ieve, that was ever written by any
pen." To this verdict every son of Scottish soil is, I suppose, bound
to say, Amen. It ought not, however, to be concealed that there has
been a very different estimate formed of it by judges sufficiently
competent. I remember to have read somewhere of a conversation between
Wordsworth and Mrs. Hemans, in which they both agreed that the famous
ode was not much more than a commonplace piece of school-boy
rhodomontade about liberty. Probably it does owe not a little of its
power to the music to which it is sung, and to the associations which
have gathered round it. The enthusiasm for French Revolution
sentiments, which may have been in Burns's mind when composing it, has
had nothing to do with the delight with which thousands since have
sung and listened to it. The Poet, however, when he first (p. 158)
conceived it was no doubt raging inwardly, like a lion, not only
caged, but muzzled with the gag of his servitude to Government. But
for this, what diatribes in favour of the Revolution might we not have
had, and what pain must it have been to Burns to suppress these under
the coercion of external authority. Partly to this feeling, as well as
to other causes, may be ascribed such outbursts as the following,
written to a female correspondent, immediately after his return from
the Galloway tour:

"There is not among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so
rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets. In the comparative view
of wretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but
how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a
stronger imagination, and a more delicate sensibility, which between
them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are
the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some
idle vagary, ... in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which
shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him
with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that lucre
can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing on
him a spurning sense of his own dignity--and you have created a wight
nearly as miserable as a poet." This passage will recall to many the
catalogue of sore evils to which poets are by their temperament
exposed, which Wordsworth in his Leech-gatherer enumerates.

The fear that kills,
And hope that is u