l^^q 
 
Life of 
 
 Robert Burns. 
 
 33^ 
 
 /y63 
 
 MOSTLY BY 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, 
 
 New York: 
 
 Delisser & Procter, 508 Broadway. 
 
 1859. 
 
^2. 
 
 1 
 
 
 ,■3^ 
 
 .•• -•- •< 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The readers of the " Household Library" 
 will certainly welcome a Life of Burns. 
 That his soul was of the real heroic stamp, 
 no one who is familiar with his imperishable 
 lyric poetry, will deny. , 
 
 This Life of the great Scottish bard is 
 composed of two parts. The first part, 
 which is brief, and gives merely his external 
 life, is taken from the " Encyclopedia Bri- 
 tannica." The principle object of it, in this 
 place, is to prepare the reader for what fol- 
 lows. The second part is a grand spiritual 
 portrait of Burns, the like of which the ages 
 have scarcely produced ; the equal of which, 
 
Editor^ s Preface, 
 
 in our opinion, does not exist. In fact, since 
 men began to write and publish their thoughts 
 in this world, no one has appeared who equals 
 Carlyle as a spiritual-portrait painter ; and, 
 taken all in all, this of his gifted country- 
 man Burns is his master-piece. I should 
 not dare to say how many times I have 
 perused it, and always with new wonder and 
 delight. I once read it in the Manfrini Pal- 
 ace, at Venice, sitting before Titian's por- 
 trait of Ariosto. Great is the contrast 
 between the Songs of Burns and the Rime 
 of the Italian poet, between the fine spiritual 
 perception of Carlyle's mind and the delicate 
 touch of Titian's hand, between picturesque 
 expression and an expressive picture; yet 
 this very antithesis seemed to prepare my 
 mind for the full enjoyment of both these 
 famous portraits; the sombre majesty of 
 northern genius seemed to heighten and be 
 heightened by the sunset glow of the genius 
 of the south. 
 
 Besides giving the article from the "En- 
 cyclopedia Britamiica," as a kind of frame for 
 
Editor'' s PrefaGe. 
 
 the portrait of Burns, we will here add, from 
 the " English Cyclopedia," a sketch of Car- 
 lyle's life. A severe taste may find it a little 
 out of place, yet we must be allowed to con- 
 sult the wishes of those for whom these little 
 volumes are designed. 
 
 Carlyle, (Thomas,) a thinker and writer, 
 confessedly among the most original and in- 
 fluential that Britain has produced, was born 
 in the parish of Middlebie, near the village 
 of Ecclefcchan, in Dumfries-shire, Scotland, 
 on the 4th of December, 1795. His father, 
 a man of remarkable force of character, Was 
 a small farmer in comfortable circumstances ; 
 his mother was also no ordinary person. The 
 eldest son of a considerable family, he re- 
 ceived an education the best in its kind that 
 Scotland could then afford — the education of 
 a pious and industrious home, supplemented 
 by that of school and college. (Another 
 son of the family, Dr. John A. Carlyle, a 
 younger brother of Thomas, was educated in 
 2ii similar mamier, and, after practising for 
 
Editor^ s Preface. 
 
 many years as a physician in Germany and 
 Rome, has recently become known in British 
 literature as the author of the best prose 
 translation of Dante.) After a few years 
 spent at the ordinary parish school, Thomas 
 was sent, in his thirteenth or fourteenth year, 
 to the grammar school of the neighboring 
 town of Annan ; and here it was ..that he 
 first became acquainted with a man destined, 
 like himself, to a career of great celebrity. 
 " The first time I saw Edward Irving," writes 
 Mr. Carlyle in 1835, "was six-and-twenty 
 years ago, in his native town, Annan. He 
 was fresh from Edinburgh, with college 
 prizes, high character, and promise : he had 
 come to see our school-master, who had also 
 been his. We heard of famed professors — 
 of high matters, classical, mathematical — a 
 whole Wonderland of knowledge ; nothing but 
 joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked 
 out from the blooming young man." Irving 
 was then sixteen years of age, Carlyle four- 
 teen; and from that time till Irving's sad 
 and premature death, the two were intimate 
 
Editor^ s Preface. 7 
 
 and constant friends. It was not long before 
 Carlyle followed Irving to that " Wonder- 
 land of Knowledge," the University of Edin- 
 burgh, of which, and its " famed professors," 
 he had received such tidings. If the descrip- 
 tion of the nameless German university, 
 however, in " Sartor Resartus," is to be sup- 
 posed as allusive also to Mr. Carlyle's own 
 reminiscences of his training at Edinburgh, 
 he seems afterwards to have held the more 
 formal or academic part of that training in 
 no very high respect. " What vain jargon 
 of controversial metaphysic, etymology, and 
 mechanical manipulation, falsely named sci- 
 ence, was current there," says Teufelsdrockh ; 
 " I indeed learned better perhaps than most." 
 At Edinburgh, the professor of " controver- 
 sial metaphysic" in Carlyle's day, was Dr. 
 Thomas Brown, Dugald Stewart having then 
 just retired ; physical science and mathemat- 
 ics, were represented by Playfair and Sir 
 John Leslie, and classical studies by men 
 less known to fame. While at college, Car- 
 lyle's special bent, so far as the work of the 
 
Editor'' s Preface, 
 
 classes was concerned, seems to have been 
 to mathematics and natural philosophy. But 
 it is rather by his voluntary studies and 
 readings, apart from the work of the classes, 
 that Mr. Carlyle, in his youth, laid the found- 
 ation of his vast and varied knowledge. 
 The college session in Edinburgh extends 
 over about half the year, from November to 
 April ; and during these months, the college 
 library, and other such libraries as were ac- 
 cessible, were laid under contribution by 
 him to an extent till then hardly paralleled 
 by any Scottish student. Works on science 
 and mathematics, works on philosophy, his- 
 tories of all ages, and the great classics of 
 British literature, were read by him miscel- 
 laneously or in orderly succession; and it 
 was at this period, also, if we are not mis- 
 taken, he commenced his studies — not very 
 usual then in Scotland — in the foreign lan- 
 guages of modern Europe. With the same 
 diligence, and in very much the same way, 
 w^ere the summer vacations employed, dur- 
 ing which he generally returned to his fa- 
 
Editor'' s Preface. 
 
 tiler's house in Dumfries shire, or rambled 
 among the hills and moors of that neighbor- 
 hood. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle had begun his studies with a 
 view to entering the Scottish Church. About 
 the time, however, when these studies were 
 nearly ended, and when, according to the 
 ordinary routine, he might have become a 
 preacher, a change of views induced him to 
 abandon the intended profession. This ap- 
 pears to have been about the year 1819 or 
 1820, when he was twenty-four years of age. 
 For some time, he seems to have been un- 
 certain as to his future course. Along with 
 Irving, he employed himself for a year or 
 two, as a teacher in Fifeshire ; but gradually 
 it became clear to him, that his true voca- 
 tion was that of literature. Accordingly, 
 parting from Irving, about the year 1822, 
 the younger Scot of Annandale, deliberately 
 embraced the alternative open to him, and 
 became a general man of letters. Probably 
 few have ever embraced that profession with 
 qualifications so wide, or with aims so high 
 
10 Editor'' s Preface, 
 
 and severe. Apart altogether from his dili- 
 gence in learning, and from the extraordi- 
 nary amount of acquired knowledge of all 
 kinds, which was the fruit of it, there had 
 been remarked in him, from the first, a strong 
 originality of character, a noble earnestness 
 and fervor in all that he said or did, and a 
 vein of inherent constitutional contempt for 
 the mean and the frivolous, inclining him, in 
 some degree, to a life of isolation and soli- 
 tude. Add to this, that his acquaintance 
 with German literature, in particular, had 
 familiarized him with ideas, modes of think- 
 ing, and types of literary character, not then 
 generally known in this country, and yet, in 
 his opinion, more deserving of being known 
 than much of a corresponding kind that was 
 occupying and ruling British thought. 
 
 The first period of Mr. Carlyle's literary 
 life may be said to extend from 1822 to 
 1827, or from his twenty-sixth to his thirty- 
 second year. It was during this period that 
 he produced (besides a translation of Legen- 
 dre's " Geometry," to which he prefixed an 
 
Editor^s Preface. 11 
 
 " Essay on Proportion,") his numerous well- 
 knov/n translations from German writers, 
 and also his " Life of Schiller." The latter 
 and a considerable proportion of the former, 
 were written by him during the leisure af- 
 forded him by an engagement he had formed 
 in 1823, as tutor to Charles Buller, whose 
 subsequent brilliant though brief career in 
 the politics of Britain, gives interest to this 
 connection. The first part of the " Life of 
 Schiller" appeared originally in the " London 
 Magazine," of which John Scott was editor, 
 and Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Allan Cunning- 
 ham, De Quincey, and Hood, were the best 
 known supporters ; and the second and third 
 parts, were published in the same magazine 
 in 1824. In this year appeared also the 
 translation of Gothe's " "Wilhelm Meister," 
 which was published by Messrs. Oliver and 
 Boyd, of Edinburgh, without the translator's 
 name. This translation, the first real intro- 
 duction of Gothe to the reading world of 
 Great Britain, attracted much notice. " The 
 translator," said a critic in " Blackwood," 
 
12 Editor^ s Preface. 
 
 "is, we understand, a young gentleman in 
 this city, who now for the first time appears 
 before the public. We congratulate him on 
 his very promising debut ; and would fain 
 hope to receive a series of really good trans- 
 lations from his hand. He has evidently a 
 perfect knowledge of German; he already 
 writes English better than is at all common, 
 even at this time ; and we know of no exer- 
 cise more likely to produce effects of perma- 
 nent advantage upon a young mind of intel- 
 lectual ambition." Tlie advice here given to 
 Mr. Carlyle by his critic, was followed by 
 him in so far that, in 1827, he published in 
 Edinburgh, his " Specimens of German Eo- 
 mance," in four volumes ; one of these con- 
 taining "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre," 
 as a fresh specimen of Gothe ; the others 
 containing tales from Jean Paul, Tieck, Mu- 
 saius, and Hoffman. Meanwhilo, in 1825, 
 Mr. Carlyle had revised and enlarged his 
 " Life of Schiller," and given it to the world 
 in a separate form, through the press of 
 Messrs. Taylor and Hessay, the proprietors 
 
Editor'' s Preface. 13 
 
 of the " London Magazine." In the same 
 year, quitting his tutorship of Charles Bul- 
 ler, he had married a lady fitted in a pre- 
 eminent degree to be the wife of such a man. 
 (It is interesting to know that Mrs. Carlyle, 
 originally Miss Welch, is a lineal descendent 
 of the Scottish Reformer, Knox.) For some 
 time after the marriage, Mr. Carlyle con- 
 tinued to reside in Edinburgh ; but before 
 1827 he removed to Craigenputtoch, a small 
 property in the most solitary part of Dum- 
 fries-shire. 
 
 The second period of Mr. Carlyle's liter- 
 ary life, extending from 1827 to 1834, or 
 from his thirty-second to his thirty-ninth 
 year, was the period of the first decided 
 manifestations of his extraordinary originality 
 as a thinker. Probably the very seclusion 
 in which he lived helped to develope, in 
 stronger proportions, his native and peculiar 
 tendencies. The following account of his 
 place and mode of life at this time was sent 
 by him, in 1828, to Gothe, with whom he 
 was then in correspondence, and was pub- 
 
14 Editor^ s Preface. 
 
 lished by the great German in the preface to 
 a German translation of the " Life of Schil- 
 ler," executed under his immediate care : — 
 " Dumfries is a pleasant town, containing 
 about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and to be 
 considered the centre of the trade and judi- 
 cial system of a district which possesses 
 some importance in the sphere of Scottish 
 activity. Our residence is not in the town 
 itself, but fifteen miles to the northwest of it, 
 among the granite hills and the black mo- 
 rasses Avhich stretch westward through Gal- 
 loway almost to the Irish Sea. In this 
 wilderness of heath and rock, our estate 
 stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, 
 partly inclosed and planted ground, where 
 corn ripens and trees afford a shade, al- 
 though surrounded by sea-mews and rough- 
 woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, 
 have we built and furnished a neat, substan- 
 tial dwelling ; here, in the absence of a pro- 
 fessional or other office, we live to cultivate 
 literature according to our strength, and in 
 our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful 
 
Editor'' s Preface. 15 
 
 growth to the roses and flowers of our gar- 
 den ; we hope for health and peaceful 
 thoughts to further our aims. The roses, 
 indeed, are still in part to be planted, but 
 they blossom already in anticipation. Two 
 ponies w^hich carry us every where, and the 
 mountain air, are the best medicine for weak 
 nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am 
 much devoted, is my only recreation; for 
 this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain — 
 six miles removed from any one likely to 
 visit me. Here Eousseau would have been 
 as happy as on his island of Saint-Pierre. 
 My to^vn friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn 
 here to a similar disposition, and forbode 
 me no good result ; but I came hither solely 
 w^ith the design to simplify my way of life, 
 and to secure the independence through 
 which I could be enabled to remain true to 
 myself. This bit of earth is our own ; here 
 we can live, write, and think, as best pleases 
 ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were 
 to be crowned the monarch of literature. 
 Nor is the solitude of such great importance. 
 
16 Editor^ s Preface. 
 
 for a stage-coach takes us speedily to Edin- 
 burgh, which we look upon as our British 
 Weimar ; and have I not, too, at this mo- 
 ment, piled upon the table of my little 
 library, a whole cart-load of French, Ger- 
 man, American, and English journals and 
 periodicals — whatever may be their worth ? 
 Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack." 
 Before this letter was written, Mr. Carlyle 
 had already begun the w^ell-known series of 
 his contributions to the "Edinburgh Re- 
 view." The first of these was his essay on 
 "Jean Paul," which appeared in 1827; and 
 was followed by his striking article on " Ger- 
 man Literature," and by his singularly beau- 
 tiful essay on "Burns" (1828). Other 
 essays in the same periodical followed, as 
 well as articles in the " Foreign Quarterly 
 Review," which was established in 1828, 
 and shorter articles of less importance in 
 Brewster's " Edinburgh Encyclopedia," then 
 in course of publication. Externally, in 
 short, at this time, Mr. Oarlyle w^as a writer 
 for reviews and magazines, choosing to live, 
 
Editor'' s Preface. 17 
 
 for the convenience of his work and the sat- 
 isfaction of his own tastes, in a retired nook 
 of Scotland, whence he could correspond 
 w^ith his friends, occasionally visit the near- 
 est of them, and occasionally also receive 
 visits from them in turn. Among the friends 
 whom he saw in his occasional visits to Edin- 
 burgh, were Jeffrey, Wilson, and other liter- 
 ary celebrities of that capital (Sir Walter 
 Scott, we believe, he never met otherwise 
 than casually in the streets) ; among the 
 more distant friends who visited him, none 
 was more welcome than the American Emer- 
 son, who, having already been attracted to 
 him by his writings, made a journey to 
 Dumfries-shire, during his first visit to En- 
 gland, expressly to see him; and of his 
 foreign correspondents, the most valued by 
 far was Gothe, whose death in 1832, and 
 that of Scott in the same year, impressed 
 him deeply, and were fuiely commemorated 
 by him. 
 
 Meanwhile, though thus ostensibly but an 
 occasional contributor to ^periodicals, Mr. 
 2 
 
18 Editor'' s Preface. 
 
 Carlyle was silently throwing his whole 
 strength into a work which was to reveal 
 him in a far other character than that of a 
 mere literary critic, however able and pro- 
 found. * This was his " Sartor Resartus ;" or, 
 an imaginary History of the Life and Opin- 
 ions of Herr Teufelsdrockh, an eccentric 
 German professor and philosopher. Under 
 this quaint guise (the name " Sartor Resar- 
 tus" being, it would appear, a translation 
 into Latin of " The Tailor done over," which 
 is the title of an old Scottish song), Mr. 
 Carlyle propounded, in a style half-serious 
 and half-grotesque, and in a manner far more 
 bold and trenchant than the rules of review- 
 writing permitted, his own philosophy of 
 life and society in almost all their bearings. 
 The work was truly an anomaly in British 
 literature, exhibiting a combination of deep, 
 speculative power, poetical genius, and lofty 
 moral purpose, with wild and riotous humor 
 and shrewd observation and satire, such as 
 had rarely been seen ; and coming into the 
 midst of the more conventional British liter- 
 
Editor'' s Preface, 19 
 
 ature of the day, it was like a fresh but bar- 
 baric blast from the hills and moorlands 
 amid which it had been conceived. But the 
 very strangeness and originality of the work 
 prevented it from finding a publisher ; and 
 after the manuscript had been returned by 
 several London firms to whom it was offered, 
 the author was glad to cut it into parts and 
 publish it piecemeal in " Frazer's Magazine." 
 Here it appeared in the course of 1833-34, 
 scandalising most readers by its Gothic mode 
 of thought and its extraordinary torture, as 
 it was called, of the English language ; but 
 eagerly read by some sympathetic mmds, 
 who discerned in the writer a new power in 
 literature, and wondered who and what he 
 was. 
 
 With the publication of the " Sartor Re- 
 sartus" papers, the third period of Mr. Car- 
 lyle's literary life may be said to begin. It 
 was during the negotiations for the publica- 
 tion tha the was led to contemplate remov- 
 ing to London — a step which he finally took, 
 we believe, in 1834. Since that year — the 
 
20 Editor's Preface. 
 
 thirty-ninth of his life— Mr. Carlyle has 
 permanently resided in London, in a house 
 situated in one of the quiet streets run- 
 ning at right angles to the River Thames, 
 at Chelsea. The change into the bustle of 
 London, from the solitude of Craigenputtoch 
 was, externally, a great one. In reality, 
 however, it was less than it seemed. A 
 man in the prime of life, when he came to 
 reside in the metropolis, he brought into its 
 roar and confusion, not the restless spirit of a 
 young adventurer, but the settled energy 
 of one who had ascertained his strength, and 
 fixed his methods and his aims. 
 
 Among the Maginns and others who con- 
 tributed to " Frazer," he at once took his 
 place as a man rather to influence than be in- 
 fluenced ; and gradually, as the circle of his 
 acquaintances widened so as to include such 
 notable men as John Mill, Sterling, Maurice, 
 Leigh Hunt, Browning, Thackeray, and 
 others of established or rising fame in all 
 walks of speculation and literature, the 
 recognition of his rare personal powers of 
 
EditoT^s Preface. 21 
 
 influence became more general and deep. 
 In particular, in that London circle, in 
 which John Sterling moved, was his per- 
 sonal influence great, even while as yet he 
 was but the anonymous author of the " Sar- 
 tor Resartus" papers, and of numerous other 
 contributions, also anonymous, to " Frazer's 
 Magazine," and the " Edinburgh," " Foreign 
 Quarterly," "British and Foreign," and 
 " Westminster," Reviews. It was not till 
 
 1837, or his forty-second year, that his 
 name, already so well known to an inner 
 circle of admirers, was openly associated 
 with a work fully proportional to his pow- 
 ers. This was his " French Revolution : a 
 History," in three volumes, the extraordina- 
 ry merits of which as at once a history and 
 a gorgeous prose-epic, are known to all. In 
 
 1838, the "Sartor Resartus" papers, already 
 re-published in the United States, w^ere put 
 forth, collectively, with his name ; and, in 
 the same year, his various scattered articles 
 in periodicals, after having similarly receiv- 
 ed the honor of re-publication in America, 
 
22 Editor^ s Preface. 
 
 were given to the world in four volumes, in 
 their chronological series from 1827 to 
 1837, under the title of " Miscellanies." 
 Mr. Carlyle's next publication was his little 
 tract on " Chartism," published in 1839, in 
 which, to use the words of one of his critics, 
 " he first broke ground on the Condition of 
 England question." 
 
