over “the keystane of the brigg” where she lost her tail; and then returning, full of the spirit of the poem, to sit in Tam’s chair, and drink ale out of the same silver-bound wooden bicker, in the very room of the inn where Tam and the poet used to get “unco fou,” while praising “inspiring bold John Barley-corn.”  Indeed, in the words of the poor Scotch carpenter, met by Washington Irving at Kirk Alloway, “it seems as if the country had grown more beautiful since Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it.”

HIS CAREER.—­The poet’s career was sad.  Gifted but poor, and doomed to hard work, he was given a place in the excise.  He went to Edinburgh, and for a while was a great social lion; but he acquired a horrid thirst for drink, which shortened his life.  He died in Dumfries, at the early age of thirty-seven.  His allusions to his excesses are frequent, and many of them touching.  In his praise of Scotch Drink he sings con amore.  In a letter to Mr. Ainslie, he epitomizes his failing:  “Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, headache, nausea, and all the rest of the hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness,—­can you speak peace to a troubled soul.”

Burns was a great letter-writer, and thought he excelled in that art; but, valuable as his letters are, in presenting certain phases of his literary and personal character, they display none of the power of his poetry, and would not alone have raised him to eminence.  They are in vigorous and somewhat pedantic English; while most of his poems are in that Lowland Scottish language or dialect which attracts by its homeliness and pleases by its couleur locale.  It should be stated, in conclusion, that Burns is original in thought and presentation; and to this gift must be added a large share of humor, and an intense patriotism.  Poverty was his grim horror.  He declared that it killed his father, and was pursuing him to the grave.  He rose above the drudgery of a farmer’s toil, and he found no other work which would sustain him; and yet this needy poet stands to-day among the most distinguished Scotchmen who have contributed to English Literature.

GEORGE CRABBE.—­Also of the transition school; in form and diction adhering to the classicism of Pope, but, with Thomson, restoring the pastoral to nature, the poet of the humble poor;—­in the words of Byron, “Pope in worsted stockings,” Crabbe was the delight of his time; and Sir Walter Scott, returning to die at Abbotsford, paid him the following tribute:  he asked that they would read him something amusing, “Read me a bit of Crabbe.”  As it was read, he exclaimed, “Capital—­excellent—­very good; Crabbe has lost nothing.”