aimed at pleasing the admirers of that refined conventional poetry, half serious and sentimental, and half ludicrous and satirical, which was cultivated by Berni, Ariosto, and the lighter poets of Italy. There was classic imagery on familiar subjects-supernatural machinery (as in the Rape of the Lock)' blended with the ordinary details of domestic life, and with lively and fanciful description. An exuberance of animal spirits seemed to carry the author over the most perilous ascents, and his wit and fancy were rarely at fault. Such a pleasant sparkling volume, in a style then unhackneyed, was sure of success. Anster Fair' sold rapidly, and has since been often republished. The author, WILLIAM TENNANT, was a native of Anstruther, or Anster, born in 1785, who, whilst filling the situation of clerk in a mercantile house, studied ancient and modern literature, and taught himself Hebrew. His attainments were rewarded in 1813 with an appointment as parish schoolmaster, to which was attached a salary of £40 per annum-a reward not unlike that conferred on Mr. Abraham Adams in 'Joseph Andrews,' who, being a scholar and man of virtue, was 'provided with a handsome income of £23 a year, which, however, he could not make a great figure with, because he lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with a wife and six children.' The author of Anster Fair' was afterwards appointed to a more eligible and becoming situation-teacher of classical and oriental languages in Dollar Institution, and finally professor in oriental languages in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. He died in 1848. Mr. Tennant published some other poetical works -a tragedy on the story of Cardinal Beaton, and two poems, the 'Thane of Fife,' and the Dinging Down of the Cathedral.' It was said of Sir David Wilkie that he took most of the figures in his pictures from living characters in the country of Fife, familiar to him in his youth: it is more certain that Mr. Tennant's poems are all on native subjects in the same district. Indeed, their strict locality has been against their popularity; but Anster Fair' is the most diversified and richly humorous of them all, and besides being an animated, witty and agreeable poem, it has the merit of being the first work of the kind in our language. The Monks and Giants of Frere, from which Byron avowedly drew his 'Beppo,' did not appear till some time after Mr. Tennant's poem. Of the higher and more poetical parts of Anster Fair,' we subjoin a specimen:

Summer Morning.

I wish I had a cottage snug and neat

་

Upon the top of many-fountained Ide,

That I might thence, in holy fervour, greet

The bright-gowned Morning tripping up her side:
And when the low Sun's glory-buskined feet

Walk on the blue wave of the Egean tide,

Oh, I would kneel me down, and worship there

The God who garnished out a world so bright and fair!

The saffron-elbowed Morning up the slope
Of heaven canaries in her jewelled shoes,
And throws o'er Kelly-law's sheep-nibbled top
Her golden apron dripping kindly dews;
And never, since she first began to hop

Up heaven's blue causeway, of her beams profuse,
Shone there a dawn so glorious and so gay,
As shines the merry dawn of Anster market-day.

Round through the vast circumference of sky
One speck of small cloud cannot eye behold,
Save in the east some fleeces bright of dye,
That stripe the hem of heaven with woolly gold,
Whereon are happy angels wout to lie

Lolling, in amaranthine flowers enrolled,

That they may spy the precious light of God,

Flung from the blessed east o'er the fair Earth abroad.

The fair Earth laughs through all her boundless range,
Heaving her green hills high to greet the beam;
City and village, steeple, cot, and grange,

Gilt as with Nature's purest leaf-gold seem;
The heaths and upland muirs, and fallows, change
Their barren brown into a ruddy gleam,

And on ten thousand dew-bent leaves and sprays,
Twinkle ten thousand suns, and fling their pretty rays.

Up from their nests and fields of tender corn
Full merrily the little skylarks spring,
And on their dew-bedabbled pinions borne,
Mount to the heavens blue keystone flickering;
They turn their plume-soft bosoms to the morn,
And hail the genial light, and cheer'ly sing;
Echo the gladsome hills and valleys round,
As half the bells of Fife ring loud and swell the sound
For when the first upsloping ray was flung
On Anster steeple's swallow-harbouring top,
Its bell and all the bells around were rung
Sonorous, jangling, loud, without a stop;
For, toilingly, each bitter beadle swung,

Even till he smoked with sweat, his greasy rope,
And almost broke his bell-wheel, ushering in
The morn of Anster Fair with tinkle-tankling din.
And, from our steeple's pinnacle outspread,

The town's long colours flare and flop on high,
Whose anchor. blazoned fair in green and red,
Curls, pliant to each breeze that whistles by;
Whilst on the boltsprit, stern, and topmast head
Of brig and sloop that in the harbour lie,
Streams the red gaudery of flags in air,

All to salute and grace the morn of Anster Fair.

