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Lo, with dim eyes, that never learn'd To fan their glowing charms, invite the

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Flutters thy breast with fear, or pants And industry and law, maintain their sway

for fame,

Or pines, to indolence and spleen a prey,

Or avarice, a fiend more fierce than they?

Flee to the shade of Academus' grove, Where cares molest not, discord melts

away

In harmony, and the pure passions prove

How sweet the words of Truth, breathed from the lips of Love.

"What cannot Art and Industry perform,

When Science plans the progress of

their toil?

They smile at penury, disease, and storm;

And oceans from their mighty mounds recoil.

When tyrants scourge, or demagogues embroil

A land, or when the rabble's headlong rage

Order transforms to anarchy and spoil, Deep-versed in man the philosophic sage

Prepares with lenient hand their frenzy to assuage.

"'Tis he alone, whose comprehensive mind,

severe."

[POETRY: ITS INFLUENCE AND DELIGHT.]

But she, who set on fire his infant heart, And all his dreams, and all his wanderings shared

And bless'd, the Muse, and her celestial art,

Still claim th' enthusiast's fond and first regard.

From Nature's beauties, variously compared

And variously combined, he learns to frame

Those forms of bright perfection, which the bard,

While boundless hopes and boundless views inflame, Enamour'd consecrates to never-dying fame.

O late, with cumbersome, though pompous show,

Edwin would oft his flowery rhyme deface,

Through ardour to adorn; but Nature

now

To his experienced eye a modest grace Presents, where ornament the second

place

Holds, to intrinsic worth and just de

sign

Subservient still. Simplicity apace

Tempers his rage; he owns her charm

divine,

And clears th' ambiguous phrase, and lops th' unwieldy line.

Fain would I sing (much yet unsung

remains)

What sweet delirium o'er his bosom stole,

When the great shepherd of the Mantuan plains

His deep majestic melody 'gan roll: Fain would I sing what transport storm'd his soul,

How the red current throbb'd his veins

along,

When, like Pelides, bold beyond control,

Without art graceful, without effort strong,

Homer raised high to Heaven the loud, th' impetuous song.

And how his lyre, though rude her first essays,

Now skill'd to soothe, to triumph, to

complain,

He sleeps in dust, and all the Muses mourn,

He, whom each virtue fired, each grace refined,

Friend, teacher, pattern, darling of mankind!

He sleeps in dust. Ah, how shall I pursue

My theme? To heart-consuming grief resigned,

Here on his recent grave I fix my view, And pour my bitter tears. Ye flowery lays, adieu!

Art thou, my Gregory, for ever fled?
And am I left to unavailing woe?
When fortune's storms assail this weary
head,

Where cares long since have shed
untimely snow,

Ah, now for comfort whither shall I go? No more thy soothing voice my anguish cheers :

Thy placid eyes with smiles no longer glow,

My hopes to cherish, and allay my fears.

Warbling at will through each har- 'Tis meet that I should mourn: flow forth

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Sighs from a breaking heart my voice O Ross, thou wale of hearty cocks,

confound.

With trembling step, to join yon weep ing train,

Sae crouse and canty with thy jokes!
Thy hamely auld-warld 3 muse provokes
Me for awhile

I haste, where gleams funereal glare To ape our guid plain country folks
around,

And, mix'd with shrieks of woe, the knells

of death resound.

Adieu, ye lays, that Fancy's flowers adorn,

The soft amusement of the vacant mind!

In verse and style.

Sure never carle was half sae gabby,4
E'er since the winsome days of Habby.5

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Oh, mayst thou ne'er gang clung1 or
shabby,
Nor miss thy snaker! 2
Or I'll call Fortune nasty drabby,

And say, Pox take her!

Oh, may the roupe ne'er roust thy weason!3
May thrist thy thrapple never gizzen !4
But bottled ale, in mony a dizen,

Aye lade thy gantry!
And fouth o' vivres, 5 a' in season,
Plenish thy pantry!

Lang may thy stevin fill with glee
The glens and mountains of Lochlee,
Which were right gowsty? but for thee,

Whase sangs enamour

Ilk lass, and teach wi' melody

The rocks to yamour.8

Ye shak your head; but, o' my fegs,9
Ye've set auld Scota 10 on her legs,
Lang had she lien, wi' beffs and flegs

II

Yet we right couthily might settle

On this side Forth.
The devil pay1 them with a pettle,2
That slight the North.

Our country leed 3 is far frae barren,
'Tis even right pithy and auldfarren; 4
Oursels are neiper-like,5 I warran,

For sense and smergh;6
In kittle times, when faes are yarring,
We're no thought ergh.7

Oh, bonny are our green-sward hows,
Where through the birks the burny rows,8
And the bee bums, and the ox lows,

And saft winds rusle,
And shepherd-lads on sunny knows,
Blaw the blythe fusle !9

'Tis true, we Norlans manna fa',
To eat sae nice, or gang sae bra',10
As they that come from far-awa';
Yet sma's our skaith;

Bumbazed 12 and dizzie; We've peace (and that's well worth it a')
And meat and claith.

Her fiddle wanted strings and pegs,
Wae's me, puir hizzie !
Since Allan's 13 death, naebody cared
For anes to speer how Scota fared;
Nor plack 14 nor thristled turner 15 wared,

Our fine new-fangle sparks, I grant ye,
Gie puir auld Scotland mony a taunty;
They're grown sae ugertfu' and vaunty,
And capernoited,12

To quench her drouth; They guide her like a canker'd 13 aunty,
That's deaf and doited.

For, frae the cottar to the laird,

We a' rin South.

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I here might gie a skreed of names,
Dawties of Heliconian dames: *
The foremost place Gavin Douglas claims,
That pawky priest;

And wha can match the first King James
For sang or jest?

Montgomery grave, and Ramsay gay, Dunbar, Scot, Hawthornden, and mae Than I can tell; for o' my fae

I maun brak aff: 'Twould take a live-lang summer day To name the half.

The saucy chiels-I think they ca' them
Critics-the muckle sorrow claw them,
(For mense nor manners ne'er could awe
them
Frae their presumption),
They need not try thy jokes to fathom,
They want rumgumption.

But ilka Mearns an' Angus bairn
Thy tales and sangs by heart shall learn,
And chiels shall come frae yont the Cairn-
a-mouth, right vousty,3

If Ross will be so kind as share in
Their pint at Drousty.

DR GEDDES. 1737-1802.

ALEXANDER GEDDES was the son of a small farmer in the parish of Rutheven, in Banffshire, where he was born in 1737. His parents were Roman Catholics. Geddes received his early education at a village school, and the first book for which he showed a special partiality was the ordinary English Bible, the historical portions of which he is said to have committed to memory by the time he had reached his eleventh year.

About this time the Laird, or proprietor of Arradowl, the estate to which his father's farm belonged, generously admitted young Geddes to share the instructions of a tutor which he kept for the education of his family, and afterwards got him into a free seminary for the training of young Roman Catholics for the Church. At the age twenty-one

1 Pets of the Muses.

he entered the Scots College at Paris, where, in addition to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he learned French, Spanish, German, and Dutch, besides divinity and Biblical criticism. His early love of the Bible seemed to increase with his ability to investigate and compare it in the original languages; and the idea of a new translation of it appears to have occupied his thoughts before his training was completed.

In 1764, he returned to Scotland, and was appointed as a priest in the district round Dundee ; but on the invitation of the Earl of Traquair, he, in 1765, became private chaplain in the Earl's family, where he had every facility for continuing his studies. An unforeseen, though not unnatural cause, however, rendered his quitting the pleasant banks

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