The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1825-09-16 00:00:00

zirriaAßY GLEANINGS.
No. XXX.

•• J. t

OBSPYATIOS. MINTS, &e. FROM Tin AIS. PRE-
I.STED BY ROBERT BURNS TO 31R. RIDDEL.

us hoswillog over some old papers I lighted on a 14S.
fan,, in which I had determined to write my-
= was placed by fortune among a class of men
eesibern my ideas would have been nonsense. i had
tneutt that the book should have lain by me, in the fond
hope that, some time or other, even after I was no more,
my thoughts would fall into the hands of somebody capable
of appreciating their value. It sets off thus :
Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c., by
It. 8.--a Mtn who had little art in making money, and
still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some
sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded goo.:-will
to every creature, rational and irrational. As he was but
little indebted to scholastic educatme.ifid bred at a plough
t be strongly tinctured with his
way Of life : but ri I believe they really
fero, it may be some entertainment to a curious
albumin nature to see how, a plotighmao thinks
2ratti
:wilder the pressure of lorie . unbitten, anxiety,
grief, w the like trues and passion', which, however
divereifled by the modes and manners of life, operate pretty
much alike, I believe, on all the species.
" There arc numbers in the world who do not *ant
sense to make a figure, so much as an opinion of ther own
abilities, to put them upon recording their observations,
and allowing them the same importance which they do to',
those which appear in frint."—Shenstone.
" pleasing when youth has long expired, to true,
The Kerns our pencil, or our pen deaign'd !
Swab was our youthful sir, and shape, and face,..._ ....
Such the soft image of our youthful Inind."—liiml.
April, 1783.
Notwithstanding all that had Men *id_ &plan love, re-
specting the folly and weakness it leads aryoupg loexpetti-
rated wind into, still I think it In a great mesietre deserves
the highest encomiums that have been passed on it., If
any thing on earth deserves the name of rapture or traha-
port, it is the feelings of green eighteen, in the company
of the mistress of his heart, when sire repays hith with an
equal return of affectiOn.
August.
Moe is certainly some connexion hetrieen love, and
sonata, and poetry; and, therefore, I have always thought
e line touch of nature, that passage in a modem love-com-
lwaition—
" As toward her cot he)ogg'd along,
Her name was frequent in his song."
For my own part, I never had the least thought or in-
clination of turning poet, till I got once heartily its love;
and then rhyme and song were, in a manner, the sponta-
neous language of my heart.
September.
I entirely agree with that •judisious philosopher, Mr.
Satire, in his excellent Theory of Moral Sentiments, that
remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the
humao bosom. .Iny ordinary pitch of fortitude may bear
op tolerably well under those calamities,. in the procure-
ment of which we ourselves have had no hand ; but when
ear own follies or crimes have made us miserable and
wretched, to bear up with manly firmness, and at the same
time have a proper penitential senSe of our iniaconduct, ft
'a glorious effort of self-command.

Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peed,
That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish,
Beyond compatisoo the worst are those
That to our lolly or our guilt we owe.
In every other circumstance, the mind
Bat this to say—" It was no deed of mine;"
Bat when to all the evil of misfortune
This Wag is added—" Blame thy foolish self !"
Or weever fas, the pangs of keen remorse;
The torturing, knitrfrig eonsciouseema guilt—
Of guilt, perhaps, Where we've inv I other ;
The young, the innocent, whh f us—
Na. more, that v,:ry love their now rain !
0 burning hell 1 in all thy store of torments,
There's not a ktener lash !
Lives there a utan so firm, who, while his heart
Feels ail the bitter horrors of his crime,
Can reason down its agonising throbs;
And, after proper purpose of amendment,
Cu firmly tune his jarring thoughts to pence !
0, happy ! happy ! enviable man !
0 glorious usaguanisnity of soul !

March, 1 7 84.

I have often obsetved, in the ecrurte of m experience of
hum fife, evtry rim. even the wows., has setertefing
Stitie—abssai.4-serp Alen w•sbmg-eisr Ail a
app tem'erpiaeut f constitution inclining him to this or
that virtue. Fur this rearm, no man can say in what de-
gree any other person, besides himself, can be. with strict
justice, called wicked. Let any of the strictest character
for regularity of conduct among us, examine impartially
how many vices he hai never been gbilty of, not frbm any
tire or vigilance, but from want of opportunity, or some
accidental circumstancti intervening how many of the
weaknesses of mankind he his escaped, because he was out
of the line of such temptation ; and, what often, if not
always, weighs more than all the rent, how much he is in-
debted to the world's g6od Opinion, bet'ause the world does
rot know all--I say, anylman who can thus think, will
scan the failings, nay, the .aults and crimes, of mankind
around him, with a brother's eye.
I have often courted the acquaintance of that part
of mankind commonly known by the ordinary phrase
of blackguards, sometimes farther than was consistent with
the safety of my character; those who, by thoughtless
prodigality or headstrong passions, have been driven to ruin.
Though disgraced by follies. nay sometimes " stained with
guilt, ***** • ° °," I have yet found among them,
In not a few instances, some of the noblest virtues, mag-
nanimity, generosity, disinterested friendship, and even
modesty.
April.
As I am what the then tif the *mid, if they knew such
a man, would call a whimsical mortal, I have various
sources of pleasure and enjoyment, which are, in a manner,
peculiar to myself, or some here and there such other out-
of-the-way person. Such is the peculiar pleasure I take in
the season of winter, tno!e than the rest of the year. This
I bel:eve may be partly owing to rgy misfortunes giving
Thy mind a melancholy East; but there is something even
in the

