settlement at Lochlea, in his eighteenth year, his literary ardour appears to have slackened, and to have given place to the indulgence of an increasing taste for the company of the fair.

We have now reached a stage of critical interest and importance, in the progress of his moral and intellectual character,—a stage at which he was to enter, either from deliberate preference, or from some accidental impulse, one of the numerous paths which opened to his choice. Professor Stewart has declared it to be his opinion, that "Burns possessed such an equality of strength in all his powers, as might have qualified him to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to direct his abilities ;" and I have been frequently assured by the bard himself, that his anxiety to succeed in poetry, was entirely occasioned by his propensity to the tenderest of passions. It is reasonable, therefore, to presume, that if he had been of a less vigorous and ardent constitution, or if he had been deterred by disappointment, or despair of success, from attempting to engage the attention of the fair, his genius, with a little guidance, might have turned to physical or mathematical science; or if destitute of any guide to aid him, in the first step to such pursuits, the "mute inglorious" philosopher might, like his father, have shewn his superiority, only by acuteness, discrimination, and sagacity, in those matters of religion or common life, to which alone his faculties would have been

applied. But when he first found himself connected, in the reaping field, with one individual of the other sex, more than with the rest, and when this connection was daily renewed, he felt himself impelled to please, and win the preference of her with whom he enjoyed this temporary union. Till then, by his own account, he had no consciousness of the powers which he possessed, nor any suspicion that the seeds of poetry were quickening within him. But poetry he knew to be the language of love, and though it was only a broken dialect of this language he could hope to speak, he resolved to make the trial, and composed a song for the voice of his youthful partner. In this production, Dr Currie observes, we find no indications of the future genius of Burns; and it certainly does not surpass the attempts of other youths, in the same degree that his subsequent compositions surpassed those of all contemporary poets. It must still, however, be regarded as an uncommon effort in an ill-educated peasant, of sixteen; and much, though not all, which was afterwards produced, might fairly have been expected from the youth who was capable of making it. It has, indeed, no pretensions to originality, but of the songs which are popular among the lower classes, the only models which he had studied, it is no unsuccessful imitation. Burns himself appears to have put considerable value on this first-born off

spring of his genius: and his partiality, though. probably owing to the pleasing recollections which the poem awakened, may still be regarded as fortunate for the public. It revealed to him the secret of his own powers, and carried him on to new attempts. The die therefore was now cast his path was chosen: and he became irrecoverably a poet.

Having thus been introduced to the pleasures of virtuous love, the greatest which he had ever tasted, he appears to have resigned himself to them with constant and unlimited indulgence. At Mount Oliphant, the principal sweetening of his cup was mental improvement; but, at Lochlea, this appears to have been superseded by the sweeter, and more seducing ingredient of amorous tenderness. His mind was never free from some attachment, either in its growth, or in its wane; and from the number of Nellys and Bettys to whom his earliest productions are addressed, he seems to have crowded a great variety of these adventures into a narrow space. Burns, like too many others of ardent and active passions, found more delight in the commencement, than in the continuance of his attachments. He found, to use the language of Shakespeare, that Women are angels, wooing:

Things won are done; the soul's joy lies in doing." He delighted in the moment when the probability of creating a tender interest in the bosom

of some fair stranger first presented itself to his thoughts; when each successive interview gratified his self-love, by assuring him of his progress: and when hope, approaching to exultation, was still seasoned with such remains of doubt, as served to give it poignancy, and invited his mind to dwell upon the subject. Such were the moments which, in his "Saturday Night," he describes as the most exquisite of all that are allotted to man. It is to be suspected, from the account of his brother, that when Burns found his triumph complete over the heart of the favourite of the hour, his passion soon began to abate, and that his enterprising gallantry turned to some new conquest, with an eagerness that shewed too little anxiety for the peace of the forsaken fair who had been contributing to his enjoyment. He confined his attention, however, to females in that condition of life, where the effects of sensibility are generally prevented or overcome, by a certain coarseness of sentiment, and sturdiness of character. His excessive jealousy of all who assumed, from their superior wealth, a consequence to which they were entitled by nothing else, deterred him from aiming at connections above his own humble rank; and he was anxiously cautious not to add to the natural difficulties which lovers have to surmount, any that could arise from contempt of his origin or occupation;-a sentiment which would have

rendered the mortification of a repulse doubly galling to his pride. This jealousy he seems to have retained through life, to an excess inconsistent with the excellence of his understanding; and it may be doubted whether, at any period, he could have united himself with a female, whom he might suspect of harbouring in her thoughts even the most secret idea of having done him honour, by stooping from the pretensions of her rank.

Burns, according to the report of his brother, was, at the close of his boyhood, awkward and ill at ease in the company of women. But by a little practice and success, this manner wore off, and he soon came to be envied by his companions for that easy and confident address, which is secretly welcome to the fair, by taking all advances on itself, and saving them from the charge, and from the consciousness, of having given the encouragement even of half approaches. He became one of "the forward and the bold," to whom women are said to be most apt to stoop. This description of the rustic Philander I received from Mr David Sillars, to whom Burns addresses his " Epistle to Davie, a Brother-Poet;" and who, at the same time, gave me the copy of a letter containing the description in his own words, which is inserted in the Appendix. With Burns, while he resided at Lochlea, Mr Sillars was in the custom of regularly meeting at church;