Essays critical and imaginative

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Presented to the
LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

John Ball

ESSAYS

CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE

BY

PROFESSOR WILSON

VOL. III.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXVI

5817

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V 3

THJ,

GENIUS AND CHARACTER OE BURNS,

PREFATORY NOTE.

THE principal Essay in this volume originally appeared in a work entitled
"The Land of Burns, a Series of Landscapes and Portraits illustrative of the
Life and Writings of THE SCOTTISH POET, with descriptive letterpress, by
Professor Wilson and Robert Chambers, Esq. — Blackie & Sons, Glasgow, 1841 ."
For the convenience of the general reader, the following short chronicle of
the more prominent dates in the career of the illustrious Poet has been
subjoined.

Robert Burns was born at Alloway, near Ayr, on the 25th of January 1759
His father and family removed to the neighbouring farm of Mount

Oliphant . . . . . . . 1766

They removed to the farm of Lochlea, parish of Tarbolton, Ayrshire 1777

Burns and his brother Gilbert took the farm of Mossgiel, parish of

Mauchline, Ayrshire ...... 1784

The father of Burns died • . . . . . 1784

Burns's first publication ...... 1786

He entertained the intention of emigrating to the West Indies 1786

Ho visited Edinburgh ...... 1786

The second edition of his Poems .... 1787

He made a tour of the south of Scotland and the Highlands . 1787

Ho returned to Edinburgh . . . . . 1787

He obtained an appointment in the Excise . . . 1788

He loft Edinburgh — married Jean Armour . . . . 1788

Ho took the farm of Ellisland, Dumfriesshire . . . 1788

He removed with his family to Dumfries . , . . 1791

Ho contributed songs to Johnson's Museum . . . 1792

Ho contributed songs to Tliomson's Scottish Melodies . . 1792-96

His health was very much impaired . . . . 1795

He died 21st July .... . 1796

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS, . . 1

SPEECH AT THE BURNS FESTIVAL, . . .212

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY : —

FYTTE I., ...... 230

FYTTE II., . . . . 260

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS, . . . .293

TOPPER'S GERALDINE, . . . . .344

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS, . . 373

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME, . . .386

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE, . . .420

ESSAYS

CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE,

THE GENIUS AND CHAEACTER OF BURNS,

BURNS is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the
bosom of the people, and lived and died in a humble con-
dition. Indeed, no country in the world but Scotland could
have produced such a man ; and he will be for ever regarded as
the glorious representative of the genius of his country. He
was born a poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius
alone is owing the perpetuity of his fame. For he manifestly
had never very deeply studied poetry as an art, nor reasoned
much about its principles, nor looked abroad with the wide
ken of intellect for objects and subjects on which to pour
out his inspiration. The condition of the peasantry of Scot-1
land, the happiest, perhaps, that Providence ever allowed to
the children of labour, was not surveyed and speculated on
by him as the field of poetry, but as the field of his own
existence ; and he chronicled the events that passed there,
not merely as food for his imagination as a poet, but as
food for his heart as a man. Hence, when inspired to com-
pose poetry, poetry came gushing up from the well of his
human affections, and he had nothing more to do than to
pour it, bike streams irrigating a meadow, in many a cheer-
ful tide over the drooping flowers and fading verdure of life.
Imbued with vivid perceptions, warm feelings, and strong

VOL. VII. A

2 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

passions, he sent his own existence into that of all things,
animate and inanimate, around him ; and not an occurrence
in hamlet, village, or town, affecting in any way the happi-
ness of the human heart, but roused as keen an interest in
the soul of Burns, and as genial a sympathy, as if it had
immediately concerned himself and his own individual wel-
fare. Most other poets of rural life have looked on it through
the aerial veil of imagination — often beautified, no doubt, by
such partial concealment, and beaming with a misty softness
more delicate than .the truth. But Burns would not thus in-
dulge his fancy where he had felt — felt so poignantly, all the
agonies and all the transports of life. He looked around him,
and when he saw the smoke of the cottage rising up quietly
and unbroken to heaven, he knew, for he had seen and blessed
it, the quiet joy and unbroken contentment that slept below ;
and when he saw it driven and dispersed by the winds, he
knew also but too well, for too sorely had he felt them, those
agitations and disturbances which had shook him till he wept
on his chaff bed. In reading his poetry, therefore, we know
•what unsubstantial dreams are all those of the golden age.
But bliss beams upon us with a more subduing brightness
through the dim melancholy that shrouds lowly life ; and
when the peasant Burns rises up in his might as Burns the
poet, and is seen to derive all that might from the life which
at this hour the peasantry of Scotland are leading, our hearts
leap within us, because that such is our country, and such the
nobility of her children. There is no delusion, no affectation,
no exaggeration, no falsehood in the spirit of Burns's poetry.
He rejoices like an untamed enthusiast, and he weeps like a
prostrate penitent. In joy and in grief the whole man-ap-,
pears : some of his finest effusions were poured out before
he left the fields of his childhood, and when he scarcely
looped for other auditors than his own heart, and the simple
dwellers of the hamlet. He wrote not to please or surprise .
others — we speak of those first effusions — but . in his own
creative delight ; and even after he had discovered his power
to kindle the sparks of nature wherever they slumbered, the
effect to be produced seldom seems to have been considered
by him, assured that his poetry could not fail to produce the
same passion in the hearts of other men from which it boiled
over in his own. Out of himself, and beyond his own nearest

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURHS. 3-

and dearest concerns, he well could, but he did not much love
often or long to go. His imagination wanted not wings broad
and strong for highest flights. But he was most at home when
walking on this earth, through this world, even along the banks
and braes of the streams of Coila. It seems as if his muse
were loth to admit almost any thought, feeling, image, drawn
from any other region than his native district — the hearth-
stone of his father's hut — the still or troubled chamber of his
own generous and passionate bosom. Dear to him the jocund
laughter of the reapers on the corn-field, the tears and sighs
which his own strains had won from the children of nature en-
joying the mid-day hour of rest beneath the shadow of the
hedgerow tree. With what pathetic personal power, from
all the circumstances of his character and condition, do many
of his humblest lines affect us! Often, too often, as we hear
him singing, we think that we see him suffering ! " Most
musical, most melancholy," he often is, even in his merri-
ment 1 In him, alas I the transports of inspiration are but
too closely allied with reality's kindred agonies 1 The strings
of his lyre sometimes yield their finest music to the sighs of
remorse or repentance. Whatever, therefore, be the faults or
defects of the poetry of Burns — and no doubt it has many —
it has, beyond all that ever was written, this greatest of all
merits, intense, life-pervading, and life-breathing truth.

There is probably not a human being come to the years of
understanding in all Scotland, who has not heard of the name
of Robert Burns. It is, indeed, a household word. His poems
are found lying in almost every cottage in the country, on the
"window-sole" of the kitchen, spenee, or parlour; and in the
town-dwellings of the industrious poor, if books belong to the
family at all, you are pretty sure to see there the dear Ayrshire
Ploughman. The father or mother, born and long bred, perhaps,
among banks and braes, possesses, in that small volume, a talis-
man that awakens in a moment all the sweet visions of the past,
and that can crowd the dim abode of hard-working poverty
with a world of dear rural remembrances that awaken not re-
pining but contentment.

No poet ever lived more constantly and more intimately in
the hearts of a people. With their mirth, or with their melan-
choly, how often do his " native wood-notes wild" affect the
sitters by the ingles of low- roofed homes, till their hearts

4 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

overflow with feelings that place them on a level, as moral
creatures, with the most enlightened in the land, and more
than reconcile them with, make them proud of, the condition
assigned them by Providence I There they see with pride
the reflection of the character and condition of their own
order. That pride is one of the best natural props of poverty ;
for, supported by it, the poor envy not the rich. They exult
to know and to feel that they have had treasures bequeathed
to them by one of themselves — treasures of the heart, the in-
tellept, the fancy, and the imagination, of which the possession
and the enjoyment are one and the same, as long as they pre-
serye their integrity and their independence. The poor man,
as he speaks of Robert Burns, always holds up his head and
regards you with an elated look. A tender thought of the
" Cottar's Saturday Night," or a bold thought of " Scots wha
hae wi' Wallace bled," may come across him ; and he who in
such a spirit loves home and country, by whose side may he
not walk an equal in the broad eye of day as it shines over
our Scottish hills ? This is true popularity. Thus interpreted,
the word sounds well, and recovers its ancient meaning. The
land " made blithe with plough and harrow," — the broomy or
the heathery braes — the holms by the river's side — the forest
where the woodman's ringing axe no more disturbs the cushat
— the deep dell where all day long sits solitary plaided boy or
girl watching the kine or the sheep — the moorland hut with-
out any garden — the lowland cottage, whose garden glows
like a very orchard, when crimsoned with fruit-blossoms most
beautiful to behold — the sylvan homestead sending its reek
aloft over the huge sycamore that blackens on the hill- side —
the straw-roofed village gathering with small bright crofts its
many white gable-ends round and about the modest manse,
and the kirk-spire covered with the pine-tree that shadows its
horologe— the small, quiet, half-slated half-thatched rural town,
— there resides, and will for ever reside, the immortal genius of
Burns. Oh, that he, the prevailing Poet, could have seen this
light breaking in upon the darkness that did too long and too
deeply overshadow his lot ! Some glorious glimpses of it his
prophetic soul did see; witness " The Vision," or that some-
what humbler but yet high strain, in which, bethinking him
of the undefined aspirations of his boyhood, he said to himself—

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 5

" Even then a wish, I mind its power,
A wish that to my latest hour

Shall strongly heave my breast,
That I, for puir auld Scotland's sake,
Some usefu' plan or book could make,

Or sing a sang at least !

The rough bur-thistle, spreading wide

Amang the bearded bear,
I turned the weeder-clips aside,

And spared the symbol dear."

Such hopes were with him in his " bright and shining youth,"
surrounded as it was with toil and trouble that could not bend
his brow from its natural upward inclination to the sky ; and
such hopes, let us doubt it not, were also with him in his dark
and faded prime, when life's lamp burned low indeed, and he
was willing at last, early as it was, to shut his eyes on this
dearly beloved but sorely distracting world.

With what strong and steady enthusiasm is the anniversary
of Burns's birthday celebrated, not only all over his own native
land, but in every country to which an adventurous spirit has
carried her sons I On such occasions, nationality is a virtue.
For what else is the " Memory of Burns," but the memory of
all that dignifies and adorns the region that gave him birth ?
Not till that region is shorn of all its beams — its honesty,
its independence, its moral worth, its genius, and its piety,
will the name of Burns

" Die on her ear, a faint unheeded sound."

But it has an immortal life in the hearts of young and
old, whether sitting at gloaming by the ingle-side, or on
the stone seat in the open air, as the sun is going down,
or walking among the summer mists on the mountain, or
the blinding winter snows. In the life of the poor there is
an unchanging and a preserving spirit. The great ele-
mentary feelings of human nature there disdain fluctuating
fashions ; there pain and pleasure are alike permanent in
their outward shows as in their inward emotions ; there
the language of passion never grows obsolete ; and at the
same passage- you hear the child sobbing at the knee of her
grandame whose old eyes are somewhat dimmer than usual

€ ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

with a haze that seems almost to be of tears. Therefore the
™etry of Burns will continue to charm as long as Nith flows
Criffel is green, and the bonny blue of the sky of Scotland
meets with that in the eyes of her maidens, as they walk up
and down her hills silent or singing to kirk or market

Let us picture to ourselves the Household in which Burns
rrew up to manhood, shifting its place without much changing
its condition, from first to last always fighting against fortune,
experiencing the evil and the good of poverty, and in the sight
of men obscure. His father may be said to have been an elderly
man when Kobert was born, for he was within a few years of
forty, and had always led a life of labour ; and labour it is that
wastes away the stubboraest strength — among the tillers of
the earth a'stern ally of time. " His lyart haffets wearing
thin and bare" at an age when many a forehead hardly
shows a wrinkle, and when thick locks cluster darkly round
the temples of easy-living men. The sire who " turns o'er
wi' patriarchal pride the big Ha-Bible," is indeed well-stricken
in years, but he is not an old man, for

" The expectant wee things, toddlin, stacher through

To meet their dad wi' flichterin noise and glee ;

His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily ;

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile,

The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary carking cares beguile,
And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil"

That picture, Burns, as all the world knows, drew from his
father. He was himself, in imagination, again one of the
" wee things " that ran to meet him ; and " the priest-like
father" had long worn that aspect before the poet's eyes,
though he died before he was threescore. " I have always
considered William Burnes," says the simple-minded tender-
hearted Murdoch, " as by far the best of the human race that
ever I had the pleasure of being acquainted with, and many
a worthy character I have known. He was a tender and
affectionate father ; he took pleasure in leading his children
in the paths of virtue, not in driving them, as some people
do, to the performance of duties to which they themselves are
averse. He took care to find fault very seldom ; and, there-
fore, when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of

TflE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 7

reverential awe. I must not pretend to give you a descrip-
tion of all the inanly qualities, the rational and Christian
virtues, of the venerable William Burnes. I shall only add
that he practised every known duty, and avoided everything
that was criminal ; or, in the apostle's words, ' herein did he
exercise himself, in living a life void of offence towards God
and towards man.' Although I cannot do justice to the char-
acter of this worthy man, yet you will perceive, from these few
particulars, what kind of a person had the principal part in the
education of the poet." Burns was as happy in a mother,
whom, in countenance, it is said he resembled ; and as sons
and daughters were born, we think of the " auld clay biggin "
more and more alive with cheerfulness and peace.

His childhood, then, was a happy one, secured from all evil
influences and open to all good, in the guardianship of reli-
gious parental love. Not a boy in Scotland had a better edu-
cation. For a few months, when in his sixth year, he was at
a small school at Alloway Mill, about a mile from the house
in which he was born ; and for two years after under the
tuition of good John Murdoch, a young scholar whom William
Burnes and four or five neighbours engaged to supply the
place of the schoolmaster, who had been removed to another
situation, lodging him, as is still the custom in some country
places, by turns in their own houses. " The earliest compo-
sition I recollect taking pleasure in, was 'The Vision of Mirza,*
and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, ' How are thy servants
bless'd, 0 Lord ! ' I particularly remember one half-stanza
which was music to my boyish ear,

' For though on dreadful whirls we hang,
High on the broken wave.'

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of
my school-books. The two first books I ever read in print, and
which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read
since, were the Life of Hannibal, and the History of Sir William
Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I
used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting
drum and bagpipe, and wished myself tall enough to be a
soldier ; while the story of Wallace poured a tide of Scottish
prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the
floodgates of life shut in eternal rest." And speaking of the

8 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

same period and books to Mrs Dunlop, he says, " For several
of my earlier years I had few other authors ; and many a soli-
tary hour have I stole out, after the laborious vocations of the
day, to shed a tear over their glorious but unfortunate stories.
In these boyish days I remember, in particular, being struck
with that part of Wallace's story, where these lines occur —

' Syne to the Leglen wood, when it was late,
To make a silent and a safe retreat.'

I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life
allowed, and walked half-a-dozen miles to pay my respects to
the Leglen wood, with as much devout enthusiasm as ever
pilgrim did to Loretto ; and explored every den and dell where
I could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged."
Murdoch continued his instructions until the family had been
about two years at Mount Oliphant, and there being no school
near us, says Gilbert Burns, and our services being already
useful on the farm, " my father undertook to teach us arith-
metic on the winter nights by candle-light ; and in this way
my two elder sisters received all the education they ever had."
Robert was then in his ninth year, and had owed much, he
tells us, to " an old woman who resided in the family, remark-
able for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. 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 and enchanted towers, dragons,
and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of
poetry ; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that

to. i • v • *

this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a
sharp look-out on suspicious places ; and though nobody can
be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes
an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."

We said that not a boy in Scotland had a better education
than Robert Burns, and we do not doubt that you will agree
with us ; for in addition to all that may be contained in those
sources of useful and entertaining knowledge, he had been
taught to read, not only in the Spelling Book, and Fisher's
English Grammar, and « The Vision of Mirza," and Addison's
Hymns, and Titus Andronkus (though on Lavinia's entrance
with her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out," he threatened

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 9

to burn the book), but in THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE BIBLE,
— and all this in his father's house, or in the houses of the
neighbours, — happy as the day was long, or the night, and in
the midst of happiness ; yet even then, sometimes saddened,
no doubt, to see something more than solemnity or awfulness
on his father's face, that was always turned kindly towards
the children, but seldom wore a smile.

Wordsworth had these memorials in his mind when he was
conceiving the boyhood of the Pedlar in his great poem The
Excursion.

u But eagerly he read and read again,
Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied ;
The life and death of martyrs, who sustained,
With will inflexible, those fearful pangs
Triumphantly displayed in records left
Of persecution, and the Covenant, — times
Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour ;
And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved
A straggling volume, torn and incomplete,
That left half-told the preternatural tale,
Eomance of giants, chronicle of fiends,
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts
Strange and uncouth ; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-knee' d, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghastly shanks — forms which once seen
Could never be forgotten. In his heart
Where fear sate thus, a cherished visitant,
Was wanting yet the pure delight of love
By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,
Or by the silent looks of happy things,
Or flowing from the universal face
Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power
Of nature, and already was prepared,
By his intense conceptions, to receive
Deeply the lesson deep of love, -which he
Whom nature, by whatever means, has taught
. To feel intensely, cannot but receive.

SUCH WAS THE BOY."

Such was the boy ; but his studies had now to be pursued
by fits and snatches, and therefore the more eagerly and
earnestly, during the intervals or at the close of labour that
before his thirteenth year had become constant and severe.

10 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" The cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil
of a galley-slave 1 " These are his own memorable words;
and they spoke the truth. " For nothing could be more re-
tired," says Gilbert, " than our general manner of living at
Mount Oliphant ; we scarcely saw any but members of our
own family. There were no boys of our own age, or near ify
in the neighbourhood." They all worked hard from morning
to night, and Robert hardest of them all. At. fifteen he was
the principal labourer on the farm, and relieved his father from
holding the plough. Two years before he had assisted in
thrashing the crop of corn. The two noble brothers saw with
anguish the old.man breaking down before their eyes ; never-
theless, assuredly, though they knew it not, they were the
happiest boys " the evening sun went down upon." " True,"
as Gilbert tells us, " I doubt not but the hard labour and
sorrow of this period of his life was in a great measure the
cause of that depression of spirits with which Robert was so
often afflicted through his whole life afterwards. At this time
he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull
headache, which at a future period of his life Avas exchanged
for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of fainting
and suffocation in his bed in the night-time." Nevertheless,
assuredly both boys were happy, and Robert the happier of
the two ; for if he had not been so, why did he not go to sea ?
Because he loved his parents too well to be able to leave
them, and because, too, it was his duty to stay by them, were
he to drop down at midnight in the barn and die with the
flail in his hand. But if love and duty cannot make a boy
naPPy> wnat can ? Passion, genius, a teaming brain, a palpi-
tating heart, and a soul of fire. These, too, were his, and idle
would have been her tears, had Pity wept for young Robert
Burns.

Was he not hungry for knowledge from a child ? During
these very years he was devouring it ; and soon the dawn
grew day. " My father," says Gilbert, " was for some time
the only companion we had. He conversed familiarly on all
subjects with us, as if we had been men ; and was at great
pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm,
to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to
increase our knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits. He
borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grammar for us, and endea-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 11

voured to make us acquainted with the situation and history
of the different countries in the world ; while from a book
society in Ayr he procured for us the reading of Durham's
Physico and Astro Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God in the
Creation. Robert read all these books with an avidity and
industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a sub-
scriber to Stackhouse's History of the Bible. From this Robert
collected a competent knowledge of ancient history ; for no
book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so anti-
quated as to damp his researches." He kept reading to at the
Spectator, Pope, and Pope's Homer, some plays of Shakespeare,
Boyle's Lectures, Locke On the Human Understanding, Hervey's
Meditations, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, the
works of Allan Ramsay and Smollett, and A COLLECTION OF
SONGS. u That volume was my vade-mecum. I pored over
them, during my work, or walking to labour, song by song,
verse by verse, carefully noticing the true tender or sublime
from affectation or fustian ; and I am convinced I owe to this
practice most of my critic-craft, such as it is."

So much for book-knowledge ; but what of the kind that is
born within every boy's own bosom, and grows there till often
that bosom feels as if it would burst ? To Mr Murdoch,
Gilbert always appeared to possess a more lively imagination,
and to be more of a wit than Robert. Yet imagination or wit
he had none. His face said, " Mirth, with thee I mean to
live ; " yet he was through life sedate. Robert himself says
that in childhood he was by no means a favourite with any-
body— but he must have been mistaken ; and " the stubborn
sturdy something in his disposition " hindered him from see-
ing how much he was loved. The tutor tells us he had no
ear for music, and could not be taught a psalm tune ! Nobody
could have supposed that he was ever to be a poet ! But no-
body knew anything about him — nor did he know much about
himself; till Nature, who had long kept, chose to reveal, her
own secret.

You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman
together as partners in the labour of harvest. In my fifteenth
autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger
than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing
her justice in that language ; she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass.
In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in

12 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-
horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of
human joys, our sweetest blessing here below. How she caught the
contagion I could not tell : you medical people talk much of infec-
tion from breathing the same air, the touch, &c., but I never ex-
pressly said I loved her. Indeed I did not know myself why I
liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the
evening from our labours ; why the tones of her voice made my
heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp ; and particularly why my
pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her
little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among
her other love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly ; and it was a
favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in
rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make
verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin ;
but my girl sang a song which was said to be composed by a small
country laird's son, on one of his father's maids with whom he was
in love ; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he ;
for, excepting that he could smear sheep and cast peats, his father
living on the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself.

THUS WITH ME BEGAN LOVE AND POETKT.

And during those seven years, when his life was "the
cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a
galley-slave," think ye not that the boy Poet was happy,
merely because he had the blue sky over his head, and the
green earth beneath his feet? He who ere long invested
the most common of all the wildflowers of the earth with
immortal beauty to all eyes, far beyond that of the rarest,
till a tear as of pity might fall down manly cheeks on the
dew-drop nature gathers on its " snawie bosom, sunward
spread!"

" "Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour ;
For I maun crush amang the stoure

Thy slender stem :
To spare thee now is past my pow'r

Thou bonny gem.
" Alas ! it's no thy neibor sweet,
The bonny lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'rnang the dewy weet !

Wi' speckled breast,
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet

The purpling east."

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 13

Thus far the life of this wonderful being is blameless —
thus far it is a life of virtue. Let each season, with him and
with all men, have its due meed of love and of praise — and,
therefore, let us all delight to declare how beautiful was the
Spring I And was there in all those bright and bold blossoms
a fallacious promise ? Certainly not of the fruits of genius :
for these far surpassed what the most hopeful could have pre-
dicted of the full-grown tree. But did the character of the
man belie that of the boy ? Was it manifested at last, either
that the moral being had undergone some fatal change reach-
ing to the core, or that it had been from the first hollow, and
that these noble-seeming virtues had been delusions all ?

The age of puberty has passed with its burning but blame-
less loves, and Robert Burns is now a man. Other seven
years of the same kind of life as at Mount Oliphant, he enjoys
and suffers at Lochlea. It is sad to think that his boyhood
should have been so heavily burthened ; but we look with no
such thoughts on his manhood, for his strength is knit, and
the sinews of soul and body are equal to their work. He still
lives in his father's house, and he still upholds it ; he still
reverences his father's eyes that are upon him ; and he is still
a dutiful son — certainly not a prodigal.

During the whole of the time we lived at Lochlea with my father,
he allowed my brother and me such wages for our labour as he gave to
other labourers, as a part of which, every article of our clothing
manufactured in the family was regularly accounted for. When my
father's affairs were near a crisis, Robert and I took the farm of
Mossgiel, consisting of 118 acres, at £90 per annum, as an asylum for
the family in case of the worst. It was stocked by the property and
individual savings of the whole family, and was a joint concern
among us. Every member of the family was allowed ordinary wages
for the labour he performed on the farm. My brother's allowance
and mine was £7 per annum each, and during the whole time this
family concern lasted, which was four years, as well as during the
preceding period at Lochlea, his expenses never in any one year
exceeded his slender income. As I was intrusted with the keeping
of the family accounts, it is not possible that there can be any
fallacy in this statement, in my brother's favour. His temperance
and frugality were everything that could be wished.

During his residence for six months in Irvine, indeed, where he
wrought at the business of a flax-dresser, with the view cf

14 .ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

adopting that trade, that he might get settled in life, paid a
shilling a-week for his lodging, and fed on meal and water,
with some wild boon-companions he occasionally lived rather
free. No doubt he sometimes tasted the " Scotch drink," of
which he ere long sung the praises ; but even then, his in-
spiration was from " a well-head undefiled." He was as sober
a man as his brother Gilbert himself, who says, " I do not
recollect, during these seven years, to have ever seen him in-
toxicated, nor was he at all given to drinking." We have
seen what were his virtues — for his vices, where must we
look?

During all these seven years, the most dangerous in the
life of every one, that of Robert Burns was singularly free from
the sin to which nature is prone ; nor had he drunk of that
guilty cup of the intoxication of the passions, that bewilders
the virtue, and changes their wisdom into foolishness, of the
discreetest of the children of men. But drink of it at last he
did ; and like other sinners seemed sometimes even to glory
in his .shame. But remorse puts on looks, and utters words,
that, being interpreted, have far other meanings ; there may
1 >w recklessness without obduracy ; and though the keenest
anguish of self-reproach be no proof of penitence, it is a pre-
paration for it in nature — a change of heart can be effected
only by religion. How wisely he addresses his friend !

" The sacred lowe o' weel-placed love,

Luxuriously indulge it ;
But never tempt th' illicit rove,

Though naething should divulge it.
I waive the quantum of the sin,

The hazard o' concealing ;
But oh ! it hardens a' within,

And petrifies ilie feeling ! "

Tt was before any such petrifaction of feeling had to be
deplored by Robert Bums that he loved Mary Campbell, his

Highland Mary," with as pure a passion as ever possessed
young poet's heart ; nor is there so sweet and sad a passage
recorded in the life of any other one of all the sons of song.
Many such partings there have been between us poor beings
d at all times, and often blindest in our bliss— but all
5one to oblivion. But that hour can never die— that scene

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS- 15.

live for ever. Immortal the two shadows standing there,
folding together the Bible — a little rivulet flowing between —
in which, as in consecrated water, they have dipt their hands,
water not purer than, at that moment, their united hearts !

There a.re few of his songs more beautiful, and none more
impassioned than

•' Ye banks, and braes, and streams around

The castle o' Montgomery,
Green be your woods, aud fair your flowers,

Your waters never drumlie !
There simmer first unfauld her robes,

And there the langest tarry ;
For there I took the last fareweel

O' my sweet Highland Mary."

But what are lines like these to his " Address to Mary in
Heaven 1 " It was the anniversary of the day on \vhicli he
heard of her death — that to him was the day on which she
died. He did not keep it as a day of •mourning — for he was
happy in as good a wife as ever man had, and cheerfully went
about the work of his farm. But towards the darkening " he
appeared to grow very sad about something," and wandered
out of doors into the barn-yard, where his Jean found him
lying on some straw with his eyes fixed on a shining star " like
another moon."

" Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray,

That lov'st to greet the early morn,
Again thou usher'st in the day

My Mary from my soul was torn.
O Mary ! dear departed shade !

Where is thy place of blissful rest ?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ?

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast ? "

He wrote them all down just as they now are, in their immortal
beauty, and gave them to his wife. Jealousy may be felt' even
of the dead. But such sorrow as this the more endeared her
husband to her heart — a heart ever faithful — and at times when
she needed to practise that hardest of all virtues in a wife —
forgiving ; but here all he desired was her sympathy — :and he
found it in some natural tears.

William Burnes was now — so writes Eobert to one of his

16 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

cousins — " in his own opinion, and indeed in almost every-
body's else, in a dying condition," — far gone in a consumption,
as it was called ; but dying, though not sixty, of old age at
last. His lot in this life was in many things a hard one, but
his blessings had been great, and his end was peace. All his
children had been dutiful to their parents, and to their care he
confided their mother. If he knew of Kobert's transgressions
in one year, he likewise knew of his obedience through many ;
nor feared that he would strive to the utmost to shelter his
mother in the storm. Robert writes, " On the 13th current
(Feb. 1784) I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we
have had long warning of the impending stroke, still the feel-
ings of nature claim their part ; and I cannot recollect the
tender endearments and parental lessons of the best of friends,
and the ablest of instructors, without feeling what perhaps the
calmer dictates of reason would partly condemn. I hope my
father's friends in your country will not let their connection in
this place die with him. For my part I shall ever with plea-
sure, with pride, acknowledge my connection with those who
were allied, by the ties of blood and friendship, to a man whose
memory I will ever honour and revere." And now the family
remove to Mossgiel,

" A virtuous household, but exceeding poor."

