forms with which they have endowed marble? The Muse has in this indiscriminate choice mingled ranks together; for poesie, as well as love, is a leveller: she has also linked the virtuous with the vile; for poesie has her sensual feelings and her grosser regards: she has also preferred the couch of purchased pleasure to the pure bed of wedlock. This is in exceeding bad taste; for though she sips ethereal nectar nigh the stars, and stoops at midnight to quaff a gross and forbidden cup, it is unwise to sing openly of her own impurity, and lend to her shame the unwearied wings of lyric verse. Of Highland Mary I have spoken before: she was the poet's love before he was well ripened into manhood; and she died too early to save him by her sense and her spirit from those courses of indulgence, the offspring of disappointed hope.

THE BANKS O' DOON.

Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair!

How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' of care!

Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,

That wantons through the flowering thorn:
Thou mindst me of departed joys,

Departed, never to return..

VOL. IV.

Oft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon,

To see the rose and woodbine twine;
When ilka bird sang of its luve,
And fondly sae did I of mine.
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;
And
my fause luver stole my rose,

But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.

Burns wrote an earlier and more simple version of the "Banks of Doon," which is printed in the Reliques, and I certainly prefer it to the present copy. But it would be unwise to seek to divorce the song from the fine air to which it is united. Other verses have been added which I have omitted; they are not by Burns→→ who can mistake water for wine?

BEWARE O' BONNIE ANN.

Ye gallants bright, I rede you right,
Beware o' bonnie Ann;

Her comely face sae fu' o' grace,
Your heart she will trepan.

Her een sae bright, like stars by night,
Her skin is like the swan ;

Sae jimpy lac'd her genty waist,

That sweetly ye might span.

Youth, grace, and love, attendant move,
And pleasure leads the van;

In a' their charms, and conquering arms,
They wait on bonnie Ann.

The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man ;

Ye gallants braw, I rede you a',

Beware o' bonnie Ann.

The "Bonnie Ann" of this song is the daughter of Allan Masterton, one of the early friends of Burns, and the wife of John Derbyshire, Esq. a surgeon in London. The Muse of the poet was ever ready at the call of beauty or friendship-and here the call was double.

I AM A SON OF MARS.

I am a son of Mars,

Who have been in many wars,
And show my cuts and scars
Wherever I come;

This here was for a wench,
And that other in a trench,
When welcoming the French

At the sound of the drum.

My prenticeship I past

Where my leader breath'd his last, When the bloody die was cast

On the heights of Abra'm : I served out my trade

When the gallant game was played, And the Moro low was laid

At the sound of the drum.

I lastly was with Curtis
Among the floating batteries,
And there I left for witness
An arm and a limb.

Yet let my country need me,
With Elliot to head me,

I'd clatter on my stumps
At the sound of the drum.

And now, though I must beg,
With a wooden arm and leg,
And wi' mony a tatter'd rag
Hanging over my bum;
I'm as happy with my wallet,
My bottle and my callet,

As when I used in scarlet

To follow the drum.

What, though with hoary locks,
I must stand the winter shocks

1

Beneath the woods and rocks,

Oftentimes for a home;
When the tother bag I sell,
And the tother bottle tell,
I could meet a troop of hell

At the sound of the drum.

In the house of " Posie Nancie," a liberal hostlerwife in Kilmarnock, Burns gathered together, in imagination, one Saturday night, a band of mendicants, to "toom their powks and pawn their duds," and drink, and drab, and act in character. Nothing can exceed the life and gaiety, and wild naïveté of the whole performance. The festive vagrants are all distinguished from each other by their personal appearance, and by the way in which they take up their parts in the living drama of vulgar life. They all resemble each other, however, in their open defiance of social order and decorum, and in their wish of enjoying the world in common, and their open scorn of the law, the kirk, and

the king. It is, perhaps, the bitterest satire ever written on the wild principles of animal liberty which the French Revolution made popular; which made many a lady a mother without the constraint of wedlock, and sought to introduce a free and tolerant system. of intercourse between the sexes. To this motley crowd a maimed soldier, with his knapsack on his back, and his doxy in his arms, chants this song of his own adventures, and I know not where to find the like specimen of military licence and animation.