was shutting
up for the night.

"Can you furnish me with a copy of Burns' Poems," I said, "either for
love or money?"

"I have but one copy left," replied the man, "and here it is."

I flung down a guinea. "The change," I said, "I shall get when I am less
in a hurry."

'Twas late that evening ere I remembered that 'tis customary to spend at
least part of the night in bed. I read on and on with a still increasing
astonishment and delight, laughing and crying by turns. I was quite in a
new world; all was fresh and unsoiled--the thoughts, the descriptions,
the images--as if the volume I read was the first that had ever been
written; and yet all was easy and natural, and appealed, with a truth
and force irresistible, to the recollections I cherished most fondly.
Nature and Scotland met me at every turn. I had admired the polished
compositions of Pope, and Gray, and Collins, though I could not
sometimes help feeling that, with all the exquisite art they displayed,
there was a little additional art wanting still. In most cases the
scaffolding seemed incorporated with the structure which it had served
to rear; and, though certainly no scaffolding could be raised on surer
principles, I could have wished that the ingenuity which had been tasked
to erect it, had been exerted a little further in taking it down. But
the work before me was evidently the production of a greater artist; not
a fragment of the scaffolding remained--not so much as a mark to show
how it had been constructed. The whole seemed to have risen like an
exhalation, and, in this respect, reminded me of the structures of
Shakspeare alone. I read the inimitable "Twa Dogs." Here, I said, is the
full and perfect realization of what Swift and Dryden were hardy enough
to attempt, but lacked genius to accomplish. Here are dogs--_bona fide_
dogs--endowed indeed with more than human sense and observation, but
true to character, as the most honest and attached of quadrupeds, in
every line. And then those exquisite touches which the poor man, inured
to a life of toil and poverty, can alone rightly understand! and those
deeply-based remarks on character, which only the philosopher can justly
appreciate! This is the true catholic poetry, which addresses itself not
to any little circle, walled in from the rest of the species by some
peculiarity of thought, prejudice, or condition, but to the whole human
family. I read on:--"The Holy Fair," "Hallow E'en," "The Vision," the