SCOTT AND BURNS. 277 



there, would have very little effect upon the quagmire. 

 The observer, too, would need to be on the quagmire, 

 before he could know whether it were shaking or not ; 

 and thus he would have a great chance of shaking it 

 himself. As for the bittern thrusting its bill into the 

 earth, and jerking up its feet in the air, while it booms, 

 or for any other purpose, at any other time, it keeps the 

 bill ready for any difficult uses. In the case of jarring 

 and shaking sounds, like that of the bittern, we are very 

 apt to mislead ourselves. Our ears are shaken by the 

 pulsations of the sound ; and when the nervous system is 

 shaken by one of the senses, we are very apt to shake 

 ourselves, and transfer the shaking to other things by 

 imagination. We have often been amused at this in 

 witnessing a man looking intently on a mower at work, 

 and unconsciously swinging and keeping time, just as 

 if he also had a scythe in his hand. 



Scott and Burns are and were " men of the fields," 

 and we are not to suppose that either of them, with 

 the eyes that they had, both physical and intellectual, 

 for scene, for subject, and character, could have taken 

 at second hand, from any holder forth upon dead 

 specimens, or any shutter up of nature within the four 

 walls of an aviary, any part of the description of a 

 bird, with which they must have been as familiar as 

 man can be in its native wilds ; and yet Scott, in 

 the delightful song with which Ellen Douglas serenades 

 the disguised monarch, has these lines : 



" But the lark's shrill fife shall come, 



At the day -break from the fallow, 

 And the bittern sound his drum, 



Booming from the sedgy shallow.'* 

 2 B 