How fared Burns during the next two years, as a peasant ?
How fared he as a poet ? As a peasant, poorly and hardly —
as a poet, greatly and gloriously. How fared he as a man ?
Read his confessions. Mossgiel was the coldest of all the soils
on which the family had slaved and starved — starved is too
strong a word— and, in spite of its ingratitude, its fields are
hallowed ground. Thousands and tens of thousands have come
from afar to look on them ; and Wordsworth's self has " gazed
himself away" on the pathetic prospect.

' ' There,' said a stripling, pointing with much pride,
Towards a low roof, with green trees half-concealed,
' Is Mossgiel farm ; and that's the very field
Where Burns plough'd up the Daisy.' Far and wide
A plain below stretched seaward, while, descried
Above sea-clouds, the peaks of Arran rose ;
And, by that simple notice, the repose
Of earth, sky, sea, and air, was vivified.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 17

Beneath the random bield of clod or stone,
Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower
Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour
Have passed away ; less happy than the one
That, by the unwilling ploughshare, died to prove
The tender charm of poetry and love."

Peasant — Poet — Man — is, indeed, an idle distinction.
Burns is sitting alone in the Auld Clay-Biggin, for it has
its one retired room; and, as he says, "half-mad, half-fed,
half-sarkit" — all he had made by rhyme ! He is the picture of
a desponding man, steeped to the lips in poverty of his own
bringing on, and with a spirit vainly divided between hard
realities, and high hopes beyond his reach, resolving at last to
forswear all delusive dreams, and submit to an ignoble lot.
When at once, out of the gloom arises a glory, effused into
form by his own genius creative according to his soul's desire,
and conscious of its greatness despite of despair. A thousand
times before now had he been so disquieted and found no
comfort. But the hour had come of self-revelation, and he
knew that on earth his name was to live for ever.

" ' All hail ! my own inspired bard !
In me thy native Muse regard !
Nor longer mourn thy fate is hard,

Thus poorly low !
I come to give thee such reward

As we bestow.

Know, the great genius of this land
Has many a light, aerial band,
Who, all beneath his high command,

Harmoniously,
As arts or arms they understand,

Their labours ply.

Of these am I — Coila my name ;
And this district as mine I claim,
Where once the Campbells, chiefs of fame,

Held ruling power :
I mark'd thy embryo tuneful flame,

Thy natal hour.

VOL. VII. B

18 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

With future hope, I oft would gaze,
Fond, on thy little early ways,
Thy rudely caroll'd chiming phrase,

In uncouth rhymes,
Fired at the simple, artless lays

Of other times.

I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar ;
Or when the north his fleecy store

Drove through the sky,
I saw grim nature's visage hoar

Struck thy young eye.

Or, when the deep green-mantled earth
Warm cherish'd every flow'ret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth

In ev'ry grove,
I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth

With boundless love.

When ripen'd fields, and azure skies,
Call'd forth the reaper's rustling noise,
I saw thee leave their evening joys,

And lonely stalk,
To vent thy bosom's swelling rise

In pensive walk.

When youthful love, warm-blushing, strong
Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along,
Those accents, grateful to thy tongue,

Th' adored Name,
I taught thee how to pour in song,

To soothe thy flame.

I saw thy puke's maddening play,
Wild send thee pleasure's devious way,
Misled by fancy's meteor ray,

By passion driven ;
But yet the light that led astray

Was light from heaven.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 19

To give my counsels all in one —
Thy tuneful flame still careful fan ;
Preserve the dignity of man,

With soul erect ;
And trust, the Universal Plan

Will all protect.

And wear ihou this1 — she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head :
The polish'd leaves, and berries red,

Did rustling play ;
And, like a passing thought, she fled

In light away."

" To reconcile to our imagination the entrance of an aerial
being into a mansion of this kind," says the excellent Currie,
" required the powers of Burns ; he, however, succeeds."
Burns cared not at that time for our imagination — not he,
indeed, not a straw ; nor did he so much as know of our exist-
ence. He knew that there was a human race ; and he believed
that he was born to be a great power among them, especially
all over his beloved and beloving Scotland. " All hail ! my
own inspired bard !" That " all hail !" he dared to hear from
supernatural lips, but not till his spirit had long been gazing,
and long been listening to one commissioned by the " genius
of the land," to stand a Vision before her chosen poet in his
hut. Keconcile her entrance to our imagination ! Into no
other mansion but that " Auld Clay-Biggin" would Coilahave
descended from the sky.

The critic continues, " To the painting on her mantle, on
which is depicted the most striking scenery, as well as the
most distinguished characters of his native country, some
exception may be made. The mantle of Coila, like the cup
of Thyrsis (see the first Idyllium of Theocritus), and the
shield of Achilles, is too much crowded with figures, and some
of the objects represented upon it are scarcely admissible
according to the principles of design."

We advise you not to see the first Idyllium of Theocritus.
Perhaps you have no Greek. Mr Chapman's translation is as
good as a translation can well be, but then you may not have
a copy of it at hand. A pretty wooden cup it is, with curled

20 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ears and ivy-twined lips — embossed thereon the figure of a
woman with flowing robes and a Lydian head-dress, to whom
two angry men are making love. Hard by, a stout old fisher-
man on a rock is in the act of throwing his net into the sea :
not far from him is a vineyard, where a boy is sitting below a
hedge framing a locust trap with stalks of asphodel, and
guarding the grapes from a couple of sly foxes. Thyrsis, we
are told by Theocritus, bought it from a Calydonian Skipper
for a big cheese-cake and a goat. We must not meddle with
the shield of Achilles.

Turn we then to the "Vision" of Burns, our Scottish
Theocritus, as we have heard him classically called, and judge
of Dr Currie's sense in telling us to see the cup of Thyrsis.

" Down flow'd her robe, a tartan sheen,
Till half her leg was scrimply seen ;
And such a leg ! my bonny Jean

Could only peer it ;
Sae straught, sae taper, tight, and clean,

Kane else could near it."

You observe Burns knew not yet who stood before him —
woman, or angel, or fairy — but the Vision reminded him of
her whom best he loved.

" Green, slender, leaf-clad holly-boughs
Were twisted gracefu' round her brows ;
I took her for some Scottish Muse,
By that same token."

Some Scottish Muse — but which of them he had not leisure to
conjecture, so lost was he in admiration of that mystic robe —
" that mantle large, of greenish hue." As he continued to
gaze on her, his imagination beheld whatever it chose to be-
hold. The region dearest to the Poet's heart is all embla-
zoned there— and there too its sages and its heroes.

" Here, rivers in the sea were lost ;
There, mountains to the skies were tost ;
Here, tumbling billows mark'd the coast,

With surging foam ;
There, distant shone Art's lofty boast,

The lordly dome.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 21

Here, Doon pour'd down his far-fetch'd floods ;
There, well-fed Irvine stately thuds :
Auld hermit Ayr staw thro' his woods,

On to the shore ;
And many a lesser torrent scuds,

With seeming roar.

Low, in a sandy valley spread,

An ancient borough rear'd her head ;

Still, as in Scottish story read,

She boasts a race,
To ev'ry nobler virtue bred,

And polish'd grace.

By stately tow'r or 'palace fair,

Or ruins pendent in the air,

Bold stems of heroes, here and there,

I could discern ;
Some seem'd to muse, some seem'd to dare,

With feature stern.

My heart did glowing transport feel,

To see a race heroic wheel,

And brandish round the deep-dyed steel

In sturdy blows ;
While back recoiling seem'd to reel

Their Southron foes.

His Country's Saviour, mark him well !
Bold Richardton's heroic swell ;
The chief on Sark who glorious fell,

In high command ;
And he whom ruthless fates expel

His native land.

There, where a sceptred Pictish shads
Stalk'd round his ashes lowly laid,
I inark'd a martial race, portray 'd

In colours strong ;
Bold, soldier-featured, undismay'd

They strode along."

What have become of " the laws of design?" But would
good Dr Currie have dried up the sea ! How many yards,
will anybody tell us, were in that green mantle ? And what
a pattern I Thomas Campbell knew better what liberty is

22 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

allowed by nature to Imagination in her inspired dreams. In
his noble Stanzas to the Memory of Burns, he says, in allusion
to " The Vision,"

" Him, in his clay-built cot the Muse
Entranced, and showed him all the forms

Of fairy light and wizard gloom,
That only gifted poet views, —

The genii of the floods and storms,
And martial shades from glory's tomb."

The Fata Morgana are obedient to the laws of perspective,
and of optics in general ; but .they belong to the material
elements of nature ; this is a spiritual creation, and Burns is
its maker. It is far from perfect, either in design or execu-
tion ; but perfection is found nowhere here below, except in
Shakespeare ; and if " The Vision" offend you, we fear your
happiness will not be all you could desire it even in the
"Tempest" or the "Midsummer's Night's Dream."

How full of fine poetry are one and all of his " Epistles" to
his friends Sillar, Lapraik, Simpson, Smith, — worthy men one
and all, and among them much mother- wit almost as good as
genius, and thought to be genius by Burns, who in the
generous enthusiasm of his nature exaggerated the mental
gifts of everybody he loved, and conceived their characters to
be " accordant to his soul's desire." His " Epistle to Davie"
was among the very earliest of his productions, and Gilbert's
favourable opinion of it suggested to him the first idea of be-
coming an author. " It was, I think, in summer 1784, when
in the interval of hard labour, he and I were reading in the
garden (kail-yard), that he repeated to me the principal parts
of this Epistle." It breathes a noble spirit of independence,
and of proud contentment dallying with the hardships of its
lot, and in the power of manhood regarding the riches that are
out of its reach, without a particle of envy, and with a haughty
scorn. True, he says, "I hanker and canker to see their
cursed pride ; " but he immediately bursts out into a strain
that gives the lie to 'his own words : —

What though, like commoners of air,
We wander out we know not where,
But either house or hal' 1

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 23

Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods,
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods.

Are free alike to all.
In days when daisies deck the ground,

And blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound
To see the coming year :

On braes when we please, then,

"We'll sit an' sowth a tune ;
Syne rhyme till't, we'll time till't,
And sing't when we hae dune.

It's no in titles nor in rank ;

It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,

To purchase peace and rest ;
It's no in makin muckle mair ;
It's no in books, it's no in lear,

To mak us truly blest ;
If happiness hae not her seat

And centre in the breast,
We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest ;
Nae treasures, nor pleasures,

Could make us happy lang ;
The heart aye's the part aye
That makes us right or wrang."

Through all these Epistles we hear him exulting in the con-
sciousness of his own genius, and pouring out his anticipa-
tions in verses so full of force and ' fire, that of themselves
they privilege him to declare himself a Poet after Scotland's
own heart. Not even in " The Vision " does he kindle into
brighter transports, when foreseeing his fame, and describing
the fields of its glory, than in his Epistle to the schoolmaster
of Ochiltree ; for all his life he associated with schoolmasters
— finding along with knowledge, talent, and integrity, origin-
ality and strength of character prevalent in that meritorious
and ill-rewarded class of men. What can be finer than this ?

" We'll sing auld Coila's plains and fells,
Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells,
Her banks and braes, her dens and dells,

Where glorious Wallace
Aft bure the gree, as story tells,

Frae Southron billies.

24 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

At Wallace' name what Scottish blood
But boils up in a spring-tide flood !
Oft have our fearless fathers strode

By Wallace' side,
Still pressing onward, red-wat shod,

Or glorious died !

Oh, sweet are Coila's haughs and woods,
When lintwhites chaunt amang the buds,
And jinkin hares, in amorous whids,

Their loves enjoy,
While thro' the braes the cushat croods

Wi' wailfu' cry !

Ev*n winter bleak has charms for me
When winds rave through the naked tree ;
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree

Are hoary grey ;
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,

Dark'ning the day.

O Nature ! a' thy shows and forms
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms !
Whether the simmer kindly warms

Wi' life an' light,
Or winter howls, in gusty storms,

The lang, dark night !

The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel' he learn'd to wander,
Adown some trotting burn's meander,

An' no think lang ;
Or sweet to stray, and pensive ponder

A heart-felt sang ! "

It has been thoughtlessly said that Burns had no very deep
love of nature, and that he has shown no very great power
as a descriptive poet. The few lines quoted suffice to set
aside that assertion ; but it is true that his love of nature was
always linked with some vehement passion, or some sweet
affection for living creatures, and that it was for the sake of
the humanity she cherishes in her bosom, that she was dear to
him as his own life-blood. His love of nature by being thus
restricted was the more intense. Yet there are not wanting
passages that show how exquisite was his perception of her

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 25

beauties even when unassociated with any definite emotion,
and inspiring only that pleasure which we imbibe through the
senses into our unthinking souls.

" Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,

As through the glen it wimpl't ;
"Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays ;

Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't ;
Whyles glittered to the nightly rays,

Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle ;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel,

Unseen that night."

Such pretty passages of pure description are rare, and the
charm of this one depends on its sudden sweet intrusion into
the very midst of a scene of noisy merriment. But there are
many passages in which the descriptive power is put forth
under the influence of emotion so gentle that they come within
that kind of composition in which it has been thought Burns
does not excel. As for example,

u Nae mair the flower on field or meadow springs ;
Nae mair the grove with airy concert rings,
Except perhaps the Robin's whistling glee,
Proud o' the height o' some bit half-lang tree :
The hoary morns precede the sunny days,
Mild, calm, serene, wide spreads the noon- tide blaze,
While thick the gossamour waves wanton hi the rays."

Seldom setting himself to describe visual objects but when
he is under strong emotion, he seems to have taken consider-
able pains when he did, to produce something striking ; and
though he never fails on such occasions to do so, yet he is
sometimes ambitious overmuch, and, though never feeble,
becomes bombastic, as in his lines on the Fall of Fyers :

" And viewless echo's ear astonished renda."

In the " Brigs of Ayr" there is one beautiful, and one magnifi-
cent passage of this kind.

" All before their sight,
A fairy train appear'd in order bright :
Adown the glittering stream they featly danced ;
Bright to the moon their various dresses glanced :

26 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

They footed o'er the wat'ry glass so neat,
The infant ice scarce bent beneath their feet :
While arts of Minstrelsy among them rung,
And soul-ennobling Bards heroic ditties sung."

He then breaks off in celebration of " M'Lauchlan, thairm-
inspiring sage," that is, " a well-known performer of Scottish
music on the violin," and returns, at his leisure, to the fairies I
The other passage which we have called magnificent is a
description of a spate. But in it, it is true, he personates the
Auld Brig, and is inspired by wrath and contempt of the New.

" Conceited gowk ! puff'd up wi' windy pride !
This mony a year I've stood the flood and tide ;
And though wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn,
I'll be a Brig when ye're a shapeless cairn !
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa-three winters will inform you better,
When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains,
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains ;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil,
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course,
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source,
Aroused by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down his sna-broo rowes ;
While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate,
Sweeps dams and mills, and brigs, a' to the gate ;
And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key,
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen' d, tumbling sea ;
Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise !
And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies."

Perhaps we have dwelt too long on this point ; but the truth
is that Burns would have utterly despised most of what is now
dignified with the name of poetry, where harmlessly enough

" Pure description takes the place of sense ; "

but far worse, where the agonising artist intensifies himself
into genuine convulsions at the shrine of nature, or acts the
epileptic to extort alms. The world is beginning to lose
patience with such idolaters, and insists on being allowed to
see the sun set with her own eyes, and with her own ears to
hear the sea. Why, there is often more poetry in five lines of

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 27

Burns than any fifty volumes of the versifiers who have had
the audacity to criticise him — as by way of specimen, —

" When biting Boreas, fell and dour,
Sharp shivers through the leafless boVr ;
When Phoebus gies a short-lived gloVr

Far south the lift,

Dim-dark'ning through the flaky show'r
Or whirling drift :

Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd,
Poor labour sweet in sleep was lock'd,
While burns, wi' snawy wreaths up-chok'd,

Wild-eddying swirl,
Or through the mining outlet bock'd,

Down headlong hurl."

"Halloween" is now almost an obsolete word — and the
liveliest of all festivals, that used to usher in the winter with
one long night of mirthful mockery of superstitious fancies,
not unattended with stirrings of imaginative fears in many a
simple breast, is gone with many other customs of the good
old time, not among town-folks only, but dwellers in rural
parishes far withdrawn from the hum of crowds, where all sucli
rites originate and latest fall into desuetude. The present
wise generation of youngsters can care little or nothing about
a poem which used to drive their grandfathers and grand-
mothers half-mad with merriment when boys and girls,
gathered in a circle round some choice reciter, who, though
perhaps endowed with no great memory for grammar, had half
of Burns by heart. Many of them, doubtless, are of opinion
that it is a silly affair. So must think the more aged march-
of-mind men who have outgrown the whims and follies of
their ill-educated youth, and become instructors in all manner
of wisdom. In practice extinct to elderly people it survives
in poetry ; and there the body of the harmless superstition,
in its very form and pressure, is embalmed. " Halloween "
was thought, surely you all know that, to be a night " when
witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings, are all
abroad on their baneful midnight errands ; particularly those
aerial people the fairies are said on that night to hold a
grand anniversary." So writes Burns in a note ; but in the
poem evil spirits are disarmed of all their terrors, and fear is

28 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

fun. It might have begun well enough, and nobody would
have found fault, with

« Some merry, friendly, kintra folks,

Together did convene,
To burn their nits, and pu' their stocks,
And haud their Halloween

Fu' blythe that night ;"

but Burns, by a few beautiful introductory lines, brings the
festival at once within the world of poetry : —
" Upon that night, when fairies light,

On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,

On sprightly coursers prance ;
Or for Colean the route is ta'en,

Beneath the moon's pale beams ;
There, up the Cove, to stay and rove
Amang the rocks and streams
To sport that night.

Amang the bonny winding banks,

Where Doon rins, wimplin, clear,
Where Bruce ance ruled the martial ranks,

And shook his Carrick spear."

Then instantly he collects the company — the business of the
evening is set agoing — each stanza has its new actor and its
new charm — the transitions are as quick as it is in the power
of winged words to fly ; female characters of all ages and dis-
positions, from the auld guidwife " wha fuft her pipe wi' sic
a hint," to wee Jenny " wi her little skelpie limmer's face " —
Jean, Nell, Merran, Meg, maidens all — and u wanton widow
Leezie " — figure each in her own individuality animated into
full life, by a few touches. Nor less various the males, from
haverel Will to " auld uncle John wha wedlock's joys sin'
Mar's year did desire " — Eab and Jock, and " fechtin Jamie
Fleck " like all bullies " cooard afore bogles ; " the only pause
in their fast-following proceedings being caused by garrulous
grannie's pious reproof of her oe for daurin to try sic sportm
" as eat the apple at the glass" — a reproof proving that her
own wrinkled breast holds many queer memories of langsyne
Halloweens ; — all the carking cares of the workday world are
clean forgotten ; the hopes, fears, and wishes that most agi-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 29

tate every human breast, and are by the simplest concealed,
hei-e exhibit themselves without disguise in the freedom not
only permitted but inspired by the passion that rules the
night — " the passion," says the poet himself, " of prying into
futurity, which makes a striking part of the history of human
nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations ; and it may
be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such
should honour the author with a perusal, to see the remains of
it among the more unenlightened of our own."

But how have we been able to refrain from saying a few
words about the " Cottar's Saturday Night " ? How affecting
Gilbert's account of its origin I

" Robert had frequently remarked to me that he thought
there was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, ' Let
us worship God,' used by a decent sober head of a family
introducing family worship. To this sentiment of the author
the world is indebted for the ' Cottar's Saturday Night.' The
hint of the plan, and title of the poem, were taken from Fer-
gusson's 'Farmer's Ingle.' When Robert had not some pleasure
in view in which I was not thought fit to participate, we used
frequently to walk together, when the weather was favourable,
on the Sunday afternoons (those precious breathing-times to
the labouring part of the community), and enjoyed such Sun-
days as would make me regret to see their number abridged.
It was on one of those walks that I first had the pleasure of
hearing the author repeat ' The Cottar's Saturday Night.' I do
not recollect to have read or heard anything by which I was
more highly electrified." No wonder Gilbert was highly
electrified ; for though he had read or heard many things of
his brother Robert's of equal poetical power, not one among
them all was so charged with those sacred influences that
connect the human heart with heaven. It must have sounded
like a very revelation of all the holiness for ever abiding in
that familiar observance, but which custom, without impairing
its efficacy, must often partially hide from the children of
labour, when it is all the time helping to sustain them upon
and above this earth. And this from the erring to the steadfast
brother ! From the troubled to the quiet spirit! out of a heart
too often steeped in the waters of bitterness, issuing, as from
an unpolluted fountain, the inspiration of pious song 1 But its
effect on innumerable hearts is not now electrical — it inspires

30 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

peace. It is felt yet, and sadly changed will then be Scot-
land, if ever it be not felt, by every one who peruses it, to be
a communication from brother to brother. It is felt by us, all
through from beginning to end,tobeBuRNs's "Cottar's Saturday
Night ;" at each succeeding sweet or solemn stanza we more
and more love the man — at its close we bless him as a bene-
factor ; and if, as the picture fades, thoughts of sin and of
sorrow will arise, and will not be put down, let them, as we
hope for mercy, be of our own — not his ; let us tremble for
ourselves as we hear a voice saying, " Fear God and keep his
commandments."

There are few more perfect poems. It is the utterance of a
heart whose chords were all tuned to gratitude, "making
sweet melody" to the Giver, on a night not less sacred in His
eye than His own appointed Sabbath.

" November chill blaws lofld wi' angry sugh ;

The short'ning winter day is near a close ;

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh ;

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose ;
The toil-worn Cottar frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend."

That one single stanza is in itself a picture, one may say a
poem, of the poor man's life. It is so imaged on the eye that
we absolutely see it ; but then not an epithet but shows the
condition on which he holds, and the heart with which he
endures, and enjoys it. Work he must in the face of Novem-
ber ; but God who made the year shortens and lengthens its
days for the sake of his living creatures, and has appointed for
them all their hour of rest. The " miry beasts" will soon be
at supper in their clean-strawed stalls — " the black'ning train
o' craws " invisibly hushed on their rocking trees ; and he
whom God made after his own image, that " toil-worn Cottar,"
he too may lie down and sleep. There is nothing especial in
his lot wherefore he should be pitied, nor are we asked to pity
hitn, as he " collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes :"
many of us, who have work to do and do it not, may envy his
contentment, and the religion that gladdens his release —
" hoping the MORN in ease and rest to spend," only to such as

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 31

lie, in truth, a Sabbath. "Kemember thatthou keep holy the
Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou
hast to do. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord
thy God. In it thou shalt do no manner of work." 0 ! that
man should ever find it in his heart to see in that law a stern
obligation — not a merciful boon and a blessed privilege !

In those times family-worship in such dwellings, all over
Scotland, was not confined to one week-day. It is to be
believed that William Burnes might have been heard by his
son Robert duly every night saying, " Let us worship God."
" There was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase "
every time he heard it ; but on " Saturday night " family
worship was surrounded, in its solemnity, with a gathering of
whatever is most cheerful and unalloyed in the lot of labour ;
and the poet's genius in a happy hour hearing those words in
his heart, collected many nights into one, and made the whole
observance, as it were, a religious establishment, it is to be
hoped, for ever.

"The fifth and sixth stanzas, and the eighteenth," says
Gilbert, " thrilled with peculiar ecstasy through my soul ;"
and well they might ; for, in homeliest words, they tell at once
of home's familiar doings and of the highest thoughts that can
ascend in supplication to the throne of God. What is the
eighteenth stanza, and why did it too " thrill with peculiar
ecstasy my soul ? " You may be sure that whatever thrilled
Gilbert's soul will thrill yours if it be in holy keeping ; for he
was a good man, and walked all his days fearing God.

" Then homeward all take oft their sev'ral way ;

The youngling cottagers retire to rest :
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest,

And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride,
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide ;
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside."

Think again of the first stanza of all — for you have forgotten
it — of the toil-worn Cottar collecting his spades, his mattocks,
and his hoes, and weary o'er the moor bending his course
homewards. In spite of his hope of the morn, you could
hardly help looking on him then as if he were disconsolate —

32 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

now you are prepared to believe, with the poet, that such
brethren are among the best of their country's sons, that
" From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad ;"

and you desire to join in the Invocation that bursts from his
pious and patriotic heart, —

" 0 Scotia ! my dear, my native soil !

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent !
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be bless'd with health, and peace, and sweet content !
And oh may Heaven their simple lives prevent.

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile !
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much lov'd Isle.

O Thou ! who pour'd the patriotic tide

That stream'd through "Wallace's undaunted heart ;
"Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
(The patriot's God peculiarly thou art,

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward !)
O never, never, Scotia's realm desert :

But still the patriot, and the patriot bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! "

We said there are few more perfect poems. The expression
is hardly a correct one ; but in two of the stanzas there are
lines which we never read without wishing them away, and
there is one stanza we could sometimes almost wish away
altogether ; the sentiment, though beautifully worded, being
somewhat harsh, and such as must be felt to be unjust by many
devout and pious people : —

" They chant their artless notes in simple guise ;

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim :
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name :
Or noble Elgin beets the heavenward flame,

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays :
Compared with these Italian trills are tame ;

The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hoe they with our Creator's praise"

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 33

We do not find fault with Burns for having written these lines ;
for association of feeling with feeling, by contrast, is perhaps
most of all powerful in music. Believing that there was no
devotional spirit in Italian music, it was natural for him to de-
nounce its employment in religious services ; but we all know
that it cannot without most ignorant violation of the truth bo
said of the hymns of that most musical of all people, and super-
stitious as they may be, among the most devout, that

" Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise."

Our objection to some lines in another stanza is more serious,
for it applies not to a feeling but a judgment. That there is
more virtue in a cottage than in a palace we are not disposed
to deny at any time, least of all when reading " The Cottar's
Saturday Night ;" and we entirely go along with Burns when
he says,

u And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,
The cottage leaves the palace far behind ;"

but there, we think, he ought to have stopped, or illustrated
the truth in a milder manner than

" What is a lordling's pomp ? — a cumbrous load,

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined.",

Our moral nature revolts with a sense of injustice from the
comparison of the wickedness of one class with the goodness
of another ; and the effect is the very opposite of that intended,
the rising up of a miserable conviction that for a while had
been laid asleep, that vice and crime are not excluded from
cots, but often, alas ! are found there in their darkest colours
and most portentous forms.

The whole stanza we had in our mind as somehow or other
not entirely delightful, is

" Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride,

In all the pomp of method, and of art,
"When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion's every grace except the heart.
The Pow'r incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul ;
And in his book of life the inmates poor enrol."
VOL. VII. C

84 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

"Let us join in the worship of God" is a strong desire of
nature, and a commanded duty ; and thus are brought together,
for praise and prayer, " congregations wide," in all populous
places of every Christian land. Superstition is sustained by
the same sympathy as religion — enlightenment of reason being
essential to faith. There sit, every Sabbath, hundreds of
hypocrites, thousands of the sincere, tens of thousands of the
indifferent — how many of the devout or how few who shall say
that understands the meaning of devotion ? If all be false and
hollow, a mere semblance only, then indeed

" The Pow'r, incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ;"•

but if, even in the midst of " religion's pride," there be humble
and contrite hearts — if a place be found for the poor in spirit
even "in gay religions full of pomp and gold" — a Christian
poet ought to guard his heart against scorn of the ritual of
any form of Christian worship. Be it performed in Cathedral,
Kirk, or Cottage — God regards it only when performed in
spirit and in truth.

Remember all this poetry, and a hundred almost as fine
things besides, was composed within little more than two
years, by a man all the while working for wages — seven
pounds from May-day to May-day ; and that he never idled
at his work, but mowed and ploughed as if working by the!
piece, and could afford therefore, God bless his heart, to stay
the share for a minute, but too late for the " wee, sleekit,
cowrin, timorous beastie's " nest. Folks have said he was a
bad farmer, and neglected Mossgiel, an idler in the land.

" How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle ! "

Absent in the body, we doubt not, he frequently was from his

fields ; oftenest in the evenings and at night. Was he in

Nance Tinnock's ? She knew him by name and head-mark,

for once seen he was not to be forgotten ; but she complained

that he had never drunk three half-mutchkins in her house,

whatever he might say in his lying poems. In Poussie

Dannie s— mother of Racer Jess ?— He was there once; and

out of the scum and refuse of the outcasts of the lowest grade

Bible being, he constructed a Beggar's Opera, in which

singers and dancers, drabs and drunkards all, belong still

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 35

to humanity ; and though huddling together in the filth of the
flesh, must not be classed, in their enjoyments, with the beasts
that perish. In the Smiddy ? Ay, you might have found him
there, at times when he had no horse to be shoed, no coulter
to be sharpened.

" When Vulcan gies his bellows breath,
And ploughmen gather wi' their graith,
O rare ! to see thee fizz and freath

I' the luggit caup !
Then Burnewin comes on like death

At every chaup.

Nae mercy, then, for aim or steel ;
The brawnie, bainie, ploughman chiel',
Brings hard owrehip, wi' sturdy wheel,

The strong forehammer,
Till block and studdie ring and reel

Wi' dinsome clamour."

On frozen Muir-loch? Among the curlers "at their roaring
play" — roaring is the right word — but 'tis not the bonspiel only
that roars, it is the ice, and echo tells it is from her crags
that submit not to the snow. There king of his rink was
Kabbie Burns to be found ; and at night in the Hostelry, in
the reek of beef and greens and " Scotch drink," Apollo in the
shape of a ploughman at the head of the fir-table that dances
with all its glasses to the horny fists clenching with cordial
thumpers the sallies of wit and humour volleying from his lips
and eyes, unreproved by the hale old minister who is happy
to meet his parishioners out of the pulpit, and by his presence
keeps the poet witliin bounds, if not of absolute decorum, of
that decency becoming men in their most jovial mirth, and not
to be violated without reproach by genius in its most wanton
mood dallying even with forbidden things. Or at a Kockin ?
An evening meeting as you know, "one of the objects of
which," so says the glossary, " is spinning with the rock or
distaff; " but which has many other objects, as the dullest
may conjecture, when lads and lasses have come flocking from
"behind the hills where Stinchar flows, 'mang muirs and
mosses mony o'," to one solitary homestead made roomy
enough for them all ; and if now and then felt to be too
close and crowded for the elderly people and the old, not

as ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

unprovided with secret spots near at hand in the broom and
the brackens, where the sleeping lintwhites sit undisturbed by
lovers' whispers, and lovers may look, if they choose it, un-
ashamed to the stars.

And what was he going to do with all this poetry — poetry
accumulating fast as his hand, released at night from other
implements, could put it on paper in bold round upright
characters, that tell of fingers more familiar with the plough
than the pen ? He himself sometimes must have wondered to
find every receptacle in the spence crammed with manu-
scripts, to say nothing of the many others floating about all
over the country, and setting the smiddies in a -roar, and not
a few, of which nothing was said, folded in the breast-kerchiefs
of maidens, put therein by his own hand on the lea-rig,
beneath the milk-white thorn. What brought him out into
the face of day as a Poet ?

Of all the women Burns ever loved, Mary Campbell not
excepted, the dearest to him by far, from first to last, was
Jean Armour. During composition her image rises up from
his heart before his eyes the instant he touches on any
thought or feeling with which she could be in any way con-
nected ; and sometimes his allusions to her might even seem
out of place, did they not please us, by letting us know that
he could not altogether forget her, whatever the subject his
muse had chosen. Others may have inspired more poetical
strains, but there is an earnestness in his fervours, at her
name, that brings her breathing in warm flesh and blood to
his breast. Highland Mary he would have made his wife, and
perhaps broken her heart. He loved her living, as a creature
in a dream, dead as a spirit in heaven. But Jean Armour
possessed his heart in the stormiest season of his passions,
and she possessed it in the lull that preceded their dissolution.
She was well worthy of his affection, on account of her ex-
cellent qualities ; and though never beautiful, had many
personal attractions. But Burns felt himself bound to her
by that inscrutable mystery in the soul of every man, by
which one other being, and one only, is believed, and truly,
to be essential to his happiness here, — without whom, life is
not life. Her strict and stern father, enraged out of all
religion both natural and revealed, with his daughter for
having sinned with a man of sin, tore from her hands her

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 37

marriage lines as she besought forgiveness on her knees, and,
without pity for the life stirring within her, terrified her into
the surrender and renunciation of the title of wife, branding
her thereby with an abhorred name. A father's power is
sometimes very terrible, and it was so here; for she submitted,
with less outward show of agony than can be well understood,
and Burns almost became a madman. His worldly circum-
stances were wholly desperate, for bad seasons had stricken
dead the cold soil of Mossgiel ; but he was willing to work
for his wife in ditches, or to support her for a while at home,
by his wages as a negro-driver in the West Indies.

A more unintelligible passage than this never occurred in the
life of any other man, certainly never a more trying one ; and
Burns must at this time have been tormented by as many violent
passions, in instant succession or altogether, as the human
heart could hold. In verse he had for years given vent to all
his moods ; and his brother tells us that the LAMENT was com-
posed " after the first distraction of his feelings had a little
subsided." Had he lost her by death he would have been
dumb, but his grief was not mortal, and it grew eloquent,
when relieved and sustained from prostration by other pas-
sions that lift up the head, if it be only to let it sink down
again, rage, pride, indignation, jealousy, and scorn. " Never
man loved, or rather adored woman, more than I did her ; and
to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to
distraction after all. My poor dear unfortunate Jean ! It is
not the losing her that makes me so unhappy ; but for her
sake I feel most severely ; I grieve she is in the road to, I
fear, eternal ruin. May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude
and perjury to me, as I from my very soul forgive her ; and
may his grace be with her, and bless her in all her future life !
I can have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment
than what I have felt in my own breast on her account. I
have tried often to forget her ; I have run into all kinds of
dissipation and riot, mason-meetings, drinking matches, and
other mischiefs, to drive her out of my head, but all in vain.
And now for the grand cure ; the ship is on her way home
that is to take me out to Jamaica ; and then farewell, dear old
Scotland ! and farewell, dear ungrateful Jean ! for never, never
will I see you more." In the LAMENT, there are the same
passions, but genius has ennobled them by the tenderness and

38 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

elevation of the finest poetry, guided their transitions by her
solemnising power, inspired their appeals to conscious night
and nature, and subdued down to the beautiful and pathetic,
the expression of what had else been agony and despair.

Twenty pounds would enable him to leave Scotland, and
take him to Jamaica ; and to raise them, it occurred to Eobert
Burns to publish his poems by subscription ! " I was pretty
confident my poems would meet with some applause ; but at
the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of
censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me for-
get neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I got
subscriptions for about three hundred and sixty. My vanity
was highly gratified by the reception I met with from tfee
public ; and besides, I pocketed, all expenses deducted, near
twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was
thinking of indenturing myself for want of money to procure
my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the
price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage
passage in the first ship that was to sail for the Clyde, ' For
hungry ruin had me in the wind.' " The ship sailed ; but
Burns was still at Mossgiel, for his strong heart could not
tear itself away from Scotland, and some of his friends en-
couraged him to hope that he might be made a gauger !
— In a few months, he was about to be hailed by the uni-
versal acclamation of his country a great National Poet.

But the enjoyment of his fame all round his birth-place,
"the heart and the main region of his song," intense as
we know it was, though it assuaged, could not still the
troubles of his heart ; his life, amidst it all, was as hopeless as
when it was obscure ; " his chest was on its road to Greenock,
where he was to embark in a few days for America," and again
he sung

" Farewell old Coila's hills and dales,

Her heathy moors and winding vales,

The scenes where wretched fancy roves,

Pursuing past unhappy loves !

Farewell my friends ! farewell my foes !

My peace with these, my love with those—

The bursting tears my heart declare —

Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr ;"

when a few words from a blind old man. to a country clergy-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 39

man kindled within him a new hope, and set his heart on fire ;
and while

" November winds blew loud wi' angry sugh,"

" I posted away to Edinburgh without a single acquaintance,
or a single letter of introduction. The baneful star that had
so long shed its blasting influence on my zenith, for once made
a revolution to the Nadir."

At first, Burns was stared at with such eyes as people open
wide who behold a prodigy ; for though he looked the rustic,
and his broad shoulders had the stoop that stalwart men acquire
at the plough, his swarthy face was ever and anon illumined
with the look that genius alone puts off and on, and that comes
and goes with a new interpretation of imagination's winged
words. For a week or two he had lived chiefly with some
Ayrshire acquaintances, and was not personally known to any
of the leading men. But as soon as he came forward, and was
seen and heard, his name went through the city, and people
asked one another, " Have you met Burns ?" His demeanour
among the Magnates was not only unembarrassed but dignified,
and it was at once discerned by the blindest that he belonged
to the aristocracy of nature. " The idea which his conversa-
tion conveyed of the power of his mind, exceeded, if possible,
that which is suggested by his writings. Among the poets
whom I have happened to know I have been struck, in more
than one instance, with the unaccountable disparity between
their general talents, and the occasional aspirations of their
more favoured moments. But all the faculties of Burns's mind
were, as far as I could judge, equally vigorous ; and his pre-
dilections for poetry were rather the result of his own enthusi-
astic and impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively
adapted to that species of composition." Who those poets
were, of occasional inspiration and low general talents, and
in conversation felt to be of the race of the feeble, Dugald
Stewart had too much delicacy to tell us ; but if Edinburgh
had been their haunt, and theirs the model of the poetical
character in the judgment of her sages, no wonder that a
new light was thrown on the Philosophy of the Human
Mind by that of Robert Burns. For his intellectual faculties
were of the highest order, and though deferential to superior
knowledge, he spoke on all subjects he understood, and they
were many, with a voice of determination, and when need was,

40 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

of command. It was not in the debating club in Tarbolton
alone, about which so much nonsense has been prosed, that he
had learned eloquence ; he had been long giving chosen and
deliberate utterance to all his bright ideas and strong emo-
tions ; they were all his own, or he had made them his own
by transfusion ; and so, therefore, was his speech. Its fount
was in genius, and therefore could not run dry — a flowing
spring that needed neither to be fanged nor pumped. As
he had the power of eloquence, so had he the will, the
desire, the ambition to put it forth ; for he rejoiced to carry
with him the sympathies of his kind, and in his highest
moods he was not satisfied with their admiration without
their love. There never beat a heart more alive to kind-
ness. To the wise and. good how eloquent his gratitude 1
to Glencairn, how imperishable ! This exceeding tender-
ness of heart often gave such pathos to his ordinary talk,
that he even melted commonplace people into tears ! With-
out scholarship, without science, with not much of what is
called information, he charmed the first men in a society
equal in all these to any at that time in Europe. The
scholar was happy to forget his classic lore, as he listened,
for the first time, to the noblest sentiments flowing from
the lips of a rustic, sometimes in his own Doric divested
of all offensive vulgarity, but oftener in language which,
in our northern capital, was thought pure English, and com-
paratively it was so, for in those days the speech of many of
the most distinguished persons would have been unintelligible
out of Scotland, and they were proud of excelling in the use of
their mother tongue. The philosopher wondered that the
peasant should comprehend intuitively truths that had been
established, it was so thought, by reasoning demonstrative
or inductive ; as the illustrious Stewart, a year or two after-
wards wondered how clear an idea Burns the Poet had of
Alison's True Theory of Taste. True it is that the great
law of association has by no one been so beautifully stated
in a single sentence as by Burns : " That the martial clangor
fa trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic,
and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a Jew's harp ; that
ehcate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower
is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beauti-
lul and elegant than the upright stalk of the burdock ; and that

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 41

from something innate and independent of all associations of
ideas — these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths,
until perusing your book shook my faith." The man of wit
— ay, even Harry Erskine himself — and a wittier than he
never charmed social life — was nothing loth, with his de-
lightful amenity, to cease for a while the endless series of
anecdotes so admirably illustrative of the peculiarities of
nations, orders, or individuals, and almost all of them created
or vivified by his own genius, that the most accomplished
companies might experience a new pleasure from the rich and
racy humour of a natural converser fresh from the plough.

And how did Burns bear all this, and much besides even
more trying? For you know that a duchess declared that
she had never before in all her life met with a man who
BO fairly carried her off her feet. Hear Professor Stewart :
" The attentions he received during his stay in town, from
all ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as would
have turned any head but his own. I cannot say that I
could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on
his mind. He retained the same simplicity of manners
and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I
first saw him in the country ; nor did he seem to feel any
additional self-importance from the number and rank of his
new acquaintance." In many passages of his letters to
friends who had their fears, Burns expressed entire confi-
dence in his own self-respect, and in terms the most true
and touching ; as, for example, to Dr Moore : " The hope
to be admired for ages is, in by far the greater part of
those who even were authors of repute, an unsubstantial
dream. For my part, my first ambition was, and still is,
to please my compeers, the rustic inmates of the hamlet,
while ever-changing language and manners shall allow me
to be relished and understood." And to his venerated friend
Mrs Dunlop he gives utterance, in the midst of his triumphs,
to dark forebodings, some of which were but too soon fulfilled !
" You are afraid that I shall grow intoxicated with my pros-
perity as a poet. Alas ! Madam, I know myself and the world
too well. I assure you, Madam, I do not dissemble, when I
tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a
poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages
which are reckoned necessary for that character, at least at

42 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public notice,
which has borne me to a height where I am feeling abso-
lutely certain my abilities are inadequate to support me ;
and too surely do I see that time, when the same tide will
leave me, and recede, perhaps, as far below the mark of
truth. I do not say this in ridiculous affectation of self-
abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know
what ground I occupy ; and however a friend or the world
may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own
opinion in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of pro-
perty. I mention this to you once for all, to disburthen
my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about
it. But

' When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,'

you will bear me witness, that, when my bubble of fame was
at the highest, I stood, unintoxicated with the inebriating cup
in my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hasten-
ing time when the blow of Calumny should dash it to the
ground with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph."

Such equanimity is magnanimous ; for though it is easy to
declaim on the vanity of fame, and the weakness of them who
are intoxicated with its bubbles, the noblest have still longed
for it, and what a fatal change it has indeed often wrought on
the simplicity and sincerity of the most gifted spirits 1 There
must be a moral grandeur in his character who receives
sedately the unexpected, though deserved ratification of his
title to that genius whose empire is the inner being of his
race, from the voice of his native land uttered aloud through
all her regions, and harmoniously combined of innumerable
tones all expressive of a great people's pride. Make what
deductions you will from the worth of that "All hail ! " and
Rtill it must have sounded in Burns's ears as a realisation of
that voice heard by his prophetic soul in " The Vision."

" ALL HAIL ! MT OWN INSPIRED BARD !

I taught tby manners-painting strains,
The loves, the ways of simple swains,
TILL NOW, O'ER ALL MY WIDE DOMAINS

THY FAME EXTENDS ! "

Robert Burns was not the man to have degraded himself
everlastingly, by one moment's seeming slight or neglect of

THE GENIUS AXD CHARACTER OF BURNS. 43

friends, new or old, belonging either to his own condition, or
to a rank in life somewhat higher perhaps than his own,
although not exactly to that " select society " to which the
wonder awakened by his genius had given him a sudden in-
troduction. Persons in that middle or inferior rank were his
natural, his best, and his truest friends ; and many of them,
there can be no doubt, were worthy of his happiest companion-
ship either in the festal hour or the hour of closer communion.
He had no right, with all his genius, to stand aloof from
them, and with a heart like his he had no inclination. Why
should he have lived exclusively with lords and ladies — paper
or landlords — ladies by descent or courtesy — with aristocratic
advocates, philosophical professors, clergymen, wild or mode-
rate, Arminian or Calvinistic ? Some of them were among the
first men of their age ; others were doubtless not inerudite,
and a few not unwitty in their own esteem ; and Burns greatly
enjoyed their society, in which he met with an admiration
that must have been to him the pleasure of a perpetual tri-
umph. But more of them were dull and pompous ; incapable
of rightly estimating or feeling the power of his genius ; and
when the glitter and the gloss of novelty was worn off before
their shallow eyes, from the poet who bore them all down into
insignificance, then no doubt they began to get offended and
shocked with his rusticity or rudeness, and sought refuge in
the distinctions of rank, and the laws, not to be violated with
impunity, of " select society." The patronage he received
was honourable, and he felt it to be so ; but it was still
patronage ; and had he, for the sake of it or its givers, for-
gotten for a day the humblest, lowest, meanest of his friends,
or even his acquaintances, how could he have borne to read
his own two bold lines —

" The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a* that " 1

Besides, we know from Burns's poetry what was then the cha-
racter of the people of Scotland, for they were its materials,
its staple. Her peasantry were a noble race, and their virtues
moralised his song. The inhabitants of the towns were of the
same family — the same blood — one kindred — and many, most
of them, had been born, or in some measure bred, in the
countiy. Their ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, were

44 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

much alike ; and the shopkeepers of Edinburgh and Glasgow
were as proud of Eobert Burns, as the ploughmen and shep-
herds of Kyle and the Stewartry. He saw in them friends
and brothers. Their admiration of him was, perhaps, fully
more sincere and heartfelt, nor accompanied with less under-
standing of his merits, than that of persons in higher places ;
and most assuredly among the respectable citizens of Edin-
burgh Burns found more lasting friends than he ever did
among her gentry and noblesse. Nor can we doubt that
then, as now, there were in that order great numbers of men
of well cultivated minds, whom Burns, in his best hours, did
right to honour, and who were perfectly entitled 'to seek his
society, and to open their hospitable doors to the brilliant
stranger. That Burns, whose sympathies were keen and
wide, and who never dreamt of looking down on others as be-
neath him, merely because he was conscious of his own vast
superiority to the common run of men, should have shunned
or been shy of such society, would have been something alto-
gether unnatural and incredible ; nor is it at all wonderful or
blamable that he should occasionally even have much pre-
ferred such society to that which has been called " more
select," and therefore above his natural and proper condition.
Admirably as he in general behaved in the higher circles, in
those humbler ones alone could he have felt himself com-
pletely at home. His demeanour among the rich, the great,
the learned, or the wise, must often have been subject to some
little restraint, and all restraint of that sort is ever painful ;
or, what is worse still, his talk must sometimes have partaken
of display. With companions and friends, who claimed no
superiority in anything, the sensitive mind of Burns must have
been at its best and happiest, because completely at its ease,
and free movement given to the play of all its feelings and
faculties ; and in such companies we cannot but believe that
his wonderful conversational powers shone forth in their most
various splendour. He must have given vent there to a thou-
sand familiar fancies, in all their freedom and all their force,
which, in the fastidious society of high life, his imagination
must have been too much fettered even to conceive; and
which, had they flowed from his lips, would either not have
been understood, or would have given offence to that delicacy
of breeding which is often hurt even by the best manners of

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OP BURNS. 45

those whose manners are all of nature's teaching, and unsub-
jected to the salutary restraints of artificial life. Indeed, we
know that Burns sometimes burst suddenly and alarmingly
the restraints of " select society ; " and that on one occasion
he called a clergyman an idiot for misquoting Gray's Elegy —
a truth that ought not to have been promulgated in presence
of the parson, especially at so early a meal as breakfast : and
he confesses in his most confidential letters, though indeed he
was then writing with some bitterness, that he never had been
truly and entirely happy at rich men's feasts. If so, then
never could he have displayed there his genius in full power
and lustre. His noble rage must in some measure have been
repressed — the genial current of his soul in some degree
frozen. He never was, never could be, the free, fearless,
irresistible Robert Burns that nature made him — no, not even
although he carried the Duchess of Gordon off her feet, and
silenced two Ex-Moderators of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland.

Burns, before his visit to Edinburgh, had at all times and
places been in the habit of associating with the best men of
his order — the best in everything, in station, in manners, in
moral and intellectual character ; such men as William Tell
and Hofer, for example, associated with in Switzerland and
the Tyrol. Even the persons he got unfortunately too well
acquainted with (but whose company he soon shook off), at
Irvine and Kirkoswald — smugglers and their adherents,
were, though a lawless and dangerous set, men of spunk, and
spirit, and power, both of mind and body ; nor was there any-
thing the least degrading in an ardent, impassioned, and
imaginative youth becoming for a time rather too much
attached to such daring and adventurous, and even interest-
ing characters. They had all a fine strong poetical smell of
the sea, mingled to precisely the proper pitch with that of the
contraband. As a poet Burns must have been much the
better of such temporary associates ; as a man, let us hope,
notwithstanding Gilbert's fears, not greatly the worse. The
passions that boiled in his blood would have overflowed his
life, often to disturb, and finally to help to destroy him, had
there never been an Irvine and its seaport. But Burns's
friends, up to the time he visited Edinburgh, had been chiefly
his admirable brother, a few of the ministers round about,

46 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

farmers, ploughmen, farm-servants, and workers in the winds
of heaven blowing over moors and mosses, cornfields, and
meadows, beautiful as the blue skies themselves ; and if you
call that low company, you had better fling your copy of
Burns's " Cottar's Saturday Night," " Mary in Heaven," and
all, into the fire. He, the noblest peasant that ever trod the
greensward of Scotland, kept the society of other peasants,
whose nature was like his own ; and then, were the silken-
snooded maidens whom he wooed on lea-rig and 'mang the
rigs o' barley, were they who inspired at once his love and
his genius, his passion and his poetry, till the whole land of
Coila overflowed with his immortal song — so that now to the
proud native's ear every stream murmurs a music not its
own, given it by sweet Kobin's lays, and the lark more lyrical
than ever seems singing his songs at the gates of heaven for
the shepherd's sake as through his half-closed hand he eyes
the musical mote in the sunshine, and remembers him who
" sung her new-wakened by the daisy's side," — were they,
the blooming daughters of Scotia, we demand of you on peril
of your life, low company and unworthy of Kobert Burns ?

As to the charge of liking to be what is vulgarly called
" cock of the company," what does that mean when brought
against such a man? In what company, pray, could not
Burns, had he chosen it, and he often did choose it, have
easily been the first ? No need had he to crow among dung-
hills. If you liken him to a bird at all, let it be the eagle, or
the nightingale, or the bird of Paradise. James Montgomery
has done this in some exquisite verses, which are clear in our
heart, but indistinct in our memory, and therefore we cannot
adorn our pages with their beauty. The truth is, that Burns,
though, when his heart burned within him, one of the most
eloquent of men that ever set the table in a roar or a hush,
was always a modest, often a silent man, and he would sit for
hours together, even in company, with his broad forehead on
his hand, and his large lamping eyes sobered and tamed, in
profound and melancholy thought. Then his soul would
"spring upwards like a pyramid of fire," and send " illumina-
tion into dark deep holds," or brighten the brightest hour in
which Feeling and Fancy ever flung their united radiance
over the common ongoings of this our commonplace world and
everyday life. Was this the man to desire, with low long-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 47

ings and base aspirations, to shine among the obscure, or rear
his haughty front and giant stature among pigmies ? He who

" walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough upon the mountain-side ; "

he who sat in glory and in joy at the festal board, when mirth
and wine did most abound, and strangers were strangers no
more within the fascination of his genius, for

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;"

or at the frugal board, surrounded by his wife and children,
and servants, lord and master of his own happy and industri-
ous home — the frugal meal, preceded and followed by thanks-
giving to the Power that spread his table in the barren,
places ?

Show us any series of works in prose or verse, in which
man's being is so illustrated as to lay it bare and open for the
benefit of man, and the chief pictures they contain drawn
from " select society." There are none such ; and for this
reason, that in such society there is neither power to paint
them, nor materials to be painted, nor colours to lay on, till
the canvass shall speak a language which all the world as it
runs may read. What would Scott have been, had he not
loved and known the people ? What would his works have
been, had they not shown the many-coloured character of the
people ? What would Shakespeare have been, had he not often
turned majestically from kings, and " lords and dukes and
mighty earls," to their subjects and vassals and lowly bonds-
men, and " counted the beatings of lonely hearts " in the ob-
scure but impassioned life that stirs every nook of this earth
where human beings abide ? What would Wordsworth have
been, had he disdained, with his high intellect and imagina-
tion, " to stoop his anointed head " beneath the wooden lintel
of the poor man's door ? His Lyrical Ballads, " with all the
innocent brightness of the new-born day," had never charmed
the meditative heart. His " Churchyard among the Moun-
tains " had never taught men how to live and how to die.
These are men who have descended from aerial heights into
the humblest dwellings ; who have shown the angel's wing
equally when poised near the earth, and floating over its
cottaged vales, as when seen sailing on high through the clouds

48 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

and azure depth of heaven, or hanging over the towers and
temples of great cities. They shunned not to parley with the
blind beggar by the wayside ; they knew how to transmute,
by divinest alchemy, the base metal into the fine gold.
Whatever company of human beings they have mingled with,
they lent it colours, and did not receive its shade ; and hence
their mastery over the " wide soul of the world, dreaming of
things to come." Burns was born, bred, lived, and died in
that condition of this mortal life to which they paid but visits ;
his heart lay wholly there ; and that heart, filled as it was
with all the best human feelings, and sometimes with thoughts
divine, had no fears about entering into places which timid
moralists might have thought forbidden and • unhallowed
ground, but which he, wiser far, knew to be inhabited by
creatures of conscience, bound there often in thick darkness
by the inscrutable decrees of God.

For a year and more after the publication of the Edinburgh
Edition, Burns led a somewhat roving life, till his final settle-
ment with Creech. He had a right to enjoy himself ; and it
does not appear that there was much to blame in his conduct
either in town or country, though he did not live upon air
nor yet upon water. There was much dissipation in those
days — much hard drinking — in select as well as in general
society, in the best as well as in the worst ; and he had his
share of it in many circles — but never in the lowest. His
associates were all honourable men, then, and in after life ;
and he left the Capital in possession of the respect of its most
illustrious citizens. Of his various tours and excursions there
is little to be said ; the birthplaces of old Scottish Song he
visited in the spirit of a religious pilgrim ; and his poetical
fervour was kindled by the grandeur of the Highlands. He
had said to Mrs Dnnlop, " I have no dearer aim than to have
it in my power, uuplagued with the routine of business, for
which, heaven knows ! I am unfit enough, to make leisurely
pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit' on the fields of her
battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and to
muse by the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the hon-
oured abodes of her heroes. But these are all Utopian thoughts ;
I have dallied long enough with life ; 'tis time to be in earnest.
I have a fond, an aged mother to care for, and some other bosom
tics perhaps equally tender. Where the individual only suffers

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 49

by the consequences of his own thoughtlessness, indolence, or
folly, he may be excusable, nay, shining abilities and some of
the nobler virtues may half sanctify a heedless character : but
where God and nature have intrusted the welfare of others to
his care, where the trust is sacred, and the ties are dear, that
man must be far gone in selfishness, or strangely lost to reflec-
tion, whom these connections will not rouse to exertion."

Burns has now got liberated, for ever, from " stately Edin-
borough throned on crags," the favoured abode of philosophy
and fashion, law and literature, reason and refinement, and
has returned again into his own natural condition, neither
essentially the better nor the worse of his city life ; the same
man he was when " the poetic genius of his country found
him at the plough and threw her inspiring mantle over him."
And what was he now to do with himself? Into what occupa-
tion for the rest of his days was he to settle down ? It
would puzzle the most sagacious even now, fifty years after
the event, to say what he ought to have done that he did not
do at that juncture, on which for weal or woe the future must
have been so deeply felt by him to depend. And perhaps it
might not have occurred to every one of the many prudent
persons who have lamented over his follies, had he stood in
Burns' s shoes, to make over, unconditionally, to his brother
one-half of all he was worth. Gilbert was resolved still to
straggle on with Mossgiel, and Eobert said, " there is my
purse." The brothers, different as they were in the constitu-
tion of their souls, had one and the same heart. They loved
one another — man and boy alike ; and the survivor cleared,
with pious hands, the weeds from his brother's grave. There
was a blessing in that two hundred pounds — and thirty years
afterwards Gilbert repaid it with interest to Robert's widow
and children, by an Edition in which he wiped away stains
from the reputation of his benefactor, which had been suffered
to remain too long, and some of which, the most difficult, too,
to be effaced, had been even let fall from the fingers of a
benevolent biographer who thought himself in duty bound to
speak what he most mistakenly believed to be the truth.
" Oh Robert ! " was all his mother could say on his return to
Mossgiel from Edinburgh. In her simple heart she was
astonished at his fame, and could not understand it well, any
more than she could her own happiness and her own pride.

VOL. VII. D

50 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

But his affection she understood better than he did, and far
better still his generosity ; and duly night and morning she
asked a blessing on his head from Him who had given her
such a son.

