180 193 _fou_, merry with drink: _coost_, carried: _unco skeigh_, very proud: _gart_, forced: _abeigh_, aside: _Ailsa craig_, a rock in the Firth of Clyde: _grat his een bleert_, cried till his eyes were bleared: _lowpin_, leaping: _linn_, waterfall: _sair_, sore: _smoor'd_, smothered: _crouse_ and _canty_, blithe and gay. 181 194 Burns justly named this 'one of the most beautiful songs in the Scots or any other language.' One stanza, interpolated by Beattie, is here omitted:--it contains two good lines, but is out of harmony with the original poem. _Bigonet_, little cap: probably altered from _béguinette_: _thraw_, twist: _caller_, fresh. 182 195 Burns himself, despite two attempts, failed to improve this little absolute masterpiece of music, tenderness, and simplicity: this 'Romance of a life' in eight lines.--_Eerie_: strictly, scared: uneasy. 183 196 _airts_, quarters: _row_, roll: _shaw_, small wood in a hollow, spinney: _knowes_, knolls. The last two stanzas are not by Burns. 184 197 _jo_, sweetheart: _brent_, smooth: _pow_, head. -- 198 _leal_, faithful. St. 3 _fain_, happy. 185 199 Henry VI founded Eton. 188 200 Written in 1773, towards the beginning of Cowper's second attack of melancholy madness--a time when he altogether gave up prayer, saying, 'For him to implore mercy would only anger God the more.' Yet had he given it up when sane, it would have been 'maior insania.' 191 203 The Editor would venture to class in the very first rank this Sonnet, which, with 204, records Cowper's gratitude to the Lady whose affectionate care for many years gave what sweetness he could enjoy to a life radically wretched. Petrarch's sonnets have a more ethereal grace and a more perfect finish; Shakespeare's more passion; Milton's stand supreme in stateliness; Wordsworth's in depth and delicacy. But Cowper's unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the ancients would have called Irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature.--There is much mannerism, much that is unimportant or of now exhausted interest in his poems: but where he is great, it is with that elementary greatness which rests on the most universal human feelings. Cowper is our highest master in simple pathos. 193 205 Cowper's last original poem, founded upon a story told in Anson's 'Voyages.' It was written March 1799; he died in next year's April. 195 206 Very little except his name appears recoverable with regard to the author of this truly noble poem, which appeared in the 'Scripscrapologia, or Collins' Doggerel Dish of All Sorts,' with three or four other pieces of merit, Birmingham, 1804.--_Everlasting_; used with side-allusion to a cloth so named, at the time when Collins wrote. _Summary of Book Fourth_