The description of the heroine is passionate and imaginative.

Description of Maggie Lauder.

Her form was as the Morning's blithesome star,
That, capped with lustrous coronet of beams,
Rides up the dawning orient in her car,

New-washed, and doubly fulgent from the streams

The Chaldee shepherd eyes her light afar,
And on his knees adores her as she gleams;
So shone the stately form of Maggie Lauder,

And so the admiring crowds pay homage and applaud her.
Each little step her trampling palfrey took,
Shaked her inajestic person into grace,
And as at times his glossy sides she strook
Endearingly with whip's green silken lace-
The prancer seemed to court such kind rebuke,
Loitering with wilful tardiness of pace-

By Jove, the very waving of her arm

Had power a brutish lout to unbrutify and charm!

Her face was as the summer cloud, whereon
The dawning sun delights to rest his rays!
Compared with it, old Sharon's vale, o'ergrown
With flaunting roses, had resigned its praise;
For why? Her face with heaven's own roses shone,
Mocking the morn, and witching men to gaze;

And he that gazed with cold unsmitten soul,

That blockhead's heart was ice thrice baked beneath the Pole.

Her locks, apparent tufts of wiry gold,

Lay on her lily temples, fairly dangling,
And on each hair, so harmless to behold,

A lover's soul hung mercilessly strangling;

The piping silly zephyrs vied to unfold

The tresses in their arms so slim and tangling,
And thrid in sport these lover-noosing snares,
And played at hide-and-seck amid the golden hairs.

Her eye was as an honoured palace, where

A choir of lightsome Graces frisk and dance;
What object drew her gaze, how mean soe'er,
Got dignity and honour from the glance;
Woe to the inan on whom she unaware

Did the dear witchery of her eye elance!
"Twas such a thrilling, killing, keen regard-

May Heaven from such a look preserve each tender bard!

His humour and lively characteristic painting are well displayed in the account of the different parties who, gay and fantastic, flock to the fair, as Chaucer's, pilgrims did to the shrine of Thomas à Becket.

Parties travelling to the Fair.

Comes next from Ross-shire and from Sutherland
The horny-knuckled kilted Highlandman:
From where upon the rocky Caithness strand
Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began,
And where Lochflne from her prolific sand

Her herrings gives to feed each bordering clan,
Arrive the brogue-shod men of generous eye,
Plaided and breechless all, with Esau's hairy thigh.

They come not now to fire the Lowland stacks,
Or foray on the banks of Fortha's firth;
Claymore and broadsword, and Lochaber axe,
Are left to rust above the smoky hearth;
Their only arms are bagpipes now and sacks;
Their teeth are set most desperately for mirth;

And at their broad and sturdy backs are hung

Great wallets, crammed with cheese and bannocks and cold tongue. ¿

Nor staid away the Islanders, that lie

To buffet of the Atlantic surge exposed;

From Jura, Arran, Barra, Uist, and Skye,

Piping they come, unshaved, unbreeched, unhosed;

And from that Isle, whose abbey, structured high,
Within its precincts holds dead kings inclosed,
Where St. Columba oft is seen to waddle,

Gowned round with flaming fire, upon the spire astraddle.

Next from the far-famed ancient town of Ayr-
Sweet Ayr! with crops of ruddy damsels blest,
That, shooting up, and waxing fat and fair,
Shine on thy braes, the lilies of the west!-
And from Dumfries, and from Kilmarnock-where
Are night-caps made, the cheapest and the best-
Blithely they ride on ass and mule, with sacks
In lieu of saddles placed upon their asses' backs.
Close at their heels, bestriding well-trapped nag,
Or humbly riding ass's backbone bare,
Come Glasgow's merchants, each with money-bag,
To purchase Dutch lint-seed at Anster Fair-
Sagacious fellows all, who well may brag

Of virtuous industry and talents rare;

The accomplished men o' the counting-room confessed,
And fit to crack a joke or argue with the best.

