ckf^^ Pf?4331 Book K^ 3 COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. Cr irf^^^y w^-oi THESILVER«SER1ES OF ENGLISH CLASSICS id );: CARLYLE ESSAYS °. BURNS m )i}: )i>y %\ % EDITED BY HOMER B.5PRAGUE Ph.D. -r(' 3H^ER,BURDETT STUDIES IN ENGLISH CLASSICS. SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY HOMER B. SPRAGUE, Ph.D. The Merchant of Venice. As You Like It. Macbeth. The Tempest. Hamlet. A Midsummer Night's Julius Cssar. Dream. In Uniform Edition, by the same Editor: THE LADY OF THE LAKE. By Sir Walter Scorr, THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By Oliver Goldsmith. Introductory Prices. Bound in cloth .... 43 cents. Bound in paper .... 30 cents. SELECT MINOR POEMS OF MILTOM. Edited by James E. Thomas, B.A., Teacher of English in the Boys' English High School, Boston. Cloth, 48 cents; paper, 30 cents. IRVING'S SKETCH BOOK. Edited by James Chalmers, Ph.D., President of the State Normal School, Platteville, Wis. Cloth, 60 cents. SELECT ENGLISH CLASSICS. Selected and Edited, with Notes, by James Baldwin, Ph.D. Four volumes now ready: "Six Centuries of English Poetry," "The Famous Alle- gories," "The Book of Elegies," "Choice English Lyrics." i2mo, cloth, 72 cents each. The special attention of teachers is invited to these choice editions, with a view to introduction into their classes and schools. SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY, Publishers, BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. THOMAS CARLYLE. The Silver Series of English Classics / CARLYLE'S ESSAY ON BURNS EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND CRITICAL COMMENTS .A^ BY HOMER B. SPRAGUE, A.M., Ph.D. FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY, AND PRESIDENT OF THE STATE UNIVF.RSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA; EDITOR OF "MASTERPIECES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE," " STUDIES IN ENGLISH CLASSICS," ETC. SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY ^ New York BOSTON Chicago {^ U 2)^^ ^ if^ fWO COPIES RECEIVED. n \ 4258 COPTEIOHT, 1S9S, By silver, BURDETT & COMPANY. Norbjoolj JJresB J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick St Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. THE SOWER'S SONG. By Thomas Carlyle. Now hands to seed-sheet, boys, We step and we cast ; old Time's on wing : And would ye partake of harvest's joys, The corn must be sown in spring. Fall gently and still, good corn. Lie warm in thy earthy bed, - And stand so yellow some morn, That beast and man may be fed. Old Earth is a pleasure to see In sunshiny cloak of red and green ; The furrow lies fresh ; this year will be As the years that are past have been. •Fall gently and still, etc. Old Mother, receive this corn. The seed of six thousand golden sires : All these on thy kindly breast were born ; One more thy poor child requires. Fall gently and still, etc. Now steady and sure again. And measure of stroke and step we keep ; Thus up and thus down we cast our grain ; Sow well, and you gladly reap. Fall gently and still, etc. I PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENT. The Silver Series of English Classics is designed to fur- nish editions of many of the standard classics in English and American literature, in the best possible form for reading and study. While planned to meet the requirements for entrance examinations to college, as formulated by the Commission of American Colleges, it serves a no less important purpose in pro- viding valuable and attractive reading for the use of the higher grades of public and private schools. It is now generally recognized that to familiarize students ■with the masterpieces of literature is the best means of developing true literary taste, and of establishing a love of good reading which will be a permanent delight. The habit of cultured original expression is also established through the influence of such study. To these ends, carefully edited and annotated editions of the Classics, which shall direct pupils in making intelligent and appre- ciative study of each work as a whole, and, specifically, of its indi- vidual features, are essential in the classroom. The Silver Series notably meets this need, through the edit- ing of its volumes by scholars of high literary ability and educa- tional experience. It unfolds the treasui'es of literary art, and shows the power and beauty of our language in the various forms of English composition, — as the oration, the essay, the argument, the biography, the poem, etc. Thus, the first volume contains Webster's oration at the laying of the corner stone of Bunker Hill monument ; and, after a brief sketch of the orator's life, the oration is defined, — the speech itself furnishing a practical example of what a masterpiece in oratory should be. Next follows the essay, as exemplified by Macaulay's " Essay on Milton." The story of the life of the great essayist creates an interest in his work, and the student, before he proceeds to study 6 PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCEMENT. the essay, is shown in the Introduction the difference between the oratorical and the essayistic style. After this, Burke's " Speech on Conciliation " is treated in a similar manner, the essential principles of forensic authorship being set forth. Again, De Quincey's " Flight of a Tartar Tribe " — a conspic- uous example of pure narration — exhibits the character and qual- ity of this department of literary composition. Southey's "Life of Nelson" is presented in the same personal and critical manner, placing before the student the essential char- acteristics of the biographical style. The series continues with specimens of such works as " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," by Coleridge ; the " Essay on Burns," by Carlyle ; the " Sir Roger De Coverley Papers," by Addi- son ; Milton's " Paradise Lost," Books I. and II. ; Pope's " Iliad," Books L, VL, XXII., and XXIY. ; Dryden's " Palamon and Ar- cite," and other works of equally eminent writei-s, covering, in the completed series, a large and diversified area of literary exposition. The functions of the several departments of authorship are explained in simple terms. The beginner, as well as the some- what advanced scholar, will find in this series ample instruction and guidance for his own study, without being perplexed by abstruse or doubtful problems. With the same thoughtfulness for the student's progress, the appended Notes provide considerable information outright ; but they are also designed to stimulate the student in making re- searches for himself, as well as in applying, under the direction of the teacher, the principles laid down in the critical examination of the separate divisions. A portrait, either of the author or of the personage about whom he writes, will form an attractive feature of each volume. The text is from approved editions, keeping as far as possible the original form ; and the contents offer, at a very reasonable price, the latest results of critical instruction in the art of literary expression. The teacher will appreciate the fact that enough, and not too much, assistance is rendered the student, leaving the instructor ample room for applying and extending the principles and sug- gestions which have been presented. .J INTRODUCTION. BIOGRAPHICAL. It is not our purpose to write a biography of Carlyle. Each student shouhl make an outline of it for himself. We give here merely a few facts and hints. Thomas Carlyle's early environment somewhat resembled that of Robert Burns. His father was at first a stone mason, and afterwards a small farmer. His mother was a painstaking woman, de- vout and sweet-souled. Both were very intelligent, very conscientious, and terribly in earnest. Hard work, plain living, and high thinking Avere cheerfully accepted as their Heaven-ordained lot. Thomas inherited that inten- sity which Coleridge makes a prime element in genius. At the parish school, while yet a child, he displayed extraordinary precocity. At the Annan Grammar School, which he entered at eight, he could translate Virgil and Horace with ease. Entering Edinburgh University at fourteen, he seemed an embodiment of the intellectual force which he ever afterwards worshiped. He distinguished himself in mathe- matics, but he never liked the curriculum. He spent his time mostly in the library, and finally left withont graduation. '■ ./ 7 8 THOMAS CARLVLE. Like Milton, he had l)een destined by his father to the ministry. "And so," he says, "I entered into my chamber and closed the door, and around me there came a trooping throng of phantasms dire from the abysmal depths of nethermost perdition. Doubt, Fear, Unbelief, Mockery, and Scorn Avere there ; and I arose and wrestled with them in agon}^ of spirit." Quitting the University, he engaged for some years in teaching ; but he was ambitious, and his heart was else- where. He became fascinated with the German language and literature. In 1824 he received £180 for his translation of "Wilhelm Meister." His marriage in 1826 to Jane Welsh, whom he had taken " by storm," was on the Avhole fortunate. But they were never blest with children, and so never experienced the sorely-needed, sweet, refining, harmonizing influence of the presence of little ones. They lived first at Comely Bank, Edinburgh ; but, just as Carlyle was beginning to acquire a reputation, they removed to " the loneliest nook in Britain, six miles from any one likely to visit " ^ them. His wife's small property sufficed to support them in a frugal way. Here he wrote his famous '^ Sartor Resartus." After six years at Craigenputtoch, the long-felt need of access to libraries induced him to move, in 1834, to the great metropolis. He resided during the rest of his life in Cheyne Row, C'helsea. The humble old-fashioned house is still a shrine for literary tourists. 1 Letter to Goethe from Craigenputtoch, his wife's estate. I INTRODUCTION. 9 More than Sir Walter Raleigh, he could " toil terribly," as the many productions of his tireless pen abundantly testify. His genius and industry at last compelled universal recognition. His election in 1865 as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh was an honor that might well have satisfied his ambition; but, during this period of triumphant joy, the death of his wife, whom — notwith- standing a thousand quarrels, half-serious, half -jocose — he tenderly loved, clouded all his sky ; and from that hour till his death in 1881, his soul was in shadow and gloom. His favorite theory of life often seemed to be that ''might makes right." If he ever thought so, he found out, long before his death, that the gospel of force is no substitute for tlie gospel of love ; that one cannot drive shams out from society, nor compel sincerity, nor scold men into decency and righteousness. A great, sad, heroic soul, to whom duty, obedience, work, truth, fortitude, were sacred words, and who for God and man splendidly chose "To scorn delights and live laborious days" — we may well believe that, in spite of his many infirmities of temper and some errors of judgment, no age will come when men will cease to hold in veneration a;nd love the name of Thomas Carlyle. On the following pages will be found specimens show- ing Carlyle's descriptive power, his grim humor, his tenderness, etc. 10 "THOMAS CARLYLE. m' EXTRACTS FROM CARLYLE'S WRITINGS. Sahara Waltzes. — As in dry Sahara, when the winds waken and lift and winnoAv the immensity of sand ! The air itself (travelers say) is a dim sand-air ; and, dim loom- ing through it, the Avonderfulest uncertain colonnades of sand-pillars rush whirling from this side and that, like so many mad spinning-dervishes of a hundred feet in stature, and dance their huge desert-waltz there ! — The FrencJi Revolution, III. i. Execution of Marie Antoinette. — The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is gray with care ; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang droop- ing, the face is stony pale as of one living in death. Mean weeds (which her own hand has mended) attire the Queen of the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop: a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught look- ing on thee there : far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads ; the air deaf with their triumph yell ! The Living dead must shudder with yet one other pang: lier startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face which she hides with her hands. There is, then, no heart to say, God pity thee? Oh, think not of these ; think of Him whom thou worshipest, the Crucified, — who, also, treading the winepress alone, fronted sorrow still deeper; and triumphed over it, and made it Holy ; and built of it a ' Sanctuary of Sorrow/ for INTRODUCTION. 11 thee and all the wretched ! Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tnileries, where thy step was once so light, — where thy children shall not dwell. The head is on the block ; the ax rushes Dumb lies the World; that Avild-yelling World, and all its madness, is behind thee ! — The Diamond Necklace. The Personal Appearance of Cromwell. — "His highness," says Whitelocke, '' was in a rich but plain suit, — black velvet, with cloak of the same ; about his hat a broad band of gold." Does the reader see him ? A rather likely figure, I think. Stands some five feet ten or more ; a man of strong, solid stature, and dignified, now partly military carriage : the expression of him, valor and devout intelli- gence, — energy and delicacy on a basis of simplicity. Fifty-four years old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray. A figure of sufficient impres- siveness, — not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so. Massive stature; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect ; wart above the right eyebrow ; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all fiercenesses and vigors ; deep, loving eyes, — call them grave, call them stern, — looking from under those craggy brows as if in life-long sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, — thinking it only labor and endeavor : on the Avhole, a right noble lion-face ; and hero-face ; and to me royal enough. — Oliver CromicelVs Letters and Speeches. 12 THOMAS CARLYLE. Midnight in a Great City. — ^' Ach, mein Lieber!" (Ah, my dear sir !) said he (Professor Teufelsdrockh) once, at midnight, Avhen we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, " it is a true sublimity to dwell here [in a tower high above all the city roofs]. " These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation some fathoms into the an- cient reign of Night — what thinks Bootes of them as he leads his Hunting-dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire ? "That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot- wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad, — that hum, I say, like the stertorous unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven ! " Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors and putrefac- tions and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid ! " The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men are dying there, men are being born ; men are praying, — on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; — and around them all is the vast void Night ! " The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw : in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir [Red and Black, a game of cards in which the players bet against the bank] languidly emits its voice of destiny to haggard hungry INTRODUCTION. • 13 Villains; while Councilors of State sit plotting, and play- ing their high chess-game whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready, and she, full of hope and fear, glides down to fly with him over the borders : the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high- swelling hearts ; but in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and blood-shot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the Jiabenstein [place of execution] ? — their gallows must even now be o' building ! " Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us in horizontal positions, their heads all in nightcaps and full of the foolishest dreams ! " Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother with streaming hair kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten ! "All these huddled and heaped together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them ; — crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel ; or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others: — such work goes on under that smoke-counterpane! — But I, mein Werther, sit above it all ! I am alone with the Stars ! " — Sartor Resartus, I. iii. 14 THOMAS CARLYLE. The three following passages afford specimens of Car- lyle's humor: — The genius of England no longer soars sunward, world- defiant, like an eagle through the storms, " mewing her mighty youth," as John Milton saw her do : the genius of England, much liker a greedy ostrich intent on provender and a Avhole skin mainly, stands with its other extremity sunward ; with its ostrich head stuck into the readiest bush, of old church-tippets, king-cloaks, or what other " sheltering fallacy " there may be, and so aAvaits the issue. The issue has been slow; but it is now seen to have been inevitable. No ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, and sticking its head into fallacies, but will be awakened one day in a terrible, a posteriori manner, if not otherwise. — Oliver Cromivell's Letters and Sj^eeches. t Sovereigns die and sovereignties : how all dies, and is for a time only ; is a ' time-phantasm,' yet reckons itself real ! The Merovingian kings, slowly wending on their bullock carts through the streets of Paris, with their long hair flowing, have all wended slowly on — into eternity ! Charlemagne sleeps at Salzburg, with truncheon grounded ; only fable expecting that he will awaken. Charles the Hammer, Pepin bow-legged — where now is their eye of menace, their voice of command ? Rollo and his shaggy Northmen cover not the Seine with ships ; but have sailed off on a longer voyage. The hair of Tow-head {THe d'^toupes) now needs no combing: Iron-cutter (Taillefer) cannot cut a cobweb : shrill Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda, INTRODUCTION. 15 have liad out their hot life-scold, and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled. — Tlie French Revolution. A crowded portal this of Literature, accordingly ! The haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and alas, also of expatriated vanities and prurient imbecilities : here do the windy aspirations, foiled activities, foolish ambi- tions, and frustrate human energies reduced to the voca- ble condition, fly as to the one refuge left ; and the Republic of Letters increases in population at a faster rate than even the Republic of America. The strangest regiment in her Majesty's service, this of the Soldiers of Literature — would your Lordship much like to march through Coventry with them ? The immortal gods are there (quite irrecognizable under these disguises), and also the lowest broken valets; — an extremely miscellaneous regiment. In fact, the regiment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley flood of discharged play-actors, funambulists, false prophets, drunken ballad- singers ; and marches not as a regiment, but as a bound- less canaille, — without drill, uniform, captaincy, or billet; with huge over-proportion of drummers ; you would say a regiment gone wholly to the drum, with hardly a good musket to be seen in it, — more a canaille than a regi- ment. Canaille of all the loud-sounding levities, and gen- eral winnowings of Chaos, marching through the world in a most ominous manner; proclaiming audibly if you have ears: ''Twelfth hour of the Night; ancient graves yawning; pale clammy Puseyisms screeching in their winding sheets ; owls busy in the City regions ; many 16 THOMAS CARLYLE. goblins abroad! Awake ye living; dream no more; ar; to judgment ! Chaos and Gehenna are broken loose ; t Devil with his Bedlams must be flung in chains agai and the Last of the Days is about to dawn ! " Such Literature to the reflective soul at this moment ! — Stmn2i Orator iu Latter-Day Pamphlets. Here are some examples of Carlyle's tenderness : Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not trie and beaten with stripes, even as I am ? Ever, whethii- thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, at thou not so weary, so heavy-laden? and thy Bed of ~Rq^\ is but a Grave! my Brother, my Brother! why canno' I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears froin thy eyes? — Sartor Resartus. O ye loved ones that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for aiM! never help ; and ye who, wide-scattered, still toil lonely ;i the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood — yet a little while and we shall all meet there, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all, and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's tire-whip, and all tlie Gehenna bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed tin cannot thenceforth harm us any more ! — Sartor Resartus. Politeness. — Given a noble man, I think your Lor 1- ship may expect by and by a polite man. No politer man was to be found in Britain than the rustic Robert Burns : high duchesses were captivated with the chivctl- INTRODUCTION. 17 rous ways of the man ; recognized that here was the true chivalry, and divine nobleness of bearing — as indeed they well might, now when the Peasant God and Norse Tlior had come down among them again ! Chivalry this, if not as they do Chivalry in Drury Lane or West End drawing-rooms, yet as they do it in Valhalla and the Gen- eral Assembly of the Gods. — T/te Stump Orator. Carlyle's greatest mistake was his attitude towards the United States during the Civil War, as shown in the fol- lowing squib : — Ilias Americana in Nuce. (The American Iliad in a nutshell.) Peter, of the North (to Paul, of the South). — Vd,n\, you unaccountable scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for life, — not by the month, or year, as I do! You are going straight to Hell, you — ! Paul. — Good words, Peter ! The risk is my own ; I am willing to take the risk. Hire you your servants by the month or the day, and get straight to Heaven; leave me to my own method. Peter. — No ; I won't ! I will beat your brains out first! (And is trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot yet manage it.) — Macmillan' s Magazine, August, 1863. The Hero as Man of Letters. — It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, secondhand Eighteenth Century, that of a Hero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions^ in the 18 THOMAS CARLYLE. guise of a Robert Burns. Like a little well in the rocky desert places, — like a sudden splendor of Heaven in the artificial Vauxhall ! People knew not what to make of it. They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall firework ! alas, it let itself be so taken, though struggling half- blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that ! Perhaps no man had such a false reception from his fellow-men. Once more a very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the sun. The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man, no lot covild be more perverse than Burns's. Among those secondhand acting-figures, mimes for most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a giant Original Man ; one of those men who reach down to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic among men : and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest soul of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scot- tish Peasant. His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things; did not succeed in any; was involved in continual diffi- culties. The Steward, Pactor as the Scotch call him, used to send letters and threatenings, Burns says, " which threw us all into tears." The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his brave heroine of a wife ; and those children of whom Robert was one ! In this Earth, so wide other- wise, no shelter for them. The letters " threw us all into tears:" figure it! The brave Father, I say always; — a silent Hero and Poet; without whom the son had never been a speaking one! Burns's Schoolmaster came after- INTRODUCTION. 19 Avards to London, learnt what good society was ; but de- clares that in no meeting of men did he ever enjoy better discourse than at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor "seven acres of nursery -ground," — not that, nor the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a living by, Avould prosper Avith him ; he had a sore, un- equal battle all his days. But he stood to it valiantly; a wise, faithful, unconquerable man ; — swallowing down how many sore suiferings daily into silence; fighting like an unseen Hero, — nobody publishing newspaper para- graphs about his nobleness ; voting pieces of plate to him ! However he was not lost : nothing is lost. Robert is there ; the outcome of him, — and indeed of many gen- erations of such as him. This Burns appeared under every disadvantage : unin- structed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he written even what he did write, in the general language of England, I doubt not he had already become universally recognized as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men. That he should have tempted so many to penetrate through the rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof that there lay something far' from common within it. He has gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do so over all quarters of our wide Saxon world : wheresoever a Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be understood, by personal inspection of this and the other, that one of the most con- siderable Saxon men of the Eighteenth century was an Ayrshire Peasant named Robert Burns. Yes, I will say, 20 THOMAS CARLYLE. here too was a piece of the right Saxon stuff: strong as the Harz-rock, rooted in the depths of the workl ; — rock, yet with wells of living softness in it ! A wild impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there; such heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A noble rough genuineness ; homely, rustic, honest ; true simplicity of strength ; with its lightning fire ; with its soft, dewy pity ; — like the old Norse Thor, the Peasant-god ! — Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech ; a fellow of in- finite frolic, laughter, sense, and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript, cutting peats in the bog, or suchlike, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth ('fojid gaillard,' as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), a primal-element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him ; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gal- lantly aside ; bounds forth victorious over them. It is as the lion shaking " dew-drops from his mane ; " as the swift- bounding horse, that laughs at the shaking of the spear. — But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Burns's, — are they not the outcome properly of Avarm generous affection, such as is the beginning of all to every man? You would think it strange if I called Burns the most gifted British soul we had in all that century of his ; and yet I believe the day is coming when there will be little danger in saying so. His writings, all that he did under INTRODUCTION. 21 * such obstructions, are only a poor fragment of him. Pro- fessor Stewart remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good for much, that his poetry was not any partic- ular faculty, but the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself iit that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts : from the gracefulest utter- ances of courtesy to the highest fire of passionate speech ; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight, — all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate liim as a man whose speech " led them off their feet." This is beautiful : but still more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more than once alluded to : How the waiters and ostlers at inns would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear this man speak ! Waiters and ostlers ! — they too were men, and here was a man ! I have heard much about his speech ; but one of the best things I ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar with him. That it was a speech distinguished by always having something in if. " He spoke rather little than much," this old man told me ; " sat rather silent in those early days, as in the com- pany of persons above him ; and always when he did speak, it Avas to throw new light on the matter." I know not why any one should ever speak otherwise ! — But if Ave look at his general force of soul, his healthy robustness every way, the rugged doAvnrightness, penetration, generous valor and manfulness that Avas in him, — where shall we readily find a better-gifted man '.' Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, I 22 THOMAS CAELYLE. sometimes feel as if Burns might be found to resemble Mirabeau more than any other. They differ widely in vesture ; yet look at them intrinsically. There is the same burly, thick-necked strength of body as of soul ; — built, in both cases, on wRat the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, for- ward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight into some object or other: so do both these men speak. The same raging passions ; capa- ble too in both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit, wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity : these were in both. The types of the two men are not dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies ; politicized, as few could. Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in the Solway Frith ; in keeping silence over so much, Avhere no good speech, but only inar- ticulate rage was possible : this might have bellowed forth Ushers de Breze and the like; and made itself visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever- memorable epochs ! But they said to him reprovingly, his Official Superiors said, and wrote : " You are to work, not think." Of your tliinMng-idiCwMj , the greatest in this land, we have no need ; you are to gauge beer there ; for that only are you wanted. Very notable; — and worth men- tioning, though Ave know what is to be said and answered ! As if Thought, Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, INTRODUCTION. 23 in all places and situations of the world, precisely the thing that was wanted ! The fatal man ; is he not always the rt^thinking man, the man who cannot think and see; but only grope, and hallucinate, and m^s-see the nature of the thing he works with? He mis-sees it, mistakes it as we say ; takes it for one thing, and it is another thing, — and leaves him standing like a Futility there ! He is the fatal man ; unutterably fatal, put in the high places of men. — '' Why complain of this ? " say some : " Strength is mourn- fully denied its arena ; that was true from of old." Doubt- less ; and the worse for the arena, answer I ! Complaining profits little ; stating of the truth may profit. That a Europe, with its French Eevolution just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for gauging beer, — is a thing I, for one, cannot rejoice at ! — Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life. The Song he sings is not of fantasticalities ; it is of a thing felt, really there ; the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his Life generally, is truth. The Life of Burns is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage sincerity, — not cruel, far from that ; but wild, wrestling naked with the truth of things. In that sense, there is something of the savage in all great men. Hero-worship, — Odin, Burns ? Well ; these Men of Letters too were not without a kind of Hero-worship : but what a strange condition has that got into now! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about the door, eager to catch any word that fell from Burns, were do- 24 THOMAS CARLYLE. ing unconscious reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for worshiper. Kousseau had Avorsliipers enough : princes calling on him in his mean garret ; the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor moon- struck man. For himself a most portentous contradic- tion; the two ends of his life not to be brought into harmony. He sits at the table of grandees ; and has to copy music for his own living. He cannot even get his music copied. " By dint of dining out," says he, " I run the risk of dying by starvation at home." For his wor- shipers too a most questionable thing ! If doing Hero- Avorship well or badly be the test of vital well-being or ill-being to a generation, can we say that these generations are very first-rate? — And yet our heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to call them ; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means whatever. The world has to obey him wlio thinks and sees in the world. The world can alter the numner of that; can either have it as blessed continuous summer sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder tornado, — with unspeakable difference of profit for the world ! The man- ner of it is very alterable ; the matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power under the sky. Light ; or, failing that, lightning: the world can take its choice. Not Avhether we call an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him ; but whether we believe the word he tells us : there it all lies. If it be a true word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we shall have to do it. What vavie or welcome we give him or it, is a point that con- cerns ourselves mainly. It, the new Trutli, new deeper INTRODUCTION. 25 revealing of the Secret of this Universe, is verily of the nature of a message from on high ; and must and will have itself obeyed. — My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's history, — his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his demeanor there were the highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him. If we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a man. So sudden ; all common Lionism, which ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had been made a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artillery Lieutenancy in the Regi- ment La Fere. Burns, still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a plowman ; he is flying to the West Indies to escape disgrace, and a jail. This month he is a ruined peasant, his wages seven pounds a j-ear, and these gone from him; next month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, handing down jeweled Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure of all eyes! Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man ; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. I admire much the way in which Burns met all this. Perhaps no man one could point out, was ever so sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, unastonished ; not abashed, not inflated ; neither awkwardness nor affectation : he feels that he there is the man Robert Burns ; that the " rank is but the guinea's stamp ; " that the celebrity is but the candle- light, which will show vliat man ; not, in the least, make him a better or other man! Alas, it may readily, unless he look to it, make him a tvorae man; a wretched, inflated 26 THOMAS CARLYLE. wind-bag, — inflated till he burst, and there become a dead lion ; for whom, as some one has said, " there is no resurrec- tion of the body ; " worse than a living dog ! — Burns is admirable here. And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion- hunters were the ruin and death of Burns. It was they that rendered it impossible for him to live ! They gath- ered around him in his Farm ; hindered his industry ; no place was remote enough from them. He could not get his Lionism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. He falls into discontents, into miseries, faults; the world getting ever more desolate for him; health, char- acter, peace of mind all gone ; — solitary enough now. It is tragical to think of ! These men came but to see him ; it was out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a little amusement: they got their amusement; — and the Hero's life went for it! Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of " Light-chafers," large Fire-flies, which people stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of con- dition can thus travel with a pleasant radiance, which they much admire. Great honor to the Fire-flies! But — ! — • — Heroes and Hero-Worsliip. CRITICAL COMMENTS. With all deductions, Carlyle remains the profoundest critic and the most dramatic imagination of modern times. Never was there a more striking example of that ingenium perfervidum long ago said to be characteristic of his coun- trymen. He is one of the natures, rare in these latter INTRODUCTION. 27 centuries, capable of rising to a white heat; but once fairly kindled, he is like a three-decker on fire, and his shotted guns go off, as the gloAv reaches them, alike dangerous to friend or foe. Though he seems more and more to confound material with moral success, yet there is always something wholesome in his unswerving loyalty to reality, as he understands it. History, in the true sense, he does not and cannot write ; for he looks on mankind as a herd without volition and without moral force ; but such vivid pictures of events, such living con- ceptions of character, we find nowhere else in prose. . . . Though not the safest of guides in politics or practi- cal philosophy, his value as an inspirer and awakener cannot b6 overestimated. It is a power which belongs only to the highest order of minds, for it is none but a divine fire that can so kindle and irradiate. The debt due him from those who listened to the teachings of his prime for revealing to them what sublime reserves of power even the humblest may find in manliness, sincerity, and self-reliance, can be paid with nothing short of rever- ential gratitude. As a purifier of the sources whence our intellectual inspiration is drawn, his influence has been second only to that of Wordsworth, if even to his. Indeed he has been in no fanciful sense the continuator of Wordsworth's moral teaching. . . . The great merit of Carlyle's essays lay in a criticism based on wide and various study, which, careless of tra- dition, applied its standard to the real and not the con- temporary worth of the literary or other performance to be judged, and in an unerring eye ior that fleeting ex- 28 THOMAS CARLYLE. pressioii of the moral features of character, a perception of which alone makes the drawing of a -coherent likeness possible. Their defect was a tendency, gaining strength with years, to confound the moral with the esthetic standard, and to make the value of an author's work dependent on the general force of his nature rather than on its special fitness for a given task. But, with all deductions, he remains the profoundest critic and the most dramatic imagination of modern times. His manner is not so well suited to the historian as to the essayist. He is always great in single figures and striking epi- sodes, but there is neither gradation nor continuity. He sees history, as it were, by flashes of lightning. He makes us acquainted with the isolated spot where we lia]3pen to be when the flash comes, as if by actual eye- sight, but there is no possibility of a comprehensive view. No other writer compares with him for vividness. AVith the gift of song, Carlyle Avould have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer. — James Russell Lowell. The essays on Burns and Scott are two sermons on life, often rambling, always full of repetition, saying, in Carlyle's way, what another man of equal genius and power could have said as vigorously, but more clearly and simply, therefore better-, in half the number of words. But that other man of equal genius and power, wherever he may be, has not written an essay on Burns. We must take Carlyle as he is ; learn to distinguish, as Jeffrey did, between dif- ferences that are radical and those Avhich are only formal. INTRODUCTION. 29 t Carlyle's style was his own; in these essays, perhaps, only incipient Carlylese ; his genius and his earnest, right-minded struggle with the problems of the life of man were his own also. The readers of these essays should draw near to their writer, mind to mind, soul to soul, live with him his best life while they read the rhetoric that, always right- minded and often joined to strains of highest eloquence, sometimes confuses alike writer and reader. I doubt very much whether, after having written his essay on Burns, Carlyle clearly knew whether he had or had not meant to say that Burns should have chosen between Ellisland and Mount Parnassus. Sometimes we seem to be clearly told that he should have given himself up to the Muses and made poetry his only calling. At other times, we are told that he could not be other than he was. Carlyle, on the whole, preaches with deep earnestness the truth as it is in man. A hint in the facts of any life may set him off on a new burst of homily, and, though all the winds blow health, they do not all blow in the same direction. — Nicoll's Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle's essays are among the most valuable of his writings. He was the first to make the great writers of Germany known in England ; and his writings on the more illustrious figures of the epoch of the French Revolution — Voltaire, Diderot, Mirabeau — are models of insight into character, profound and discriminating estimates of men who had proved stumbling-blocks to British critics. The essays on Burns and Johnson may be said to have struck the keynote of all succeeding writings on these men ; while 30 THOMAS CARLYLE. his criticism of Scott, which has provoked a good deal of hostility, is more and more coming to be generally recog- nized as substantially correct. The "Life of Schiller," though warmly praised by Goethe, who added a preface to the German translation of it, is not a first-rate perform- ance. But the "Life of Sterling" is a perfect triumph of literary art, far and away the best biography of its size in the language. — Henry Morley. BURNS'S PERSOXAL APPEARANCE. I was not much struck with Burns's first appearance, as I had previously heard it described. His person, though strong and well-knit, and much superior to what might be expected in a plowman, was still rather coarse in its out- line. His stature, from want of setting up, appeared to be only of the middle size, but was rather above it. His motions were firm and decided, and, though without any pretensions to grace, were at the same time so free from clownish restraint as to show that he had not always been confined to the society of his profession. His countenance was not of that elegant cast which is most frequent among the upper ranks, but was manly and intelligent, and marked by a thoughtful gravity which shaded at times into stern- ness. In his large dark eye the most striking index of his genius resided. It was full of mind, and would have been singularly expressive under the management of one who could employ it with more art for the purpose of expression. He was plainly but properly dressed, in a style mid- way between the holiday costume of a farmer and that of the company with which he now associated. His black INTRODUCTION. . 31 hair, without powder at a time when it was very generally worn, was tied behind, and spread upon his forehead. Upon the whole, from his person, physiognomy, and dress, had I met him near a seaport, and been required to guess his condition, I should have probably conjectured him to be the master of a merchant vessel of the most respectable class. In no part of his manner was there the slightest de- gree of affectation, nor could a stranger have suspected, from anything in his behavior or conversation, that he had been for some months the favorite of the fashionable circles of a metropolis. In conversation he was powerful. His conceptions and expression were of corresponding vigor, and on all subjects were as remote as possible from commonplace. Though somewhat authoritative, it was in a way which gave little offense, and was readily imputed to his inexperience in those modes of smoothing dissent and softening assertion Avhich are important characteristics of polished manners. After breakfast I requested him to communicate some of his unpublished pieces, and he recited his farewell song to the Banks of Ayr, introducing it with a description of the circumstances in which it was composed, more striking than the poem itself. I paid particular attention to his recita- tion, which was plain, slow, articulate, and forcible, but without any eloquence or art. He did not always lay the emphasis Avith propriety, nor did he humor the sentiment by the variations of his voice. He was standing, during the time, with his face to the window ; to which, and not to his auditors, he directed his eye. — Professor Walker. 32 THOMAS CAELYLE. CARLYLE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. [The student may verify and complete these imperfect lists.] 17135, Dec. 4. Born at Eecle- fechau, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 1800. At village school. 1805. At school at Annan, on Solway Firth. 1809. Walks eighty miles to Edinburgh, and enters the University. 1814. LeavesUniversityUefore graduation. — Becomes teacher of mathemat- ics at Annan. 1816. Master of .school in Kirkaldy. 1818. Studies law. 1819. Settles in Edinburgh. 1820. Suffers from dyspepsia. — German studies. 1822. Article on Faust in Edinburgh Revieiv. — Tutor. 1823. Life of Schiller in Lon- don Magazine. Contemporary Literature and Events. 1798. Lyrical Ballads published by Cole- ridge and Wordsworth. — Battle of the Nile. 1800. Union of Great Britain and Ireland. — Malta surrendered to Engli.sh. 1801. First regular census of Great Britain. — French army in Egypt surren- ders. — Battle of Copenhagen. 1802. Peace of Amiens. — Edinburgh Re- vieiv begun. — Australia colonized. 1803. Emerson boru. 1805. Battle of Trafalg;i«^ — Scott's Lay of the Lust Minstrel. 180G. Death of Pitt and Fox. — Moore's Epistles, Odes and Other Poems. 1807. Slave-trade abolished. — Two volumes of PoejHS by Wordsworth. — Byron's Hours of Idleness. 1808. Scott's Marmion. — Peninsular War begins. 1809. Abraham Lincoln born. — Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming. 1812. War between America and England. — Byron's Childe Harold (2 cantos) . 1813. Shelley's Queen i/«6. — Southey made poet laureate. 1814. Scott's Waverley Novels. — BvUlsh raid on Washington. — Words- worth's Excursion. 1815. Waterloo. 1816. Byron's Siege of Corinth, Parisina. — Shelley's Alastor. — Bryant's Thanatopsis. — Byron abandons England and wife. 1817. Moore's Lulla Rookh. 1818. Keats publishes Endymion. 1819. First steamship on the Atlantic. 1820. Keats goes to Italy. — Byron, Shel- ley, Moore, Lamb, and the "Lake Poets," all writing. 1821. Keats dies. 1822. Cabs first used in London. — Words- worth's Ecclesiastical Sketches in Ve7'se. INTRODUCTION. 33 1824. Translatiou of Wilhelin Meisti'r. ISlio. Life of Schiller, iu book iorm. 1826. Marries Jaue Welsh. 18'27. SpeciDiens of German Romance. 1828. Settled on wife's inher- ited farm at Craigeu- puttoeh, Dumfries- shire. — Essay ou Burns. 1830. Sartor Kesartus grow- ing. 1833. Sartor Resartus begins to appear iu Fraser's Mayuzine. 1834. Removes to Chelsea, London suburb. 1835. At work ou The French Revolution. 183(3. At work on The French Rerolution. 18.37. The French Revolution. — Ijectures. 1840. Chartism. 1841. Heroes and Hero-Wor- ship. 1843. Past and Present. 1845. Oliner Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. /■ 1850. Latter-day Pamphlets. ClINTEMPOKABY LiTEKATI'RK AND EVENTS. 1824. Byron dies at Missolonghi, Greece. Irving's Tales of a T?-aveler. 1825. Macaulay's Essay on Milton. 182(i. Cooper's Ixtst of the Mohicans. 1827. Battle of Navarino. 1828. Duke of Wellington minister. 1830, 1832, 1833, 1834. 1835. 1836. 18^7. 1840. 1S41. 1842. 1843. 1844. 1845. William IV. crowned. — Stephenson's " Rocket " locomotive. Walter Scott die.s. Slavery abolished iu the British colo- nies. — Arthur Hallam dies. Bancroft's U. S. History. Vol. I. — Buhver's Last Days of Pompeii. — Coleritlge dies. Wordsworth's Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems. Dickens's Pickwick Papers. — Holmes's Poems. Victoria becomes Queen. — Haw- thorne's Twice-told T(des. — Pres- cott's Ferdinand and Isabella. — Whittier's Poems. Penny Postage established in Eng- land. Browning's Pippa Passes. — Emer- son's Fssays. — Massacre of Eng- lish army in Afghanistan. — Pho- tography. Tennyson's Poems, 2 vols. — China compelled to open her ports to trade. Ruskin's Modern Painters, Vol. I. — Southey dies. Elizabeth Barrett's (afterwards Mrs. Browning) Poems. — Campbell dies. Poe's Raven and Other Poems. 1846. Jews admitted to municipal offices in England. — Famine iu Ireland. — Anresthetics. — Sewing-machines. — Repeal of the Corn Laws. — Free Trade in England. Longfellow's "Evangeline. — Thack- eray's Vanity /'(«';•. —Tennyson's Princess. Lowell's Bic/low Papers. — Chartists aiul Irish rising suppressed. Parkman's California. Tennyson marries. — His /;/, Mrmo- ri!«;». — Becomes poet laureate. 1847. 1848. 1849. 1850. 34 THOMAS CARLYLE. 1851. Life of John Sterling. 1858. History of Frederick the Great, first two vols. 1865. History of Frederick the Great completed. 1866. Lord Rector at Edin- burgh. — Wife dies. 1867. Shooting Niagara. 1875. Early Kings of Norway . 1881, Feb. 4. Dies. Contemporary Literature and Events. 1851. First "World's Fair." —Herbert Spencer's Social Statics. 1854. The Crimean War. 1855. Capture of Sebastopol. 1859. Darwin's Origin of Species. — Tenny- son's Idyls of the King. 1861. George Eliot's Silas Marner. — Amer- ican Civil War. 1872. The Geneva Arbitration Congress, 1877. Victoria made Empress of India. INTRODUCTION. 3^7 BURNS CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. [Th" student may verify a)id complete these imperfect lists.] 1759, Jan. 25. Born 2 m. S. of Ayr, in the mid.st of a storm that wrecked the house. — Eldest of six children. — Father was William Burness, or, as he wrote it, Burues. 1705. Sent to school with his brother Gilbert for a few months at Alloway Mill. 1766. Family removes to Mount Oliphant to re- side on a leased farm, an unfortunate step. 1774. Composes his first song, eTititled Huttdsome Nell. I Contemporary Literature and Events. 1759. Johnson writes Rasselas ; Sterne, Tristram Shandy, I. and II. — Victory of Quebec gives England Canada. 1700. George III. ascends the throne. — Wedgwood establishes his famous potteries. 1762. Goldsmith's collected essays entitled The Citizen of the World. — Mac- pherson publishes Poems of Os- sian. — Johnson pensioned, and meets Boswell. — Parliament enacts stringent laws to punish bribery of voters. 1703. Canada is ceded by France to Brit- ain. — John Wilkes violently at- tacks the government. 1704. Johnson founds club. — Goldsmith publishes The Traveler. — Har- greaves invents a spinning jenny. 1705. Percy publishes Reliques of Ancient Poe Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy ; ^ and was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect ; till his early and most mournful 15 death' again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, espe- cially as there was now nothing to be done,^ and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the " nine days " "* have long since elapsed ; and the very continuance of this clamor proves that Burns was no 20 vulgar wonder. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has^ come to rest more and more exclusively on his own intnnsic_merits, and may now be Avell-nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most consider- 25 able British men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be / objected that he did little. He did much, if we consider \ where and how. If the work performed was small, we--' must remember that he had his very materials to discover ; ^ for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert moor, 30 where no eye but his had guessed its existence ; and we may almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest 44 carlyle's essay [n. obscurity, without help, without instructiou, without model ; or with models only of the meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which 5 man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest time ; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain forever shut against him ! His means 10 are the commonest and rudest; the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dAvarf behind his steam engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf Avill hew them down Avith a pickax ; and he must be a Titan ^ that hurls them abroad with his arms. 15 y It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pres- sure of- continual bodily toil, nay, of penury and desponding 20 apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson" or Ramsay^fo^^^is standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impeclimems : through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his lynx eye 25 discerns the true relations of the world and human life ; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the expansive move- ment of his own irrepressible soul, he struggles forward into the general view; and with haughty modesty lays 30 down before us, as the fruit of his labor, a gift, which Time has now pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome, drudging childhood'* and youth was by far the kindliest era of his Avhole life ; and that he died in his thirty-seventh year : and then ask. If it be strange that his 35 poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his genius II.] ON BURNS. 45 attained no mastery in its art ? Alas, his Sun slione ' as through a tropical tornado ; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon ! Shrouded in such baleful vapors, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure splendor, enlightening the world : but some beams from it did, by 5 fits, pierce through ; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colors into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears ! ^^ — n- ^ We are anxious not to exaggerate ; for it is exjroiffion^*^ ^ ^ rather than admiration that our readers require of us here ; 10 and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold business ; ' we are not so sure of this ; but, at all events, our concern with Burns is not ex- 15 clusively that of critics. True and genial as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet/"^ bi;t as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was often advised to write a tragedy : ^ time and means were not lent him for this ; but through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of the deep- 20 est. We question whether the Avorld has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene ; whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe^ and perish on his rock, " amid the melancholy main," " presented* to the reflecting mind such a " spectacle of pity and fear " as did this intrin- 25 sically nobler, gentler, and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with base entanglements, which coiled closer and closer round him, till only death opened him an outlet. I Conquerors are a class of men with whom, for most part, the world could well dispense ; nor 30 can the hard intellect, the unsympathizing loftiness, and high but selfish enthusiasm of such persons, inspire us in general with any affection; at best it, may excite amaze- ment ; and their fall, like that of a pyramid,' will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. iBut a true Poet, a man in ."5 46 caelyle's essay [u. whose heart resides some effluence of Wisdom, some tone of the " Eternal Melodies," ^ is the most precious gift - that can be bestowed oiTa generation : we see in him a freer, purer development of whatever is noblest in ourselves ; his life is 5 a rich lesson to us ; and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us. ?' Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on us in Robert Burns ; but with queen-like indifference she cast it fronj her hand, like a thing of no moment ; and it was de- 10 faced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before Ave recog- nized it. To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given. Destiny, — for so in our igno- rance we must speak, — his faults, the faults of others, 15 proved too hard for him; and that spirit, which might have soared could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blos- som ; and^ died, we may almost say, without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul ; so full of inborn 20 riches, of love to all living and lifeless things ! How his heart flows out in sympathy over universal Nature, and in her bleakest provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning ! The '^ Daisy " ^ falls not unheeded under his plowshare ; nor the ruined nest of that "wee, cowering, timorous beastie,"^ 25 cast forth, after all its provident pains, to " thole "' the sleety dribble® and cranreuch^ cauld."* The "hoar visage" of Winter delights him ; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation ; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears ; he loves to 30 walk in the sounding woods,^ for " it raises his thoughts to Hi7n that walketh on. the ivings of the wiiuV^ ^" A true Poet- soul ; for it needs but to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music ! But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What warm, all-comprehending fellow- 35 feeling ; what trustful, boundless love ; what generous ex- 11.] ON BURNS. 47 agge ration of the object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden/ are no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons - of Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian ^ illusion, biit in the rude contradiction, in the 5 smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him : Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, and Cour- age ; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell iinder the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his heart : and thus over the lowest provinces of man's existence he 10 pours the glory of his own soiil ; and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest.'' He has a just self- consciousness, which too often degenerates into pride ; yet it is a noble pride,^ for defense, not for offense ; no cold sus- 15 picious feeling, but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears himself, we might say, like a King in exile : he is cast among the low, and feels himself equal to the high- est ; yet he claims no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the supercilious'' he can 20 subdue ; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with him ; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the '• insolence of condescension " cannot thrive. In his abase- ment, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty' of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels 25 himself above common men, he wanders not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests ; nay, throws him- self into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him. It is moviiig to see how, in his darkest despondency, this proud being still seeks relief from"* friendship; un- 30 ])Osoms himself, often to the unworthy; and, amid tears, strains to Ids glowing heart a heart that knows only the name of friendship. And yet he was " quick to learn ; " a man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His understanding saw through the hollow- 35 48 . carlyle's essay [m. ness even of aeeoiuplislied deceivers ; but there was a gener- ous credulity ' in liis heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among us; "a soul like an .Eolian- harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed 5 itself into articulate melody." And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarreling with smugglers and vintners, computing excise dues upon tallow, and gauging ale barrels ! In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully wasted : and a hundred years may pass 10 on before another such is given us to waste. III. All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him ; lirief, broken glimpses '^ of a genius that could never show itself complete ; that wanted 15 all things for completeness : culture, leisure, true effort, nay, even length of life. His poems are, Avith scarcely any ex- ception, mere occasional effusions, poured forth with little premeditation ; expressing, by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humor of the hour. Never in one in- 20 stance was it permitted him to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mold it in the concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect fragments would be at once unprofitable and unfair.'' Nevertheless, there is something 25 in tliese poems, marred and defective as they are, which for- bids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort • of enduring quality they must have ; for, after fifty years of the wildest -vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still continue to be read ; nay, are read more ' and more 30 eagerly, more and more extensively ; and this not only by literary virtuosos,'"' and that class upon whom transitory causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the III.] ON BURNS. 49 most hard, unlettered and tnily natural class, who read little, • and especially no poetry, except because they hud pleasure in it. The grounds of so singular and wide a popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the palace to the hut,^ and over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are 5 well worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that excellence ? ^,, u UXc(.,-J .i (^-^ \ > - ^ .i-c-*-~ /^Here, however, let us say, it is to the Poetry of Burns that we now allude ; to those writings which he had time to med- 30 itate, and where no special reason existed to warp his critical feeling, or obstruct his endeavor to fulfill it. Certain of his Letters, and other fractions of prose composition, by no means deserve this praise. Here, doubtless, there is not the same natural truth of style ; but on the contrary, something 35 52 carlyle's essay [m. not only stiff, but strained and twisted ; a certain high-flown, inflated tone ; tlie stilting emphasis of which contrasts ill with the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. Thus no man, it would appear, is altogether un- 5 affected. Does not Shakespeare himself^ sometimes pre- meditate the sheerest bombast ! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The fi rst was his comparative - deficienay^Jjir, lang uage. Burns, though for most part he writes with 10 singular force and even gracefulness, is not master of Kng- lish prose as he is of Scottish verse ; not master of it, we mean, in proportion to the depth and vehejnence of his mat- ter. These Letters strike us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressing. ^^utJfc- 15 second and weightier excu.s^e is to be_f.Oimd in the pe culiarit y '^f Bui-ns's socia l j'iink. . His correspondents are often men whosp ri'latidii to him he has never accurately ascertained; Avhom therefore he is either forearming himself against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the style he thinks 20 will please them. At all events, we should remember that these faults, even in his Letters, are not the rule, but the exception. Whenever he writes, as one would ever wish to do, to trusted friends and on real interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes even beautiful.- His 25 letters to Mrs. Dunlop * are uniformly excellent. /-y!6ut we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sincerity, It has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or perhaps a means, of the foregoing: this displays itself "^S*- in his choice of subjects ; or I'ather in his indifference as to t.^yj9^>9aibjects, and the power he has of making all subjects inter- esting.'' The ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is for- ever seeking in external circumstances the help which can be found only in himself. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or comeliness : home is not poet- 35 ical but prosaic; it is in some past, distant, conventional, ii'j ON BURNS. 53 lieroic woild that poetry resides ; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, it Avoiikl be Avell with him. Henee our innumerable host of rose-colored Novels and iron- maih."' Rpics,^ with their locality not on the Earth, but ^- Moir^-'Vv i:ore nearer to the Moon.^ Hence our .Virgins of the 5 :■ UB, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in ttirba^' , and copper-colored Chiefs in wampum, and so many other truculent^ figures from the heroic times or the heroic Lumates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace be with tliem ! But yet, as a great moralist * proposed preach- lo ing to the men of this century, so would we fain preach to the poets " a ser mon on the duty of _sta ying at home.'' Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates can do little for them. That form of life has-attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than our own than simply be- 15 cause it is different; and even this attraction must be of the most transient sort. For will not our own age one day be an ancient one, and have as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintness ? Does Homer ^ 20 interest us now because he wrote of what passed beyond his native Greece, and two centuries before ^ he was born ; or because he wrote of what passed in God's world and in the heart of man, which is the same after thirty centuries ? Let our poets look to this: is their feeling really finer, 25 truer, and their vision deeper than that of other men, — they have nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject: is it not so, — they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral" favor, even from the highest. ^w^'t fc^x-tXX.^^ /j. The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a 30 subject : the elements of his art are in him, and around him^Xv*" on every hand ; for him the Ideal world is not remote from ,.V the Actual, but \uider it and within it : nay, he is a poet — precisely because he can discern it there. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is 35 54 carlyle's essay [m. in his place; for here too is man's existence, witi^ its infi- nite longings and small acquirings ; its ever-thwartGd, ever- renewed endeavors; its unspeakable aspirations, iljs fears and hopes that wander through Eternity; and all tlijj'mys- 5 tery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever maJo of, in any age or climate, since man first began to live. Js there not the fifth act of a Tragedy in every deathbed, though it Avere a peasant's and a bed of heath ? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that there can be Comedy 10 no longer ? Or are men suddenly grown wise, that Laugh- ter^ must no longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce? Man's life and nature is as it was, and as it will ever be. But the poet must have an eye to read these things, and a heart to understand them ; or they come and 15 pass away before him in vain. He is a oates,^ a seer ; a gift of vision has been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which another cannot equally decipher? then he is no poet, and Delphi^ itself will not make him one. /(f, In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a 20 great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves the truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength kept the whole Minerva Press' going, to the end of his literary course. He showfi jiin^sejif^at least a^ poet.af .^Njjiiitela-aiiLU- making ; a nd Natur e^ after aiTpTs still the grand agent in 25 mak ing poet s. We often hear of this and the other external condition being requisite for the existence of a poet. Some- times it is a certain sort of training; he must have studied certain things, studied for instance "the elder dramatists," and so learned a poetic language ; as if poetry lay in the 30 tongue, not in the heart." At other times we are told he must be bred in a certain rank, and must be on a confi- dential footing with the higher classes ; because, above all things, he must see the world. As to seeing the world, we * apprehend this will cause him little difficulty, if he have 35 but eyesight to see it with. A\'ithout eyesight, indeed, the III.] ON BURNS. 55 task might be hard. The blind or the purblind man "travels from Dan to Beersheba^ and finds it all barren." But hap- pily every poet is born in the world; and sees it, with or against his Avill, every day and every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of man's heart, the true light and 5 the inscrutable darkness of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. Nay, do not the elements of all human virtues and all human vices, the passions at once of a Borgia^ and of a Luther,^ lie written, 10 in stronger or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every individual bosom that has practiced honest self-examina- tion ? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel * and Tarbolton,^ if we look well, as clearly as it ever came to light in Crockford's,'' or the Tuileries ^ itself. 15 / But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor aspirant to poetry; for it is hinted that he should have beeiL-i^orn two centuries ago ; inasmuch as poetry, about — that date, vanished- from the rarth, and became no longer attainable by men ! Such cobweb speculations " have, now 20 and then, overhung the field of literature ; but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there : the Shakespeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every genius an impos- sibility ^° till he appear ? Why do we call him new and 25 original, if ive saw where his marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it? It is not the material but the workman that is wanting. It is not the dark p?ac0 pace with keenness of feeling ; ^ that his light is not more *A \ pervading than his ivarmth. He is a man of the most im- ^ passioned temper ; with passions not strong only, but noble, 10 and of the sort in which great virtues and great poems take their rise. It is reverence, it is love towards all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes to its beauty, and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise. There is a true old saying, that "Love furthers knowledge:" but, above 15 all, it is the living essence of that knowk'dge whic h make s ppt'ts ; the first principle of its existence, increase, activity. Of Burns's fervid affection, his generous all-embracing Love, \ve have spoken already, as of the grand distinction of his nature, seen equally in word and deed, in his Life and in Lis Writings. It were easy to multiply examples. Not man only, but all that environs man in the material and moral universe, is lovely in his sight : " the hoary hawthorn the "troop of gray plover," the "solitary curlew," 25 are dear to him; all live in this Earth along with him, and to all he is knit as in mysterious brotherhood. How touching is it, for instance, that, amidst the gloom of per- sonal misery, brooding over the wintry desolation without him and within him, he thinks of the "ourie cattle" and 30 " silly sheep," and their sufferings in the pitiless storm ! I thought me on the ourie cattle,^ Or silly sheep, wha bide ^ this brattle * ()' wintry war, Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing.^^ sprattle,^ 35 Beneath a scar.'' % III.] ON BURNS. 63 Ilk 1 happing - bird, wee helpless thing, That in the merry months o' spring Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee ? Whei-e wilt thou cow'r thy chittering ^ wing, 5 And close thy e'e ? The tenant of the mean hut, with its "ragged roof and chinky wall," has a heart to pity even these ! This is worth several homilies on Mercy ; for it is the voice of Mercy her- self. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy ; his soul rushes 10 forth into all realms of being ; nothing that has existence can be indifferent* to him. The very DeviP he cannot hate with right orthodoxy: But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben ; ^ O, wad'^ ye tak a thought and men' ! ^ 15 Ye aiblins ^ might, — I dinna '^^ ken, " — Still hae a stake ; i^ I'm wae i^ to think upo' yon den. Even for your sake ! " He is the father of curses and lies," said Dr. Slop ; ^* "and 20 is cursed and damned already." — "I am sorry for it," quoth my uncle Toby ! ^^ — A Poet without Love were a physical ajid metaphysical impossibility. ^/ But has it not been said, in contradiction to this principle, /that " Indignation makes verses " ? ^^ It has been so said, 25 and is true enough : but the contradiction is apparent, not real. The Indignation which makes verses is, properly speaking, an inverted Love ; ^' the love of some right, some worth, some goodness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has been injured, and which this tempestuous feeling 30 issues forth to defend and avenge. Xo selfish fury of heart, existing there as a primary feeling and without its opposite, ever produced much Poetry : otherwise, we suppose, the Tiger were the most musical of all our choristers. John- son ^^ said, he loved a good hater ; by which he must have 35 64 carlyle's essay [m. meant, not so much one that hated violently, as one that hated wisely ; hated baseness from love of nobleness. How- ever, in spite of Johnson's paradox, tolerable enough for once in speech, but which need not have been so often 5 adopted in print since then, we rather believe that good men deal sparingly in hatred, either wise or unwise : nay that a " good " hater is still a desideratum ^ in this world. The Devil, at least, who passes for the chief and best of th^ class, is said to be nowise an amiable character. j\ l?v^alL)f the verses which Indignation makes, Burns has also ^U*\ given us specimens, andamong the best that wer e ever V^ given. \\ ho will torget his Dweller in yon Dungeon dark ; ^ a piece that might have been chanted by the Furies'* of ^schylus?* The secrets of the infernal Pit^ are laid 15 bare ; a boundless baleful " darkness visible ; " •* and streaks of hell-fire quivering madly in its black haggard bosom ! Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, Hangman of Creation, mark" 2Q Who in widow's weeds appears, Laden with unhonored years, Noosing*^ with care a bursting purse, Baited ^ with many a deadly curse ! i" < © Why should Ave speak of Scots wha hae ivi' Wallace bled ; " since all know of it, from the king to the meanest of his 25 subjects ? This dithyrambic '- was composed on horse- back ; ^^ in riding in the middle of tempests over the wildest Galloway moor, in company Avith a Mr. Syme, Avho, observing the poet's looks, forbore to speak, — judiciously enough, for a man composing Bnice's Address might be unsafe to trifle 30 with ! Doubtless this stern hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through the soul of Burns : but to the external ear it should be sung with the throat of the Avhirlwind. So long as there is warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will move in fierce thrills under this war-ode; the 35 best," we believe, that was ever written by any pen. III.] ON BURNS. 65 '^V Anotlier wild stormful Song, that dwells in our ear and mind with a strange tenacity, is Macpherson'' s Farewell} Perhaps there is something in the tradition itself "tliat co- operates. For was not this grim Celt,- this shaggy North- land Cacus,^ that '• lived a life of sturt^ and strife, and died 5 by treacherie," — was not he too one of the Nimrods^ and Napoleons" of the earth in the arena of his owu^ remote misty glens, for want of a clearer and wider one ? Nay, was there not a touch of grace given him ? A fiber of love and softness, of poetry itself,'' must have lived in his savage lo heart : for he composed that air the night before his execu- tion; on the wings of that poor melody his better soul would soar away above oblivion, pain, and all the ignominy and despair, which, like an avalanche, was hurling him to the abyss ! Here, also, as at Thebes,'^ and in Pelops's ^ 15 line, was material Fate '" matched against man's Free-will ; matched in bitterest though obscure duel ; and the ethereal soul sank not, even in its blindness, without a cry which has survived it. But who, except Burns, could have given words to such a soul ; words that we never listen to without 20 a strange half-barbarous, half-poetic fellow-feeling ? Sue rantingly, sae wantonhj, Sue dauntingltj yaed he ; He plaifd a spring, and danced it round, Below the ( fallows tree. ' /"T^/LA^ />5 M^y I f (^ ^v Under a lighter disguise, the same principle of Love, C/ which we have recognized as the great characteristic of Burns, and of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself in the shape of Humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through the mind 30 of Burns ; he rises to the high, and stoops to the Ioav, and is brother and playmate to all Nature. We speak not of his bold and often irresistible faculty of caricature ; for this is Drollery rather than Humor : '^ but a much tenderer 66 carlyle's essay [iv. sportfulness dwells in him ; and comes forth here and there in evanescent and beautiful touches ; as in his Ad- dress to the Mouse,^ or the Farmer's Mare,- or in his Elegy on poor Mailie,^ which last may be reckoned his hap- 5 piest effort of this kind. In these pieces there are traits of a Humor as fine as that of Sterne ; ■* yet altogether dilfer- ent, original, peculiar, — the Humor of Burns. IV. 5Wc Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other " Kindred qualities of Burns's Poetry, much more might be 10 said; but now, with these poor outlines of a sketch, we must prepare to quit this part of our subject. To speak of his individual Writings adequately and with any detail would lead us far beyond our limits. As already hinted, we can look on but few of these pieces as, in strict critical 15 language, deserving the name of Poems : they are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed sense ; yet seldom essen- tially melodious, aerial, poetical. Tarn o' Shanter^ itself, which enjoys so high a favor, doeapnpt ai:yDear to A^s at all decisively to come under this la^^'^M^opy. "Tt"is not so 20 much a poem, as a piece of sparkling rhetoric : the heart and body of the story still lies hard and dead. He has not gone back, much less carried us back, into that dark, earnest, wondering age when the tradition was believed, and when it took its rise ; he does not attempt, by any new modeling 25 of his supernatural ware, to strike anew that deep myste- rious chord of human nature, which once responded to such things, and which lives in us too, and will forever live, though silent now, or vibrating with far other notes and to far different issues. Our German readers will understand 30 us when we say that he is not the Tieck " but the Musaus,^ of this tale. Externally it is all green and living; yet look closer, it is no firm growth, but only ivy on a rock. The IV.] ON BURN^. l/y 67 piece does not properly cohere : the strange chasm which yawns in our incredulous imaginations between the Ayr public house and the gate of Tophet,' is nowhere bridged over; nay, the idea of such a bridge is laughed at; and thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere drunken 5 phantasmagoria, or many-colored spectrum painted on ale- vapors, and the Farce alone has any reality. We do not say that Burns should have made much more of this tradi- tion; Ave rather think that, for strictly poetical purposes, not much ivas to be made of it. Neither are we blind to 10 the deep, varied, genial power displayed in what he has actually accomplished ; but we find far more " Shake- spearean " qualities, as these of Turn o' Shanter have been fondly named, in many of his other pieces ; nay, we incline to believe that this latter may have been written, all 15 but quite as well, by a man who, in place of genius, had only possessed talent. ^'•-■ -- '^"'C' Perhaps we may venture to say, tnat the most strictly ""pCefical of all his " poems " is one which does not appear in Currie's Edition, but has been often printed before and 20 since under the humble title of The Jolbj Beggarsr' The subject truly is among the loAvest in Nature; but it only the more shows our Poet's gift in raising it into the domain of Art. To our minds, this piece seems thoroughly compacted ; melted together, refined ; and poured forth in 25 one flood of true liquid harmony. It is light, airy, soft of movement; yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait: that raude^ carlin* that 7vee Apollo,^ that Son of Mars,^ are Scottish, yet ideal; the scene is at once a dream, and the very Ragcastle of " Poosie '^-Nansie." 30 Farther, it seems in a considerable degree complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is the highest merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night is drawn asunder for a mo]iient; in full, ruddy, flaming light, these rough tatter- demalions are seen in their boisterous revel ; for the strong 35 68 CARLYLE's essay [iv. pulse of Life vindicates its right to gladness even here ; and when the curtain closes, we prolong the action without effort ; the next day as the last, our Ckdrd ^ and our Ballad- monger are singing and soldiering ; their '• brats and callets " - 5 are hawking, begging, cheating; and some other night, in new combinations, they will wring from Fate another hour of wassail ^ and good cheer. Apart from the universal sym- pathy with man which this again bespeaks in Burns, a genuine inspiration and no inconsiderable technical talent 10 are manifested here. There is the fidelity, humor, warm life, and accurate painting and grouping of some Teniers,* for whom hostlers and carousing peasants are not without significance. It Avould be strange, doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's writings : we mean to say only, that it 15 seems to us the most perfect of its kind, as a piece of poetical composition, strictly so called. In the Beggars' Opera,^ in the Beggars' Bush,''' as other critics have al- ready remarked, there is nothing which, in real poetic rigor, equals this Cantata;' nothing, as we think, which comes within many degrees of it. _«iflSaBut by far the most finished, complete, and truly inspired pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found among his ■^ongs^ It is here that, although through a small aperture, his light shines with least obstruction, in its highest beauty 25 and pure sunny clearness. The reason may be, that Son g is a brief simple species of composition ; and requires noth- ing so much for its perfection as genuine poetic feeling, genuine music of the heart.* Yet the Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy; rules which in most cases are 30 poorly fulfilled, in many cases are not so much as felt. We might write a long essay on the Songs of Burns ; which we reckon by far the best that Britain has yet produced : •' for indeed, since the era of Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other hand, aught truly worth attention has bern IV.] ON BURNS. 69 accomplished in this department. True, we have songs enough "hy persons of quality ; " ^ we have tawdry, hollow, wine-bred madrigals ; ^ many a rhymed speech " in the flow- ing and watery vein of Ossorius ^ the Portugal Bishop," rich in sonorous words, and, for moral, dashed perhaps with 5 some tint of a sentimental sensuality ; all which many per- sons cease not from endeavoring to sing ; though for most part, we fear, the music is but from the throat outwards, or at best from some region far enough short of the iSoul; not in which, but in a certain inane Limbo* of the Fancy, or 10 even in some vaporous debatable-land on the outskirts of the Nervous System, most of such madrigals and rhymed speeches seem to have originated. S^ With the Songs of Burns we must not name these things. Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt sentiment that 15 ever pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest in another point of view: in form, as well as in spirit. They do not affect to be set to music, but they actually and in themselves are music;' they have received their life, and fashioned themselves together, in the medium of Harmony,'^ as Venus 20 rose '' from the bosom of the sea. The story, the feeling; is not detailed, but suggested ; not said, or spouted, in rhetori- cal completeness and coherence ; but simg, in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in fantastic breaks, in toarhUngs not of the voice only, but of the whole mind. We consider this to be 25 the essence of a song ; and that no songs since the little careless catches, and as it were drops of song,^ which Shake- speare has here and there sprinkled over his Plays, fulfill this condition in nearly the same degree as most of Burns's do. Such grace and truth of exteinal movement, too, pre- 30 supposes in general a corresponding force and truth of sen- timent and inward meaning. The Songs of Burns are not more perfect in the former quality than in the latter. With Avhat tenderness he sings, yet with what vehemence and entireness ! There is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the 35 70 carlyle's essay [iv. purest rapture in his joy ; he burns with the sternest ire, or laughs with the loudest or slyest mirth ; and yet he is sweet and soft, " sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear." (if we far ther take i nto 5 account the immense variety of his subjects ; how, from the loud, flowing revel in Wi llie brew\l a Peck o' Maut } to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for ^^ar1 l ' ' i ^J ^^^i >'''>' - ' from the glad, kind greeting of Auld Lang Sme,^ or the comic archness of Dan can Gray * to tlie tire-eyed fury of Sc ots zvhcL 10 hae icV Wallgse hlpf{^ jip linv^ ^oniKl n, tone and \y 9vds fun ^very mood ^ of man's heart, — Jftt will seem a small praise if we rank him as the first of /ill our Song-writers; for we know not where to find one worthy of being second to him. •^^It is on his Songs, as we believe, that Kurns's chief influ- 15 ence as an author will ultimately be found to depend : nor, if our Fletcher's' aphorism^ is true, shall we account this a small influence. '' Let me make the songs of a people," said he, " and you shall make its laws." " Surely, if ever any Poet might have equaled himself with Legislators on 20 this ground, it was Burns. His Songs are already part of the mother tongue, not of Scotland only but of Britain, and of the millions that in all ends of the earth speak a British language. In hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in many-colored joy and woe of existence, the name, the voice, 25 of that joy and that woe is the name and voice '" which Burns has given them. Strictly speaking, perhaps no Brit- ish man has so deeply affected the thou;j:hts and feelings of so many men as this solitary and altogether private individ- ual, with means apparently the humblest. SO '^Jn another point of view, moreover, we incline to think that Burns's influence may have been considerable : we mean, as exerted specially on the Literature of his coimtry, at least on the Literature of Scotland. A mong the ffl,'eat_ changes wJ iich British, particularly Snn| j| ,jsh. 1i|,pra.tnTP. li.i s 35 undergone since that period, one of the s[reat^fiti '^^^'^J be lY.] ON BURNS. 71 fmnifl \(^ pr.ngigf_ ia it.> n'iiiaikahlc iiinca.^r m nationality. Even the English writers, most popular in Burns's time, Avere little distinguished for their literary patriotism, in its best sense. A certain attenuated cosmopolitanism had, in good measure, taken place of the old insular home-feeling ; 5 literature Avas, as it were, without any local environment ; was not nourished by the affections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays ^ ami Glovers ' seemed to Avrite almost as if in vacuo ;^ the thing Avritten bears no mark of place; it is not written so much for Englishmen, as for 10 men; or rather, which is the inevitable result of this, for certain Generalizations which philosophy termed men. Goldsmith'' is an exception: not so Johnson;'' the scene of \\\^ianihJer^ is little more English than that of his RasselasJ t3 I^i^it if such was, in some degree, the case Avith England, 15 it Avas in the highest degree the case Avith Scotland. In fact, our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very sin- gular aspect ; unexampled, so far as we knoAv, except perhaps at Geneva,* where the same state of matters appears still to continue. For a long period after Scotland became British,'*" 20 Ave had no literature : at the date Avhen Addison and Steele'" Avere writing their Spectators,'^^ our good John Boston '- was Avriting, Avith the noblest intent, but alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy, his Fourfold State of Man. Then came the schisms in our national Church,'^ and the 25 fiercer schisms in our Body Politic : " Theologic ink, and Jacobite '•' blood, Avith gall enough in both cases, seemed to have blotted out the intellect of the country : however, it was only obscured, not obliterated. Lord Kames^'^ made nearly the first attempt at Avriting English ; and, ere long, 30 Hume,'^ Eobertson,'* Smith,''' and a Avhole host of folloAvers attracted hither the eyes of all Europe. And yet in this brilliant resuscitation of our "ferAdd genius," there A\^as nothing truh^ Scottish, nothing indigenous except, perhaps, the natural impetuosity of intellect, Avhich we sometimes 35 72 CAKLYLE's essay [iv. claim, and are sometimes upbraided with, as a characteristic of our nation. It is curious to remark that Scotland, so full of writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed any English ; our culture was almost exclusively French. It was by 5 studying Racine ' and Voltaire,- Batteux ^ and Hoileau,* that Karnes had trained himself to be a critic and philosopher ; it was the light of Montesquieu^ and Mably '' that guided Robertson in liis political speculations; Quesnay's' lamp that kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too rich 10 a man to borrow ; and perhaps he reacted on the French more than he was acted on by them : but neither had he aught to do with Scotland; Edin])urgh, equally with La Fleche,** was but the lodging and laboratory, in which he not so much morally lived, as metaphysically investigated. Never, 15 perhaps, was there a class of writers so clear and Avell ordered, yet so totally destitute, to all appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay of any human affection whatever. The French wits of the period were as unpatriotic : but their general deficiency in moral principles, not to say their •JO avowed sensuality and unbelief in all virtue, strictly so called, render this accountable enough. We hope there is a patriotism founded on something better than prejudice;'-' that our country may be dear to us without injury to i)ur philosophy; that in loving and justly jjrizing all other L'5 lands, we may prize justly, and yet love before all others, our own stern Motherland, and the venerable Structure of social and moral Life which ]\rin(l has through long ages been building up for us there. Surely there is nourishment for the better part of man's heart in all this : surely the 30 roots that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's being may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, but into roses, in the field of his life ! Our Scottish sages have no such propensities : the field of their life shows neither briers nor roses ; but only a flat, continuous thrash- 35 ing floor for Logic, ^" whereon all (questions, from the "Doc- IV.] ON BURNS. 73 trine of Rent" to the ''Natural History of Religion," are tlirashed and sifted with the same mechanical impartiality I ?1 With Sir Walter Scott ^ at the head of our literature, it cannot be denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly passing away : our chief literary men, whatever other faults 5 they may have, no longer live among us like a French Colony, or some knot of Propaganda- Missionaries ; but like natural-born subjects of the soil, partaking and sympathiz- ing in all our attachments, humors, and habits. Our litera- ture no longer grows in water but in mold, and with the 10 true racy virtues of the soil and climate. How much of this change may be due to Burns, or to any other individ- ual, it might be difficult to estimate. Direct literary imita- tion of Burns was not to be looked for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of domestic subjects, could not but 15 operate from afar ; a nd certainly in no lienrt did f,1iP in^ro _ of country e ver burn ^viH, .^ -»v;^i.p-.Qy gi^-^y ^\^^^j^ ,„ ^]^^^ ^f KiTrns :_J ^ a tide of Sruttish ]uejudice,"3as he modestly calls this deep and generous feeling, "had been poured along his veins; and he felt that it would boil there till the flood- 20 gates shut in eternal rest." It seemed to him, as if he could do so little for his country, and yet would so gladly have done all. One small province stood open for him, — that of Scottish Song ; and hoAv eagerly he entered on it, how devotedly he labored there ! In his toilsome journeyings, 2.1 this object never quits him; it is the little happy-valley •• of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own affliction, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the oblivion that was covering it ! These were early feelings, and they abode 30 with him to the end : — ... A wish (I iiiiud its power), A wish, that to my latest hour Will strongly heave my breast, — That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 35 carlyle's essay [v. Some useful plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least. The rough bur Thistle ^ spreading wide Amang the bearded bear,'^ I turn'd my weeding-clips aside, And spared 3 the symbol dear. -ut^werves to and fro, between passionate hope and r emor seful disappointment : rushing onwards with a deep tempestuous force, he surmounts or breaks asunder many a barrier ; travels, nay advances far, but advancing only under o5 76 carlyle's essay [v. uncertain guidance, is ever and anon turned from his path ; and to the last cannot reach the only true happiness ^ of a man, that of clear decided Activity in the sphere for which, by nature and circumstances, he has been litted and appointed. ^OWe do not say these things in dispraise of Burns ; nay, perhaps they but interest us the more in his favor. This blessing is not given soonest to the best; but rather, it is often the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining it ; for where most is to be developed, most time may be required 10 to develop it. A complex condition had been assigned him from without; as complex a condition from within: no " preestablished harmony " existed between the clay soil of Mossgiel and the empyrean - soul of Robert Burns ; it was not wonderful that the adjustment between them should 1.5 have been long postponed, and his arm long cumbered, and his sight confused, in so v'ast and discordant an economy as he had been appointed steward over. Byron was, at his death, but a year younger than Burns,, and through life, as it might have appeared, far more simply situated: yet in 20 him too we can trace no such adjustment, no such moral manhood; but at best, and only a little before his end/'' the beginning of what seemed such. "^Q By much the most striking incident in Burns's Life is his .^journey^ jtg_ Edinburgh ; but perhaps a still more important 25 one is his residence at Irvine, so early as in his twenty-tliird year. Hitherto his life had been poor and toil-worn ; but otherwise not ungenial, and, with all its distresses, by no means unhappy. In his parentage, deducting outward cir- cumstances, he had every reason to reckon himself fortunate. 30 His father'* was a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest char- acter, as the best of our peasants are ; valuing knowledge, possessing some, and, what is far better and rarer, open- minded for more : a man with a keen insight and devout heart ; reverent towards God, friendly therefore at once, 35 and fearless towards all that God has made; in one word, v.] ON BURNS. 