" Between the men of rustic life," said Burns — so at least
it is reported — " and the polite world I observed little differ-
ence. In the former, though unpolished by fashion, and
unenlightened by science, I have found much observation and
much intelligence. But a refined and accomplished woman
was a thing altogether new to me, and of which I had formed
but a very inadequate idea." One of his biographers seems
to have believed that his love for Jean Armour, the daughter
of a Mauchline mason, must have died away under these more
adequate ideas of the sex along with their corresponding
emotions ; and that he now married her with reluctance.
Only think of Burns taking an Edinburgh Belle to wife ! He
flew, somewhat too fervently,

" To love's willing fetters, the arms of his Jean."

Her father had again to curse her for her infatuated love of
her husband — for such, if not by the law of Scotland, which
may be doubtful, Burns certainly was by the law of heaven
— and like a good Christian had again turned his daughter
out of doors. Had Burns deserted her he had merely been a
heartless villain. In making her his lawful wedded wife he
did no more than any other man, deserving the name of man,
in the same circumstances would have done ; and had he not,
he would have walked in shame before men, and in fear and
trembling before God. But he did so, not only because it was
his most sacred duty, but because he loved her better than
ever, and without her would have been miserable. Much had
she suffered for his sake, and he for hers ; but all that dis-
traction and despair which had nearly driven him into a
sugar plantation, were over and gone, forgotten utterly, or
remembered but as a dismal dream endearing the placid day
that for ever dispelled it. He writes about her to Mrs Dunlop
and others in terms of sobriety and good sense — " The most
placid good nature and sweetness of disposition; a warm
heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me ;
vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best
advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure "—these

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 51

he thought in a woman might, with a knowledge of the Scrip-
tures, make a good wife. During the few months he was
getting his house ready for her at Ellisland he frequently tra-
velled, with all the fondness of a lover, the long wilderness of
moors to Mauchline, where she was in the house of her austere
father, reconciled to her at last. And though he has told us
that it was his custom, in song-writing, to keep the image of
some fair maiden before the eye of his fancy, " some bright
particular star," and that Hymen was not the divinity he then
invoked, yet it was on one of these visits, between Ellisland and
Mossgiel, that he penned under such homely inspiration as
precious a love-offering as genius in the passion of hope ever
laid in' a virgin's bosom. His wife sung it to him that same
evening — and indeed he never knew whether or no he had
succeeded in any one of his lyrics, till he heard his words
and the air together from her voice.

" Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,

I dearly like the west,
For there the bonny lassie lives,

The lassie I loe best :
There wild woods grow, and rivers row,

And mony a hill between ;
But day and night my fancy's flight

Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,

I see her sweet and fair :
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,

I hear her charm the air :
There's not a bonny flower that springs,

By fountain, shaw, or green,
There's not a bonny bird that sings,

But minds me o' my Jean.

Oh blaw ye westlin winds, blaw saft

Amang the leafy trees,
Wi' balmy gale, frae hill and dale,

Bring hame the laden bees ;
And bring the lassie back to me

That's aye sae neat and clean ;
Ae smile o' her wad banish care,

Sae charming is my Jean.

52 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

What sighs and vows amang the knowes

Hae passed atween us twa !
How fond to meet, how wae to part,

That night she gaed awa !
The powers aboon can only ken,

To whom the heart is seen,
That nane can be sae dear to me

As my sweet lovely Jean."

And here we ask you who may be reading these pages, to
pause for a little, and consider with yourselves, what up to
this time Burns had done to justify the condemnatory judg-
ments that have been passed on his character as a man by so
many admirers of his genius as a poet ? Compared with that
of men of ordinary worth, who have deservedly passed through
life with the world's esteem, in what was it lamentably want-
ing? Not in tenderness, warmth, strength of the natural
affections ; and they are good till turned to evil. Not in the
duties for which they were given, and which they make
delights. Of which of these duties was he habitually
neglectful ? To the holiest of them all next to piety to his
Maker, he was faithful beyond most — few better kept the
fourth commandment. His youth though soon too impassioned
had been long pure. If he were temperate by necessity and
not nature, yet he was so as contentedly as if it had been by
choice. He had lived on meal and water with some milk,
because the family were too poor for better fare ; and yet he
rose to labour as the lark rises to sing.

In the corruption of our fallen nature he sinned, and, it has
been said, became a libertine. Was he ever guilty of de-
liberate seduction ? It is not so recorded ; and we believe his
whole soul would have recoiled from such wickedness: but let
us not affect ignorance of what we all know. Among no
people on the face of the earth is the moral code so rigid, with
regard to the intercourse of the sexes, as to stamp with in-
effaceable disgrace every lapse from virtue ; and certainly not
among the Scottish peasantry, austere as the spirit of religion
has always been, and terrible ecclesiastical censure. Hateful
in all eyes is the reprobate — the hoary sinner loathsome ; but
many a grey head is now deservedly reverenced that would
not be so, were the memory of all that has been repented by
the Elder, and pardoned unto him, to rise up against him

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 53

among the congregation as he entered the House of God.
There has been many a rueful tragedy in houses that in after
times " seemed asleep." How many good and happy fathers
of families, who, were all their past lives to be pictured in
ghastly revelation to the eyes of their wives and children,
could never again dare to look them in the face I It pleased
God to give them a long life ; and they have escaped, not by
their own strength, far away from the shadows of their mis-
deeds that are not now suffered to pursue them, but are
chained down in the past no more to be let loose. That such
things were is a secret none now live to divulge ; and though
once known they were never emblazoned. But Bums and men
like Burns showed the whole world their dark spots by the
very light of their genius ; and having died in what may
almost be called their youth, there the dark spots still are,
and men point to them with their fingers, to whose eyes there
may seem but small glory in all that effulgence.

Burns now took possession at Whitsuntide (1788) of the
farm of Ellisland, while his wife remained at Mossgiel, com-
pleting her education in the dairy, till brought home next
term to their new house, which the poet set a-building with
alacrity, on a plan of his own which was as simple a one as
could be devised, — kitchen and dining-room in one, a double-
bedded room with a bed-closet, and a garret. The site was
pleasant, on the edge of a high bank of the Nith, commanding
a wide and beautiful prospect, — holms, plains, woods, and hills,
and a long reach of the sweeping river. While the house and
offices were growing, he inhabited a hovel close at hand, and
though occasionally giving vent to some splenetic humours in
letters indited in his Booty cabin, and now and then yield-
ing to fits of despondency about the " ticklish situation of a
family of children," he says to his friend Ainslie, " I am de-
cidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my
happiness." He had to qualify himself for holding his excise
commission by six weeks' attendance on the business of that
profession at Ayr — and we have seen that he made several
visits to Mossgiel. Currie cannot let him thus pass the
summer without moralising on his mode of life. "Pleased
with surveying the grounds he was about to cultivate, and
with the rearing of a building that should give shelter to
his wife and children, and, as he fondly hoped, to his own

54 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

grey hairs, sentiments of independence buoyed tip his mind,
pictures of domestic comfort and peace rose on his imagina-
tion ; and a few days passed away, as he himself informs us,
the most tranquil, if not the happiest, which he had ever
experienced." Let us believe that such days were not few,
but many, and that we need not join with the good Doctor
in grieving to think that Burns led all the summer a wander-
ing and unsettled life. It could not be stationary ; but there
is no reason to think that his occasional absence was injurious
to his affairs on the farm. Currie writes as if he thought him
incapable of self-guidance, and says, " it is to be lamented that,
at this critical period of his life, our poet was without the society
of his wife and children. A great change had taken place in
his situation ; his old habits were broken ; and the new cir-
cumstances in which he was placed were calculated to give
a new direction to his thoughts and conduct. But his appli-
cation to the cares and labours of his farm was interrupted by
several visits to his family in Ayrshire ; and as the distance
was too great for a single day's journey, he generally slept a
night at an inn on the road. On such occasions he sometimes
fell into company, and forgot the resolutions he had formed.
In a little while temptation assailed him nearer home." This
is treating Burns like a child, a person of so facile a disposi-
tion as not to be trusted without a keeper on the king's high-
way. If he was not fit to ride by himself into Ayrshire, and
there was no safety for him at Sanquhar, his case was hope-
less out of an asylum. A trustworthy friend attended to the
farm as overseer, when he was from home ; potatoes, grass,
and grain grew though he was away ; on September 9th, we
find him where he ought to be,—" I am busy with my har-
vest;" and on the 16th,— « This hovel that I shelter in is
pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower that
falls, and I am only preserved from being chilled to death
by being suffocated with smoke. You will be pleased to hear
that I have laid aside idle eclat, and bind every day after my
reapers." Pity 'twas that there had not been a comfortable
house ready furnished for Mrs Burns to step into at the
beginning of summer, therein to be brought to bed of " little
Frank, who, by the by, I trust will be no discredit to the honour-
able name of Wallace, as he has a fine manly countenance,
and a figure that might do credit to a little fellow two months

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 55

older ; and likewise an excellent good temper — though, when
he pleases, he has a pipe only not quite so loud as the horn
that his immortal namesake blew as a signal to take the pin
out of Stirling bridge."

Dear good old blind Dr Blacklock, about this time, was
anxious to know from Bums himself how he was thriving,
and indited to him a pleasant epistle.

u Dear Burns, thou brother of my heart,
Both for thy virtues and thy art ;
If art it may be call'd in thee,
Which Nature's bounty, large and free,
"With pleasure in thy heart diffuses,
And warms thy soul with all the Muses.
Whether to laugh with easy grace,
Tl;y numbers move the sage's face,
Or bid the softer passions rise,
And ruthless souls with grief surprise,
Tis Nature's voice distinctly felt
Through thee her organ, thus to melt.

Most anxiously I wish to know,

With thee of late how matters go ;

How keeps thy much-loved Jean her health ?

What promises thy farm of wealth 1

Whether the muse persists to smile,

And all thy anxious cares beguile 'i

Whether bright fancy keeps alive ?

And how thy darling infants thrive ?"

It appears, from his reply, that Burns had intrusted Heron
with a letter to Blacklock, which the preacher had not de-
livered, and the poet exclaims, —

" The ill-thief blaw the Heron south !
And never drink be near his drouth !
He tauld mysel by word o' mouth

He'd tak my letter ;
I lippen'd to the chiel in trouth

And bade nae better.

But aiblins honest Master Heron,
Had at the time some dainty fair one,
To ware his theologic care on,

And holy study ;
And tired o' sauls to waste his lear on,

E'en tried the body."

56 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Currie says in a note, " Mr Heron, author of the History of
Scotland lately published, and, among various other works,
of a respectable life of our poet himself." Burns knew his
character well : the unfortunate fellow had talents of no
ordinary kind, and there are many good things, and much
good writing, in his Life of Burns ; but respectable it is not,
basely calumnious, and the original source of many of the
worst falsehoods even now believed too widely to be truths,
concerning the moral -character of a man as far superior to
himself in virtue as in genius. Burns then tells his venerated
friend that he has absolutely become a gauger.

" Ye glaikit, gleesorae, dainty damies,
Wha by Castalia's wimplin streamies,
Loup, sing, and lave your pretty limbies,

Ye ken, ye ken,
That strang necessity supreme is

'Mang sons o' men.

I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,

They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies ;

Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is,

I needna vaunt,
But I'll sned besoms — thraw saugh woodies,

Before they want.

Lord help me through this warld o' care !
I'm weary sick o't late and air !
Not but I hae a richer share

Than mony ithers ;
But why should ae man better fare,

And a' men brithers 1

Come, FIRM EESOLVE, take thou the van,
Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man !
And let us mind, faint heart ne'er wan

A lady fair :
Wha does the utmost that he can,

Will whiles do mair.

But to conclude my silly rhjine,
(I'm scant o' verse, and scant o' time),

To MAKE A HAPPY FIRE-SIDE CLIME
To WEANS AND WIFE,

THAT'S THE TRUE PATHOS AND STJBLIME
OF HUMAN LIFE."

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 57

These noble stanzas were written towards the end of Octo-
ber, and in another month Burns brought his wife home to
Ellisland, and his three children, for she had twice born him
twins. The happiest period of his life, we have his own words
for it, was that winter.

But why not say that the three years he lived at Ellisland
were all happy, as happiness goes in this world ? As happy
perhaps as they might have been had he been placed in some
other condition apparently far better adapted to yield him what
all human hearts do most desire. His wife never had an hour's
sickness, and was always cheerful as day, one of those

" Sound healthy children of the God of heaven,"

whose very presence is positive pleasure, and whose silent
contentedness with her lot inspires comfort into a husband's
heart, when at times oppressed with a mortal heaviness that
no words could lighten. Burns says with gloomy grandeur,
" There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour
of care which makes the dreary objects seem larger than life."
The objects seen by imagination ; and he who suffers thus can-
not be relieved by any direct appliances to that faculty, only
by those that touch the heart — the homelier the more sanative,
and none so sure as a wife's affectionate ways, quietly moving
about the house affairs, which, insignificant as they are in them-
selves, are felt to be little truthful realities that banish those
monstrous phantoms, showing them to be but glooms and
shadows.

And how fared the G auger? Why, he did his work. Currie
says, " His farm no longer occupied the principal part of his
care or his thoughts. It was not at Ellisland that he was now
in general to be found. Mounted on horseback, this high-
minded poet was pursuing the defaulters of the revenue
among the hills and vales of Nithsdale; his roving eye
wandering over the charms of nature, and muttering his
wayward fancies as he moved along." And many a happy
day he had when thus riding about the country in search
of smugglers of all sorts, zealous against all manner of con-
traband. He delighted in the broad brow of the day, whether
glad or gloomy, like his own forehead ; in the open air whether
still or stormy, like his own heart. While " pursuing the de-
faulters of the revenue," a gauger has not always to track them

58 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

by his eyes or his nose. Information has been lodged of their
whereabouts, and he deliberately makes a seizure. Senti-
mentalists may see in this something very shocking to the
delicate pleasures of susceptible minds, but Burns did not ;
and some of his sweetest lyrics, redolent of the liquid dew of
youth, were committed to whitey -brown not scented by the
rose's attar. Burns on duty was always as sober as a judge.
A man of his sense knew better than to muddle his brains,
when it was needful to be quick-witted and ready-handed
too; for he had to do with old women who were not to be
sneezed at, and with middle-aged men who could use both
club and cutlass.

" He held them with his glittering eye ; "

but his determined character was not the worse of being
exhibited on broad shoulders. They drooped, as you know,
but from the habits of a strong man who had been a labourer
from his youth upwards, and a ganger's life was the very one
that might have been prescribed to a man like him, subject to
low spirits, by a wise physician. Smugglers themselves are
seldom drunkards — gangers not often — though they take their
dram ; your drunkards belong to that comprehensive class that
cheat the excise.

Then Burns was not always " mounted on horseback pur-
suing the defaulters of the revenue among the hills and vales
of Nithsdale ; " he sat sometimes by himself in Friar's-Carse
Hermitage.

" Thou -whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these counsels on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost ;
Hope not sunshine ev'ry hour,
Fear not clouds will always lower.

As the shades of ev'ning close,

Beck'ning thee to long repose ;

As life itself becomes disease,

Seek the chimney-neuk of ease ;

There ruminate with sober thought,

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought ;

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 59

And teach the sportive younkers round,

Saws of experience, sage and sound.

Say, man's true, genuine estimate,

The grand criterion of his fate, «

Is not, Art thou high or low ?

Did thy fortune ebb or flow ?

Did many talents gild thy span ?

Or frugal nature grudge thee one ?

Tell them, and press it on their mind,

As thou thyself must shortly find,

The smile or frown of awful Heav'n,

To virtue or to vice is giv'n.

Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,

There solid self-enjoyment lies ;

That foolish, selfish, faithless ways

Lead to the wretched, vile, and base.

Thus resign'd and quiet, creep

To the bed of lasting sleep ;

Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,

Night, where dawn shall never break,

Till future life, future no more,

To light and joy the good restore ,

To light and joy unknown before.

Stranger, go ! Heav'n be thy guide !
Quod the beadsman of Nith-side."

Burns acquired the friendship of many of the best families
in the Vale of Nith, at Friar's Carse, Terraughty, Blackwood,
Closeburn, Dalswinton, Glenae, Kirkconnel, Arbigland, and
other seats of the gentry old or new. Such society was far
more enjoyable than that of Edinburgh, for here he was not a
lion but a man. He had his jovial hours, and sometimes they
were excessive, as the whole world knows from " the Song of
the Whistle." But the Laureate did not enter the lists — if he
had, it is possible he might have conquered Craigdarroch.
These were formidable orgies ; but we have heard " 0 1
Willie brewed a peck o' maut " sung after a presbytery din-
ner, the bass of the moderator giving somewhat of a solemn
character to the chorus.

But why did Burns allow his genius to lie idle — why did
he not construct some great work, such as a Drama? His
genius did not lie idle, for, over and above the songs alluded
to, he wrote ever so many for his friend Johnson's Museum.

60 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Nobody would have demanded from him a Drama, had he
not divulged his determination to compose one about " The
Bruce," with the homely title of " Eob M'Quechan's Elshin."
But Burns did not think himself a universal genius, and at
this time writes : " No man knows what nature has fitted him
for till he try ; and if after a preparatory course of some years'
study of men and books I shall find myself unequal to the
task, there is no harm done. Virtue and study are their own
reward. I have got Shakespeare, and begun with him," &c.
He knew that a great National Drama was not to be produced
as easily as " The Cottar's Saturday Night ; " and says,
" though the rough material of fine writing is undoubtedly the
gift of genius, the workmanship is as certainly the united
efforts of labour, attention, and pains."

And here, one day between breakfast and dinner he com-
posed " Tarn o' Shanter." The fact is hardly credible, but
we are willing to believe it. Dorset only corrected his
famous " To all ye ladies now on land, we men at sea indite,"
the night before an expected engagement, a proof of his self-
possession ; but he had been working at it for days. Dryden
dashed off his " Alexander's Feast" in no time, but the labour
of weeks was bestowed on it before it assumed its present
shape. " Tarn o' Shanter" is superior in force and fire to that
Ode. Never did genius go at such a gallop — setting off at
score, and making play, but without whip or spur, from
starting to winning post. All is inspiration. His wife with
her weans a little way aside among the broom watched him
at work as he was striding up and down the brow of the
Scaur, and reciting to himself like one demented, —

" Now Tarn, O Tarn ! had they been queans,
A' plump and strapping, in their teens ;
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen,
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen !
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
That ance were plush, o' guid blue hair,
I wad hae gien them aff my hurdies,
For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies ! "

His bonny Jean must have been sorely perplexed— but she
was familiar with all his moods, and like a good wife left him

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 61

to his cogitations. It is " all made out of the builder's
brain ; " for the story that suggested it is no story at all, the
dull lie of a drunkard dotard. From the poet's imagination
it came forth a perfect poem, impregnated with the native
spirit of Scottish superstition. Few or none of our old tradi-
tionary tales of witches are very appalling — they had not their
origin in the depths of the people's heart ; there is a mean-
ness in their mysteries — the ludicrous mixes with the horrible :
much matter there is for the poetical, and more perhaps for
the picturesque ; but the pathetic is seldom found there ; and
never — for Shakespeare, we fear, was not a Scotchman — the
sublime. Let no man therefore find fault with " Tarn o'
Shanter," because it strikes not a deeper chord. It strikes a
chord that twangs strangely, and we know not well what it
means. To vulgar eyes, too, were such unaccountable on-
goings most often revealed of old ; such seers were generally
doited or dazed — half- born idiots or neerdoweels in drink.
Had Milton's Satan shown his face in Scotland, folk either
would not have known him, or thought him mad. The devil
is nnich indebted to Burns for having raised his character
without impairing his individuality —

" O thou ! whatever title suit thee,
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie,
Wha in yon cavern grim and sootie,

Closed under hatches,
Spairges about the brumstane cootie,

To scaud puir wretches !

Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee,
And let puir damned bodies be ;
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie,

E'en to a deil,
To skelp and scaud puir dogs like me,

A lid hear us squeel ! "

This is conciliatory ; and we think we see him smile. We
can almost believe for a moment that it does give him no
great pleasure, that he is not inaccessible to pity, and at times
would fain devolve his duty upon other hands, though we
cannot expect him to resign. The poet knows that he is the
Prince of the Air.

62 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" Great is thy pow'r, and great thy fame ;
Far ken'd and noted is thy name ;
And though yon lowin heugh's thy hame,

Thou travels far ;

And faith ! thou's neither lag nor lame,
Nor blate nor scaur.

Whyles rangin like a roarin lion,
For prey a' holes and corners tryin ;
Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin,

Tirlin the kirks ;
Whyles, in the human bosom pryin,

Unseen thou lurks."

That is magnificent — Milton's self would have thought so —
and it could have heen written by no man who had not stu-
died Scripture. The Address is seen to take ; the Old Intru-
sionist is glorified by " tirlin the kirks ; " and the poet
thinks it right to lower his pride.

" I've heard my reverend Grannie say,
In lanely glens ye like to stray ;
Or where auld ruin'd castles, gray,

Nod to the moon,
Ye fright the nightly waud'rer's Vay,

Wi' eldritch croon.

"When twilight did my Grannie summon
To say her prayers, douce, honest woman !
Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin,

Wi' eerie drone ;
Or, rustlin, through the boortrees comin

Wi' heavy groan.

Ae dreary, windy, winter night,

The stars shot doun wi' sklentin light,

Wi' you, mysel, I gat a fright,

Ayont the lough ;
Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight,

Wi' wavin sough."

_ Throughout the whole Address, the elements are so com-
bined in him, as to give the world " assurance o' a deil ; "
but then it is the Deil of Scotland.

Just so in "Tarn o' Shanter." We know not what some
great German genius like Goethe might have made of him ;
but we much mistake the matter, if " Tarn o' Shanter " at

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 63

Alloway Kirk be not as exemplary a piece of humanity as
Faustus on May-day Night upon the Hartz Mountains. Faust
does not well know what he would be at, but Tarn does ; and
though his views of human life be rather hazy, he has
glimpses given him of the invisible world. His wife — but
her tongue was no scandal — calls him

" A skellum,

A bletherin, blusterin, drunken blellum ;
That, frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou wasna sober,
That ilka melder, wi' the miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ;
That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on,
The smith and thee gat roarin fou on ;
That at the L — d's house, ev'n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday.
She prophesied, that, late or soon,
Thou wad be found deep drown'd in Doon ;
Or catch'd wi' warlocks iu the mirk,
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk."

That is her view of the subject ; but what is Tarn's ? The
same as Wordsworth's, —

" He sits down to his cups, while the storm is roaring, and heaven
and earth are in confusion ; the night is driven on by song and
tumultuous noise ; laughter and jests thicken as the beverage im-
proves upon the palate ; conjugal fidelity archly bends to the ser-
vice of general benevolence ; selfishness is not absent, but wearing
the mask of social cordiality ; and while these various elements of
humanity are blended into one proud and happy composition of
elated spirits, the anger of the tempest without doors only heightens
and sets off the enjoyment within. I pity him who cannot perceive
that, in all this, though there was no moral purpose, there is a moral
effect.

' Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious.'

What a lesson do these words convey of charitable indulgence for the
vicious habits of the principal actor in the scene and of those who
resemble him ! — men who to the rigidly virtuous are objects almost
of loathing, and whom therefore they cannot serve. The poet,
penetrating the unsightly and disgusting surfaces of things, has un-
veiled, with exquisite skill, the finer ties of imagination and feeling
that often bind those beings to practices productive of much unhap.

C4 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

piness to themselves and to those whom it is their duty to cherish ;
and as far as he puts the reader into possession of this intelligent
sympathy, he qualifies him for exercising a salutary influence over
the minds of those who are thus deplorably deceived."

We respectfully demur from the opinion of this wise and
benign judge, that " there was no moral purpose in all this,
though there is a moral effect." So strong was his moral pur-
pose, and so deep the moral failing moved within him by the
picture he had so vividly imagined, that Burns pauses, in
highest moral mood, at the finishing touch,

" Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious ; "

and then, by imagery of unequalled loveliness, illustrates an
universal and everlasting truth :

" But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ;
Or like the snowfall in the river,
A moment white — then melts for ever ;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place ;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm."

Next instant he returns to Tarn; and, humanised by that ex-
quisite poetry, we cannot help being sorry for him " mountin
his beast on sic a night." At the first clap of thunder he
forgets Souter Johnny — 'how " conjugal fidelity archly bent to
the service of general benevolence " — such are the terms in
which the philosophical Wordsworth speaks of

" The landlady and Tarn grew gracious,
Wi' favours, secret, sweet, and precious ;"

and as the haunted Ruin draws nigh, he remembers not only
Kate's advice but her prophecy. He has passed by some
fearful places ; at the slightest touch of the necromancer, how
fast one after another wheels by, telling at what a rate Tarn
rode 1 And we forget that we are not riding behind him,

" When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seemed in a bleeze ! "

We defy any man of woman born to tell us who these witches

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 65

and warlocks are, and why the devil brought them here into
Alloway Kirk. True,

" This night, a child might understand,
The deil had business on his hand ;"

but that is not the question — the question is what business ?
Was it a ball given him on the anniversary of the Fall ?

" There sat Auld Nick, in shape o' beast ;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge : "

and pray who is to pay the piper ? We fear that young witch
Nanny 1

" For Satan glowr'd, and fidged fu' fain,
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main : "

and this may be the nuptial night of the Prince — for that tyke
is he — of the Fallen Angels !

How was Tarn able to stand the sight, " glorious " and
" heroic " as he was, of the open presses ?

" Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ;
And by some devilish cantrip slight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light."

Because, show a man some sight that is altogether miracu-
lously dreadful, and he either faints or feels no fear. Or say
rather, let a man stand the first glower at it, and he will
make comparatively light of the details. There was Auld
Nick himself, there was no mistaking him, and there were

" Wither'd beldams, auld and droll,
Eigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Lowping an' flinging — "

to such dancing what cared Tarn who held the candles ? Ho
was bedevilled, bewarlocked, and bewitched, and therefore

« Able

To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes in gibbet aims ;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ;
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape,
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ;
Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted ;
VOL. vn. E

66 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted ;
A garter, which a babe had strangled ;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o' life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft."

This collection has all the effect of a selection. The bodies
were not placed there ; but following each other's heels they
stretched themselves out of their own accord upon the haly
table. They had received a summons to the festival, which
murderer and murdered must obey. But mind ye, Tarn could
not see what you see. Who told him that that garter had
strangled a babe ? That that was a parricide's knife ? No-
body— and that is a flaw. For Tarn looks with his bodily
eyes only, and can know only what they show him ; but Burns
knew it, and believed Tarn knew it too ; and we know it, for
Burns tells us, and we believe Tarn as wise as ourselves ; for
we almost turn Tarn — the poet himself being the only real
warlock of them all.

You know why that Haly Table is so pleasant to the apples
of all those evil eyes? They feed upon the dead, not merely
because they love wickedness, but because they inspire it into
the quick. Who ever murdered his father but at the instiga-
tion of that " towzie tyke, black, grim, and large ? " Who
but for him ever strangled her new-born child ? Scimitars
and tomahawks I Why, such weapons never were in use in
Scotland. True. But they have long been in use in the
wildernesses of the western world, and among the orient cities
of Mahound, and his empire extends to the uttermost parts of
the earth.

And here we shall say a few words, which perhaps were
expected from us when speaking a little while ago of some of
his first productions, about Burns's humorous strains, more
especially those in which he has sung the praises of joviality
and good-fellowship, as it has been thought by many that in
them are conspicuously displayed not only some striking
qualities of his poetical genius, but likewise of his personal
character. Among the countless number of what are called
convivial songs floating in our literature, how few seem to
have been inspired by such a sense and spirit of social enjoy-
ment as men can sympathise with in their ordinary moods,
when withdrawn from the festive board, and .engaged without

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 67

blame in the common amusements or recreations of a busy
or a studious life I The finest of these few have been grace-
fully and gaily thrown off, in some mirthful minute, by Shake-
speare, and Ben Johnson, and "the Best," inebriating the
mind as with "divine gas" into sudden exhilaration, that
passes away not only without headache, but with heartache
for a time allayed by the sweet afflatus. In our land, too, as
in Greece of old, genius has imbibed inspiration from the
wine-cup, and sung of human life in strains befitting poets
who desired that their foreheads should perpetually be
wreathed with flowers. But putting aside them and their
little lyres, with some exceptions, how nauseous are the
bacchanalian songs of Merry England !

