Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/151

Rh popish festivals, in which superstition, traffic, and amusement, used to be so strangely intermingled. Burns saw, and seized in it one of the happiest of all subjects, to afford scope for the display of that strong and piercing sagacity by which he could almost intuitively distinguish the reasonable from the absurd, and the becoming from the ridiculous; of that picturesque power of fancy, which enabled him to represent scenes, and persons, and groupes, and looks, attitude, and gesture, in a manner almost as lively and impressive, even in words, as if all the artifices and energies of the pencil had been employed; of that knowledge which he had necessarily acquired of the manners, passions, and prejudices of the rustics around him of whatever was ridiculous, no less than of whatever was affectingly beautiful, in rural life. A thousand prejudices of popish, and perhaps too, of ruder pagan superstition, have, from time immemorial, been connected in the minds of the Scottish peasantry, with the annual recurrence of the Eve of the Festival of all the Saints, or Halloween. These were all intimately known to Burns, and had made a powerful impression upon his imagination and feelings. He chose them for the subject of a poem, and produced a piece, which is the delight of those who are best acquainted with its subject; and which will not fail to preserve the memory of the prejudices and usages which it describes, when they shall, perhaps, have ceased to give one merry evening in the year, to the cottage fireside. The simple joys, the honest love, the sincere friendship, the ardent devotion of the cottage; whatever in the more solemn part of the rustic's life is humble and artless, without being mean or unseemly or tender and dignified, without aspiring to stilted grandeur, or to unnatural, buskined pathos had deeply impressed the imagination of the rising poet; had in some sort wrought itself into the very texture of the fibres of his soul. He tried to express in verse, what he most tenderly felt, what he most enthusiastically imagined ; and produced the Cottar's Saturday Night.

These pieces, the true effusions of genius, informed by reading and observation, and prompted by his own native ardour, as well as by friendly applause, were soon handed about among the most discerning of Burns' acquaintance; and were by every new reader perused, and re-perused, with an eagerness of delight and approbation, which would not suffer him long to withhold them from the press. A subscription was proposed, was earnestly promoted by some gentlemen, who were glad to interest themselves in behalf of such signal poetical merit; was soon crowded with the names of a considerable number of the inhabitants of Ayrshire, who, in the proffered purchase, sought not less to gratify their own passion for Scottish poesy, than to encourage the wonderful ploughman. At Kilmarnock were the poems of Burns for the first time printed. The whole edition was quickly distributed over the country.

It is hardly possible to express, with what eager admiration and delight they were every where received. They eminently possessed all those qualities which can contribute to render any literary work quickly and permanently popular. They were written in a phraseology, of which all the powers were universally felt; and which being at once antique, familiar, and now rarely written, was hence fitted to serve all the dignified and picturesque uses of poetry, without making it unintelligible. The imagery, the sentiments, were, at once, faithfully natural, and irresistibly impressive and interesting. Those topics of satire and scandal in which the rustic delights ; that humorous delineation of character, and that witty association of ideas, familiar and striking, yet not naturally allied to one another, which has force to shake his sides with laughter; those fancies of superstition, at which he still wonders and trembles; those