followers on that eventful morning." BURNS TO G. THOMSON, September 1792. PAGE 233, NOTE 369.-According to some of Burns's commentators, this song was written in 1793, on the occasion of Clarinda's purposed departure to join her hus band in the West Indies. This is a mistake. The words might, very possibly, have been suggested by such a circumstance; but the song was written in 1794 for Thomson's collection, Burns having previously suggested the air of Oran Gaoil to his correspondent, and expressed his admiration of it.

But to think I was betrayed,
[sunder!
That falsehood e'er our loves should
To take the flow'ret to my breast,
And find the guilefu' serpent under.
Could I hope thou'dst ne'er deceive,
I'd slight, nor seek in other spheres
Celestial pleasures, might I choose 'em,
That heaven I'd find within my bosom.
Stay my Willie-yet believe me,
Stay, my Willie-yet believe me,
For, ah! thou knows't na' every pang
Wad wring my bosom shouldst thou
leave me.'

PAGE 239, NOTE 374.-The following passage, which conveys a very analogous occurs in Wycherley's Comedy of The Plain Dealer :--

PAGE 237, NOTE 372.-The title of this song is of remote date in the English version, and even the opening lines have been retained. The air, however, had never before been coupled with it, and the length of the stanzas was cut down, and the song otherwise remodelled by Burns for Thomson's collection, in which it was coupled with Burns's favourite tune of Dainty Davie.

PAGE 239, NOTE 273.-The supposition that this song was elicited as a kind of penitential address to Mrs. Riddel, of Woodlee park, in consequence of an affront offered to her by the poet when intoxicated, is by no means well founded. The purport of the song in no way concerned Burns personally, it was written for a friend as an apostrophe to an offended mistress, and the reply was also by the hand of Burns, who was thus employed on both sides in the dispute. The reply runs thus:

"Stay, my Willie-yet believe me, Stay, my Willic-yet believe me, For, ah! thou know'st na' every pang, Wad wring my bosom shouldst thou leave me. Tell me that thou yet art true,

And a' my wrongs shall be forgiven, And when this heart proves fause to thee, Yon sun shall cease its course in heaven.

"I weigh the man, not his title: 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you bend every way, and who debases the stamp he bears."

PAGE 240, NOTE 375.-"Composed on a passion which a Mr. Gillespie, a particular friend of mine, had for a Miss Lorimer, afterwards Mrs. Whelpdale. The young lady was born at Cragieburn Wood" (near Moffat).-BURNS. Mrs. Whelpdale at future date became the heroine Chloris, under which appellation she is the subject of many songs by Burns. It is painful to add, that this beautiful woman eventually sank into the lowest state of female degradation, and died in misery at Mauchline a few years ago.-CHAMBERS.

PAGE 240, NOTE 376.-"Craigieburn Wood is situated on the banks of the river Moffat, and about three miles distant from the village of that name, celebrated for its medicinal waters. The woods of Cragieburn and of Dumcrieff, were at one time favourite haunts of our poet. It was there he met the Lassie wi' the lint-white locks,' and that he conceived several of his beautiful lyrics.” -CURRIE.

PAGE 241, NOTE 377.-This song was composed on the same occasion, and suggested by the same incident, as that to which the song, Had I a Cave, is also attributable, namely, a disappointment in love which befel Mr. Alexander Cunningham, the mutual friend of Burns and Thomson. The date of this song is 1795.

PAGE 242, NOTE 378.-In the original manuscript this line runs, He up the Gateslack to my black cousin Bess.' Mr. Thomson objected to this word, as well as to the word Dalgarnock, in the next verse. Robert Burns replied as follows :

Gateslack is the name of a particular place, a kind of passage up among the Lawther hills, on the confines of this county. Dalgarnock is also the name of a romantic spot near the Nith, where are still a ruined church and a burial-ground. However, let the first rune up the lang loan, &c.”

"It is always a pity to throw out anything that gives locality to our poet's verses."CURRIE.

