But I am wandering sadly from him, who, as Wordsworth has beautifully expressed it,

"walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough along the mountain's side."

-However, I shall come back to him in my

next.

P. M.

125

LETTER XII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR DAVID,

In order to catch the post, a few days ago, I sent off my letter before my subject was half concluded; which, doubtless, you will attribute chiefly, or entirely, to my old passion for parentheses and episodes. To return to my eposthe Burns's dinner.

One of the best speeches, perhaps the very best, delivered during the whole of the evening, was that of Mr J Won, in proposing the health of the Ettrick Shepherd. I had heard a great deal of Win from W, but he had been out of Edinburgh ever since my arrival, and indeed had walked only fifty miles that very morning, in order to be present on this occasion. He showed no symptoms, however, of being fatigued with his journey, and his style of elo

quence, above all, whatever faults it might have, displayed certainly no deficiency of freshness and vigour. As I know you admire some of his verses very much, you will be pleased with a sketch of his appearance. He is, I imagine, (but I guess principally from the date of his Oxford prize-poem) some ten years your junior and mine-a very robust athletic man, broad across the back-firm set upon his limbs-and having altogether very much of that sort of air which is inseparable from the consciousness of great bodily energies. I suppose, in leaping, wrestling, or boxing, he might easily beat any of the poets, his contemporaries—and I rather suspect, that in speaking, he would have as easy a triumph over the whole of them, except Coleridge. In complexion, he is the best specimen I have ever seen of the genuine or ideal Goth. His hair is of the true Sicambrian yellow; his eyes are of the lightest, and at the same time of the clearest blue; and the blood glows in his cheek with as firm a fervour as it did, according to the description of Jornandes, in those of the "Bello gaudentes, prælio ridentes Teutones" of Attila. I had never suspected, before I saw him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of complexion could be compatible with so much

variety and tenderness, but, above all, with so much depth of expression. His forehead is finely, but strangely shaped; the regions of pure fancy, and of pure wit, being both developed in a very striking manner-which is but seldom the case in any one individual-and the organ of observation having projected the sinus frontalis to a degree that is altogether uncommon. I have never seen a physiognomy which could pass with so much rapidity from the serious to the most ludicrous of effects. It is more eloquent, both in its gravity and in its levity, than almost any countenance I am acquainted with is in any one cast of expression; and yet I am not without my suspicions, that the versatility of its language may, in the end, take away from its power.

In a convivial meeting-more particularly after the first two hours are over-the beauty to which men are most alive in any piece of eloquence is that which depends on its being impregnated and instinct with feeling. Of this beauty, no eloquence can be more full than that of Mr JWn. His declamation is often loose and irregular to an extent that is not quite worthy of a man of his fine education and masculine powers; but all is redeemed, and more than redeemed, by his rich abundance of quick, gene

rous, and expansive feeling. The flashing brightness, and now and then the still more expressive dimness of his eye-and the tremulous music of a voice that is equally at home in the highest and the lowest of notes-and the attitude bent forward with an earnestness to which the graces could make no valuable addition-all together compose an index which they that run may read—a rod of communication to whose electricity no heart is barred. Inaccuracies of language are small matters when the ear is fed with the wild and mysterious cadences of the most natural of all melodies, and the mind filled to overflowing with the bright suggestions of an imagination, whose only fault lies in the uncontrolable profusion with which it scatters forth its fruits. With such gifts as these, and with the noblest of themes to excite and adorn them, I have no doubt, that Mr W-n, had he been in the church, would have left all the impassioned preachers I have ever heard many thousand leagues behind him. Nor do I at all question, that even in some departments of his own profession of the law, had he in good earnest devoted his energies to its service, his success might have been equally brilliant. But his ambition had probably taken too decidedly another turn;