Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

The following trifles are not the production of the Poet, who, with all the advantages of learned art, and perhaps amid the elegancies and idlenesses of upper life, looks down for a rural theme, with an eye to Theocrites or Virgil. To the Author of this, these and other celebrated names their countrymen are, in their original languages, ‘A fountain shut up, and a book sealed’. Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing Poet by Rule, he sings the sentiments and manners, he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, in his and their native language.