"Is thy Burns dead?
And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth,
Without the meed of one melodious tear?
Thy Burns, and nature's own beloved Bard,
Who to 'the illustrious of his native land,'[35]
So properly did look for patronage.
Ghost of Maecenas! hide thy blushing face!
They took him from the sickle and the plough--
To guage ale firkins!
O, for shame return!
On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount,
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,
Whose aged branches to the midnight blast
Make solemn music, pluck its darkest bough,
Ere yet th' unwholesome night dew be exhaled,
And weeping, wreath it round thy Poet's tomb:
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,
Pick stinking henbane, and the dusky flowers
Of night-shade, or its red and tempting fruit;
These, with stopped nostril, and glove-guarded hand,
Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine
Th' illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility!"

If Mr. C.'s nature had been less benevolent, and he had given full vent
to the irascible and satirical, the restrained elements of which abounded
in his spirit, he would have obtained the least enviable of all kinds of
pre-eminence, and have become the undisputed modern Juvenal.

Mr. George Burnet resided sometimes with his relations, sometimes with