Thus, with Burns, began Love and Poetry. This, his first effort, is valuable, more from the promise it {240} gave of his future excellence as a poet, than for any intrinsic merit which it possessed as a performance of so gifted a genius. I have been the more particular in describing the circumstances attending the composition of these, his earliest verses, for the proof they afford of the truth of the general remark, that of all the poetical compositions of Burns, his love-songs, and amatory poetry are far the best. His feelings predominated over his fancy, and whenever the latter is introduced we are forced to deem it an intrusion for the strong contrast it presents with the native and characteristic simplicity of his more natural and heartfelt effusions. Referring to the predilections which I have said gave a character to so large a portion of his poetical writings, he says,--"My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other: and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favor, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse." And in another letter he says farther, "Another circumstance in my life which made some alterations in my mind and manners, was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. Scenes of riot and roaring dissipation were, till now, new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. For all that, I went on with a high hand in my geometry till the sun entered _Virgo_, (a month, which is always a carnival in my bosom,) when a charming fair one, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my duties. I, however, struggled on with my _sines_ and _co-sines_ for a few days more, but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel, 'Like Proserpine, gathering flowers, Herself, a fairer flower.' It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining weeks I staid I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her. And the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless."