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lights, fantastic Will-o'-the-wisps, and ec- with God's will and man's service, which centric gleams of contradictory guidance. is not in the other. It is premature to Probably the amount of genius in the two carry out the comparison, which we may lands has not been so unequal as the world resume at a later period. But the two, supposes; but in the one it has been frit- somehow, stand together in a sad separatered away in wild melodious foolishness, tion from other men, in their individual without plan or union, in Shan van Voghts places, made distinct by fortune. The one and faction-songs; whereas in the other with everything (as people say) in his fait has been concentrated, and done the our; the other with everything (as people work which one great voice better than a say) against him. And both failed as hundred quavering pipes of smaller sing- men, tragically and mournfully. Yet the ers can do. When the world comes to Peasant less tragically, less awfully, than recognize what a wonderful agency it is the Peer. All the gentle compensations which in reality makes a great part of the of nature, all her tears and sweetnesses, all difference between greatness and pettiness, the flowers with which she sprinkles the happiness and unhappiness, for a country, too early grave, are for the lowly, the then, perhaps, yet only perhaps, it will fare better with the poet. We say, only perhaps; for it is very doubtful whether the Poet bred in an intellectual hothouse and trained for a special work, would have either heart or ability for it. The chances are according to the perversity of human nature, either that the singer chosen for such a process would turn out incapable, or that his mind would choose some other channel. The man who would touch the deepest springs of human motive, must endure the difficulties and feel the fierce contention of every struggle that he sings.

proud, the tender child of poverty-the son of the soil. Heaven and earth weep over him with an indulgence, a pitiful awe of his weakness, which is not for the other. He is footsore and weary, his dress and his hands are all scratched with briers and thorns of toil; but, heaven pardon all their straying, these feet were loyal amid their stumblings, these hands laboured and pulled away the thorns out of the path of others. Never, or only by moments when the bravado of his time would seize him, did this man glory in shame. On the contrary, he repented in sackcloth and ashes, A great deal too much however, we standing still to note his shortcomings, think, has been made of the condition of struggling against them, sometimes manlife into which Burns was born. It had its fully if sometimes weakly, and when he disadvantages, but perhaps not more than could, repairing the wrong. Whatever those which belong to some other spheres. may be said of the disadvantages of naTwo poets of that rich and splendid age ture, it is clear that at least in this case which ushered in our own were born in the exceptionally unfortunate circumexceptionally difficult circumstances. The stances were better than the exceptionone was a ploughman and the other aally fortunate; and that if one extremity peer. Both lived and died tragically, in of the social level is to be chosen for a poet, their youth, having had trial of cruel it is better that that extremity should be scourgings and woundings, bitter deser- low than high — a farmhouse rather than a tions, and still more bitter encourage- palace. ments. Heaven forbid that any son of ours should emulate either fate; yet if such a terrible choice had to be made, would any man hesitate to choose for the boy most dear to him the fate of Burns rather than that of Byron? To ourselves there does not seem a moment's hesitation in the matter. Tragic and terrible as both are, there is a harmony and sweetness of life about the humble poet, a note of pathetic accordance amid all its discords

But though it is impossible to consider him as a man, without considering these circumstances of origin and calling, we think, we repeat, that Burns's rank in life has been made a great deal too much of. It was an accident which directed his genius into a special channel; but in that direction there was certainly more good than evil. His poverty and lowliness did for him what probably no amount of training could have done. It made him the natural

