suddenly darts from the tree-top down to the caresses that flutter through the spring? Yea, even such, too, are often the airs to which those dear auld sangs are sung! From excess of feeling-fragmentary! Or of one divine part-to which genius may be defied to conceive another, for but one hour in all time could have given it birth!

"The moon was a-waning!" Is not that ane o' our ain Shepherd's? It is indeed a-snaw-sang.

DIRGE.

"The moon was a-waning,

The tempest was over; Fair was the maiden,

And fond was the lover; But the snow was so deep,

That his heart it grew weary, And he sunk down to sleep,

In the moorland so dreary.

"Soft was the bed

She had made for her lover, White were the sheets,

And embroider'd the cover; But his sheets are more white, And his canopy grander, And sounder he sleeps

Where the hill foxes wander.

"Alas, pretty maiden,

What sorrows attend you! I see you sit shivering,

With lights at your window; But long may you wait

Ere your arms shall enclose him, For still, still he lies,

With a wreath on his bosom !

"How painful the task

The sad tidings to tell you!An orphan you were,

Ere this misery befell you; And far in yon wild,

Where the dead-tapers hover, So cold, cold and wan,

Lies the corpse of your lover!"

"The sacred source of sympathetic tears!"

What sayeth our Shepherd himself, in one of the delightfully characteristic notes or notices, in the collection of his Songs-published this very day-of "The moon was a-waning ?" "It is," quoth he, “one of the songs of my youth, written long ere I threw aside the shepherd's plaid, and took farewell of my barking colley, for a bard's perilous and thankless occupation. I was a poor shepherd half a century ago, and I have never got farther to this day; but my friends would be far from regretting this, if they knew the joy of spirit that has been mine. This was the first song of mine I ever heard sung at the piano, and my feelings of exultation are not to be conceived by men of sordid dispositions. I had often heard my strains chanted from the ewe-bught and the milking-green with delight; but I now found that I had got a step higher; I, therefore, was resolved to cling to my harp, with a fondness which no obloquy should diminishand I have kept the resolution. The song was first set to music and sung by Miss C. Forest, and has long been a favourite, and generally sung through a great portion of Scotland."

Yes, James-thou art but a poor shepherd still-poor in this world's goods-though Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie-left to thee still-with its few laigh sheep-braes -its somewhat stony hayfield or two -its pasture where Crummie may unhungered graze-nyeuck for the potato's bloomy or ploomy shawsand path-divided from the porch the garden, among whose flowers "wee Jamie" plays. But nature has given thee, to console thy heart in all disappointments, from the "false smiling of fortune beguiling," a boon which thou hast hugged to thy heart

with transport on the darkest daythe "gift o' genie," and the power of immortal song!

And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd been just-been generous -as she was-or was not-to the Ayrshire peasant-has she, in her conduct to him, shewn her contrition for her sin-whatever that may have been-to Burns? It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the feathered head and gentility turns away her painted cheek from the mountain bard; but when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever such votaries devoutly worship? Cold, false, and hollow, ever has been their admiration of genius-and different, indeed, from their evanescent ejaculations, has ever been the enduring voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But Scott, and Southey, and Byron, and the other great bards, have all loved the Shepherd's lays-and Joanna the palm-crowned, and Felicia the muse's darling, and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all the other fair female spirits of song. And in his native land, all hearts that love her streams, and her hills, and her cottages, and her kirks, the bee-humming garden, and the primrose-circled fold, the white hawthorn, and the green fairy-knowe, all delight in Kilmany and Mary Lee, and in many another vision that visited the Shepherd in the Forest. What more could he desire, than such sweet assurance that his name will never die-but be remembered among those of

"The poets who, on earth, have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays?"

Nor haply will the Old Man in future times be altogether forgotten, who, in moods of mirth or melancholy, still delighted to sound his dear Shepherd's praise! While others scowled, he smiled-nor was the Shepherd ungrateful for the sunshine that thus illumined the gloom, though it was poured from an urn which his own genius had filled with " golden light." We ever listened to his lyre

sounding sweetly to our ears in the wilderness-while all unheard by the ears of the worldlings amidst the smoke and stir of their earthy life. We loved to look on his honest