LXIX.

THE TOAST.

[One day, when Burns was ill and seemed in slumber, he observed Jessy Lewars moving about the house with a light step lest she should disturb him. He took a crystal goblet containing wine-and-water for moistening his lips, wrote these words upon it with a diamond, and presented it to her.

FILL me with the rosy wine,
Call a toast-a toast divine;
Give the Poet's darling flame,
Lovely Jessy be the name;
Then thou mayest freely boast,
Thou hast given a peerless toast.

LXXII.

TAM, THE CHAPMAN.

[Tam, the chapman, is said by the late William Cobbett, who knew him, to have been a Thomas Kennedy, a native of Ayrshire, agent to a mercantile house in the west of Scotland. Sir Harris Nicolas confounds him with the Kennedy to whom Burns addressed several letters and verses, which I printed in my edition of the poet in 1834: it is perhaps enough to say that the name of the one was Thomas and the name of the other John.]

As Tam the Chapman on a day,
Wi' Death forgather'd by the way,
Weel pleas'd he greets a wight so famous,
And Death was nae less pleas'd wi' Thomas,
Wha cheerfully lays down the pack,
And there blaws up a hearty crack;
His social, friendly, honest heart,
Sae tickled Death they could na part:
Sae after viewing knives and garters,
Death takes him hame to gie him quarters.

LXX.

ON MISS JESSY LEWARS.

[The constancy of her attendance on the poet's sickbed and anxiety of mind brought a slight illness upon Jessy Lewars. "You must not die yet," said the poet: