society, it is hard to say; but whatever it was, he liked it and the conviviality to which it led,--which, occasionally coarsened by stories that set the table in a roar, was ever and anon refined by songs that filled his eyes with tears. His life was a hard one,--a succession of dull, monotonous, laborious days, haunted by anxiety and harassed by petty, irritating cares,--but he faced it cheerfully, manfully, and wrestled with it triumphantly, for he compelled it to forge the weapons with which he conquered it. He sang like a boy at Lochlea; he wrote like a man at Mossgiel. The first poetical note that he struck there was a personal one, and commemorative of his regard for two rustic rhymers, David Sillar and John Lapraik, to whom he addressed several Epistles,--a form of composition which he found in Ferguson and Ramsay, and of which he was enamored. That he thoroughly enjoyed the impulse which suggested and dictated these Epistles was evident from the spirit with which they were written. In the first of the two, which he addressed to Sillar, he discovered and disclosed for the first time the distinctive individuality of his genius. It was a charming and touching piece of writing; charming as a delineation of his character, and touching as a confession of his creed,--the patient philosophy of the poor. As his social horizon was enlarged, his mental vision was sharpened; and before long, other interests than those which concerned himself and his poetical friends excited his sympathies and stimulated his powers. It was a period of theological squabbles, and he plunged into them at once, partly no doubt because there was a theological strain in his blood, but largely because they furnished opportunities for the riotous exercise of his wit. He paid his disrespects to the fomenters of this holy brawl in 'The Twa Herds,' and he pilloried an old person who was obnoxious to him, in that savage satire on sanctimonious hypocrisy, 'Holy Willy's Prayer.' Always a poet, he was more, much more than a poet. He was a student of man,--of all sorts of men; caring much, as a student, for the baser sort which reveled in Poosie Nansie's dram-shop, and which he celebrated in 'The Jolly Beggars'; but caring more, as a man, for the better sort which languished in huts where poor men lodged, and of which he was the voice of lamentation in 'Man was Made to Mourn.' He was a student of manners, which he painted with a sure hand, his masterpiece being that reverential reproduction of the family life at Lochlea,--'The Cotter's Saturday Night.' He was a student of nature,--his love of which was conspicuous in his poetry, flushing his words with picturesque phrases and flooding his lines with the feeling of outdoor life. He was a student of animal life,--a lover of horses and dogs, observant of their habits and careful of their comfort. He felt for the little mouse which his plowshare turned out of its nest, and he pitied the poor hare