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expositor and prophet of a certain class, novel and original won out of the niggardly and that the widest and most numerous of hands of fate. The world of poetry and any in the country. It might be well a imagination was all the more lovely, all century ago to utter condescending com- the more precious to him, that it lay side mendations of the "short and simple an- by side with the plainest and hardest of nals of the poor;" but at this present time facts. Every intellectual step he made he would be a bold critic who would ven- filled him with a delight and exultation ture to assert that a true study of life in such as a modern epicure of emotion would what we call the lower classes, is either give worlds to taste. All that belonged less interesting or less noble than a study to the mind and its ethereal existence of the lives of dukes and duchesses; in- all, in short, that was not hard toil and acdeed, the balance has turned, and our pre- tual struggle was fresh and sweet, and dilections are ready to go the other way. novel and lovely, full of a beauty which Duchesses and dukes, though sometimes surprised him, and tock his heart by storm. admirable persons, have the lines of their And while he had this delightful relish of life so traced out for them that, unless their novelty in everything intellectual, his moral characters be very exceptional indeed, training was such as the world could not there is but a very limited amount of profit have surpassed. He was the son of a good, to be got out of them; but the vast levels honest and honourable man. He was of human nature, where Sorrow and Pain, brought up fearing God and serving his those greatest of dramatists, do their work neighbour-if, perhaps, within too narrow broadly - where the primitive emotions a circle, and with too absolute a limitation are less controlled by complicating cob- of the title, yet cheerfully, unselfishly, webs of new-fangled thought where life without even the idea of separating his own is more outspoken, more logical, less self-interests from those of the intimate few contained these have an interest deeper around him. In all the events of the life and truer than all the high life ever re- of William Burns's household there is nothcorded. Nothing but the fact of being to ing that is not worthy and noble. A man the manner born could enable a man to was above the reach of shame who came elucidate to us this great silent sea of liv- from such a house. He had as good a seting, which without such elucidation we ting out in the world as any prince could should know only in those periodical storms have given to his best-beloved son. The which raise it into fury, and confound all only drawback, indeed that we can see in the wisdom of the wise and the conclu- Burns's education, was its tendency to culsions of the learned. So far as this tivate that excessive pride and sense of goes, the accident of birth secured for bitterness under obligation which was the Burns a very great and real advantage. grand stumbling-block of the peasant of all the advantage which a man derives from those days. It cannot be called the weakan immense "backing;" and from being ness of any class now; yet we feel that the representative of a very large number the misery of wounded pride which atof other men. Neither was there anything tended indebtedness in the mind of the in his education to neutralize this advan- Scotch ploughman farmer, and the morbid, tage. For his characteristic and peculiar passionate terror of shame which reigned office, which was not that of a poet in the in many such humble houses, was the weak abstract, but of a poet born to real and point in their life, though it proceeded special use and service, no training could from very strength of character and integhave been more perfect. He acquired let-rity. But surely this was a failing which ters as those do whom he had come into leant to virtue's side. The ease with which the world to interpret-painfully, toil- debt sits upon most people's shoulders somely, at a cost which made the scanty now, and the readiness to take from all sum of instruction dearer than the highest sources which is characteristic of modern attainments of an education more easily ac- civilization, is a failing of an infinitely quired. Every new book was to him as meaner kind; though the excess of virtue an undiscovered country - a something had its drawbacks too.

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more prevailing, and suggestions of ambition, and hints of profit, he stood by those colours. His faithfulness to his work made him wiser than the wise. He yielded, facile as a man - but as a poet he was immovable; and as a poet, though not as a man, he is safe for ever.

This, so far as we know, was the only said, to permit such a man to remain in the principle in which his youth was trained inferior sphere where he was born! and which could be other than advantageous to accordingly every fool who wrote himself the poet. We do not contest the advantages gentleman, and a hundred local nobodies, of academical training, but we doubt much who were as mice not only to Robert whether, had William Burns been able to Burns, but to such men as his father and send his sons to college, and had Robert brother-"noticed" the poet, "raised struggled into a poor Scotch student's him to their level, impressed that foolish hardly-won knowledge of classic and mod- social lie, from the sway of which none of ern literature, it would have done him half us entirely escape, upon his mind too, and as much good as his natural breeding in spoiled the fit education, the noble training, his father's cottage was calculated to do. which God and his home had given. By It might, perhaps, and that is doubtful, this he was, as a man, torn asunder, and have enriched us with some smoother epic, ruined for this world; but faithful to his some tragedy of loftier plan; but the cot- trust in the midst of all his misery, through tar's fireside would have remained voice- heart-breakings, through tempest and conless, and the mouse and gowan of the Ayr-vulsions, he held firm his commission as shire fields would have perished like their poet, to the last. He held that post, as predecessors, without one word of all that a soldier blind with wounds, and diztender musing, that pathetic and most hu- zy with the tumult of the fight, might man philosophy, which has made them live hold fast the flag, the symbol of duty and for ever. Had we the choice even of an- honour, of country and cause. Whatever other Hamlet, we should pause ere we pur- he lost besides, that he held high to the chased it at such a cost. Nay, we would end. Through worlds of good advice from not pause; but with a quick decisive choice the wise, and siren whispers from voices would hold out our hands towards the poet of the ploughed fields, and the wimpling burn, and the farm-steading. Shakespeare is and praised be heaven no critic has it in his power to barter him for any classic piece of perfection observant of all the rules of art, as some critics would have gladly done little more than a century ago; but not even for a second Shakespeare could we let go our Burus. We refuse to believe that education would have mended him, or that the poet, bad he been more than a ploughman, would have been a greater poet. We are much more ready to believe that the very reverse is the truth, and that if ever man was anointed and consecrated to a special work in this world, for which all his antecedents, all his training, all his surrounding circumstances combined to fit him, Robert Burns was that man. What was to blame was not his birth or breeding, but that monstrous fiction of conventional life, which ordains that one set of circumstances are essentially nobler than another, and that all who deserve well of their fellows should be forced upon one sphere and one monotonous level of good society, whether it suits them or not, whether it is really better or not. This fiction is wide as the world, and old as the ancient ages; neither is there any possibility, so far as we are aware, of shaking its hold upon men: but, notwithstanding, it is false and evil; and to its injurious influence, and not to anything in the natural life of the poet, are his miseries, and, we believe, most of his sins, to be ascribed. What a pity, the world

