F Moore was, in the opinion of his age, an Irish prodigy, Burns is, for all time, a Scottish marvel. The one was polished and musical, but artificial and insidiously immoral; the other homely and simple, but powerful and effective to men of all classes in society. The one was the poet of the aristocracy; the other the genius whose sympathies were with the poor. One was most at home in the palaces of the great; and the other, in the rude Ayrshire cottage, or in the little sitting-room of the landlord in company with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter. As to most of his poems, Burns was really of no distinct school, but seems to stand alone, the creature of circumstance rather than of the age, in an unnatural and false position, compared by himself to the daisy he uprooted with his ploughshare:

Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,

That fate is thine-no distant date;

Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight

Shall be thy doom!

His life was uneventful.

He was the son of a very poor

C

man who was gardener to a gentleman at Ayr. He was born in Alloway on the 25th of January, 1759. His early education was scanty; but he read with avidity the few books on which he could lay his hands, among which he particularly mentions, in his short autobiography, The Spectator, the poems of Pope, and the writings of Sterne and Thomson. But the work which he was to do needed not even that training he drew his simple subjects from surrounding nature, and his ideas came from his heart rather than his head. Like Moore, he found the old tunes or airs of the country, and set them to new words - words full of sentiment and sense.

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HIS POEMS.

Most of his poems are quite short, and of the kind called fugitive, except that they will not fly away. The Cotter's Saturday Night is for men of all creeds, a pastoral full of divine philosophy. His Address to the Deil is a tender thought even for the Prince of Darkness, whom, says Carlyle, his kind nature could not hate with right orthodoxy. His poems on The Louse, The Field-Mouse's Nest, and The Mountain Daisy, are homely meditations and moral lessons, and contain counsels for all hearts. In The Twa Dogs he contrasts, in fable, the relative happiness of rich and poor. In the beautiful song

Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doun,

he expresses that hearty sympathy with nature which is one of the most attractive features of his character. His Bruce's Address stirs the blood, and makes one start up into an attitude of martial advance. But his most famous poem drama, comedy, epic, and pastoralis Tam o'Shanter: it is a universal favorite; and few travellers leave Scotland without standing at the window of "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," walking over the road upon which Meg galloped, pausing 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."

George Crabbe was born on December 24th, 1754, at Aldborough, Suffolk. His father was a poor man; and Crabbe, with little early education, was apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards practised; but his aspirations were such that he went to London, with three pounds in his pocket, for a literary venture. He would have been in great straits, had it not been for the disinterested generosity of Burke, to whom, although an utter stranger, he applied for assistance. Burke aided him by introducing him to distinguished literary men; and his fortune was made. In 1781 he published The Library, which was well received. Crabbe then took orders,

and was for a little time curate at Aldborough, his native place, while other preferment awaited him. In 1783 he appeared under still more favorable auspices, by publishing The Village, which had a decided success. Two livings were then given him; and he, much to his credit, married his early love, a

young girl of Suffolk. In The Village he describes homely

The poor are

scenes with great power, in pentameter verse. the heroes of his humble epic; and he knew them well, as having been of them. In 1807 appeared The Parish Register, in 1810 The Borough, and in 1812 his Tales in Verse,— the precursor, in the former style, however, of Words

worth's lyrical stories. All these were excellent and very popular, because they were real, and from his own experience. The Tales of the Hall, referring chiefly to the higher classes of society, are more artificial, and not so good. His pen was most at home in describing smugglers, gipsies, and humble villagers, and in delineating poverty and wretchedness; and thus opening to the rich and titled, doors through which they might exercise their philanthropy and munificence. In this way Crabbe was a reformer, and did great good; although his scenes are sometimes revolting, and his pathos too exacting. As a painter of nature, he is true and felicitous; especially in marine and coast views, where he is a pre-Raphaelite in his minuteness. Byron called him "Nature's sternest painter, but the best." He does not seem to write for effect, and he is without pretension; so that the critics were quite at fault; for what they mainly attack is not the poet's work so much as the consideration whether his works come up to his manifesto. Crabbe died in 1832, on the 3d of February, being one of the famous dead of that fatal year.

Crabbe's poems mark his age. At an earlier time, when literature was for the fashionable few, his subjects would have been beneath interest; but the times had changed; education had been more diffused, and readers were multiplied. Goldsmith's Deserted Village had struck a new chord, upon which Crabbe continued to play. Of his treatment of these subjects it must be said, that while he holds a powerful pen, and portrays truth vividly, he had an eye only for the sadder conditions of life, and gives pain rather than excites sympathy in the reader. Our meaning will be best illustrated by a comparison of The Village of Crabbe with The Deserted Village of Goldsmith, and the pleasure with which we pass from the squalid scenes of the former to the gentler sorrows and sympathies of the latter.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

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More identified with his age than

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