Dr Currie has scarcely left any thing to do in illus trating the merit of his chief poems individually ; and we owe no small degree of gratitude to the memory of that good and great man, for so fully executing the trust of a critic and biographer to the poet of Scotland. Holy Billie's Prayer, which I)r Currie has omitted, is inferior to nothing which Burns has written in force of humour ; and his Cantata of the Beggars, which Dr Currie has likewise omitted, is another inimitable picture from low life.
We trust, as Scotchmen, we shall be pardoned for dis cussing at such length. the merits of a poet so peculiar in genius and circumstances. It is not that we under rate the living or the future generation, when we say, that " we shall not look upon his like again." Our an cient language is expiring, and with Burns, or with Mac niel at least, it is probable, that Scottish poetry will also expire ; we dwell therefore with fondness on the last voice of our Doric muse. We may find again the same genius spring from a cottage, and sufficiently acquainted with veritable life, to interest us in whatever belongs to simplicity and rustic nature ; but we shall not again hear a poet, in that dialect which is at once venerable front ancient associations, and endearing, because it has been the real language of our childhood, and entwined with our earliest recollections. The affected rust of obsolete
words, will not be a substitute for this natural Let them plant the moss of language ever so thickly. poets only make out of this phraseology an artificial 1 2, pile of ruins. But II-urn's song is, to a Scotchmau m foreign land, the ran= de vaehes of his country. On the banks of the Ganges, or the Ohio, it recall to him scenes of his playfellows, the images of his brothers and his sisters ; it speaks to him also of Bruce and of Wallace in the very language which the heroes themselves spoke.
" He was alive (says Dr Currie,) to every species of emotion. He is one of the few poets, who have at once excelled in humour, in tenderness, and in sublimity ; praise unknown to the ancients, and which, in modern times, is only due to Ariosto, to Shakespeare, and per haps to Voltaire. To compare the writings of the Scot tish peasant with the works of these giants in literature, might appear presumptuous, yet it may be asserted, that he has displayed the foot of (>;)