PAGE 243, NOTE 379.-The heroine of this song was Mrs. Burns's endeared young friend, Miss Jessy Lewars, sister to one of Burns's associates in office-since wife of Mr. James Thomson, writer, Dumfries.

PAGE 244, NOTE 380.-This was the first attempt of Burns in verse. It was composed, according to his own account, in his sixtee..th year, on a "bonnie sweet sonsie lass," who was his companion on the harvest field. See his letter to Dr. Moore. He says elsewhere" For my own part, I never had the least inclination of turning poet, till I once got heartily in love, and then rhyme and song were in a manner the spontaneous language of my heart. This composition was the first of my performances, and done at an early period of life, when my heart glowed with honest warm simplicity, unacquainted and uncorrupted with the ways of a wicked world. The performance is, indeed, very puerile and silly; but I am always pleased with it, as it recalls to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest, and my tongue was sincere."

PAGE 244, NOTE 381.-This autobiographical song, as it may be called, is understood to have been composed during the most depressed period of the poet's early fortunes, when struggling with family distresses at Lochlee. It is a wild rhapsody," he says, "miserably deficient in versification; but as the sentiments are the are the genuine feelings of my heart, I have a particular pleasure in conning it over.”—CHAMBERS.

PAGE 245, NOTE 382.-It has been said that there was some foundation in fact for this tale of a gossip-a wayfaring woman, who chanced to be present at the poet's birth, having actually announced some such prophecies respecting the infant placed in her arms.

Some similar circumstances attended the birth of Mirabeau.

PAGE 245, NOTE 383.-It may be gratifying to curiosity to know the fates of the six belles of Mauchline. Miss Helen Miller, the first mentioned, became the wife of Burns's friend, Dr. Mackenzie. The divine Miss Markland was married to a Mr. Finlay, an officer of Excise at Greenock. Miss Jean

Smith was afterwards Mrs. Candlish. Miss Betty (Miller) became Mrs. Templeton, and Miss Morton married a Mr. Paterson. Of Armour's history immortality has taken charge.

The Glasgow Herald of Saturday, September 6th, 1851, has the following notice of the death of the last of the Mauchline Belles, "Died on Saturday, the 30th ult. (August 1851), Mrs. Findlay, relict of Robert Findlay, Esq., of the Excise. In ord nary circumstances, the departure from this life of a respectable lady, ripe in years, would not have afforded matter of general interest; but it happens that the deceased was one of the very few persons surviving to our own times, who intimately knew the peasant bard in the first flush of his genius and manhood, and by whom her name and charms have been wedded to immortal verse. She was the di ine " Miss Markland, noticed in the "Belles of Mauchline." Miss Markland became the wife of Mr. Findlay, officer of Excise, of Tarbolton, a gentlemen who was appointed to instruct the bard in the mysteries of gauging. The connection thus formed between Burns and Findlay, led to the introduction of the latter to Miss Markland, and his subsequent marriage to her in September of the same year (1788). Mrs. Findlay was in her 23rd year at the time of her marriage, and in her 86th at the time of her death."

PAGE 245, NOTE 384.-Jean Armour, afterwards Mrs. Robert Burns who, as is well known, survived the poet.

PAGE 245, NOTE 385.-This little fragment was composed in consequence of a momentary glimpse which the poet one day obtained of a beautiful young female, who rode up to an inn at Ayr, as the poet was mounting his horse to leave it.

PAGE 216, NOTE 335.-Killie, a familiar appellation amongst the country people for Kilmarnock. This song was composed in allusion to a meeting of the Kilmarnock Mason Lodge, which took place in 1786, and at which William Parker, one of the poet's oldest friends presided, and which Burns himself attended. The song was an impromptu, and was sung, as it is believed, at this very meeting.

PAGE 246, NOTE 387 (misprinted 386).The air of Bonnie Dundee appears in the Skene MS., of date circa 1620. The tune seems to have existed at even an earlier period, as there is a song to it amongst those which were written by the English, to disparage the Scottish followers by whom James VI. was attended on his arrival in the south. The first of the following verses is

from an old homely ditty, the second only being the composition of Burns.

