ease not, but affront you to your face.'

In the passage above quoted, our readers will perceive that the wit is
rather aukward, [_sic_] and the verses, especially the last, very
prosaic.

Toward the end of this volume are some little pieces of a lighter kind,
which, after dragging through Mr. Cowper's long moral lectures, afforded
us some relief. The fables of the Lily and the Rose, the Nightingale and
Glow-worm, the Pine-apple and the Bee, with two or three others, are
written with ease and spirit. It is a pity that our author had not
confined himself altogether to this species of poetry, without entering
into a system of ethics, for which his genius seems but ill
adapted.--_The Critical Review_.

[Footnote G: Nous sommes nes pour la verite, et nous ne pouvons souffrir
son abord. Les figures, les paraboles, les emblemes, sont toujours des
ornements necessaires pour qu'elle puisse s'annoncer: on veut, en la
recevant, qu'elle soit _deguisee_.]

ROBERT BURNS

_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By_ ROBERT BURNS,
_Kilmarnock_.

When an author we know nothing of solicits our attention, we are but too
apt to treat him with the same reluctant civility we show to a person
who has come unbidden into company. Yet talents and address will
gradually diminish the distance of our behaviour, and when the first
unfavourable impression has worn off, the author may become a favourite,
and the stranger a friend. The poems we have just announced may probably
have to struggle with the pride of learning and the partiality of
refinement; yet they are intitled to particular indulgence.

Who are you, Mr. Burns? will some surly critic say. At what university
have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what authors
have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace directed
your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are
they published? In short, what qualifications intitle you to instruct or
entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps honest
Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answers. 'My good Sir, he might
say, I am a poor country man; I was bred up at the school of Kilmarnock;
I understand no languages but my own; I have studied Allan Ramsay and
Ferguson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside; and I ask no
patronage for them, if they deserve none. I have not looked on mankind
_through the spectacle of books_. An ounce of mother-wit, you know,