» 560 
of their ignorance, their want of tafte, 
their’ extravagance of fancy, their want 
of abufe of the advantages of a liberal 
education. Burns has no pardon to 
‘demand for defeéts of this fort. 
might {corn every concefiion which we 
are ready to grant to his peculiar cir- 
cumftances, are ai ie being, on this ac- 
count, reduced to relinquith any part of 
his claims to the praife of poetical excel- 
lénce. He touches his lyre, at all times, 
with the hand of a Pitas He demands 
‘to be ranked, not with the Woop- 
HOUSES, the Ducks, the RAMSA¥s, 
but with the MiLtTons, the Poress, the 
GRa¥ He cannot be denied to have 
been largely endowed with that trong 
common fenfe 
writing. 
“The next remarkable quality in this 
man’s charactér, feems to have confifted 
in native ftreng th, ARDOUR, and deli- 
cacy OF FEELINGS, paffions. “and affec- 
tions. Sz wis me flere., dtlendum primum 
eft ipfi tibi.’ All that is valuable in poetry, 
and, at the fame time, peculiar tO It, 
confit ts in the effufion of particular, not 
general, fentimeni, and in ‘the ‘picturing 
out of ‘particular imagery. But educa- 
cation, reading, a wide converie with 
men in fociety, the moft extenfive ob- 
fervation of external nature, however 
uifeful to improve, cannot, even all com- 
bined, confer the power of apprehending 
either Imagery or Sentiment ‘with fuch 
force and vivacity of conception as may 
enable one to imprefs whatever he may 
choofe upon the fouls of others, with 
full, irrefiftible, electric energy ; this is 
4 power which nought can beftow, fave 
mative foundnefs, delicacy, quickneds, 
ardour, force of thofe parts of dur bodily 
organization, of thofe energies in the 
firuéture of our minds, on which depend 
all cur fenfations, emotions, appetites, 
afions, and affections. “Who ever 
ew a man of high original genius, 
whole fenfes were imperfect, his feelings 
dull and callous, his paffions all languid 
and ftagnant, his affections without ar- 
dour, and without conftancy? Others 
may be artifans, fpeculatifts, imitators 
in the fine arts: none but the man who 
is thus richly endowed by nature, can 
be a poet, an artift, an illuftrious in- 
ventor in philofophy. Let any perfon 
Jrf poffefs this  criginal foundnefs, 
vigour, and delicacy of the primary ener- 
gies of mind; and sea let him receive 
iome impreffion upon his imagination, 
Which fhall excite a paffion for this or 
Original Memoirs of the late Robert Burns. 
He 
wHich is neceJarily the’ 
very feurce and” principle of ail fine 
[Supe 
that particular purfuit : he will fcarcely 
fail to diftinguith himfelf by illuftrious 
efforts of exalted. and original genius. 
Without-having, frf, thofe‘fimple ideas 
which belong,” “refpeétively, to the dif- 
ferent fenfes, no man can ever form for 
himfelf the complex notions, into the 
compofition of which fuch fimple ideas _ 
neceflarily enter.. Never could Burws, 
‘without this delicacy, this frréngth, this 
vivacity of the powers of bodily fenfar 
tion, and of mental feeling, which. I 
aoa here claim as the indifpeafible 
native endowments of ‘true _genlas— 
without thefe, never could he have pour- 
ed fortl: thofe fentiments, or pourtrayed 
thofe images which have fo powerfuily 
impreficd every imagination, and pene- 
trated every heart. Al moft 2! the fen- 
timents and images -diffufed tt hroughout 
the poems cf Buxws, are freth from ‘the 
mint of naturé. He fings w hat he had © 
himfelf Dbelield wich. interefted atten- 
tion—-what he had himfelf fele with: 
keen emotions of pain or pleafure. You 
actually fee what he defcribes; you more 
than tympathize with his joys ; your 
bofom is inflamed with all his fire; your 
heart dies away within you, infected by 
the contagion of his defpondency. He 
‘exalts, for a time, the genius of his 
teader to the elevation of his own: 
and, for the moment, confers upon him 
all the powers of a poet. Quotations 
were endlefs: but any. perfon’: of 
difcernment, tafte, and feeling, who fhall 
carefully read over Burns’s book, will 
net fail to difcover. in its every page, 
abundance of thofe fentiments and 
images to which this obfervation relates ; 
it: is: Original} ty of genius, it is found- 
nefs of perception, if is delicacy of paf-> 
fion, it Is general vigour and impetuofity 
of the whole mind, by w hich fuch effeéts 
are produced. Others have fang, in the 
fame Scottifh diale&t; and in fimilar 
rhymes, many of the lame topics which 
are celebated by: Bury “but, what 
with BuRNS awes or ralGi ane. in the 
hands of others, only difgufts bv its de= 
formity, or excites contempt by its mean-. 
nefs and uninterefting fimplicity. 
A third quality which the life and 
the writings of Burns fhow to have be- 
longed to his character, was a — and 
correét DISCERNMENT of the ditinc- 
tions between RIGHT and WRONG— 
between TRUTH and FALSEHOOD; 
and this, accompanied with a ~pathionate 
preference of whatever was righ? and 
frue, with an indignant Shoe pas of 
whatever was fal/e-and morally wee 
ae ; 