It seems almost needless to tell over again the old well-known tale; but it is so full of pity and wonder, of the beautiful and the tragic, that there are few histories of man more attractive. Robert Burns was born in January 1759, on the banks of the Doon, in a cottage built of clay by his father's own hands. The "blast of Januar' wind" which "blew hansel in " upon the new-born, blew this humble little house about his baby ears at the very out set of his career. His mother was a woman of the country, peaceable, religious, and orderly; his father a man from the north, of a sterner and higher type of character. Robert was the eldest of seven children, born to toil and to spare; to live hardly and honestly by the sweat of their brow; with no pretence beyond their station, and little hope of any advance out of it, a most lowly, high-minded race, humble as the humblest, yet proud as the proudest, combining, in a way which few people understand nowadays, the most matter-of-fact and absolute poverty with a haughty and stern independence. In external circumstances they were scarcely better off than the villagers whose claims for Christmas coals and blankets is one of the chartered rights of English country

en and parlour and hall - the croon of their
mother's long low songs lingering in their
ears, and their hearts still thrilling with
old Jenny's wonders. Sometimes threat-
ening letters would come from the factor

doubt, the two horrors of the poor, which
"used to set us all in tears." Sometimes,
-a more agreeable interruption
however
- friends would come from Ayr, to lighten
this grave life with friendly talk; and on
one occasion, of which there is a distinct
record, the young dominie who had taught
the boys came over to spend an evening in
the smoky, cheery farm kitchen, where the
slates and books were no doubt laid aside.
He brought with him (of all things in the
world) the tragedy of "Titus Andronicus'

life; but in mind they were haughty as | gathered about the solitary candle, with the Doges, holding charity as poison, and the cheerful glow of the fire lighting up debt as shame. This virtue of independ- the one homely chamber, which was kitchence was the one only point in the family character which threatened to grow morbid. All the others were sweet and wholesome as the day. Never was there a more attractive picture than that of this pleasant father among his children, in the midst letters threatening roup and jail, no of the ceaseless toil and care of their beginning of life. His first little farm was sterile and profitless; his second promised better, but even there ill-fortune overtook him in the shape of a doubtful lease and unkind landlord. His boys had to set to work as soon as their young strength permitted, and Robert had begun to do a man's work by the time he was fifteen. He and his brother Gilbert were sent to school as occasion served - for a few years regularly, and then, as they grew older, "and by way of passing the evening he We were "week and week about," as they could be spared from the farm-work. When there began to read the play aloud. was no possibility of schooling, "my fath- all attention for some time, till presently er," says Gilbert Burns, "undertook to the whole party was dissolved in tears. A teach us arithmetic in the winter evenings female in the play (I have but a confused by candle-light; and in this way my two remembrance of it) had her hands chopped elder sisters received all the education off, and her tongue cut out, and then was Of these sisters insultingly desired to call for water to they ever received." nothing is ever told us, but the kindly wash her hands. At this, in an agony of mother moved but and ben while the fire- distress, we with one voice desired he side lessons were going on, and sang them would read no more. My father observed, Robert songs in the gloaming; and a certain old that if we would not hear it out, it would Jenny, brimful of ghost stories and all the be needless to leave it with us. ballads of the country-side, frightened and replied, that if it was left he would burn charmed the lads with her endless lore. it." Bold critic, wise by nature! Is there "Nothing could be more retired than our not something in these scenes which the manner of living: we rarely saw anybody imagination lingers over more tenderly own family. than if this boy's education had been in but the members of our There were no boys of our own age or the hands of scholars of endless learning? ... My And then when the books were laid aside, near it in the neighbourhood. father was for some time almost the only and the porridge supped, and the homely the "Let us worship God," companion we had. He conversed famil- yet hospitable table cleared, came the famiiarly on all subjects with us, as if we had ly servicebeen men, and was at great pains while which, in the confidential intercourse bewe accompanied him in the labours of the tween the two brothers, Robert told Gilbert A sketch of family farm, to lead the conversation to such sub- had always seemed to him the most soljects as might tend to increase our knowl-emn of utterances. edge or confirm us in virtuous habits. He life more pure, more true, more touching, borrowed Salmon's Geographical Gram- was never made. But this existence, though so beautiful mar' for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the situation and history to look back upon now, was painful enough of the different countries of the world; then. To the lads who were confined while from a book society in Ayr he pro- within these bonds of toil, it seemed hard cured for us the reading of Durham's that they should have thus to labour withPhysics and Astro-Theology,' and Ray's out ceasing with little prospect of any out"The cheerless gloom of a hermit, 'Wisdom of God in Creation,' to give us let. some idea of astronomy and natural his- with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave," tory. Robert read all these books with says the poet, looking back upon it with an avidity and industry scarcely to be a shudder from the heights of early fame, equalled." Quaint and strange studies for when he seemed to have got clear for ever the ploughboys in their winter evenings, of that grinding poverty. His brother is