77 though but a hard-hantled peasant, a complete and fully \nifolded Ifan. Such a father is seldom found in any rank in society, and was worth descending far in society to seek. Unfortunately, he was very poor : had he been even a little richer, almost never so little, the Avhole might have issued 5 far otherwise. Mighty events turn on a straw ; the crossing of a brook ^ decides the conquest of the world. Had this >Villiam Burns's small seven acres of nursery ground any- wise prospered, the boy Robert liad been sent to school ; had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some lo university.; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular well-trained intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of British Literature,- — for it lay in him to have done this ! But the nursery did not prosper ; poverty sank his whole family below the help of even our cheap 15 school system. Burns remained a hard- worked plowboy, and British literature took its own course. Nevertheless, even in this rugged scene there is much to nourish him. If lie drudges, it is with his brother, and for his father and rnother, whom he loves and Avould fain shield from want. 20 Wisdom is not banished from their poor hearth, nor the balm of natural feeling. The solemn words. Let us ivorsldp God,^ are heard there from a " priest-like father : " ^ if tlireat- enings of unjust men throw mother and children into tears, these are tears not of grief only, but of holiest affection ; 25 every heart in that Immble group feels itself the closer knit to every other ; in their hard warfare they are there to- gether, a " little band of brethren." iSTeither are such tears, and the deep beauty that dwells in them, their only portion. Light visits the hearts as it does the eyes of all living : 30 there is a force, too, in this youth, that enables him to trample on misfortune ; nay, to bind it under his feet to make him sport. For a bold, warm, buoyant humor of character has been given him ; and so the thick-coming shapes of evil are welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, and 35 78 carlyle's essay [v. in their closest pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope. Vague yearnings of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; dreamy fancies hang like cloud-cities around him ; the cur- tain of Existence is slowly rising, in many-colored splendor 5 and gloom : and the aiiroral light of first love is gilding his horizon, and the music of song is on his path ; and so he walks ... in glory and in joy, Behind his plow, upon the mountain side. 10^ We ourselves know, from the best evidence, that up to this date Burns was happy ; nay, that he was the gayest, brightest, most fantastic, fascinating being to be found in the world ; ^ more so even than he ever afterwards appeared. But now, at this early age, he quits the paternal roof ; goes 1.") forth into looser, louder, more exciting society ; and becomes initiated in those dissipations, those vices, which a certain class of philosophers have asserted to be a natural prepara- tive for entering on active life ; a kind of mud-bath,- in which the youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we 20 suppose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on him. We shall not dispute much with this class of philosophers ; we hope they are mistaken : for Sin and Remorse so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we 25 should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term in their leprous armada.'^ We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be the training one receives in this Devil's-service,^ but only our determining to desert from it, 30 that fits us for true manly Action. We become men, not after we have been dissipated, and disappointed in the chase of false pleasure ; but after we have ascertained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in through this life ; how mad it is to hope for contentment to our infinite 35 soul from the fjifts of this extremely finite world; that a v.] ON BURNS. 79 man must be sufficient for himself; and that for suffering and enduring there is no remedy but striving and doing. Manh ood begins when jre have in any way made truce with ]*f ecessi tv ; begins^even when we have surrendered to iSle- cessity, as the most part only do ; but begins joyfully and 5 hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Neces- sity, and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free. Surely, such lessons as this last, which, in one shape or other, is the grand lesson for every mortal man, are better learned from the lips of a devout lo mother, in the looks and actions of a devout father, while the heart is yet soft and pliant, than in collision with the sharp adamant of Fate,^ attracting us to shipwreck us, when the heart is grown hard and may be broken before it will become contrite. Had Burns continued to learn this, as he 15 was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he would have learned it fully, which he never did ; and been saved many a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour and year of remorseful sorrow. 5^' It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in 20* Burns's history, that at this time too he became involved in the religious quarrels of his district ; that he was enlisted and feasted as the fighting man of the New-Light Priest- hood, in their highly unprofitable warfare. At the tables of these free-minded clergy he learned much more than 25 was needful - for him. Such liberal ridicule of fanaticism awakened in his mind scruples about Religion itself, and a whole world of Doubts, which it required quite another set of conjurers than these men to exorcise. We do not say that such an intellect as his could have escaped similar ">o doubts at some period of his history; or even that he could, at a later period, have come through them altogether vic- torious and unharmed : but it seems peculiarly unfortunate that this time, above all others, should have been fixed for the encounter. For now, with principles assailed by evil 35 80 CARLYLE's ESSAY [v. example from without, by "passions raging like demons'" from within, he had little need of skeptical misgivings to whisper treason in the heat of the battle, or to cut off his retreat if he Avere already defeated. He loses his feeling 5 of innocence ; his mind is at variance with itself ; the old divinity no longer presides there ; but wild Desires and wild Repentance alternately oppress him. Ere long, too, he has committed himself before the world ; his character for sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted 10 worldlings can even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes of men ; and his only refuge consists in trying to disbelieve his guiltiness, and is but a refuge of lies. The blackest des- peration now gathers over him, broken only by red light- nings of remorse. The whole fabric of his life is blasted 15 asunder ; for now not only his character, but his personal liberty,- is to be lost ; men and Fortune are leagued for his hurt; '• hungry Ruin has him in tlie Avind."""* He sees no escape but the saddest of all : exile from his loved country to a country in every sense inhospitable and abhorrent to 20 him. While the ''gloomy night is gathering fast,""* in mental storm and solitude, as well as in physical, he sings his wild farewell to Scotland : Farewell, my friends ; farewell, my foes ! My peace with these, my love with those : 25 The bursting tears my heart declare ; / ^y^ Adieu, my native banks of Ayr ! /^Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods; but still a false transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is invited to Edinburgh ; hastens thither with anticipating heart ; is 30 welcomed as in a triumph, and with universal blandish- ment and acclamation; whatever is wisest, whatever is greatest or loveliest there, gathers round him, to gaze on his face, to show him honor, sympathy, affection. lUirns's appearance ^ among the sages and nobles of Edinburgh must 35 be regarded as one of the most singular phenomena in v.] ON BURNS. 81 modern Literature ; almost like the appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sovereigns of modern Politics. For it is nowise as " a mockery king," set there by favor, transiently and for a purpose, that he will let himself be treated ; still less is he a mad Rienzi,^ whose sudden eleva- 5 tion turns his too weak head : but he stands there on his own basis ; cool, unastonished, holding his equal rank from Nature herself ; putting forth no claim which there is not strength in him, as well as about him, to vindicate. Mr. L Loc khart has some forcible observations on this point.. 10 ^'^ 'T^t needs no effort of imagination," says he, " to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all either clergymen or professors) must have been in the pres- ence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with his great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among 15 them from the plow-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole strain of his bearing and conversation a most thor- ough conviction, that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an 20 occasional symptom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns calmly measured himself against the most cultivated understandings of his time in discussion ; overpowered the bon-mots - of the most >celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, . .iiu]jregna i5P with all tne burning liie 25 of genius ; astounded bosdT»sJjabitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social reserve, by compelling them to tremble — nay, to tremble visibly — beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos ; and all this without indicating the smallest willingness to be ranked among those profes- 30 sional ministers of excitement, who are content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their own persons, even if they had the power of doing it ; and last, and prob- ably worst of all, who was known ^ to be in the habit of 35 82 carlyle's essay [v. enlivening societies which they would have scorned * to ap- proach, still more frequently than their own, with elo- quence no less magnificent; with wit, in all likelihood still more daring; often enough, as the superiors whom he 5 fronted without alarm might have guessed from the begin- ning, and had ere long no occasion to guess, with wit uinted at themselves." The farther we remove from this scene, the more singular ill it seem to us : details of the exterior aspect of it are 10 already full of interest. Most readers recollect Mr. Walker's^ personal interviews with Burns as among the best passages of his Narrative : a time will come when this reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott's, slight though it is, will also be precious : v& " As for Burns," writes Sir Walter, " I may truly say, Virriilium vidi tantitm.^ 1 was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when he came first to Edinlnirgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know liim : but I had ver}^ little ac- 20 quaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most fre- quented. ]Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner ; but had no opportiinit}' to keep his 25 word ; otherwise I might have seen more of this distin- guished man. As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's,^ where there were several gentlemen of literary rpjintation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we youngsters 30 sat silent, looked and listened. The only thing I remember which was remarkal)le in Burns's manner was the effect produced upon him b}' a print_ of Bunbury' s.' representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, — on the other, his widow, with a child in her 35 arms. These lines were written beneath: V-] ON BURNS. 83 ' Cold dn Canadian hills, or Minden's ^ plain, Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew. The big drops, mingling with tlie milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery baptized in tears.' ^^^ ■ Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were ; and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half- lo forgotten poem of Langhorne's - called by the unpromising title of ' The Justice of Peace.' I whispered my information to a friend present ; he mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect, with very great pleasure. 15 s/^"His person was strong and robust; his manners' rustic, not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's know- ledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are repre- sented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture : ^ but to me it conveys the 20 idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive ^ than it looks in any of the portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school ; i.e., none of your modern agriculturists 25 who keep laborers for tlieir drudgery, but the douce gude- man ^ who held his own plow. There Avas a strong expres- sion of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and tempera- ment. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I so say literally gloived) ^ when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption.^- -Among the men who were the most 35 84 caulyle's essay [v. learned of tlieir time and country, he expressed himself with perfect hrmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to ex- press it Jirinly, yet atthesam^tim^ with ^ Wijjeji^ '- I do 5 not remejuber any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever see him again except in the street, where he did not recognize me, as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh : but (con- sidering what literary emoluments have been since his day) 10 the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling, -^^V*' I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns's acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited ; ' and also that, having twenty times the abilities of Allan liamsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility X5 as his models : there was doubtless national predilection ^ in his estimate. j^\i' This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to 'add that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird.^ I 20 do not speak in malam partem* when I say, I never saw a man in comjjany with his superiors in station or information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always 25 with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous,* wliich en- gaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. — I do not know anything j'an add to these recollections of forty years since." Tonduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of favor; Ihe calm, unaffected, manly manner in which he not only bore it, but estimated its value, has justly been regarded as the best proof that could be given of his real vigor and in- tegrity of mind. A little natural vanity, some touches of hypocritical modesty, some glimmerings of affectation, at 35 least some fear of being thought affected, we could have v.] ON BURNS. 85 pardoned in almost any man; but no such indication is to be traced here. In liis unexampled situation the young peasant is not a moment perplexed ; so many strange lights do not confuse him, do not lead him astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive that this winter did him great and 5 lasting injury.^ A somewhat clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their characters, it did afford him ; but a sharper feeling of Fortune's une(iual arrangements in their social destiny it also left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in Avhich the powerful are born to play 10 their parts ; nay, had himself stood in the midst of it ; and he felt more bitterly than ever, that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this_ ti.niP. a ifialous inrljo-na.nt. fpa.T of pnf;.j^,] r1ogi-ar]p_ tinn tii]iru_p.n""rri iinn nf hini | and perverts, so far as aught 15 could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could he but have rightly willed this ; it was clear also that he willed something far different, and therefore could not 20 make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one and reject the other; but must halt forever between two opinions, two objects ; making hampered advancement towards either. But so is it with many men : we " long for the merchandise, yet would fain keep 25 the price ; " and so stand chaffering with Fate, in vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is over ! u4P The Edinburgh Learned of that period were in general T more noted for clearness of head than for warmth of heart: with the exception of the good old Blacklock,' whose help 30 was too ineffectual, scarcely one among them seems to have looked at Burns with any true sympathy, or indeed much otherwise than as at a highly curious thing. By the great also he is treated in the customary fashion ; entertained at their tables and dismissed : certain modica -^ of pudding and 35 86 caulyle's essay [v. praise are, from time to time, gladly exchanged for the fas- cination of his presence ; which exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each party goes his several way. At the end of this strange season. Burns gloomily sums nj) ri his gains and losses, and meditates on the chaotic future. In money he is somewhat richer ; in fame and the show of happiness, infinitely richer ; but in the substance of it, as l)oor as ever. Nay, poorer ; for his heart is now maddened still more with the fever of worldly Ambition ; and through 10 long years the disease will rack him with unprofitable sutfer- ings, and weaken his strength for all true and nolilcr aims. What Burns was next to do or to avoid — how a man so inumstanced was now to guide himself towards his true advantage — might at this point of time have been a (piestion 15 for the wisest. It was a question too, which apparently he was left altogether to answer foF himself: of his learned or rich patrons it had not struck any individual to turn a thought on this so trivial matter. Without claiming for Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we must say, that his 20 Excise and Farm scheme ' does not seem to us a very un- reasonaVile one ; that we should be at a loss, even now, to siiggest one decidedly better. Certain of his admirers have felt .scandalized at his ever resolving to f/«"i/c ; and would have had him lie at the pool* till the sjjirit of Patronage'' 2-> stirred the waters, that so, with one friendly plunge, all his sorrows might be healed. Unwise counselors 1 They know not the manner of this spirit; and how, in the lap of most golden dreams, a man might have hajipiness, were it not that in the interim he must die of hunger ! It reflects credit on 30 the manliness and stmnd .sen.se of Burns, that he felt so early on what ground he was standing; and i)referred self- help,* on the humblest scale, to dependence and inaction, though with hope of far more splendid possibilities. But even these possibilities were not rejected in his scheme : he 35 might expect, if it chanced that he Inol any friend, to rise, t6 >•/ v.] ON BURNS. 87 in no long period, into something even like opnlence and leisure ; while again, if it chanced that he had no friend, he could still live in security ; and for the rest, he " did not intend to borrow honor from any profession."' We reckon that his plan was honest and well-calculated : all turned on 5 the execution of it. Doubtless it failed ; yet not, we be- lieve, from any vice inherent in itself. Nay, after all, it was no failure of external means, but of internal, that over- took Burns. His was no bankruptcy of the purse, but of the soul ; to his last day, he owed no man anything.' 10 jVIeanwhile he begins well, with two good and wise actions. His donation to his mother, munificent from a man whose income had lately been seven pounds a year, was worthy of him, and not more than worthy. Generous also, and worthy of him, was the treatment of the woman- 15 whose life's -welfare depended on his pleasure. A friendly observer might have hoped serene days for him : his mind is on the true road to peace with itself : what clearness he still wants will be given him as he proceeds ; for the best teacher of duties that still lie dim to us is the Practice 20 of those we see and have at hand. Had the " patrons of genius," who could give him nothing, but taken nothing from him, at least nothing more ! The wounds of his heart would have healed, vulgar ambition would have died away. Toil and Frugality would have been welcome, since Virtue 25 dwelt with them ; and Poetry would have shone through them as of old : and in her clear ethereal light, which was his own by birthright, he might have looked down on his earthly destiny, and all its obstructions, not with patience nly, but with love. 30 But the patrons of genius would not have it so. Pictur- esque tourists,^ all manner of fashionable danglers after literature, and, far worse, all manner of convivial ]\Ia3ce- nases,* hovered round him in his retreat ; and his good as well as his weak qualities secured them influence over him. 35 88 carlyle's essay [v. He was flattered by their notice ; and his warm social nature made it impossible for him to shake them off, and hold on his way apart from them. These men, as we be- lieve, were proximately the means of his ruin.' Not that 5 they meant him any ill ; they only meant themselves a little good; if he suffered harm, let him look to it! But they wasted his precious time and his precious talent ; they dis- turbed his composure, broke down his returniuLj habits of temperance and assiduous contented exertion. Their pam- 10 pering was baneful to him; their cruelty, which soon fol- lowed, was eijually baneful. The old grudge against Fortune's inecpuility awoke with new bitterness in their neighborhood ; and Burns had no retreat but to " the Rock of Independence ; '' which is but an air castle after all, that 15 looks well at a distance, but will screen no one from real wind and wet. Flushed with irregular excitement, exasper- ated alternately by contempt of others, and contempt of himself, Burns was no longer regaining his peace of mind, but fast losing it forever. Tliere was a hollowness at the 20 heart of his life; for his conscience did not now approve ^hat he was doing. '^^-Amid the vapors of unwise enjoyment, of bootless re- morse, and angry discontent with Fate, his true loadstar,^ a life of Poetry with Poverty, nay with Famine if it must be 25 so, was too often altogether hidden from his eyes. And yet he sailed a sea," where without some such loadstar there was no right steering. ]\Ietoors^ of French Politics rise before him, but these were not his stars. An accident this, which hastened, but did not originate, his worst distresses. 30 In the mad contentions of that time, he comes in collision^ with certain official Superiors ; is wounded l)y them ; cruelly lacerated, we should say, could a dead mechanical imple- ment, in any case, be called cruel : and shrinks, in indig- nant pain, into deeper self-seclusion, into gloomier moodiness ,35 than ever. His life has now lost its unity: it is a life of v.] ON BURNS. 89 fragments ; led with little aim, l)eyond the melancholy one of securing its own continuance, — in fits of wild false joy when such offered, and of black despondency when they passed away. His character before the world begins to suffer : calumny is busy Avith him ; for a miserable man 5 makes more enemies than friends. Some faults he has fallen into and a thousand misfortunes ; but deep criminal- ity is what he stands accused of, and they that are not without sin cast the lirst stone ' at him ! For is he not a well-wisher to the French Kevolution, a Jacobin,- and 10 therefore in that one act guilty of all ? ^ These accusa- tions, political and moral, it has since appeared, were false enough : but the world hesitated little to credit them. Nay, his convivial Maecenases themselves were not the last to do it. There is reason to believe that, in his later years, the 15 Dumfries aristocracy had partly withdrawn themselves from Burns, as from a tainted person, no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That painful class, stationed, in all provin- cial cities, behind the outmost breastwork of Gentility, there to stand siege and do battle against the intrusions of 20 Grocerdom and Grazierdom, had actually seen dishonor in the society of Burns, and branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly say, cut him ! We find one passage in this ^Vork of Mr. Lockhart's, which will not out of our thoughts : '^^f^" A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already 25 ' more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dumfries one fine summer's evening about this time to attend a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the 30 opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted, and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the street said : ' Nay, nay, my young 35 90 carlyle's essay [v. friend, that's all over now ; ' and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's ^ pathetic ballad : " ' His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new ; 5 But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing,2 And casts himsell dowie^ upon the corn-bing.* Oh, wei'e we young as we ance hae been, We suds hae been galloping down on yon green, And linking" it ower the lily-white lea ! 10 And icereiia my heart light, Iioad die.'' It was little in Bums's character to let his feelings on cer- tain subjects escape in this fashion. He, immediately after reciting these verses, assumed the sprightliuess of his most pleasing manner ; and taking his young friend home Avith .•^S^l5 him, entertained him very agreeably ^ till the hour of the all arrived." Alas I wlicn we think that Burns now sleeps " where bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart," ^ and that most of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already 20 lie at his side, where the breastwork of gentility is quite ' thrown down, — who would not sigh over tlie thin delusions and foolish toys that divide heart from heart, and make inan unmerciful to his brother ! 