The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-10 00:00:00

-"coachman, affixed to the literary sketch of this
(comer sample of humanity, is full of character.
His coat, in particular, is the very coat to a
patoh ; his nose, as it should be, is crimsoned at
,the tip, from the effects of something stronger
than tea; and his shrewd, restless eye, is symp-
tomatic of an overcharge. Don't engage him,
or if you do, be sure you take his number, for
extortion is written in every feature of his face.
This is the cleverest engraving in the Part.

MEMOIR OF MRS. AGNES
MACLEHOSE—THE CLARINDA OF BURNS.
0 gentle lady, I did hear you talk
Far above singing ; after you were gone
I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched
What stirred it so ! Alas ! I found it love !
Though the life of Burns was troubled and sorrow.
ful, yet much as he sat apart from the world with his
mournful but holy thoughts, there never was a being
whose soul was more open to joy and cheerfulness, or
whose senses were more fresh and vigorous towards the
perception and enjoyment of actual beauty. Grateful
was he to Heaven in his heart for field and forest, hill
and vale ; but more thankful far than for the green
summer, or the mild air, or the flowers or the stars, or
all that makes this world so beautiful, was he' for the
good and beautiful beings he knew in it—the fair
shapes of womankind who tended his steps or adminis-
tered to his delights.

Of kind-hearted and beauiiful women, Burns, per-
haps, by reason —a the attractive goodness of his dis-
position; and his ardent warmth of soul, was acquainted
with a larger Circle than often falls to the lot of one
man. Every page of his works glitters with some dear
and ineffaceable memory of one or other whom his
passions, or virtues prompted him to celebrate in verse.
The "lasses," as he called ihem in his own Doric lan-
guage were ever bringing a warble to his lip ; to them
his affections fastened, and the impulses of his soul,
like bright wine, were ever pouring out to them in song.
OUthis crowd of beauties, none made a more per-
manent impression upon his susceptible heart than Mrs.
Maclehose, the 'celebrated Edinburgh beauty—the
beautiful Clarinda, whom the poet loved constantly to
toast when the wine., circulated..., .the Aceoinplished
Clarinda, to whom, under the name of Sylvander, he
addressed so much piese and verse. In addition to a
countenance of the sweetest expression, and a person
the most prepossessing, Mrs. Mac., as Burns was
accustomed familiarly, or rather lovingly, to call her,
ssas possessed of those accomplishments, which render
the former irresistible. Her voice was perhaps one of
the sweetest toiled that it was possible to hear; and
when it is remembered that the poet often heard, from
her lips, his own exquisite and feeling ballads, little
surprise can be manifested that his heart was so
deeply smitten.
A few days since only, and the once-beloved of Burns
' was still in the living world, at Calton Hill, Edinburgh,
though bearing up under the weight of eighty-two years.
Her maiden name was Agnes Craig, and she subse-
quently married Mr. A. Maclehose, writer, of Glasgow.
It was on the death of her husband, and during her
youthful widowhood, that the poet became so fervently
attachedsto her ; and now that neither of them can blush
at the innocent recital of this amour; we will recite from
personal remembrances, and other sources, all that we
know of this interesting circumstance. Mrs. Maclehose,
or rather Clarinda, we are aware, had many letters in
her possession which passed between herself and Burns
upon this occasion, and she refrained, for various rea-
sons, from giving them to the world ; but it is now to
be hoped that this correspondence will speedily appear
in some complete and authentic form, at the same time
removing doubts, and revealing gratifying and delight-
ful circumstances.

While influenced by the beauty and attractions of
Mrs. Macleshose, Burns resigned himself to the two-
fold captivations of love and verse. Charlotte Hamil-
ton, who had beforetime been so long the exquisite ob-
ject of his poetic homage, had now passed away from
his memory, or if any image of her remembrance re-
mained in him, it was totally swept away or obliterated
by the newer charms of the fair Clarinda. The first
intimations of this amour, which appears to have filled
the mind of Burns for a long period with an inexpres-
sible sweetness and gratification, appears in a letter
which be wrote to his friend Richard Brown, mariner,
dated December 30, 1787 :

" Almighty love," says the poet, " still reigns and
revels in my bosom, and I am at this moment ready to
hang'myself for a young Edinburgh widow. My high-
land dirk, that used to hang beside-my crutches, I have
gravely removed into a neighbouring closet, the key of
which I cannot command in case of spring-tide pa-
roxysm. You may guess of her wit by the verses which
she sent me the other day :
" ' Talk not of love ; it gives me pain ;
For love has been my foe ;
He bound me with an iron chain,
And plunged me deep in woe.' "
But the opening of this correspondence between
Clarinda and Burns commenced by a letter from the
poet himself. It is to be found among a number of
others ; some written with tenderness and feeling ;
others bold and vehement ; but all showing the ardour
of an impassioned heart. It runs plainly and simply
thus :

