there is no self-conceit in that, cares not though "small critics, wielding their delicate pens," accuse him of it, and even set down to the score of affectation, mannerisms which are the growth and the genial growth too, of a strong and fearless nature. We regard the work of which we now speak, as, under all circumstances, one of the most remarkable in our literature. It is already one of the British classics.

SONG-WRITING.

BURNS.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1839.)

No composition, not even a sonnet, seems to us to concentrate within so small a bound so much delight and so much difficulty as a good song. We cannot say of it what was said, by a sweet poet, of the ribbon that encircled his mistress's waist

"A narrow compass, and yet there

Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair."

Minor poetry, however pleasing or perfect, must never be exalted to the same level with the sublimer efforts of the muse—with those massive monuments of poetic genius, in which wisdom and beauty are united with majesty and power-in which the susceptibilities and destinies of the human soul are better developed than even in the loftiest attainments of pure science, and in which ordinary minds find a source at once of docile veneration and of pious pride. Yet as the epos, or the drama, abstractly, are superior to the sonnet or the song, in the same, or rather in a still greater proportion, does a good poem of the slenderest style transcend a bad epic or tragedy. There is far less

difference between the Iliad and the Flowers of the Forest, than between the Flowers of the Forest and the Antediluvians. The popular lyric, however, is not slender, though it is not a long-sustained, exertion of poetry. Within its

limited extent it affords scope for very high talent, and exercises in its perfection a very powerful sway. The best feelings of our nature may and must be here addressed;

the fairest, the vividest images must be evoked; the ideas must be developed in the most rapid and direct manner; the language must be eminently precise, polished, and appropriate. Every thought must go straight to the hearer's heart-every word must speak magically to the ear and the fancy. The choice of a subject for a song, is as difficult as the task of doing justice to that subject. Its essence and object imply that the theme shall be popular but not commonplace; simple and single in its conception, but stirring and striking in its progress, and in its close complete and satisfying, and producing, for the most part, a sober and subdued surprise. Any thing flat or feeble— any thing subtle or strained-is out of the question. Homer may sometimes nod, and may almost in his slumbers approach within a measureable distance of M'Henry's snore; but Sappho and Alcæus must always be wide awake. The epic, the didactic, the Pindaric poet, may be sometimes turbid as the torrent, or dark as the sea; but the songwriter must be clear and transparent as the living fountain or the pebbled stream. His work must have the purity,

the ease, the modesty, of nature; and it must have another of nature's attributes, which perfect art can alone approach, that of wearing the freshness of novelty on the hundredth repetition.

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Enough," perhaps our reader may say, after the prince in Rasselas; " you have convinced me that no man can write a song. 99 But such a conclusion would be rash and erroneous. Innumerable lyric jewels are to be found in the treasuries of poetic genius. In all times, and in all tongues, songs have been written and sung, realizing enough of their proper attributes to delight the hearts and live in the memories of the multitude, while they were capable of pleasing the most fastidious and baffling the most critical. How many a palace, how many a cottage, how many solitary glens and crowded alleys have resounded, and at this hour resound, with vocal verse, in which the spirit of poetry is breathed around with more or less of power and loveliness, exhilarating the happy, cheering the sad, softening the sullen, and reclaiming the depraved! The themes which befit the lyric muse are not many, but they are exhaustless; they may be dis

figured in their form, or perverted from their purpose, but they are in their nature noble and good. Love is the essence of them all-love in all its forms and phases; whether the love of lovers, or of friends, or of kindred, or of patriots, for the dear objects which engage their hearts -love, whether exulting in the happiness of hope, and presence, and enjoyment, or enduring the trials of absence, disappointment, and despair. Years and ages roll over the world, yet the oldest forms of lyrical beauty are ever new -yet the same field is ever yielding new fruits, with all the unabating fertility which marked its golden prime.

The best songs are often produced by those who are not professed, or professional poets; by those who do not write at all except when the heart prompts them; by those whose compositions can never be successful except when their power of pleasing is their only recommendation. When art or ambition have any share in the production, nature, which is the essence of song-writing, is liable to be forgotten or displaced. The apparent slightness of the effort required for a song, creates a temptation more than in any other kind of poetry, to supply, by mechanical facility, what can only be produced by sincere enthusiasm. If a right standard of lyric poetry be adopted, it is manifest that it cannot be hurriedly or superficially composed. Moments of inspiration, we presume, are of rare occur rence among the best poets; and these, must in every department, be solicited and improved by reflection and labour. The comparative narrowness of the path, indeed, in this peculiar region of poetry, increases the necessity of care and consideration to avoid running into old ruts, and to discover any original tract of thought and feeling. We should expect, therefore, that no one man could possibly produce more than a very few of such compositions, and many of our most popular songs seem to be the unique productions of their authors. The orator of a single speech has been considered a prodigy; but experience would not lead us to say the same thing of a poet whose reputation rested on a single song.

In modern times, however, a variety of causes have combined to make fertility, at least, as remarkable a characteristic of lyric talent as perfection of execution. Not

to mention inferior names, Burns and Moore, in our own time and that of our fathers, have each produced more songs than in other ages would have distinguished any twenty writers of genius. Burns is the reputed author or emendator of about two hundred and fifty lyrics, while the songs of Moore are as the sands of the sea-shore. We strongly suspect, that to the works of the best poets who write with such fertility in a limited department, the maxim of Martial must necessarily apply: Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, SUNT MALA PLURA. We lament and we condemn this consequence. We consider that any system is bad under which poetry of this description is hurriedly huddled up, and cast into the world with all its imperfections on its head, to the injury alike of the writer's reputation and the depression of the standard of poetical excellence. There will always be abundance of clippers and coiners to pass off counterfeit money on the unwary. But poets, like princes, should be niggardly of their name and countenance, and chary of depreciating the legal currency, of which they exercise the control, by issuing from their mint what has not been tried and tested as fine gold.

In the two examples to which we have referred, the inducements which led to this fault were not altogether the same. The Bard of Erin, we believe, has, in his day received for his lyrical effusions no inconsiderable amount of currency of a more substantial kind: and, however much it may have come to, we sincerely wish it had been more. With regard to the case of our Scottish minstrel, we must say, that, after an attentive and repeated perusal of the Thomson Correspondence, we have arrived deliberately at the conviction, that pecuniary recompense was not the incentive, as it was certainly not the result, of his lyric labours. The sum of five pounds, forced upon him by the most solemn adjurations at the commencement of his task, and five pounds more given on his death-bed, but which, we believe, was not needed, and never used, amount to a much less remuneration per song than Mr. Willison Glass was in the habit of receiving from every mason-lodge or private patron with whose name he might fill up the dedication of his poetical circulars. This calculation fully exonerates Burns from any suspicion that he