Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/268

260 of any mighty magic in these lines. We have read them several times, and still feel much "in our ordinary," as the phrase is. They appear to us to be poorly imagined, and extremely ill-written. What is meant by "as the lambs before me?" Is it in the same sense as "my father the deacon afore me?" the lambs that preceded me? or the lambs in my presence? What, again, is the meaning of the fourth line—"as the breeze flew o'er me?" Is it a comparison or a circumstance? Does it mean "while the breeze flew o'er me?" or, "as the breeze that flew o'er me?". In the one way it is idle; in the other ungrammatical. "Sport and play," prefixed to "mirth or sang," are weak and mean. "Care and anguish seize me," is veritable Vauxhall. The second stanza is to us still less enchanting than the first. "Trembling, I dow nocht but glowr, sighing, dumb, despairing," is melancholy, but certainly not gentlemanlike! It strongly represents the stupor of a village imbecile. "If she winna ease the thraws in my bosom swelling," is so poorly and almost ludicrously expressed, that it reconciles us to consigning the supposed lover to his long home in the next couplet without a single pang. Let any man attempt to sing this song in a mixed company, to its tune of the Quaker's wife, in the most pathetic possible style, and we venture to predict that, from the word "glowr," to the conclusion, the whole table, and more particularly the young ladies, who have by far the surest sense of the beautiful or ridiculous, will be convulsed with laughter, beginning with a titter or grin and increasing gradually to a guffaw.

We are not sure whether the next sample is inserted in Mr Thomson's Collection, though it is to be found in the Correspondence. We are sure it should not have appeared in either. It is needless to point out the faults and feeblenesses, which almost overlay the germs of fancy and feeling which it contains.

To the song next in our list, our objections are of a different, and, some of our readers may think, of a more doubtful nature.

There is here a great deal of sweetness, cheerfulness, and beauty; but their effect is not, to our taste, what it ought to have been. The opening of the song reminds us, though by a feeble reflection, of other delightful lines, the offspring of a greater than Burns, and with the whole of which the slenderest excuse will justify us in adorning our pages.