LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap Copyright No Shel£__lli__. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Sf P 8 1898 i / 3lake English Classics. For College Entrance, 1899. Under the editorial supervision of LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B., Instructor in English in The University of Chicago. Limp Cloth. SHAKSPERE — Macbeth 25c. John Henry Boynton, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Syracuse University. MILTON — Paradise Lost, 25c, Frank E. Farley, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Haverford College. BURKE — Speech on Conciliation with America, . . . 25c. Joseph Villiers Denney, B. A., Professor of Rhetoric and Eng- lish Language, The Ohio State University. CARLYLE — Essay on Burns, 25c. Geo. B. Aiton, State Inspector of High Schools, Minnesota. DRYDEN — Palemon and Arcite 25c. May Estelle Cook, A.B., Instructor in English, South Side Academy, Chicago. POPE — Homer's Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV, . . . 25c. Wilfred Wesley Cressy, A.M., Associate Professor of English, Oberlin College. GOLDSMITH — The Vicar of Wakefield 30c. Edward P. Morton, A.M., Instructor in English, The Indiana University. COLERIDGE — The Ancient Mariner 1 LOWELL — Vision of Sir Launfal in 'vi 1*50. William Vaughn Moody, A.M., Instructor in ° ne VoL > English, The University of Chicago. J HAWTHORNE — The House of the Seven Gables, . . . 35c. Robert Herrick, A.B., Assistant Professor of English, The University of Chicago. DE QUINCEY — The Flight of a Tartar Tribe 25c. Charles W. French, A.M., Principal Hyde Park High School, Chicago. ADDISON— The Sir Roger de Co verley Papers, . . . 25c. Herbert Vaughan Abbott, A.M., Instructor in English, Har- vard University. COOPER — Last of the Mohicans, 35C (Announcement later.) SCOTT, FORESMAN & CO., PUBLISHERS, 378-388 Wabash Ave., Chicago. £be lake English Classics EDITED BY LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. Instructor in English in the University of Chicago Zhz Xafee Enalisb Classics BUENS THOMAS CARLYLE EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE BY GEORGE B. AITON STATE INSPECTOR OF HIGH SCHOOLS, MINNESOTA CHICAGO SCOTT, FORESMAN & CO. 1898 ^ A ?■• -A ■*> Cx „ 13952 Copyright 1898 By SCOTT, FORESMAN & COMPANY ^?'er of C 2nd COPY, 1898. CONTENTS PAGE Preface 7 Introduction 9 Map 10 Carlyle 11 Burns 23 Comments on the Essay .... 30 Bibliography 39 Poems of Burns Named in the Essay . . 40 Text 43 Glossary 131 Notes 137 PREFACE This edition of Carlyle's Essay on Burns has been prepared for the use of students iu secondary schools. It presents the text as the author left it, and such introduction and notes as are thought likely to assist the student. With this purpose in mind, the sketches of Carlyle and Burns have been restricted to the parts of their lives pertinent to the essay under consider- ation. It is impossible within the brief limits of an introduction to give a balanced account of two remarkable men and an equally remarkable essay. For an adequate life of the essayist the reader is referred to Froude's Carlyle and to Carlyle's own Reminiscences and Letters. The most satisfactory view of Burns may be had from Dr. Chambers's Life and Works of Robert Burns (4 vols. Long- man's), but Blackie's Burns, in the Great Writers Series, will answer. It is sufficient for oar purpose to sketch an outline of Carlyle's life, indicating how by study he became a thinker, what he stood for and why he was the particular man of letters to write an essay on Burns that would repay study. 8 PREFACE To this must be added the pertinent facts of Burns 's life, in order that Carlyle's references may be understood. We shall also desire some account of the place this essay fills in literature. A short list of reference books is given to em- phasize the importance of having and using a serviceable school library. A list of those of Burns 's poems which Carlyle mentions has been arranged in chronological order. The notes are intended merely to clear up certain allusions or to call attention to important thought. It has not been considered advisable to give explanations of what may be inferred from the text, or to embar- rass the student with remarks upon proper names with which he is already familiar. A like desire to disencumber the notes has led to the insertion, in the glossary, of such Lowland words as are found in Carlyle's numerous but always judicious quotations. G. B. A. Minneapolis, August, 1898. INTRODUCTION r mz s* l§& ~ *^i ^ V s -\ ^* INTRODUCTION CAT.L \ The Carlyles /::-riding. hard-striking border family al bout the Firth ; - the vieissitu" sub- side farmers. They - '. temper I men no: : be fcri the . :er- 3. Hew - Lug in- deed built his own bouse, - -:an. He was a man of inl g strong and active both in be . - well s{ '•-::. oj had a I - •■'•/.' _ 3 ' : : Qdar in (bs 3 mas, 1, 1795, h : = "A n 12 INTRODUCTION pious, the just and the wise. " Of his father, he says: "More remarkable man than my father I have never met in my journey through life ; ster- ling sincerity in thought, word, and deed, most quiet but capable of blazing into whirlwinds when needful, and such a flash of just insight and brief natural eloquence and emphasis, true to every feature of it, as I have never known in any other. Humour of a most grim Scandinavian type he occasionally had; wit rarely or never — too serious for wit. My excellent mother, with perhaps the deeper piety in most senses, had also the most sport. No man of my day, or hardly any man, can have had better parents." We are interested in this account of Oarlyle's ancestry because ability does not spring from the dull-witted in a single generation. Education of the right sort will improve any mind, but a boy without good blood in him cannot make much of a man. The Carlyles were prosperous while their chil- dren were growing up. Their housekeeping, though simple, was scrupulously neat. The chil- dren ran barefoot in summer and had an abundance of the simple but exceedingly nutritious food of the Scottish peasantry, consisting chiefly of oat- meal porridge, scones, milk, cheese and potatoes. Carlyle's mother began to teach him so early that he could not remember the time when he was unable to read. At seven he was sent to the vil- lage school and pronounced ready for Latin. At CARLYLE 13 ten he was fondly destined for the Presbyterian ministry, and was sent to the grammar school at Annan, a few miles down the valley, where he learned to overcome homesickness, bullies, French, Latin, mathematics and the Greek alphabet — not a bad beginning for one who was to become versed in literature. In the autumn of 1809, though he was not quite fourteen, it was decided, despite the shaking of wise heads in the village, to send Thomas Oarlyle to the University of Edinburgh. Carlyle's parents deserve credit for their self-sacrifice, for Thomas was now old enough to labor, and his help would have been very acceptable ; but parental pride came to the rescue, and Thomas, though he never became a minister, fully justified all expectations. Up Annandale and over the fells, twenty miles a day, every foot of the way historic ground — and Car- lyle just the kind of boy to enjoy it — he trudged, to Edinburgh. According to the custom pre- vailing among the sons of working people, Carlyle boarded himself while at the university, depending mainly on provisions sent from home by the carrier, the weekly arrival of whose cart was a social feature of the countryside. As a student, he worked hard and read omnivorously, gaining recognition, strangely enough, in the department of mathematics only. He himself intimates that the library was the best part of the university. "Nay, from the chaos of that library, I succeeded in fishing up 14 INTRODUCTION more books than had been known to the keeper thereof." Having in due time brought his university course to a conclusion, Carlyle registered as a non-resident divinity student. He left the old library and his scanty quarters for home, as, indeed, he had not failed to do at the end of each college year. For- tunately the mathematical instructorship in the Annan school fell vacant, and Carlyle, now nine- teen years old, received the appointment at a salary of about £60 a year, quite sufficient to render him independent and to put him in the way of saving something for a future course, still supposed to be theology. The young instructor is said to have done his work faithfully, but to have disliked teaching. He shunned society; shut himself up with his books, and spent his vacations with his parents, who had now removed with the entire family to the farm of Mainhill, a few miles up the road Carlyle used to take for the university. Two years passed in this way, when university influ- ence procured him a better position as master of a new classical and mathematical school at the sea- coast town of Kirkcaldy, some twenty miles to the north of Edinburgh. Here he had the friendship and the companionship of Edward Irving, also an Annandale boy, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and a rural divinity student, but now master of a competing school in Kirkcaldy. Car- lyle, doubtless through the influence of his new CARLYLE 15 friend, with whom he walked and talked summer nights on the Kirkcaldy sands, and with whom he spent vacation times in the Highlands, now began to enjoy society more and to hate "schoolmas- tering" worse. More than this, the ministry, never attractive to him, now seemed intolerable, and though he had hitherto complied with the non-resident requirement of a sermon a year, delivered at the university, and had but two years to wait for ordination, he applied for his father's consent, reluctantly but silently granted, and in 1818 resigned at Kirkcaldy, cancelled his registra- tion as a divinity student by suffering it to lapse, and with £90, the savings of four years, began the study of law. Irving, who resigned his Kirkcaldy position at the same time, soon had a call to Glasgow as an assistant of the renowned Dr. Chalmers, but as for Carlyle he "was poor, unpopular, unknown, . . . proud, shy, at once so insignificant looking, and so grim and sorrowful." He settled in rooms at Edinburgh again, and "once more the Ecclefechan carrier brought up the weekly or monthly supplies of oatmeal cakes and butter." Carlyle, in these years, is sincerely to be pitied. If it had been possible for some publisher to recognize his talent and to put him at work, even in a humble way, he might have been saved years of poignant distress, and might have escaped the severe attacks of mental as well as bodily dyspepsia, from which he 16 INTRODUCTION suffered all his life. We cannot say. Young people of mettle always struggle before they settle into the harness of life, and it may he that this mental unrest and hovering over the brink of de- spair were necessary before his mind could break its bonds and utter its message to the world. At all events, he secured a private pupil now and again at two guineas a month ; he found some employ- ment as a writer of articles for Brewster's Ency- clopcedia, and, all in all, with the aid from home, got on without using his £90. With the solace of summers at Mainhill and an occasional stay and a tramp with Irving at Glasgow, he fancied at times he might like the law, but even in his most cheer- ful letters one can see that he was fiercely at war with life and faint at heart for fear of being ultimately worsted in the conflict. Finally, the outlook brightened. Some recognition came to him by way of his encyclopaedia articles ; he got on a footing which justified correspondence with publishers; law was abandoned. Brewster gave him a check one day for fifteen guineas. He was able to send his father a pair of spectacles and his mother a golden guinea. Heartened by this up- ward fortune, he could ask himself, "What art thou afraid of? Wherefore like a coward dost thou for- ever pip and whimper and go cowering and trem- bling? . . . Ever from that time the temper of my misery was changed ; not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and grim, fire-eyed defiance." CARLYLE 17 At twenty-six, then, the victory was practically won. Carlyle was to be a man of letters. He was well versed in French literature; in German he was doubtless the best read man of Great Britain. Another year, and Irving, who had gone from Glasgow to London, put him in the way of tutoring two young men by the name of Buller, whose par- ents removed to Edinburgh that their sons might attend the university. This arrangement yielded £200 a year. Carlyle had, moreover, all the liter- ary work by way of encyclopaedia and magazine articles he could find time to do, and thereafter, though never in affluent circumstances, financial considerations do not appear to have given him legitimate cause for distress. Four crowded years now passed rapidly. Carlyle tutored, translated Legendre, sent his mother a new bonnet, helped his father with money for the farm, assisted his brother John at the medical school, walked the sands of the Firth, climbed Arthur's Seat, visited Miss Welsh, of whom more hereafter, wrote a life of Schiller for the London Magazine, parted company with the Bullers most amicably, and returned to Mainhill. Here he translated Wilhelm Meister, and arranged for its publication at a compensation of £180 for the first edition and £250 for the second. Correspondence with Goethe followed. Carlyle then visited London. He saw Irving, called on various publishers, and met the literary celebrities of the day. His rever- 18 INTRODUCTION ence for literary people received a shock, he revised his estimates, and effaced several lights from his literary firmament or reduced them to stars of lesser magnitude. He terrified the simple-hearted folk at Mainhill by venturing across the Channel, even to Paris, but returning safe, rented the small farm of Hoddam Hill, enjoyed its quiet, lost some money in its management, and finally * 'flitted" with his father and the whole family to a larger farm and house called Scotsbrig, near Ecclefechan. Then followed four years of intense and now well-directed effort, for the details of which the student is referred to Fronde's admirable Life of Carlyle. One cannot keep up courage in an intellectual life without friends. They need not be many, but they must be staunch. Irving was a firm friend to Carlyle, and he was the means of introducing him to another. Before taking a school at Kirk- caldy, Irving had taught at Haddington, the birth- place of John Knox, less than twenty miles east of Edinburgh. Here he became much interested in Jane Baillie Welsh, a young girl of beautiful per- son and unusual intellectual quickness, whose studies he continued to direct until he went to Glasgow. During the summer of 1821, returning to Edinburgh for a visit, as was his wont, he took Carlyle from his supposed law studies, and together they walked out to Haddington, taking the short cuts and byways, talking as they went. Here Car- lyle met Miss Welsh, who united with Irving in CARLYLE 19 admiration of his vigorous understanding and racy speech, while Carlyle no less admired her vivacity and literary appreciation. Under these circum- stances, there was little difficulty in arranging that he should direct her reading. A fast friendship ensued. Carlyle had no hope of aspiring to one of her high social position, and she had no thought of marrying a penniless peasant's son in a single lodg- ing, but friends they were, and during his years of greatest struggle, she was his literary confidante, never doubting his ultimate success. Society at her feet she cared not a rap for ; the young man of genius, of flawless private life, struggling out of obscurity, she did care for ; his future became the sole object of her solicitude ; she entered into his plans with energy and hopefulness, and even visited the Carlyle home at Mainhill. Finally, after many misgivings and prudential hesitatings, they decided to face the world together. Miss Welsh was the daughter of an eminent sur- geon, who at his death had left his property (the house at Haddington, some investments and a farm near Dumfries) to his only daughter for the support of herself and her mother; now, on her marriage to Carlyle, with a mixture of character- istic pride and generosity, she turned all the prop- erty over to her mother. Carlyle and Miss Welsh were married in October, 1826, and began house- keeping the same day in a small dwelling at Comely Bank, in the suburbs of Edinburgh. The home 20 INTRODUCTION was comfortably furnished from Haddington. Mrs. Carlyle had a faculty for entertaining little parties, her social standing was unquestioned, and the literary people of Edinburgh were pleased to be her guests. Among these visitors at Comely Bank came one who, after Irving and Jane Welsh, must be counted Carlyle 's closest friend, no less a person than the brilliant Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review. The Edinburgh Revieio was started in 1802 by a coterie of brilliant young men who were dissatisfied with current criticism as ema- nating from those who had books to sell. Jeffrey was the first editor-in-chief. Contributors were paid liberally, and from the first the new quarterly took high standing for wit and ability. It was an honor to be a contributor, and quite the proper thing to be a subscriber. Under the influence of this new friendship that never failed, Carlyle set fire to a novel he could not have completed, and became a contributor to this, the most influential quarterly of the day. Carlyle's first article was creditable; his second, on the State of German Literature, attracted the attention of the best minds in Europe. Carlyle, however, was dissatisfied with city life. He wanted undisturbed quiet for his hours of writ- ing, and he pined for the solitude of the moors for his hours of thinking. Mrs. Carlyle was a deli- cate, refined woman, accustomed to the town and to intelligent society, yet she yielded out CARLYLE 21 of regard to her husband and his future. The way seemed to open naturally. Mrs. Welsh, Jane's mother, had not been successful in obtain- ing a thrifty tenant for Craigenputtock, the Dum- frieshire farm, so Alexander Carlyle, a brother who had not succeeded particularly well with Carlyle 's experiment at Hoddam Hill, was placed in charge of Craigenputtock. The farm-house was enlarged and put in repair ; six teams drew the household stuff from Edinburgh. Mrs. Carlyle turned her back on the comforts she had been accustomed to, and for seven years the Carlyles took up their home at the farmstead of Craigenput- tock, on the bleak hills seventeen miles from Dum- fries and the postoffice. Here Jeffrey came to see them, here our American Emerson came for the night's visit later recorded in English Traits, and here Carlyle, not yet perfectly happy, made the following entry in his diary: "Finished a paper on Burns, September 16, 1828, at this Devil's Den, Craigenputtock. " We have followed Carlyle thus minutely from Ecclefechan to Craigenputtock to show that his final success — mastery is the better word — was achieved by working for it. Carlyle inherited a capacious, constructive mind and power of expres- sion, but if reading and studying and digging at books, with prolonged and agonizing thinking, ever brought a mind to its full development, it did in him. And, though many other pieces of work 22 INTRODUCTION were done at Craigenputtock, we do not at this time need the details, however interesting, of Car- lyle's later life there, nor, indeed, anything but the barest record of the life that followed. After writ- ing Sartor Resartus, he removed in 1834 to Lon- don to secure library facilities. Mrs. Carlyle resumed her tea-parties, which became one of the features of literary London, and guarded her husband's study for thirty-two years while he scolded and fumed and wrote his French Revolution, his Heroes and Hero Worship, Past and Present, Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell, Life of Sterling, and Life of Frederick the Great, his writings ex- tending in all to thirty volumes. In 1866 he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, whither he journeyed and where, after delivering an address of noble power, he left the hall amid the tumultuous applause of the body of students, no doubt the most gratifying and fit recognition he had ever received. But before he could rejoin his wife in London, that high-minded and gifted woman, in the midst of her gladness for his new honor, had passed away. Carlyle lived another fifteen years to mourn her loss, but his spirit was broken, his pen was no longer in service. In 1881, he ended a life, stern, impetuous, irri- table, but, "in the weightier matters of the law, without speck or flaw. From his earliest years, in the home at Ecclefechan, at school, at college, we see invariably the same innocence of heart and BURNS 23 uprightness and integrity of action. As a child, as a boy, as a man, he had been true in word, and honest and just in deed." By his own request, made with true Scottish loyalty, his remains were not deposited in Westminster Abbey, but in the churchyard of Ecclefechan. Perhaps no man has exercised a greater influence on the thought of this century. BURNS It is to be wished that the testimony to Carlyle's private character could be given to Burns 's as well. A recent critic says that Burns is good enough as he is, but, unfortunately, it is not so, for in the poet's unrestrained hours, even of his later years, he committed acts which to this day cause his admirers to hang their heads and to wish that he had possessed some strong, unselfish friend to hold him to the ways of his forefathers. Like Carlyle, Burns was well born, none better. His father and his mother were Lowland peas- ants, hardworking, frugal, and in straitened cir- cumstances, but with an indigenous culture far above the vulgarity of life, a culture which one comes upon throughout Anglo- Saxondom, and which, under favorable circumstances, has reached its highest development in the hills of New Eng- land. Eobert Burns was born January 25, 1759, in a straw -thatched cottage, a half hour's walk out of Ayr, to a father and a mother belonging to 24 INTRODUCTION that better peasant element which on both sides of the Atlantic has forced the world to hold the term, "common people," in respect. His father was a gardener, tilling a few acres of his own but also working for wages. In the Cotter's Saturday Night Burns gives a picture of his father with "his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes," and of his mother, * 'wi' her needles and her shears. ' ' Family circumstances were such that Eobert, a strong boy, large of his age, was needed in the small tasks of tillage, but in one way he was fortunate. His mother had an extraordinary store of folk-lore songs and ballads, and his father made an effort to surround his children with good reading and to entertain them with instructive conversation Schooling, moveover, was not neglected altogether. The lad was started at school when five years of age, and had an occasional term of prized instruc- tion until he was a youth grown. When Burns was seven years old, his father removed to the farm of Mt. Oliphant. At fifteen, Robert was the principal breadwinner of the family ; in 1773, he composed his first song, Handsome Nell,m honor of the village blacksmith's daughter. In 1777 the family removed to Lochlea, an unprof- itable farm in the parish of Tarbolton. In 1778 Burns was fortunate enough to secure a summer term of schooling at Kirkoswald, where it is said he ate his meals with Fergusson's poems in one hand and his spoon in the other. Returning to the BURNS 25 farm, he composed Poor Mailie's Elegy, Winter, and other early pieces, under an awakened ambi- tion to become a poet of the people, or, as he loved to put it, a Scottish bard. Then in casting about for some means of bettering his own circumstances and of helping the family, Burns worked for some months in a kind of partnership at the flaxdresser's trade in Irvine; but, during a New Year's carousal, the shop took fire and burned to the ground. Burns returned to Lochlea without a penny and much the worse in morals. Three years later, in 1784, his father died, and Burns, with his brother Gilbert, took the family to their fourth home, the farm of Mossgiel, in Mauchline. His best work, indeed, most of his good work, was done here. It will be interesting to note that the body of the poems mentioned by Carlyle (pp. 67-78) were written during the two or three short years at Mossgiel, before Burns had much idea of his own value. Of Burns at Mossgiel, we have an interest- ing account. He was now twenty -six years old, and labored on the farm with his brother, carrying a book about in his pocket during the day, reading as he rested against the plough, or, as the mood was on him, thinking out his theme. At night he climbed to his attic room, where he had contrived a rude table, and committed his thoughts to paper before he went to rest His subjects afford variety enough, and happily none are from books. Some old tune, or some border ballad running in his 26 INTRODUCTION mind, some church fracas, the death of an old neighbor, or even the loss of his pet sheep, brought forth a poem. He wrote ballads, epistles, epitaphs, satires, dedications. He attacked the clergy and praised the devil, but never belittled religion. He wrote a poem, it has been cleverly said, to each lass in the parish, and, finally, in ecstasy, wrote a poem to them collectively. He wrote of winter, spring, and summer, of rivers, braes, and uplands. Dreams, regret, and despond- ency called forth expression. A mouse, a daisy, a suet pudding, a favorite mare, a calf, the tooth- ache, a stormy night, and even a louse, are made the subjects of poems which must be read to be appreciated. They are a revelation, and justify Carlyle's dictum that genius can never have far to seek for a subject. Burns 's poems were composed for a local audi- ence, often for a single eye, or, at most, for a local paper. Whatever hope he may have had of future distinction, he took no step to secure outside recog- nition, and, were the truth known, he was only too proud of the rip-roaring, thigh-slapping applause of the numerous convivial gatherings in which he was easily first. Evidently his heart was not in farming. Numer- ous amatory experiences which mar this as well as other periods of his life, and constantly increasing indebtedness, involved him in embarrassments, and led to his casting about for means to leave the BURNS 27 country. After some thought and not a little encouragement from acquaintances, Burns decided to raise money by publishing a small volume of his poems at Kilmarnock. This was before enterprise had concentrated so largely in the cities, and, to his surprise as well as relief, the edition sold so well as to clear off his obligations and enable him to arrange for his departure to the plantations of Jamaica. He had, in fact, sent his box to Green- ock, at that time the sailing port of Glasgow, and was himself on the way thither when a letter from Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh came into his hands, expressing the high favor with which his Kilmar- nock volume had been received. Burns at once changed his mind. He resolved to go to Edin- burgh to seek an appointment in the excise, and to canvass the desirability of a new edition of his poems. His presence in Edinburgh created a f urqre. The gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt subscribed in advance for a hundred copies of his poems, and the newly-discovered ploughman poet was the lion of the day. For the time Burns felt rich ; he had been lionized by the society of the capital city of Scot- land, and he had money in his pocket. He now made a long-desired tour of the border between England and Scotland, so rich in traditions of minstrelsy. Returning to Mossgiel, he again took a trip, this time into the Highlands. A consider- able sum of money, which came in from the sale of 28 INTRODUCTION his Edinburgh edition, he generously shared with his brother and the rest of the family. In 1788, he obtained the desired post in the excise, formally married Jean Armour, by whom he had already had two children under an irregular but morally binding form of marriage, and rented Ellisland, near Dumfries. But Burns was spoiled. His farm ran behind under hired help, he wasted time among discreditable companions, and had it not been for the £60 derived annually from his exciseship, his family would have been in need. To Mary in Heaven, Auld Lancf Syne, and Tain O'Shanter were composed at Ellisland, but, on the whole, Burns never recovered from the glimpses he had of "high life" in Edinburgh. In 1790, he removed with his family to Dumfries, living hence- forth on his income as an officer and some small return from his poems. At Dumfries, he fell into disrepute, we cannot say undeservedly, his self- respect faded away, and he was but the shadow of what he might have been when, in 1796, he died. Robert Burns was a sad bundle of contradictions. Education and independence he sacrificed freely to keep father and mother above want — Carlyle himself had no deeper respect for the piety and upright- ness of his parents — yet Burns rejected their most serious admonitions. No poet before or since has surpassed Burns in seeing the true dignity of pro- ductive labor ; yet work irked him, and he allowed himself in his letters to speak contemptuously of BURNS 29 miry furrows and offensive barnyard surroundings. None saw more keenly the injustice of rank and the emptiness of title; yet he permitted lack of social distinction to embitter his existence. A man could hardly have been more desirous for sympathy and respect; certainly no one ever threw away opportunity with a more prodigal hand. The lives of Burns and Carlyle afford perfect contrast. Carlyle 'a parents seem to have set him apart for study from his earliest childhood. Burns 's parents did what they could, but depended upon the poet's labor beyond the period when he ought to have had a home and a family of his own. Carlyle 'a education was as thorough as Scotland could offer ; the muse found Burns literally at the tail of a plough. Carlyle was cautious and thrifty; Burns was reckless and prodigal. In their methods of work there is the aame difference. Carlyle wasted no moments; he blocked out his subject, and sat down to it as methodically as ever Roman laid siege to a city. Burns assumed no responsi- bility, cared not a straw how his subject might come, but when a thought took shape in his mind wrote it off. Give Carlyle a subject, a library, his meals and seclusion, and he would heat and forge and weld until he had his thought in appropriate form for presentation. Let Burns alone, make no effort to direct him, let him move among men and among the fields until something casually stirred him, and he would sink into the proper mood, — and 30 INTRODUCTION then a poem. Each had the proper training for his own kind of composition, and each in his own sphere is among the few. Carlyle, however, is constructive; Burns is creative. Carlyle's essay is a search for value; in Burns 's poems may be found the treasure. COMMENTS ON THE ESSAY To derive full benefit from Carlyle's essay on Burns, it should be read repeatedly. The first reading should be off-hand and free, without note or explanation. It would be well to copy the fash- ion of Lowell, who was fond of reading alone under some large willows near his home, for the serious thoughtf ulness and quiet uplift that are the true reader's guests steal in only when they are sure of their host to themselves. This first time one should read simply because he is interested. Then, for class purposes, the essay should be read with dictionary and cyclopaedia of names at hand. Words must be weighed, references looked up, and allusions made clear. While one should cultivate a rangy method of getting through a book, a reader who makes any pretension to exact informa- tion owes it to himself to do a given amount of close verbal reading something after the fashion of translating a foreign text. This essay, like any other, may also be regarded from more than one point of view, which it were well, perhaps, to distinguish carefully. COMMENTS ON THE ESSAY 31 a. AS AN" ILLUSTRATION OF CARLYLE'S STYLE. Carlyle's writings are difficult to classify. Heroes and Hero Worship, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, and the French Revolution are in a way historical, yet they are not primarily history. Carlyle's fame is not that of an historian. His theory of history and of the hero at the helm is founded on a dis- trust of the ability of the common people to work out their own affairs. His discussions of questions of the day in Chartism and Past and Present, share with the writings of Euskin the delusion that leaders will arise among the well-to-do who shall devote themselves to the interests of the masses, the people on the other hand becoming grateful and, above all, obedient. The nineteenth century idea of government emanating from the people and exercised by themselves in their own interests, he seems unable to disassociate from violence, subver- sion and lawless disobedience. Historians will go to Carlyle for lurid descriptions and minute details, but not for authentic statement, nor for the theory of history. Political economists and teachers of social science will draw on Carlyle for scathing indictments of evil, but he is utterly impracticable; his ideas of political reform have had little accept- ance. It is as a criticism of life, as an appeal to conscience that his political writings have so pow- erfully influenced, not indeed popular legislation directly, but personal conduct. They rank pri- marily as contributions to literature, and Carlyle's 32 INTRODUCTION standing is that of a man of letters. It is just and proper, therefore, that a study of Carlyle should be based on his Miscellanies or Essays, which include his best literary work. First to attract the attention of a student is Carlyle 's peculiar choice and forceful use of words. The vocabulary used by the family at Ecclefechan, a vocabulary from which he never departed, was a remarkably apt one, drawn from two unsurpassed sources, the dialect of the Lowlands and King James's Translation. To this Carlyle added, by dint of prodigious reading, almost the entire vocabulary known to metaphysics, theology, his- tory, biography, and polite literature. Familiarity with German and French and the ancient lan- guages rendered him superior to lexicons and made him an authority unto himself. He not only felt competent, but was competent to use any word that suited his meaning. Fire-eyed, perhaps borrowed from Shakspere, is a favorite word. Many unusual words, such as poet-soul and ale-vapors, he probably coined on the spot, without giving the origin of the words a second thought, provided they met his needs. One has only to choose a paragraph at ran- dom and attempt to substitute synonyms to become impressed with the fitness of Carlyle 's vocabulary. In some other respects one feels that he might have improved, for Carlyle is hard to understand. His Burns was written under the most favorable circumstances, and is considered one of his clearest COMMENTS ON THE ESSAY 33 and best pieces of writing. Yet it is by no means easy to follow his thought. He pays little atten- tion to the reader. The thought is there; if the reader cannot get it, let him qualify. Carlyle's allusions are frequent and pertinent but undis- criminating, and at times certainly unduly recon- dite. An author who shreds into his writings bits of fact or information gathered up in his walks and conversation, or more probably unearthed from old volumes that may not be opened again for genera- tions, if ever, is not likely to be popular. In read- ing this essay, for instance, it is easy to trace many phrases and words to their source in border history, in the Scriptures, or in Shakspere, but the aver- age reader can hardly realize how full every line is of hidden fire. With here a word from a ballad, and there a word from Lamentations, called up by the relationship of the ballad to Burns 's poem or by a train of reflection upon the contrasting char- acters of the Scottish bard and the Hebrew prophet, it would be impossible to determine what association of ideas moulded Carlyle's phraseology, unless one were to pass through his experiences. The most diligent student, even by giving a life- time to the study of Lowland life, Scottish poetry and Carlyle's literary antecedents, would be unable to read out of this essay all that the author wrote into it. There is all the more need, therefore, for a careful study of the points it is possible to clear up. 34 INTRODUCTION An attempt to bring the essay as a whole, or by paragraphs, or even sentence by sentence, within the rules of modern composition is unavailing. It would not be easy to give a reason for the occur- rence of paragraphs in their present order ; entire groups of paragraphs might be shifted to another position; it is difficult to bring the essay within any reasonable kind of topical analysis. Yet it would be more difficult to suggest an arrange- ment of greater effectiveness. One might as well try to rearrange the stones in a wall as to rear- range Carlyle's sentences. In matters of punctua- tion and capitalization and sentence structure, too, Carlyle must be taken as he is. Carlyle's whole life was a protest against thinking as other people pretend to think, and against doing as other people do. To be sure, he had bound- less sympathy and coveted appreciation. In his correspondence with Goethe, and possibly in some of his letters to Emerson, he shows a desire to propitiate, to be pleasant ; but ordinarily he makes no effort to write in an acceptable, not to say pleasing, manner. If Carlyle did not care to please, he did care to be believed. Criticism of his style, retort for his sharp sayings, personal attack, any amount of vituperation, might fall on his armored sides and he would lie at anchor grim and silent ; but doubt his sincerity, venture to question his colors and he would train his guns upon you instantly. Had Carlyle known that this essay would some day COMMENTS ON THE ESSAY 35 be used for class purposes, his only concern would have been to have students find and accept his thought. Carlyle himself says that composition was a slow and even painful task. As a lad he had seen his industrious father choose stones and true them with a hammer, and lift them into place and level them with smaller pieces, and imbed them all in mortar to build up an honest wall. So, as a man, Carlyle chose rugged thoughts, shaped and fitted them and laid them in a wealth of allusions and supporting facts to build up an honest essay; and he has succeeded. We may, indeed, pick out a bit of mortar here and point out a want of harmony in the granitic colors there, but this essay is still a fitting monument to its builder, a simple, enduring piece of workmanship, the very materialization of his own rules for the honest craftsman, be he in literature or any other honor- able walk in life. "No slop work ever dropped from his pen. He never wrote down a word which he had not weighed, nor a sentence which he had not assured himself contained a truth." No better exemplification of his literary method can be chosen than his paper on Burns. b. AS A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF BURNS. It was no doubt the author's intention to say a conclusive word about Burns. He had a feeling that, while noise enough had been made over Burns, the popular applause was indis criminating 36 INTRODUCTION and not based upon a genuine perception of merit. Carlyle was peculiarly well fitted to write on this subject. Froude says, "It is one of the very best of his essays, and was composed with an evidently very peculiar interest, because the outward circum- stances of Burns's life, his origin, his early sur- roundings, his situation as a man of genius born in a farmhouse not many miles distant, among the same people and the same associations as were so familiar to himself, could not fail to make him think often of himself while he was writing about his countryman." Carlyle 's estimate has been very generally accepted, and future critics can hardly re- verse his judgment. They will have greater length of perspective, but this advantage will be offset by want of sympathy. They cannot be a part of what Burns and Carlyle were, for the land of Burns, the land of Carlyle, is fast becoming a part of the out- side world. Local culture, long indigenous, is merging into cosmopolitanism. Stevenson and Barrie and Watson are indeed worthy weavers of the Scottish plaid, but they are not Carlyle and Burns. If the essay be studied for the light it throws on Burns and for a criticism of his poetry, a good life of Burns should be read first, and Burns's more important poems should be made familiar. For a farther contribution in Carlyle's best vein, the student should read a few pages of Burns, the Hero as a Man of Letters, in Heroes and Hero Worship. COMMENTS ON THE ESSAY 37 C. AS A CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY OF LIT- ERATURE. Carlyle's theory of literature, his enun- ciation of the rules which should govern literary utterance and in accordance with which judgment should be passed — that is to say, his ideas of literary criticism — are entirely subordinate in the plan of the essay. They are given briefly in a few paragraphs, only to justify the reviewer's dogmas and to support his critique of Burns 's poetry and life. When an author considers every word he writes as important, it is unlikely that he knows when he says his best things, but Carlyle's theory of literature, first clearly enunciated in this essay, is his surest claim to fame. Eeference has been made to the diffi- culty of tracing Carlyle's allusions, but there is no difficulty in tracing his influence. Once on the alert, it is astonishingly easy to note the indebtedness of modern criticism to him. Of American writers we may mention Emerson and Lowell and Whipple and Stedman as freely acknowledging his influence. In England, Matthew Arnold extended and applied the ideas of Carlyle's essay. It holds a fundamental piece of literary criticism which has underlain and stimulated the literary activity of the Victorian age. Poets, novelists and critics have squared their writings or sealed their verdicts, consciously or unconsciously, in accordance with the message sent by that lone man with the beetling brow down from the moors of Craigenputtock to the Edinburgh Review. Carlyle's ideas of what literature should 38 INTRODUCTION be and, consequently, by what standard it should be judged, are stated so clearly that it would be unfair to the student to summarize them here instead of permitting him to gather and arrange them for himself. One other point should be noticed, for it marks the beginning of better things in literary criticism. Carlyle was a man of spotless integrity. His life was trying to his friends, but he laid it down with- out a blot. He hated the way of the transgressor with a hatred akin to savagery. Yet in this essay, overlooking Burns 's slips and wrong-doing, he throws over him the mantle of charity, takes him by the hand, calls him countryman, and says to the world : Behold, here is a Man, his works do speak for him. BIBLIOGRAPHY 39 Even with judicious notes at hand not a little work in a library is desirable. For tributes to Burns the poems of Whittier, Lowell and Wordsworth should be* put under contribution. Encyclopaedia articles on Burns and Carlyle should be consulted. Frequent references to a large dictionary and the Century Cyclo- pcedia of Names are almost indispensable. For the literary conditions of the times of Carlyle and Burns, consult Welsh's Development of English Literature. The recent edition of Burns's Poems, by Andrew Lang, since it is inexpensive and carefully done, is probably the most appropriate edition for a school library. The following additional reference books are care- fully selected as those most likely to repay study. Carlyle Thomas Carlyle, Froude. Reminiscences, Carlyle. Correspondence, Carlyle-Emerson. Correspondence, Carlyle-Goethe. Letters and Memorials, Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Critical Miscellanies, Morley. Literary Essays, Vol. II., Lowell. Emerson (Discourses in America), Arnold. English Traits, Emerson. Thomas Carlyle (English Men of Letters Series), Nichol. Fresh Fields, Burroughs. Corrected Impressions, Saintsbury. Burns Life and Works of Robert Burns, Chambers. The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Lang. Life of Burns (Great Writers Series), Blackie. History of English Literature, Taine. Familiar Studies of Men and Books, Stevenson. letters (Camelot Classics), Burns. The Study of Poetry (Essays in Criticism), Arnold. Heroes and Hero Worship, Carlyle. Miscellanies, Emerson. 40 INTRODUCTION POEMS OF BUENS NAMED IN THE ESSAY 1783 Poor Mailie's Elegy. Epistle to William Simpson. The Holy Fair. Halloween. To a Mouse. The Jolly Beggars. A Cantata. The Cotter's Saturday Night. Address to the Deil. Scotch Drink. 1785-^ 1786