" I can say with truth, Madam, that I never met
with a person in my life whom I more anxiously wished
to meet again than yourself. You are a stranger to me ;
but I eat an odd heir).-' ; some yet unnamed feelings,
things, not principles, but better than whims, carry me
further than boasted reason ever did a philosopher. Our
worthy common friend, in her usual pleasant way,
rallied me a good deal on my new acquaintance. She
tells me you are not only a critic, but a poetess."
Of the powers of Clarinda in rhyme many specimens
might be adduced, which certainly have an elegiac and
plaintive beauty about them, and which smote the
heart of Burns. Speaking of a copy of one of these,
Burns, in writing to his beautiful favourite herself,
says, " Your last verses have so delighted me that I
have got an excellent old Scots air that suits the mea-
sure, and you shall see them in print. I want
four stanzas—you gave me but three, and one
of them alluded to an expression in my former
letter ; so I have taken your two first verses, with a
slight alteration in the second, and have added a third,
but you must help me to a fourth. Your first stanza,"
continues he, still alluding to the same set, " is worthy
of Sappho ; I am in raptures with it !"
Most of the compositions addressed by Burns to
Clarinda were produced during the painful leisure
which a bruised limb afforded him. On this occasion
Clarinda was a constant visitor to the crippled bard,
and diverted him with her wit, and soothed him with
her presence. At her approach it was always apparent
that his troubled spirits grew more calm ; for
her presence was to his feverish heart like a
tropical night, beautiful, soothing, and invigorating.
Yet, strange to say, at this time, watched as he was by
beauty on his couch, and praised as a poet from
" Maidenkirk to John o'Groats," the poet was any-
thing but happy. " I have a hundred times wished.,r,
he says in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, " that one at'ald
resign life as an officer resigns his commission."
Some have chat acterised Burns' courtship of Cla-
rinda as too presumptuous and overbold, but Chose wb.o
knew Clarinda cannot but feel what Burns tbougbt of
her, when he wrote, " People of nice sensibility and
generous minds have a certain intrinsic dignity which
1
fires et being trifled with or lowered, or even too closely
approached?'And though in the 'subsequent extract
from one of his poems addressed to her, the charge of
" boldness" may seem somewhat fair, yet, when the
generous and exuberant nature of Burns is considered,
it will appear rather in the light of a noble compliment
than a licentious verse. It runs thus:—
In vain would Prudence, with a decent sneer,
Point to a censuring world and bid me fear ;
Above this world on wings of love I rise,
I know its worst, and can that worst despise ;
Wrong'd, slander'd, shunn'd, unpitied, unreAlrest,
The mock'd quotation of the scorner's jest,
Let Prudence' direst bodements on me call_
CLAamni—rich reward!—repays them all.
And, to show the durable and lasting nature of his
affection, in another part of the same poem he swears
By all on high adoring mortals know,
By all the conscious villain fears Wu;
to love her so long as the trees grow, or the streams
anh, perhaps, recovered
ee
oh
wa rTnrohkoen ii
kind
andostursdl y h run.alndip bi
inspiriting
t thisi ag attend
time, partly under Clarinda's
r verses
from the effects of his feu; and
een contemplatinghweaswote
his. departure from Edinburgh, when
the fair sun of all her sex," commencing rses to
Clarinda, mistress of :my :
:my soul
The measured time •
is
And which close with
the run
following
picturesque and
beautiful lines, that evince on the part of Clarinda a
reciprocity of feeling which
is not to be overlooked :
We part—but, b
lovely theseprecious drops
That fill thy
No other light shall eyes, guide in y steps
Till thy bright beams arise.
This season of the poet's departure seems sorely to
have agitated him. He was too deeply enamoured to
snap asunder the links of his affection with a careless
hand,
and it is beautiful to b o serve the various oppor-
tunities he seizes on, whereby be may testify by some
token or present his fast-during love. The subsequent
lines furnish a ready instance out of many. In the.
edition of his poems they are entitled, "To a Lady,
with a present of a pair of Drinking Glasser--
Fair Empress of the Poet's soul,
And Queen of Poetesses,
Clarinda, take this little boon,
This humble pair of glasses. ~
He then bids her, with her delicate .ruby lips to a
first and 'a second health, for purpo
by
therein_ reea-
tioned;but above all she is prayed him. o drink a
third, and that " third, to thee and me, love . 1 At this
time he sentler,
too, it appears, a copy of the personal
account which he gave of himself to Dr. Moore,
therein desCribing himself to her as a " very devotee
to the warmest degree of enthusiasm in love."
• The last letter that Clarinda received from him was
;fraught more than usual with spiritual and abstract
,speculation. H. endeavoured to paint to her the vision
# a pure and uaembodied state, in.whieh both he and she