an existence of pain and pleasure, distilled into one burning drop. Of almost all his songs, the heroines are real, though we must not suppose he was in love with them all,--that were too unconscionable; but he sometimes sought inspiration, and found it, where he could not have hoped any farther boon. In one of his letters to Mr. Thompson, for whose collection of Scottish airs he was then adapting words, he says, "Whenever I want to be more than ordinary in song, to be in some degree equal to your divine airs, do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation ?-tout au contraire. I have a glorious recipe, the very one that, for his own use, was invented by the divinity of healing and poetry, when erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus,-I put myself on a regimen of admiring a fine woman."

Thus, the original blue eyes which inspired that sweet song, "Her ee'n sae bonnie blue," belonged to a Miss Jeffreys, now married, and living at New York. We owe "She's fair and

she's false," to the fickleness of a Miss Jane Stuart,

who, it is said, jilted the poet's friend, Alexander Cunningham." The bonnie wee thing," was a very little, very lovely creature, a Miss Davies ; and the song, it has been well said, is as brief and as beautiful as the lady herself. The heroine of "O saw ye bonnie Leslie," is now Mrs. Cumming of Logie: Mrs. Dugald Stewart, herself a delightful poetess, inspired the pastoral song of Afton Water; and every woman has an interest in "Green grow the Rushes." All the compliments that were ever paid us by the other sex, in prose and verse, may be summed up in Burns's line,

What signifies the life o' man, an' 't were na for the lasses O?

It were, however, an endless task to give a list of his heroines; and those who are curious about the personal history of the poet, of which his songs

are "

part and parcel," must be referred to higher and more general sources of information.*

Burns used to say, after he had been intro

*To the "Reliques of Burns, by Cromek;" to the Edition of the Scottish Songs, with notes, by Allan Cunningham; and to Lockhart's Life of Burns.

duced into society above his own rank in life, that he saw nothing in the gentlemen much superior to what he had been accustomed to; but that a refined and elegant woman was a being of whom he could have formed no previous idea. This, I think, will explain, if it does not excuse, the characteristic freedom of some of his songs. His love is ardent and sincere, and it is expressed with great poetic power, and often with the most exquisite pathos; but still it is the love of a peasant for a peasant, and he wooes his rustic beauties in a style of the most entire equality and familiarity. It is not the homage of one who waited, a suppliant, on the throne of triumphant beauty. "He. drew no magic circle of lofty and romantic thought around those he loved, which could not be passed without lowering them from stations little lower than the angels."* Still, his faults against taste and propriety are far fewer and lighter than might have been expected from his habits; and as he acknowledged that he could have formed no idea of a woman refined by high * Allan Cunningham.

breeding and education, we cannot be surprised if he sometimes committed solecisms of which he

was scarcely aware. For instance, he met a young lady (Miss Alexander, of Ballochmyle,) walking in her father's grounds, and struck by her charms and elegance, he wrote in her honour his well known song, "The lovely lass of Ballochmyle," and sent it to her. He was astonished and offended that no notice was taken of it; but really, a young lady, educated in a due regard for the convenances and the bienséances of society, may be excused, if she was more embarrassed than flattered by the homage of a poet, who talked, at the first glance, of "clasping her to his bosom." It was rather precipitating things.

209

CHAPTER XII.

CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUed.

MONTI AND HIS WIFE.

MONTI, who is lately dead, will at length be allowed to take the place which belongs to him among the great names of his country. A poet is ill calculated to play the part of a politician; and the praise and blame which have been so profusely and indiscriminately heaped on Monti while living, must be removed by time and dispassionate criticism, before justice can be done to him, either as a man or a poet. The mingled grace and energy of his style obtained him the name of il Dante grazioso, and he has left behind him something