3\ O- it was not now' to be hoped that the genius of Burns 25 would ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. His spirit was, jarred in its melody ; not the soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what harmony was in him, what music even in his discords ! How the 30 wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the wisest; and all men felt and knew that here also was one of the Gifted ! " If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret ; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, o5 the landlord and all his guests were assembled ! " Some \ v.] ON BURNS, 91 brief pure moments of poetic life were yet appointed him in the composition of liis Songs. We can understand how he grasped at this employment; and how too, he spnrned all other reward for it but what the labor itself brought him. For the soul of Burns, though scathed and marred, 5 was yet living in its full moral strength, though sharply t conscious of its errors and abasement: and here, in his destitution and degradation, was one act of seeming noble- ness and self-devotedness left even for him to perform. He felt too, that with all the "thoughtless follies" that'io had "laid him low," the world was unjust and cruel to him; and he silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not as a hired soldier,^ but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of his country : so he cast from him the poor sixpence a-day, and served zealously as a volunteer. Let us not grudge 15 him this last luxury of his existence ; let him not have ap- pealed to us in vain ! The ihoney was not necessary to him ; he struggled through without it : long since, these guineas would have been gone, and now the high-mindedness ^ of refusing them will plead for him in all hearts forever. 20 ^^ We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life ; for matters had now taken such a shape with him as could not long continue. If improvement was not to b'e looked for, Nature could only for a limited time maintain this dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. We 25 are not medically informed whether any continuance of years was, at this period, probable for Burns ; whether his death is to be looked on as in some sense an accidental event, or only as the natural consequence of the long series of events that had, preceded. The latter seems to be the 30 likelier opinion; and yet it is by no means a certain one. At all events, as we have said, some change could not be very distant. TJn:fifi_gaj^^^pi_ile]±veraiicej^ it seems to us, were open for BurnsU clear p oetical act ivity ; madness ; or ■ death. The first, with longer life, was spll possible, though 35 J 92 carlyle's essay [m. not probable ; for physical causes ' were beginning to be concerned in it : and yet Burns had an iron resolution ; could he but have seen and felt, that not only his highest glory, but his first duty, and the true medicine for all his 5 woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for his mind was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third gate was opened - for him : and he passed, not softly yet speedily, into that still country where the hail-storms and fire-shoAvers do not reach, and the heaviest- 10 laden wayfarer at length lays down his load ! VI. hkr Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he sank Tinaided by any real help, uncheered by any wise sympathy, generous minds have sometimes figured to themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, that much might have been done for 15 him ; that by counsel, true affection, and friendly ministra- tions ^ he might have been saved to himself and the world. We question whether there is not more tenderness of heart than soundness of judgment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent 20 individual could have lent Burns any effectual help, ('oun- sel, which seldom profits any one, he did not need ; in his understanding, he knew the right from the wrong as well perhaps as any man ever did ; but the persuasion which would have availed him lies not so much in the head as in 25 the heart, where no arguments or expostulation could have assisted much to implant it. As to money again, we do not believe that this was his essential want ; or well see how any private man could, even presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him an independent fortune, with mnch 30 prospect of decisive advantage. It is a mortifying truth,' that two men in any rank of society could hardly be found virtuous enough to give money, and to take it as a necessary f6 VI.] ON BUENS. 93 gift, without injury to the moral entireness of one or both. But so stands the fact : Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists ; ^ except in the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality no longer expected, or recognized as a virtue, among men. A close 5 observer of manners has pronounced "Patronage," that is, pecuniary or other economic furtherance, to be "twice cursed ; " ^ cursing him that gives, and him that takes ! And thus, in regard to outward matters also, it has become the rule, as in regard to inward it always was and must be the 10 rule, that no one shall look for effectual help to another ; but that each shall rest contented with what help he can afford himself. Such, we say, is the principle of modern Honor ; naturally enougli growing out of that sentiment of Pride which we inculcate and encourage as the basis of our 15 whole social morality.^ Many a poet has been poorer than Burns; but no one was ever prouder: we may question whether, without great precautions, even a pension from Royalty would not have galled and encumbered, more than actually assisted hiin. 20 Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks among us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect of him. We have already stated our doubts whether direct pecuniary help, had it been offered, would have been ac- 25 cepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall read- ily admit, however, that much was to be done for Burns; that many a poisoned arrow might have been warded from his bosom ; many an entanglement in his path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful ; and light and heat, shed on 30 him from high places, would have made his humble atmos- phere more genial ; and the softest heart then breathing * might have lived and died with some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for Burns it is granting much. 94 carlyle's essay [vi. that, with all his pride, he would have thanked, eveu with exaggerated gratitude, any one who had cordially befriended him : patronage, unless once cursed, needed not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor promotion he desired 5 in his calling might have been granted : it was his own scheme, therefore likelier than any other to be of service. All this it might have been a luxury, nay it was a duty, for our nobility to have done. No part of all this, however, did any of them do, or apparently attempt or wish to do: 10 so much is granted against them. But Avliat then is the amount of their blame ? Simply that they were men of the world, and walked by the principles of such men ; that they treated Burns as other nobles and other commoners had done other poets ; as the English did Shakespeare ; ^ as 15 King Charles and his Cavaliers did Butler; as King Philip ^ and his Grandees did Cervantes.^ Do men gather grapes of thorns;* or shall Ave cut down our thorns for yielding only a fence and haws ? How, indeed, could the " nobility and gentry of his native land " hold out any help to this " Scot- 20 tish Bard, proud of his name and country " ? Were the nobility and gentry so much as able rightly to help them- selves ? Had they not their game to preserve ; their bor- ough interests to strengthen ; dinners, therefore, of various kinds to eat and give ? AVere their means more than ade- 2.') quate to all this business, or less than adequate ? Less than adequate, in general ; few of them in reality were richer than Burns ; many of them were poorer ; for some- times they had to wring their supplies, as with thumbscrews, from the hard land, and, in their need of guineas, to forget 30 their duty of mercy ; which Burns was never reduced to do. Let us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough inter- ests they strengthened, the little Babylons* they severally builded by the glory of their might, are all melted or melt- 35 ing back into the primeval Chaos, as man's merely selfish VI.] ON BURNS. 95 endeavors are fated to do : and here was an action, extend- ing, in virtue of its wordly influence, we may say, through all time ; in virtue of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself : this action was offered them to do, and light was not given them to do 5 it. Let us pity and forgive them. But better than pity, let us go and do otherwise} Human suffering did not end with the life of Burns ; neither was the solemn uiandate,- "Love one another, bear one another's burdens," given to the rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns lO to relieve, to assuage ^ by our aid or our pity ; but celestial natures, groaning under the fardels* of a weary life, we shall still find; and that wretchedness which Fate has rendered voiceless and tuneless is not the least wretched, but the most. 15 In Still, we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies chiefly with the Avorld. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more rather than with less kindness than it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small favor to its Teachers : ^ hunger and nakedness, 20 perils and revilings, the prison, the cross, the poison chalice '^ have in most times and countries been the market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the welcome '' with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer ^ and Socrates ^ and the Christian Apostles ^" belong 25 to old days ; but the world's Martyrology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon " and Galileo ^- languish in priestly dungeons ; Tasso^^ pines in the cell of a mad-house; Camoens " dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so '^ per- secuted they the Prophets," ^^ not in Judea only, but in all 30 places where men have been. We reckon that every peet of Burns's order is, or should be, a prophet and teacher to his age ; that he has no right to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound to do it great kindness ; that Burns, in particular, experienced fully the usual proportion of the 35 96 carlyle's essay [vi. world's goodness ; and that the blame of his failure, as we -/-have said, lies not chiefly with the world. J / Wliere, then, does it lie ? We are forced to answer. With himself; it is his inward, not his outward misfortunes 5 that bring him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it otherwise; seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement, some want less of good for- tune than of good guidance. Nature fashions no creature without implanting in it the strength needful for its action 10 and duration ; least of all does she so neglect her master- piece and darling, the poetic soul. Neither can we believe that it is in the jjower of am/ external circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man ; nay, if proper wisdom be given him, even so much as to affect its essential health and 15 beauty. The sternest sum-total ' of all worldly misfortunes is Death ; nothing more can lie in the cup of human woe : yet many men, in all ages, have triumphed over Death,^ and led it captive ; converting its physical victory into a moral victory for themselves, into a seal and immortal con- 20 secration for all that their past life had achieved. What has been done may be done again : nay, it is but the degree and not the kind of such heroism that differs in different seiisons; for without some portion of this spirit, not of bois- terous daring, but of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial in 25 all its forms, no good man, in any scene or time, has ever ^ttained to be good. We have already stated the error of Burns; and mourned 6ver it, rather than blamed it. It was the want of unity in his purposes, of consistency in his aims ; the hapless .■;o attempt to mingle in friendly union the common spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry, which is of a far differ- ent and altogether irreconcilable nature. Burns was noth- ing wholly; and Burns could be nothing — no man formed as he was can be anything — by halves. The heart, not of 35 a mere hot-blooded, popular Verse-monger, or poetical Res- H VI.] ON BURNS. 97 taurateur,^ but of a true Poet and Singer, worthy of the okl religious heroic times, had been given him ; and he fell in an age, not of heroism and religion, but of skepticism, self- ishness, and triviality, when true Nobleness was little under- stood, and its place supplied by a hollow, dissocial, altogether 5 barren and unfruitful principle of Pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, susceptible nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to cast aside, or rightly subordinate ; - the better spirit that was within him ever sternly demanded its 10 rights, its supremacy : he spent his life in endeavoring to reconcile these two;"^ and lost it, as he must lose it, Avithout reconciling them. Burns was born poor ; and born also to continue poor, for e Avould not endeavor to be otherwise: this it had been 15 well could he have once for all admitted, and considered as Anally settled. He was poor, truly ; but hundreds even of his own class and order of minds have been poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it : nay, his own father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful destiny than his was ; * and 20 he did not yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all moral intents prevailing, against it. True, Burns had little means, had even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation ; but so much the more precious was what little he had. In all these external respects his 25 case was hard ; but very far from the hardest. Poverty, incessant drudgery and much worse evils, it has often been the lot of Poets and wise men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke ^ was banished as a traitor ; and wrote his Essay on the Human Understanding sheltering 30 himself in a Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at his ease when he composed Paradise Lost ? Not only low, but fallen from a height ; not only poor, but impoverished ; in darkness " and with dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song,' and found fit audience, though few. Did 35 1 98 CARLYLE's essay [vi. not Cervantes finish his work, a maimed soklier and in prison? Nay, was not the Araiicana,^ which Spain acknow- ledges as its Epic, written without even the aid of paper, on scraps of leatlier, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched 5 any moment from that wild warfare ? (i^ And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted ? 'Two things; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable for such men. They had a true, religious principle of morals ; and a single, not a double aim in their activity. 10 Tiiey were not self-seekers and self-worshipers ; but seekers and worshipers of something far better than Self. Not personal enjoyment was their object; but a high, heroic idea- of Religion, of Patriotism, of heavenly AVisdom,' in one or the other form, ever hovered before them ; in which 15 cause they neither shrank from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful ; but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so tp si)end and be spent. Thus the '"golden calf^ of Self-love," however curiously carved, was not their Deity; but the Invisible 20 Goodness, which alone is man's reasonable service.^ This feeling was as a celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing to which all other things were subordinated and made subserv- 25 lent; and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks ; but its edge must be sharj) and single : if it be . double, tlie wedge is bruised in pieces and will rend nothing. j^l Part of this superiority these men owed to their age; in Avhich heroism and devotedness were still practiced, or at 30 least not yet disbelieved in : but much of it likewise they owed to themselves. With Burns, again, it was different. His morality, in most of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man ; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is the only thing he longs and strives for.^ A nol)le instinct 35 sometimes raises him above this ; but an instinct only, and VI.] ON BURNS. 99 acting only for moments. He has no Eeligion;^ in the shallow age where his clays were cast, Religion was not discriminated from the New and Old Light forms of Reli- gion ; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trembling ado- 5 ration, but there is no temple in his understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His religion, at best, is an anxious wish ; like that of Rabelais,- " a great Perhaps." C} He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart ; could he but have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it 10 had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have followed it. is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion; is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also was denied him. _His poetry is a stray, vagrant gleam, which will not be extin- guished within him, yet rises not to be the true light of his 15 l^ath, Init is often a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns to be rich, to be or to seem " indepen- dent;" but it was necessary for him to be at one Avith his own heart ; to place Avhat was highest in his nature highest also in his life ; " to seek within himself for that consistency 20 and sequence which external events would forever refuse him." He was born a poet ; poetry was the celestial ele- ment of his being, and should have been the soul of his whole endeavors. Lifted into that serene ether,^ whither he had wings given him to mount, he would have needed no 25 other elevation : poverty, neglect and all evil, save the desecration of himself and his Art, were a small matter to him ; the pride and the passions of the world lay far beneath his feet ; and he looked down alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar and all that wore the stamp of 30 man, with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympathy, with pity. Nay, we question whether, for his culture as a Poet, poverty and much suffering for a season were not absolutely advantageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, have testified to that effect. " I would 35 100 CARLYLE's essay [vi. not for much," says Jean Paul/ ".that I had been born richer." And yet Paul's birth was \poor enough ; for, in another place, he adds, '' The prisoners allowance is bread and water; and I had often only the latter." But the gold 5 that is refined in the hottest furnace cqmes out the purest ; or, as he himself expressed it, '* the canaiW bird sings sweeter / the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage." (pW-A man like Burns might have divided ^his hours between poetry and virtuous industry ; industry which all true feel- 10 ing sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp- of thrones : but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's banquets was an ilh . starred and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such banquets ? What had he to do there, mingling his music .15 with the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices; brighten- ing the thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from heaven ? ^ Was it his aim to eiijoy life ? To-morrow he must go drudge as an Exciseman ! We wonder not that Burns became moody, indignant, and at times an offender 20 against certain rules of society ; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and run amxick ^ against them all. How could a man, so falsely placed by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment or peaceable diligence for an hour? What he did, under such perverse guidance, and 25 what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the >* natural strength and worth of his character. \f^ Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness ; but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple in- crease of wealth and worldly " respectability." We hope 30 we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days ? Byron,* a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns,* is born in the rank not of a Scottish plowman but 35 of an English peer : the highest worldly honors," the fairest (4 VI.] ON BURNS. 101 worldly career, are his by inheritance ; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him ? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal ; and soon feels that 5 all this is but mounting to the house-top to reach the stars ! Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; might, like him, have " purchased a pocket copy of Milton to study the character of Satan ; " for Satan also is Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model apparently of his con- 10 duct. As in Burns's case too, the celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth ; both poet and man of the world he must not be ; vulgar Ambition will not live kindly with poetic Adoration ; he cannot serve God and Mammon.^ Byron, like Burns, is not happy ; nay, he is the most 15 wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged : the fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products of a world ; but it is the mad fire of a volcano ; and noAv — we look sadly into the ashes of a rater, which ere long will fill itself with snow ! 20 Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth; they had a message to deliver, which left them no rest till ■ it was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest lay smoldering within them; for they knew not 25 what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation, and they had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the camp of the Unconverted ; yet not as high mes- sengers of rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers, and in pleasant fellowship, will they live 30 there : they are first adulated, then persecuted ; they accom- plish little for others ; they find no peace for themselves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we view the fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet ruined to so 35 102 CARLYLE's essay [vt. little purpose with all their gifts. It seems to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history, — twice told us in our own time ! Surely to men of like genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of deep, impressive 5 significance. Surely it would become such a man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. For the words of Milton^ are true in all times and were never truer than in this, "He 10 who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a heroic poem." If he cannot first so make his life, then let him hasten from this arena ; for neither its lofty glories nor its fearful perils are fit for him. Let him dwindle into a modish balladmonger ; let him worship and besing the 15 idols of the time, and the time will not fail to reward him, if, indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity ! Byron and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the fire of their own hearts consumed them ; and better it was for them that they could not. For it is not in the favor of the great or of 20 the small, but in a life of truth, and in the inexpugnable citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns's strength must lie. Let the great stand aloof from him, or know how to reverence him ! Beautiful is the union of wealth with favor and furtherance for literature ; like the costliest 25 flower jar enclosing the loveliest amaranth. Yet let not Uhe relation be mistaken. A true poet is not one whom they can hire by money or flattery to be a minister of their pleasures, their Avriter of occasional verses, their purveyor of table wit ; he cannot be their menial, he cannot even be 30 their partisan. At the peril of both parties, let no such union be attempted ! Will a Courser of the Sun - work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse ? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all lands ; will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale 35 for earthly appetites from door to door ? VI.] ON BUPtNS. 