That dreary hour he mounts his beast-in,
And sic a night he taks the road in,
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in.
The wind blew as twad blawn its last,
The rattlin show'rs rose on the blast :
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd;
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd,
That night, a child might understand,

The deil had business on his hand.

« Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars through the woods!
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll;
When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees,
Kisk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze;

Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing,
And loud resounded mirth and dancing

« Now Maggie, the mare on which he rode, Ventur'd forward on the light;

And vow! Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance »>,

« There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towsie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge ».

<< Tam stood, like ane bewitch'd,

And thought his very een enrich'd ;

Even Satan glowr'd, and fidg'ed fu fain,

And hotch'd and blew wi might and main :
Till first ae caper, syne anither,

Tam tint his reason à thegither,

And roars out « weel done, cutty-sark!

And in an instant all was dark :
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied ».

Now do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane of the brig;
There at them thou thy tail may toss ;
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake! «<

ע

There is no other poem of Burns so characteristic of his powers, his habits, and his manners, as this of his love of conviviality; his bold, daring spirit; his fondness for the sublime features of nature; his delight in popular superstitions; his wild and fiery imagination; the vigour of his conceptions; and the inspired condensation of his language.

Poetry is here in its true vocation, in embodying those visions of the mind, which vanish like the brilliant shapes and colours that the clouds often momentarily assume. After all, there are few true pleasures in life, but those which result from imagination. Reality almost always ends in disappointment.

Whether it arises from faculties diluted and misled by tuition and example, or from the sparing degree in which Nature bestows the quantity of her endowments, the generality of candidates for poetical fame waver between the

attempt to describe realities, and the attempt to describe the visionary associations of things.

The presence of the true image was too decided before the mind of Burns, to leave him in any doubt what choice he had to make; and what task he had to perform.

Books of criticism, and the rules of writing, may help forward mediocrity into the attainment of some technical merits; but they often enfeeble or encumber original genius; and sometimes destroy it. Fear of touching topics or images, not already legitimated by example, produces triteness and servility. A timid author is thus driven to describe, not what his own experience has impressed strongly upon him; but what he has borrowed faintly from others.

While therefore the subjects of poetry are inexhaustible, authors continue for the most part to traverse the same dull round; or if they quit it, quit it with rashness, and pursue the bye-ways of extravagance and delusion, instead of the genuine paths of beauty and sublimity which are open to them.

XXIV.

Dr JOSEPH WARTON.

Of D. JOSEPH WARTON (1) I am inclined to speak with respect; and even with affection, if that word may be applied to one whom I never saw. He was a scholar of extraordinary taste and elegance; but I cannot refrain from

(1) Ob. 1800, aged 78.

pronouncing that he has left behind him no proofs of much poetical genius.

:

I remember that, when I was young, his Ode to Fancy was always exhibited to me as me as a specimen of a genuine poetical spirit. On turning to it, after a lapse of years, with an unprejudiced eye, I am quite astonished at its triteness it is a mere effort of memory directed by taste; the production of one putting forth his familiarity with every image and every form of expression of Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. It not ouly wants sentiment and thought, but it has not a single original image. There is indeed a passage, which has often been pointed out as fine but I doubt if this be not the most objectionable passage in the Ode, because it wants even taste!

« Let us with silent footsteps go
To charnels and the house of woe ».

« Or to some abbey's mouldering towers,
Where, to avoid cold wintry showers,
The naked Beggar shivering lies,
While whistling tempests round her rise;
And trembles lest the tottering wall

Should on her sleeping infant fall ».

This image appears to me revolting, because it contains no redeeming pleasure, to counteract the cold anguish which the contemplation of it gives.

Campbell (1) agrees in this opinion of D." Warton's want of originality. « Collins,» he says, « realised with the hand of genius that idea of highly - personified and picturesque composition, which Warton contemplated with the eye of

taste ».

(1) Brit. Poets, VII, 319.

How it happens that there are so many minds powerful in the faculty to repeat, but like Echo, without original existence, it would take a long and perhaps a tiresome space to discuss. These men make excellent scholars; perhaps better than those who think for themselves, because they receive the ideas of others uninterrupted by their own. But the value of their productions is always of a secondary kind. They supply no novelty either in the fields of Imagination, or of Intellect. They want force and freshness; and often therefore rather contribute to make a subject dull and repulsive, than add to its attraction. Cowper says of Pope, that

« He (his musical finesse was such,

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch),
Made poetry a mere mechanic art;

And every warbler has his tune by heart (1)

».

This is so in all ages; the object of momentary fashion is imitated, till the imitation brings even the original itself into contempt.

It must not be understood that D." Warton had no fancy he had a fancy; but it was an imitative fancy (2), that moved only at the direction of others. I know not that he has shewn any gleams of Imagination. But let it be recollected that even Imitative Fancy is a power of a very superior class to Memory!

(1) Table-Talk.

(2) I apply the words Fancy and Imagination in the way which modern usage has sanctioned, without enquiring into its etymological propriety. I assume Fancy to be the reflector of images previously existing; and Imagination, to be the power of new combinations.