On this topic we but touch ; and request you to recollect
that there are not half-a-dozen, if so many, drinking songs in
all Burns. " Willie brewed a peck o' maut" is, indeed, the
chief; and you cannot even look at it without crying, " 0
rare Eob Burns !" So far from inducing you to believe that
the poet was addicted to drinking, the freshness and fervour
of its glee convince you that it came gushing out of a healthful
heart, in the exhilaration of a night that needed not the influence
of the flowing bowl, which friendship, nevertheless, did so fre-
quently replenish. Wordsworth, who has told the world that he
is a water-drinker, and in the lake country he can never be at
a loss for his favourite beverage, regards this song with the
complacency of a philosopher, knowing well that it is all a
pleasant exaggeration ; and that had the, moon not lost
patience and gone to bed, she would have seen " Eab and
Allan" on their way back to Ellisland, along the bold banks of
the Nith, as steady as a brace of bishops.

Of the contest immortalised in ' The Whistle,' it may be
observed, that in the course of events it is likely to be as
rare as enormous; and that as centuries intervened between
Sir Eobert Laurie's victory over the Dane in the reign of
James VI., and Craigdarroch's victory over Sir Eobert Laurie in
that of George III., so centuries, in all human probability, will
elapse before another such battle will be lost and won. It is
not a little amusing to hear good Dr Currie on this passage in
the life of Burns. In the text of his Memoir he says, speaking
of the poet's intimacy with the best families in Nithsdale,
" Their social parties too often seduced him from his rustic

C8 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

labours and his rustic fare, overthrew the unsteady fabric of
his resolutions, and inflamed those propensities which temperance
might have weakened, and prudence ultimately suppressed." In
a note he adds, in illustration : " The poem of ' The Whistle '
celebrates a bacchanalian event among the gentlemen of
Nithsdale, where Burns appears as umpire. Mr Kiddell died
before our bard, and some elegiac verses to his memory will
be found in Volume IV. From him, and from all the members
of his family, Burns received not kindness only, but friend-
ship ; and the society he met with in general at Friar's Carse
was calculated to improve his habits, as well as his manners. Mr
Fergusson of Craigdarroch, so well known for his eloquence and
social habits, died soon after our poet. Sir Eobert Laurie, the
third person in the drama, survives ; and has since been
engaged in contests of a bloodier nature — long may he live to
fight the battles of his country ! (1799)." Three better men
lived not in the shire ; but they were gentlemen, and Burns
was but an exciseman ; and Currie, unconsciously influenced
by an habitual deference to rank, pompously moralises on the
poor poet's " propensities, which temperance might have
weakened, and prudence ultimately suppressed ; " while in
the same breath, and with the same ink, he eulogises the rich
squire for " his eloquence and social habits," so well calcu-
lated to " improve the habits as well as the manners " of the
bard and gauger 1 Now suppose that " the heroes " had been,
not Craigdarroch, Glenriddel, and Maxwellton, but Burns,
Mitchell, and Findlater, a gauger, a supervisor, and a collec-
tor of excise, and that the contest had taken place not at
Friar's Carse, but at Ellisland, not for a time-honoured here-
ditary ebony whistle, but a wooden ladle not a week old, and
that Burns the Victorious had acquired an implement more
elegantly fashioned, though of the same materials, than the
one taken from his mouth the moment he was born, what
blubbering would there not have been among his biographers !
James Currie, how exhortatory I Josiah Walker, how lachry-
mose 1

" Next uprose our Bard like a prophet in drink :
' Craigdarroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink !
But if thou would flourish immortal in rhyme,
Come— one bottle more— and have at the sublime !

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURN'S. 69

Thy line, they have struggled for Freedom with Bruce,

Shall heroes and patriots ever produce :

So thine be the laurel, and mine be the bay ;

The field thou hast won, by yon bright god of day ! "

How very shocking 1 Then only hear in what a culpable spirit
Burns writes to Riddel, on the forenoon of the day of battle ! —

Sir, — Big with the idea of this important day at Friar's Carse, I
have invoked the elements and skies, in the fond persuasion that
they would announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena
of terrific import. Yester-night, until a very late hour, did I
wait with anxious horror for the appearance of some comet firing
half the sky ; or aerial armies of conquering Scandinavians, darting
athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and
horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury nations. The ele-
ments, however, seem to take the matter very quietly ; they did not
even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood,
symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of
the day. For me, as Thomson in his ' Winter ' says of the storm, I
shall ' Hear astonished, and astonished sing.' To leave the heights
of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of prose, I have some mis-
givings that I take too much upon me, when I request you to get
your guest, Sir Eobert Laurie, to post the two enclosed covers for
me, the one of them to Sir William Cunninghame of Eobertland.
Bart., Kibnarnock— the other to Mr Allan Masterton, writing-mas-
ter, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir Eobert, a*
being a brother baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite ; the other is
one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius ; so
allow me to say he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them
fi-anked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post to-night. I
shall send a servant again for them in the evening. Wishing that
your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from aches
to-morrow, I have the honour to be, Sir, your deeply-indebted and
obedient servant, E. B.

Why, you see that this " Letter," and " The Whistle "—
perhaps an improper poem in priggish eyes, but in the eyes of
Bacchus the best of triumphal odes — make up the whole of
Burns's share in this transaction. He was not at the Carse.
The " three potent heroes " were too thoroughly gentlemen
to have asked a fourth to sit by with an empty bottle before
him as umpire of that debate. Burns that evening was sitting
with his eldest child on his knee, teaching it to say Dad —

70 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

that night he was lying in his own bed, with bonnie Jean by
hie side— and yon " bright god of day " saluted him at morn-
ing on the Scaur above the glittering Nith.

Turn to the passages in his youthful poetry, where he
speaks of himself or others " wi' just a drappie in their ee."
Would you that he had never written Death and Dr Hornbook?

" The clachan yill had made me canty —
I wasna fou, but just had plenty ;
I stacher'd whyles, but yet took tent aye

To free the ditches ;
And hillocks, stanes, and bushes kenn'd aye

Frae ghaists and witches.

The risin moon began to glow'r
The distant Cumnock hills out-owre :
To count her horns, wi' a' my pow'r,

I set mysel ;
But whether she had three or four,

I couldna tell.

I was come round about the hill,
And toddlin doun on Willie's mill,
Settin my staff wi' a' my skill,

To keep me sicker :
Tho' leeward whyles, against my will,

I took a bicker.

I there wi' SOMETHING did forgather," &c.

Then and there, as you learn, ensued that " celestial colloquy
divine," which being reported drove the doctor out of the coun-
try, by unextinguishable laughter, into Glasgow, where half a
century afterwards he died universally respected. SOMETHING
had more to say, and long before that time Burns had been
sobered.

" But just as he began to tell,
The auld kirk-hammer strak the bell
Some wee short hour ayont the twal,

Which raised us baith :
/ look the way that pleased mysel,
And sae did Death."

In those pregnant Epistles to his friends, in which his gener-
ous and noble character is revealed so sincerely, he now and
then alludes to the socialities customary in Kyle ; and the

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 71

good people of Scotland have always enjoyed such genial
pictures. When promising himself the purest pleasures
society can afford, in company with " Auld Lapraik," whom
he warmly praises for the tenderness and truthfulness of his
" sangs " —

" There was ae sang, amang the rest,
Aboon them a' it pleased me best,
That some kind husband had addrest

To some sweet wife :

It thirl'd the heart-strings thro' the breast,
A' to the life ;"

and when luxuriating in the joy of conscious genius holding
communion with the native muse, he exclaims —

" Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire ;
Then, tho I drudge thro' dub and mire

At pleugh or cart,
My muse, though hamely in attire,

May touch the heart ; "

where does Burns express a desire to meet his brother-bard ?
Where but in the resorts of their fellow-labourers, when re-
leased from toil, and flinging weariness to the wind, they flock
into the heart of some holiday, attired in sunshine, and feeling
that life is life ?

" But Mauchline race, or Mauchline fair,
I should be proud to meet you there ;
We'se gie ae night's discharge to care,

If we forgather,
An' hae a swap o' rhymin-ware

Wi' ane anither.

The four-gill chap, we'se gar him clatter,
An' kirsen him wi' reekin water ;
Syne we'll sit doun and tak our whitter,

To cheer our heart ;
And, faith, we'se be acquainted better

Before we part.

Awa, ye selfish war'ly race,

"Wha think that bavins, sense, and grace,

Ev"n love and friendship, should give place

To catch the plack t
I dinna like to see your face,

Nor hear your crack.

72 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms,
Who hold your being on the terms,

' Each aid the others,'
Come to my bowl, come to my arms,

My friends, my brothers !"

Yet after all, " the four-gill chap " clattered but on paper.
Lapraik was an elderly man of sober life, impoverished by a
false friend in whom he had confided ; and Burns, who wore
good clothes, and paid his tailor as punctually as the men he
dealt with, had not much money out of seven pounds a-year
to spend in " the change-house." He allowed no man to pay
his "la win," but neither was he given to treating— save the sex;
and in his " Epistle to James Smith " he gives a more correct
account of his habits, when he goes thus off careeringly —

"My pen I here fling to tiie door,
And kneel, ' Ye Pow'rs ! ' and warm implore,
' Though I should wander terra o'er

In all her climes,
Grant me but this — I ask no more —

Aye rowth o' rhymes.
* * * * *

While ye are pleased to keep me hale,
I'll sit down owre my scanty meal,
Be't water-brose or muslin-kail,

Wi' cheerfu' face,
As lang's the Muses dinna fail

To say the grace."

Eead the " Auld Farmer's New- Year Morning Salutation to
his Auld Mare Maggie." Not a soul but them-two-selves is
in the stable — in the farmyard — nor, as far as we think of, in
the house. Yes — there is one in the house — but she is some-
what infirm, and not yet out of bed. Sons and daughters
have long since been married, and have houses of their own —
such of them as may not have been buried. The servants are
employed somewhere else out of doors — and so are the " four
gallant brutes as e'er did draw" a moiety of Maggie's " bairn-
time." The Address is an Autobiography. The master
remembers himself, along with his mare — in days when she
was " dappl't, sleek, and glaizie, a bonnie grey ;" and he •" the
pride o' a' the parishin."

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 73

" That day we pranced wi' muckle pride,
When ye bure hame my bonny bride ;
And sweet and gracefu' she did ride,

Wi' maiden air !
Kyle Stewart I could braggit wide,

For sic a pair."

What passages in tlieir common life does he next select to
" roose " mare and master ? " In tug or tow ? " In cart,
plough, or harrow ? These all rise before him at the right
time, and in a cheerful spirit ; towards the close of his address
he grows serious, but not sad — as well he may ; and at the
close, as well he may, tender and grateful. But the image he
sees galloping, next to that of the Broose, comes second,
because it is second best. —

" When thou and I were young and skeigh,
And stable-meals at fairs were dreigh,
How thou wad prance, and snore, and skreigh,

And tak the road !
Toun's bodies ran, and stood abeigh,

And ca't thee mad.

When thou was corn'l, and I was mellow,
We took the road aye like a swallow ! "

We do not blame the old farmer for having got occasionally
mellow some thirty years ago — we do not blame Burns for
making him pride himself on his shame ; nay, we bless them
both as we hear these words whispered close to the auld
Mare's lug, —

" Mony a sair daurk we twa hae wrought,
And wi' the weary warl' fought !
And mony an anxious day, I thought

We wad be beat 1
Yet here to crazy age we're brought,

Wi' something yet.

And think na, my auld trusty servan',
That now perhaps thou's less deservin,
And thy auld days may end in starvin,

For my last/ow,
A heapit stimpart, I'll reserve ane

Laid by for you.

74 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

"We've worn to crazy years thegither ;
We'll toyte about wi' ane anither ;
Wi' ten tie care I'll flit thy tether,

To some hain'd rig,
Whare ye may nobly rax your leather,

Wi' sma' fatigue."

Or will you turn to " The Twa Dogs," and hear Luath, in
whom the best humanities mingle with the canine — the Poet's
own colley, whom some cruel wretch murdered ; and gibbeted
to everlasting infamy would have been the murderer, had
Burns but known his name ?

" The dearest comfort o' their lives,
Their grushie weans and faithfu' wives ;
The prattling things are just their pride,
That sweetens a' their fireside.

And whiles twalpenny worth o' nappy
Can mak the bodies unco happy ;
They lay aside their private cares,
To mend the Kirk and State affairs :
They'll talk o' patronage and priests,
Wi' kindling fury in their breasts,
Or tell what new taxation's comin,
An' ferlie at the folk in Lon'on.

As bleak-faced Hallo wmass returns,
They get the jovial, rantin kirns,
When rural life, o' ev'ry station,
Unite in common recreation ;
Love blinks, Wit slaps, and social Mirth
Forgets there's Care upo' the earth.

That merry day the year begins,
They bar the door on frosty win'a ;
The nappy reeks wi' mantlin ream,
And sheds a heart-inspirin steam ;
The luntin pipe, and sneeshin mill,
A"e handed round wi' right guid will ;
The cantie auld folks crackin crouse,
The young anes rantin thro' the house —
My heart has been sae fain to see them,
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them."

Yet how happens it that in the « Halloween" no mention is
made of this source of enjoyment, and that the parties con-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 75

cerneol pursue the ploy with unflagging passion through all
its charms and spells ? Because the festival is kept alive by
the poetic power of superstition that night awakened from its
slumber in all those simple souls ; and that serves instead of
strong drink. They fly from freak to freak, without a thought
but of the witcheries — the means and appliances needful to
make them potent ; this Burns knew to be nature, and there~
fore he delays all " creature comforts " till the end, when the
curtain has dropped on that visionary stage, and the actors
return to the floor of their everyday world. Then —

" Wi' merry sangs, and friendly cracks,

I wat they didiia weary ;
And unco tales, and funny jokes,

Their sports were cheap and cheery,
Till butter d so'ns, wi' fragrant hint,

Set a' their gabs a-steerin ;
Syne, wi' a social glass o' strunt,
They parted aff careerin

Fu' blythe that night."

We see no reason why, in the spirit of these observations,
moralists may not read with pleasure and approbation, " The
Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representa-
tives in the House of Commons." Its political economy is as
sound as its patriotism is stirring ; and he must be indeed a
dunce who believes that Burns uttered it either as a defence
or an encouragement of a national vice, or that it is calculated
to stimulate poor people into pernicious habits. It is an
Address that Cobbett, had he been a Scotsman and one of the
Forty-Five, would have rejoiced to lay on the table of the
House of Commons ; for Cobbett, in all that was best of him,
was a kind of Burns in his way, and loved the men who work.
He maintained the cause of malt, and it was a leading article
in the creed of his faith that the element distilled therefrom is
like the air they breathe ; if the people have it not, they die.
Beer may be best ; and Burns was the champion of beer, as
well as of what bears a brisker name. He spoke of it in " The
Earnest Cry," and likewise in the " Scotch Drink," as one of
the staffs of life which had been struck from the poor man's
hand by fiscal oppression. Tea was then little practised in
Ayrshire cottages ; and we do not at this moment remember

76 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the word in Burns' s Poems. He threatens a rising if Ministers
will not obey the voice of the people : —

" Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue ;
She's just a devil wi' a rung ;
And if she promise auld or young

To tak their part,
Though by the neck she should be strung,

She'll no desert."

In the Postscript, the patriotism and poetry of " The Earnest
Cry " wax stronger and brighter ; and no drunkard would dare
to read aloud in the presence of men — by heart he never could
get it — such a strain as this, familiar to many million ears :—

" Let half-starved slaves in •warmer skies
See future wiues, rich clust'riug, rise ;
Their lot auld Scotland ne'er envies,

But blythe and frisky,
She eyes her freeborn, martial boys

Tak aff their whisky.

What though their Phoebus kinder warms,
While fragrance blooms, and beauty charms ;
When wretches range, in famish'd swarms,

The scented groves,
Or hounded forth, dishonour arms

In hungry droves.

Their gun's a burden on their shouther ;
They downa bide the stink o' pouther ;
Their bauldest thought's a hank'rin swither

To stand or rin,
Till skelp— a shot— they're aff, a' throwther,

To save their skin.
But bring a Scotsman frae his hill,
Clap in his cheek a Highland gill,
Say such is Royal George's will,

And there's the foe,
He has nae thought but how to kill

Twa at a blow.

Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him ;
Death comes, wi' fearless eye he sees him ;
Wi' bluidy hand a welcome gies him :

And when he fa's,
His latest draught o' breathin lea'es him

In faint huzzas."

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 77

These are not the sentiments of a man who " takes an
enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains." Nor is there
anything to condemn, when looked at in the light with which
genius invests them, in the pictures presented to us in " Scotch
Drink," of some of the familiar scenes of humble life, whether
of busy work, or as busy recreation, and some of home-felt
incidents interesting to all that live — such as " when skirlin
weanies see the light" — animated and invigorated to the
utmost pitch of tension, beyond the reach of the jaded spiiits
of the labouring poor — so at least the poet makes us for the
time willing to believe — when unaided by that elixir he so
fervidly sings. Who would wish the following lines expunged ?
Who may not, if he chooses, so qualify their meaning as to
make them true ? Who will not pardon the first two, if they
need pardon, for sake of the last two that need none ? For
surely you, who, though guilty of no excess, fare sumptuously
every day, will not find it in your hearts to grudge the " poor
man's wine" to the Cottar after that " Saturday Night f> of his,
painted for you to the life by his own son, Kobert Burns !

" Thou clears the head o' doited Lear ;
Thou cheers the heart o' drooping Care ;
Thou strings the nerves o' Labour sair,

At's weary toil ;
Thou brightens even dark Despair

Wi' gloomy smile.

Aft clad in massy, siller weed,
Wi' gentles thou erects thy head ;
Yet humbly kind in time o' need,

The puir man's wine ;
His wee drap parritch, or his bread,

Thou kitchens fine."

Gilbert, in his excellent vindication of his brother's charac-
ter, tells us that at the time when many of those " rhapsodies
respecting drinking" were composed and first published, few
people were less addicted to drinking than he ; and that he
assumed a poetical character, very different from that of the
man at the time. It has been said- that Scotsmen have no
humour — no perception of humour — that we are all plain
matter-of-fact people — not without some strength of under-

78 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

standing — but grave to a degree on occasions when races more
favoured by nature are gladsome to an excess ; and —

" In gay delirium rob them of themselves."

This judgment on our national characteristics implies a familiar
acquaintance with Scottish poetry from Dunbar to Burns. It
would be nearer the truth — though still wide of it — to affirm,
that we have more humour than all the rest of the inhabi-
tants of this earth besides ; but this at least is true, that, un-
fortunately for ourselves, we have too much humour, and that
it has sometimes been allowed to flow out of its proper pro-
vince, and mingle itself with thoughts and things that ought
for ever to be kept sacred in the minds of the people. A few
words by-and-by on this subject ; meanwhile, with respect to
his "rhapsodies about drinking," Burns knew that not only
had all the states, stages, and phases of inebriety been humor-
ously illustrated by the comic genius of his country's most
popular poets, but that the people themselves, in spite of their
deep moral and religious conviction of the sinfulness of in-
temperance, were prone to look on its indulgences in every
droll and ludicrous aspect they could assume, according to
the infinite variety of the modifications of individual character.
As a poet dealing with life as it lay before and around him,
so far from seeking to avoid, he eagerly seized on these ; and
having in the constitution of his own being as much humour
and as rich as ever mixed with the higher elements of genius,
he sometimes gave vent to its perceptions and emotions in
strains perfectly irresistible — even to the most serious — who
had to force themselves back into their habitual and better
state, before they could regard them with due condemnation.

But humour in men of genius is always allied to pathos —
its exquisite touches

" On the pale cheek of sorrow awaken a smile,
And illumine the eye that was dim with a tear."

So is it a thousand times with the humour of Burns — and we
have seen it so in our quotations from these very " Khapso-
dies." He could sit with "rattlin, roarin Willie" — and
when he belonged to the Crochallan Fencibles, " he was the
king o' a' the core." But where he usually sat up late at
night, during those glorious hard-working years, was a low

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 79

loft above a stable — so low that he had to stoop even when
he was sitting at a deal table three feet by two — with his
" heart inditing a good matter " to a plough-boy, who read it
up to the poet before they lay down on the same truckle bed.
Burns had as deep an insight as ever man had into the
moral evils of the poor man's character, condition, and life.
From many of them he remained free to the last ; some he
suffered late and early. What were his struggles we know,
yet we know but in part, before he was overcome. But it
does not appear that he thought intemperance the worst moral
evil of the people, or that to the habits it forms had chiefly to
be imputed their falling short of or away from that character
enjoined by the law written and unwritten, and without which,
preserved in its great lineaments, there cannot be to the poor
man, any more than the rich, either power or peace. He be-
lieved that, but for " man's inhumanity to man," this might
be a much better earth ; that they who live by the sweat of
their brows would wipe them with pride, so that the blood did
but freely circulate from their hearts ; that creatures endowed
with a moral sense and discourse of reason would follow their
dictates, in preference to all solicitations to enjoyment from
those sources that flow to them in common with all things
that have life, so that they were but allowed the rights and
privileges of nature, and not made to bow down to a servitude
inexorable as necessity, but imposed, as he thought, on their
necks as a yoke by the very hands which Providence had
kept free ; — believing all this, and nevertheless knowing and
feeling, often in bitterness of heart and prostration of spirit,
that there is far worse evil, because self-originating and self-
inhabiting, within the invisible world of every human soul,
Burns had no reprobation to inflict on the lighter sins of the
oppressed, in sight of the heavier ones of the oppressor ; and
when he did look into his own heart and the hearts of his
brethren in toil and in trouble, for those springs of misery
which are for ever welling there, and need no external blasts
or torrents to lift them from their beds till they overflow their
banks, and inundate ruinously life's securest pastures, he saw
THE PASSIONS to which are given power and dominion for bliss
or for bale — of them in his sweetest, loftiest inspirations, he
sung as a poet all he felt as a man ; willing to let his fancy
in lighter moods dally with inferior things and merry mea-

80 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

sures — even with the very meat and drink that sustains man
who is but grass, and like the flower of the field flourisheth
and is cut down, and raked away out of the sunshine into the
shadow of the grave.

That Burns did not only not set himself to dissuade poor
people from drinking, but that he indited " rhapsodies " about
" Scotch Drink " and " Earnest Cries," will not, then, seem at
all surprising to poor people themselves, nor very culpable
even in the eyes of the most sober among them ; whatever
may be the light in which some rich people regard such de-
linquencies, your more-in-sorrow-than-anger moralists, who
are their own butlers, and sleep with the key of the wine-
cellar under their pillow. His poetry is very dear to the
people, and we venture to say, that they understand its
spirit as well as the best of those for whom it was not written ;
for written it was for his own Order — the enlightened majo-
rity of Christian men. No fear of their being blind to its
venial faults, its more serious imperfections, and, if such there
be, its sins. There are austere eyes in workshops, and in the
fields, intolerant of pollution ; stern judges of themselves and
others preside in those courts of conscience that are not open
to the public ; nevertheless, they have tender hearts, and they
yearn with exceeding love towards those of their brethren who
have brightened or elevated their common lot. Latent vir-
tues in such poetry as Burns's are continually revealing them-
selves to readers, whose condition is felt to be uncertain, and
their happiness to fluctuate with it ; adversity puts to the test
our opinions and beliefs, equally with our habits and our
practices ; and the most moral and religious man that ever
worked from morning to night, that his family might have
bread — daily from youth upwards till now he is threescore and
ten— might approve of the sentiment of that Song, feel it in
all its fervour, and express it in all its glee, in which age
meeting with age, and again hand and heart linked together,
the " trusty feres," bring back the past in a sun-burst on the
present, and, thoughtless of the future, pour out unblamed
libations to the days " o' auld lang syne ! "

It seems to us very doubtful if any poetry could become
popular, of which the prevalent spirit is not in accordance
with that of the people, as well in those qualities we grieve to
call vices, as in those we are happy to pronounce virtues. It

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 81

is not sufficient that they be moved for a time against their
will, by some moral poet desirous, we shall suppose, of purify-
ing and elevating their character, by the circulation of better
sentiments than those with which they have been long fami-
liar ; it is necessaiy that the will shall go along with their
sympathies to preserve them, perhaps, from being turned into
antipathies ; and that is not likely to happen, if violence be
done to long-established customs and habits, which may have
acquired not only the force, but something too of the sanctity,
of nature.

But it is certain that to effect any happy change in the
manners or the morals of a people — to be in any degree in-
strumental to the attainment or preservation of their dearest
interests — a Poet must deal with them in the spirit of truth ;
and that he may do so, he must not only be conversant with
their condition, but wise in knowledge, that he may under-
stand what he sees, and whence it springs — the evil and the
good. Without it, he can never help to remove a curse or
establish a blessing ; for a while his denunciations or his
praises may seem to be working wonders — his genius may be
extolled to the skies — and himself ranked among the bene-
factors of his people : but yet a little while, and it is seen that
the miracle has not been wrought, the evil spirit has not been
exorcised ; the plague-spot is still on the bosom of his un-
healed country ; and the physician sinks away unobserved
among men who have not taken a degree.

Look, for example, at the fate of that once fashionable, for
we can hardly call it popular, tale — " Scotland's Skaith, or
the History of Will and Jean," with its Supplement, " The
Waes o' War." Hector Macneil had taste and feeling — even
genius — and will be remembered among Scottish poets.

" Robin Burns, in mony a ditty,

Loudly sings in whisky's praise ;
Sweet his sang ! the mair's the pity
E'er on it he wared sic lays.

O' a' the ills puir Caledonia

E'er yet pree'd, or e'er will taste,
Brew'd in hell's black Pandemonia,

Whisky's ill will skaith her maist."

So said Hector Macneil of Eobert Burns, in verse not quite

VOL. VII. F

82 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. .

so vigorous as the " Earnest Cry." It would require a deeper
voice to frighten the "drouthy" from " Scotch Drink," if it
be " brewed in hell." " Impressed with the baneful conse-
quences inseparable from an inordinate use of ardent spirits
among the lower orders of society, and anxious to contribute
something that might at least tend to retard the contagion
of so dangerous an evil, it was conceived, in the ardour of
philanthropy, that a natural, pathetic story, in verse, calcu-
lated to enfore moral truths, in the language of simplicity
and passion, might probably interest the uncorrupted ; and
that a striking picture of the calamities incident to idle de-
bauchery, contrasted with the blessings of industrious pro-
sperity, might (although insufficient to reclaim abandoned
vice) do something to strengthen and encourage endangered
virtue. Visionary as these fond expectations may have been,
it is pleasing to cherish the idea ; and if we may be allowed
to draw favourable inferences from the sale of ten thousand
copies in the short space of Jive months, why should we despair
of success ? " The success, if we may trust to statistical
tables, has, alas ! been small ; nor would it have been greater
had a million copies been put into circulation. For the argu-
ment illustrated in the " History of Will and Jean " has no
fcrandation in nature — and proceeds on an assumption grossly
calumnious of the Scottish character. The following verses
used once to ring in every ear : —

" Wha was ance like Willie Gairlace,

Wha in neiborin town or farm ?

Beauty's bloom shone in his fair face,

Deadly strength was in his arm !

Wha wi' Will could rin or wrastle,

Throw the sledge or toss the bar ?
Hap what would, he stood a castle,

Or for safety or for war.

Warm his heart, and mild as manfu',

Wi' the bauld he bauld wad be ;
But to friends wha had their handfu',

Purse and service aye were free."