103 ^jiC But we must stop short in these considerations, which *w-ould. lead us to boundless lengths. We had something to say on the public moral character of Burns ; but this also we must forbear. We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average ; nay, from 5 doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thousand. Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where the Ple- hiscita^ of common civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually unjust in its judg- 10 ments of such men ; unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the substance : It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes ; and not positively but negatively, less on what is done right than on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection from the mathe- 15 matical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system ; or it may be a city hippodrome ; - nay, the cir- cle of a gin-horse : ^ its diameter,* a score of feet or paces. 20 But the inches of deflection only are measured : and it is assumed that the diameter of the gin-horse, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio ^ when compared with them ! Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts,*' Rousseaus,^ which one never listens to 25 with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor Avith shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful : but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Ramsgate^ and the Isle of Dogs.^ 30 ^ With our readers in general, with men of right feeling mywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pity- ing admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts,^" in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble ; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of 35 104 caklyle's essay men. While the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl fishers ^ on their waves; this little Valclusa- Fountain will also arrest our eye : for this also is of Nature's own and most cunning work- manship, bursts from the depths of the earth, Avith a full gushing current, into the light of day ; and often will the traveler turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! BIBLIOGRAPHY. BURNS. For facts and critical comments in regard to the life and works of Burns, the following may be found useful : Chambers's Life and Works of Robert Burns (4 vols.) ; Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotchmen; Paterson's Works of liohert Burns (G vols.) ; the lives or memoirs of Burns by Lockhart, Currie, Cunningham, Blackie, IShairp, Setoun, Leslie Stephen (in Xalional Dictionary of Biography, etc.). See also Genius and Character of Burns, by Prof. Wilson ; Literary His- tory of England, etc., by Mrs. Oliphant ; Literature of the Euro- pean Era, by Minto ; Ward's English Boets ; EncyclojHvdia Britannica, and the other cyclopedias; Taine's, Angus's, Mor- ley's (Tyler's ed.), and the other treatises on English Literature; articles in the Edinburgh Eevieuj, Vols. 13, 48 ; London Quar- terly, 1st Vol.; Stevenson's Familiar Studies of Men and Books ; and other essays mentioned in Poole's Index. See also Allibone's Dictionary of Authors ; Emerson's 3Iiscellanies ; Hawthorne's Our Old Home; Henley and Henderson's Poetry of Burns; the Camelot Classics ; Shairp's Aspects of Poetry, etc. The student who cares to traverse and survey a still wider field of criticism on ^urns and his works, and particularly on Tarn o' Shanter and the Cotter's Saturday Night, will do well to examine ON BURNS. 105 the long lists in "Welsh's Unglish Masterpiece Course, pp. 118-121, published by Silver, Burdett & Company, Boston, New York, and Chicago. *o"- CARLYLE. Life of Carlijle, by Garnett ("Great Writers" Series) ; by Stephen ("National Dictionary of Biography") ; and by Nichol ("Eng- lish Men of Letters" Series). See Bayne's Lessoiis from My Musters, Carhjle, Tennyson, and Buskin; .Japp's Three Great Teachers of Our Own Time ; Masson's Carlyle Personally and in His Writings ; Symington's Personal Beminiscences of Carlyle ; Hutton's Modern Guides of English Thought in flutters of Faith; Fronde's Life of Thomas Carhjle (4 vols.) ; and Norton's Corre- spondence (of Carlyle with Emerson, Goethe, etc.), Letters, and Beminiscences. See, too, Adams's Dictionary of English Litera- ture; Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature; Morley's Critical Miscellanies ; Matthew Arnold's Discourses in America (the lecture on Emerson) ; and magazine articles in Poole's Index to Periodical Literature. The student who wishes to go still deeper into what we may term "Carlyleana" will find a cai'efuUy prepared list of critics and commentators, with full references, in Vi^Glsli's English 3Iasterpiece Course, pp. 190, 191. Among the critical commentaries, perhaps the most noteworthy is that of Taine in his English Literature (Van Laun's translation, Vol. 2, p. 436 et seq.). He gives Carlyle forty pages characterized by keen insight, vivid imagination, and masterly eloquence ; yet, like everything of Taine's, it is " Frenchy " : we feel that in Car- lyle's soul there are depths which the great French critic never penetrated. For a just and intelligent estimate of the relations that existed between Carlyle and his wife see the work of the Oliphants {The Victorian Age of English Literature). 106 NOTES. ABBREVIATIONS. The following abbreviations are used in tlie Notes. ThoK. . g to the titles of books in tlie Bible and of Shakespeare's p' ily need explanation. Ante, earlier in this book. Ar., Arabic. A. 8., Anglo-Saxon. Beaum., Beaumont. B.C., before Christ. Bio\f/, ops, NOTES. 119 eye ; Kvic\u\p, ktiklops, or cyclops, the round-eyed. Each of these gigantic beings had one round eye in the centre of his forehead. "Class. Diet." 15. "Priam's chariot." " Iliad," XXIV. — " Burn-the-wind " = (10) Burnewin = blacksmith. Vivid word-painting, calling up bel- lows and forge ? 17. " Scotch Drink." See two stanzas of this poem, ^'os^- — Sum- marize this paragraph. Page 59. 1. " Homer surpasses all." True ? — "in this quality." Is it properly termed a " quality " ? 2. "Richardson" (Samuel, 1689-1761), one of the earliest and ablest of English novel writers, published " Pamela " (1740), "Clarissa Harlowe " (1748), and " Sir Charles Grandison " (1753). Is Carlyle's estimate too high ? 3. "Defoe" (Daniel, 1661-1731). His father's name was Foe. Daniel adopted the prefix. He wrote "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), "A Journal of the Plague Year" (1722), "Roxana" (1724), and about 200 other works. His "Review," begun in 1704, was one of the earliest attempts at periodical literature. More about Defoe and Richardson? "Taine," III. vi. ; "AUibone," etc. 4. " red-wat-shod " = red-wct-shod = over-shoe {i.e. more than shoe- deep) in blood. 5. "too frightfully accurate," etc. Possible? Entitle this para- graph. 6. "vigor of his strictly intellectual perceptions." Differentiate this expression and "clearness of sight," and "impetuous force of conceptions." 7. " Stewart" (Dugald, 1753-1828), author of important works on mental and moral philosophy, long a professor in the University of Edinburgh. IMentioned later in this essay. Page 60. 1. "Keats" (John, 1795-1821), a worshiper, not of force, like Carlyle, but of beauty ; all sweetness ; author of " Hyperion," "Lamia," "Ode to the Nightingale," "Eve of St. Agnes," and the epitaph,* indelible in men's souls, though carved on his tomb, " Here lies one whose name was writ in water." More of his life ? 2. " Hell of Dante " (Alighieri, 1265-1.321). His matchless work, which he modestly entitled "The Divine Comedy," is a threefold allegorical vision ( ' ' Inferno, Purgator io, Paradiso " ) . The poet is con- ducted through the ten circles of the first by Vergil, and there he seems * Suggested, doubtless, by Shakespeare in " Henry VIII.," IV. ii. 46. 120 NOTES. to behold " all the woe of all the universe." Over the entrance gate of hell is the inscription, '•All hope abandon, ye who enter here !" 3. "Shakespeare" (William, 1564-1616) shows more genius in the creation and development of characters than in the origination of plots or the structure of plays ? 4. " Novum Organum." Bacon's new method of arriving at truth by observation and induction was set forth in his "Novum Organum" (= new instrument), first sketched in 1007, completed in 1620. See Macaulay's " Essay on Bacon." May we not say of Bacon, as I-kner- son does of Plato, " We can in some sort nestle into Plato's brain ; not so into Shakespeare's; we are still out of doors" ? — Label this paragraph. 5. " Burns is fine, as well as strong," etc. In what sense is " fine " here used ? Page 61. 1. "wonders in the passage," etc. Is the statement omittfd through carelessness ? 2. "doctrine of association "=*' the psychological reason for the very familiar phenomenon of which Burns .shows his appreciation below (paragraph 23)" [Farrand] ? "the combination or connection of states of mind, or their objects, with one another; as the result of which, one is said to be revived, or repre.sented, by means of the other" [Porter] ? — Cliaracterize this paragraph by a descriptive phrase. .3. " We know nothing," etc. This is from a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, Jan. 1, 1780. See Wordsworth's lines on "Tintern Abbey" and on " Immortality." Mrs. Dunlop and tlie ^Eolian harp have already been mentioned. — Summary of the paragraph. Page 62. 1. " Keenness of insight . . . keenness of feeling." Is "kt'onni-ss" the best word ? Would "depth of insight . . . intensity of feeling" be better? Your reason ? "I thought me on the ourie," etc. See " A Winter Night," ;)os<. 2. "ourie," cowering, shivering, drooping. 3. "bide," abide, endure. 4. " brattle," race, attack, noisy hurry, b. "lairing," wading, sinking. 6. "sprattle," struggle, scramble. 7. "scar," Icel. sker, Swedish .s'/ivir, bare rock, cliff. Page 63. 1. '• Ilk," each, every. A.S. " ilk," "ylc," the same ; fr. -i," he, and "lik," like. 2. "happing," hopping. NOTES. 121 3. "chittering," shivering, trembling (with cold). 4. "indifferent." So Shakespeare in "Julius Cfesar," "Dangers are to me indifferent." 5. "the very Devil." Milton has been blamed by Thomas Arnold, Heniy Reed, and others for not making Satan wholly bad. But is not Milton's conception psychologically correct ? "Milton," says Lowell, " can do justice to great devils, but not to little ones ! " C. " auld Nickie-ben," etc. Carlyle here quotes the last stanza of Burns's "Address to the De'il." Aidd we know, and JVickie, the Old Nick ; but what is ben ? Added for rhyme ? 7. "wad," would. 8. "men'," mend. 9. " aiblins," perhaps. 10. "dinna," do not. 11. "ken," know. 12. "stake," chance. 13. "wae," woe; woeful, sorry. 14. "Dr. Slop." An uncharitable " doctor of ^)/i/si7,-." 15. "Uncle Toby." In the "Tristram Shandy" of Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), Dr. Slop is choleric, Uncle Toby sweet-souled. "There is Sterne, too, the refined and silly blackguard, who, amid his buffooneries and oddities, pauses to weep over an ass or an imagi- nary prisoner." Taine. — Pith of this paragraph ? 16. "Indignation makes verses." Fi'om Juvenal's (Decimus Junius, the Roman satirist, a.d. 38-120) Facit indignntio versus. 17. "inverted Love." Is not Carlyle's explanation the true one? Are bitter biting verses likely to be true poetry ? 18. "Johnson" (Samuel, 1709-1784), biographer, essayist, lexi- cographer, verse writer, and most powerful of conversers. He said, "Dear Bathurst was a man to my very heart's content; he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig ; he was a vet-y good hater." See "Boswell." Page 64. 1. "a good hater is still a desideratum," etc. In " Model Prisons " (in "Latter Day Pamphlets," 1850) Carlyle writes : " Caitiff, we hate thee, and discern for some six thousand years now, that we are called upon by the whole Universe to do it. Not with a diabolic but with a divine hatred." — Embody in a word or two the contents of this paragraph. 2. "Dweller," etc. See the ode, posf. 3. "Furies." The Erinyes (Gr. 'Ep»/u6s, the angry ones), called euphemistically "Eumenides" (Gr. Ei'^e;'i5ey, the gracious or kindly 122 NOTES. disposed ones), were properly three : Alecto (Gr. 'aatj/ctw, the impla- cable one), Tisiphone (Gr. TKri^Jt-r;, avenger of murder), and Mega^ra (Gr. M67ai/)a, Megaira, the gi-udger or envier). They had snaky locks, blood-dripping eyes, flaming torches. " Class. Diet." 4. "^Eschylus" (b.c. 525-456). Earliest and loftiest of Greek dramatists. He has the Furies for chorus in his great tragedy, "The Eumenldes." 6. "infernal Pit." "Par. Lost," I. 657. 6. "darkness visible." See Sprague's ed. of "Par. Lost, I. 63. Note alliteration and meter, both, as in "Shakespeare," used by, or of, supernatural beings. " Macbeth," Sprague's ed., IV. i. 10 ; "Mid- summer N. Dr.," II. i. 7. "mark (thou, her) who." 8. "Noosing." Lat. nodus; Fr. noued, a knot; notter, to tie up? Farrand thinks it may mean nnrsiitg ! See line 12 of "Tam o' Shanter," post. 9. "Baited," etc. The editors do not seem to know that Shake- speare liad written "baited witli the rabble's curse." — " Bait." Icel. beita, to make, to bite. To "bait a bear," is to make the dogs bite him. Skeat. See Sprague's ed. of " Macbeth," V. viii. 29. Is the Oswald ode as sublime as Carlyle thinks it ? Substance of the paragraph ? 11. " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." Analyze the " argument " of this song (post) and memorize. 12. " dithyrambic," a dithyramb, a poem in a wild irregular strain ; orig. a song boisterously sung by revelers in honor of Bacchus (to whom the epithet AiOvpan^os, Dithyrambus, was sometimes applied.) 13. " On horseback." So was Scott's " Marmion " ? 14. " the best," etc. Call to mind and compare those of Campbell, Tennyson, Pierpont, Ilalleck, etc. — Essence of the paragraph? Page 65. 1. " Macpherson's Farewell." James Macpherson, exe- cuted ill 1700, was a Highland robber of giant strength, yet a skilful violinist. In prison, he composed a song beginning as follows : — "I've spent my time in rioting, Debauclied my health and strength: I squandered fast as pillage came, And fell to .shame at length : But dantonly and wantonly And rantonly I'll gae ; I'll play a tune and dance it ronn' Beneath the gallows tree." NOTES. 123 He is said to have actually played his tune under the gallows, and then offered his violin to any one who would come and take it. No one coming up, he smashed it across his knee and flung away the frag- ments. See Burns's song to the same air, post. 2. "Celt." The Celts were of two branches: Gaelic from Spain, Cymric from Belgium and the north of France ; the former, the an- cestors of the Irish and Highland Scotch ; the latter, of the Welsh. 3. " Cacus " (Gr. Ka/c6s, cacos., bad), son of Vulcan, was a monster robber inhabiting a cave in Mt. Aventine. Into it he dragged Her- cules' oxen by the tails backward, so that their tracks appeared to lead outward ! But the hero heard them bellow, unroofed the cavern, and choked to death the fire-belching giant. For further particulars, see "^Eneid," VIII. 190-267. 4. "sturt," struggle, disturbance. Sturt is akin to Du. stortem, to hurl, rush, fall. 5. "Nimrod," a mighty hunter. Genesis x. 8, t) ; 1 Chronicles i. 10. Did he found Babylon ? 0. "Napoleon." Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). More about him ? 7. "of poetry," etc. The Gaelic Celt had lively imagination, was joyous, musical, sensitive to honor, fervent in religion. 8. "Thebes," chief city of Boeotia, scene of the action in some of the greatest tragedies of ^Eschylus and Sophocles. 9. "Pelops," King of Phrygia, a grandson of Jupiter, and sou of Tantalus, and the father of Atreus, and grandfather of Agamem- non. The crimes and misfortunes of his fated "line " were fruitful themes to the Grecian dramatists. Milton's stately verses in "II Penseroso " are famous : — " Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by. Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line. Or the tale of Troy divine." 10. "Material Fate." The underlying idea of the great Greek tragedies, man's Free-will vainly struggling in the grip of Fate, is perhaps best illustrated in the wonderful "CEdipus" of Sophocles. — Designate, by epithet or phrase, the substance of this paragraph. 11. " Humor." Differentiate humoi*, wit, drollery. How does love manifest itself in humor ? Page 66. 1. " Address to the Mouse." 2, "Farmer's Mare " begins thus : — 124 NOTES. " A guid New-year I wish thee, Maggie ! Hae, there's a rip to thy aiild baggie : Tho' thou's howe-backit, now, an' knaggie, I've seen the day Thou could hae gaen like onie staggie Out-owre the lay." It ends with, — " And think na, my auld, trusty servan'. That now in-ihaps thou's less doscrvin', And thy auld days may end in starvin' For my last few, A heapit stimpart, I'll reserve ane Laid by for you. " We've worn to crazy years together ; We'll toyte about wi' ane anither. Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tither, To some hained rig, Whare ye may nobly rax your leather Wi' .sma' fatigue." 3. "Elegj' on poor Mail ie." See post. 4. "Sterne" (Laurence, 17i:]-1708). It is a pity that the writ- ings of one whom Carlyle characterizes as "our best specimen of humor" should be soiled with indecency. — Condensed "argument" of this paragraph. 6. "Tanj o' Slianter." Burns th()ught this his best, and mo.st critics since his day have agreed with him. He says in letter to Mrs. Dunlop, April 11, ITfll : "I look on Tam o' Shanter to be my chief performance in the poetical line." Why, then, is Carlyle less com- ])limpntary ? Nute how different is Carlyle's point of view from that of most men. Apply his tests. See the poem, post. 6. "Tieck" (Ludwig, 1773-1853), poet, critic, satirist, wrote fantastic novels and translated Shakespeare. "Tieck," said Carlyle, " is no ordinary man ; he is a true poet, born as well as made." 7. "Musiius" (.Tohann Karl August, 1735-1787), satirist, wrote " Folk-Tales of the Germans," " Friend Hein's Apparition.s," etc. Carlyle declares that "he attempts not to deal with the deeper feelings of the hrart ... is in fact no poet." Page 67. I. "Ayr." See map and gazetteer. — " Tophet," east or southeast of Jerusalem, in the valley of Ilinnom, was an unclean NOTES. 125 "dumping-ground." Here fires were kept burning to consume the carcasses and otlier offal ; "Tophet thence, And black Gehenna called, the type of hell." — " Par. Lost," I. 405. Show by a phrase what Carlyle thinks " Tarn o' Shanter " is, and is not. 2. "The Jolly Beggars." The poem is too long to quote and too coarse. It was first published in 1801. The scene is in Mauchline. 3. "raucle," sturdy, bold. 4. "carlin," old woman, crone (Icel. and Swedish karl, man ; A.S. ceoi-l, fellow; carl, male ; dim. carlin). 5. " wee Apollo," " a pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle." 6. "Son of Mars," a soldier. 7. "Poosie (i.e. pussy ?) Nancy" keeps the alehouse (Rag-castle). Page 68. 1. "Caird" (Iri.sh ceanl, a tinker), a traveling tinker, tramp, sturdy beggar, fortune teller. 2. " callets," loose women. 3. " wassail," noisy, drunken frolic, carousal. See Sprague's edition of "Macbeth," I. vii. 64; Sprague's "Hamlet," I. iv. 9. 4. "Teniers" (ten'yers) (David, the elder, 1582-1G49 ; David, the younger, 1610-1604), Flemish painters of tavern subjects. See "Cen- tury Magazine," September, 1895, for sketch of the son, who excelled his father. 5. "The Beggar's Opera" (of the dramatic poet, John Gay, 1688- 1732), acted in London in January, 1728, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was a political satire, a parody and caricature of the Italian opera, and a great success. 6. " Beggar's Bush," a comedy sometimes ascribed to Francis Beaumont (1586-1615) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). "Century Cyclopedia of Names." Abernethy, usually very correct, says it is by Beaumont, written in 1661 ! 7. "Cantata," a musical composition comprising. choruses, solos, interludes, etc., somewhat dramatically arranged. — Enumerated merits of "The Jolly Beggars" in this paragraph? 8. "Music of the heart." Illustrate. 9. " best that Britain has yet produced." Should We say the same now ? Page 69. 1. "of quality " = of birth (or station) superior to that of the masses ? 2. "madrigals," little simple amorous poems, usually pastoral. See Sprague's edition of Milton's " Comus," 495. 12G NOTES. 3. "Ossorius" (Osorio, Geronymo, 1506-1580), flatteringly styled "The Cicero of Portugal," but characterized by Bacon as of "weak and vvaterish vein." 4. "Limbo" (Lat. limbus, border), a region beyond earth and on the borders of Paradise. Here, awaiting the Judgment, are souls not good enough for heaven and not bad enough fur purgatory or hell. See Milton's astonishing description, "Paradise Lost," III. — Give a phrase that may serve as the exponent of this paragraph. 5. "In themselves are music." See Coraon's " Primer of English Verse;" Lanier's "Science of Vei-se ; " Carlyle's "The Hero as Poet," and his paragraph on "Tarn o' Shanter." G. "in the medium of Harmony." How explain his schoolmaster's declaration that Robert's ear was remarkably dull, and his voice un- tunable ? "It wa.s long," he says, "before I tould got him to dis- tinguish one tune from another." — "fashioned themselves together," etc. This passage reminds of Shakespeare's line, " Such harmony is in immortal souls." — " Mer. of Yen." V. i. Of music as a formative power, even able to aid in evolving cosmos from chaos, Mrs. Osgood sings : — The Father spake : in grand reverberations Slow rolled through space the mighty music tide, While, to its low majestic modulations. The clouds of chaos slowly swept aside." See the Pythagorean and Platonic notions as to the power of music. 7. "Venus rose," etc. Near Cythera (now Cerigo). See note on "Cyprian queen," in Sprague's " Masterpieces in Eng. Literature," p. 72 ; also " Class. Diet." 8. "drops of song." Felicitous phrase ? Illustrate. Page 70. 1. " Willie brew'd." See p. 170. 2. " Mary in Heaven." See pp. 109, 180. .3. "Auld Lang Syne." See p. 171. 4. " Duncan Gray." See p. 172. 5. "Scots wha hae," etc. See pp. 105, 100. 6. "a tone and words for every mood." True? — Formulate a phrase to cover this paragraph. 7. " Our Fletcher " (Andrew, 1053 ?-1710), " Fletcher of Saltoun," author, orator, politician. Was it he who said, " I will lay down my life to serve my country, but I will not do a base thing to save it" ? NOTES. 127 — " our." Of us Scotch ? After Carlyle had been a while in London, he used to say " we English." 8. "aphorism." Gr. airS, apo, irom ; 6pf fetv, ftonscm, to separate (by boundary) ; droph('sied, that late or .soon. Thou would be found deej) drown'd in Dooii : Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk. By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet. To think how mony counsels sweet, IIow mony lengthened, sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises! But to our tale : — Ae market night Tam had got planted unco right; Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely; And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony. I bops ; narrow -V openings in a I feueo blockhead jabbering ; bawler t every loud to be I grotind silver, money nag wizards ; dark makes ; weep fireplace frotbiiif; new ale shoemaker TAM O' SHANTEK. 