" Mighty tempest, and the hoary waste
Abrupt and deep, metered o'er the buried earth,"—
which rakes the mind to a serious sublimity, favourable to
(very thing great and noble. there is scarcely any earthly
object gives me mere-1 do not know if I should call it
pleasure—but something which exalts me, something
which enraptures me—than to walk in the sheltered side
of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day; and
hear the stormy wind howling among the tree's, and raving
over the plain. It is my best season for devotion: my
mind is rapt stn in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, in
the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, " walks on the
wings of the wind." In one of these 'Pawns, just after a
train of misfortunes, I composed the following:
The wintry west extends his blast, &c.
fist ?farces finely observes, that love-verses, writ With-
out sny real passion, are the most nauceous of all cone:elm;
and I have often thought that no man can be a proper
tie of love-composition, except he himself, in one or more
instances, have been a warm votary of this passion. As I
have been all along a miserable dupe to love, and hive been
led into a thousand weakness(' and follies by it, for that
reason I put the more confidence in my critical skill, in
distinguishing foppery and conceit from real passion and
nature. Whether the following song will stand the test, I
will not pretend to say, because it is my own ; only I can
say it was, at the time, genuine from the heart.
Behind yon hills, &c.
I thick the whole specks of young men may be naturally,
tnon.:!: divided into two grand classes, which I shall call
the grave and the merry ; though, by the bye, these terms
dons: with propriety enough express my ideas. The grave
I shall east into the usual division of those who are goaded
on by the love of money, and those whose darling wish is
to make a figure in the world. The merry are the men of
Pleasure of all denominations ; the jovial lads, who have too
mutt fire and spirit to have any settled rule of action ;
bu:, without much deliberation, follow the strchg itnpulses
of nature : the thoughtless, the careless, the indolent—in
ra-tvular he, who, with a hay sweetness of natural
l'rnixr, and a cheerful vacancy of pp
thought, steals through,
te—generally, indeed, in poverty and obscurity ; but pcs-
ti,rty Slid obscurity are only evils to him who can sit gravely''
ktwru and make a repining comparison between his own
situation and ;)tat of others : and, lastly, to grace the quo-
such as are, generally, v.hc.7.:: bads are caps-

• '
.ble of all the tonerings of genius, and whose hearts arc
warmed with all the delicacy of feeling.
As the grand end of human life is to cultivate an inter-
course with that Being to whom we owe life, with-every'
enjoyment that can undo. life delightful; and to maintain
an integritive conduct tolvlrdsr, war fellow-ereatates; that
so, by forming piety and shine into habit, welciy be fit
members for that society.of tea pious and the good,' which
reason and revelation teach us to expect be,yond thr grave ;
I do not see that the turn of mind and pursuits of an* son
of poverty and obscurity, arc in the feast more tnimicatl to
the sacred interests of piety and virtue, than the '(even
henful) bustling and straining after thc v:tirld's riches and
honours; and I do not see but that he rily gain Heaven
as well (which, by-the-bye, is no mean consideration),
who steals through the vale of life, amusing himself with
every little flower that fortune throws in his wry; as he
who, straining straight forward, and perhaps bespattering all
abont him, gains some of life's little eminences; Where,
after all, he can only see and be seen a little more emrspis
cuously than what, in the pride of his hart, he is apt to
term the poor indolent devil be has left behind him.
There is a noble sublimity, a heart-melting tenderness,
in some of our ancient ballads, which show them to be the
work of a masterly hand ; and it has often given me many
a herrtlache to reflect, that such glorious old bards—bards
who very probablir owed all their talents to native genius,
yet have tiescribsd the exploits of heroes, the pangs of dis-
appointment, and the meltings of love, with such fine
strokes oT natnre—that their very names (0 how mortify-
ing to a bard't vanity!) are now " buried among the
' wreck or things which were."
0 ye illustrious names unknown! who could fed so strongly
and describe so well; the last, the meanest of the muses'
train—one who, tho4h much inferior to your flights, yet
eyes your path, -and with trembling wing would sometimes
soar after yon--a poor rustic bard unknown, pays this
sympathetic pang to your memory ! Some of you tell us,
with all tbie chasms of verse, that you have been unfonen-
ateitt .vvoiS;-hbfortnnate In love : be too has felt the
ltiiiof Milling fortune, the loss Of frientTs, in& worse
than all, the law of the woman he adored. Like you, ell
his consolation was his muse : she taught him in rustic
measurer to complain. Happy could he have done it with
your strength of iinagination and flow of verse! May the
turf lie lightly on ,yoor .bones! and may you now enjoy
that solace and rest which this world rarely gives to the
heart tuned to all the feelings of poesy and love !
This kill worth quoting in my MSS. and more than all.
R. B.