He marries Jeanie Miller, a wife worthy of him, and for three
years they are good and happy in the blessing of God.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 83

What in a few months makes drunkards of them both ? He
happens to go once for refreshment, after a long walk, into a
wayside public-house — and from that night he is a lost man.
He is described as entering it on his way home from a Fair —
and we never heard of a Fair where there was no whisky —
drinks Meg's ale or porter, and eats her bread and cheese
without incurring much blame from his biographer ; but his
companion prevails on him to taste " the widow's gill " — a
thing this bold peasant seems never before to have heard of —
and infatuated with the novel potion, Willie Gairlace, after a
few feeble struggles, in which he derives no support from his
previous life of happiness, industry, sobriety, virtue, and reli-
gion, staggers to destruction. Jeanie, in despair, takes to
drinking too ; they are " rouped out ; " she becomes a beggar,
and he " a sodger." The verses run smoothly and rapidly,
and there is both skill and power of narration, nor are touches
of nature wanting, strokes of pathos that have drawn tears.
But by what insidious witchcraft this frightful and fatal trans-
formation was brought about, the uninspired story-teller gives
no intimation — a few vulgar commonplaces constitute the
whole of his philosophy — and he no more thinks of tracing
the effects of whisky on the moral being — the heart — of poor
Willie Gairlace, than he would have thought of giving an
account of the coats of his stomach, had he been poisoned to
death by arsenic. " His hero " is not gradually changed
into a beast, like the victims of Circe's enchantments ; but
rather resembles the Cyclops all at once maddened in his cave
by the craft of Ulysses. This is an outrage against nature ;
not thus is the sting to be taken out of " Scotland's Skaith,"
and a nation of drunkards to be changed into a nation of
gentlemen. If no man be for a moment safe who " prees the
widow's gill," the case is hopeless, and despair admits the
inutility of Excise. In the " Waes o' War" — the Sequel of
the story — Willie returns to Scotland with a pension and a
wooden leg, and finds Jeanie with the children in a cottage
given her by " the good Buccleuch." Both have become as
sober as church-mice. The loss of a limb, and eight pounds
a-year for life, had effectually reformed the husband, a cottage
and one pound a-quarter the wife ; and this was good Hector
Macneil's.idea of a Moral Poem ! A poem that was not abso-
lutely to stay the plague, but to fortify the constitution

84 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

against it ; " and if we may be allowed to draw favourable
inferences from the sale of ten thousand copies in the short
space of five months, why should we despair of success ? "

It is not from such poetry that any healthful influence can
be exhaled over the vitiated habits of a people ; —

" With other ministrations, thou, 0 Nature !
Healest thy wandering and distempered child."

Had Burns written a Tale to exemplify a Curse, Nature would
have told him of them all ; nor would he have been in aught
unfitted by the experiences that prompted many a genial and
festive strain, but, on the contrary, the better qualified to give
in "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" some solu-
tion of that appalling mystery, in which the souls of good
men are often seen hurrying and hurried along paths they
had long abhorred, and still abhor, as may be seen from
their eyes, even when they are rejecting all offered means
of salvation, human and divine, and have sold their bibles
to buy death. Nor would Burns have adopted the vulgar
libel on the British army, that it was a receptacle for drunken
husbands who had deserted their wives and children. There
have been many such recruits ; but his martial, loyal, and
patriotic spirit would ill have brooked the thought of such
a disgrace to the service, in an ideal picture, which his
genius was at liberty to colour at its own will, and could
have coloured brightly according to truth. " One fine sum-
mer evening he was at the Inn at Brownhill with a couple of
friends, when a poor wayworn soldier passed the window : of
a sudden, it struck tho poet to call him in, and get the story
of his adventures ; after listening to which, he all at once fell
into one of those fits of abstraction, not unusual with him,"
and perhaps, with the air of " The mill, mill 0 " in his heart,
he composed " The Soldier's Return." It, too, speaks of the
" waes of war ; " and that poor wayworn soldier, we can well
believe, had given no very flattering account of himself or his
life, either before or after he,had mounted the cockade. Why
had he left Scotland and Mill-Mannoch on the sweet banks of
the Coyle near Coylton Kirk ? Burns cared not why ; he
loved his kind, and above all, his own people ; and his
imagination immediately pictured a blissful meeting of long-
parted lovers : —

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 85

" I left the lines and tented field,
Where lang I'd been a lodger,
My humble knapsack a' my wealth,
A pair but honest sodger.

A right leal heart was in my breast,

A hand unstain'd wi' plunder ;
And for fair Scotia, harne again,

I cheery on did wauder.
] thought upon the banks o' Coil,

I thought upon my Nancy,
I thought upon the witching smile

That caught my youthful fancy.

At length I reach'd the bonny glen

Where early life I sported ;
I passed the mill, and trysting thorn,

Where Nancy aft I courted :
Wha spied I but my ain dear maid,

Down by her mother's dwelling !
And turn'd me round to hide the flood

That in my een was swelling."

The ballad is a very beautiful one, and throughout how true
to nature ! It is alive all over Scotland ; that other is dead,
or with suspended animation ; not because " The Soldier's
Return" is a happy, and " Will and Jean" a miserable story ;
for the people's heart is prone to pity, though their eyes are
not much given to tears. But the people were told that " Will
and Jean" had been written for their sakes, by a wise man
made melancholy by the sight of their condition. The upper
ranks were sorrowful exceedingly for the lower — all weeping
over their wine for them over their whisky, and would not be
comforted ! For Hector Macneil informs them that

" Maggie's club, wha could get nae light
On seme things that should be clear,
Fand ere lang the faut, and ae night
and gat the Gazetteer?

The lower ranks read the Lamentation, for ever so many
thousands were thrust into their hands ; but, though not
insensible of their own infirmities, and willing to confess
them, they rose up in indignation against a charge that
swept their firesides of all that was most sacredly cherished

86 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

there, asked who wrote "The Cottar's Saturday Night?" and
declared with one voice, and a loud one, that if they were
to be bettered by poems, it should be by the poems of their
own Robert Burns.

And here we are brought to speak of these Satirical com-
positions which made Burns famous within the bounds of
more than one Presbytery, before the world had heard his
name. In boyhood and early youth he showed no symptoms
of humour — he was no droll — dull even — from constitutional
headaches, and heartquakes, and mysteries not to be under-
stood— no laughing face had he — the lovers .of mirth saw
none of its sparkles in his dark melancholy-looking eyes. In
his autobiographical sketch he tells us of no funny or facetious
" chap-books ; " his earliest reading was of the " tender and the
true," the serious or the sublime. But from the first he had
been just as susceptible and as observant of the comic as of
the tragic — nature had given him a genius as powerful over
smiles as tears — but as the sacred source lies deepest, its first
inspirations were drawn thence in abstraction and silence, and
not till it felt some assurance of its diviner strength did it de-
light to disport itself among the ludicrous images that, in in-
numerable varieties of form and colour — all representative of
realities — may be seen, when we choose to look at them,
mingling with the most solemn or pathetic shows that pass
along in our dream of life. You remember his words, " Thus
with me began Love and Poetry." True, they grew to-
gether ; but for a long time they were almost silent — seldom
broke out into song. His earliest love verses but poorly ex-
press his love — nature was then too strong within him for art,
which then was weak ; and young passion, then pure but all-
engrossing, was filling his whole soul with poetry that ere
long was to find a tongue that would charm the world.

It was in the Humorous, the Comic, the Satirical, that
he first tried and proved his strength. Exulting to find
that a rush of words was ready at his will — that no sooner
flashed his fancies than on the instant they were em-
bodied, he wantoned and revelled among the subjects that
had always seemed to him the most risible, whatever
might be the kind of laughter, simple or compound — pure
mirth, or a mixture of mirth and contempt, even of indig-
nation and scorn— mirth still being the chief ingredient

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 87

that qualified the whole — and these, as you know, were all
included within the " Sanctimonious," from which Burns
believed the Sacred to be excluded ; but there lay the
danger, and there the blame, if he transgressed the holy-
bounds.

His satires were unsparingly directed against certain min-
isters of the gospel, whose Calvinism he thought was not
Christianity ; whose characters were to him odious, their
persons ridiculous, their manners in the pulpit irreverent,
and out of it absurd ; and having frequent opportunities of
seeing and hearing them in all their glory, he made studies
of them con amore on the spot, and at home from abundant
materials with a master's hand elaborated finished pictures —
for some of them are no less — which, when hung out for pub-
lic inspection in market-places, brought the originals before
crowds of gazers transported into applause. Was this wicked ?
Wicked we think too strong a word ; but we cannot say that
it was not reprehensible, for to all sweeping satire there must
be some exception — and exaggeration cannot be truth. Burns
by his irregularities had incurred ecclesiastical censure, and
it has not unfairly been said that personsal spite barbed the
sting of his satire. Yet we fear such censure had been but
too lightly regarded by him ; and we are disposed to think
that his ridicule, however blamable on other grounds, was
free from malignity, and that his genius for the comic rioted
in the pleasure of sympathy and the pride of power. To those
who regard the persons he thus satirised as truly belonging to
the old Covenanters, and Saints of a more ancient time, such
satires must seem shameful and sinful ; to us who regard
" Rumble John " and his brethren in no such light, they
appear venial offences, and not so horrible as Hudibrastic.
A good many years after Burns's death, in our boyhood, we
sometimes saw and heard more than one of those worthies,
and cannot think his descriptions greatly overcharged. We
remember walking one day — unknown to us a fast-day — in
the neighbourhood of an ancient fortress, and hearing a noise
to be likened to nothing imaginable on this earth but the
bellowing of a buffalo fallen into a trap upon a tiger, which aa
we came within half a mile of the castle we discerned to be
the voice of a pastor engaged in public prayer. His physiog-
nomy was little less alarming than his voice, and his sermon

88 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

corresponded with his looks and his lungs — the whole being in-
deed an extraordinary exhibition of divine worship. We never
can think it sinful that Burns should have been humorous on
such a pulpiteer ; and if we shudder at some of the verses in
which he seems yet alive, it is not at the satirist.

" From this time, I began to be known in the country as a
maker of rhymes. * Holy Willie's Prayer ' next made its ap-
pearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much that they held
several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, and see
if any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers ; " " and
to a place among profane rhymers," says Mr Lockhart, in his
masterly volume, u the author of this terrible infliction had un-
questionably established his right." Sir Walter speaks of it
as " a piece of satire more exquisitely severe than any which
Burns ever afterwards wrote, but unfortunately cast in a form
too daringly profane to be received into Dr Currie's collection."
We have no wish to say one word in opposition to the sentence
pronounced by such judges ; but has Bums here dared beyond
Milton, Goethe, and Byron ? He puts a Prayer to the Almighty
into the mouth of one whom he believes to be one of the lowest
of blasphemers. In that Prayer are impious supplications
couched in shocking terms characteristic of the hypocrite
who stands on a familiar footing with his Maker. Milton's
blasphemer is a fallen angel, Goethe's a devil, Byron's the
first murderer, and Burns's an elder of the Kirk. All the
four poets are alike guilty, or not guilty — unless there be
in the case of one of them something peculiar that lifts
him up above the rest, in the case of another something
peculiar that leaves him alone a sinner. Let Milton then
stand aloof, acquitted of the charge, not because of the
grandeur and magnificence of his conception of Satan, but
because its high significance cannot be misunderstood by
the pious, and that out of the mouths of the dwellers in
darkness, as well as of the Sons of the Morning, " he vindi-
cates the ways of God to man." Byron's Cain blasphemes ;
does Byron? Many have thought so — for they saw, or
seemed to see, in the character of the Cursed, as it glooms
in soliloquies that are poetically sublime, some dark in-
tention in its delineator to inspire doubts of the justice of
the Almighty One who inhabiteth eternity. Goethe in the
"Prologue in Heaven" brings Mephistopheles face to face

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 89

with God. But Goethe devoted many years to "his great
poem, Faust," and in it he too, as many of the wise and good
believe, strove to show rising out of the blackness of dark-
ness the attributes of Him whose eyes are too pure to behold
iniquity. Be it even so ; then, why blame Burns ? You can-
not justly do so, on account of the " daringly profane form" in
which " Holy Willie's Prayer" is cast, without utterly repro-
bating the " Prologue in Heaven."

Of " The Holy Fair " few have spoken with any very serious
reprehension. Dr Blair was so much taken with it that he
suggested a well-known emendation ; and for our own part
we have no hesitation in saying, that we see no reason to
lament that it should have been written by the writer of
"The Cottar's Saturday Night." The title of the poem
was no profane thought of his — it had arisen long before
among the people themselves, and expressed the prevalent
opinion respecting the use and wont that profaned the
solemnisation of the most awful of all religious rites. In
many places, and in none more than in Mauchline, the ad-
ministration of the Sacrament was hedged round about by
the self-same practices that mark the character and make
the enjoyment of a Rural Fair-day. Nobody doubts that
in the midst of them all sat hundreds of pious people whose
whole hearts and souls were in the divine service. Nobody
doubts that even among those who took part in the open or
hardly concealed indecencies which vcustom could never make
harmless, though it made many insensible to their grossness,
not a few were now and then visited with devout thoughts ;
nay, that some, in spite of their improprieties, which fell off
from them unawares, or were by an act of pious volition dis-
missed, were privileged to partake of the communion elements.
Nobody supposes that the heart of such an assemblage was to
be judged from its outside — that there was no composed depth
beneath that restless surface. But everybody knows that there
was fatal desecration of the spirit that should have reigned
there, and that the thoughts of this world were paramount at
a time and place set apart, under sanctions and denunciations
the most awful, to the remembrance of Him who purchased
for us the kingdom of Heaven.

We believe, then, that Burns was not guilty in this poem of
any intentional irreverence toward the public ordinances of

90 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

religion. It does not, in our opinion, afford any reason for
supposing that he was among the number of those who regard
such ordinances as of little or no avail, because they do not
always exemplify the reverence which becomes men in the
act of communing with their God. Such is the constitution
of human nature that there are too many moments in the very
article of these solemn occasions when the hearts of men are a
prey to all their wonted cares and follies ; and this short-
coming in the whole solemnity robs it to many a delicate and
well-disposed, but not thoroughly instructed imagination, of
all attraction. But there must be a worship by communities
as well as by individuals ; for in the regards of Providence,
communities appear to have a personality as well as indi-
viduals ; and how shall the worship of communities be con-
ducted, but by forms and ceremonies, which, as they occur at
stated times, whatever be the present frame of men's minds,
must be often gone through with coldness. If those persons
would duly consider the necessity of such ordinances, and
their use in the conservation of religion, they would hold them
sacred, in spite of the levity and hypocrisy that too often
accompany their observance, nor would they wonder to see
among the worshippers an unsuspected attention to the things
of this world. But there was far more than this in the dese-
cration which called for " The Holy Fair " from Burns. A
divine ordinance had through unhallowed custom been over-
laid by abuses, if not to the extinction, assuredly to the sup-
pression, in numerous communicants, of the religious spirit
essential to its efficacy ; and in that fact we have to look for
a defence of the audacity of his sarcasm ; we are to believe
that the Poet felt strong in the possession of a reverence far
greater than that which he beheld, and in the conviction that
nothing which he treated with levity could be otherwise than
displeasing in the eye of God. We are far from seeking to
place him, on this occasion, by the side of those men who,
" strong in hatred of idolatry," became religious reformers,
and while purifying Faith, unsparingly shattered Forms, not
without violence to the cherished emotions of many pious
hearts. Yet their wit, too, was often aimed at faulty things
standing in close connection with solemnities which wit can-
not approach without danger. Could such scenes as those
against which Burns directed the battery of his ridicule be

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 91

endured now ? Would they not be felt to be most profane *
And may we not attribute the change in some measure to the
Comic Muse ?

Burns did not need to have subjects for poetry pointed out
and enumerated to him, latent or patent in Scottish Life, as
was considerately done in a series of dullish verses by that
excellent person, Mr Telford, Civil Engineer. Why, it has
been asked, did he not compose a Sacred Poem on the admin-
istration of the Sacrament of our Lord's Last Supper? The
answer is — how could he with such scenes before his eyes ?
Was he to shut them, and to describe it as if such scenes were
not? Was he to introduce them, and give us a poem of a
mixed kind, faithful to the truth ? From such profanation his
genius was guarded by his sense of religion, which though
defective was fervent, and not unaccompanied with awe.
Observe, in what he has written, how he keeps aloof from the
Communion Table. Not for one moment does he in thought
enter the doors of the House of God. There is a total separa-
tion between the outer scene and the inner sanctuary — the
administration of the sacrament is removed out of all those
desecrating circumstances, and left to the imagination of the
religious mind — by his silence. Would a great painter have
dared to give us a picture of it ? Harvey has painted, simply
and sublimely, a " Hill Sacrament." But there all is solemn
in the light of expiring day ; the peace that passeth all under-
standing reposes on the heads of all the communicants ; and
in a spot sheltered from the persecutor by the solitude of
sympathising nature, the humble and the contrite, in a ritual
hallowed by their pious forefathers, draw near at his bidding
to their Redeemer.

We must now return to Burns himself, but cannot allow
him to leave Ellisland without dwelling for a little while
longer on the happy life he led for three years and more on
that pleasant farm. Now and then you hear him low-spirited
in his letters, but generally cheerful ; and though his affairs
were not very prosperous, there was comfort in his household.
There was peace and plenty; for Mrs Burns was a good
manager, and he was not a bad one ; and one way and
another the family enjoyed an honest livelihood. The house
had been decently furnished, the farm well-stocked ; and
taey wanted nothing to satisfy their sober wishes. Three

92 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

years after marriage, Burns, with liis Jean at Iris side, writes
to Mrs Dunlop, " As fine a figure and face we can produce as
any rank of life whatever; rustic, native grace; unaffected
modesty, and unsullied purity ; nature's mother- wit, and the
rudiments of taste ; a simplicity of soul, unsuspicious of, be-
cause unacquainted with, the ways of a selfish, interested,
disingenuous world ; and the dearest charm of all the rest, a
yielding sweetness of disposition, and a generous warmth of
heart, grateful for love on our part, and ardently glowing with
a more than equal return : these, with a healthy frame, a sound,
vigorous constitution, which your higher ranks can scarcely
ever hope to enjoy, are the charms of lovely woman in my
humble walk of life." Josiah Walker, however, writing many
years after, expresses his belief that Burns did not love his wife.

A discerning reader will perceive (says he) that the letters in
which he announces his marriage are written in that state, when the
mind is pained by reflecting on an unwelcome step ; and finds relief
to itself in seeking arguments to justify the deed, and lessen its dis-
advantages in the opinion of others. But the greater the change
which the taste of Burns had undergone, and the more his hopes of
pleasure must in consequence have been diminished, from rendering
Miss Armour his only female companion, the more credit does he
deserve for that rectitude of resolution, which prompted him to
fulfil what he considered as an engagement, and to act as a necessary
duty prescribed. We may be at the same time permitted to lament
the necessity which he had thus incurred. A marriage, from a senti-
ment of duty, may by circumstances be rendered indispensable ; but
as it is undeniably a duty, not to be accomplished by any temporary
exertion, however great, but calling for a renewal of effort every
year, every day, and every hour, it is putting the strength and con-
stancy of our principles to the most severe and hazardous trial.
Had Burns completed his marriage, before perceiving the interest
which he had the power of creating in females, whose accomplish-
ments of mind and manners Jean could never hope to equal— or had
his duty and his pride permitted his alliance with one of that supe-
rior class— many of his subsequent deviations from sobriety and hap-
piness might probably have been prevented. It was no fault of Mrs
Burns that she was unable, from her education, to furnish what had
?rown, since the period of their first acquaintance, one of the poet's
most exquisite enjoyments ; and if a daily vacuity of interest at home
chausted his patience, and led him abroad in quest of exercise for the
Jtivity of his mind, those who can place themselves in a similar
situation will not be inclined to judge too severely of his error.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 93

Mrs Burns, you know, was alive when this philosophical
stuff was published, and she lived for more than twenty years
after it, as exemplary a widow as she had been a wife. Its
gross indelicacy — say rather wanton insult — to all the feelings
of a woman, is abhorrent to all the feelings of a man, and
shows the monk. And we have quoted it now that you may
see what vile liberties respectable libellers were long wont to
take with Burns and all that belonged to him — because he was
a Gauger. Who would have dared to write thus of the wife
and widow of a — Gentleman — of one who was a Lady ? Not
Josiah Walker. Yet it passed for years unreproved : the
"Life" which contains it still circulates, and seems to be in
some repute ; and Josiah Walker on another occasion is cited
to the rescue by George Thomson as a champion and vindi-
cator of the truth. The insolent eulogist dared to say that
Kobert Burns in marrying Jean Armour " repaired seduction
by the most precious sacrifice, short of life, which one htirnan
being can make to another ! " To her, in express terms, he
attributes her husband's misfortunes and misdoings — to her
who soothed his sorrows, forgave his sins, inspired his songs,
cheered his hearth, blest his bed, educated his children, re-
vered his memory, and held sacred his dust.

What do you think was, according to this biographer, the
chief cause of the blamable life Burns led at Ellisland ? He
knew not what to do with himself! " When not occupied in the
fields, his time must have hung heavy on his hands!" Just
picture to yourself Burns peevishly pacing the " half-parlour
half-kitchen " floor, with his hands in his breeches pockets,
tormenting his dull brain to invent some employment by which
he might be enabled to resist the temptation of going to bed
in the forenoon in his clothes ! But how is this ? " When
not occupied in the fields, his time must have hung heavy on
his hands ; for we are not to infer, from the literary eminence
of Burns, that, like a person regularly trained to studious
habits, he could render himself by study independent of
society. He could read and write when occasion prompted ;
but he could not, like a professional scholar, become so inte-
rested in a daily course of lettered industry, as to find company
an interruption rather than a relief." We cheerfully admit
that Burns was not engaged at Ellisland on a History of the
World. He had not sufiicieut books. Besides, he had to

94 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ride, in good smuggling weather, two hundred miles a-week.
But we cannot admit that " to banish dejection, and to Jill his
vacant hours, it is not surprising that he should have resorted
to such associates as his new neighbourhood, or the inns upon
the road to Ayrshire, could afford ; and if these happened to be
of a low description, that his constant ambition to render him-
self an important and interesting figure in every society, made
him suit his conduct and conversation to their taste." When
not on duty, the Exciseman was to be found at home like
other farmers, and when not " occupied in the fields " with
farm work, he might be seen playing with Sir William Wallace
and other Scottish heroes in miniature, two or three pet sheep
of the quadruped breed sharing in the vagaries of the bipeds ;
or striding along the Scaur with his Whangee rod in his fist,
with which, had time hung heavy, he would have cracked the
skull of Old Chronos; or sitting on a divot-dyke with the
ghost of Tarn 0' Shanter, Captain Henderson, and the Earl of
Glencairn; or, so it is recorded, "on a rock projecting into
the Nith (which we have looked for in vain), employed in
angling, with a cap made of a fox's skin on his head, a loose
great-coat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an
enormous Highland broadsword;" or with his legs under the
fir, with the famous Black Bowl sending up a Scotch mist in
which were visible the wigs of two orthodox English clergy-
men, " to whose tastes his constant ambition to render himself
an important and interesting figure in every society, made him
suit his conduct and conversation ;" — in such situations might
Josiah Walker 'have stumbled upon Burns, and perhaps met
with his own friend, " a clergyman from the south of England,
who on his return talked with rapture of his reception, and of
all that he had seen and heard in the cottage of Ellisland," or
with Ramsay of Oughtertyre, who was so delighted "with
Burns's uxor Sabina qualis and the poet's modest mansion, so
unlike the habitations of ordinary rustics," the very evening
the Bard suddenly bounced in upon us, and said as he entered,
" I come, to use the words of Shakespeare, ' stewed in haste,' "
and in a little while, such was the force and versatility of his

genius, he made the tears run down Mr L 's cheeks, albeit

unused to the poetic strain ;" — or who knows but the pedes-
trian might have found the poet engaged in religious exercises
under the sylvan shade ? For did he not write to Mrs Dun-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 95

lop, " I own myself so little of a presbyterian, that I approve
of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devo-
tion, for breaking in on that habitual routine of life and
thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of
instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state
very little superior to mere machinery. This day (New- Year-
day morning), the first Sunday of May, a breezy blue-skyed
noon, some time before the beginning, and a hoary morning
and calm sunny day about the end of autumn ; — these, time
out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday." Finally,
Josiah might have made his salaam to the Exciseman just as
he was folding up that letter in which he says, —

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or struc-
ture of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices or
whims, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing or
struck with that, which, in minds of a different cast, makes no extra-
ordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among
which are the mountain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-
brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view
and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud soli-
tary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing
cadence of a troop of grey plovers 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 all this be owing 1
Are we a piece of machinery, which like the ^Eolian harp, passive,
takes the impression 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 important realities — a God
that made all things — man's immaterial and immortal nature — and
a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.

Burns, however, found that an active ganger, with ten
parishes to look after, could not be a successful farmer ; and
looking forward to promotion in the Excise, he gave up his
lease, and on his appointment to another district removed into
Dumfries. The greater part of his small capital had been
sunk or scattered on the somewhat stony soil of Ellisland; but
with his library and furniture — his wife and his children — his
and their wearing apparel — a trifle in ready money — no debt
— youth, health, and hope, and a salary of seventy pounds,
he did not think himself poor. Such provision, he said, was
luxury to what either he or his better-half had been born to —

96 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

and the Flitting from Ellisland, accompanied as it was with
the regrets and respect of the neighbourhood, displayed on the
whole a cheerful cavalcade.

It is remarked by Mr Lockhart that Burns's " four principal
biographers, Heron, Currie, Walker, and Irving, concur in the
general statement that his moral course, from the time that he
settled in Dumfries, was downwards." Mr Lockhart has
shown that they have one and all committed many serious
errors in this " general statement," and we too shall examine
it before we conclude. Meanwhile let us direct our attention,
not to his " moral course," but to the course of his genius.
It continued to burn bright as ever, and if the character of the
man corresponded in its main features with that of the poet,
which we believe it did, its best vindication will be found in
a right understanding of the spirit that animated his genius
to the last, and gave birth to perhaps its finest effusions — HIS

MATCHLESS SONGS.

In his earliest Journal, we find this beautiful passage : —

There is a noble sublimity, a heart-melting tenderness, in some
of our ancient ballads, which show them to be the work of a masterly
hand : and it has often given me many a heartache to reflect, that
such glorious old bards— bards who very probably owed all their
talents to native genius, yet have described the exploits of heroes,
the pangs of disappointment, and the meltings of love, with such
fine strokes of nature — that their very names (O how mortifying to
a bard's vanity !) are now ''buried among the wreck of things which
were." 0 ye illustrious names unknown ! who could feel so strongly
and describe so well ; the last, the meanest of the Muse's train — one
who, though far inferior to your flights, yet eyes your path, and with
trembling wing would sometimes soar after you — a poor rustic bard,
unknown, pays this sympathetic pang to your memory ! Some of
you tell us, with all the charms of verse, that you have been unfor-
tunate in the world — unfortunate in love ; he too has felt the loss of
his little fortune, the loss of friends, and, worse than all, the loss of
the woman he adored. Like you, all his consolation was his muse :
She taught him in rustic measures to complain. Happy could he
have done it with your strength of imagination and flow of verse !
May the turf lie lightly on your bones ! and may you now enjoy
that solace and rest which this world rarely gives to the heart tuned
to all the feelings of poesy and love.

The old nameless Song -writers, buried centuries ago in
kirk-yards that have themselves perhaps ceased to exist — yet

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 97

one sees sometimes lonesome burial-places among the hills,
where man's dust continues to be deposited after the house of
God has been removed elsewhere— the old nameless Song-
writers took hold out of their stored hearts of some single
thought or remembrance surpassingly sweet at the moment
over all others, and instantly words as sweet had being, and
breathed themselves forth along with some accordant melody
of the still more olden time ;— or when musical and poetical
genius happily met together, both alike passion-inspired, then
was born another new tune or air soon treasured within a
thousand maidens' hearts, and soon flowing from lips that
" murmured near the living brooks a music sweeter than their
own." Had boy or virgin faded away in untimely death, and
the green mound that covered them, by the working of some
secret power far within the heart, suddenly risen to fancy's
eye, and then as suddenly sunk away into oblivion with all
the wavering burial-place ? Then was framed dirge, hymn,
elegy, that, long after the mourned and the mourner were
forgotten, continued to wail and lament up and down all the
vales of Scotland — for what vale is unvisited by such sorrow ?
— in one same monotonous melancholy air, varied only
as each separate singer had her heart touched, and her
face saddened, with a fainter or stronger shade of pity or
grief ! — Had some great battle been lost and won, and to the
shepherd on the braes had a faint and far-off sound seemed on
a sudden to touch the horizon like the echo of a trumpet ?
Then had some ballad its birth, heroic yet with dying falls,
for the singer wept, even as his heart burned within him, over
the princely head prostrated with all its plumes, haply near
the lowly woodsman, whose horn had often startled the deer
as together they trode the forest-chase, lying humble in
death by his young lord's feet ! — 0, blue-eyed maiden, even
more beloved than beautiful! how couldst thou ever find heart
to desert thy minstrel, who for thy sake would have died
without one sigh given to the disappearing happiness of sky
and earth — and, witched by some evil spell, how couldst thou
follow an outlaw to foreign lands, to find, alas ! some day a
burial in the great deep ? Thus was enchained in sounds the
complaint of disappointed, defrauded, and despairing passion,
and another air filled the eyes of our Scottish maidens with a

VOL. VII. G

98 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

new luxury of tears — a low flat tune, surcharged throughout
with one groan-like sigh, and acknowledged, even by the
gayest heart, to be indeed the language of an incurable grief!
— Or flashed the lover's raptured hour across the brain — yet
an hour, in all its rapture, calm as the summer sea — or the
level summit of a far flushing forest asleep in sunshine, when
there is not a breath in heaven ? Then thoughts that breathe,
and words that burn — and, in that wedded verse and music
you feel that " love is heaven, and heaven is love ! " — But
affection, sober, sedate, and solemn, has its sudden and strong
inspirations ; sudden and strong as those of the wildest and
most fiery passion. Hence the old grey-haired poet and
musician, sitting haply blind in shade or sunshine, and be-
thinking him of the days of his youth, while the leading hand
of his aged Alice gently touches his arm, and that voice of
hers that once lilted like the linnet, is now like that of the
dove in its lonely tree, mourns not for the past, but gladdens
in the present, and sings a holy song — like one of the songs
of Zion ; for both trust that, ere the sun brings another
summer, their feet will be wandering by the waters of eternal
life.