 During the time when these successive 
 publications were carrying his name through 
 the land, Mr. Carlyle appeared in a new 
 capacity, and delivered four courses of lec- 
 tures in London to select but crowded au- 
 diences, including many of the aristocracy 
 both of rank and of literature : the first, a 
 course on " German Literature," delivered at 
 Willis's Rooms in 1837; the second, a 
 course on " The History of Literature, or the 
 Successive Periods of European Culture," 
 delivered in Edward-street, Portman-square, 
 in 1838 ; the third, a course on "the Revo- 
 lutions of Modern Europe," delivered in 
 1839 ; and the fourth, a course on " Heroes, 
 Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History," 
 
Editor's Preface. 23 
 
 delivered in 1840. This last course alone 
 was published ; and it became more imme- 
 diately popular than any of the works which 
 had preceded it. It was followed, in 1843, 
 by " Past and Present," a work contrasting, 
 in a historico-philosophical spirit, English 
 society of the middle ages with English 
 society in our own day ; and this again, in 
 1845, by " Oliver Cromwell's Letters and 
 Speeches, with elucidations and a connecting 
 narrative;" such being the unpretending 
 form which a work, originally intended to 
 be a history of Cromwell and his times, ul- 
 timately assumed. By the year 1849, this 
 work had reached a third edition. In 1850, 
 appeared the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," in 
 which, more than in any previous publica- 
 tion, the author spoke out in the character of 
 a social ' and political censor of his own age. 
 From their very nature, as stern denuncia- 
 tions of what the author considered contem- 
 porary fallacies, wrongs, and hypocrisies, 
 these pamphlets produced a storm of critical 
 indignation against Mr. Carlyle, which was 
 
24 Editor'' s Preface. 
 
 still raging, when, in 1 851 , he gave to the world 
 his " Life of John Sterling." While we 
 write (April, 1856) this, with the exception 
 of some papers in periodicals, is the last 
 publication that has proceeded from his pen ; 
 but at the present the British public are 
 anxiously expecting a " History of the Life 
 and Times of Frederick the Great," in which 
 he is known to have been long engaged. 
 A collection of some of the most striking 
 opinions, sentiments, and descri]3tions, con- 
 tained in all his works hitherto written, has 
 been published in a single volume, entitled, 
 " Passages selected from the Writings of 
 Thomas Carlyle," (1855,) from the memoir 
 prefixed to which, by the editor, Mr. Thomas 
 Ballantyne, we have derived most of the 
 facts for this notice. 
 
 An appreciation of Mr. Carlyle's genius 
 and of his influence on British thought and 
 literature, is not to be looked for here, and 
 indeed is hardly possible in the still raging- 
 conflict of opinions — one might even say, 
 passions and parties — respecting him. The 
 
Editor's Preface. 25 
 
 following remarks, however, by one of his 
 critics, seems to us to express what all must 
 admit to be the literal truth : — " It is nearly 
 half a generation since Mr. Carlyle became 
 an intellectual power in this country; and 
 certainly rarely, if ever, in the history of 
 literature, has such a phenomenon been wit- 
 nessed as that of his influence. Throughout 
 the whole atmosphere of this island his spirit 
 has diflused itself, so that there is, probably, 
 not an educated man under forty years of 
 age, from Caithness to Cornwall, that can 
 honestly say that he has not been more or 
 less affected by it. Not to speak of his 
 express imitators, one can hardly take up a 
 book or a periodical, without finding some 
 expression or some mode of thinking that 
 bears the mint-mark of his genius," The 
 same critic notices it as a peculiarity in Mr. 
 Carlyle's literary career, that, whereas most 
 men begin with the vehement and the con- 
 troversial, and gradually become calm and 
 acquiescent in things as they are, he began 
 as an artist in pure literature, a critic of 
 
26 Editor's Preface. 
 
 poetry, song, and the drama, and has ended 
 as a vehement moralist and preacher of 
 social reforms, disdaining the etiquette and 
 even the name of pure literature, and more 
 anxious to rouse than to please. With this 
 development of his views of his own func- 
 tions as a writer, is connected the develop- 
 ment of his literary style, from the quiet 
 and pleasing, though still solid and deep 
 beauty of his earlier writings, to that later 
 and more peculiar, and to many, disagree- 
 able form, which has been nicknamed 'the 
 Carlylese.' " 
 
 As all the world knows, two volumes of 
 Carlyle's Frederick the Great have recently 
 appeared. We might add, from personal 
 acquaintance, many anecdotes, but we have 
 learned, during a long residence abroad, to 
 respect the hospitality that we have enjoyed. 
 O. W. Wight. 
 
 January^ 1859. 
 
LIFE OF BURNS, 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 Robert Burns, the national bard of 
 Scotland, was born on the 25th of Jan- 
 uary, 1759, in a claj-built cottage about 
 two miles south of the town of Ayr. He 
 was the eldest son of William Burnes, or 
 Burness, who, at the period of Robert's 
 birth, was gardener and overseer to a 
 gentleman of small estate ; but resided 
 on a few acres of land which he had on 
 lease from another person. The father 
 was a man of strict religious principles, 
 and also distinguished for that penetra- 
 tion and knowledge of mankind which 
 
28 Life of Burns, 
 
 was afterwards so conspicuous in his 
 son. The mother of the poet was like- 
 wise a very sagacious woman, and pos- 
 sessed an inexhaustible store of ballads 
 and legendary tales, with which she 
 nourished the infant imagination of him 
 whose own productions were destined 
 to excel them all. 
 
 These worthy individuals labored dili- 
 gently for the support of an increasing 
 family ; nor, in the midst of harassing 
 struggles did they neglect the mental im- 
 provement of their offspring ; a charac- 
 teristic' of Scottish parents, even under the 
 most depressing circumstances. In his 
 sixth year, Robert was put under the tui- 
 tion of one Campbell, and subsequently 
 under Mr. John Murdoch, a very faith- 
 ful and pains-taking teacher. With this 
 individual he remained for a few years, 
 and was accurately instructed in the 
 first principles of composition. The poet 
 and his brother Gilbert were the aptest 
 
Life of Burns 
 
 29 
 
 pupils in the school, and were generally 
 at the head of the class. Mr. Murdoch, 
 in afterwards recording the impressions 
 which the two brothers made on him, 
 says : " Gilbert always appeared to me 
 to possess a more lively imagination, 
 and to be more of the wit, than Eobert. 
 I attempted to teach them a little church 
 music. Here they were left far behind 
 by all the rest of the school. Eobert's 
 ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, 
 and his voice nntunable. It was long 
 before I could get them to distinguish 
 one tune from another. Eobert's coun- 
 tenance was generally grave, and ex- 
 pressive ^of a serious, contemplative, and 
 thoughtful mind. Gilbert's face said, 
 Mirth, with thee I mean to live ; and 
 certainly, if any person who knew the 
 two boys had been asked which of them 
 was the most likely to court the muses, 
 he would never have guessed that Bolert 
 had a propensity of that kind." 
 
30 Life of Burns. 
 
 Besides the tuition of Mr. Murclocli, 
 Burns received instructions from his 
 father in writing and arithmetic. Under 
 their joint care, he made rapid progress, 
 and was remarkable for the ease with 
 which he committed devotional poetry 
 to memory. The following extract from 
 liis letter to Dr. Moore, in 1Y87, is inter- 
 esting, from the light which it throws 
 upon his progress as a scholar, and on 
 the formation of his character as a poet : 
 — " At those years," says he, " I was by 
 no means a favorite with anybody.^ I 
 was a good deal noted for a retentive 
 memory, a stubborn, sturdy something 
 in my disposition, and an enthusiastic 
 idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I 
 was then but a child. Though it cost 
 the schoolmaster some thrashings, I 
 made an excellent scholar ; and by the 
 time I was ten or eleven years of age, I 
 was a critic in substantives, verbs, and 
 particles. In my infant and boyish 
 
Life of B terns. 31 
 
 days, too, I owed much to an old woman 
 who resided in the family, remarkable 
 for her ignorance, credulity, and super- 
 stition. She had, I suppose, the largest 
 collection in the country, of tales and 
 songs, concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, 
 brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, 
 kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, 
 apparitions, cantrips, giants, enchanted 
 towers, dragons, and other trumpery. 
 This cultivated the latent seeds of poet- 
 ry; but had so strong an effect upon 
 my imagination, that to this hour, in my 
 nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a 
 sharp look-out in suspicious places ; and 
 though nobody can be more skeptical 
 than I am in such matters, yet it 
 often takes an effort of philosophy to 
 shake off these idle terrors. The earli- 
 est composition that I recollect taking 
 pleasure in, was. The Vision of Mirza, 
 and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, 
 ^^IIoio are thy servants hlest^ LordP'' I 
 
32 Life of Burns. 
 
 particularly remember one-half stanza, 
 wliicli was music to my boyish ear. : 
 
 *' For though on dreadful whirls we hung 
 High on the broken wave." 
 
 I met with these pieces in Mason^s Eng- 
 lish Collection^ one of my school-books. 
 The first two books I ever read in pri- 
 vate, and which gave me more pleasure 
 than any two books I ever read since, 
 were. The Life of LLannihal^ and The 
 Llistory of Sir William Wallace. \ Han- 
 nibal gave my young ideas such a turn, 
 that I used to strut in raptures up and 
 down after the recruiting drum and 
 bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough 
 to be a soldier ; while the story of Wal- 
 lace poured a tide of Scottish prejudice 
 into my veins, which will boil along 
 there till the flood-gates of life shut in 
 eternal rest." 
 
 Mr. Murdoch's removal from Mount 
 Oliphant deprived Burns of his instruc- 
 
Life of Burns. 33 
 
 tions ; but they were still continued by 
 the father of the bard. About the age 
 of fourteen, he was sent to school every 
 alternate week for the improvement of 
 his writing. In the mean while, he was 
 busily employed upon the operations of 
 the farm ; and, at the age of fifteen, was 
 considered as the principal laborer upon 
 it. About a year after this he gained 
 three weeks of respite, which he spent 
 with his old tutor, Murdoch, at Ayr, in 
 revising the English grammar, and in 
 studying the French language, in which 
 he made uncommon progress. Ere his 
 sixteenth year elapsed, he had consider- 
 ably extended his reading. The vicinity 
 of Mount Oliphant to Ayr afforded him 
 facilities for gratifying what had now 
 become a passion. Among the books 
 which he had perused were some plays 
 of Shakspeare, Pope, the works of Allan 
 Ramsay, and a collection of songs, which 
 constituted his vade mecum. " I pored 
 8 
 
84 Life of Burns. 
 
 over them," says he, " driving my cart 
 or walking to labor, song by song, verse 
 by verse, carefully noticing the true, 
 tender or sublime, from affectation and 
 fustian." So early did he evince his 
 attachment to the lyric muse, in which 
 he was destined to surpass all who have 
 gone before or succeeded him. 
 
 At this period the family removed to 
 Lochl^a, in the parish of Tarbolton. 
 Some time before, however, he had 
 made his first attempt in poetry. It 
 was a song addressed to a rural beauty, 
 about his own age, and though possess- 
 ing no great merit as a whole, it con- 
 tains some lines and ideas wdiich would 
 have done honor to him at any age. 
 After the removal to Lochlea, his lit- 
 erary zeal slackened, for he was thuh 
 cut off from those aquaintances whose 
 conversation stimulated his powers, and 
 whose kindness supplied him with books. 
 For about three years after this period, 
 
Life of Burns. 35 
 
 lie was busily employed upon the farm, 
 but at intervals he paid his addresses to 
 the poetic muse, and with no common 
 success. The summer of his nineteenth 
 year was spent in the study of mensura- 
 tion, surveying, etc., at a small sea-port 
 town, a good distance from home. He 
 returned to his father's considerably im- 
 proved. " My reading," says he, " was 
 enlarged with the very important addi- 
 tion of Thomson's and Shenstone's works. 
 I had seen human nature in a new pha- 
 sis ; and I engaged several of my school- 
 fellows to keep up a literary correspon- 
 dence with me. This improved me in 
 composition. I had met with a collec- 
 tion of letters by the wits of Qaeen 
 Anne's reign, and I pored over them 
 most devoutly ; I kept copies of any of 
 my own letters that pleased me, and a 
 comparison between them and the com- 
 position of most of my correspondents 
 flattered my vanity. I carried this whim 
 
36 Life of Burns. 
 
 so far, that though I had not three far- 
 things' worth of business in the world, 
 yet almost every post brought me as 
 many letters as if I had been a broad, 
 plodding son of day-book and ledger/' 
 
 His mind, peculiarly susceptible of 
 tender impressions, was continually the 
 slave of some rustic charmer. In the 
 "heat and whirlwind of his love," he 
 generally found relief in poetry, by 
 which, as by a safety-valve, his turbu- 
 lent passions were allowed to have vent. 
 He formed the resolution of entering 
 the matrimonial state ; but his circum- 
 scribed means of subsistence as a far- 
 mer preventing his taking that step, he 
 resolved on becoming a flax-dresser, for 
 which purpose he removed to the town 
 of Irvine, in 1781. The speculation 
 turned out unsuccessful; for the shop, 
 catching fire, was burnt, and the poet 
 returned to his father without a six- 
 pence. During his stay at Irvine he 
 
Life of Btbrns. 87 
 
 had met with Ferguson's poems. This 
 circumstance was of some importance to 
 Burns, for it roused his poetic powers 
 from the torpor into which they had 
 fallen, and in a great measure finally 
 determined the Scottish character of his 
 poetr}'. He here also contracted some 
 friendships, which he himself says did 
 him mischief; and, by his brother Gil- 
 bert's account, from this date there was 
 a serious change in his conduct. The 
 venerable and excellent parent of the 
 poet died soon after his son's return. 
 The support of the family now devolv- 
 ing upon Burns, in conjunction with his 
 brother he took a sub-lease of the farm 
 of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline. 
 The four years which he resided upon 
 this farm were the most important of 
 his life. It was here he felt that nature 
 had designed him for a poet ; and here, 
 accordingly, his genius began to develop 
 its energies in those strains which will 
 
V 
 
 Life of Bv/rns. 
 
 make his name familiar to all future 
 times, the admiration of every civilized 
 country, and the glory and boast of his 
 own. 
 
 The vigor of Burns^s understanding, 
 and the keenness of his wit, as displayed 
 more particularly at masonic meetings 
 and debating clubs, of which he formed 
 one at Mauchline, began to spread his 
 fame as a man of uncommon endow- 
 ments. He now could number as his 
 acquaintance several clergymen, and 
 also some gentlemen of substance ; 
 amongst whom was Mr. Gavin Ham- 
 ilton, wTiter in Mauchline, one of his 
 earliest patrons. One circumstance 
 more than any other contributed to 
 increase his notoriety. "Polemical 
 divinity," says he to Dr. Moore in 
 1787, " about this time w^as 23utting 
 the country half mad ; and I, ambitious 
 of shining, in conversation-parties on 
 Sundays, at funerals, etc., used to puz- 
 
Life of Burns, 39 
 
 zle Calvinism with so much heat and 
 indiscretion, that I raised a hue-and-cry 
 of heresy against me, which has not 
 ceased to this hour." The farm which 
 he possessed belonged to the Earl of 
 Loudon, but the brothers held it in sub- 
 lease from Mr. Hamilton. This gentle- 
 man was at open feud with one of the 
 ministers of Mauchline, who was a rigid 
 Calvinist. Mr. Hamilton maintained 
 opposite tenets ; and it is not matter of 
 surprise that the young farmer should 
 have espoused his cause, and brought 
 all the resources of his genius to bear 
 upon it. The result was The Holy Fair^ 
 The Ordination^ Holy Willie's Prayer^ 
 and other satires, as much distinguished 
 for their coarse severity and bitterness, 
 as for their genius. 
 
 The applause which greeted these 
 pieces emboldened the poet, and en- 
 couraged him to proceed. In his life, 
 by his brother Gilbert, a very interest- 
 
40 Life of Burns. 
 
 ing account is given of the occasions 
 which gave rise to the poems, and the 
 chronological order in which they were 
 produced. The exquisite pathos and 
 humor, the strong manly sense, the 
 masterly command of felicitous lan- 
 guage, the graphic power of delineat- 
 ing scenery, manners, and incidents, 
 which appear so conspicuously in his 
 various poems, could not fail to call 
 forth the admiration of those who were 
 favored with a perusal of them. But 
 the clouds of misfortune were gathering 
 darkly above the head of him who was 
 thus giving delight to a large and widen- 
 ing circle of friends. The farm of Moss- 
 giel proved a losing concern ; and an 
 amour with Miss Jane Armour, after- 
 wards Mrs. Burns, had assumed so seri- 
 ous an aspect, that he at first resolved 
 to fly from the scene of his disgrace and 
 misery. One trait of his character, how- 
 ever, must be mentioned. Before taking 
 
Life of Burns. 41 
 
 any steps for liis departure, lie met Miss 
 Armour by appointment, and gave into 
 her hands a written acknowledgment 
 of marriage, which, when produced by 
 a person in her situation, is, according 
 to the Scots' law, to be accepted as legal 
 evidence of an irregular marriage hav- 
 ing really taken place. This the lady 
 burned, at the persuasion of her father, 
 who was adverse to a marriage; and 
 Burns, thus wounded in the two most 
 powerful feelings of his mind, his love 
 and pride, was driven almost to insanity. 
 Jamaica was his destination ; but as he 
 did not possess the money necessary to 
 defray the expense of his passage out, 
 he resolved to publish some of his best 
 poems, in order to raise the requisite 
 sum. These views were w^armly pro- 
 moted by some of his more opulent 
 friends ; and a sufficiency of subscribers 
 having been procured, one of the finest 
 volumes of poetry that ever appeared in 
 
42 Life of Burns. 
 
 the world issued from the provincial 
 press of Kilmarnock. 
 
 It is hardly possible to imagine with 
 what eager admiration and delight thej 
 were every where received. They pos- 
 sessed in an eminent deo^ree all those 
 qualities which invariably contribute to 
 render any literary work quickl}^ and 
 permanently popular. They were writ- 
 ten in a phraseology of which all the 
 powers were universally felt, and which 
 being at once antique, familiar, and now 
 rarely written, was therefore fitted to 
 serve all the dignified and picturesque 
 uses of poetry, without making it unin- 
 telligible. The imagery and the senti- 
 ments were at once natural, impressive, 
 and interesting. Those topics of satire 
 and scandal in which the rustic delights; 
 that humorous imitation of cliaracter, 
 and that witty association of ideas, famil- 
 iar and striking, yet not naturally allied 
 to one another, which has force to shake 
 
Life of Burns. 43 
 
 his sides with laughter ; those fancies of 
 superstition, at which one still wonders 
 and trembles ; those affecting sentiments 
 and images of true religion, which are 
 at once dear and awful to the heart ; 
 were all represented by Burns with the 
 magical power of true poetry. Old and 
 young, high and low, grave and gay, 
 learned and ignorant, all were alike sur- 
 prised and transported. 
 
 In the mean time, a few copies of 
 these fascinating poems found tlieir way 
 to Edinburgh, and having been read to 
 Dr. Blacklock, obtained his warmest 
 approbation ; and he advised the author 
 to repair to Edinburgh. Burns lost no 
 time in complying with this request; 
 and accordingly, towards the end of the 
 year 1786, he set out for the capitol, 
 where he was received by Dr. Black- 
 lock with the most flattering kindness, 
 and introduced to every person of taste 
 among that excellent man's friends. 
 
44: Life of Burns. 
 
 Multitudes now vied with each other 
 in patronizing the rustic poet. Those 
 who possessed at once true taste and 
 ardent jDhilanthropy were soon united 
 in his praise ; those who were disposed 
 to favor any good thing belonging to 
 Scotland, purely because it was Scottish, 
 gladly joined the cry ; while those who 
 had hearts and understandings to be 
 charmed without knowing why, when 
 they saw their native customs, manners, 
 and language, made the subjects and 
 the materials of poesy, could not sup- 
 press that impulse of feeling which 
 struo-ffled to declare itself in favor of 
 Burns. 
 
 Thus did Burns, ere he had been 
 many weeks in Edinburgh, find him- 
 self the object of universal curiosity, 
 favor, admiration, and fondness. Pie 
 was sought after, courted with atten- 
 tions the most respectful and assiduous, 
 feasted, flattered, caressed, and treated 
 
Life of Burns. 45 
 
 bj all ranks as the great boast of his 
 country, whom it was scarcely possible 
 to honor and reward in a degree equal 
 to his merits. 
 
 A new edition of his poems was called 
 for; and the public mind was directed 
 to the subject by Henry Mackenzie, who 
 dedicated a paper in the Lounger to a 
 commendatory notice of the poet. This 
 circumstance will ever be remembered 
 to the honor of that polished writer, not 
 only for the warmth of the eulogy he 
 bestowed, but because it was the first 
 printed acknowledgment which had 
 been made to the genius of Burns. 
 The copyright was sold to Creech for 
 <£100 ; but the friends of the poet ad- 
 vised him to forward a subscription. The 
 patronage of the Caledonian Hunt, a 
 very influential body, was obtained. 
 The list of subscribers rapidly rose to 
 1500, many gentlemen paying a great 
 deal more than the price of the volume ; 
 
46 Life of Burns. 
 
 and it was supposed that the poet de- 
 rived from the subscription and the sale 
 of his copyright a clear profit of at least 
 £700. 
 
 The conversation of Burns, according 
 to the testimony of all the eminent men 
 who heard him, was even more wonder- 
 ful than his poetry. He affected no soft 
 air nor graceful motions of politeness, 
 which might have ill accorded with the 
 rustic plainness of his native manners. 
 Conscious superiority of mind taught 
 him to associate with the great, the 
 learned, and the gay, without being 
 overawed into any such bashfulness as 
 mio^ht have rendered him confused in 
 thought, or hesitating in elocution. He 
 possessed withal an extraordinary share 
 of plain common sense, or mother-wit, 
 which prevented him from obtruding 
 upon persons, of whatever rank, with 
 whom he was admitted to converse, any 
 of those effusions of vanity, envy, or 
 
-^i^<^ of Burns. 47 
 
 self-conceit, in which authors who have 
 lived remote from the general practice 
 of life, and whose minds have been 
 almost exclusively confined to contem- 
 plate their own studies and their own 
 works, are but too prone to indulge. 
 In conversation, he displayed a sort of 
 intuitive quickness and rectitude of 
 judgment, upon every subject that 
 arose. The sensibility of his heart, and 
 the vivacity of his fancy, gave a rich 
 coloring to whatever opinions he was 
 disposed to advance; and his language 
 was thus not less haj^py in conversation 
 than in his writings. Hence those who 
 had met and conversed ^dth him once, 
 were pleased to meet and to converse 
 with liim again and again. 
 
 For some time he associated only with 
 the virtuous, the learned, and the wise, 
 and the purity Of his morals remained 
 uncontaminated. But unfortunately he 
 fell, as others have fallen in similar cir- 
 
48 Life of Bums. 
 
 cumstances. He suffered himself to be 
 surrounded by persons wlio were proud 
 to tell that they had been in company 
 with Burns, and had seen Burns as loose 
 and as foolish as themselves. He now 
 also began to contract something of 
 arrogance in conversation. Accustomed 
 to be among his associates what is vul- 
 garly but expressively called " the cock 
 of the company," he could scarcely re- 
 frain from indulging in a similar free- 
 dom and dictatorial decision of talk, 
 even in the presence of persons who 
 could less patiently endure presumption. 
 After remaining some months in the 
 Scottish metropolis, basking in the noon- 
 tide sun of a popularity which, as Dugald 
 Stewart well remarks, would have turned 
 any head but his own, he formed a reso- 
 lution of returning to the shades whence 
 he had emerged, but not before he had 
 perambulated the southern border. On 
 the eth of May, 1Y87, he set out on his 
 
Life of Burns. 49 
 
 journey, and, visiting all that appeared 
 interesting on the north of the Tweed, 
 proceeded to I^ewcastle and other places 
 on the English side. He returned in 
 about two months to his family at 
 Mauchline ; but in a short period he 
 again set out on an excursion to the 
 north, where he was most flatteringly 
 received by all the great families. On 
 his return to Mossgiel he completed his 
 marriage with Miss Armour. He then 
 concluded a bargain with Mr. Miller of 
 Dalswinton, for a lease of the farm of 
 Elliesland, on advantageous terms. 
 
 Burns entered on possession of this 
 farm at Whit-Sunday, 1788. He had 
 formerly applied with success for an ex- 
 cise commission, and during six weeks 
 of this year, he had to attend to the 
 business of that profession at Ayr. His 
 life for some time was thus wandering 
 and unsettled ; and Dr. Currie mentions 
 this as one of his chief misfortunes. 
 4 
 
50 Life of Burns. 
 
 Mrs. Burns came home to him towards 
 the end of the year, and the poet was 
 accustomed to say that the happiest 
 period of his life was the first winter 
 spent in Elliesland. The neighboring 
 farmers and gentlemen, pleased to ob- 
 tain for a neighbor the poet by wdiose 
 works they had been delighted, kindly 
 sought his company, and invited him to 
 their houses. Burns, however, found 
 an inexpressible charm in sitting down 
 beside his wife, at his own fireside ; in 
 wandering over his own grounds; in 
 once more putting his hand to the spade 
 and the plough ; in farming his enclo- 
 sures, and managing his cattle. For 
 some months he felt almost all that 
 felicity which fancy had taught liim to 
 expect in his new situation. He had 
 been for a time idle ; but his muscles 
 were not yet unbraced for rural toil. 
 He now seemed to find a joy in being 
 the husband of the mistress of his affec- 
 
^'^■f^ of Burns. 51 
 
 tions, and in seeing himself the father 
 of children such as promised to attach 
 him for ever to that modest, humble, 
 and domestic life, in which alone he 
 could hope to be permanently happy. 
 Even his engagements in the service of 
 excise did not, at first, threaten either 
 to contaminate the poet or to ruin the 
 farmer. 
 
 From various causes, the farming 
 speculation did not succeed. Indeed, 
 from the time he obtained a situation 
 under government, he gradually began 
 to sink the farmer in the exciseman. 
 Occasionally he assisted in the rustic 
 occupations of Elliesland, but for the 
 most part he was engaged in very dif- 
 ferent pursuits. In his professional per- 
 ambulations over the moors of Dum- 
 fries-shire he had to encounter tempta- 
 tions which a mind and temperament 
 like his found it difficult to resist. His 
 immortal w^orks had made him univer- 
 
52 Life of Burns. 
 
 sally known and entliusiasticallj ad- 
 mired ; and accordingly lie was a wel- 
 come guest at every house, from the 
 most princely mansion to the lowest 
 coTteitry inn. In the latter he was too 
 frequently to be found as the presiding 
 genius, and master of the orgies. How- 
 ever, he still continued at intervals to 
 cultivate the muse ; and, besides a vari- 
 ety of other pieces, he produced at this 
 period the inimitable poem of Tam 
 O'Shanter. Johnson's Miscellany was 
 ulso indebted to him for the finest of its 
 lyrics. One pleasing trait of his char- 
 acter must not be overlooked. He su- 
 perintended the formation of a subscrip- 
 tion library in the parish, and took the 
 v^hole management of it upon himself. 
 These institutions, though common now, 
 were not so short at the period of which 
 we write ; and it should never be forgot- 
 ten that Burns was amongst the first, if 
 
Life of Burns. 53 
 
 not tlie very first, of their founders in the 
 rural districts of southern Scotland. 
 
 Towards the close of 1791 he finally 
 abandoned his farm ; and obtaining an 
 appointment to the Dumfries division 
 of excise, he repaired to that toAvn on a 
 salary of £70 per annum. All his prin- 
 cipal biographers concur in stating that 
 after settling in Dumfries his moral 
 career was downwards. Heron, who 
 had some accpaintance with the matter, 
 says, '' His dissipation became still more 
 dee2:)ly habitual ; he was here more ex- 
 posed than in the country to be solicited 
 to share the revels of the dissolute and 
 the idle ; foolish young men flocked 
 eagerly about him, and from time to 
 time pressed him to drink with them, 
 that they might enjoy his wit. The Cal- 
 edonia Club, too, and the Dumfries-shire 
 and Galloway Hunt, had occasional 
 meetings in Dumfries after Burns went 
 to reside there : and the poet was of 
 
54: Life of Burns. 
 
 course invited to share their convivial- 
 ity, and hesitated not to accept the invi- 
 tation. In the intervals between his 
 different fits of intemperance, he suffered 
 the keenest anguish of remorse, and 
 horribly afflictive foresight. His Jane 
 behaved with a degree of conjugal and 
 maternal tenderness and prudence, which 
 made him feel more bitterly the evil of 
 his misconduct, although they could not 
 reclaim him." 
 
 This is a dark picture — perhaps too 
 dark. The Eev. Mr. Gray, who, as the 
 teacher of his son, was intimately ac- 
 quainted with Burns, and had frequent 
 opportunities of judging of his general 
 character and deportment, gives a more 
 amiable portrait of the bard. Being an 
 eye-witness, the testimony of this gen- 
 tleman must be allowed to have some 
 weight. "The truth is," says lie, " Burns 
 was seldom intoxicated. The drunkard 
 soon becomes besotted, and is shunned 
 
Life of Burns. 55 
 
 even by the convivial. Had he been 
 so, he could not have long continued 
 the idol of eveiy party." This is strong 
 reasoning; and he goes on to mention 
 other circumstances which seem to con- 
 firm the truth of his position. In bal- 
 ancing these two statements, a juster 
 estimate of the moral deportment of 
 Burns may be formed. 
 
 In the year 1Y92 party politics ran to 
 a great heiglit in Scotland, and the 
 liberal and independent spirit of Burns 
 did certainly betray him into some in- 
 discretions. A general opinion prevails, 
 that he so far lost the good graces of his 
 superiors by his conduct, as to consider 
 all prospects of future promotion as 
 hopeless. But this appears not to have 
 been the case ; and the fact that he acted 
 as supervisor before his death is a strong- 
 proof to the contrary. Of his political 
 verses, few have as yet been published. 
 But in these he warmly espoused the 
 
56 Life of Burns, 
 
 cause of the Whigs, which kept up the 
 spleen of the other party, ah*eady suffi- 
 ciently provoked ; and this may in some 
 measure account for the bitterness with 
 which his own character was attacked. 
 Whatever opinion may be formed of 
 the extent of his dissipation in Dumfries, 
 one fact is unquestionable, that his pow- 
 ers remained unimpaired to the last ; it 
 was there he produced his finest lyrics, 
 and they are the finest, as well as the 
 purest, that ever delighted mankind. 
 Besides Johnson's Museum^ in which 
 he took an interest to the last, and to 
 which he contributed most ^extensively, 
 he formed a connection with Mr. George 
 Thomson, of Edinburgh. This gentleman 
 had conceived the laudable design of 
 collecting the national melodies of Scot- 
 land, with accompaniments by the most 
 eminent composers, and poetry by the 
 best writers, in addition to those words 
 which were originally attached to them. 
 
Life of Bior7is. 57 
 
 From the multitude of songs which 
 Burns wrote, from the year 1792 till 
 the commencement of his illness, it is 
 evident that few days could have passed 
 without his producing some stanzas for 
 the work. The following passage from 
 his correspondence, which was also most 
 extensive, proves that his songs were not 
 hurriedly got up, but composed with the 
 utmost care and attention. " Until I am 
 complete master of a tune in my own. 
 singing, such as it is," says he, "I can 
 never compose for it. My way is this : 
 I consider the poetic sentiment cor- 
 respondent to my idea of the musical 
 expression — then choose my theme — 
 compose one stanza. When that is 
 composed, which is generally the most 
 difficult part of the business, I w^alk out 
 — sit down now and then — look out for 
 objects in nature round me that are in 
 unison or harmony with the cogitations 
 of my fancy, and workings of my bosom 
 
58 Life of Biorns. 
 
 — humming every now and then the air, 
 with the verses I have framed. When 
 I feel my muse beginning to jade, I 
 retire to the solitary fireside of my 
 study, and there commit my effusions 
 to paper; swinging at intervals on the 
 hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of 
 calling forth my own critical strictures, 
 as my pen goes. Seriously, this, at 
 home, is almost invariably my Avay." 
 This is not only interesting for the light 
 which it throws upon his method of 
 composition, but it proves that convivi- 
 ality had not as yet greater charms for 
 him than the muse. 
 
 From his youth Burns had exhibited 
 ominous symptoms of a radical disorder 
 in his constitution. A palpitation of the 
 heart, and a derangement of the diges- 
 tive organs, were conspicuous. These 
 were, doubtless, increased by his indul- 
 gences, which became more frequent as 
 he drew towards the close of his career. 
 
Life of Bitrns. 59 
 
 In the autumn of 1795 he lost an only 
 daughter, which was a severe blow to 
 him. Soon afterwards he was seized 
 with a rheumatic fever ; and " long the 
 die spun doubtful," sajs he, in a letter 
 to his faithfnl friend Mrs. Dunlap, '' un- 
 til, after many wrecks of a sick bed, it 
 seems to have turned up life, and I am 
 beghming to crawl across my room." 
 The cloud behind which his sun was 
 destined to be eclipsed at noon had be- 
 gun to darken above him. Before he 
 had completely recovered, he had the 
 imprudence to join a festive circle ; 
 and, on his return from it, he caught a 
 cold, which brought back his trouble 
 upon liim with redoubled severity. Sea- 
 bathing was had recourse to, but with 
 no ultimate success. He lingered until 
 the 21st of July, 1796, when he expired. 
 The interest which the death of Burns 
 excited was intense. All differences 
 were forgotten; his genius only was 
 
60 Life of B 
 
 urns. 
 
 thought of. On the 26tli of the same 
 month he was conveyed to the grave, 
 followed by about ten thousand individ- 
 uals of all ranks, many of whom had 
 come from distant parts of the country 
 to witness the solemnity. He was in- 
 terred with military honors by the Dum- 
 fries volunteers, to which body he had 
 belonged. 
 
 Thus, at the age of thirty-seven, an age 
 when the mental powers of man have 
 scarcely reached their climax, died 
 Kobert Burns, one of the greatest poets 
 whom his country has produced. It is 
 unnecessary to enter into any lengthened 
 analysis of his poetry or character. Ilis 
 works are universally known and ad- 
 mired, and criticism has been drawn to 
 the dregs upon the subject; and that, 
 too, by the gi;eatest masters who have 
 appeared since his death, — no mean test 
 of the great merits of his writings. He 
 excels equally in touching the heart by 
 
• Life oj Burns. 61 
 
 the exquisiteness of his pathos, and ex- 
 citing the risible faculties by the breadth 
 of his humor. His lyre had many strings, 
 and he had equal command over them 
 all; striking each, and frequently in 
 chords, with the skill and power of a 
 master. That his satire sometimes de- 
 generates into coarse invective, can not 
 be denied ; but where personality is not 
 permitted to interfere, his poems of this 
 description may take their place beside 
 any thing of the kind w^hich has ever 
 been produced, without being disgraced 
 by the comparison. It is unnecessary 
 to re-echo the praises of his best pieces, 
 as there is no epithet of admiration 
 which has not been bestowed upon them. 
 Those who had best opportunities of 
 judging, are of opinion that his works, 
 stamped as they are with the impress of 
 sovereign genius, fall short of the pow- 
 ers he possessed. It is therefore to be 
 lamented that he undertook no great 
 
62 Life of Btirns. 
 
 work 'of fiction or invention. Had circum- 
 stances permitted, he would probably 
 have done so ; but his excise duties, and 
 without doubt his own follies, prevent- 
 ed him. His passions were strong, and 
 his capacity of enjoyment corresponded 
 with them. These continually precipi- 
 tated him into the variety of pleasure, 
 where alone they could be gratified ; 
 and the reaction consequent upon such 
 indulgences (for he possessed the finest 
 discrimination between right and Avrong) 
 threw him into low S2:)irits, to wliicli lie 
 was also constitutionally liable. His 
 mind, being thus never for any length 
 of time in an equable tone, could scarcely 
 pursue with steady regularity a work of 
 an}'- length. His moral aberrations, as 
 detailed by some of his biographers, 
 have been exaggerated, as already 
 noticed. This has been proved by the 
 testimony of many witnesses, from whose 
 authority there can be no appeal; for 
 
Life of Burns, 63 
 
 they bad the best opportunities of jiidg- 
 ing. In fine, it may be doubted whether 
 he has not, by his writings, exercised a 
 greater power over the minds of men, 
 and the general system of life, than has 
 been exercised by any other modern 
 poet. A complete edition of his works, 
 in four vols. 8vo., with a life, was pub- 
 lished by Dr. Currie of Liverpool, for 
 the benefit of his family, to whom it re- 
 alized a handsome sum. Editions have 
 been since multiplied beyond number ; 
 and several excellent biographies of the 
 23oet have been published, particularly 
 that by Mr. Lockhart. 
 
LIFE OF BURNS.* 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 In the modern arrangements of soci- 
 ety, it is no uncommon thing that a man 
 of genius must, like Butler, "ask for 
 bread and receive a stone ;" for, in spite 
 of our grand maxim of supply and de- 
 mand, it is by no means the highest ex- 
 cellence that men are most forward to 
 recognize. The inventor of a spinning- 
 jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his 
 own day ; but the writer of a true poem, 
 like the apostle of a true religion, is 
 
 * A review of the Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lock- 
 hart, LL. B. Edinburgh, 1828. 
 
Ziife of Burns. 65 
 
 nearly as sure of tlie contrary. We do 
 not know whether it is not an aggrava- 
 tion of the injustice, that there is gener- 
 ally a posthumous retribution. Kobert 
 Burns, in the course of nature, might yet 
 have been living ; but his short life was 
 spent in toil and penury ; and he died, 
 in the prime of his manhood, miserable 
 and neglected ; and yet already a brave 
 mausoleum shines over his dust, and 
 more than one splendid monument has 
 been reared in other places to his fame : 
 the street where he languished in poverty 
 is called by his name ; the highest per- 
 sonages in our literature have been proud 
 to appear as his commentators and ad- 
 mirers, and here is the sixth narrative of 
 his Life^ that has been given to the 
 world ! 
 
 Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to 
 apologize for this new attempt on such 
 a subject: but his readers, we believe, 
 will readily acquit him ; or, at worst. 
 
Q6 Life of Burns. 
 
 will censure only the performance of his 
 task, not the choice of it. The character 
 of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot 
 easily become either trite or exhausted ; 
 and will probably gain rather than lose in 
 its dimensions by the distance to which it 
 is removed by Time. ]^o man, it has 
 been said, is a hero to his valet : and this 
 is probably true ; but the fault is at least 
 as likely to be the valet's as the hero's : 
 For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye 
 few things are wonderful that are not 
 distant. It is difficult for men to believe 
 that the man, the mere man whom they 
 see, nay, perhaps, painfully feel, toiling 
 at their side through the poor jostlings 
 of existence, can be made of finer clay 
 than themselves. Suppose that some 
 dining acqaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, 
 and neighbour of John a Combe's, had 
 snatched an hour or two from the pre- 
 servation of his game, and written us a 
 Life of Shakspeare ! What dissertations 
 
Life of Burns. 67 
 
 should we not have had, — ^not on Hamlet 
 and The Tempest^ but on the wool-trade 
 and deer-stealing, and the libel and va- 
 grant laws! and how the Poacher be- 
 came a Player ; and how Sir Thomas 
 and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and 
 did not push him to extremities ! In 
 like manner, we believe, with respect to 
 Burns, that till the companions of his 
 pilgrimage, the honourable Excise Com- 
 missioners, and the Gentlemen of the 
 Caledonian Hunt, and the Dumfries 
 Aristrocracj, and all the Squires and 
 Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers, 
 and the New and Old Light Clergy, 
 whom he had to do with, shall have be- 
 come invisible in the darkness of the 
 Past, or visible only by light borrowed 
 from Ms juxtaposition, it will be difficult 
 to measure him by any true standard, or 
 to estimate what he really was and did, 
 in the eighteenth century, for his country 
 and the world. It will be difficult, we 
 
68 Life of Burns. 
 
 say ; but still a fare problem for literary 
 historians ; and repeated attempts will 
 give us repeated approximations. 
 
 His former biographers have done 
 something, no doubt, but by no means 
 a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie 
 and Mr. "Walker, the principal of these 
 writers, have both, we think, mistaken 
 one essentially important thing : — Their 
 own and the woi'ld's true relation to 
 their author, and the style in which it 
 became such men to think and to speak 
 of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the 
 poet truly ; more perhaps than he avow- 
 ed to his readers, or even to himself; 
 yet he everywhere introduces him with 
 a certain patronizing, apologetic air ; as 
 if the polite public might think it strange 
 and half unwarrantable that he, a man 
 of science, a scholar, and gentleman, 
 should do such honour to a rustic. In 
 all this, however, we r-eadily admit that 
 his fault was not want of love, but weak- 
 
Life of Burn. 
 
 ness of faith; and regret that the first 
 and kindest of all onr poet's biographers 
 should not have seen farther, or believed 
 more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker 
 offends more deeply in the same kind : 
 and both err alike in presenting us with 
 a detached catalogue of his several sup- 
 posed attributes, virtues, and vices, in- 
 stead of a delineation of the resulting 
 character as a living unity. This, how- 
 ever, IS not painting a portrait ; but 
 gauging the length and breadth of the 
 several features, and jotting down their 
 dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, 
 it is not so much as this : for we are yet 
 to learn by what arts or instruments the 
 mind could be so measured and gauged. 
 Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, 
 has avoided both these errors. He uni- 
 formly treats Burns as the high and re- 
 markable man the public voice has now 
 pronounced him to be : and in delineat- 
 ing him, he has avoided the method of 
 
70 Life of Burns. 
 
 separate generalities, and rather songlit 
 for characteristic incidents, habits, ac- 
 tions, sayings ; in a word, for aspects 
 which exhibit the whole man, as he 
 looked and lived among his fellows. 
 The book accordingly, with all its de- 
 ficiencies, gives more insight, w^e think, 
 into the true character of Burns, than 
 any prior biography ; though, being writ- 
 ten on the very popular and condensed 
 sclieme of an article for Constable's Mis- 
 cellany^ it has less depth than we could 
 have wished and expected from a writer 
 of such power, and contains rather 
 more, and more multifarious, quotations, 
 than belong of right to an original pro- 
 duction. Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own 
 writing is generally so good, so clear, di- 
 rect, and nervous, that we seldom wish 
 to see it making place for another man's. 
 However, the spirit of the work is 
 throughout candid, tolerant, and anx- 
 iously conciliating; compliments and 
 
Life of Burns. 71 
 
 praises are liberally distributed, on all 
 hands, to great and small ; and, as Mr. 
 Morris Birkbeck observes of the society 
 in the backwoods of America, "the 
 courtesies of polite life are never lost 
 sight of for a moment." But there are 
 better things than these in the volume ; 
 and we can safely testify, not only tliat 
 it is easily and pleasantly read a first 
 time, but may even be without difficulty 
 read again. 
 
 / N'evertheless, we are far from thinking 
 that the problem of Burns's Biography 
 has yet been adequately solved. We 
 do not allude so much to deficiency of 
 facts or documents, — though of these we 
 are still every day receiving some fresh 
 accession, — as to the limited and imper- 
 fect application of them to the great end 
 
 - of Biography. Our notions upon this 
 subject may perhaps appear extrava- 
 gant ; but if an individual is really of 
 consequence enough to have his life and 
 
72 Life of Burns. 
 
 character recorded for public remem- 
 brance, we have always been of opinion, 
 that the public ought to be made ac- 
 quainted with all the inward springs and 
 relations of his character. How did the 
 world and man's life, from his particular 
 position, represent themselves to his 
 mind ? How did coexisting circumstan- 
 ces modify him from without % liow did 
 he modify these from within? With 
 what endeavors and what efficacy rule 
 over them? with what resistance and 
 what suffering sink under them? In 
 one word, what and how produced was 
 the effect of society on him? what and 
 how produced was his effect on society ? 
 He who shou'ld answer these questions, 
 in regard to any individual, would, as 
 we believe, furnish a model of perfection 
 in biography. Few individuals, indeed, 
 can deserve such a study ; and many 
 lives will be written, and, for the grati- 
 fication of innocent curiosity, ought to 
 
Life of Burns. 73 
 
 be written, and read, and forgotten, 
 which are not in this sense hiograpliies. 
 But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of 
 these few individuals ; and sucli a study, 
 at least with such a result, he has not 
 yet obtained. Our own contributions 
 to it, we are aware, can be but scanty 
 and feeble ; but we offer them with good- 
 will, and trust they may meet with 
 acceptance from those for whom they 
 are intended. 
 
 Burns first came upon the w^orld 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 neg- 
 lect; till his early and most mournful 
 death again awakened an enthusiasm 
 for him, which, especially 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 
 
74 Life of Burns, 
 
 very continuance of this clamor proves 
 that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Ac- 
 cordingly, even in sober judgments, 
 where, as years passed by, he has come 
 to rest more and more exclusively on his 
 own intrinsic merits, and may now be 
 well nigh shorn of that casual radiance, 
 he appears not only as a true British 
 poet, but as one of the most considerable 
 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, 
 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 obscurity, without 
 help, without instruction, without model ; 
 or with models only of the meanest sort. 
 
Life of Burns. Y5 
 
 An educated man stands, as it were, in 
 the midst of a boundless arsenal and 
 magazine, filled with -all the weapons 
 and eno^ines which 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 dif- 
 ferent is Kis state who stands on the out- 
 side of that storehouse, and feels that its 
 gates must be stormed, or remain for 
 ever shut against him ? His means are 
 the commonest and rudest; the mere 
 work done is no measure of his strength. 
 A dw^arf behind his steam engine may 
 remove mountains ; but no dwarf will 
 hew them down with the pick-axe ; and 
 he must be a Titan that hurls them 
 abroad with his arms. 
 
 It is in this last shape that Burns pre- 
 sents 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 
 
76 Life of Burns, 
 
 aught, must accomplish it under the 
 pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, 
 of penury and desponding apprehension 
 of the worst evils, and with no further- 
 ance but such knowledge as dwells in a 
 poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a 
 Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard 
 of beau.ty, he sinks not under all these 
 impediments. Through the fogs and 
 darkness of that obscure region, his 
 eagle eye discerns the true relations of 
 the world and human life ; he grows into 
 intellectual strength, and trains himself 
 into intellectual expertness. Impelled 
 by the irrepressible movement of his 
 inward spirit, he struggles forward into 
 the general view, and with haughty 
 modesty lays 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 w^hole life ; and that 
 
Life of Burns. 77 
 
 he died in his thirty-seventh year ; and 
 then ask if it be strange that his poems 
 are imperfect, and of small extent, or 
 that his genius attained no mastery in 
 its art ? Alas, his Sun shone 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 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 ! 
 
 We are anxious not to exaggerate; 
 for it is exposition rather than admira- 
 tion that our readers require of us here ; 
 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 some- 
 times thought, should be a cold business; 
 
Y8 Life of Burns. 
 
 we are not so sure of this ; but, at all 
 events, our concern with Burns is not 
 exclusively that of critics. True and 
 genial as his poetry must appear, it is 
 not chiefly as a poet, but 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 deepest. We question 
 whether the world has since witnessed 
 so utterly sad a scene ; whether l^apo- 
 leon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hud- 
 son 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 intrinsically nobler, 
 gentler, and perhaps greater soul, wast- 
 ing itself away in a hopeless struggle 
 with base entanglements, which coiled 
 closer and closer round him, till only 
 death opened him an outlet. Conquer- 
 ors are a race with whom the world 
 
Life of Burns. 79 
 
 could well dispense ; nor can the hard 
 intellect, the nnsympathizing 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. But a true Poet, a 
 man in whose heart resides some efflu- 
 ence of Wisdom, some tone of the 
 "Eternal Melodies," is the most pre- 
 cious gift that can be hestowed on a 
 generation : we see in him a freer, purer, 
 development of whatever is noblest in 
 ourselves ; his life is a rich lesson to us, 
 and we mourn his death, as that of a 
 benefactor who loved and taught us. 
 
 Such a gift had i^Tature in her bounty 
 bestowed on us in Eobert Burns ; but 
 with queen-like indifference she cast it 
 from her hand, like a thing of no mo- 
 ment ; and it was defaced and torn a- 
 sunder, as an idle bauble, before we re- 
 
80 Life of Burns. 
 
 cognized it. To the ill-starred Burns 
 was given the power of making man's 
 life more venerable, but that of wisely 
 guiding his own was not given. Destiny 
 — for so in our ignorance we must si)eak, 
 — his faults, the faults of others, proved 
 too hard for him ; and that spirit, which 
 might have soared, could it but have 
 walked, soon sank to the dust, its glori- 
 ous faculties trodden under foot in the 
 blossom, and died, we may almost say, 
 without ever having lived. And so kind 
 and warm a soul ; so full of inborn rich- 
 es, 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 mean- 
 ing! The "Daisy" falls not unheeded 
 under his ploughshare ; nor the ruined 
 nest of that " wee, cowering, timorous 
 beastie," cast forth, after all its provi- 
 dent pains, to " thole the sleety dribble, 
 and cranreuch cauld." The " hoar vis- 
 
Life of Burns, 81 
 
 age" of Winter deliglits him : he dwells 
 with a sad and oft-returning fondness in 
 these .scenes of solemn desolation ; but 
 the voice of the tempest becomes an an- 
 them to his ears ; he loves to w^alk in the 
 sounding woods, for "it raises his thoughts 
 to Ilim that walketh on the wings of the 
 windP 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- 
 feeling, what trustful, boundless love, 
 what generous exaggeration of the ob- 
 ject 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, 
 but in the rude contradiction, in the 
 smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, 
 are still lovely to him : Poverty is in- 
 
82 Life of B'lbTns. 
 
 deed his companion, but Love also, and 
 Courage ; the simple feelings, the worth, 
 the nobleness, that dwell under the 
 si raw roof, are dear and venerable to 
 his heart ; and thus over the lowest pro- 
 vinces of man's existence he pours the 
 glory of his own soul ; 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 defence, not for offence, no 
 cold, suspicious feeling, but a frank and 
 social one. The peasant Poet bears him- 
 self, we might say, like a King in exile ; 
 he is cast among the low, and feels him- 
 self equal to the highest ; yet he claims 
 no rank, that none may be disputed to 
 him. The forward he can repel, the 
 supercilious he can subdue ; pretensions 
 of wealth or ancestry are of no avail 
 with him ; there is a fire in that dark 
 
Life of Bicrns. 83 
 
 eye, under which the " insolence of con- 
 descension" 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 
 himself above common men, he wanders 
 not apart from them, bnt mixes warmly 
 in their interests ; nay, throws himself 
 into their arms ; and, as it were, entreats 
 them to love him. It is moving: to see 
 how, in his darkest despondency, this 
 pi-oud being still seeks relief from friend- 
 ship ; unbosoms himself, often to the im- 
 woi-thy ; and, amid tears, strains to his 
 glowing heart a heart that knows only 
 the name of friendship. And yet he 
 was " cpick to learn ;" a man of keen 
 vision, before whom common disguises 
 afforded no concealment. His under- 
 standing saw through the hollowness 
 even of accomplished deceivers ; but 
 there was a generous credulity in his 
 Heart. And so did our Peasant show 
 
84: Life of Burns. 
 
 himself among us; "a soul like an 
 /Eolian harp, in whose strings the vul- 
 gar wind, as it passed through them, 
 changed itself into articulate melody." 
 And this was he for whom the world 
 found no fitter business than quarrelling 
 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 on, before an- 
 other such is given us to waste. 
 
 All that remains of Burns, the Writ- 
 ings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted 
 above, no more than a poor mutilated 
 fraction of what was in him ; brief, 
 broken glimpses of a genius that could 
 never show itself complete ; that wanted 
 all things for completeness ; culture, leis- 
 ure, true effort, nay, even length of life. 
 His poems are, with scarcely any excep- 
 tion, mere occasional effusions, poured 
 
Life of Burns. 85 
 
 forth with little premeditation, express- 
 ing, by such means as offered, the pas- 
 sion, opinion, or hmnor of the hour. 
 Never in one instance was it permitted 
 him to grapple with anj^ subject with 
 the full collection of his strength, to fuse 
 and mould it in the concentrated fire of 
 his genius. To try by the strict rules 
 of Art such imperfect fragments, w^ould 
 be at once unprofitable and unfair. 
 ISTevertheless, there is something in 
 these poems, marred and defective as 
 they are, which forbids the most fas- 
 tidious 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 eagerly, more and more 
 extensively; and this not only by lit- 
 erary virtuosos, and that class upon 
 w^hom transitory causes operate most 
 strongly, but by all classes, down to the 
 
 I 
 
Life of B%bTns. 
 
 \ 
 
 most hard, unlettered, and truly natural 
 class, who read little, and especially no 
 poetry, except because they find pleas- 
 ure 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 well 
 w^orth inquiring into. After every just 
 deduction, it seems to imply some rare 
 excellence in these works. "What is 
 that excellence ? 
 
 To answer this question will not lead 
 us far. The excellence of Burns is, 
 indeed, among the rarest, whether in 
 poetry or prose ; but, at the same time, 
 it is plain and easily recognized: his 
 SinGerity^ his indisputable air of Truth. 
 Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no 
 hollow fantastic sentimentalities ; no 
 
 wiredrawn refinings, either in thought 
 or feeling: the passion that is traced 
 before us has glowed in a living heart ; 
 
L^f^ ^f Burois. 87 
 
 the opinion lie utters has risen in liis 
 own understanding, and been a light to 
 his own steps. He does not write from 
 hearsay, but from sight and experience ; 
 it is the scenes he has lived and labored 
 amidst, that he describes : those scenes, 
 rude and humble as they are, have kin- 
 dled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble 
 thoughts, and definite resolves ; and he 
 speaks forth wdiat is in him, not from 
 any outward call of vanity or interest, 
 but because his heart is too full to be 
 silent. Ho speaks it, too, with such 
 melody and modulation as he can ; " in 
 homely rustic jingle ;" but it is his own, 
 and genuine. This is the grand secret 
 for finding readers and retaining them : 
 let him who would move and convince 
 others, be first moved and convinced 
 himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me fl^ 
 is applicable in a wider sense than'^the 
 literal one. To every poet, to every 
 writer, we might say : Be true, if you 
 
88 Life of Burns. 
 
 would be believed. Let a man but 
 speak forth with genuine earnestness 
 the thought, the emotion, the actual 
 condition, of his own heart ; and other 
 men, so strangely are we all knit to- 
 gether by the tie of sympathy, must 
 and will give heed to him. In culture, 
 in extent of view, we may stand above 
 the speaker, or below him ; but in either 
 case, his words, if they are earnest and 
 sincere, will find some response witliin 
 us ; for in spite of all casual varieties in 
 outward rank, or inward, as face an- 
 swers to face, so does the heart of man 
 to man. 
 
 This may appear a very simple prin- 
 ciple, and one which Burns had little 
 merit in discovering. True, the discov- 
 ^ei^y is easy enough; but the practical 
 appliance is not easy ; is indeed the fun- 
 damental difiiculty which all poets have 
 to strive with, and which scarcely one 
 in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. 
 
^^f^ of BuTois. 89 
 
 A head too dull to discriminate tlie true 
 from the false ; a heart too dull to love 
 the one at all risks, and to hate the 
 other in spite of all temptations, are 
 alike fatal to a writer. With either, or, 
 as more commonly happens, with both, 
 of these deficiencies, combine a love of 
 distinction, a wish to be original, which 
 is seldom wanting, and we have Affec- 
 tation, the bane of literature, as Cant, 
 its elder brother, is of morals. How 
 often does the one and the other front 
 us, in poetry, as in life! Great poets 
 themselves are not always free of this 
 vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain 
 sort and degree of greatness that it is 
 most commonly ingrafted. A strong 
 effort after excellence will sometimes 
 solace itself with a mere shadow of suc- 
 cess, and he who has much to unfold, 
 will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. 
 Byron, for instance, was no common 
 man : yet if we examine his poetry with 
 
90 I^^f^ of Burns. 
 
 this- view, we shall find it far enough 
 from faultless. Generally speaking, w^e 
 should say that it is not true. He re- 
 freshes us, not with the divine fountain, 
 but too often with vulgar strong waters, 
 stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon 
 ending in dislike or even nausea. Are 
 his Harolds and Giaours, w^e would ask, 
 real men, we mean, poetically consistent 
 and conceivable men? Do not these 
 characters, does not the character of 
 their author, which more or less shines 
 through them all, rather appear a thing 
 put on for the occasion ; no natural or 
 possible mode of being, but something 
 intended to look much grander than 
 nature? Surely, all these stormful ago- 
 nies, this volcanic heroism, su23erhuman 
 contempt, and moody desperation, with 
 so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, 
 and other sulphurous humors, is more 
 like the brawling of a player in some 
 paltry tragedy, which is to last three 
 
Life of Burns, 91 
 
 hours, than the bearing of a man in the 
 business of life, which is to last three- 
 score and ten years. To our minds, there 
 is a taint of this sort, something which 
 we should call theatrical, false and af- 
 fected, in every one of these otherwise 
 powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan,, 
 especially the latter parts of it, is the 
 only thing approaching to a sincere work, 
 he ever wrote ; the only work where he 
 showed himself, in any measure, as he 
 was ; and seemed so intent on his sub- 
 ject, as, for moments, to forget himself. 
 Yet Byron hated this vice ; we believe, 
 heartily detested it : nay, he had de- 
 clared formal war against it in words. 
 So difficult is it even for the strongest 
 to make this primary attainment, which 
 might seem the simplest of all: to read 
 its oion consciousness without mistakes^ 
 without errors involuntar}^ or wilful! 
 We recollect no poet of Burns's suscep- 
 tibility who comes before us from the 
 
92 Life of Burns. 
 
 first, and abides with us to the last, with 
 such a total want of affectation. He is 
 an honest man, and an honest writer. 
 In his successes and his failures, in his 
 greatness and his littleness, he is evei' 
 clear, simple, true, and glitters with no 
 lustre but his own. We reckon this to 
 be a great virtue ; to be, in fact, the 
 root of most other virtues, literary as 
 well as moral. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to mention, 
 that it is to the poetry of Burns that we 
 now allude ; to those writings which he 
 had time to meditate, and where no 
 special reason existed to warp his criti- 
 cal feeling, or obstruct his endeavor 
 to fulfil 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 not only stiff, but strained 
 and twisted; a certain high-flown, in- 
 
Life of Burns. 93 
 
 flated tone ; the 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 nnaifected. Does not 
 Shakspeare himself sometimes premed- 
 itate the sheerest bombast ! But even 
 with regard to these Letters of Burns, it 
 is but fair to state that he had two ex- 
 cuses. The first was his comparative 
 deficiency in language. Burns, though 
 for most part he w^rites with singular 
 force, and even gracefulness, is not mas- 
 ter of English prose, as he is of Scottish 
 verse ; not master of it, we mean, in 
 proportion to the depth and vehemence 
 of his matter. These Letters strike us 
 as the effort of a man to express some- 
 thing which he has no organ fit for ex- 
 pressing. But a second and weightier 
 excuse is to be found in the peculiarity 
 of Burns's social rank. His correspon- 
 dents are often men whose relation to 
 
94 Life of Burns. 
 
 liim he has never accurately ascertained ; 
 whom therefore he is either forearming 
 himself against, or else unconsciously 
 flattering, by adopting the style he 
 thinks will please them. At all events, 
 we should remember tliat 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 Letters 
 to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent. 
 But we return to his j^oetry. Li ad- 
 dition to its sincerity, it has another 
 peculiar merit, which indeed is but a 
 mode, or perhaps a means, of the fore- 
 going. It displays itself in liis choice 
 of subjects, or rather in his indifference 
 as to subjects, and the power he has of 
 making all subjects interesting. The 
 ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is 
 for ever seeking, in external circumstan- 
 
Life of B terns, 
 
 ces, the help which can be found only 
 in himself. In what is familiar and near 
 at hand, he discerns no form or comeli- 
 ness ; home is not poetical but prosaic ; 
 it is in some past, distant, conventional 
 world, that poetry resides for him ; were 
 he there and not here, were he thus and 
 not so, it would be well with him. 
 Hence our innumerable host of rose- 
 colored novels and iron-mailed epics, 
 with their locality not on the Earth, but 
 somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence 
 our Yirgins of the Sun, and our Knights 
 of the Cross, malicious Saracens in tur- 
 bans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wam- 
 pum, and so many other truculent figures 
 from the heroic times or the heroic cli- 
 mates, who on all hands swarm in our 
 poetry. Peace be with them ! But yet, 
 as a great moralist proposed preaching 
 to the men of this century, so would we 
 fain preach to the poets, "a sermon on 
 the duty of staying at home." Let 
 
96 Life of Burns. 
 
 them be sure that heroic ages and heroic 
 climates can do little for them. That 
 form of life has attraction for ns, less 
 because it is better or nobler than our 
 own, than simply because 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 interest us 
 now, because he wrote of wdiat passed 
 out of his native Greece, and tw^o cen- 
 turies before he was born ; or because 
 he wrote of what passed in God's world, 
 and in the heart of man, wdiicli is the 
 same after thirty centuries? Let our 
 poets look to this; is their feeling 
 really finer, truer, and their vision deeper 
 than that of other men, they have noth- 
 ing to fear, even from the humblest 
 object ; is it not so ? — they have nothing 
 
Life of Btcrns. 97 
 
 to hope, but an epliemeral favor, even 
 from the highest. 
 
 The poet, we cannot bnt think, can 
 never have far to seek for a subject ; the 
 elements of his art are in him, and 
 around him on every hand ; for him the 
 Ideal world is not remote from the 
 Actual, but under 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 in his place ; for here too is 
 man's existence, with its infinite long- 
 ings and smal] acquirings; its ever- 
 thwarted, ever-renewed endeavors; its 
 unspeakable aspirations, its fears and 
 hopes that wander through Eternity : 
 and all the mystery of brightness and 
 of gloom that it was ever made of, in 
 any age or climate, since man first began 
 to live. Is there not tlie fifth act of a 
 Tragedy, in every death-bed, though it 
 w^ere a peasant's and a bed of heath? 
 7 
 
98 Life of Burns. 
 
 And are wooings and weddings obsolete, 
 that there can be Comedy no longer? 
 Or are men suddenly grown wise, that 
 Laughter 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 
 pass away before him in vain. He is a 
 vates^ a seer ; a gift of vision has been 
 given him. Has life no meanings for 
 him, which another can not equally de- 
 cipher ? then he is no poet, and Delphi 
 itself will not make him one. 
 
 In this respect. Burns, though not 
 perhaps absolutely a great poet, better 
 manifests his capability, better proves 
 the truth of his genius, tlian if he had, 
 by his own strength, kept the whole 
 Minerva Press going, to the end of his 
 literary course. He shows himself at 
 least a poet of Nature's own making; 
 
Life of Burns. 99 
 
 and J^ature, after all, is still the grand 
 agent in making poets. We often hear 
 of this and the other external condition 
 being requisite for the existence of a 
 poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of 
 training ; he must have studied certain 
 things, studied for instance " the elder 
 dramatists," and so learned a poetic lan- 
 guage ; as if poetry lay in the tongue, 
 not in the heart. At other times we are 
 told, he must be bred in a certain rank, 
 and must be on a confidential footing: 
 with the higher classes ; because, above 
 all other things, he must see the world. 
 As to seeing the world, we apprehend 
 this will cause him little difficulty, if he 
 have but an eye to see it with. With- 
 out eyes, indeed, the task might be hard. 
 But happily every poet is born in the 
 world, and sees it, wdth or against liis 
 wull, every day and every hour he lives. 
 The mysterious workmanship of man's 
 heart, the true light and the inscrutable 
 
100 Life of Burns. 
 
 darkness of man's destiny, reveal them- 
 selves 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 pas- 
 sions at once of a Borgia and of a Lu- 
 ther, lie written, in stronger or fainter 
 lines, in the consciousness of every indi- 
 vidual bosom, that has practised honest 
 self-examination? 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 Tuil- 
 eries itself. 
 
 But sometimes still harder requisitions 
 are laid on the poor aspirant to poetry ; 
 for it is hinted that he should have leen 
 horn two centuries ago; inasmuch as 
 poetry, soon after that date, vanished 
 from the earth, and became no longer 
 attainable by men ! Such cobweb spec- 
 ulations have, now and then, overhung 
 
Life of Burns. 101 
 
 the field of literature ; but tliey obstruct 
 not the growth of any plant there : the 
 Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously, 
 and merely as he walks onw^ard, silently 
 brushes them away. Is not every genius 
 an impossibility till he appear? Why 
 do we call him new and original, if we 
 saw where his marble w^as 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 ])lace 
 that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scot- 
 tish peasant's life was the meanest and 
 rudest of all lives, till Burns became a 
 poet in it, and a poet of it ; found it a 
 mcm^s life, and therefore significant to 
 men. A. thousand battle-fields remain 
 unsung ; but the Wounded Hare has not 
 perished without its memorial ; a balm 
 of mercy yet breathes on us from its 
 dumb agonies, because a poet was there. 
 Our Halloween had passed and repassed, 
 in rude awe and laughter, since the era 
 
102 Life of Burns. 
 
 of the Druids; but no Theocritus, till 
 Burns, discerned in it the materials of a 
 Scottish Idyl : neither was the Holy Fair 
 any Council of Trent ^ or Roman Jubi- 
 lee ', but nevertheless, Superstition and 
 Hypocrisy^ and Fun having been pro- 
 pitious to him, in this ^nan's hand it be- 
 came a poem, instinct with satire, and 
 genuine comic life. Let but the true 
 poet be given us, we repeat it, place 
 him where and how you will, and true 
 poetry will not be wanting. 
 
 Independently of the essential gift of 
 poetic feeling, as we have now attempt- 
 ed to describe it, a certain rugged ster- 
 ling worth pervades whatever Burns 
 has written : a virtue, as of green fields 
 and mountain breezes, dwells in his 
 poetry ; it is redolent of natural life, and 
 hardy, natural men. There is a deci- 
 sive strength in him ; and yet a sweet 
 native gracefulness : he is tender, and 
 he is vehement, yet without constraint 
 
Life of Burns. 103 
 
 or too visible effort ; he melts the heart, 
 or inflames it, with a power which seems 
 habitual and familiar to him. We see 
 in him the gentleness, the trembling 
 pity of a woman, with the deep earnest- 
 ness, the force and passionate ardor of a 
 hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming 
 fire ; as lightning lurks in the drops of 
 the summer cloud. He has a resonance 
 in his bosom for every note of human 
 feeling : the high and the low, the sad, 
 the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome 
 in their turns to his " lightly-moved and 
 all-conceiving spirit." And observe 
 with what a prompt and eager force he 
 grasps his subject, be it what it may! 
 How he fixes, as it were, the full image 
 of the matter in his eye ; full and clear 
 in every lineament; and catches the 
 real type and essence of it, amid a thou- 
 sand accidents and superficial circum- 
 stances, no one of which misleads him ! 
 Is it of reason — some truth to be dis- 
 
104 Life of Burns, 
 
 covered ? ]^o sophistry, no vain surface- 
 logic detains him ; quick, resolute, un- 
 erring, he pierces through into the mar- 
 row of the question, and speaks his 
 verdict with an emphasis that can not 
 be forgotten. Is it of description — some 
 visual object to be represented? N^o 
 poet of any age or nation is more graphic 
 than Burns : the characteristic features 
 disclose themselves to him at a glance ; 
 three lines from his hand, and we have 
 a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, 
 in that rude, often awkward, metre, so 
 clear, and definite a likeness ! It seems 
 a draughtsman working with a burnt 
 stick ; and yet the burin of a Retzsch is 
 not more expressive or exact. 
 
 This clearness of sight we may call 
 the foundation of all talent ; for in fact, 
 unless we see our object, how shall we 
 know how to place or prize it, in our 
 understanding, our imagination, our af- 
 fections? Yet it is not in itself per- 
 
Life of Bitrns. 105 
 
 haps a very high excellence ; but capable 
 of being nnited indifferently with the 
 strongest, or with ordinary powers. Ho- 
 mer surpasses all men in this quality : 
 but strangely enough, at no great dis- 
 tance below him are Kichardson and 
 Defoe. It belongs, in truth, to what is 
 called a lively mind : and gives no sure 
 indication of the higher endowments 
 that may exist along with it. In all the 
 three cases we have mentioned, it is 
 combined with great garrulity; their 
 descriptions are detailed, ample, and 
 lovingly exact ; Homer's fire bursts 
 through, from time to time, as if by 
 accident ; but Defoe and Kichardson 
 have no fire. Burns, again, is not more 
 distinguished by the clearness than by 
 the impetuous force of his conceptions. 
 Of the strength, the piercing emphasis 
 with which he thought, his emphasis of 
 expression may give an humble but the 
 readiest proof. Who ever uttered sharper 
 
106 Life of Bums. 
 
 sayings tlian his ; words more memora- 
 ble, now by their burning vehemence, 
 now by their cool vigor and laconic 
 pith ? A single phrase depicts a whole 
 subject, a whole scene. Our Scottish 
 forefathers in the battle-field struggled 
 forward, he says, ''' red-wat shod f^ giv- 
 ing, in this one word, a full vision of 
 horror and carnage, perhaps too fright- 
 fully accurate for Art ! 
 
 In fact, one of the leading features in 
 the mind of Burns is this vigor of his 
 strictly intellectual perceptions. A reso- 
 lute force is ever visible in his judgments, 
 as in his feelings and volitions. Pro- 
 fessor Stewart says of him, with some 
 surprise : '' All the faculties of Burns's 
 mind were, as far as I could judge, 
 equally vigorous ; and his predilection 
 for poetry was rather the result of his 
 own enthusiastic and impassioned tem- 
 per, than of a genius exclusively adapt- 
 ed to that species of composition. From 
 
Life of Burns. 107 
 
 his conversation I should have pronounc- 
 ed him to be fitted to excel in whatever 
 walk of ambition he had chosen to exert 
 his abilities." But this, if we mistake 
 not, is at all times the very essence of a 
 truly poetical endowment. Poetry, ex- 
 cept in such cases as that of Keats, 
 where the whole consists in extreme 
 sensibility, and a certain vague pervad- 
 ing tunefulness of nature, is no separate 
 faculty, no organ wdiich can be super- 
 added to the rest or disjoined from 
 them ; but rather the result of their 
 general harmony and completion. The 
 feelings, the gifts, that exist in the Poet, 
 are those that exist, with more or less 
 development, in every human soul : the 
 imagination, which shudders at the Hell 
 of Dante, is the same faculty, weaker in 
 degree, which called that picture into 
 being. How does the poet speak to all 
 men, with power, but by being still 
 more a man than they % Shakspeare, it 
 
108 L^f^ of Biivns. 
 
 lias been well observed, in the planning 
 and completing of his tragedies, has 
 shown an Understanding, were it noth- 
 ing more, which might have governed 
 states, or indited a Novum Orgamiin. 
 What Burns's force of understanding 
 may have been, we have less means of 
 judgment: for it dwelt among the hum- 
 blest objects, never saw philosophy, and 
 never rose, except for short intervals, 
 into the region of great ideas. ISTever- 
 theless, sufficient indication remains for 
 us in his works : we discern the brawny 
 movement of a gigantic though untutor- 
 ed strength, and can understand how, in 
 conversation, his quick, sure insight into 
 men and things may, as much as aught 
 else about him, have amazed the best 
 thinkers of his time and country. 
 
 But, unless we mistake, the intellectual 
 gift of Burns is fine as well as strong. 
 The more delicate relation of things 
 could not well have escaped his eye, for 
 
Life of Burns. 109 
 
 they were intimately present to his 
 heart. The logic of the senate and the 
 forum is indispensable, but not all-snffi- 
 cient ; nay, perhaps the highest Truth is 
 that which will the most certainly elude 
 it. For this logic works by words, and 
 " the highest," it has been said, " cannot 
 be expressed in words." We are not 
 without tokens of an openness for this 
 higher truth also, of a keen though un- 
 cultivated sense for it, having existed in 
 Burns. Mr. Stewart, it will be remem- 
 bered, *' wonders," in the passage above 
 quoted, that Burns had formed some 
 distinct conception of the " doctrine of 
 association." We rather think that far 
 subtiler tilings than the doctrine of as- 
 sociation had from of old been familiar 
 to him. Here for instance : 
 
 " "We know nothing," thus writes he, 
 " or next to nothing, of the structure of 
 our souls, so we cannot account for those 
 seeming caprices in them, that one 
 
110 Life of Burns. 
 
 should be particularly pleased with this 
 thing, or struck with that, w^hich, on 
 minds of a different cast, makes no ex- 
 traordinary impression. I have some 
 favorite flowers in spring, among which 
 are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, 
 the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the 
 budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, 
 that I view and hang over with partic- 
 ular delight. I never hear the loud 
 solitary whistle of the curlew in a sum- 
 mer noon, or the wild mixing cadence 
 of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal 
 morning, without feeling an elevation 
 of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion 
 or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to 
 what can this be owing? Are we a 
 piece of machinery, which, like the 
 ^olian harp, passive, takes the impress- 
 ion of the passing accident ; or do these 
 workings argue something within us 
 above the trodden clod ? I own myself 
 partial to such proofs of those awful and 
 
Life of Burns. Ill 
 
 important realities : a God that made all 
 things, man's immaterial and immortal 
 nature, and a world of weal or wo be- 
 yond death and the grave." 
 
 Force and fineness of understanding 
 are often spoken of as something differ- 
 ent from general force and fineness of 
 nature, as something partly independent 
 of them. The necessities of language 
 probably require this ; but in truth these 
 qualities are not distinct and independ- 
 ent : except in special cases, and from 
 special causes, they ever go together. 
 A man of strong understanding is gen- 
 erally a man of strong character ; neither 
 is delicacy in the one kind often divided 
 from delicacy in the otlier. E"o one, at 
 all events, is ignorant that in the poetry 
 of Burns, keenness of insight keeps pace 
 with keenness of feeling ; that his light 
 is not more pervading than his warmth. 
 He is a man of the most impassioned 
 temper ; with passions not strong only, 
 
112 Life of Burns. 
 
 but noble, and of the sort in which great 
 virtues and great poems take their rise. 
 It is reverence, it is Love towards all 
 ]S"ature 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 all, it is the liv- 
 ing essence of that knowledge which 
 makes poets; the first principle of its 
 existence, increase, activity. Of Burns's 
 fervid affection, his generous, all-embrac- 
 ing Love, we have spoken already, as of 
 the grand distinction of his nature, seen 
 equally in word and deed, in his Life 
 and in his Writings. It were easy to 
 multiply examples, l^ot man only, but 
 all that environs man in the material 
 and moral nniverse, is lovely in his 
 sight: "the hoary hawthorn," the "troop 
 of gray plover," the " solitary curlew," 
 are all dear to him — all live in this 
 Earth along with him, and to all he is 
 
Life of Burns. 113 
 
 k 1 1 i t as in mysterious brotherhood. How 
 toucliiiig' is it, for instance, that, amidst 
 tlie gloom of personal misery, brooding 
 over tlie wintry desolation without him 
 and witliin him, he thinks of the "ourie 
 cattle" and '' silly sheep," and their suf- 
 ferings in the pitiless storm ! 
 
 " I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
 Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 
 
 0' wintry war; 
 Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle, 
 
 Beneath a scaur. 
 
 Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
 That in the merry month o' spring 
 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 
 
 What comes o' thee? 
 Where wilt thou coAv'r thy chittering wing, 
 
 And close thy ee '?" 
 
 The tenant of the mean hut, with its 
 " ragged roof and chinky wall," has a 
 heart to pity even these ! Tliis is worth 
 several homilies on Mercy ; for it is the 
 voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, 
 lives in sympathy ; his soul rushes forth 
 8 
 
114 Life of Burns. 
 
 into all realms of being; nothing that 
 has existence can be indifferent to him. 
 The very devil he cannot hate with right 
 orthodoxy 1 
 
 "But fare yovi weel, auld Nickie-ben ; 
 wad ye ttik a thought and men' ! 
 Ye aiblins might, — I dinna ken, — 
 
 Still hae a stake; 
 I'm wae to think upo' yon den. 
 
 Even for your sake!" 
 
 He did not know, probably, that Sterne 
 had been beforehand with him. " ' He 
 is the father of curses and lies,' said Dr. 
 Slop ; ' and is cursed and damned al- 
 ready.' — ' I am sorry for it,' quoth my 
 uncle Toby !" — " A poet without Love, 
 were a physical and metaphysical im- 
 possibility." 
 
 Why should we speak of Bcots^ wha 
 hae wi'' Wallace hied ; since all know it, 
 from the king to the meanest of his sub- 
 jects ? This dithyrambic was composed 
 on horseback ; in riding in the middle of 
 
Life of Burns. 115 
 
 tempests, over the wildest Galloway 
 moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, 
 who, observing the j^oet's looks, fore- 
 bore to speak,— judiciously enough,— 
 for a man composing Bruce s Address 
 might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubt- 
 less this stern hynm was singing itself, 
 as he formed it, through the soul of 
 Burns ; but to the external ear, it should 
 be sung with tlie throat of the whirlwind. 
 So long as there is warm blood in the 
 heart of a Scotchman or man, it will 
 move in fierce thrills under this war-ode, 
 the best, we believe, that was ever writ- 
 ten by any pen. 
 
 Another wild, stormful song, that 
 dwells in our ear and mind with a 
 strange tenacity, is MaepJierson' s Fare- 
 xoell. Perhaps there is something in 
 the tradition itself that co-operates. 
 For was not this grim Celt, this shaggy 
 IS'orthland Cacus, that "lived a life of 
 sturt and strife, and died by treacherie," 
 
116 Life of Burns. 
 
 was not ho too one of the Nimrods and 
 Napoleons of the earth, in the arena of 
 his own remote misty glens, for want 
 of a clearer and wider one ? Nay, was 
 there not a touch of grace given him ? 
 A fibre of love and softness, of poetry 
 itself, must have lived in his savage 
 heart; for he composed that air the 
 night before his execution ; 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' line, was mate- 
 rial Fate matched against man's Free- 
 will; matched in bitterest though ob- 
 scure duel ; and the ethereal soul sunk 
 not, even in its blindness, without a cry 
 which has survived it. But who, ex- 
 cept Burns, could have given words to 
 such a soul — words that we never listen 
 
Life of Burns. 117 
 
 to without a strange half-barbarous, 
 half-poetic fellow-feeling ? 
 
 Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 
 
 Sue dauntlngly gaed lie; 
 He play' d a sjmng, and danced it round, 
 
 Below tJie galloios tree. 
 
 Under a lighter and thinner disguise, 
 the same principle of Love, which we 
 have recognized as the great character- 
 istic of Burns, and of all true poets, occa- 
 sionally manifests itself in the shape of 
 Humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his 
 sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of 
 mirth rolls through the mind of Burns ; 
 he rises to the high, and stoops to the 
 low, 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 sportfulness dwells 
 in him ; and comes forth, here and there, 
 in evanescent and beautiful touches ; as 
 in his Address to the Mouse, or the Far- 
 
118 Life of Burns. 
 
 mer^s Mare, or in his Elegy on Poor 
 Mailie, which last may be reckoned his 
 happiest effort of this kind. In these 
 pieces, there are traits of ,a Humor as 
 fine as tliat of Sterne ; yet altogether 
 different, original, ]3ecnliar, — the Hu- 
 mor of Burns. 
 
 Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, 
 and many other kindred qualities of 
 Buriis's poetry, much more might be 
 said ; but now, with these poor outlines 
 of a sketch, we must prepare to quit this 
 part of our subject. To speak of his in- 
 dividual 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 language, deserving the name of 
 Poems; they are rhymed eloquence, 
 rhymed pathos, rhymed sense ; yet sel- 
 dom essentially melodious, aerial, poeti- 
 cal. Tarn O'Shanter itself, which enjoys 
 so high a favor, does not appear to us. 
 
Life of Burns. 119 
 
 at all decisively, to come under tins last 
 categoiy. It is not so miicli 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 modelling 
 of his supernatural ware, to strike anew 
 that deep mysterious chord of human 
 nature, which once responded to such 
 things; and which lives in us too, and 
 will forever live, though silent, or vibrat- 
 ing with far other notes, and to far dif- 
 ferent issues. Our German readers w^ill 
 understand us, wdien 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 fom 
 growth, but only ivy on a rock. The 
 piece does not properly coliere ; the 
 strange chasm which yawns in our in- 
 
120 Life of Burns. 
 
 credulous 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 phantasmagoria, painted 
 on ale-vapors, and the farce alone has 
 any reality. We do not say that Burns 
 should have made much more of this 
 tradition ; we rather think that, for 
 strictly poetical purposes, not much was 
 to be made of it. l!^either are we blind 
 to the deep, varied, genial power dis- 
 played in what he has actually accom- 
 plished : but we find far more '' Shaks- 
 pearian" qualities, as these of Tarn 
 O^Shanter have been fondly named, in 
 many of his other pieces ; nay, we in- 
 cline to believe, that this latter might 
 have been written, all but quite as well, 
 by a man who, in place of genius, had 
 only possessed talent. 
 
 Perhaps we may venture to say, that 
 
Life of Burns. 121 
 
 tlie most strictly poetical of all his 
 " poems " is one, wliicli does not appear 
 in Carrie's Edition ; but has been often 
 printed before and since, nnder the hum- 
 ble title of The Jolly Beggars. The 
 subject truly is among the lowest 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 
 thoroughl}^ compacted; melted together, 
 refined ; and poured forth in one flood 
 of true liquid harmony. It is light, 
 airy, and soft of movement ; yet sharp 
 and precise in its details ; every face is 
 a portrait : that raude carlin^ that wee 
 Apollo^ that Son of Mars^ are Scottish, 
 yet ideal ; the scene is at once a dream, 
 and the very Eag-castle of "Poosie- 
 Nansie." Farther, it seems in a consid- 
 erable degree complete, a real self-sup- 
 porting Whole, which is the highest 
 merit in a poem. The blanket of the 
 night is drawn asunder for a moment ; 
 
122 Life of Burns. 
 
 in full, ruddy, and flaming liglit, these 
 rougli tatterdemalions are seen in their 
 boisterous revel ; for the strong pulse of 
 Life vindicates its right to gladness even 
 here ; and when the curtain closes, we 
 prolong the action without eifort; the 
 next day, as the last, onr Caird and our 
 Balladmonger are singing and soldier- 
 ing ; tlieir " brats and callets " are hawk- 
 ing, begging, cheating ; and some other 
 night, in new combinations, they will 
 ring from Fate another hour of wassail 
 and good cheer. It would be strange, 
 doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's 
 writings ; we mean to say only, that it 
 seems to us the most perfect of its kind, 
 as a piece of poetical composition, 
 strictly so called. In the Beggar's Ojpera^ 
 in the Beggar^ s Busily as other critics 
 have already remarked, there is nothing 
 which, in real poetic vigor, equals this 
 Cantata ; nothing, as we think, which 
 comes within many degrees of it. 
 
Life of Burns. 123 
 
 But l)j far the most finished, complete, 
 and truly inspired pieces of Burns are, 
 without dispute, to be found among his 
 Songs. It is here that, although through 
 a small aperture, his light shines with 
 the least obstruction; in its highest 
 beauty-, and pure sunny clearness. The 
 reason may be, that Song is a brief and 
 simple species of composition : and re- 
 quires nothing so mncli for its perfection 
 as genuine poetic feeling, genuine music 
 of heart. The Song has its rules equally 
 with the Tragedy ; rules which in most 
 cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases 
 are not so much as felt. We mi^ht 
 wu-ite a long essay on the Songs of 
 Burns ; which we reckon by far the best 
 that Britain has yet produced ; for, in- 
 deed, since the era of Queen Elizabeth, 
 we know not that, by any other hand, 
 aught truly worth attention has been 
 accomplished in this department. True, 
 we have songs enough " by persons of 
 
124: Life of Burns. 
 
 quality ;" we have tawdry, hollow, wine- 
 bred, madrigals; many a rhymed 
 '' speech " in the flowing and watery 
 vein of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop, 
 rich in sonorous words, and, for moral, 
 dashed perhaps with some tint of a sen- 
 timental sensuality; all which many 
 persons cease not from endeavoring to 
 sing : though for most part, we fear, the 
 music is but from the throat outward, or 
 at best from some region far enough 
 short of \h.Q Soul / not in which, but in 
 a certain inane Limbo of the Fancy, or 
 even in some vaporous debatable land 
 on the outside of the IsTervous System, 
 most of such madrigals and rhymed 
 speeches seem to have originated. With 
 the Songs of Burns we must not name 
 these things. Independently of the clear, 
 manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever 
 pervades his poetry, his Songs are hon- 
 est in another point of view : in form as 
 well as in sj)irit. They do not affect to 
 
Life of Burns. 125 
 
 be set to music ; but tliey actually and 
 in themselves are music ; they have re- 
 ceived their life, and fashioned them- 
 selves together, in the medium of Har- 
 mony, as Yenus rose from the bosom 
 of the sea. The story, the feeling, is 
 not detailed, but suggested; not said., 
 or spouted, in rhetorical completeness 
 and coherence ; but sung^ in fitful gushes, 
 in glowing hints, in fantastic breaks, in 
 vjarUings not of the voice only, but of 
 the whole mind. "We consider this to 
 be the essence of a song ; and that no 
 songs- since the little careless catches, 
 and, as it were, drops of song, which 
 Shakspeare has here and there sprinkled 
 over his plays, fulfil this condition in 
 nearly the same degree as most of 
 Burns's do. Such grace and truth of 
 external movement, too, presupposes in 
 general a corresponding force and truth 
 of sentiment, and inward meaning. The 
 Songs of Burns are not more perfect in 
 
126 Life of Burns. 
 
 the former quality than in the latter. 
 "With what tenderness he sings, yet with 
 what vehemence and entireness ! There 
 is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the 
 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 farther take into 
 account the immense variety of his sub- 
 jects ; how, from the loud flowing revel 
 in Willie 'breio'd a jpeck 6' Maiit^ to the 
 still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness iov Ifcci^y 
 in Heaven / from the glad kind greeting 
 of Aitld Langsyne^ or the comic arch- 
 ness of Duncan Gray^ to the fire-eyed 
 fury of Scots^ %clia liae wi^ Wallace hled^ 
 he has found a tone and words for every 
 mood of man's heart, — it will seem a 
 small praise if we rank him as the first 
 of all our song-w^riters ; for we know not 
 
L^f^ of Burns. 127 
 
 where to find one wortlij of being 
 second to him. ^ 
 
 It is on his Songs, as we believe, that 
 Burns's chief influence 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 
 equalled himself with Legislators, on 
 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 the ends of 
 the earth speak a British language. Li 
 hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself 
 in the joy and wo of existence, the name, 
 the voice of that joy and that wo, is the 
 name and voice which Burns has ffiven 
 them. Strictly speaking, perhaps, no 
 British man has so deeply aff'ected the 
 thoughts and feelings of so many men 
 
128 Life of Burns. 
 
 as this solitary and altogether private 
 individual, with means apparently the 
 humblest. 
 
 In another point of view, moreover, 
 we incline to think that Burns's influ- 
 ence may have been considerable : we 
 mean, as exerted specially on the Lite- 
 rature of his country, at least on the 
 Literature of Scotland. Among the 
 great changes which British, particu- 
 larly Scottish literature, has undergone 
 since that period, one of the greatest 
 will be found to consist in its remarka- 
 ble increase of nationality. Even the 
 English writers, most popular in Burns's 
 time, were little distinguished for their 
 literary patriotism, in this its best sense. 
 A certain attenuated cosmopolitanism 
 had, in good measure, taken place of 
 the old insular home-feeling ; literature 
 was, as it were, without any local envi- 
 ronment — was not nourished by the 
 affections which spring from a native 
 
-^i^^ ^f Burns. 129 
 
 soil. Our Grays and Glovers seemed 
 to write almost as if in vacuo ; the thing 
 written bears no mark of place ; it is not 
 written so much for Englishmen, as for 
 men ; or rather, which is the inevitable 
 result of this, for certain Generalizations 
 which philosophy termed men. Gold- 
 smith is an exception ; not so Johnson ; 
 the scene of his EamUer is little more 
 English than that of his Basselas. But 
 if such was, in some degree, the case 
 with England, it was, in the highest 
 degree, the case with Scotland. In fact, 
 our Scottish literature had, at that peri- 
 od, a very singular aspect ; unexampled, 
 so f\ir as we know, except perhaps at 
 Geneva, where the same state of matters 
 appears still to continue. For a long 
 period after Scotland became British, 
 we had no literature : at the date when 
 xiddison and Steele were writins: their 
 Spectators^ our good Thomas Boston was 
 writing, with the noblest intent, but 
 9 
 
130 Life of Burns. 
 
 alike in defiance of grammar and phil- 
 osophy, his Fourfold State of Man. 
 Then came the schisms in our National 
 Church, and the fiercer schisms in our 
 Body Politic : Theologic ink, and Jaco- 
 bite blood, with gaul enough in both 
 cases, seemed to have blotted out the 
 intellect of the country ; however, it Avas 
 only obscured, not obliterated. Lord 
 Karnes made nearly the first attempt, 
 and a tolerably clumsy one, at writing 
 English ; and, ere long, Hume, Robert- 
 son, Smith, and a whole host of follow- 
 ers, attracted hither the eyes of all 
 Europe. And yet in this brilliant re- 
 suscitation of our " fervid genius," there 
 was nothing truly Scottish, nothing in- 
 digenous; except, perhaps, the natural 
 impetuosity of intellect, which we some- 
 times claim, and are sometimes upbraid- 
 ed with, as a characteristic of onr nation. 
 It is curious to remark that Scotland, so 
 full of writers, had no Scottish culture, 
 
Life of Burns. 131 
 
 iior indeed any English ; our culture 
 was almost exclusively French. It was 
 by studying Racine and Yoltaire, Bat- 
 teux and Boileau, that Kames had 
 trained himself to be a critic and phil- 
 osopher: it was the light of Montes- 
 quieu and Mably that guided Robertson 
 in his political speculations : Quesnay's 
 lamp that kindled the lamp of Adam 
 Smith. Hume was too rich a man to 
 borrow ; and perhaps he reached on the 
 French more than he was acted on by 
 them : but neither had he aught to do 
 with Scotland ; Edinburgh, equally with 
 La Fleche, was but the lodging and 
 laboratory, in which he not so much 
 morally Uved^ as metaphysically inves- 
 tigated. ISTever, perhaps, was there a 
 class of writers, so clear and well-or- 
 dered, 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 
 
132 Life of Burns. 
 
 unpatriotic; but their general defici- 
 ency in moral principle, not to say tlieir 
 avowed sensuality and unbelief in all 
 virtue, strictly so called, render tliis 
 accountable enough. We hope there is 
 a patriotism founded on something bet- 
 ter than prejudice ; that our country 
 may be dear to us, without injury to 
 our philosophy ; that in loving and 
 justly prizing all other lands, we may 
 prize justly, and yet love before all 
 others, our own stern Mothei-land, and 
 the venerable structure of social and 
 moral Life, which Mind has through 
 long ages been building up for us there. 
 Surely there is nourishment for the bet- 
 ter part of man's heart in all this : surely 
 the 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 pro- 
 pensities: the field of their life shows 
 
Life of Burns. 133 
 
 neither briers nor roses ; but only a flat, 
 continuous tlirasliing-floor for Logic, 
 whereon all questions, from the " Doc- 
 trine of Eent," to the " l^atural History 
 of Religion," are thrashed and sifted 
 with the same mechanical impartiality ! 
 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 they may have, 
 no longer live among us like a French 
 Colony, or some knot of Propaganda 
 Missionaries ; but like natural-born sub- 
 jects of the soil, partaking and sympa- 
 thizing in all our attachments, humors, 
 and habits. Our literature no longer 
 grows in water, but in mould, and with 
 the true racy virtues of the soil and cli- 
 mate. How much of this change may 
 be due to Burns, or to any other indi- 
 vidual, it might be difiicult to estimate. 
 Direct literary imitation of Burns was 
 
134 
 
 Life of Burns, 
 
 not to be looked for. But his example, 
 in the fearless adoption of domestic sub- 
 jects, could not but operate from afar; 
 and certainly in no heart did the love 
 of country ever burn with a warmer 
 glow than in that of Burns : " a tide of 
 Scottish prejudice," as 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- 
 gates shut in eternal rest." It seemed 
 to him, as if lie 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 
 liow eagerly he entered on it ; how de- 
 votedly he labored there ! In his most 
 toilsome journeyings, 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 
 
Life of Bums. 135 
 
 from the oblivion that was covering it ! 
 These were early feelings, and they 
 abode with him to the end. 
 
 -a wish, (I mind its power,) 
 
 A wish, that to my latest hour 
 Will strongly heave my breast; 
 That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
 Some useful plan or book could make, 
 Or sing a sang at least. 
 The rough bur Thistle spreading wide 
 
 Am-ang the bearded bear, 
 I turn'd my weeding-clips aside. 
 
 And spared the symbol dear. 
 
 But to leave the mere literary charac- 
 ter of Burns, which has already detained 
 us too long, we cannot but think that the 
 Life he willed, and was fated to lead 
 among his fellow-men, is both more in- 
 teresting and instructive than any of 
 his written works. Tliese Poems are 
 but like little rhymed fragments scat- 
 tered here and there in the grand un- 
 rhymed Romance of his eartlily exist- 
 ence ; and it is only when intercalated in 
 
136 Life of Burns. 
 
 this at their proper places, that they attain 
 their full measure of significance. And 
 this too, alas, was but a fragment ! The 
 plan of a mighty edifice had been sketch- 
 ed ; some columns, porticoes, firm masses 
 of building, stand completed; the rest 
 more or less clearly indicated; with 
 many a far-stretching tendency, which 
 only studious and friendly eyes can now 
 trace towards the purposed termination. 
 For the work is broken oif in the middle, 
 almost in the beginning ; and rises among 
 us, beautiful and sad, at once unfinished 
 and a ruin ! If charitable j udgment was 
 necessary in estimating his poems, and 
 justice required that the aim and the 
 manifest power to fulfil it must often be 
 accepted for the fulfilment ; much more 
 is this the case in regard to his life, the 
 sum and result of all his endeavors, 
 where his difficulties came upon him not 
 in detail only, but in mass ; and so much 
 
Life of Burns. 137 
 
 has been left unaccomplished, nay, was 
 mistaken, and altogether marred. 
 
 Properly speaking, there is but one 
 era in the life of Burns, and that the 
 earliest. We have not youth and man- 
 hood ; but only youth : for, to the end, 
 we discern no decisive change in the 
 complexion of his character; in his 
 thirty-seventh year, he is still, as it were, 
 in youth. With all that resoluteness of 
 judgment, that penetrating insight, and 
 singular maturity of intellectual power, 
 exhibited in his writings, he never at- 
 tains to any clearness regarding himself; 
 to the last he never ascertains his pecu- 
 liar aim, even with such distinctness as 
 is common among ordinary men ; and 
 therefore never can pursue it with that 
 singleness of will, which insures success 
 and some contentment to such men. To 
 the last, he wavers between two purposes : 
 glorying in his talent, like a true poet, 
 he yet cannot consent to make this his 
 
138 Life of Burns. 
 
 chief and sole glory, and to follow it as 
 the one thing needful, through poverty 
 or riches, through good or evil report. 
 Another far meaner ambition still cleaves 
 to him ; he must dream and struggle 
 about a certain "Rock of Independ- 
 ence ;" which, natural and even admira- 
 ble as it might be, was still but a warring 
 with the world, on the comparitively 
 insignificant ground of his being more 
 or less completely supplied with money, 
 than others ; of his standing at a higher, 
 or at a lower altitude in general estima- 
 tion, than others. For the world still 
 appears to him, as to the young, in bor- 
 rowed colors ; he expects from it what 
 it cannot give to any man ; seeks for con- 
 tentment, not within himself, in action 
 and wise effort, but from without, in the 
 kindness of circumstances, in love, friend- 
 ship, honor, pecuniary ease. He would 
 be happy, not actively and in himself, 
 but passively, and from some ideal cor- 
 
Life of Burns. 139 
 
 nucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by 
 his own labor, but showered on him by 
 the beneficence of Destiny. Thus, like 
 a young man, he cannot steady himself 
 for any fixed or systematic pursuit, but 
 swerves to and fro, between passionate 
 hope, and remorseful disappointment: 
 rushing onwards with a deep tempestuous 
 force, he surmounts or breaks asunder 
 many a barrier ; travels, nay, advances 
 far, but advancing only under 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 fitted and appointed. 
 
 We do not say these things in dispraise 
 of Burns : nay, perhaps, they but inter- 
 est us the more in his favor. This bless- 
 ing is not given soonest to the best ; but 
 rather, it is often the greatest minds that 
 are latest in obtaining it ; for where most 
 
140 Life of Burns. 
 
 is to be developed, most time may be 
 required to develope it. A complex con- 
 dition had been assigned him from with- 
 out, as complex a condition from within : 
 no "pre-established harmony" existed 
 between the clay soil of Mossgiel and 
 the empyrean soul of Kobert Burns ; it 
 was not wonderful, therefore, that the 
 adjustment between them should have 
 been long postponed, and his arm long 
 cumbered, and his sight confused, in so 
 vast 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 him, too, we can trace no such ad- 
 justment, no such moral manhood; but 
 at best, and only a little before his end, 
 the beginning of what seemed such. 
 
 By much the most striking incident 
 in Burns's Life is his journey to Edin- 
 burgh ; but perhaps a still more impor- 
 
Life of Btirns. 141 
 
 tant one is his residence at Irvine, so 
 early as in his twenty-third year. Hith- 
 erto his hfe had been poor and toilworn ; 
 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 : his father was 
 a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest 
 character, 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, 
 and fearless towards all that God has 
 made ; in one word, though but a hard- 
 handed peasant, a complete and fully 
 unfolded Man. 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 ever 
 
142 Life of Burns, 
 
 so little, the whole might have issued 
 far otherwise. Mighty events turn on a 
 straw ; the crossing of a brook decides 
 the conquest of the world. Had this 
 William Burns's small seven acres of 
 nursery ground anywise prospered, the 
 boy Robert had been sent to school ; had 
 struggled forward, as so many weaker 
 men do, to some university ; come forth 
 not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular 
 well-trained intellectual workman, and 
 changed the whole course of British Lit- 
 erature, — 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 school-system: 
 Burns remained a hard-worked plough- 
 boy, and British literature took its own 
 course. ^Nevertheless, even in this rug- 
 ged scene, there is much to nourish him. 
 If he drudges, it is with his brother, and 
 for his father and mother, whom he 
 loves, and would fain shield from want. 
 
Life of Burns. 143 
 
 Wisdom is not banished from their poor 
 hearth, nor the bahn of natural feeling : 
 the solemn words, Let its loorship God^ 
 are heard there from a " priest-like 
 father;" if threatenings of unjust men 
 throw mother and children into tears, 
 these are tears not of grief only, but of 
 holiest affection ; every heart in that 
 humble group feels itself the closer knit 
 to every other ; in their hard warfare 
 they are there together, a " little band 
 of brethren." Neither are such tears, 
 and the deep beauty that dwells in them, 
 their only portion. Light visits the 
 liearts as it does the eyes of all living : 
 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 
 liumor of character has been given hini; 
 and so the tliick-coming shapes of evil 
 are welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, 
 and in their closest pressure he bates no 
 
144: Life of Burns. 
 
 jot of heart or hope. Yague yearnings 
 of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; 
 dreamy fancies hang like cloud-cities 
 around him ; the curtain of Existence is 
 slowly rising, in many-colored splen- 
 dor and gloom : and the auroral 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 jor, 
 
 Behind his plough, upon the mountain side !" 
 
 We 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 forth into looser, louder, more excit- 
 ing society; and becomes initiated in 
 those dissipations, those vices, which a 
 certain class of philosophers have assert- 
 
Life of Bairns. - 145 
 
 ed to be a natural preparative for enter- 
 ing on active life ; a kind of mud-bath, 
 in which the youth is, as it were, neces- 
 sitated to steep, and, w^e suppose, cleanse 
 liimself, before the real toga of Manliood 
 can be laid on him. We shall not dis- 
 pute much with this class of philoso- 
 phers ; we hope they are mistaken ; for 
 Sin and Ee morse so easily beset us at all 
 stages of life, and are always such indif- 
 ferent company, that it seems hard we 
 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 lep- 
 rous armada. AYe hope it is not so. 
 Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be 
 the training one receives in this service, 
 but only our determining to desert from 
 it, that fits for true manly Action. We 
 become men, not after we have been dis- 
 sipated, and disappointed in the chase 
 of false pleasure ; but after we have as- 
 certained, in any way, what impassable 
 10 
 
146 Life of Burns, 
 
 barriers hem us in through tliis life ; how 
 mad it is to hope for contentment to our 
 infinite soul from the gifts of this ex- 
 tremely finite world ! that a man must 
 be sufficient for himself ; and that "for 
 suffering and enduring there is no rem- 
 edy but striving and doing." Manhood 
 begins when w^e have in any w^ay made 
 truce with E'ecessity; begins, at all 
 events, when we have surrendered to ITe- 
 cessity, as the most part only do ; but be- 
 gins joyfully and hopefully only when we 
 have reconciled ourselves to Eecessit}^ ; 
 and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, 
 and felt that in ]N"ecessity 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 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, 
 
Life of Burns. 147 
 
 when the heart is grown hard, and ma}^ 
 be broken before it will become contrite ! 
 Had Burns continued to learn this, as he 
 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. 
 
 It seems to us another circumstance 
 of fatal import in 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 fight- 
 ing man of the ]N"ew-Light Priesthood, 
 in their highly unprofitable warfare. 
 At the tables of these free-minded clergy, 
 he learned much more than was needful 
 for him. Such liberal ridicule of fanat- 
 icism awakened in his mind scruples 
 about Religion itself; and a whole world 
 of Doubts, which it required quite an- 
 other set of conjurors than these men 
 to exorcise. We do not say that such 
 
148 Life of Burns. 
 
 an intellect as his could have escaped 
 similar doubts, at some period of his his- 
 tory ; or even that he could, at a later 
 period, have come through them alto- 
 gether victorious 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 example from 
 without, by " passions raging like de- 
 mons" from within, he had little need 
 of skeptical misgivings to whisper trea- 
 son in \}L\<d heat of the battle, or to cut 
 off his retreat if he were already defeated. 
 He loses his feeling of innocence; his 
 mind is at variance with itself; the old di- 
 vinity no longer presides there ; but wild 
 Desires and wild Repentance alternately 
 oppress him. Ere long, too, he has com- 
 mitted himself before the world; his 
 character for sobriety, dear to a Scottish 
 peasant, as few corrupted worldings can 
 even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes 
 
Life of Burns. U9 
 
 of men ; and his only refuge consists in 
 trying to disbelieve liis guiltiness, and is 
 but a refuge of lies. The blackest des- 
 peration now gathers over him, broken 
 only by the red lightnings of remorse. 
 The whole fabric of his life is blasted 
 asunder ; for now not only his character, 
 but his personal liberty, is to be lost; 
 men and Fortime are leagued for his 
 hurt; "hungry Euin has him in the 
 wind." He sees no escape but the sad- 
 dest of all : exile from his loved country, 
 to a country in every sense inhospitable 
 and abhorrent to 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 : 
 
 "Fare^yell, my friends, farewell my foes! 
 My peace with these, my love with those : 
 The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
 Adieu, my native banks of Ayr !" 
 
 Light breaks suddenly in on him in 
 
150 Life of Biorns. 
 
 floods ; but still a false transitory light, 
 and no real sunshine. He is invited to 
 Edinburgh ; hastens thither with antici- 
 pating heart ; is welcomed as in triumph, 
 and with universal blandishment and 
 acclamation ; whatever is wisest, what- 
 ever is greatest, or loveliest there, gath- 
 ers round him, to gaze on his face, to 
 show him honor, sympathy, affection. 
 Burns's appearance among the sages 
 and nobles of Edinburgh, must be re- 
 garded as one of the most singular phe- 
 nomena in modern Literature; almost 
 like the appearance of some ^Napoleon 
 amono^ the crowned sovereifi^ns of mod- 
 ern 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- 
 tion turns his too weak head ; but he 
 stands there oh his own basis ; cool, un- 
 astonished, holding his equal rank from 
 
Life of Burns. 151 
 
 IS^atiire herself; putting forth no claim 
 which there is not strength in him, as 
 well as about him, to vindicate. Mr. 
 Lockhart has some forcible observations 
 on this point : 
 
 '' It needs no effort of imagination," 
 says he, " to conceive what the sensa- 
 tions of an isolated set of scholars 
 (almost all either clergymen or profes- 
 sors) must have been, in the presence 
 of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny 
 stranger, with his great flashing eyes, 
 who, having forced his way among 
 them from the plough-tail, at a single 
 stride, manifested in the whole strain of 
 his bearing and conversation, a most 
 thorough 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 occasional symptom 
 of being flattered by their notice ; by 
 turns calmly measured himself against 
 
152 Life of Burns. 
 
 the most cultivated understandings of 
 liis time in discussion ; overpowered the 
 hon mots of the most celebrated con- 
 vivialists by broad floods of merriment, 
 impregnated with all the burning life 
 of genius ; astounded bosoms habitually 
 enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of 
 social reserve, by compelling them to 
 tremble, — nay, to tremble visibly, — be- 
 neath the fearless touch of natural 
 pathos ; and all this without indicating 
 the smallest willingness to be ranked 
 among those professional 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 j^ersons, 
 even if they had the power of doing it ; 
 and last, and probably worst of all, who 
 was known to be in the habit of en- 
 livening societies which they would 
 have scorned to approach, still more 
 frequently than their own, with elo- 
 
Life of Biirns. 153 
 
 quence no less magnificent; with wit, 
 in all likelihood still more daring ; often 
 enough as the superiors whom he front- 
 ed without alarm might have guessed 
 from the beginning, and had, ere long, 
 no occasion to guess, with wit pointed 
 at themselves." 
 
 The farther we remove from this 
 scene, the more singular will it seem to 
 us : details of the exterior aspect of it 
 are already full of interest. Most read- 
 ers recollect Mr. Walker's personal in- 
 terviews with Burns as among the best 
 passages of his ]^arrative ; a time will 
 come when this reminiscence of Sir 
 Walter Scott's, slight though it is, will 
 also be precious. 
 
 "As for Burns/' writes Sir Yv^alter, 
 " I may truly say Yergilium vidi tantiom. 
 I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when 
 he came first to Edinburgh, but had 
 sense and feeling enough to be much 
 interested in his poetry, and would have 
 
154 Life of Burns. 
 
 given the world to know liim : but I 
 had very little acquaintance with any 
 literary people ; and still less with the 
 gentry of the west country, the two sets 
 that he most frequented. 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 opportunity to keep his word ; 
 otherwise I might have seen more of 
 this distinguished man. As it was, I 
 saw him one day at the late venerable 
 Professor Ferguson's, wliere there were 
 several gentlemen of literary reputation, 
 amonc: whom I remember the celebrated 
 Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we 
 youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. 
 The only thing I remember, which was 
 remarkable in Burns's manner, was the 
 effect produced upon him by a print of 
 Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying 
 dead on the snow, his dog sitting in mis- 
 ery on one side, — on the other, his 
 
Life of Burns. 155 
 
 widow, with a child in her arms. These 
 lines were written beneath : 
 
 " Cold on 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 the 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-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, call- 
 ed by the unpromising title of "The 
 Justice of Peace." I whispered my in- 
 formation to a friend i3resent, he men- 
 tioned 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. 
 
 "His person was strong and robust; 
 
156 ^^^f^ of Burns. 
 
 his manners rustic, not clownisli ; a sort 
 of dignified plainness and simplicity, 
 wliicli received part of its effect perhaps 
 from one's knowledge of his extraordin- 
 ary talents. His features are represent- 
 ed in Mr. Nasmyth's picture : but to 
 me it conveys the 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 
 who keep laborers for their drudgeiy, 
 but the douce gudeman who lield liis 
 own plough. There w^as a strong ex- 
 pression of sense and shrewdness in all 
 his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, 
 indicated the poetical character and 
 temperament. It was large, and of a 
 dark cast, which glowed (I say literally 
 glowed) when he spoke with feeling or 
 
Life of Burns. 157 
 
 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 pre- 
 sumption. Among the men who were 
 the most learned of their time and 
 country, he expressed himself with per- 
 fect firmness, but without the least in- 
 trusive forwardness ; and when he dif- 
 fered in opinion, he did not hesitate to 
 express it firmly, yet at the same time 
 with modesty. I do not remember 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) the efforts made for 
 his relief were extremely trifling. 
 
 " I remember, on this occasion, I men- 
 
158 Life of Burns. 
 
 tion, I thought Burn-s's acquaintance 
 with English poetry was rather limited; 
 and also, that having twenty times the 
 abilities of Allan Eamsay and of Fer- 
 guson, he talked of them with too much 
 humility as his models : there w^as doubt- 
 less national predilection in his estimate. 
 "This is all I can tell j^ou 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 do not speak 
 in malam jpartem^ when I say, I never 
 saw a man in company with his superi- 
 ors in station or information more per- 
 fectly 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 defer- 
 ential, and always with a turn either to 
 the pathetic or humorous, wdiich engaged 
 their attention particularly. I have 
 heard the late Duchess of Gordon re- 
 
Life of Burns. 159 
 
 mark this. I do not know any tiling 
 I can add to these recollections of forty 
 years since." 
 
 The conduct of Burns under this daz- 
 zling blaze of favor; the calm, unaf- 
 fected, 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 
 integrity of mind. A little natural vanity, 
 some touches of hypocritical modesty, 
 some glimmerings of affectation, at least 
 some fear of being thought affected, w^e 
 could have pardoned in almost any man ; 
 but no such indication is to be traced 
 here. In his unexampled situation the 
 young peasant is not a moment per- 
 plexed ; so many strange lights do not 
 confuse him, do not lead him astray. 
 iSTevertheless, we cannot but perceive 
 that this winter did him great and last- 
 ing injury. A somewhat clearer knowl- 
 edge of men's affairs, scarcely of their 
 
160 Life of Burns. 
 
 characters, it did afford liim : but a 
 sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal ar- 
 rangements in their social destiny it also 
 left with him. He had seen the gay 
 and gorgeous arena, in which the power- 
 ful are born to play 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 tliat splendid game. 
 From this time a jealous, indignant fear 
 of social degradation takes possession of 
 him ; and perverts, so far as aught could 
 pervert, his private contentment, and 
 his feelings towards his richer fellows. 
 It was clear enough to Burns that he 
 had talent enough to make a foi'tune, 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 make one. Unhappy 
 it was that he had not power to choose 
 the one, and reject the other; but must 
 
Life of Burns. 161 
 
 halt forever between two opinions, two 
 objects ; making liam]3ered advancement 
 towards either. But so is it with many 
 men : we " long for the merchandise, 
 yet wonld fain keep the price ;" and so 
 stand chaffering with Fate in vexatious 
 altercation, till the IS'ight come, and our 
 fair is over ! 
 
 The Edinburgh learned of that period 
 were in general more noted for clearness 
 of head than for warmth of heart : with 
 the exception of the good old Blacklock, 
 wdiose help was too ineffectual, scarcely 
 one among them seems to have looked 
 at Burns with any true sympathy, or in- 
 deed much otherwise than as at a highly 
 curious thing. By the great, also, he is 
 treated in the customary fashion ; enter- 
 tained at their tables, and dismissed: 
 certain modica of pudding and praise 
 are, from time to time, gladly exchanged 
 for the fascination of his presence ; which 
 exchange once effected, the bargain is 
 11 
 
162 Life of Burns. 
 
 finished, and each party goes his several 
 way. At the end of this strange sea- 
 son, Burns gloomily snms up his gains 
 and losses, and meditates on the chaotic 
 future. In money he is somewhat rich- 
 er ; in fame and the show of happiness, 
 infinitely richer; but in the substance 
 of it, as poor as ever. ISTay, poorer, for 
 his heart is now maddened still more 
 with the fever of mere worldly Ambi- 
 tion : and through long years the disease 
 will rack him with unprofitable sufi'er- 
 ings, and weaken his strength for all 
 true and nobler aims. 
 
 Wliat Burns was next to do or avoid ; 
 how a man so circumstanced was now 
 to guide himself towards his true advan- 
 tage, might at this point of time have 
 been a question for the wisest: and it 
 w^as a question wdiicli he was left alto- 
 gether to answer for himself: of his 
 learned or rich patrons it had not struck 
 any individual to turn a thought on this 
 
Life of Burns. 163 
 
 so trivial matter. Witliont claiming for 
 Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we 
 must say, that his Excise and Farm 
 scheme does not seem to ns a very un- 
 reasonable one; and that we should be 
 at a loss, even now, to suggest one de- 
 cidedly better. Some of his admirers, 
 indeed, are scandalized at his ever re- 
 solving to gauge / and Tvould have had 
 him apparently lie still at the pool, till 
 the spirit of Patronage should stir the 
 waters, and then heal with one plunge 
 all his worldly sorrows ! We fear such 
 counsellors knew but little of Burns; 
 and did not consider that happiness 
 might in all cases be cheaply had by 
 waiting for the fulfilment of golden 
 dreams, were it not that in the interim 
 the dreamer must die of huno^er. It re- 
 fleets credit on the manliness and sound 
 sense of Burns, that he felt so early on 
 what ground he was standing ; and pre- 
 ferred self-help, on the humblest scale, 
 
164: Life of Biii^ns. 
 
 to dependence and inaction, though 
 with hope of far more splendid possibil- 
 ities. But even these possibilities were 
 not rejected in his scheme : he might 
 expect, if it chanced that he had any 
 friend, to rise, in no long period, into 
 something even like opulence and leis- 
 ure ; 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 pro- 
 fession." We think, then, tliat his plan 
 was honest and well calculated: all 
 turned on the execution of it. Doubt- 
 less it foiled ; yet not, we believe, from 
 any vice inherent in itself. Nay, after 
 all, it was no failure of external means, 
 but of interna], that overtook Burns. 
 His was no bankruptcy of the purse, but 
 of the soul ; to his last day, he owed no 
 man any thing. 
 
 Meanwhile he begins well ; with two 
 good and wise actions. His donation 
 
Life of ^nr7is. 165 
 
 to liis mother, munificent from a man 
 whose income had lately been seven 
 pounds ayear, was worthy of him, and 
 not more than worthy. Generous also, 
 and worthy of him, was his treatment 
 of the woman whose life's welfare now 
 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 as he proceeds ; for 
 the best teacher of duties, that still lie 
 dim to us, is the Practice of those we 
 see, and have at hand. Had the " pat- 
 rons 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 ambi- 
 tion would have died away. Toil and 
 Frugality w^ould have been welcome, 
 since Virtue dwelt with them, and poet- 
 ry would liave shone through them as 
 of old ; and in her clear ethereal light, 
 
-u 
 
 166 
 
 Life of Bums. 
 
 wliich was his own by birth-riglit, lie 
 might liave looked clown on his earthly 
 destiny, and all its obstructions, not with 
 patience only, but with love. 
 
 But the patrons of genius would not 
 have it so. Picturesque tourists,"^ all 
 manner of fashionable danglers after 
 literature, and, far worse, all manner of 
 convivial Mecsenases, hovered round 
 him in his retreat ; and his good as well 
 
 « There is one little sketch by certain " English gentlemen" 
 of this class, which, though adojited in Currie's Narrative, 
 and since then repeated in most others, we have all along felt 
 an invincible disposition to regard as imaginary : " On a rock 
 that projected into the stream they saw a man emjjloyed in 
 angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of 
 fox-skin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a 
 belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broad- 
 sword. It was Burns." Now, we rather think, it was not 
 Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox-skin cap, loose and 
 quite Hibernian watch-coat with the belt, what are we to make 
 of this "enormous Highland broad-sword" depending from 
 him? More especially, as there is no word of parish consta- 
 bles on the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he 
 had an eye to his own midriff, or that of the public ! Burns, 
 of all men, had the least tendency to seek for distinction, 
 either in his own eyes, or those of others, by such poor mum- 
 meries. 
 
Life of Burns. 167 
 
 as his weak qualities secured them in- 
 lliience over him. He was flattered by 
 fheir 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 believe, were proxi- 
 mately the means of his ruin. Not that 
 rhey meant him any ill ; they only meant 
 themselves a little good ; if he suffered 
 harm, let liiin look to it ! But they 
 wasted his precious time and his pre- 
 cious talent; they disturbed his compos- 
 ure, broke down his returning liabits of 
 temperance and assiduous contented ex- 
 ertion. Their pampering was baneful 
 to him ; their cruelty, which soon follow- 
 ed, was equally baneful. The old grudge 
 against Fortune's inequality awoke with 
 new bitterness in their neighborhood, 
 and Burns had no retreat but to the 
 " Kock of Independence," which is but 
 an air-castle, after all, that looks well 
 at a distance, but will screen no one 
 
168 Life of Burns. 
 
 from real wind and wet. Flushed with 
 irregular excitement, exasperated alter- 
 nately by contempt of others, and con- 
 tempt of himself. Burns was no longer 
 regaining his peace of mind, but fast 
 losing it forever. There was a hollow- 
 ness at the heart of his life, for his con- 
 science did not now approve what he 
 w^as doing. 
 
 Amid the vapors of unwise enjoy- 
 ment, of bootless remorse, and angry 
 discontent w^itli Fate, his true loadstar, 
 a life of Poetry, with Poverty, nay, with 
 Famine if it must be so, was too often 
 altogether hidden from his eyes. And 
 yet he sailed a sea, where, without some 
 such guide, there was no right steering. 
 Meteors of French Politics rise before 
 him, but these were not his stars. An 
 accident this, which hastened, but did 
 not originate, his worst distresses. In 
 the mad contentions of that time, he 
 comes in collision with certain official 
 
Life of Burns. 169 
 
 Superiors ; is wounded bj tliem ; cruelly 
 lacerated, we should say, could a dead 
 mechanical implement, in any case, be 
 called cruel : and shrinks, in indignant 
 pain, into deeper self-seclusion, into 
 gloomier moodiness than ever. His life 
 has now lost its nnity : it is a life of 
 fragments ; led with little aim, beyond 
 the melancholy one of securing its own 
 continuance — in fits of wild false joy, 
 wdien such offered, and of black despon- 
 dency when they passed away. His 
 character before the world begins to suf- 
 fer : calumny is busy with him ; for a 
 miserable man makes more enemies 
 than friends. Some faults he has fallen 
 into, and a thousand misfortunes ; but 
 deep criminality is wdiat he stands ac- 
 cused of, and they that are not without 
 sin, cast the first stone at him ! For is 
 he not a w^ell- wisher of the French Rev- 
 olution, a Jacobin, and therefore in that 
 one act guilty of all? These accusa- 
 
170 Life of Bu7'7is. 
 
 tions, j^olitical and moral, it has since 
 appeared, were ftilse enough ; but the 
 world hesitated little to credit them. 
 JN^ay, his convivial Mecsenases them- 
 selves were not the last to do it. There 
 is reason to believe that, in his later 
 j^ears, the 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 pro- 
 vincial cities, behind the outmost breast- 
 work of Gentility, there to stand siege 
 and do battle against the intrusion of 
 Grocerdom, and Grazierdom, had actual- 
 ly 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 work of Mr. Lockhart's, 
 which will not out of our thoughts : 
 
 '' A gentleman of that country, whose 
 name I have already more than once 
 had occasion to refer to, has often told 
 
Life of Burns. 171 
 
 me that lie was seldom more grieved, 
 than when, riding into Dumfries one 
 fine summer evening about this time to 
 attend a country ball, he saw Burns 
 walking alone, on the shadj side of the 
 principal street of the town, while the 
 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 will- 
 ino: to reco2:nize him. The horseman 
 dismounted, and joined Burns, who, on 
 his proposing to cross the street, said : 
 'Kay, nay, my young 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 looked better than mony ane's new ; 
 But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hiug, 
 And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-biug. 
 
 * were we young, as we ance hae been, 
 We sud hae been galloping down on von green, 
 
172 Life of Burns. 
 
 And linking it ower the lily-white lea ! 
 
 And xvereiiamy heart light Ixoaddie.^ 
 
 It was little in Buriis's character to let 
 his feelings on certain subjects escape in 
 this fashion. He, immediately after re- 
 citing these verses, assumed the spright- 
 liness of his most pleasing manner ; and, 
 taking his young friend home with him, 
 entertained him very agreeably till 
 the hour of the ball arrived." 
 
 Alas ! when w^e think that Burns now 
 sleeps " where bitter indignation can no 
 longer lacerate his heart,"* and that 
 most of these fair dames and frizzled 
 gentlemen already lie at his side, where 
 the breastwork of gentility is quite 
 thrown down, — who would not sigh over 
 the thin delusions and foolish toys that 
 divide heart from heart, and make man 
 unmerciful to his brother ! 
 
 It was not now to be hoped that the 
 
 * VM smva indignatio cor lilterius lacerare neqidt. — 
 Swift's Epitaph. 
 
Life of Burns. 173 
 
 genius of Burns would ever reach ma- 
 turity, or accomplish ought worthy of 
 itself. His spirit was jarred in its mel- 
 ody ; not the soft breath of natural feel- 
 ing, but the rude hand of Fate, was now 
 sweeping over the strings. And 3^et 
 what harmony was in him, wdiat music 
 even in his discords ! How t"lie w^ild 
 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, the landlord and all his guests 
 w^ere assembled !" Some brief, pure mo- 
 ments of poetic life were yet appointed 
 him, in the composition of his Songs. 
 We can understand how he grasped at 
 this employment ; and how, too, he 
 spurned at all other reward for it but 
 what the labor itself brouo-ht him. For 
 
174 Life of Burns. 
 
 the soul of Burns, though scathed and 
 marred, was yet living in its full moral 
 strength, though sliarply conscious of its 
 errors and abasement : and here, in his 
 destitution and degradation, was one act 
 of seeming nobleness and self-devoted- 
 ness left even for him to perform. He felt, 
 too, that w^ith all the " thoughtless fol- 
 lies" that 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 zealous- 
 ly as a volunteer. Let us not grudge him 
 this last luxury of his existence ; let him 
 not have appealed to us in vain ! The 
 money w^as not necessary to him ; he 
 struggled through without it ; long since, 
 these guineas would have been gone, and 
 now the high-mindedness of refusing 
 
Life of Burns. 175 
 
 them will plead for him in all hearts for 
 ever. 
 
 We are here arrived at the crisis of 
 Burns's life ; for matters had now taken 
 such a shape with him as conld not long 
 continue. If improvement was not to 
 be looked for, Nature could only for a 
 limited time maintain this dark and 
 maddening warfare against the world 
 and itself. We are not medically in- 
 formed whether any continuance of 
 years was, at this period, probable for 
 Burns ; whether his death is to be look- 
 ed 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 
 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. Three gates of deliver- 
 ance, it seems to us, were open for 
 Burns : clear poetical activity, madness. 
 
176 -^'(/^ of Burns. 
 
 or death. The first, with longer life, 
 was still possible, though 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 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 coun- 
 try, where the hail-storms and fire-show- 
 ers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden 
 wayfarer at length lays down his load ! 
 Contemplating this sad end of Burns, 
 and how he sank unaided by any real 
 hel23, uncheered by any wise sympathy, 
 generous minds have sometimes figured 
 to themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, 
 that much might have been done for 
 him ; that by counsel, true afi'ection, and 
 
Life of Burns. 177 
 
 friendly ministrations, he might have 
 been saved to himself and the world. 
 ^ye question whether there is not more 
 tenderness of heart than soundness of 
 j udgment in these suggestions. It seems 
 dubious to us whether the richest, wisest, 
 most benevolent individual, could have 
 lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, 
 which seldom profits any one, he did 
 not need ; in his understanding, he knew 
 the right from, the wrong, as well per- 
 haps as any man ever did ; but the per- 
 suasion, which would have availed him, 
 lies not so much in the head, as in the 
 heart, where no argument or expostula- 
 tion could have assisted much to im- 
 plant it. As to money again, we do not 
 really believe that this was his essential 
 want ; or well see how any private man 
 could, even presupposing Burns's con- 
 sent, have bestowed on him an inde- 
 pendent fortune, with much prospect of 
 decisive advantage. It is a mortifying 
 
178 Life of Biirns. 
 
 truth, that two men in any rank of so- 
 ciety could hardly be found virtuous 
 enough to give money, and to take it, 
 as a necessary gift, without injury to the 
 moral entireness of one or both. But 
 so stands the fact: friendship, in tlie 
 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 observer of man- 
 ners has pronounced " Patronage," that 
 is, pecuniary or other economic further- 
 ance, 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 
 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 enough 
 
L^f^ ^f Burns. 179 
 
 o^rowins: out of that sentiment of Pride, 
 wliicli we inculcate and encourage as 
 tlie basis of our whole social morali- 
 ty. Many a poet has been poorer than 
 Burns; but no one was ever prouder: 
 and we may question, whetlier, without 
 great precautions, even a pension from 
 Eoyalty would not have galled and en- 
 cumbered, more than actually assisted 
 him. 
 
 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 accepted, or could 
 have proved very effectual. We shall 
 readily admit, however, that much was 
 to be done for Burns ; that many a poi- 
 soned arrow might have been warded 
 from his bosom ; many an entanglement 
 
180 Life of Burns. 
 
 in his path cut asunder by the hand of 
 the powerful ; and light and heat shed 
 on him from high places, would have 
 made his humble atmosphere more ge- 
 nial ; and the softest heart then breath- 
 ing" mifflit have lived and died with some 
 fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant fur- 
 ther, and for Burns it is granting much, 
 that with all his pride, he would have 
 thanked, even with exaggerated grati- 
 tude, any one who had cordially be- 
 friended him: patronage, unless once 
 cursed, needed not to have been twice 
 so. At all events, the poor promotion 
 he desired 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 no- 
 bility to have done. No part of all 
 this, however, did any of them do ; or 
 apparently attempt, or wish to do ; so 
 much is granted against them. But 
 
Life of Btorns. 181 
 
 what 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 
 Shakspeare ; as King Charles and his 
 cavaliers did Butler, as King Philip and 
 his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men 
 gather grapes of thorns? or shall w^e 
 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- 
 tish Bard, proud of his name and coun- 
 try ?" Were the nobility and gentry so 
 much as able rightly to help themselves ? 
 Had they not their game to preserve ; 
 their borough interests to strengthen ; 
 dinners, therefore, of various kinds to 
 eat and give ? Were their means more 
 than adequate to all this business, or 
 less than adequate 1 Less than adequate 
 
182 Life of Burns. 
 
 in general : few of them in reality were 
 richer than Burns ; many of them were 
 poorer ; for sometimes they had to wring 
 their snpplies, as with thnmbscrews, 
 from the hard hand ; and, in their need 
 of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy ; 
 which Burns was never reduced to do. 
 Let us pity and forgive them. The 
 game they preserved and shot, the din- 
 ners they ate and gave, the borough in- 
 terests they strengthened, the little Baby- 
 Ions they severally builded by the glory 
 of their might, are all melted, or melt- 
 ing back into the primeval Chaos, as 
 man's merely selfish endeavors are fated 
 to do : and here was an action extending, 
 in virtue of its worldly 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 
 lio-ht was not given them to do it. Let 
 us pity and forgive them. But, better 
 
Life of Burns. 183 
 
 than pity, let ns go and do otherioise. Hu- 
 man suffering did not end with the life of 
 Bui'DS ; neither was the solemn mandate, 
 " Love one another, bear one another's 
 burdens," given to the rich only, but to 
 all men. True, we shall find no Burns 
 to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our 
 pity : but celestial natures, groaning 
 under the fardels of a wxary life, we 
 shall still find ; and that wretchedness 
 which Fate has rendered voiceless and 
 tuneless^ is not the least wretched, but 
 the most. 
 
 Still we do not think that the blame 
 of Burns's failure lies chiefly with the 
 world. The w^orld, it seems to us, treat- 
 ed him with more, rather than with less 
 kindness, than it usually shows to such 
 men. It has ever, w^e fear, shown but 
 small favor to its Teachers ; hunger and 
 nakedness, perils and reviling, the pris- 
 on, the cross, the poison-chalice, have, 
 in most times and countries, been the 
 
184 Life of Biirns. 
 
 market-place 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 to old days ; 
 but the world's Martyrology was not 
 completed with these. Eoger Eacon 
 and Galileo languish in priestly dun- 
 geons, Tasso pines in the cell of a mad- 
 house, Camoens dies begging on the 
 streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so " 23er- 
 secuted they the Prophets," not in Ju- 
 dea only, but in all places wdiere men 
 have been. We reckon that every poet 
 of Burns's order is, or should be, a 
 prophet and teacher to his age ; that he 
 has no right therefore 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 world's goodness ; and 
 that the blame of his failure, as we have 
 said, lies not chiefly with the world. 
 
Life of Burns. 185 
 
 Where then does it lie ? We are 
 forced to answer: With himself ; it is 
 his inward, not his outward misfortunes, 
 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 fortune than of 
 good guidance. ISTature fashions no 
 creature without implanting in it the 
 strength needful for its action and dura- 
 tion ; least of all does she so neglect her 
 masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. 
 N^either can we believe that it is in the 
 power of any external circumstances 
 utterly to ruin the mind of a man ; nay, 
 if proper w^isdom be given him, even so 
 much as to affect its essential health and 
 beauty. The sternest sum-total of all 
 worldly misfortunes is Death ; nothing 
 more can lie in the cup of human wo : 
 yet many men, in all ages, have tri- 
 umphed over Death, and led it captive ; 
 
186 Life of Burns. 
 
 converting its physical victory into a 
 moral victory for themselves, into a seal 
 and immortal consecration 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 
 seasons; for without some portion of 
 this spirit, not of boisterous daring, but 
 of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial, in 
 all its forms, no good man, in any scene 
 or time, has ever attained to be good. 
 
 We have already stated the error of 
 Burns ; and mourned over it, rather 
 than blamed it. It was the want of 
 unity in his purposes, of consistency in 
 his aims ; the hapless attempt to mingle 
 in friendly union the common sjDirit of 
 the world with the spirit of poetry, 
 which is of a far different and altogether 
 irreconcilable nature. Burns was noth- 
 ing wholly, and Burns could be noth- 
 ing ; no man formed as he was can be 
 
Life of Burns. 187 
 
 any thing, by halves. The heart, not 
 of a mere hot-blooded, popular verse- 
 monger, or poetical Restaurateur^ but 
 of a true Poet and Singer, worthy of the 
 old religious heroic times, had been 
 given him : and he fell in an age, not 
 of heroism and religion, but of skepti- 
 cism, selfishness, and triviality, when 
 true Nobleness was little understood, 
 and its place supplied by a hollow, dis- 
 social, altogether barren and unfruitful 
 principle of Pride. The influences of 
 that age, his open, kind, susceptible na- 
 ture, to say nothing of his highly un- 
 toward situation, made it more than 
 usually difficult for him to repel or resist; 
 the better spirit that was within him ever 
 sternly demanded its rights, its supre- 
 macy ; he spent his life in endeavoring 
 to reconcile these two ; and lost it, as he 
 must have lost it, without reconciling 
 them here. 
 
 Barns was born poor ; and born also 
 
188 Life of Burns. 
 
 to continue poor, for he would not en- 
 deavor to be otherwise : this it had been 
 well could he have once for all admit- 
 ted, and considered as finally 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 un- 
 grateful destiny than his was ; and he 
 did not yield to it, but died courageous- 
 ly warring, and to all moral intents pre- 
 vailing, against it. True, Burns had lit- 
 tle means, had even little time for poet- 
 ry, his only real pursuit and vocation ; 
 but so much the more precious was 
 what little he had. In all these exter- 
 nal res^^ects his case was hard ; but very 
 far from the hardest. Poverty, inces- 
 sant 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 trai- 
 
Life of Burns. 189 
 
 tor ; and wrote his Essay on the Human 
 Understanding., sheltering himself in a 
 Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at 
 his ease, when he composed Paradise 
 Lost f JSTot only low, but fallen from a 
 height ; not only poor, but impoverish- 
 ed ; in darkness and with dangers com- 
 passed round, he sang his immortal song, 
 and found fit audience, though few. Did 
 not Cervantes finish his work, a maimed 
 soldier, and in prison? Nay, was not 
 the Araucana^ which Spain acknowl- 
 edges as its Epic, written without even 
 the aid of paper ; on scraps of leather, 
 as the stout fighter and voyager snatch- 
 ed any moment from that wild warfare ? 
 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 princi- 
 ple of morals ; and a single not a double 
 aim in their activity. They were not 
 self-seekers and self-worshippers ; but 
 
190 Life of Bicr7hs. 
 
 seekers and worshippers of something 
 far better than Self. ISTot personal en- 
 joyment was their object; but a high, 
 heroic idea of Keligion, of Patriotism, 
 of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the other 
 form, ever hovered before them ; in 
 which cause, they neither shrunk from 
 suffering, nor called on the earth to wit- 
 ness it as something wonderful ; but pa- 
 tiently endured, counting it blessedness 
 enough so to spend and be spent. Thus 
 the " golden calf of Self-love," however 
 curiously carved, was not their Deity ; 
 but the Invisible Goodness, which alone 
 is man's reasonable service. This feel- 
 ing was as a celestial fountain, whose 
 streams refreshed into gladness and 
 beauty all the provinces of their other- 
 wise too desolate existence. In a word, 
 they willed one thing, to which all other 
 things were subordinated, and made sub- 
 servient ; and therefore they accomplish- 
 ed it. The wedge will rend rocks ; but 
 
Life of Burns. 191 
 
 its edge must be sharp and single : if it 
 be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces 
 and will rend nothing. 
 
 Part of this superiority these men 
 owed to their age ; in which heroism 
 and devotedness were still practised, or 
 at least not yet disbelieved in ; but much 
 of it likewise the}^ owed to themselves. 
 With Burns again it was different. His 
 morality, in most of its practical points, 
 is that of a mere worldly man ; enjoy- 
 ment, in a finer or a coarser shape, is the 
 only thing he longs and. strives for. A 
 noble instinct sometimes raises him 
 above this ; but an instinct only, and 
 acting only for moments. He has no 
 Religion ; in the shallow age, where his 
 days were cast, Religion was not discrim- 
 inated from the N^ew and Old Lio-ht 
 
 o 
 
 forms of Religion ; and was, with these, 
 becoming obsolete in the minds of men. 
 His heart, indeed, is alive with a trem- 
 bling adoration, but there is no temple 
 
192 Life of Burns. 
 
 in his understanding. He lives in dark- 
 ness and in the shadow of doubt. His 
 religion, at best, is an anxious wish ; like 
 that of Rabelais, " a great Perhaps." 
 
 He loved Poetry warmly, and in his 
 heart ; could he but have loved it purely, 
 and with his whole undivided heart, it 
 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 ex- 
 tinguished within him, yet rises not to be 
 the true light of his path, but is often a 
 wildfire that misleads him. It was not 
 necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or 
 to seem, "independent;^' but it was 
 necessary for him to be at one with his 
 own heart; to place what was highest 
 in his nature, highest also in his life ; '' to 
 seek within himself for that consistency 
 and sequence, which external events 
 
-^i^^ ^f Burns. 193 
 
 would for ever refuse him." He was 
 born a poet; poetry was the celestial 
 element 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 other elevation: Pov- 
 erty, 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 man, with clear 
 recognition, with brotlierly affection, 
 with sympathy, with pity. ISTay, we 
 question whether for his culture as a 
 Poet, poverty, and much suffering for 
 a season, were not absolutely advanta- 
 geous. Great men, in looking back 
 over their lives, have testified to that 
 effect. " I would not for much," says 
 Jean Paul, "that I had been born 
 
194 Life of Bums. 
 
 riclier." And yet Paul's birth was poor 
 enough ; for, in another place, he adds ; 
 " The prisoner's allowance is bread and 
 water ; and I had often only the latter." 
 But the gold that is refined in the hottest 
 furnace comes out the purest ; or, as he 
 has himself expressed it, " the canary- 
 bird sings sweeter the longer it has been 
 trained in a darkened cage." 
 
 A man like Burns might have divided 
 his hours between poetry and virtuous 
 industry ; industry wdiich all true feeling 
 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 ill-starred and inauspicious at- 
 tempt. How could he be at ease at 
 such banquets? What had he to do 
 there, mingling his music with the coarse 
 roar of altogether earthly voices, and 
 brightening the thick smoke of intoxica- 
 tion with fire lent him from heaven ? Was 
 
Life of Burns. 195 
 
 it his aim to en^oy life ? To-morrow he 
 must go drudge as an Exciseman ! We 
 wonder not that Burns became moody, 
 indignant, and at times an offender 
 against certain rules of society ; but 
 rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, 
 and run a-miick against them all. How 
 could a man, so falsely placed, by his 
 own or others' fault, ever know content- 
 ment or peaceable diligence for an hour? 
 What he did, under such perverse guid- 
 ance, and what he forbore to do, alike 
 fill us with astonishment at the natural 
 strength and worth of his character. 
 
 Doubtless there was a remedy for this 
 perverseness : but not in others ; only 
 in himself ; least of all in simple increase 
 of wealth and worldly "respectability." 
 We hope we have now heard enough 
 about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, 
 and to make poets happy, l^ay, have 
 we not seen another instance of it in 
 these very days ? Byron, a man of endow- 
 
196 Life of Burns. 
 
 ment considerably less ethereal than that 
 of Burns, is born in the rank not of a 
 Scottish ploughman, but of an English 
 peer: the highest worldly honors, the 
 fairest worldly career, are his by inherit- 
 ance: 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 all this is but mount- 
 ing to the house-top to reach the stars ! 
 Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; 
 might like him have " 23urchased a pock- 
 et-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 conduct. 
 As in Burns's case, too, the celestial ele- 
 ment will not mingle with the clay of 
 earth ; both poet and man of the world 
 he must not be ; vulgar Ambition will 
 
Life of Burns, 197 
 
 not live kindly with poetic Adoration ; 
 he cannot serve God and Mammon. 
 Bjron, like Burns, is not happy ; nay, 
 he is the most 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 vol- 
 cano ; and now, — we look sadly into the 
 ashes of a crater, which ere long, will fill 
 itself with snow ! 
 
 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 
 smouldering within them ; for they knew 
 not what it meant, and felt itonly in mys- 
 terious anticipation, and they had to die 
 without articulately uttering it. They are 
 in the camp of the Unconverted. Yet not 
 as high messengers of rigorous though be- 
 
198 Life of Burns. 
 
 nignant truth, but as soft flattering sing- 
 ers, and in pleasant fellowship, will they 
 live there ; they are first adulated, then 
 persecuted; they accomplish little for 
 othere ; 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 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 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 neveir 
 truer than in this : " He, who would write 
 
Life of Burns. 199 
 
 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 for him. Let 
 him dwindle into a modish balladmon- 
 ger ; let him worship and be-sing the 
 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 consum- 
 ed them ; and better it was for them 
 that they could not. For it is not in the 
 favor of the great, or of the small, but 
 in a life of truth, and in the inexpugna- 
 ble 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 further- 
 ance for literature ; like the costliest 
 flower-jar enclosing the loveliest amar- 
 
200 Life of Burns. 
 
 anth. Yet let not the relation be mis- 
 taken. A true poet is not one whom 
 they can hire by money or flattery to be 
 a minister of their pleasures, their writer 
 of occasional verses, their purveyor of 
 table-wit ; he cannot be their menial, he 
 cannot even be 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 for earthly 
 appetites, from door to door ? 
 
 But we mnst stop short in these con- 
 siderations, which would lead us to 
 boundless ]eno:ths. We had somethius^ 
 to say on the public moral character of 
 Burns ; but this also we must forbear. 
 We are far from regarding him as guil- 
 ty before the world, as guiltier than the 
 average ; nay, from doubting that he is 
 
Life of Bihvns. 201 
 
 less guilty than one of ten tliousand. 
 Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than 
 that where the PleMscita 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 
 judgments of such men ; unjust on many 
 grounds, of which this one may be stat- 
 ed 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 re- 
 flection from the mathematical orbit, 
 which are so easily measured, but the 
 i^atio of these to the w^hole 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 circle 
 of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of 
 feet or paces. But the inches of de- 
 
202 Life of B 
 
 urns. 
 
 flection 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, Eousseaus, which one never lis- 
 tens to with approval. Granted, the 
 ship comes into harbor with shrouds 
 and tackle damaged ; and the pilot is 
 therefore blameworthy ; for he has not 
 been all-w^ise 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. 
 
 With our readers in general, w^ith men 
 of right feeling anywhere, we are not 
 required to plead for Burns. In pitying 
 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 
 
Life of Burns. 203 
 
 from the memory of man. While the 
 
 Shakspeares 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 Yalclusa Fountain will also 
 
 arrest our eye : for this also is of Na- 
 
 ture's own and most cunning workman- 
 
 ship, bursts from the depths of the 
 
 earth, with a full gushing current, into 
 
 the light of day; and often will the 
 
 traveller turn aside to drink of its clear 
 
 waters, and muse among its rocks and 
 
 pines ! 
 
 THE END.