A caller burn o' siller sheen, Ran cannily out o'er the green, And whan our gutcher's1 drouth had been He loutit down and drank bedeen3 A dainty skair". His bairns a' before the flood Had langer tack o' flesh and blood, Wha still hae been a feckless brood The fuddlin' Bardies now-a-days While each his sea of wine displays 6 My muse will no gang far frae hame, 8 For thinking on 't, This is the name that doctors use In kittle words to gar you roose 10 But we'll hae nae sick clitter-clatter, Few drogs in doctors' shops are better 1 staff. Tho' joints are stiff as ony rung', Out o'er the lugs3, 'Twill mak you souple, swack' and young, Tho' cholic or the heart-scad teaze us, Or ony inward pain should seize us, That would ye spulzie", And brings them to a canny crisis Wer't na for it the bonny lasses Would glowr nae mair in keeking-glasses", In gleefu' looks and bonny faces, The fairest then might die a maid, Could then discover, ODE TO THE GOWDSPINK 10. Frae fields where Spring her sweets has blawn The gowdspink comes in new attire, 12 For spraings 18 and bonny spats to thee; 2 exhausted. 7 looking-glasses. u bless. 5 spoil. dirty. different coloured stripes. Nae mair the rainbow can impart Whase pencil wrought its freaks at will Nae mair through straths in simmer dight And fool the tints that Nature chose 'Mang men, wae's heart! we aften find In vain thro' woods you sair may ban 5 Frae ilka fav'rite houff and bield, In window hung, how aft we see Like Tantalus they hing you here Ah, Liberty! thou bonny dame, And herd lowns 2 louping o'er the grass, 6 The gowdspink, that sae lang has kend 8 For now we tyne its wonted lay, Then tent her syren smiles wha list, Bu ROBERT BURNS. [ROBERT BURNS was born 25th January, 1759, 'the hindmost year but ane' of George the Second's reign, in a cottage built by his father, two miles south of Ayr, and close to Alloway Kirk, that relic of nondescript architecture to which his genius has lent almost as worldwide an interest as that which makes Vaucluse a place of pilgrimage to all nations. Eldest son of William Burness, of a Kincardineshire family of small farmers, market gardener and overseer of a small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr, and afterwards tenant of Lochlie and Mount Oliphant, small Ayrshire farms, Burns received an education which ultimately included a sound acquaintance with English grammar, a little mathematics, mensuration, French, and a smattering of Latin. At work on his father's farm from an early age till he was twenty-three, he tried then to establish himself in business as a flax-dresser in Irvine, but returned in a short time to his father's house with empty pockets and with a character hitherto blameless deteriorated by some new companionships. After the death of his father, a specimen of industry and integrity never rewarded in this life, his brother Gilbert and he took the farm of Mossgiel near Mauchline (1784), which also turned out to be a bad bargain. To escape troubles in which his youthful and characteristic follies involved him, especially with the father of his future partner in life, 'Bonie Jean,' he accepted an appointment to a clerkship in Jamaica; but on the point of starting on the voyage he had his footsteps turned towards Edinburgh by the success of his volume of poems (Kilmarnock, 1786), and by the patronage, literary and aristocratic, which it immediately secured for him. With the proceeds of a second edition of the volume (Edinburgh, 1787), amounting to £500 or £600, he established himself on the farm of Ellisland near Dumfries. Unsuccessful once more in this tenancy he became an exciseman to eke out his income, and finally in that capacity, unfortunately both for his health and for his reputation, removed to Dumfries, where he died in 1796.] That admiration of Burns' poetry as the work of a ploughman which Jeffrey in his time had occasion to deprecate, in which he could see no more sense than 'in admiring it as if it had been written with his toes,' has not survived Jeffrey's ridicule. Burns, like Joseph in Egypt, was destined to 'forget his toil and his father's house.' His right to a place among the greater poets of Europe being no longer in dispute, to speak of him still as 'the |