Thus haply might arise verse and air of Scotland's old
pathetic melodies. And how her light and airy measures ?

Streaks of sunshine come dancing down from heaven on the
darkest days, to bless and beautify the life of poverty dwelling
in the wilderness. Labour, as he goes forth at morn from his
rustic lodge, feels, to the small bird's twitter, his whole being
filled with joy ; and, as he quickens his pace to field or wood,
breaks into a song. Care is not always his black companion,
but oft, at evening hour — while innocence lingers half-afraid
behind, yet still follows with thoughtful footsteps — Mirth
leads him to the circular seat beneath the tree, among whose
exterior branches swings, creaking to and fro in the wind, the
sign-board teaching friendship by the close grasp of two
emblematical hands. And thence the catch and troU, while
"laughter holding both its sides," sheds tears to song and
ballad pathetic on the woes of married life, and all the ills that
" our flesh is heir to." Fair, Rocking, and Harvest-home, and
a hundred rural festivals, are for ever giving wings to the
flight of the circling year ; or how could this lazy earth ever
in so short a time whirl, spinning asleep on her axis, round

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 99

that most attractive but distant sun ? How loud, broad, deep,
soul-and-body-shaking is the ploughman's or the shepherd's
mirth, as a hundred bold sun-burnt visages make the rafters
of the old hostel ring ! Overhead the thunder of the time-
keeping dance, and all the joyous tenement alive with love !
The pathetic song, by genius steeped in tears, is forgotten ;
roars of boorish laughter reward the fearless singer for the
ballad that brings burning blushes on every female face, till the
snooded head can scarcely be lifted up again to meet the free
kiss of affection bold in the privileges of the festival, where
bashfulness is out of season, and the chariest maid withholds
not the harmless boon only half granted beneath the milk-
white thorn. It seems as if all the profounder interests of life
were destroyed, or had never existed. In moods like these,
genius plays with grief, and sports with sorrow. Broad farce
shakes hands with deep tragedy. Vice seems almost to be
virtue's sister. The names and the natures of things are
changed, and all that is most holy, and most holily cherished
by us strange mortal creatures — for which thousands of men
and women have died at the stake, and would die again rather
than forfeit it — virgin love, and nuptial faith, and religion it-
self that saves us from being but as the beasts that perish,
and equalises us with the angels that live for ever — all
become for a time seeming objects of scoff, derision, and
merriment. But it is not so, — as God is in heaven it is not
so ; there has been a flutter of strange dancing lights on life's
surface, but that is all ; its depths have remained undisturbed
in the poor man's nature ; and how deep these are you may
easily know by looking, in an hour or two, through that small
shining pane, the only one in the hut, and beholding and
hearing him, his wife and children, on their knees in prayer
— (how beautiful in devotion that same maiden now !) not un-
seen by the eye of Him who sitting in the heaven of heavens
doth make our earth his footstool !

And thus the many broad-mirth-songs, and tales, and
ballads arose, that enliven Scotland's antique minstrelsy.

To Burns's ear all these lowly lays were familiar, and most
dear were they all to his heart : nor less so the airs in which
they have as it were been so long embalmed, and will be im-
perishable, unless some fatal change should ever be wrought
in the manners of our people. From the first hour, and indeed

100 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

long before it, that he composed his rudest verse, often had he
sung aloud " old songs that are the music of the heart ; " and
some day or other to be able himself to breathe such strains,
had been his dearest, his highest ambition. His " genius and
his moral frame " were thus imbued with the spirit of our old
traditionary ballad poetry ; and as soon as all his manifold
passions were ripe, and his whole glorious being in full
maturity, the voice of song was on all occasions of deepest
and tenderest human interest, the voice of his daily, his
nightly speech. He wooed each maiden in song that will, as
long as our Doric dialect is breathed by love in beauty's ears,
be murmured close to the cheek of Innocence trembling in the
arms of Passion. It was in some such dream of delight that,
wandering all by himself to seek the muse by some " trotting
burn's meander," he found his face breathed upon by the wind,
as it was turned toward the region of the setting sun ; and in
a moment it was as the pure breath of his beloved, and he
exclaimed to the conscious stars, —

" Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,

I dearly like the west ;
For there the bonny lassie lives,
The lassie I loe best ! "

How different, yet how congenial to that other strain, which
ends like the last sound of a funeral bell, when the aged have
been buried, —

" "We'll sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo ! "

These old songs were his models, because they were models
of certain forms of feeling having a necessary and eternal
existence. Feel as those who breathed them felt, and if you
utter your feelings, the utterance is song. Burns did feel as
they felt, and looked with the same eyes on the same objects.
So entirely was their language his language, that all the
beautiful lines, and half lines, and single words, that, because
of something in them more exquisitely true to nature, had
survived all the rest of the compositions to which they had
long ago belonged, were sometimes adopted by him, almost
unconsciously it might seem, in his finest inspirations ; and
oftener still sounded in his ear like a key-note, on which he
pitched his own plaintive tune of the heart, till the voice and

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTEK OF BURNS. 101

language of the old and new days were but as one ; and the
maiden who sung to herself the song by her wheel, or on the
brae, quite lost in a wavering world of phantasy, could not, as
she smiled, choose but also weep !

So far from detracting from the originality of his lyrics,
this impulse to composition greatly increased it, while it gave
to them a more touching character than perhaps ever could
have belonged to them, had they not breathed at all of anti-
quity. Old but not obsolete, a word familiar to the lips of
human beings who lived ages ago, but tinged with a slight
shade of strangeness as it flows from our own, connects the
speaker, or the singer, in a way, though " mournful, yet plea-
sant to the soul," with past generations, and awakens a love
at once more tender and more imaginative towards " auld
Scotland." We think, even at times when thus excited, of
other Burnses who died without their fame ; and, glorying
in him and his name, we love his poetry the more deeply for
the sake of him whose genius has given our native land a new
title of honour among the nations. Assuredly Burns is felt to
be a Scotchman intus et in cute in all his poetry ; but not more
even in his "Tarn o' Shanter" and "Cottar's Saturday
Night," his two longest and most elaborate compositions, than
in one and all of his innumerable and inimitable songs, from
" Dainty Davie" to " Thou lingering star." We know, too,
that the composition of songs was to him a perfect happiness
that continued to the close of life — an inspiration that shot
its light and heat, it may be said, within the very borders of
his grave.

In his "Commonplace or Scrap Book, begun in April
1783," there are many fine reflections on Song-writing, besides
that exquisite Invocation — showing how early Burns had
studied it as an art. We have often heard some of his most
popular songs found fault with for their imperfect rhymes — so
imperfect, indeed, as not to be called rhymes at all ; and we
acknowledge that we remember the time when we used re-
luctantly to yield a dissatisfied assent to such objections.
Thus in " Highland Mary" — an impassioned strain of eight
quatrains — strictly speaking there are no rhymes — Mont-
gomery, drumlie ; tarry, Mary ; blossom, bosom ; dearie, Mary ;
tender, asunder ; early, Mary ; fondly, kindly ; dearly, Mary.
It is not enough to say that here, and in other instances,

102 ESSAYS : CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Burns was imitating the manner of some of the old songs —
indulging in the same license ; for he would not have done
so had he thought it an imperfection. He felt that there
must be a reason in nature why this was sometimes so pleas-
ing— why it sometimes gave a grace beyond the reach of art.
Those minnesingers had all musical ears, and were right in
believing them. Their ears told them that such words as
these — meeting on their tympana under the modifying influ-
ence of tune, were virtually rhymes ; and as such they " slid
into their souls."

There is (says Burns in a passage unaccountably omitted by
Carrie, and first given by Cromek), a great irregularity in the old
Scotch songs — a redundancy of syllables with respect to that exact-
ness of accent and measure that the English poetry requires — but
which glides in most melodiously with the respective tunes to which
they are set. For instance, the fine old song of " The mill mill O" —
to give it a plain prosaic reading — it halts prodigiously out of mea-
sure. On the other hand, the song set to the same tune in Brem-
ner's Collection of Scotch songs, which begins — "To Fanny fair
could I impart," &c. — it is most exact measure ; and yet, let them
both be sung before a real critic, one above the biases of prejudice,
but a thorough judge of nature, how flat and spiritless will the last
appear, how trite and lamely methodical, compared with the wild,
warbling cadence, the heart-moving melody of the first. This is
particularly the case with all those airs which end with a hyper-
metrical syllable. There is a degree of wild irregularity in many of
the compositions and fragments which are daily sung to them by my
compeers — the common people — a certain happy arrangement of old
Scotch syllables, and yet very frequently nothing — not even like
rhyme— or sameness of jingle, at the end of the lines. This has
made me sometimes imagine that perhaps it might be possible for a
Scotch poet, with a nice judicious ear, to set compositions to many
of our most favourite airs — particularly the class of them mentioned
above — independent of rhyme altogether.

It is a common mistake to suppose that the world is in-
debted for most of Burns's songs to George Thomson. He
contributed to that gentleman sixty original songs, and a
noble contribution it was ; besides hints, suggestions, emen-
dations, and restorations innumerable ; but three times as
many were written by him, emended or restored, for Johnson's
SCOTS' ^MUSICAL MUSEUM. He began to send songs to John-
son, with whom he had become intimately acquainted on his

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 103

first visit to Edinburgh, early in 1787, and continued to send
them till within a few days of his death. In November 1788
he says to Johnson, " I can easily see, my dear friend, that
you will probably have four volumes. Perhaps you may not
find your account lucratively in this business ; but you are a
patriot for the music of your country, and I am certain
posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted to your
public spirit. Be not in a hurry ; let us go on correctly, and
your name will be immortal." On the 4th of July 1796 — he
died on the 21st — he writes from Dumfries to the worthy
music-seller in Edinburgh : —

How are you, my dear friend, and how comes on your fifth vol-
ume ? You may probably think that for some time past I have
neglected you and your work ; but alas ! the hand of pain, sorrow,
and care, has these many months lain heavy on me. Personal and
domestic affliction have almost entirely banished that alacrity and
Ufe with which I used to woo the rural muse of Scotia. You are a
good, worthy, honest fellow, and have a good right to live in this
world — because you deserve it. Many a merry meeting the publica-
tion has given us, and possibly it may give us more, though alas ! I
fear it. This protracting, slow, consuming illness which hangs over
me will, I doubt much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before he
has well reached his middle career, and will turn over the poet to far
more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit, or the
pathos of sentiment. However, hope is the cordial of the human
heart, and I endeavour to cherish it as well as I can. Let me hear
from you as soon as convenient. Your work is a great one, and now
that it is finished, I see, if I were to begin again, two or three things
that might be mended ; yet I will venture to prophesy, that to
future ages your publication will be the text-book and standard of
Scottish song and music. I am ashamed to ask another favour of
you, because you have been so very good already ; but my wife has
a very particular friend of hers — a young lady who sings well — to
whom she wishes to present the Scots' Musical Museum,. If you
have a spare copy, will you be so obliging as to send it by the very
first Fly, as I am anxious to have it soon.

Turn from James Johnson and his Scots' Musical Museum
for a moment to George Thomson and his Collection. In
September 1792, Mr Thomson — who never personally knew
Burns — tells him, " For some years past I have, with a friend
or two, employed many leisure hours in selecting and collat-
ing the most favourite of our national melodies for publica-

104 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

tion ; " and says — " We will esteem your poetical assistance a
particular favour ; besides paying any reasonable price you
shall please to demand for it." Burns, spurning the thought
of being " paid any reasonable price," closes at once with the
proposal, " As the request you make to me will positively add
to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall enter into your
undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I have —
strained to the utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm."
That enthusiasm for more than three years seldom languished
— it was in his heart when his hand could hardly obey its
bidding; and on the 12th of July 1796 — eight days after he
had written, in the terms you have just seen, to James John-
son for a copy of his Scots' Musical Museum — he writes thus
to George Thomson for five pounds : " After all my boasted
independence, stern necessity compels me to implore you for

five pounds. A cruel of a haberdasher, to whom I owe

an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has com-
menced a process, and will infallibly put me into jail. Do for
God's sake send me that sum, and that by return of post.
Forgive me this earnestness ; but the horrors of a jail have
made me half distracted. I do not ask all this gratuitously ;
for upon returning health, I hereby promise and engage to fur-
nish you with five pounds' worth of the neatest song genius you
have seen. FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME ! "

Mr Johnson, no doubt, sent a copy of the Museum ; but we
do not know if the Fly arrived before the BIER. Mr Thomson
was prompt : and Dr Currie, speaking of Burns's refusal to
become a weekly contributor to the Poet's Corner in the
Morning Chronicle, at a guinea a-week, says, " Yet he had
for several years furnished, and was at that time furnishing,
the Museum of Johnson, with his beautiful lyrics, without fee
or reward, and was obstinately refusing all recompense for
his assistance to the greater work of Mr Thomson, which the
justice and generosity of that gentleman was pressing upon
him." That obstinacy gave way at last, not under the pres-
sure of Mr Thomson's generosity and justice, but under " the
sense of his poverty, and of the approaching distress of his
mfant family, which pressed," says Dr Currie truly, " on
Burns as he lay on the bed of death."

But we are anticipating ; and desire at present to see
Burns « in glory and in joy." « Whenever I want to be more

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 105

than ordinary in song ; to be in some degree equal to your
diviner airs, do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial
emanation ? I have a glorious recipe ; the very one that for
his own use was invented by the divinity of healing and
poetry, when erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I put
myself on a regimen of admiring a fine woman ; and in pro-
portion to the admirability of her charms, in proportion you
are delighted with my verses. The lightning of her eye is
the godhead of Parnassus ; and the witchery of her smile, the
divinity of Helicon." We know the weak side of his cha-
racter— the sin that most easily beset him — that did in-
deed " stain his name," and made him for many seasons the
prey of remorse. But though it is not allowed to genius to
redeem — though it is falsely said that " the light that leads
astray is light from heaven " — and though Burns's transgres-
sions must be judged as those of common men, and visited
with the same moral reprobation — yet surely we may dismiss
them with a sigh from our knowledge, for a while, as we feel
the charm of the exquisite poetry originating in the inspira-
tion of passion, purified by genius, and congenial with the
utmost innocency of the virgin breast.

In his LOVE- SONGS, all that is best in his own being delights
to bring itself into communion with all that is best in theirs
whom he visions walking before him in beauty. That beauty
is made " still more beauteous " in the light of his genius, and
the passion it then moves partakes of the same ethereal col-
our. If love inspired his poetry, poetry inspired his love, and
not only inspired but elevated the whole nature of it. If the
highest delights of his genius were in the conception and
celebration of female loveliness, that trained sensibility was
sure to produce extraordinary devotion to the ideal of that
loveliness of which innocence is the very soul. If music re-
fine the manners, how much more will it have that effect on
him who studies its spirit, as Burns did that of the Scottish
songs, in order to marry them to verse. " Until I am com-
plete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is, I can
never compose for it. My way is this : I consider the poetic
sentiment correspondent 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

106 ESSAYS I CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

business, I walk 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, hum-
ming 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 effu-
sions 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 invari-
ably my way." Then we know that his Bonny Jean was
generally in his presence, engaged in house affairs, while he
was thus on his inspiring swing, that she was among the
first to hear each new song recited by her husband, and the
first to sing it to him, that he might know if it had been pro-
duced to live. He has said, that " musically speaking, con-
jugal love is an instrument of which the gamut is scanty and
confined, but the tones inexpressibly sweet " — that Love, not
so confined, " has powers equal to all the intellectual modu-
lations of the human soul." But did not those " tones inex-
pressibly sweet " often mingle themselves unawares to the
Poet with those "intellectual modulations?" And had he
not once loved Jean Armour to distraction ? His first experi-
ences of the passion of love, in its utmost sweetness and
bitterness, had been for her sake, and the memories of those
years came often of themselves unbidden into the very heart
of his songs when his fancy was for the hour enamoured of
other beauties.

With a versatility not compatible, perhaps, with a capacity
of profoundest emotion, but in his case with extreme tender-
ness, he could instantly assume, and often on the slightest
apparent impulse, some imagined character as completely as
if it were his own, and realise its conditions. Or he could
imagine himself out of all the circumstances by which his in-
dividual life was environed, and to all the emotions arising
from that transmigration, give utterance as lively as the
language inspired by his communion with his own familiar
world. Even when he knew he was dying, he looked in
Jessie Lewars' face, whom he loved as a father loves his
daughter, and that he might reward her filial tenderness for
him who was fast wearing away, by an immortal song, in his

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 107

affection for her he feigned a hopeless passion, and imagined
himself the victim of despair : —

u Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
And soft as their parting tear — Jessie !

Although thou maun never be mine,
Although even hope is denied ;

'Tis sweeter for thee despairing,
Than aught in this world beside 1 "

It was said by one who during a long life kept saying
weighty things — old Hobbes — that " in great differences of
persons, the greater have often fallen in love with the meaner ;
but not contrary." What Gilbert tells us of his brother
might seem to corroborate that dictum — "His love rarely
settled on persons who were higher than himself, or who had
more consequence in life." This, however, could only apply
to the early part of his life. Then he had few opportunities
of fixing his affections on persons above him ; and if he had
had, their first risings would have been suppressed by his
pride. But his after destination so far levelled the inequality
that it was not unnatural to address his devotion to ladies of
high degree. He then felt that he could command their be-
nevolence, if not inspire their love ; and elated by that con-
sciousness, he feared not to use towards them the language of
love, of unbounded passion. He believed, and he was not
deceived in the belief, that he could exalt them in their own
esteem, by hanging round their proud necks the ornaments of
his genius. Therefore, sometimes, he seemed to turn himself
away disdainfully from sunburnt bosoms in homespun cover-
ing, to pay his vows and adorations to the Queens of Beauty.
The devoirs of a poet, whose genius was at their service, have
been acceptable to many a high-born dame and damsel, as the
submission of a conqueror. Innate superiority made him, in
these hours, absolutely unable to comprehend the spirit of
society as produced by artificial distinctions, and at all times
unwilling to submit to it or pay it homage. " Perfection
whispered passing by, Behold the Lass o' Ballochmyle ! " and
Burns, too proud to change himself into a lord or squire, ima-
gined what happiness might have been his if all those charms
had budded and blown within a cottage like " a rose-tree full
in bearing."

108 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" Oh, had she been a country maid,

And I the happy country swain,
Though shelter' d in the lowest shed

That ever rose on Scotland's plain,
Through weary winter's wind and rain,

With joy, with rapture, I would toil ;
And nightly to my bosom strain

The bonny lass o' Ballochmyle."

He speaks less passionately of the charms of " bonn
Lesley as she gaed owre the border," for they had not take
him by surprise ; he was prepared to behold a queen, and with
his own hands he placed upon her head the crown.

" To see her is to love her,

And love but her for ever ;
For Nature made her what she is,
And never made anither !

Thou art a queen, fair Lesley,

Thy subjects we, before thee ;
Thou art divine, fair Lesley,

The hearts o' men adore thee."

Nay, evil spirits look in her face and almost become good — f
while angels love her for her likeness to themselves, and
happy she must be on earth in the eye of heaven. We know
not much about the " Lovely Davis ; " but in his stanzas she
is the very Sovereign of Nature.

" Each eye it cheers, when she appears,

Like Phoebus in the morning,
When past the shower, and every flower

The garden is adorning.
As the wretch looks o'er Siberia's shore,

When winter-bound the wave is ;
Sae droops our heart when we must part

.Frae charming, lovely Davis.

Her smile's a gift frae 'boon the lift

That makes us mair than princes,
A sceptred hand, a king's command,

Is in her parting glances.
The man in arms 'gainst female charms,

Even he her willing slave is ;
He hugs his chain, and owns the reign

Of conquering, lovely Davis."

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 109

The loveliest of one of the loveliest families in Scotland he
changed into a lowly lassie, aye " working her inammie's
work," and her lover into Young Robbie — " wha gaed wi'
Jeanie to the tryst, and danced wi' Jeanie on the down."
In imagination he is still himself the happy man — his loves
are short and rapturous as his lyrics — and while his constancy
may be complained of, it is impossible to help admiring the
richness of his genius that keeps for ever bringing fresh
tribute to her whom he happens to adore.

" Her voice is the voice of the morning,

That wakes through the green-spreading grove,
When Phoebus peeps over the mountains,
On music, and pleasure, and love."

That was the voice of one altogether lovely — a lady elegant
and accomplished — and adorning a higher condition than his
own ; but though finer lines were never written, they are not
finer than these four inspired by the passing-by of a young
woman from the country, on the High Street of Dumfries,
with her shoes and stockings in her hand, and her petticoats
frugally yet liberally kilted to her knee.

" Her yellow hair, beyond compare,

Comes trinkling down her swan-white neck,
And her two eyes, like stars in skies,
Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck."

It may be thought that such poetry is too high for the
people — the common people — " beyond the reaches of their
souls;" but Burns knew better — and he knew that he who
would be their poet must put forth all his powers. There is
not a single thought, feeling, or image in all he ever wrote,
that has not been comprehended in its full force by thousands
and tens of thousands in the very humblest condition. They
could not of themselves have conceived them — nor given
utterance to anything resembling them to our ears. How
dull of apprehension ! how unlike gods ! But let them be
spoken to, and they hear. Their hearts, delighted with a
strange sweet music which by recognition they understand,
are not satisfied with listening, but yearn to respond ; and the
whole land that for many years had seemed but was not silent,
in a few months is overflowing with songs that had issued
from highest genius it is true, but from the same source that

110 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

is daily welling out its waters in every human breast. The
songs that establish themselves among a people must indeed
be simple — but the simplest feelings are the deepest, and once
that they have received adequate expression, then they die
not — but live for ever.

Many of his Love-songs are, as they ought to be, untinged
with earthly desire, and some of these are about the most
beautiful of any — as

" "Wilt thou be my dearie 1

When sorrow wrings thy gentle heart,

Wilt thou let me cheer thee ?
By the treasure of my soul,

That's the love I bear thee 1

I swear and vow, that only thou

Shalt ever be my dearie.

Lassie, say thou loes me ;

Or if thou wilt na be my ain,
Say na thou' It refuse me :

Let me, lassie, quickly die,
Trusting that thou loes me.

Lassie, let me quickly die,
Trusting that thou loes me."

Nothing can be more exquisitely tender — passionless from the
excess of passion — pure from very despair ; love yet hopes for
love's confession, though it feels it can be but a word of pity
to sweeten death.

In the most exquisite of his songs, he connects and blends
the tenderest and most passionate emotions with all appear-
ances— animate and inanimate ; in them all — and in some by
a single touch — we are made to feel that we are in the midst
of nature. A bird glints by, and we know we are in the woods
— a primrose grows up, and we are among the braes — the
mere name of a stream brings its banks before us — or two-
three words leave us our own choice of many waters.

" Far dearer to me the lone glen of green bracken,
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom."

It has been thought that the eyes of "the labouring poor "
are not very sensible— nay, that they are insensible to scenery —
and that the pleasures thence derived are confined to persons
of cultivated taste. True that the country girl, as she " lifts

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. Ill

her leglin, and hies her away," is thinking more of her lover's
face and figure — whom she hopes to meet in the evening —
than of the trysting-tree, or of the holm where the grey haw-
thorn has been standing for hundreds of years. Yet she knows
right well that they are beautiful ; and she feels their beauty
in the old song she is singing to herself, that at dead of winter
recalls the spring-time, and all the loveliness of the season of
leaves. The people know little about painting — how should
they? for, unacquainted with the laws of perspective, they
cannot see the landscape-picture on which instructed eyes gaze
till the imagination beholds a paradise. But the landscapes
themselves they do see — and they love to look on them. The
ploughman does so, as he "homeward plods his weary way;"
the reaper as he looks at what Burns calls his own light—
" the reaper's nightly beam, mild checkering through the
trees." If it were not so, why should they call it " Bonny
Scotland" — why should they call him " Sweet Kobbie Burns?"
In his songs they think of the flowers as alive, and with
hearts : "How blest the flowers that round thee bloom !" In
his songs, the birds they hear singing in common hours with
common pleasure, or give them not a thought, without losing
their own nature partake of theirs, and shun, share, or mock
human passion. He is at once the most accurate and the
most poetical of ornithologists. By a felicitous epithet he
characterises each tribe according to song, plumage, habits,
or haunts ; often introduces them for sake of their own happy
selves ; oftener as responsive to ours, in the expression of
their own joys and griefs.

" Oh, stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay,
Nor quit for me the trembling spray ;
A hapless lover courts thy lay —
Thy soothing, fond complaining.

Again, again, that tender part,
That I may catch thy melting art ;
For surely that wad touch her heart,
Wha kills me wi' disdaining.

Say, was thy little mate unkind,
And heard thee as the careless wind ?
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd,
Sic notes o' love could wauken.

112 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Thou tells o' never-ending care :
O' speechless grief and dark despair ;
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair,
Or my poor heart is broken ! "

Who was Jeany Cruikshank ? Only child " of my worthy
friend, Mr William Cruikshank of the High School, Edin-
burgh." Where did she live ? On a floor at the top of a
common stair, now marked No. 30, in St James's Square.
Burns lived for some time with her father — his room being
one which has a window looking out from the gable of the
house upon the green behind the Eegister Office. There was
little on that green to look at — perhaps " a washing " laid
out to dry. But the poet saw a vision — and many a maiden
now often sees it too — whose face may be of the coarsest, and
her hair not of the finest — but who, in spite of all that, strange
to say, has an imagination and a heart.

" A rosebud by my early walk,
Adown a corn-enclosed bawk,
Sae gently bent its thorny stalk,

All on a dewy morning.
Ere twice the shades o' dawn are fled,
In a' its crimson glory spread,
And drooping rich the dewy head,

It scents the early morning.

Within the bush, her covert nest,
A little linnet fondly prest ;
The dew sat chilly on her breast

Sae early in the morning.
She soon shall see her tender brood
The pride, the pleasure o' the wood,
Amang the fresh green leaves bedew' d,

Awake the early morning.

So thou, dear bird, young Jeany fair !
On trembling string, or vocal air,
Shall sweetly pay the tender care,

That tents thy early morning.
So thou, sweet rosebud, young and gay,
Shalt beauteous blaze upon the day,
And bless the parent's evening ray,

That watch'd thy early morning."
Indeed, in all his poetry, what an overflowing of tenderness,

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 113

pity, and affection towards all living creatures that inhabit
the earth, the water, and the air ! Of all men that ever lived,
Burns was the least of a sentimentalist ; he was your true
Man of Feeling. He did not preach to Christian people the
duty of humanity to animals ; he spoke of them in winning
words warm from a manliest breast, as his fellow-creatures,
and made us feel what we owe. What child could well be
cruel to a helpless animal who had read " The Death and Dying
Words of Poor Mailie"— or "The Twa Dogs?" "The Auld
Farmer's New-year's-day Address to his Auld Mare Maggie "
has — we know — humanised the heart of a Gilmerton carter.
** Not a mouse stirring," are gentle words at that hour from
Shakespeare — when thinking of the ghost of a king ; and he
would have loved brother Burns for saying — " What makes
thee startle, at me thy poor earth-born companion and fellow
mortal ! " Safe-housed at fall of a stormy winter-night, of
whom does the poet think, along with the unfortunate, the
rring, and the guilty of his own race ?

" List'ning, the doors and winnocks rattle,
I thought me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

O' winter war,
And through the drift, deep-lairing sprattle,

Beneath a scar.

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,
That in the merry months o' spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee ?
Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,

And close thy ee ?"

