mony of the supervisor respecting the gauger; and in that capacity Burns stands up one of its very best servants before the Board. There was no call, therefore, for Josiah's Jeremiad. But our words have not been wasted; for Burns's character has suffered far more from such aspersions as these, which, easily as they can be wiped away, were too long left as admitted stains on his memory, than from definite and direct charges of specific facts; and it is still the duty of every man who writes about him, to apply the sponge. Nothing, we repeat, shall tempt us to blame or abuse the Board. But we venture humbly to confess that we do not clearly see that the Board would have been "gratifying its tenderness at the expense of the public," had it, when told by Burns that he was dying, and disabled by the hand of God from performing actively the duties of his temporary supervisorship, requested its maker to continue to him for a few months his full salary-seventy pounds a year-instead of reducing it in the proportion of one-half-not because he was a genius, a poet, and the author of many immortal productionsbut merely because he was a man and an exciseman, and moreover the father of a few mortal children, who with their mother were in want of bread.

Gray, whom we knew well and highly esteemed, was a very superior man to honest Findlater—a man of poetical taste and feeling, and a scholar-on all accounts well entitled to speak of the character of Burns; and though there were no bounds to his enthusiasm when poets and poetry were the themes of his discourse, he was a worshipper of truth, and rightly believed that it was best seen in the light of love and admiration. Compare his bold, generous, and impassioned eulogy on the noble qualities and dispositions of his illustrious friend, with the timid, guarded, and repressed praise for ever bordering on censure, of biographers who never saw the poet's face, and yet have dared to draw his character with the same assurance of certainty in their delineations as if they had been of the number of his familiars, and had looked a thousand times, by night and day, into the saddest secrets of his heart. Far better, surely, in a

world like this, to do more rather than less than justice to the goodness of great men. No fear that the world, in its final

judgment, will not make sufficient deduction from the laud, if it be exaggerated, which love, inspired by admiration and pity, delights to bestow, as the sole tribute now in its power, on the virtues of departed genius. Calumny may last for ages-we had almost said for ever; lies have life even in their graves, and centuries after they have been interred they will burst their cerements, and walk up and down, in the face of day, undistinguishable to the weak eyes of mortals from truths-till they touch; and then the truths expand, and the lies shrivel up, but after a season to reappear, and to be welcomed back again by the dwellers in this delusive world.

"He was courted," says Gray, "by all classes of men for the fascinating powers of his conversation, but over his social scene uncontrolled passion never presided. Over the social bowl, hi wit flashed for hours together, penetrating whatever it struck ̧ like the fire from heaven; but even in the hour of thoughtless gaiety and merriment I never knew it tainted by indecency. It was playful or caustic by turns, following an allusion through all its windings; astonishing by its rapidity, or amusing by its wild originality and grotesque yet natural combinations, but never, within my observation, disgusting by its grossness. In his morning hours, I never saw him like one suffering from the effects of last night's intemperance. He appeared then clear and unclouded. He was the eloquent advocate of humanity, justice, and political freedom. From his paintings, virtue appeared more lovely, and piety assumed a more celestial mien. While his keen eye was pregnant with fancy and feeling, and his voice attuned to the very passion which he wished to communicate, it would hardly have been possible to conceive any being more interesting and delightful. * * * The men with whom he generally associated, were not of the lowest order. He numbered among his intimate friends, many of the most respectable inhabitants of Dumfries and the vicinity. Several of those were attached to him by ties that the hand of calumny, busy as it was, could never snap asunder. They admired the poet for his genius, and loved the man for the candor, generosity, and kindness of his nature. His early friends clung to him through good and bad report, with a zeal and fidelity that prove their

disbelief of the malicious stories circulated to his disadvantage. Among them were some of the most distinguished characters in this country and not a few females, eminent for delicacy, taste, and genius. They were proud of his friendship, and cherished him to the last moment of his existence. He was endeared to them even by his misfortunes, and they still retain for his memory that affectionate veneration which virtue alone inspires."

Gray tells us too that it came under his own view professionally, that Burns superintended the education of his childrenand promising children they were, nor has that promise been disappointed with a degree of care that he had never known surpassed by any parent whatever; that to see him in the happiest light you had to see him, as he often did, in his own house, and that nothing could exceed the mutual affection between husband and wife in that lowly tenement. Yet of this man, Josiah

Walker, who claims to have been his friend as well as James Gray, writes, "soured by disappointment, and stung with occasional remorse, impatient of finding little to interest him at home, and rendered inconstant from returns of his hypochondriacal ailment, multiplied by his irregular life, he saw the difficulty of keeping terms with the world; and abandoned the attempt in a rash and regardless despair!"

