TO RUIN. . ALL hail! inexorable lord! At whose destruction-breathing word, I see each aimed dart; Then low'ring and pouring, The storm no more I dread d; Though thick'ning and black'ning, Round my devoted head. II. And thou grim pow'r, by life abhorr'd, While life a pleasure can afford, To close this scene of care! When shall my soul, in silent peace, My weary heart its throbbings cease, No fear more, no tear more, To stain my lifeless face; Within thy cold embrace! Burns seems to have glanced into futurity with a prophetic eye images of misery and woe darkened the distant vista: and when he looked back on his career he saw little to console him.—“ I have been, this morning," he observes, taking a peep through, as Young finely says, The dark postern of time long elapsed.' 'Twas a rueful prospect ! What a tissue of thoughtlessness, weakness, and folly! My life reminded me of a ruined temple. What strength, what proportion, in some parts ! What unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruins in others! I kneeled down before the Father of Mercies and said :'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' I rose, eased and strengthened." The present fragment seems to have been composed when his farming speculations failed-one on whom he had set his heart had deserted him-and " Hungry Ruin had him in the wind." ΤΟ JOHN GOUDIE OF KILMARNOCK, ON THE PUBLICATION OF HIS ESSAYS. O GOUDIE! terror of the Whigs, Girnin', looks back, Wishin' the ten Egyptian plagues Wad seize you quick. Poor gapin', glowrin' Superstition, Fie! bring Black Jock, her state physician, Alas! there's ground o' great suspicion She'll ne'er get better. Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple, See, how she fetches at the thrapple, An' gasps for breath. Enthusiasm's past redemption, Gaen in a galloping consumption, Not a' the quacks, wi' a' their gumption, Will ever mend her. Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption Death soon will end her. 'Tis you and Taylor* are the chief, A toom tar-barrel, An' twa red peats wad send relief, An' end the quarrel. The Essays of John Goudie are all but forgotten; not so the burning commentary of the Bard. To the English admirers of Burns it is perhaps necessary to say that the Whigs," of whom the Essayist was the terror, were the Old Light portion of the Presbyterian kirk; men, ceremonious in their observances, austere in their conversation, and who accounted themselves Calvinists to the letter." These people inculcate," says a reverend biographer," that the greatest sinner is the greatest favourite of heaven-that a reformed bawd is more acceptable to the Almighty than a pure virgin who has hardly ever transgressed, even in thought-that the lost sheep alone will be saved, and that the ninety-and-nine out of * Dr. Taylor, of Norwich. the hundred will be left in the wilderness to perish without mercy-that the Saviour of the world loves the elect, not from any lovely qualities which they possess, for they are hateful in his sight-but he loves them, because he loves them.' Such are the sentiments which are breathed by those who are denominated high Calvinists, and from which the soul of a poet who loves mankind, and who has not studied the system in all its bearings, recoils with horror." Burns- against whom a hue and cry of heresy was raised-has said nothing so ferocious as this "bold commentator." The picture which he has painted is as unjust as it is indecorous. Death has been dealing-to use the language of the old bard—with all the clergymen of the west whom the poet lampooned or praised, save one, and that one is MacKinlay, one of the characters in the "Ordination." He is a good and venerable man: was the friend, of Auld, minister of Mauchline, and it was his practice, when he called at his reverend brother's house, to shake hands, kneel down and unite in asking a blessing from above on their ministry, and on the flocks committed to their charge. There is something apostolical or primitive in this. |