ies were beautiful, and two of them sang Scottish
songs charmingly. Urbani, an Italian musician who had edited Scotch
music, was there, and sang many Scottish melodies, accompanying them
with instrumental music. Burns recited some of his songs amid the deep
silence that is most expressive of admiration. The evening passed very
pleasantly, and the lion of the morning had, ere the evening was over,
melted to a lamb.

_Scots wha hae_ has been mentioned. Mr. Syme tells us that it was
composed partly while Burns was riding in a storm between Gatehouse
and Kenmure, and partly on the second morning after this when they
were journeying from St. Mary's Isle to Dumfries. And Mr. Syme adds
that next day the poet presented him with one copy of the poem for
himself, and a second for Mr. Dalzell. Mr. Carlyle says, "This
Dithyrambic was composed on horseback; in riding in the middle of
tempests over the wildest Galloway moor, in company with a Mr. Syme,
who, observing the poet's looks, forebore to speak--judiciously
enough,--for a man composing Bruce's address might be unsafe to trifle
with. Doubtless this stern hymn was singing itself, as he formed it,
through the soul of Burns, but to the external ear it should be sung
with the throat of the whirlwind."

Burns, however, in a letter to Mr. Thomson dated September, 1793,
gives an account of the composition of his war-ode, which is difficult
to reconcile with Mr. Syme's statement. "There is a tradition (p. 157)
which I have met with in many places in Scotland," he writes, "that
the old air, _Hey, tuttie taitie_ was Robert Bruce's march at the
battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my yesternight's evening walk,
warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and
independence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the
air, that one might suppose to be the gallant royal Scot's address to
his heroic followers on that eventful morning." He adds, that "the
accidental recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom,
associated with the glowing ideas of some struggles of the same
nature, _not quite so ancient_, roused my rhyming mania." So _Bruce's
Address_ owes its inspiration as much to Burns's sympathy with the
French Republicans as to his Scottish patriotism. As to the intrinsic
merit of the ode itself, Mr. Carlyle says, "So long as there is warm
blood in the heart of Scotchmen or man, it will move in fierce thrills
under this war-ode, the best, we bel