The pious Lady built with hope sublime. XXV. ROMAN ANTIQUITIES. (From the Roman Station at Old Penrith.) How profitless the relics that we cull, C the world's flatteries if the brain be full, XXVI. APOLOGY FOR THE FOREGOING POEMS. No more the end is sudden and abrupt, Nor will the Power we serve, that sacred Power, A ministration humble but sincere, That from a threshold loved by every Muse (Life's three first seasons having passed away) Leaf-scattering winds; and hoar-frost sprinklings fell (Foretaste of winter) on the moorland heights; NOTES. Page 9. THE following is extracted from the journal of my fellowtraveller, to which, as persons acquainted with my poems will know, I have been obliged on other occasions: "Dumfries, August, 1803. "On our way to the churchyard where Burns is buried, we were accompanied by a bookseller, who showed us the outside of Burns's house, where he had lived the last three years of his life, and where he died. It has a mean appearance, and is in a by-situation; the front whitewashed, dirty about the doors, as most Scotch houses are; flowering plants in the window. Went to visit his grave; he lies in a corner of the churchyard, and his second son, Francis Wallace, beside him. There is no stone to mark the spot; but a hundred guineas have been collected to be expended upon some sort of monument. "There,' said the bookseller, pointing to a pompous monument, 'lies Mr. (I have forgotten the name), a remarkably clever man; he was an attorney, and scarcely ever lost a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him, and there they rest as you see.' We looked at Burns's grave with melancholy and painful reflections, repeating to each other his own poet's epitaph: 'Is there a man,' &c. "The churchyard is full of grave-stones and expensive monuments, in all sorts of fantastic shapes, obelisk-wise, pillar wise, &c. When our guide had left us, we turned again to Burns's grave, and afterwards went to his house, wishing to inquire after Mrs. Burns. who was gone to spend some time by the sea-shore with her children. We spoke to the maid-servant at the door, who invited us forward, and we sat down in the parlor. The walls were colored with a blue wash; on one side of the fire was a mahogany desk; opposite the window a clock, which Burns mentions, in one of his letters, having received as a present. The house was cleanly and neat in the inside, the stairs of stone scoured white, the kitchen on the right side of the passage, the parlor on the left. In the room above the parlor the poet died, and his son, very lately, in the same room. The servant told us she had lived four years with Mrs. Burns, who was now in great sorrow for the death of Wallace. She said that Mrs. Burns's youngest son was now at Christ's Hospital. We were glad to leave Dumfries, where we could think of little but poor Burns, and his moving about on that unpoetic ground. In our road to Brownhill, the next stage, we passed Ellisland, at a little distance on our right,his farm house. Our pleasure in looking round would have been still greater, if the road had led us nearer the spot. "I cannot take leave of this country which we passed through to-day, without mentioning that we saw the Cumber land Mountains within half a mile of Ellisland, Burns's house, the last view we had of them. Drayton has prettily described the connection which this neighborhood has with ours, when he makes Skiddaw say: 'Scruffel, from the sky That Annandale doth crown, with a most amorous eye "These lines came to my brother's memory, as well as the Cumberland saying: 'If Skiddaw hath a cap Scruffel wots well of that.' "We talked of Burns, and of the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions: indulging ourselves in the fancy that we might have been perBonally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects with more pleasure for our sakes." |