started and exclaimed loudly, "Jupiter, snuff the moon!" as if the heavenly constellation had been some vast candle. At another time, having plaited a crown very neatly from the straw of his cell, he put it on his head and strutted around proclaiming himself "a king! a king!”

"FERGUSSON," says Chambers, "continued about two months to occupy a cell in this gloomy mansion. Occasionally, when the comparative tranquility of his mind permitted it, his friends were allowed to visit him. A few days before his dissolution his mother and sister found him lying on his straw bed, calm and collected. The evening was chill and damp; he requested his mother to gather the bed-clothes about him, and sit on his feet, for he said they were so very cold as to be almost insensible to the touch. She did so, and his sister took her seat by the bed-side. He then looked wistfully in the face of his affectionate parent, and said, 'Oh, mother, this is kind indeed.' Then addressing his sister he said, 'Might you not come frequently, and sit beside me; you cannot imagine how comfortable it would be; you might fetch your seam and sew beside me.' To this no answer was returned; an interval of silence was filled up by sobs and tears. 'What ails ye?' inquired the dying poet; wherefor sorrow for me, sirs? I am very well cared for here-I do assure you. I want for nothing ---but it is cold-it is very cold. You know, I told you, it would come to this at last-yes, I told you so. Oh, do not go yet, mother-I hope to be soon-oh, do not go yet-do not leave me!' The keeper, however, whispered that it was time to depart, and this was the last time that FERGUSSON saw those beloved relatives."

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Sommers thus describes his last interview with the poet, which took place in company with Dr. John Aitken, another friend of the unfortunate lunatic. We got immediate access to the cell, and found Robert lying with his clothes on, stretched upon a bed of loose uncovered straw. The moment he heard my voice he arose, got me in his arms, and wept. The doctor felt his pulse and declared it to be favourable. I asked the keeper (whom I formerly knew as a gardener) to allow him to accompany us into an adjoining back court, by way of taking the air. He consented. Robert took hold of me by the arm, placing me on his right, and the doctor on his left, and in this form we walked backward and forward along the court, conversing for nearly an hour in the course of which many questions were asked both by the doctor and myself, to which he returned most satisfactory answers; but he seemed very anxious to obtain his liberty. The sky was lowering, the sun being much obscured. Led by curiosity, and knowing his natural quickness, I asked him what hour of the day it might be. stopped, and looking up with his face towards the south, while his hands were clasped, paused a little, and said it was within five minutes of twelve. The doctor looked his watch and exclaimed, 'It is just six minutes from twelve.' .. Having passed about two hours with him on this visit, we found it necessary to take our leave, the doctor assuring him that he would soon be restored to his friends, and that I would visit again in a day or two. He calmly and without a murmur walked with us to the cell, and, upon parting, reminded the doctor to get him soon at liberty, and of mine to see him next day. Neither of us, however, had

an opportunity of accomplishing our promise, for in a few days thereafter, I received an intimation from the keeper that ROBERT FERGUSSON had breathed his last."

This melancholy event took place on the 16th of October, 1774, when he had only a few weeks completed his twenty-fourth year. Verily, "it was not a life, but only a piece of childhood thrown away!" Three days afterwards-being followed thither from Bristo Port by a large company of sorrowing friendshis poor wasted body was laid to rest in the Canongate churchyard. In this humble and confined spot-yet not unmeet situation, lying as it does in the very heart of "Auld Reekie," the life of which pulses in every line of his Doric verse-FERGUSSON'S "lone house of clay" remained without a mark for thirteen years, until Robert Burns, at his own expense, and acting on his own initiative, set up the simple monument which to this hour directs pale Scotia's way, to pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust."

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As early as during his "heckling" days in the town of Irvine, the Ayrshire bard had been stimulated by his elder brother in misfortune." Rhyme then he had all but abandoned, but meeting with FERGUSSON'S Scots poems he strung anew, he tells, his "wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." In his first "Epistle to Lapraik," he refers to him as "Fergusson, the bauld an' slee," and in his "Epistle to William Simson," the Ochiltree schoolmaster, he exclaims with biting vigour:

"O Fergusson! thy glorious parts

Ill suited law's dry, musty arts!
My curse upon your whunstane hearts,
Ye E'nbrugh gentry!

The tythe o' what ye waste on cartes
Wad stow'd his pantry!"

On a later date (19th March, 1787), when he presented Miss Carmichael, a young Edinburgh lady, who herself wrote verses, with a copy of FERGUSSON'S poems, he repeated the above sentiment in more elegant form, in the following lines, inscribed partly above and partly below the frontispiece portrait:--"Curse on ungrateful man, that can be pleas'd, And yet can starve the author of the pleasure! O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,

By far my elder brother in the muse,
With tears I pity thy unhappy fate!
Why is the Bard unfitted for the world,

Yet has so keen a relish of its pleasures?"

When, in the end of November, 1786, Burns made his first visit to the Scottish capital, he was not long in the city, we are told by Cunningham, who had special opportunities of knowing, until he found his way to the old churchyard in the Canongate. The bleak aspect of the unmarked grave, in a day of nipping cold, moved his big heart to tears, and he sobbed as he stood over it with uncovered head. Yea, kneeling down, he even embraced and kissed the sod. It was a beautiful and touching tribute. But his regard did not end with this emotional outburst. On the 6th of February following, Burns applied by petition to the churchyard managers of the Barony of the Canongate, craving permission to mark and render sacred for ever the spot where FERGUSSON'S remains are laid. His petition is worth quoting: "Gentlemen," he wrote, "I am sorry to be told, that the remains of ROBERT FERGUSSON, the so justly celebrated poet, a man whose talent for ages to come will do honour to our Cale

* Now in the possession of the Right Hon. the Earl of Rosebery.