Nor keep their homes the Borderers, that stay
Where purls the Jed, and Esk, and little Liddel,

Men that can rarely on the bagpipe play,

And wake the unsober spirit of the fiddle;

Avowed freebooters, that have many a day

Stolen sheep and cow, yet never owned they did ill;

Great rogues, for sure that wight is but a rogue

That blots the eighth command from Moses' decalogue.

And some of them in sloop of tarry side,

Come from North-Berwick harbour sailing out;

Others, abhorrent of the sickening tide,

Have ta'en the road by Stirling Brig about,

And eastward now from long Kirkcaldy ride,

Slugging on their slow-gaited asses stout,

While dangling at their backs are bagpipes hung,
And dangling hangs a tale on every rhymer's tongue.

ROBERT GILFILLAN.

ROBERT GILFILLAN (1798-1850) was a native of Dunfermline. He was long clerk to a wine-merchant in Leith, and afterwards collector of poor-rates in the same town. His 'Poems and Songs' have passed through three editions. The songs of Mr. Gilfillan are marked by gentle and kindly feelings and a smooth flow of versification, which makes them eminently suitable for being set to music. The Exile's Song.

The p Im-tree waveth high,
And fair the myrtle springs;
And, to the Indian maid,

The bulbul sweetly sings;
But I dinna see the broom
Wi' its tassels on the lea,
Nor hear the lintie's sang
O' my ain countrie!

Oh, here no Sabbath bell
Awakes the Sabbath morn,
Nor song of reapers heard
Amang the yellow corn:

For the tyrant's voice is here,
And the wail of slaverie;
But the sun of freedom shines
In my ain countrie!

There's a hope for every woe,
And a balm for every pain,
But the first joys o' our heart
Come never back again.
There's a track upon the deep,
And a path across the sea;
But the weary ne'er return
To their ain countrie!

In the days o' Langsyne.

In the days o' langsyne, when we carles was young,
An' nae foreign fashions among us had sprung;

When we made our aine bannocks, an' brewed our aine yill,
An' were clad frae the sheep that gaed white on the hill;
Oh, the thochet o' thae days gars iny auld heart aye fill!'

In the days o' langsyne we were happy an' free,
Proud lords on the land, an' kings on the sea!

To our foes we were fierce, to our friends we were kind
An' where battle raged loudest, you ever did find
The banner of Scotland float high in the wind!

In the days o' langsyne we aye ranted an' sang
By the warm ingle-side, or the wild braes amang;
Our lads busked braw, an' our lasses looked fine,
An' the sun on our mountains seemed ever to shine;
Oh, where is the Scotland o' bonny langsyne?

In the days o' langsyne ilka glen had its tale,
Sweet voices were heard in ilk breath o' the gale;
An' ilka we burn had a sang o' its ain,

As it trotted alang through the valley or plain
Shall we e'er hear the music o' streamlets again?

In the days o' langsyne there were feasting an' glee,
Wi' pride in ilk heart, an' joy in ilk ee;

An' the auld, 'mang the nappy, their eild seemed to tyne,"
It was your stoup the nicht, an' the morn it was mine;
Oh, the days o' langsyne !-Oh, the days o' langsyne!

The Hills o' Gallowa'.-By THOMAS MOUNCEY CUNNINGHAM. Thomas Cunningham was the senior of his brother Allan by some years, and was a copious author in prose and verse, though with an undistinguished name, long be fore the author of the Lives of British Painters' was known. He died in 1834, aged sixty-eight.

Amang the birks sae blithe and gay,
I met my Julia hameward gaun;
The linties chantit on the spray,

The lammies loupit on the lawn;
On ilka howm the sward was mawn,
The braes wi' gowans buskit braw,
And gloamin's plaid o' gray was thrawn
Out ower the hills o' Gallowa'.

Wi' music wild the woodlands rang,
And fragrance winged alang the lea,

As down we sat the flowers amang,

Upon the banks o' stately Dee,
My Julia's arms encircled me,
And saftly slade the hours awa',
Till dawnin' coost a glimmerin' ee
Upon the hills o' Gallowa'.

It isna owsen, sheep, and kye,
It isna gowd, it isna gear,
This lifted ee wad hae, quoth I,
The warld's drumlie gloom to cheer.