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more moderate; but still with a deep rious works above recorded; how his boy. gravity relates the story of their painful ish imagination was struck by the "Vision youth. "To the buffetings of misfortune," of Mirza," and his literary ambition he says, 66 we could only oppose hard la- aroused by the accidental acquisition of bour and the most rigid economy. We "a small collection of letters by the most lived very sparingly. For several years eminent writers," which was bought by butcher's meat was a stranger in the his uncle by mistake instead of the "Comhouse; while all the members of the fam- plete Lettter-Writer," which he had inily exerted themselves to the utmost of tended to buy; - for a lurking doubt aftheir strength, and even beyond it, in the flicts us, whether Burns's letters might not labours of the farm. My brother, at the have been more natural and agreeable age of thirteen, assisted in threshing the had he never met with the compositions crops of corn; and at fifteen was the prin- of these "eminent writers: " nor need we cipal labourer on the farm, for we had no pause to say that he acquired some rudihired servant, male or female. The an- ments of French-an acquisition which guish of mind that we felt at our tender his biographers rather insist upon, but years under these straits and difficulties which, we imagine, the readers of his corwas very great. To think of our father respondence will ruefully wish had never now growing old (for he was above fifty), been attained. He also began the "Rudibroken down with the long-continued fa- ments of the Latin Tongue,' but soon tigues of his life, with a wife and five other laid aside that uncongenial study. What children, and in a declining state of cir- is infinitely more important is, that he cumstances, these reflections produced in lived his toilsome life in innocence, in warm my brother's mind and mine sensations of friendship with some companions of his the deepest distress." But, nevertheless, own age, and chiefly with his admirable the lads were young and capable of throw- brother; that he obeyed, and loved, and ing over their deep distress whenever the honoured, keeping faithfully in the narrow factor's letter, or some other immediate but noble track of duty which his father pinch of misery, was a few days, or per- had trod before him, often sad and haps a few hours off. At fifteen, Robert anxious, yet ever light hearted, playing fell in love for the first time, with "a bon- with the woes of life in a sweet unconnie, sweet, sonsie lassie," who was his part-sciousness of the deep innate happiness ner in the harvest-field, following him which lay beneath them, such as is natu close through the golden rig, as the man- ral to youth. How fine is his own descripner was, binding, as he cut it, the rustling tion of this boyish innocent existence: poppy-mingled grain. She " sang sweet-"I mind it weel, in early date,

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When I was beardless, young, and blate,

And first could thrash the barn,
Or haud a yokin' o' the plough,
An', though forfoughten sair enough,

Yet unco proud to learn."

What better sketch could be made of the happy, weary" lad, "sair forfoughten," but proud and glad of his advance to his heritage, a man's work? "He is hardly to be envied," says Mr. Lockhart, who can contemplate without emotion this exquisite picture of young nature and young genius.'

ly" a song "composed by a small country
laird's son on one of his father's maids,
with whom he was in love;" and the
dark, sunburnt, glowing boy, with the
thrill of a new emotion stirring through
him, ran into song too, moved by emula-
tion and by all those dawning "thoughts,"
and passions, and delights," which are the
ministers of love. My Nelly's looks are
blythe and sweet," sang the fifteen-year-
old boy in his rapture, in the golden au-
tumn sunshine among the golden corn.
He is not much to be pitied after all.
The scene is Arcadian in its tender inno-
cence, lit up with a sweet glow of natural
light and colour, but no heat of prema-
ture or unnatural passion. This little
scene in the harvest-field balances with its
sweet daylight the Rembrandt interior
of the farmhouse kitchen and its copy-
books. "Puirtith cauld," such as "wracks
the heart," and labours without ceasing;
but at the same time, warm, natural, hope-
ful, glowing life, and love, and song.

We need not linger to tell how he read
Addison and Pope, in addition to the se-

This fresh and spotless youth outlasted all the early experiences of rural life, and retained its purity through all the picturesque and dangerous flirtations of the country-side. Into these flirtations it was evident he plunged with all the warmth of his impassioned nature. He "went owre the hills to Nannie," though the wastlin wind blew both rude and chill, and the day's darg had been hard and heavy. On "the Lammas night," when

"The sky was blue, the wind was still,
The moon was shining clearly,"

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