It may be thought by some that we have referred too frequently to Walker's Memoir, perhaps that we have spoken of it with too much asperity, and that so respectable a person merited tenderer treatment at our hands. He was a respectable person, and for that very reason, we hope by our strictures to set him aside for ever as a biographer of Burns. He had been occasionally in company with the Poet in Edinburgh, in 1787, and had seen him during his short visit at Athol house. "Circumstances led him to Scotland in November, 1795, after an absence of eight years, and he felt strongly prompted" to visit his old friend; for your common-place man immediately becomes hand in glove with your man of genius, to whom he has introduced himself, and ever after the first interview designates him by that flatter

ing appellation "my friend." "For this purpose I went to Dumfries, and called upon him early in the forenoon. I found him in a small house of one story. He was sitting in a win

dow-seat reading with the doors open, and the family arrangements going on in his presence, and altogether without that snugness and seclusion which a student requires. After conversing with him for some time, he proposed a walk, and promised to conduct me through some of his favorite haunts. We accordingly quitted the town, and wandered a considerable way up the beautiful banks of the Nith. Here he gave me an account of his latest productions, and repeated some satirical ballads which he had composed, to favor one of the Candidates at last election. These I thought inferior to his other pieces, though they had some lines in which dignity compensated for coarseness. He repeated also his fragment of an Ode to Liberty, with marked and peculiar energy, and showed a disposition which, however, was easily repressed, to throw out political remarks, of the same nature with those for which he had been reprehended. On finishing our walk, he passed some time with me at the inn, and I left him early in the evening, to make another visit at some distance from Dumfries. On the second morning after I returned with a friend—who was acquainted with the poet-and we found him ready to pass a part of the day with us at the inn. On this occasion I did not think him quite so interesting as he had appeared at the outset. His conversation was too elaborate, and his expression weakened by a frequent endeavor to give it artificial strength. He had been accustomed to speak for applause in the circles which he frequented, and seemed to think it necessary, in making the most common remark, to depart a little from the ordinary simplicity of language, and to couch it in something of epigrammatic point. In his praise and censure he was so decisive, as to render a dissent from his judgment difficult to be reconciled with the laws of good breeding. His wit was not more licentious than is unhappily too venial in higher circles, though I thought him rather unnecessarily free in the avowal of his excesses. Such were the clouds by which the pleasures of the evening were partially shaded, but coruscations of genius were visible between them. When it began to grow late, he showed no disposition to retire, but called for fresh supplies of liquor with a freedom which might be excusable, as we were in an inn, and no condition had been distinctly made,

though it might easily have been inferred, had the inference been welcome, that he was to consider himself as our guest; nor was it till he saw us worn out, that he departed about three in the morning with a reluctance, which probably proceeded less from being deprived of our company, than from being confined to his own. Upon the whole, I found this last interview not quite so gratifying as I had expected; although I discovered in his conduct no errors which I had not seen in men who stand high in the favor of society, or sufficient to account for the mysterious insinuations which I heard against his character. He on this occasion drank freely without being intoxicated—a circumstance from which I concluded, not only that his constitution was still unbroken, but that he was not addicted to solitary cordials; for if he had tasted liquor in the morning, he must have easily yielded to the excess of the evening. He did not, however, always escape so well. About two months after, returning at the same unseasonable hour from a similar revel, in which he was probably better supported by his companions, he was so much disordered as to occasion a considerable delay in getting home, where he arrived with the chill of cold without, and inebriety within," &c.

a

And for this the devotee had made what is called " pilgrimage to the shrine of genius" as far as Dumfries! Is this the spirit in which people with strong propensities for poetry are privileged to write of poets, long after they have been gathered to their rest? No tenderness—no pity— no respect-no admiration-no gratitude-no softening of heart -no kindling of spirit--on recollection of his final farewell to Robert Burns! If the interview had not been satisfactory, he was bound in friendship to have left no record of it. Silence in that case was a duty especially incumbent on him who had known Burns in happier times, when "Dukes, and Lords, and mighty Earls" were proud to receive the ploughman. He might not know it then, but he knew it soon afterwards, that Burns was much broken down in body and spirit.

Those two days should have worn to him in retrospect a mournful complexion; and the more so, that he believed Burns to have been then a ruined man in character, which he had once