PAGE 249, NOTE 388.-"This song is said to be a homely version of a Highland lament for the ruin which followed the rebellion of the "forty-five." Burns heard it sung in one of his northern excursions, and begged a transcription."-CUNNINGHAM.

PAGE 251, NOTE 389.-Written at the commencement of his residence at Ellisland, to express the buoyant feelings which animated him on that occasion, when, as he himself informs us, he enjoyed a few days, the most tranquil, if not the happiest, he had ever experienced.

PAGE 255, NOTE 390.—This ballad is, as well as some of those which have preceded it, dedicated to the turmoil of the parliamentary election at Dumfries, in which Burns took as active a part as he well could on the tory side: -to wit, in the election of 1790. In the "Five, Carlines," as well as in the "Second Epistle to Mr. Graham of Fintry;" the poet appeared to reserve a neutral position, merely sketching the events as they occurred; and, in fact, it was obvious, seeing his dependency upon a government situation, that he should observe some measure in his political writings. Burns's genius had moreover acquired for him friends amongst men of all parties, many of whom in the heat of a political contest, might have felt aggrieved at any uncalled for violence on his part. The secret Jacobitish yearnings of Burns naturally impelled him to the side of Sir James Johnstone, the tory and Pittite candidate, whilst being the tenant of Mr. Miller, father of the whig or opposition candidate, to whom he was indebted for much personal kindness, he could not well signalise himself by any very decided exertion against Mr. Miller the younger. In this ballad "the Laddies of the Banks of Nith," he does not retain such very decided neutrality, and pretty clearly allows his tory predilections to oose out. It must be noticed, however, that the toryism of Burns was merely a traditionary love for the native Scotch race of princes, and a detestation for the usurping dynasty (as he thought) of Brunswick; for in abstract political principles, it may easily be gathered from his writings that he had a far greater leaning towards Jacobinism, than towards the exploded principle of the divine right of kings. Sir Walter Scott, writing to Mr. Lockhart, with an enclosure of a whole parcel of letters of Burns says:-"In one of them to that singular old curmudgeon, Lady Winifred Constable, you will see he plays high Jacobite, and on that account it is curious; though I fancy his Jacobitism, like mine, belonged to

He

the fancy, rather than to the reason. was, however, a great Pittite down to a certain period, that is, until the influx of Jacobinism from the outbreak of 1789, when he certainly became more decidedly Jacobin than Jacobite. There were some passing stupid verses in the papers, attacking and defending his satire on a certain preacher whom he termed an unco calf. In one of them occurred these lines in vituperation of the adversary:A whig I guess; but Rab's a tory, And gies us mony a funny story. This was in 1787."

In the "Laddies of the banks of Nith,' Burus first alludes to the great influence of the Duke of Queensberry, owing to his extensive landed possessions in the neighbourhood. The Duke of Queensberry figures in no enviable light, either politically or privately.—A life spent in mere selfish gratification and profligacy, and a political career stamped with his protest of December 26th, 1788, on the Regency question, are very concisely lashed.

PAGE 256, NOTE 391.-Captain Grose himself, was the first and most earnest to relish the point of this epigram. It was an impromptu of one of the drinking parties or nightly carousals of these "guid fellows."

PAGE 256, NOTE 392.-An allusion to the excessive corpulency of Captain Grose, which was a common subject of joke with himself.

PAGE 256, NOTE 393.-"Stopping at a merchant's shop, a friend of mine, in Edinburgh, one day put Elphinstone's translation of Martial into my hand, and desired my opinion of it. I asked permission to write my opinion in a blank leaf of the book, which, being granted, I wrote this epigram." -BURNS. A similar idea occurs in a mockheroic poem, entitled the Knight, by William Meston, who, in allusion to Dr. J. Trapp's translation of the Georgics of Virgil, says:

Read the commandment, Trapp, proceed no further;

For there 'tis written, thou shalt do no

murder."