161 Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ; They had been fou for weeks thegither. The night drave on with sangs and clatter : And ay tlie ale was growing better : The landlady and Tani grew gracious, Wi' favors secret, sweet, and precious : The souter told his queerest Stories ; The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : The storm without might rair and rustle, Tarn did na mind the storm a whistle. Care, mad to see a man sae happy, E'en drowned himself amang the nappy ! As bees flae hame wi' lades o' treasure. The minutes winged their way wi' pleasure : Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious. O'er a' the ills o' life victorious ! But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; Or like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white — then melts forever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place ; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time nor tide ; The hour a]iproaches, Tam maun ride ; That hour o' night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hour he mounts his beast in; And sic a night he taks the road in, such As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; The rattling showers rose on the blast ; The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed; Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellowed : That night a child might understand. The Deil had business on his hand. 162 rOEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. _( tripiu'd, clattered, ( sti-jil suiartl}' soinetimeit Weel niouutcil on his gray mare Meg, - A better never lifted leg, — Tarn skelpit on through dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles holiliiig'fast his gnde blue bonnet; Wliiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet ; huuuiilniLr Wiiiles glowering round \vi' prudent cares, looking fearfully Lest bogles catch him unawares; t'oblins Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. owlets, owls siuutbered stone Ame ; stona-beap uliove Hy this time he was cross the ford. Whare in the snaw tiie chapman smoored ; And past the birks and meikle stane, Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; And through the whins, and by the cairn, Whart' huMti-rs faiid tiie murdt-rt'd liairn; And nt-ar the thorn, aboon the well. Whan- M lingo's initlier hanged hersel. liefore him Doon pours all his floods; The doidjling storm roars through the woods; The lightnings flash from ]M>ie to jvole; Near and more near the thunders roll : When, glimmering through tlie groaning trees, Kirk Alloway .seemed in a blee/.e; Through ilka bore the beams were glancing; hole in the wall And loud resounded mirth ;iiul dancing. Inspiring bold John Harleycorn ! What dangt-rs thou canst make us .scorn ! Wi' tipjienny, we fear nae evil ; Wi" usquebae, we'll face the Devil ! The swats sae reamed in Tammie's noddle. Fair l^lay, he cared na deils a boddlf. liut Maggie stood right sair astonished, Till, by the heel and hand admonished, She ventured forward on the light ; And. wow I Tam saw an unco sight I two-pence boer ) wlil.Hkey (i/yi/rt I rittr] n-othi'ii copper vow, I vow I TAM O SHANTER. 163 AVarlocks and witches in a dance ; Nae cotillon brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels. Put life and mettle in their heels. At winnock-bunker in the east, There sat auld Xick, in shape o' beast; A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his chai'ge : He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl. Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. Coffins stood round like open presses. That shawed the dead in their last dresses ; And by some devilish cantrip sleight Each in his cauld hand held a light, — By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murdei-er's banes in gibbet aims ; Twa span-lang wee, unchristened bairns ; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted ; Five scimiters, wi' murder crusted ; A garter which a babe had strangled ; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o' life bereft. The gray hairs yet stack to the heft ; Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu'. Which even to name would be unlawfu'. i bright, "brand ) new " dances of couples window-seat shaggy dog made, forced ; to .■ihrii'k tremble, vibrato magic As Tammie glowered, amazed and curious. The mirth and fun grew fast and furious : The piper loud and louder blew : The dancers quick and !IGHT. 177 Oft as by winding Nith, 1, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheeriiil dawn, I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn. And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate! A wixtp:r night. (" This poem is worth several homihes on Mercy, for it is the voice of Mercy herself." — Carlyle. See page 57.) When biting Boreas, fell and doure, keen; stern Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r; AVheu Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r stare Far south the lift, sky Dim-dark'ning through tlie flaky show'r, Or whirling drift; Ae night the storm the steeples rocked, Poor labor sweet in sleep was locked, ^^'hile burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-choked, Wild-eddying swirl. Or through the mining outlet bocked, gushed, vomited Down headlong huil. List'ning the doors and winnocks rattle, windows I thought me on the ourie cattle, sliiveiinfr Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle helpless; peltin- O' winter war, And through the drift, deep-lairing sprattle scramble Beneath a scar. cliti; i.recipico Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, eadi ho|,i.ing That, ill the merry months o' spring. Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee ? ^^ here wilt thou cower thy chitterina" wins-. And close thy e'e? 178 POEMS OF K015ERT nUii]s'S. Ev'n you on inurd'riiig errands toil'd, Lone from your savage lioines exiled, The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled, My heart forgets. While pitiless the tempest wild Sore on you beats. Now Phrebe in lier midnitrlit reign. Dark nuittted, viewed the dreary plain; Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train. Rose in my soul, When on my ear tliis plaintive strain Slow, solemn, stole: — " Blow, blow,* ye wind.s, with heavier gust ! And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost; Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows ! Xot all your rage, as now united, shows More hard nnkindne.ss, unrelenting, Vengeful malice unrepenting, Than heavcn-illiimined man on brother man be- " See stern Oppression's iron grip, Or mad Ambition's gory hand. Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip, Woe, Want, and ^Murder o'er a land! Even in the peaceful rural vale. Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale, How pamjHM-'d Luxury. Flattery by her side. The parasite empoisoning her ear, ^ With all the servile wretches in the rear, Looks o'er proud Property, extended wide ; And eyes the simple rustic hind. Whose toil upholds the glittering show — A creature of another kind. Some coarser substance, unrefin'd — Placed for her lordlv use thus far. thus vile, below. * See SOUS' in As You Like it. A WINTER NIGHT. 179 " Where, where is Love's fond, tender throe With lordly Honor's lofty brow, The powers you proudly own ? Ts there beneath Love's noble name, Can harbor, dark, the selfish aim, To bless himself alone ! ]\Iark maiden innocence a prey To love-pretending snares. This boasted Honor turns away, Shunning soft Pity's rising sway, Regardless of the tears and unavailing prayers; Periiaps this hour, in ^Misery's squalid nest. She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rocking blast I " Oh 3^e ! who sunk in beds of down. Feel not a want but what yourselves create. Think for a moment, on liis wretched fate, AVhom friends and fortune (piite disown ! Ill satisfied keen nature's clamorous call, Stretched on his straw he lays himself to sleep. While through the ragged roof and clunky wall. Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap ! Think on the dungeon's grim confine. Where Guilt and poor jNIisfortune pine ! Guilt, erring man, relenting view! But shall thy legal rage pursue The wretch, already crushed low By cruel Fortune's undeserved blow ? Affliction's sons are brothers in distress : A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss ! " I heard nae raair, for Chanticleer Shook off the pouthery snaw, And hailed the morning with a cheer — A cottage-rousing craw ! 180 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. lUit deep this truth impressed my mind ; Through all His works abroad, Tlie heart benevolent and kind The most resembles God. IIKillLAXL) MAKY.* (See pp.70, 1G9.) I. Ye banks, and braes, and streams around Tiie castle of Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie I muil.ly There simmer first unfald her robes, ] '^"I'tlfltm ' And there tlie langest tarry: For there I took tlie last fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary. II. How sweetly bloomed tlie gay green birk. How rich the hawthorn'.s blossom, As underneath the fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom ! The golden hours on angel wings, Flew o'er me and my dearie ; For dear to me as light and ]\U\ Was my sweet Highland Mary. * Mary Campbell lived in Greenuck. Burns became acquainted witb her while mi service at the castle of Montgdinery. At i)artinK, tliey plighted their faith by the exchange r)f Bibles, and lifting water in their hands from a running brook, they vowed love while woods grew and waters ran. They never met again. She was carried off by a fever. Burns's tirst intimation of her death was when he visited her friends to meet her on her return from Cowal, whither .she had gone to prepare for marriage. The Bible Burns gave her, with his autograph in it, and a long, bright lock of her hair, were in the keeping of her relatives a few years ago. This song was written for Mr. Thomson's book. ^ AE FOND KISS. 181 III. \Vi' luony a vow, and locked embrace, Our parting was fu' tender ; And, pledging aft to meet again, We tore ouvsels asunder ; But oh ! fell death's untimely frost. That nipt my flower sae early ! Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay, That wraps my Highland Mary ! IV. O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, I aft hae kissed sae fondly ! And closed for aye the sparkling glance, That dwelt on me sae kindly ! And moldering now in silent dust, The heart that lo'ed me dearly ! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary. AE FOND KISS. (" These exquisitely affecting stanzas contain the essence of a thousand love-tales." — Walter Scott. See page 70.) I. As fond kiss, and then we sever ; Ae farewell, and then forever ! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee. Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. Who shall say that fortune grieves him While the star of hope she leaves him ? Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me ; Dark despair around benights me. 18:^ POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. II. I'll ueer blame my partial fancy, Naetliiiig could resist my Xaiicy ; But to see her was to love her; Love but her, and love forever. — Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly. Never met — or never parted. We had ne'er been broken hearted. III. Fare thee weel, thou tirst and fairest! Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest ! Thine be ilka joy and treasure, Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure ! .\e fond kiss, and then we sever; Ae farewell, alas! forever I Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee! INDEX. abbreviations, 107 adamant of fate, 79, 132 Addison, Joseph, 71, 128 ae„ 57, 118, 181 "Ae Fond Kiss," 181 .Eneid, 118 .Eolian harp, 48, 61, 113, 120 .Eolus, 113 ^schylus, 6-1, 122 /Etna, 118 atTectation, bane, 50, 113 aiblins, 63, 121 Allan Ramsay, 44, 111 alliteration, 122 Americana Ilias in Nuce, 17 amuck, 100, 141 aphorism, 70, 127 Apollo, 67. 116, 125 apostles. Christian, 95, 139 " Arancana," 98, 140 Arcadian, 47, 112 aristocracy, Dumfries, 40, 89 armada, leprous, 78, 132 Armour, Jean, 87, 135 Arnold, Matthew, 113 Arnold, Thomas, 121 arrest, skulking to avoid, 80, 132 "Art of Poetry," 113 assuage, peculiar use, 95, 138 Athos, Mt., carved, 109 "AuldBrig,"58, 118 " Auld Lang Syne," 70, 126, 171 Auld Mare, 58, 118 Auld Niokie-ben, 63, 121 Aurora, Guide's, 142 Austen, Jane, 53, 115 Aventine, Mt., 123 Ayr, 58, 67, SO. 124, 132, 173 " Ayr, Farewell to," 80, 132, 173 B Babylons, little, 94, 138 backwoods of America, 42, 110 Bacon, Francis, 120 Bacon, Koger, 95, 139 Baillie, Lady Grizzcl, 90, 136 baited, 64, 122 " Bannockburn," 64, 122, 165 bath, inud-l)ath, 78, 131 Bathurst, Allen, 121 Batteux, Charles, 72, 128 bear, barley, 74, 130 beast ie, mouse, 46, 153 Beaumont, Francis, 125 Beersheba, 55, 116 "Beggar's Bush," 68, 125 "Beggar's Opera," 68, 1.35 "Beggars, The Jolly," 67, 135 Bethesda, pool of, 86, 134 Betterton, Thomas, 108 bide. 62, 120 -bing, corn-bing, 90, 13(5 biography, true end of, 42, 110 Birkbeck, Morris, 42, 110 Blackie, Dr., 114 Blacklock, Dr., 85, 134 bock'd, 57, 118 Boileau, Nicholas, 72, 128 bombast, 52, 114 bon-)nots, 81, 1.32 Boreas, 57, 118 Borgia family, 55, 116 borrowed colors, world in, 75, 130 bowels. Christian, 40, 109 brats and callets, 68, 125 183 184 INDKX. l)raltle,(i-.', 120 brave, 39, lOS " BriR. Auld," r.S, IIH -broo. snaw-broM, oS, US Browiiiiij;, Mis., (luoted. 100 " Bniee's Address," t)4, 1J12, Kio I'.iinl)ury"s print, .S'J, lo^J Imriii, 57. 117 Buriiewiu, .">«, ll'.t Biirn-the-wiud, 58, ll'.» burns, brooks, 57, IIH Burns, Robert . ai)i>earance, ',Vi, 3.S, H:\ ; a volunteer soldier, l.«>; erisis of life, 1)1; debts, VM; bibliography, 104; debut in "society," 81-»i, I'.i'l: rliniuiiluuical, ."VJ, ;5;{: his fatlier, l.S-'J(i, 7(1, 77, '.»7, i:?l ; Hrst love, 78; glowing eyes, 83, 133; in Edinburnii, l.'L'; ear for niusie, ]2otation, 1.3(j Butler, Samuel, :«», 'M, 107 Byron. Lord. 50, 51, 70, 100, 101, 102, 113, 115, 131, 141 Cacus, tin, 12.? Caesar, Julius, 131 caird, 08, 125 Caleilonian Hunt. 40, 109 calf, golden, 1>8. 141 callets, brats and, 08 Calviuist, lO'.t Cauioens, poet, '.15, 130 Campbell, Mary, 100, 180 Campbell, poet, (pioted. 1.30 cannon sent by Burns to the French, i:!<; cant, 50, li;! cantata, 08, 125 Caraniucl. 110 carlin. 07, 125 Carlyle, 7, 20, 28, 20, 30, 3:?, ia5, etc. cast the Hrst stone, 80, 1.3<) "C:vstle of Indolence," 111 Cavaliers. 04 Cells, C>5. 117, 123 Cervantes. 'M, 08, 138 chalice, poison, 05, 138 Channing, 117 character of .'^aiaii. 101 chariot of I'riani. 5S, 110 Chaucer, (pioted, 143 "Childe Uar.dd," 113 Chinese Letters, KYJ chittering. 03, 121 Christian bowels, 40, 100 chronological table, 32-37 church, schisms in, 71, 12H church, state, IHO clearness of sight, 58, 50 Coil, 58 Coleridge on genius, i;W collision with otlicial superiors. SS, 1,35 " Ct)metly, Divine," Dante's, 110 Commissioners of Exci.se, 40 Constable's Miscellany, 41, 110 Cooper's novels, 115 Coperuicau theory, l'>0 copiicr-<'olored chiefs, 53, 115 corn-bing, IN), 130, 110 Currie, biographer, 40, 07, 108, 100, i;« Cyclops, 58, lis D Daisy, "To a .Mountain Daisy," 40. I 112, 151 ! Dan to Beersheba, .55, 110 INDEX. 185 Dante, 60, ll'.l "darkness visible,"' (54, 122 death, slernest sum-total, 96, 13i) death, third gate of deliverance, 02, 137 ; triumph over, 9(5, 139 debts of Burns, 86, 87, 134 (ieep-lairiiis, 62, 120 deer-stealinj,', 40. 108 definition of j^enius, 115 Defoe, Daniel, 59, 119 Deil, devil, 58 deliverance, gates of, 91, 137 Delphi, 54, 116 De Quiucey, 114 devil, the very, 63, 64, 121 devils, passions raging like, 80, 132 devil's-service, 78, 132 diameter of gin-horse (!), 103, 142 "Diamond Necklace," 11 Dickens, Charles, 112 dim eye, 55, 117 diniia, (53, 121 dithyrambic, VA, 122 "Divine Comedy," 119 doctrine of association, 61, 120 does, for do(?). 50, 113 "Don Juan," 51, 113 "Don Quixote," 138 doubts, religious, 79 douce gudeman, 83, 133 donre, 57, 118 dowie, 90, 136 " Drama, Technique of the," 115 dribble, 46, 112 "Drink, Scotch," 58, 158 drollery and humor, 65, 123 drops of song, 69 Druids, 56, 117 Dryden, John, 107 Dumfries aristocracy, 40, 89, 136 Duncan Gray, 70, 172 Dunlop, Mrs., 52, 114, 120, 124 Dweller in yon dungeon, 64, 121, 158 E Edgeworth, Maria, 115 Edinburgh, 72, 76, SO, 81, 132, etc. " Elegy on Poor Maillie," m, 124, 167 emblem, thistle, 74, 130 Emerson, R. W., 110, 111, 120 empyrean, 7(), 131 enshrined in all hearts. Burns, 103, 142 ephemeral, 53, 115 Epics, iron-mailed, 53, 115 epitaph, of Keats, 119 era, but one in Burus's life, 74, 75, 130 Erinyes, 121, 122 Escobar, 109 essays and examinations, topics, 147- 150 eternal melodies, 46, 111 ether, etymology of, 131, 141 Eumenides, 121, 122 excise, 86, 109, 134 FabnlosHfs Hydaspes, 118 failure, causes of, 92, 137 fardels, 95, 138 "Farewell, Macpherson's," 65, 122, 1(}6 " Farewell to Ayr," 80, 132, 173 "Farmer's Mare," 58 " Farmer's Salutation," 58, 118 fate, adamant of, 79, 132 : in Greek tragedy, 65, 123; as viewed by ^Vhitti'er (quoted), 130 father of Burns, 18, 76, 77, 131 Ferguson, Adam, 82,84, 133 Ferguson, Robert, poet, 44, 111 fire from heaven, 100, 141 Fisher's "Outlines of History," 135 FIcche, La, 72, 129 Fletcher, A., of Saltoun, 70, 126, 127 Fletcher's aphorism, 70 forms, New Light, etc., 40, 99, 109 " Fourfold State of Man," 71 fourth gate, 137 France, wits of, 72, 128 Franklin at court, 132 Freucli politics, meteors of, 88, 135 Freytag's "Technique of the Drama," 115 friendship, true, extinct (?), 137 Furies of iEschylus, 121 186 INDEX. G (Jrra, Earth, 111 (Jaelic, lli:; (ialileo (ialilei, 95, 139 (iaina, Vasco da, 139 Garpal, hauuted, 58, 118 gates of deliverance, 91, 92, 137 fiauge, resolved to, 8(5, IM (iay. Jolin, 1'_'5 gayety, of Burns, 131 generous credulity, 48, 113 Geneva, 71. 128 genius, definition fif, 115, i;iO genius of Kngland, 14 "Gentle .Slieplicrd," 111 Giaour, 50,113, 114 gies, 57, 118 gin-liorse, 103, 142 (Tlenbuck. 5S, 1 is Glover, Richard, 71, 127 go and iki otherwise, it.T (iod and Maniinon, 101, 141 (Joethe, 128 golden calf, 98, 141 (ioldsniith, 71, 109, 113, 114, 118, 127, VM goodness, persecuted, 95, 1.39 Gordon, Duchess of, 84 grapes of thorns, *M (J ray, Duncan, 70, 172 (iray, liionias, 71, 127 grazierdoni, 39 Greenock, .58. 1^ (irey, Laily Jane, 110 (irierson, Thomas, 82 (irizzel, " Lady G. Baillie," 90 grocerdoin, 89 gudeman, douce, 83, I'Xi gudewife, 129 Guido's Aurora, 142 gumlie, 58, 118 H Hallani, Henry, 128 Halli\\ell-Phillipi)S, 109 Halloween, 55, 117 •'Hamlet," 114 Hannibal, 129 happiness, only true, 7(5. 130 happing, (i.'>, 120 happy \alley, 73, 129 happy warrior, 130 "Hare, the Wounded," 55, 117, 17(5 Hargreaves, .Tames, 108 harmony, medium t)f, (i9, 12(i "Har.dd, ("hilde," 50, 113 harp. .Eolian, 48, (il, 113, 120 hater, a gf)od, t>4, 121 haunted (Jarpal, 5S, lis heart, the softest, 93, K'>8 hell, of Dante, 60, 119 Hen-nles, oxen of, 123 " Hero as Man of Letters, ' 17-2fi, l.'i5 " Heroes and Hero-Worship," 113 hero to one's own valet, 40, 108 Hesiod, 118 " Highland Mary," 70, 1(;9, 180 high-mindedness, I'M hing, 90, i:5() Hinnom. 12.5 hippodrome, 103, 142 hireling soldier, no, 91, 13*! " History of the Freiu-h Revolution," 135 "Holy Fair," .5(i, 117 Home, Henry, 12S Homer, .53, .5S. .59, 95, 115, 119, 138 honor and pride, 9."5, 137 Horace, poet, 49, ll.?, US, l.T. " Hudil)ras, ■ 107 " Human Understanding," l^cke, 97 Hume, David, 71, 128 humor, (>5, 123 I idyl..5r,, 117 "iliad," 119 llia.i Americdua in Nuce, 17 ilk,»}3, 120 " II Pen.seroso," 123 " Immortality, Ode," V.V) independence, rock of, 75, 88, 134, 1.38 indifferent, sense of, (53, 121 iiKlir/natio, C,'.',, 90, 121, i:«; infern.il pit, f4. 122 iti inalain parteiii, 84, 133 intemperance, 137 INDEX. 187 ititercalated, 74, 130 in vaciin, 71, 127 inverted love, 63, 121 Irvine, life at, 7(> Isle of Dogs, 142 Italian trait, 113 J Jacobite, 71,811, rjs, 13(i James I., James II., 128 jaups, o8, lis Jean Paul, 100, 141 Jeffrey, Francis, 110 jenny, spiniiiiig-j., 39, 108 "Jerusalem Delivered,'" 139 John-a-Combe, 40 Johnson, Dr., <)3, 64, 71, 112, 121, 127, 134, 137 " Jolly Beggars," 67, 125 "Juan, Don, "51, 113 jubilee. Roman, 56, 117 Juvenal, satirist, 121 K Kames, Lord, 71, 72, 128 Koats, poet, 60, 119 ken, 63, 121 kind, correct use of, 41, 109 King Charles (England), 94 King Philip (Spain), 94 Knights of the Cross, 53, 115 La Fleche, 72, 129 laird, 84, 133 lairing, 120 Langhorne, poet, 83, 1.33 " Last Man," Campbell's, 139 " Latter Day Pamphlets," 121 laws, songs and, 70, 73, 127 " Leech Gatherer, The," 131 leprous armada, 78, 132 liberty, Burns's lost, 80, 132 lift, r,7, 118 limbo, 69, 126 line, Pelops's, 05, 123 linking it, 90, 136 literature, crowded portal of, 15 literature, Scottish, 70, 71, 73, 129 loadstar, 88, 135 Locke, John, 97, 140 Lockhart, 39, 41, 42, 81, 89, 108, 114, 133 logic, Scottish, 72, 129 logic, threshing-tloor of, 129 Louis XIV., 116 Louvre, 116 Lowe, Sir Hudson, 45, 111 Lowell on Carlylc, 2t)-2S Lucy, Sir Thomas, 40, 108 Lugar, 58 lunatic, 115 "Lusiad," 139 Luther, Martin, 56, 116 M Mably, publicist, 72, 129 Macaulay, 117, 120, 140 Macbeth, 114 " Macphei-son's Farewell," 65, 122 madrigals, 69, 125 Maecenas, 87, 89, 135 Mahaffy, 112 " Maillie, Elegy on Poor," 66, 124, 167 mohmi partem, in, 84, 133 Mammon-worship, 101, 141 " Mare, Farmer's Auld," 58, 66, 123 Marie Antoinette, 10 Mars, Son of, 67, 125 " Mary in Heaven, To," 70, 169 material fate, 65, 123 Manchline, 125 mausoleum, 39, 103, 108 men", for mend, 63, 121 " Merchant of Venice," 112, 115 126, 137 metaphors, mixed ( ?) , 93, 138 meteors of French politics, 88, 135 midnight in a great city, 12, 13 Milton, 97, 101, 102, 104, 116, 123, 131, 138, 140, 143 Minden's plains, 82, 133 Minerva Press, 54, 11(5 misfortunes, sum-total of, 96, 139 "Model Prisons," 121 modica, 85, 134 Montesquieu, Baron, 72, 129 188 INDEX. nionnnieiits to Huriis, .JO. lOS Moore, Dr., letter (iiutohio;;raphical to), 132 Moore, Thouias, 115 Morley, «>ii Carlylo's essays, 29, 30, 111 ' Mossffiel, "lo, 7(), 111, IHJ •• Mouse, To a," O*;, 1J3, 153 iniul-bath of vices, 78, 131 -Miisiius, m, 124 music of the heart, l'J5, 126 music of the spheres, 111 N Naucy, Poosie. »'>7, 125 Najmh-oii Hiiuaparte, (m, SI, 111, 123 Nasmyth's jiictiire, 83, IXi New Light i-ierpy. 40, 7'.», IW New Liulit forms, etc, 7'.i, W, 117 Nii-kif-hcii, tlio rievil, (13, 121 Nicnli oti Ctrlyle's style. 2«, 21) Niuirods, f>5. 123 nine (lays' wonder, 43, 110 noosiiiL'. •">4, 122 novels and epics, .'>.3, 115 " Xovuin Orffinnim," W, 120 "Nut-Hrown Maid," 47, 112 O Odysseus, 118 '• Ossorius, (59, 12<) ostracism, social, 80 Oswal.l, Mrs., 64, 122, 158 oiirie, (52, 120 Ovid, 133 paraiion. 47, 112 " I'ar.-idise Lo.st."' (•7, VI'k 12*; Parnassus, 116 passions rairintr like ilevils, 80, l.'lJ Paterson, bioj;rapher, lOS patriotism, and prejudice ( ?), 72, 73, 129 patronage, scorned, 86, !I2, 93, 1.34 Paul. .lean (= Richter?). 100, 141 pearl-tisliers, 104, 143 Peloi)s's line, Ii5, 123 Petrarch, 104, 112, 143 Philip II. (Spain), 138 picturesque tourists, S7, 1.3.-I pkbiKrli,!, 103, 142 poetry, declining (?), 116 poet-soul, 4t!, Ill I)olilics, Biirns's, 88, 136 Polyplnmus, 118 pool, Hcthesda, 8t) Poosie XaiK-y, 67, 125 Pope. poet, (pioted, 1.32 Poussiii, Nicholas, lis ! prejudice, Scotch, 129 j Preshyterian. ln9 Priam, .".s, 119 pride. 47, 93, 112, i:;7 priest-like father, 77, 131 Prior, Matthew, 112 pro|iagan, 95. 1.39 Puritans. 107 Pythagoras. Ill () quality, 69. 125 Ouesnir . F., political economist, 72, 129 K Rahelais, F., Olt. HI Racine, ilramalist, 72, 128 Rambler, 71. 127 Rams.n-. .Mian, 44. Ill Hanisgate, 103, 142 Rasselas, 71, 127, 129 Ratfonkey, 58, 118 raucle, 67, 125 *' rea.sonable service," 98, 141 " Reason of t'hurch Government." 110. 11.'-., 141, 142 rcd-wat-slir..l. .".9. 119 Reeil, Professor Henry, 121 INDEX. 181) relief, fruin (?). tlir()uj;h(?), 47, 112 religion of Burns ( ?), 98, '.t'J, 141 religion, nat. hist, of, 73 religious scruples, 79 " Reliques," Percy's, 112 rent, doctrine of, 72, 73 restaurateur, 97, 140 retribution, .S9, 108 Retzsch, Moritz, 57, 117 Kichardson, Samuel, 59, 119 Ki<-hter (= Jean Paul?), 100, 141 Kienzi, ina, 124 Titan, 44, 111 Tol)y. Uncle, (J3, TJl Topiiet, ()7, 1_'4. 12.". tourists, picturesque, 87, IST) trai^edy, tiftli act of. 54, 115 Trent, Council of, 5(i, 117 "Tristram Shandy," i>3, 121 Trojan War, 115 tru<'ulent, 115 Tuileries, ")5. lift Turks, 114 twice-cursed patronaKe, it3, I'M Tyrol, 117 U Uncle Toby, 63, 121 Uranus, 111 Valclusa. 104, 14.T Vasco da Gama, i;?lt vat OS, 54, 115 Venus rose from the sea, CD, 12^ Vergil, 117, ll'.i, 1.!.". " Virgilium vidi tantum," 82, 133 Virjjins of the sun, 53, 115 virtuosos, 48, 113 Voltaire, F. M. A. 72. 128 Vulcan, 123, 158 W wad, (53, 121 wae. 1)3, 121 " Walker's Narrative," 30, 31, 41, 82, 108 " walketh on the wings of the wind," ■Hi, 112 Wallace. William. 12'.i, Kk') war-ode, the best, t»4, 122, 105 wassail, G8, 125 Wauchope House, 129 wealth, etlicacy of, 100 wee, 112, 12.-., 174 welcome, the world's, '.t5, 138 Wendell, Professor, 11(5 Whitticr, (pioted, I'M WifTcn, .1. A., '.6. 13«» " Willie brewed," etc., 70, 170 William of (Irange 1'2K "Winter Night." 57, 177-180 Wisdom, heavenly, HS. 141 Wordsworth, 121, l.'MJ work, blessedness of, Hi, l.'iO, 131 wreeths. 118 writers, peculiar sense of the word, 40, lOli \ Xerxes, scheme to carve Mt. Athos, lOil CHOICE LITERATURE VOLUMES. The Silver Series of English Classics. Edited by Prof. F. L. Pattek, A. S. TwoMBLY, and others. With Critical and Explanatory Notes. This series furnishes editions of standard classics in English and American literature, in the best possible form for reading and study. Twelve volumes now ready: Macaulay's Essay on Milton; Webster's First Oration on Bunker Hill Monument; De Quincet's Flight of a Tartar Tribe; Coler- idge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers; Milton's Paradise Lost, Books Land II.; 18 cents each. 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