just as it happened. The money raised went to discharge the cost of music and refreshments: and, according as the young pair were liked, they found a larger or smaller surplus to enable them to begin housekeeping.

Burns had commenced his short and bright career, when the rustic pictures of Allan began to take the public attention he was among the foremost to perceive in the painter much of the truth and nature of which he was himself a worshipper; and although aware of a deficiency in elegance and beauty, regarded, probably, the presence of fun and humour as a sufficient compensation. During the period in which the poet wrote his incomparable lyrics, it occurred to Thomson, the proprietor of the work for which they were designed, that he might bring in the hand of our painter to illustrate the choicest scenes in Scottish song; some dozen or so were accordingly produced; and several of these imbody the images, serious or comic, of Burns. One of the best is "John Anderson my Jo:" the group is truly comic; John is a personification of sly glee and domestic gladness-his eyes seem glimmering with a delight for which he cannot find utterance; his wife, however, is a sad fright,-her aspect would become a scarecrow, yet it pleases her husband, and that is enough. Another humorous subject was still more happily treated. "Allan,"

says Thomson," has just sketched a charming design from Maggie Lauder. She is dancing with such spirit as to electrify the piper, who seems almost dancing too, while he is playing with the most exquisite glee." These, and others of the artist's designs, were submitted to Burns, who wrote the following letter to Thomson on the subject of the "stock and horn," a rude instrument of music which

* This "John Anderson my Jo" has been forgotten in that of Burnet, who has all the humour and more than the propriety of Allan.

Allan was fond of putting into the hands of his shepherds:"Tell my friend Allan that I much suspect he has, in his plates, mistaken the figure of the stock and horn. I have, at last, gotten one, but it is a very rude instrument. It is composed of three parts; the stock, which is the hinder thighbone of a sheep, such as you see in a mutton-ham ; the horn, which is a common highland cow's horn, cut off at the smaller end until the aperture be large enough to admit the stock to be pushed up through the horn, until it be held by the thicker end of the thigh-bone; and, lastly, an oaten reed, exactly cut and notched like that which you see every shepherdboy have when the corn-stems are green and fullgrown. The reed is not made fast in the bone, but is held by the lips, and plays loose in the smaller end of the stock; while the stock, with the horn hanging on, its larger end, is held by the hands in playing. The stock has six or seven ventages on the upper side, and one back ventage, like the common flute. This of mine was made by a man from the braes of Athole, and is exactly what the shepherds are wont to use in that country. If Mr. Allan chooses, I will send him a sight of mine, as I look on myself to be a kind of brother brush with him. 'Pride in poets is nae sin :' and I will say it, that I look on Mr. Allan and Mr. Burns to be the only genuine and real painters of Scottish costume in the world."

As the work of illustration went on, the poet found other opportunities of commending the designs of the painter. "Woo'd and married an' a',"-he says, in one of his letters,-" is admirable; the grouping is beyond all praise. The expression of the figures, conformable to the story of the ballad, is absolutely faultless perfection. I next admire Turnimspike." One of the best, perhaps, is The Gaberlunzie Man. The gladsome looks of the "paukie auld carle,' the joyous surprise of the young woman in recog

nising youth and strength where she had expected nothing better than weariness and wo, and the grave solicitude of the matron in matters of household economy, unite to form a picture of true natural humour and humble life. The songs of Scotland-those of the olden minstrels and of Burns-would have presented a fine field for a painter equal to the task of catching truly and imbodying naturally their perpetually blending moods of humour and pathos; but Allan, with all his talents, was deficient in that "art unteachable" of communicating grace and loveliness to the creations of the mind; his touch was too gross to give the more delicate hues of feeling and of fancy, and though he delineated the coarser feelings of the offspring of the Muse with considerable skill, it must be acknowledged that the task of painting in the varied spirit of the lyric poetry of the north is yet to be performed.

The fame which Allan acquired by these works soothed him during the slow sapping progress of a dropsical complaint, accompanied by an asthma, which arose from anxious application in a line of study requiring head and hand. His bodily strength was never great, nor had he any liking to the exercises of walking or riding, by which health is preserved and vigour confirmed. After an illness, of which he scarcely knew himself the commencement, he died August 6, 1796, in the fifty-third year of his age, leaving one daughter, named Barbara Anne, and a son, David, who went out a cadet to India in the year 1806.

In person this painter was under the middle size, of a slender make, with a long coarse face pitted by the small-pox, and hair of the colour of sand. His eyes were large and prominent, without animation or fire; his nose was long and high; his mouth wide; and his whole exterior mean and inpromising. On a stranger who met Allan in the street, such is the impression his looks would have left; but in

company to his liking he was another sort of person; his large eyes grew bright and penetrating; his manners pleasing, and his conversation open, gay, and humorous, inclining to satire, and replete with observation and anecdote. On the antiquities and literary history of his country he had employed much of his leisure time, and delighted to discourse; he boldly pronounced the stock and horn, of which Burns gave him an account, to be an instrument too rude for producing true music, and fit only for "routing and roaring."

As a painter, his merits are of a limited nature; he neither excelled in fine drawing nor in harmonious colouring, and grace and grandeur were beyond his reach. He painted portraits-which are chiefly remarkable for a strong homely resemblance; he painted landscapes, but these want light and air; and he attempted the historical, but, save in one picture, "The Corinthian Maid," all his efforts in that way were failures. His genius lay in expression, especially in grave humour and open drollery. Yet it would be difficult, perhaps, to name one of his pictures where nature is not overcharged; he could not stop his hand till he had driven his subject into the debatable land that lies between truth and caricaure. He is among painters what Allan Ramsay is among poets,-a fellow of infinite humour, and excelling in all manner of rustic drollery, but deficient in fine sensibility of conception, and little acquainted with lofty emotion or high imagination.

NORTHCOTE

HE whose life I am about to write was one of those men who rise to eminence in the world more from skill in various departments than from original excellence in any one. The man who, without much presumption, wrote himself painter, critic, fabulist, and biographer, merits a memoir such as may exhibit his character, and illustrate his pretensions.

James Northcote was born at Plymouth, in Dev onshire, on the 22d day of October, 1746. At times he claimed descent from certain Northcotes who flourished nearly as far back as the Norman Conquest; numbered sundry high-sheriffs of the county among his ancestors, and reckoned kin with Sir Clifford Northcote of Pynes; but in his cynical moods he contented himself with humbler ancestry. "All people," he could then say, "are sprung from somebody; and even the Northcotes have an origin: in Devonshire there stood four cottages; one was called Eastcot, one Westcot, one Southcot, and one Northcot: I am of the latter house; and so there's an honest descent, without help from the Herald's Office." But the vanity of remote ancestry finally triumphed. He left 1500l. by will, to some one who exhibited, from "parchments and tradition, a line of descent which reached to the days of William the Conqueror. It was his pleasure. frequently to talk of the old families, and importance of his native county. "You are to consider," he said, "that it is almost a peninsula, so that there is no thoroughfare, and people are, therefore, more stationary on one spot; for this reason they intermarry among themselves, and you can trace the genealogies of families for centuries back. There are squires and gentry in