PAGE 256, NOTE 394.-The Miss Burns | who was the subject of these lines, was a young English woman, settled in Edinburgh -as remarkable for the laxity of her demeanour, as for the exquisite beauty of her person. She figured in the less rigid society of some of our wits, and her portrait was engraved and published by Mr. John Kay. It was on one of these engravings that

512

Burns wrote the lines which it sug-| gested.

PAGE 257, NOTE 395.-These lines were in reply to a question put to the poet: "Wherefore Miss Davies (a particular favourite of Burns's) should have been made so diminutive, and another lady named, so large in proportion ?"

PAGE 257, NOTE 396.-The occasion which suggested these lines, was the receipt of intelligence that the Austrians had been totally routed at Gemappes, by General Dumourier (1792.)

PAGE 257, NOTE 397.-Burns, accompanied by a friend, having gone to Inverary at a time when some company were there on a visit to his Grace the Duke of Argyle, finding himself and his companion entirely neglected by the innkeeper, whose whole attention seemed to be occupied with the visitors of his grace, expressed his disapprobation of the incivility with which he was treated, in the above lines.

Page 257, NotE 398.-Composed and repeated by Burns, to the master of the house, on taking leave at a place in the Highlands, where he had been hospitably entertained.

PAGE 257, NOTE 399.-Spoken, in reply to a gentleman, who sneered at the sufferings of Scotland for conscience-sake, and called the Solemn League and Covenant ridiculous and fanatical.

PAGE 258, NOTE 400.-These were a society of friends of the government, who assumed an exclusive loyalty during the fervours of the French Revolution. The above lines were written in consequence of the receipt, at a convivial meeting, of the following senseless quatrain from one of the Loyal Natives

"Ye sons of sedition, give ear to my song, Let Syme, Burns, and Maxwell, pervade every throng,

With Craken the attorney, and Mundell the quack,

Send Willie the monger to hell with a smack."

PAGE 258, NOTE 401.-When the Board of Excise informed Burns that his business was to act, and not to think and speak, he read the order to a friend, turned the paper, and wrote what he called The Creed of Poverty-CUNNINGHAM,

PAGE 258, NOTE 402.-" These lines are addressed to John Taylor, blacksmith, at Wanlockhead, on being indebted to him, one winter's day between Dumfries-shire and Ayrshire, for a small cast of his office."BURNS.

PAGE 259, NOTE 403.—Burns was called upon for a song at a dinner of the Dumfries Volunteers, in honour of Rodney's victory of the 12th of April, 1782. He replied to the call by pronouncing the following.

PAGE 259, NOTE 404.—This was at the King's Arms Inn, Dumfries, and was suggested by hearing some person speak in terms of reproach of the officers of his Majesty's Excise.

PAGE 259, NOTE 405.-This lady, in her early days, was an intimate friend of Mrs. Burns, and also a great favourite with the poet, who esteemed her sprightly and affectionate character. During his last illness, his surgeon, Mr. Brown, brought in a long sheet, containing the particulars of a menagerie of wild beasts which he had just been visiting. As Mr. Brown was handing the sheet to Miss Lewars, Burns seized it, and wrote upon it these verses with red chalk ; after which he handed it to Miss Lewars, saying that it was now fit to be presented to a lady. Miss Lewars afterwards married Mr. James Thomson, of Dumfries.

PAGE 259, NOTE 406.-While Miss Lewars was waiting upon him in his sick chamber, the poet took up a crystal goblet containing wine and water, and after writing upon it these verses, in the character of a Toast, presented it to her.

PAGE 259, NOTE 407.-At this time of trouble, on Miss Lewars complaining of indisposition, he said, to provide for the worst, he would write her epitaph. He accordingly inscribed these lines on another goblet, saying, "That will be a compauion

to the Toast.

PAGE 260, NOTE 408.-Quotation from Goldsmith.

PAGE 260, NOTE 409.-James Humphry. PAGE 260, NOTE 410.-Mr. John Wilson, printer, of Kilmarnock, by whom the first edition of Burns's Poems was produced.

PAGE 261, NOTE 411.-(Misprinted 409). The father of Dr. Richardson, who accompanied Franklin's expedition.-CHAMBERS.