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conjecture, except it be, that he cannot construe his pure, but somewhat difficult latinity; but this I know, and if you will consult your Lempriere, you will know it also, that there are no more points, either of contrast or resemblance, between you and Terence, than between a lamb and a bear; and that the very thought of you and Terence (were that gentleman alive amongst us) sitting together over a bowl of punch at Young's, is not more absurd than would be the herding together of the above-mentioned animals.

He then, for what purpose I know not, compares, or contrasts you, I do not well know which, with Allan Ramsay. He asserts that Ramsay is the "author of the finest pastoral of any age or country" (his reading must be pretty extensive to enable him to judge of that); and there, perhaps unintentionally, he seems to point to a contrast; but he afterwards tells us, that Ramsay was a hairdresser in a populous town, and you a shepherd in an uninhabited valley; and therein, I presume, according to him, consists the resemblance.

Having talked of Ramsay, of course he could not but say something of Burns; and he has contrived to compress into four lines, as much error respecting that great man as is to be found in the whole of Mr Wordsworth's notable Letter to Mr Gray on that subject. "Burns, so far from being illiterate, had acquired greatly more knowledge at twenty years of age, than many of the young men who issue from our universities at the same period." In one sense of the word this doubtless may be true. Whoever has taken his station in College Street, opposite to the great vomitory of the College, and seen the "young men issuing from the university," as it were a levy en masse, a wild and confused rabble of all nations, lumbering along with their precious notebooks "aneath their oxters" (to use a favourite phrase of your own), and from their gaunt and hungry looks, obviously far more eager, and much better fitted, to devour and digest a good tough bull-beef-steak at a sixpenny ordinary, than the hard Greek roots of Christison, the dry logic of Ritchie, or the poetical metaphysics of Brown,—I say, whoever has seen such a burst of the congregated literary population of all countries, will have no difficulty in believing that the Ayrshire ploughman may have had more knowledge than many of the extraordinary figures then hurrying by; but the same might also be affirmed of yourself; for I will venture to say, that when you finished your education under your mother, at the tender age of seven years, you had, if your biographer speaks truth, more true theological knowledge, a more intimate acquaintance with Covenanters and Brownies, than the very flower of the Irish youth blooming in native modesty through a winter in Edinburgh—aye, even than the general run of the presidents of the far-famed Edinburgh Medical Society itself. But your biographer is quite wrong, if he thinks that Burns, when he commenced author, had read less than you had when you began your literary career. None of your writings, previous to that most beautiful poem the Queen's Wake, are any great shakes. That you know very well. Genius pervades all of them, but the composition is not so good as it might be, and barbarisms stick like burs in bunches upon the flowing drapery of your muse. But before you had written the Queen's Wake, you had read with great voracity. You had, with highly creditable industry, made yourself well acquainted with modern English literature; and though there is originality enough in that delightful poem, or rather collection of poems, to entitle you to rank with the poets of Scotland, yet it is obvious to every eye, that where you leave the imitation of the old ballad poetry, you form yourself upon the style of your great friend, Walter Scott. There is no occasion to mystify every thing about you, James. You enjoyed many advantages, and overcame many disadvantages, like a man of genius as you are; but there is nothing at all miraculous about you that ever I could discover; and really, were I to look abroad for a genius to make us stare, I do not think that one could be found better fitted to produce that effect than your own biographer.

Having thus placed you above Terence, Ramsay, and Burns, why should your biographer sneer at Robert Bloomfield? All that he can bring himself to say of that poet is, that "he has sometimes painted such of the forms of nature as fell under his observation with con