ept the sounding chords along."

[Footnote 63: _Life of Scott_, by Mr. Allan, p. 53.]

His {p.120} youthful admiration of Langhorne has been rendered
memorable by his own record of his first and only interview with his
great predecessor, Robert Burns. Although the letter in which he
narrates this incident, addressed to myself in 1827, when I was
writing a short biography of that poet, has been often reprinted, it
is too important for my present purpose to be omitted here.

"As for Burns," he writes, "I may truly say, _Virgilium vidi tantum_.
I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-87, when he came first to Edinburgh,
but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry,
and would have given the world to know him; but I had very little
acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry
of the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas
Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and
promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity
to keep his word, otherwise I might have seen more of this
distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable
Professor Ferguson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary
reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart.
Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened. The only
thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's manner was the effect
produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier
lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on
the other his widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were
written beneath,--

'Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,
The child of misery baptized in tears.'

Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the ideas which it
suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the
lines were, and it chanced that {p.121} nobody but myself remembered
that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the
unpromising title of The Justice of the Peace. I whispered my
information to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who
rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility,