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TALES.

744, 789

Maid of Sker, 173, 267, 420, 540, 615, 684, 812 | Plébiscite, Story of the,. 99, 231, 337, 470
Ministre Malgre Lui, Le,

Off the Skelligs, . 43, 146, 289, 405, 565, 653

Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, 24, 77, 211,
358, 499, 593, 724

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From Blackwood's Magazine.

A CENTURY OF GREAT POETS, FROM 1750 DOWNWARDS.

ROBERT BURNS.

understood, must stomach the reproach as they may. Therefore every man has had his fling and said his say about Burns. The greatness of the poet has given in ALL lives are tragedies: and it may be many cases but a reason at once and an that those that seem the bitterest and dark- excuse for raking up all the follies of the est take their intenser shades chiefly from ploughboy, and showing the gauger in his the fact that adventitious circumstances cups. Poor devil! as it was a fine fate for have brought them more vividly before him to amuse his betters at their feasts the eyes of the world. Such a reason while he lived, so it was a fine fate for him might at least hold good as an explanation when he was dead to furnish them with a of the supremely tragic character of the moral and gratify the complaisance of his lives of poets. Of all we have yet ven- superiors. And this impertinent folly — tured to touch in this series, Wordsworth most impudent, most foolish, despite the alone has pursued his life to a calm protests of Lockhart and Wilson and Carand ordinary conclusion, without passing lyle — has survived even to this day. Perthrough the heaviest clouds that can over- haps no one now would venture to speak shadow humanity. With the others the of him with the affability and condescenpassage has been bitter as sorrow and sion which all, or almost all, of his contemsuffering could make it; and not only sor- poraries considered themselves justified in row and suffering - that which gives its employing. But still, the facts that he deepest pang to pain, and its bitterest was a ploughman and an exciseman, and prostration to ruin, moral weakness and was of dissipated habits, are much more wrong-doing has woven itself in with these prominent in his career to the general eye, typical lives in an inseparable thread of especially out of Scotland, than are the darkness. The splendour of the gifts with nobler facts of his work and character. In which it is combined makes this gloomy Scotland, fortunately, thanks to the naweft only the more apparent; and through tional fire which he perhaps was the first all the brightness and nobleness of the to raise again out of its embers, after all the web it runs its darkling pattern, its intri- depression and discouragement of the sevencate design, impairing the beauty, dimin- teenth century, there exists such a warmth ishing the greatness, yet adding a sorrow- of feeling on this subject, that he who ful human meaning, which touches while it would touch our poet rudely may well behumbles every spectator. And in no life think himself of our national motto before of genius has this fatal darkness been he makes the venture, and remember the more apparent than in the life of Burns. thistle's sharp and instant reprisals. To Circumstances have set it before the world have re-created that national feeling, that in such prominence that to many it seems deep and warm and unquenchable patriotthe chief thing notable, the first memory ism which has made Scotland, small and attached to his name. Three parts of a poor, a force in the great universe, is no century have passed since in premature small work, however accomplished. Had gloom and lurid splendour the sun went there been any to do it for Ireland at the down for him at noonday; and since then same dreary crisis, when the national the world has never ceased to dwell upon spirit had sunk low, and discouragement this warp in his nature and stain on his had fallen upon its heart, what issues of life. The reticences with which relations courage and cheerful hope and warm indiand friends have surrounded the name vidual exertion might there not have of Coleridge, have been contemptuously been! But Ireland had neither Burns nor thrown to the winds in the case of the Scott; and the genius which might have ploughman-poet. Whose feelings were to remoulded it-giving, by dint of poetry be considered among a race of small farm- and imagination, such an impulse to all ers and tradesmen, too much honoured by that was noble, reasonable, and resolute in incurring even the censure of the great the country, as no other influence could world? Such small personages, it is well give has flickered away in confusing

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