The poet loved the sportsman; but lamenting in fancy

1 Tarn Samson's Death " — he could not help thinking, that

' on his mouldering breast, some spitefu' muirfowl bigs her

Dest." When at Kirkoswald studying trigonometry, plane

I spherical, he sometimes associated with smugglers, but
lever with poachers. You cannot figure to yourself young
lobert Burns stealing stoopingly along under cover of a hedge,

h a long gun and a lurcher, to get a shot at a hare sitting,
ind perhaps washing her face with her paws. No tramper
jver " coft fur " at Mossgeil or Ellisland. He could have

VOL. VII. H

114 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ioined, had lie liked, in the passionate ardour of the rod and
the gun, the net and the leister ; but he liked rather to think
of all those creatures alive and well, " in their native element.
In his love-song to " the charming filette who overset his
trigonometry," and incapacitated him for the taking of the
sun's altitude, he says to her, on proposing to take a walk—
" Now westlin winds and slaught'ring guns

Bring autumn's pleasant weather ;
The moorcock springs, on whirring wings,

Amang the blooming heather.

The partridge loves the fruitful fells ;

The plover loves the mountains ;
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells ;

The soaring hern the fountains :
Through lofty groves the cushat roves,

The path of man to shun it ;
The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush,

The spreading thorn the linnet.

Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find,

The savage and the tender ;
Some social join, and leagues combine ;

Some solitary wander :•
Avaunt, away ! the cruel sway,

Tyrannic man's dominion ;
The sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry,

The flutt'ring, gory pinion ! "

Bruar Water, in his Humble Petition to the Noble Duke of
Atholl, prays that his banks may be made sylvan, that shep-
herd, lover, and bard may enjoy the shades ; but chiefly for
sake of the inferior creatures.

" Delighted doubly then, my Lord,

You'll wander on my banks,

And listen many a gratefu' bird

Return you tuneful thanks."

The sober laverock — the gowdspink gay — the strong black-
bird— the clear lintwhite — the mavis mild and mellow — they
will all sing " God bless the Duke." And one mute creature
will be more thankful than all the rest — " coward maukin
sleep secure, low in her grassy form." You know that he
threatened to throw Jem Thomson, a farmer's son near Ellis-

THE GENIUS AND CHAKACTER OF BURNS. 115

land, into the Nith, for shooting at a hare — and in several of
his morning landscapes a hare is hirpling by. What human
and poetical sympathy is there in his address to the startled
wildfowl on Loch Turit ! He speaks of " parent, filial, kindred
ties ;" and in the closing lines who does not feel that it is
Burns that speaks ?

" Or, if man's superior might

Dare invade your native right,

On the lofty ether borne

Man with all his powers you scorn ;

Swiftly seek, on clanging wings,

Other lakes and other springs ;

And the foe you cannot brave,

Scorn, at least, to be his slave."

Whatever be his mood, grave or gladsome, mirthful or melan-
choly— or when sorrow smiles back to joy, or care joins hands
with folly — he has always a thought to give to them who
many think have no thought, but who all seemed to him, from
highest to lowest in that scale of being, to possess each its
appropriate degree of intelligence and love. In the " Sonnet
written on his birth-day, 25th January 1793, on hearing a
thrush sing in a morning- walk," it is truly affecting to hear
how he connects, on the sudden, his own condition with all its
cares and anxieties, with that of the cheerful bird upon the
leafless bough —

" Yet come, thou child of poverty and care,
The mite high Heaven bestows, that mite with thee Til share."

We had intended to speak only of his Songs ; and to them
we return for a few minutes more, asking you to notice how
cheering such of them as deal gladsomely with the concerns
of this world must be to the hearts of them who of their own
accord sing them to themselves, at easier work, or intervals
of labour, or at gloaming when the day's darg is done. All
partings are not sad — most are the reverse ; lovers do not fear
that they shall surely die the day after they have kissed fare-
well ; on the contrary they trust, with the blessing of God, to
be married at the term.

" Jockey's taen the parting kiss,

O'er the mountains he is gane ;
And with him is a' my bliss,
Nought but griefs with me remain.

116 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Spare my love, ye winds that blaw,

Flashy sleets and beating rain !
Spare my love, thou feathery snaw,

Drifting o'er the frozen plain.

When the shades of evening creep

O'er the day's fair, gladsome ee,
Sound and safely may he sleep,

Sweetly blythe his waukening be !

He will think on her he loves,

Fondly he'll repeat her name ;
For where'er he distant roves,

Jockey's heart is still at hame."

There is no great matter or merit, some one may say, in
such lines as these — nor is there ; but they express sweetly
enough some natural sentiments, — and what more would you
have in a song ? You have had far more in some songs to
which we have given the go-by ; but we are speaking now of
the class of the simply pleasant ; and on us their effect is like
that of a gentle light falling on a pensive place, when there
are no absolute clouds in the sky, and no sun visible either,
but when that soft effusion, we know not whence, makes the
whole day that had been somewhat sad, serene, and reminds
us that it is summer. Believing you feel as we do, we do not
fear to displease you by quoting " The Tither Morn."

" The tither morn, when I, forlorn,

Aneath an aik sat moaning,
I didna trow I'd see my jo,

Beside me, 'gain the gloaming.
But he sae trig, lap o'er the rig,

And dautingly did cheer me,
When I, what reck, did least expeck

To see my lad so near me.

His bonnet he, a thought ajee,

Cock'd sprush when first he clasp'd me ;
And I, I wat, wi' fainness grat,

While in his grips he press'd me.
Deil take the war ! I late and air

Hae wish'd sin' Jock departed;
But now as glad I'm wi' my lad,

As short-syne broken-hearted.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 117

Fu' aft at e'en wi' dancing keen,

When a' were blythe and merry,
I cared na by, sae sad was I,

In absence o' my dearie.
But praise be blest ! my mind's at rest,

I'm happy wi' my Johnny :
At kirk and fair, Pse aye be there,

And be as canty 's ony."

We believe that the most beautiful of his songs are dearest
to the people, and these are the passionate and the pathetic ;
but there are some connected in one way or other with the
tender passion, great favourites too, from the light and lively
up to the humorous and comic — yet among the broadest of that
class there is seldom any coarseness — indecency never — vulgar
you may call some of them, if you please ; they were not
intended to be genteel. Flirts and coquettes of both sexes are
of every rank ; in humble life the saucy and scornful toss
their heads full high, or " go by like stour ;" " for sake o'
gowd she left me" is a complaint heard in all circles;
'* although the night be ne'er sae weet, and he be ne'er sae
weary 0," a gentleman of a certain age will make himself
ridiculous by dropping on the knees of his corduroy breeches ;
Auntie would fain become a mother, and in order thereunto a
wife, and waylays a hobbletehoy ; daughters the most filial
think nothing of breaking their mothers' hearts as their grand-
mothers' were broken before them ; innocents, with no other
teaching but that of nature, in the conduct of intrigues in which
verily there is neither shame nor sorrow, become systematic
and consummate hypocrites not worthy to live — single ;
despairing swains are saved from suicide by peals of laughter
from those for whom they fain would die, and so get noosed ;
— and surely here is a field — indicated and no more — wide
enough for the Scottish Comic Muse ; and would you know how
productive to the hand of genius, you have but to read Burns.

In one of his letters he says, " If I could, and I believe I do
it as far as I can, I would wipe away all tears from all eyes."
His nature was indeed humane ; and the tendernesses and
kindlinesses apparent in every page of his poetry, and most
of all in his songs — cannot but have a humanising influence
on all those classes exposed, by the necessities of their condi-
tion, to many causes for ever at work to harden or shut up the

118 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

heart. Burns does not keep continually holding up to them
the evils of their lot, continually calling on them to endure or
to redress; but while he stands up for his Order, its virtues
and its rights, and has bolts to hurl at the oppressor, his de-
light is to inspire contentment. In that solemn " Dirge," — a
spiritual being, suddenly spied in the gloom, seems an Appa-
rition, made sage by sufferings in the flesh, sent to instruct us
and all who breathe that " Man was made to mourn."

" Many and sharp the numerous ills

Inwoven with our frame !
More pointed still we make ourselves,

Eegret, remorse, and shame !
And man, whose heaven-erected face

The smiles of love adorn,
Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn !

See yonder poor o'erlabour'd wight,

So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth

To give him leave to toil ;
And see his lordly fellow-worm

The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, though a weeping wife

And helpless offspring mourn."

But we shall suppose that " brother of the earth" rotten, and
forgotten by the " bold peasantry their country's pride," who
work without leave from worms. At his work we think we
hear a stalwart tiller of the soil bumming what must be a verse
of Burns.

" Is there, for honest poverty,

That hangs his head, and a' that ?
The coward slave, we pass him by,

"We dare be poor for a' that !
What though on Lamely fare we dine,

Wear hoddin grey, and a' that ;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,

May bear the gree, and a' that.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 119

For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that."

A spirit of Independence reigned alike in the Genius and
•die Character of Burns. And what is it but a strong sense of
what is due to Worth apart altogether from the distinctions of
society — the vindication of that Worth being what he felt to
be the most honoured call upon himself in life ? That sense
once violated is destroyed, and therefore he guarded it as a
sacred thing — only less sacred than Conscience. Yet it
belongs to Conscience, and is the prerogative of Man as Man.
Sometimes it may seem as if he watched it with jealousy, and
in jealousy there is always weakness, because there is fear.
But it was not so ; he felt assured that his footing was firm
and that his back was on a rock. No blast could blow, no air
could beguile him from the position he had taken up with his
whole soul in " its pride of place." His words were justified
by his actions, and his actions truly told his thoughts : his
were a bold heart, a bold hand, and a bold tongue ; for in the
nobility of his nature he knew that, though born and bred in
a hovel, he was the equal of the highest in the land ; as he
was — and no more — of the lowest, so that they too were MEN.
For hear him speak—" What signify the silly, idle gewgaws
of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness ! When fellow-
partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same
benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same de-
testation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at every-
thing unworthy — if they are not in the dependence of absolute
beggary, in the name of common sense are they not EQUALS ?
And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls, were the
same way, why may they not be FRIENDS ?" He was indeed
privileged to write that u Inscription for an Altar to Indepen-
dence."

" Thou of an independent mind,
With soul resolved, with soul resign'd
Prepared Power's proudest frown to brave,
Who wilt not be, nor have a slave ;
Virtue alone who dost revere,
Thy own reproach alone dost fear,
Approach this shrine, and worship here."

120 ESSAYS t CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Scotland's adventurous sons are now as proud of this moral
feature of his poetry as of all the pictures it contains of their
native country. Bound up in one volume it is the Manual of
Independence. Were they not possessed of the same spirit,
they would be ashamed to open it ; but what they wear they
win, what they eat they earn ; and if frugal they be — and that
is the right word — it is that on their return they may build a
house on the site of their father's hut, and, proud to remember
that he was poor, live so as to deserve the blessings of the
children of them who walked with him to daily labour on
what was then no better than a wilderness, but has now been
made to blossom like the rose. Ebenezer Elliott is no flatterer
— and he said to a hundred and twenty Scotsmen in Sheffield,
met to celebrate the birth- day of Burns —

" Stern Mother of the deathless dead !

Where stands a Scot, a freeman stands ;
Self-stayed, if poor — self-clothed — self-fed ;
Mind mighty in all lands.

No wicked plunder need thy sons,

To save the wretch whom mercy spurns ;

No classic lore thy little ones,
Who find a Bard in Burns.

Their path though dark, they may not miss ;

Secure they tread on danger's brink ;
They say ' this shall be,' and it is :

For ere they act, they think."

There are, it is true, some passages in his poetry, and more
in his letters, in which this Spirit of Independence partakes
too much of pride, and expresses itself in anger and scorn.
These, however, were but passing moods, and he did not love
to cherish them ; no great blame had they been more frequent
and permanent — for his noble nature was exposed to many
causes of such irritation, but it triumphed over them all. A
few indignant flashes broke out against the littleness of the
great ; but nothing so paltry as personal pique inspired him
with feelings of hostility towards the highest orders. His was
an imagination that clothed high rank with that dignity which
some of the degenerate descendants of old houses had forgotten;
and whenever true noblemen "reverenced the lyre" and
grasped the hand of the peasant who had received it from

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 121

nature as his patrimony, Burns felt it to be nowise inconsistent
with the stubbornest independence that ever supported a son
of the soil in his struggles with necessity, reverently to doff
his bonnet, and bow his head in their presence with a proud
humility. Jeffrey did himself honour by acknowledging that
he had been at first misled by occasional splenetic passages,
in his estimation of Burns' s character, and by afterwards
joining, in eloquent terms, in the praise bestowed by other
kindred spirits on the dignity of its independence. "It is
observed," says Campbell with his usual felicity, "that he
boasts too much of his independence ; but in reality this boast
is neither frequent nor obtrusive ; and it is in itself the expres-
sion of a noble and laudable feeling. So far from calling up
disagreeable recollections of rusticity, his sentiments triumph,
by their natural energy, over those false and artificial distinc-
tions which the mind is but too apt to form in allotting its
sympathies to the sensibilities of the rich and poor. He
carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make us dole
out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers and cot-
tagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, to make
us enter into their passions and interests, and share our hearts
with them as brothers and sisters of the human species."

In nothing else is the sincerity of his soul more apparent
than in his Friendships. All who had ever been kind to him
he loved till the last. It mattered not to him what was their
rank or condition — he returned, and more than returned their
affection — he was, with regard to such ties, indeed of the
family of the faithful. The consciousness of his infinite
superiority to the common race of men, and of his own fame
and glory as a Poet, never for a moment made him forget the
humble companions of his obscure life, or regard with a
haughty eye any face that had ever worn towards him an
expression of benevolence. The Smiths, the Muirs, the
Browns, and the Parkers, were to him as the Aikens, the Bal-
lantynes, the Hamiltons, the Cunninghames, and the Ainslies
— these as the Stewarts, the Gregorys, the Blairs, and the
Mackenzies — these again as the Grahams and the Erskines —
and these as the Daers, the Glencairns, and the other men of
rank who were kind to him, — all were his friends — his bene-
factors. His heart expanded towards them all, and throbbed
with gratitude. His eldest son — and he has much of his

122 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

father's intellectual power — bears his own Christian name ; the
others are James Glencairn, and William Nicol — so called
respectively after a nobleman to whom he thought he owed all
— and a schoolmaster to whom he owed nothing — yet equally
entitled to bestow — or receive that honour.

There is a beautiful passage in his " Second Commonplace
Book," showing how deeply he felt, and how truly he valued,
the patronage which the worthy alone can bestow. " What
pleasure is in the power of the fortunate and happy, by their
notice and patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the
heart of depressed worth ! I am not so angry with mankind
for their deaf economy of the purse. The goods of this world
cannot be divided without being lessened ; but why be a nig-
gard of that which bestows bliss on a fellow-creature, yet takes
nothing from our own means of enjoyment ? Why wrap our-
selves in the cloak of our own better fortune, and turn away
our eyes lest the wants and cares of our brother mortals should
disturb the selfish apathy of our souls ? " What was the
amount of all the kindness shown him by the Earl of Glencairn ?
That excellent nobleman at once saw that he was a great
genius, — gave him the hand of friendship — and in conjunction
with Sir John Whitefoord got the members of the Caledonian
Hunt to subscribe for guinea instead of six-shilling copies of
his volume. That was all — and it was well. For that Burns
was as grateful as for the preservation of life.

" The bridegroom may forget the bride

Was made his wedded wife yestreen ;
The monarch may forget the crown

That on his head an hour hath been ;
The mother may forget the child

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,

And a' that thou hast done for me."

He went into mourning on the death of his benefactor, and
desired to know where he was to be buried, that he might
attend the funeral, and drop a tear into his grave.

The " Lament for Glencairn" is one of the finest of Elegies.
We cannot agree with those critics — some of them of deserved
reputation — who have objected to the form in which the poet
chose to give expression to his grief. Imagination, touched
by human sorrow, loves to idealise ; because thereby it purifies,

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 123

elevates, and ennobles realities, without impairing the pathos
belonging to them in nature. Many great poets — nor do we
fear now to mention Milton among the number — have in such
strains celebrated the beloved dead. They have gone out,
along with the object of their desire, from the real living world
in which they had been united, and shadowed forth in imagery
that bears a high similitude to it, all that was most spiritual in
the communion now broken in upon by the mystery of death.
So it is in the " Lycidas" — and so it is in this "Lament."
Burns imagines an aged Bard giving vent to his sorrow for his
noble master's untimely death, among the "fading yellow
woods, that waved o'er Lugar's winding stream." That name
at once awakens in us the thought of his own dawning genius ;
and though his head was yet dark as the raven's wing, and
" the locks were bleached white with time " of the Apparition
evoked with his wailing harp among "the winds lamenting
through the caves," yet we feel on the instant that the imaginary
mourner is one and the same with the real — that the old and
the young are inspired with the same passion, and have but
one heart. We are taken out of the present time, and placed
in one far remote ; yet by such removal the personality of the
poet, so far from being weakened, is enveloped in a melancholy
light that shows it more endearingly to our eyes — the harp of
other years sounds with the sorrow that never dies — the words
heard are the everlasting language of affection ; and is not the
object of such lamentation aggrandised by thus being lifted
into the domain of poetry ?

" I've seen sae mony changefu' years,

On earth I am a stranger grown ;
I wander in the ways of men,

Alike unknowing and unknown :
Unheard, unpitied, unrelieved,

I bear alane my lade o' care,
For silent, low, on beds of dust,

Lie a' that would my sorrows share.

And last (the sum of a' my griefs ! )

My noble master lies in clay ;
THE FLOW'S AMANG OUE BARONS BOLD,

His COUNTRY'S PRIDE, HIS COUNTRY'S STAY."

We go along with such a mourner in his exaltation of the

124 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

character of the mourned— great must have been the goodness
to generate such gratitude— that which would have been felt
to be exaggeration, if expressed in a form not thus imagina-
tive, is here brought within our unquestioning sympathy— and
we are prepared to return to the event in its reality, with
undiminished fervour, when Burns reappears in his own cha-
racter without any disguise, and exclaims —

" Awake thy last sad voice, my harp,

The voice of woe and wild despair ;
Awake, resound thy latest lay,

Then sleep in silence evermair !
And thou, my last, best, only friend,

That fillest an untimely tomb,
Accept this tribute from the bard

Thou brought from fortune's mirkest gloom.

In poverty's low barren vale,

Thick mists obscure involved me round ;
Though oft I turned the wistful eye,

Nae ray of fame was to be found :
Thou found' st me, like the morning sun

That melts the fogs in limpid air,
The friendless bard and rustic song

Became alike thy fostering care."

The Elegy on " Captain Matthew Henderson" — of whom
little or nothing is now known — is a wonderfully fine flight of
imagination ; but it wants, we think, the deep feeling of the
" Lament." It may be called a Eapture. Burns says — " It
is a tribute to a man I loved much ;" and in " The Epitaph"
which follows it, he draws his character — and a noble one it is
— in many points resembling his own. With the exception of
the opening and concluding stanzas, the Elegy consists entirely
of a supplication to Nature to join with him in lamenting the
death of the " ae best fellow e'er was born ;" and though to our
ears there is something grating in that term, yet the disagree-
ableness of it is done away by the words immediately fol-
lowing : —

" Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn,

By wood and wild,
Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,

By man exiled.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 125

The poet is no sooner on the wing, than he rejoices in his
strength of pinion, and with equal ease soars and stoops. We
know not where to look, in the whole range of poetry, for an
Invocation to the great and fair objects of the external world,
so rich and various in imagery, and throughout so sustained ;
and here again we do not fear to refer to the "Lycidas" — and to
say that Kobert Burns will stand a comparison with John
Milton.

" But oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return !
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,
"With wild thyme, and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn :
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen,
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint- worm to the weanling-herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows ;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
*****
* * * Return, Sicilian Muse,

And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rath primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
"With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the Laureat herse where Lycid lies."

All who know the " Lycidas," know how impossible it is to
detach any one single passage from the rest, without marring

126 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

its beauty of relationship — without depriving it of the charm
consisting in the rise and fall — the undulation — in which the
whole divine poem now gently and nowmagnificentlyfluctuates.
But even when thus detached, the poetry of these passages is
exqiu'site — the expression is perfect — consummate art has
crowned the conceptions of inspired genius — and shall we dare
to set by their side stanzas written by a ploughman ? We
shall. But first hear Wordsworth. In The Excursion, the
Pedlar says — and the Exciseman corroborates its truth, —

" The poets in their elegies and hymns
Lamenting the departed, call the groves ;
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn,
And senseless rocks : nor idly ; for they speak
In these their invocations with a voice
Of human passion."

You have heard Milton — hear Bums —

" Ye hills ! near neibors o' the starns,
That proudly cock your crested cairns !
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,

Where echo slumbers !
Come join ye, Nature's sturdiest bairns,

My wailing numbers !

Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens !
Ye haz'lly shaws and briery dens !
Ye burnies, wimplin down your glens,

Wi' toddlin din,
Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,

Frae linn to linn !

Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea ;
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see ;
Ye woodbines, hanging bonnily

In scented bow'rs ;
Ye roses on your thorny tree,

The first o' flow'rs.

At dawn, when ev'ry grassy blade

Droops with a diamond at its head,

At ev'n, when beans their fragrance shed,

I' th' rustling gale,
Ye maukins whiddin through the glade,

Come join my wail.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 127

Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood ;
Ye grouse that crap the heather bud ;
Ye curlews calling through a clud ;

Ye whistling plover ;
And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood ! —

He's gane for ever !

Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals ;
Ye fisher herons, watching eels ;
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels

Circling the lake ;
Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,

Kair for his sake.

Mourn, clam'ring craiks at close o' day,
'Mang fields o' flow'ring clover gay ;
And when ye wing your annual way

Frae our cauld shore,
Tell thae far worlds, wha lies in clay,

Wham we deplore.

Ye houlets, frae your ivy bow'r
In some auld tree, or eldritch tow'r,
What time the moon, wi' silent glow'r

Sets up her horn,
Wail through the dreary midnight hour

Till waukrife morn !

Oh, rivers, forests, hilts, and plains !
Oft have ye heard my canty strains :
But now, what else for me remains

But tales of woe ?
And frae my een the drapping rains

Maun ever flow.

Mourn, spring, thou darling of the year !
Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear :
Thou, simmer, while each corny spear

Shoots up its head,
Thy gay, green, flow'ry tresses shear

For him that's dead.

Thou, autumn, wi' thy yellow hair,
In grief thy sallow mantle tear :
Thou, winter, hurling through the air

The roaring blast,
Wide o'er the naked world declare

The worth we've lost !

128 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Mourn him, thou sun, great source of light !

Mourn, empress of the silent night !

And you, ye twinkling starnies bright,
My Matthew mourn !

For through your orbs he's taen his flight,

Ne'er to return."

Of all Burns's friends the most efficient was Graham of
Fintry. To him he owed Exciseman's diploma — settlement
as a ganger in the District of Ten Parishes, when he was
gudeman at Ellisland — translation as ganger to Dumfries —
support against insidious foes, despicable yet not to be despised
with rumour at their head — vindication at the Excise Board —
pro loco et tempore supervisorship — and though he knew not of
it, security from dreaded degradation on his deathbed. " His
First Epistle to Mr Graham of Fintry" is in the style, shall
we say it, of Dryden and Pope ? It is a noble composition ;
and these fine, vigorous, rough, and racy lines truly and duly
express at once his independence and his gratitude :

" Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace ;
Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes !
Prop of my dearest hopes for future times.
"Why shrinks my soul, half blushing, half afraid,
Backward, abash'd, to ask thy friendly aid ?
I know my need, I know thy giving hand,
I crave thy friendship at thy kind command ;
But there are such who court the tuneful nine —
Heavens ! should the branded character be mine !
Whose verse in manhood's pride sublimely flows,
Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose.
Mark, how their lofty independent spirit
Soars on the spurning wing of injured merit !
Seek not the proofs in private life to find ;
Pity the best of words should be but wind !
So to heaven's gates the lark's shrill song ascends,
But grovelling on the earth the carol ends.
In all the clam'rous cry of starving want,
They dun benevolence with shameless front ;
Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays,
They persecute you all their future days !
Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain,
My horny fist assume the plough again ;
The piebald jacket let me patch once more ;
On eighteen^tence a-week I've lived before.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 129

Though, thanks to Heaven, I dare even that last shift !

I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift :

That, placed by thee upon the wish'd-for height,

Where, man and nature fairer in her sight,

My muse may imp her wing for some sublimer flight."

Bead over again the last three lines ! The favour requested
was removal from the laborious and extensive district which
he surveyed for the Excise at Ellisland to one of smaller
dimensions at Dumfries ! In another Epistle, he renews the
request, and says most afiectingly, —

" I dread thee, fate, relentless and severe,
With all a poet's, husband's, father's fear !
Already one strong hold of hope is lost,
Glencairn, the truly noble, lies in dust
(Fled, like the sun eclipsed at noon appears,
And left us darkling in a world of tears) :
Oh ! hear my ardent, grateful, selfish prayer ! —
Fintry, my other stay, long bless and spare !
Through a long life his hopes and wishes crown ;
And bright in cloudless skies his sun go down !
May bliss domestic smooth his private path,
Give energy to life, and soothe his latest breath,
With many a filial tear circling the bed of death ! "

The favour was granted, and in another Epistle was requited
with immortal thanks.

" I call no goddess to inspire my strains,
A fabled muse may suit a bard that feigns :
Friend of my life ! my ardent spirit burns,
And all the tribute of my heart returns,
For boons accorded, goodness ever new,
The gift still dearer, as the giver, you.

Thou orb of day ! thou other paler light !
And all ye many sparkling stars of night ;
If aught that giver from my mind efface,
If I that giver's bounty e'er disgrace ;
Then roll to me, along your wand'ring spheres,
Only to number out a villain's years !"

Love, Friendship, Independence, Patriotism — these were the
perpetual inspirers of his genius, even when they did not form
the theme of his effusions. His religious feelings, his resent-
ment against hypocrisy, and other occasional inspirations,

VOL. VII. I

130 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

availed only to the occasion on which they appear. But these
influence him at all times, even while there is not a whisper
about them, and when himself is unconscious of their opera-
tion. Everything most distinctive of his character will be
found to appertain to them, whether we regard him as a poet
or a man. His Patriotism was of the true poetic kind — intense
— exclusive ; Scotland and the climate of Scotland were in his
eyes the dearest to nature — Scotland and the people of Scot-
land the mother and the children of liberty. In his exultation,
when a thought of foreign lands crossed his fancy, he asked,
" What are they ? the haunts of the tyrant and slave." This
was neither philosophical nor philanthropical ; in this Burns
was a bigot. And the cosmopolite may well laugh to hear the
cottager proclaiming that " the brave Caledonian views with
disdain" spicy forests and gold-bubbling fountains with their
ore and their nutmegs — and blessing himself in scant apparel
on " cauld Caledonia's blast on the wave." The doctrine will
not stand the scrutiny of judgment ; but with what concen-
trated power of poetry does the prejudice burst forth ! Let
all lands have each its own prejudiced, bigoted, patriotic
poets, blind and deaf to what lies beyond their own horizon,
and thus shall the whole habitable world in due time be
glorified. Shakespeare himself was never so happy as when
setting up England, in power, in beauty, and in majesty above
all the kingdoms of the earth.

In times of national security the feeling of Patriotism among
the masses is so quiescent that it seems hardly to exist — in
their case national glory or national danger awakens it, and
it leaps up armed cap-h-pie. But the sacred fire is never ex-
tinct in a nation, and in tranquil times it is kept alive in the
hearts of those who are called to high functions in the public
service — by none is it beefed so surely as by the poets. It is
the identification of individual feeling and interest with those
of a community ; and so natural to the human soul is this en-
larged act of sympathy, that when not called forth by some
great pursuit, peril, or success, it applies itself intensely to
internal policy; and hence the animosities and rancour of
parties, which are evidences, nay forms, though degenerate
ones, of the Patriotic Feeling ; and this is proved by the fact
that on the approach of common danger, party differences in
a great measure cease, and are transmuted into the one har-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 131

monious elemental Love of our Native Land. Burns was said
at one time to have been a Jacobin as well as a Jacobite ;
and it must have required even all his genius to effect such
a junction. He certainly wrote some so-so verses to the
Tree of Liberty, and like Cowper, Wordsworth, and other
great and good men, rejoiced when down fell the Bastile.
But when there was a talk of taking our Island, he soon
evinced the nature of his affection for the French.

" Does haughty Gaul invasion threat 1

Then let the loons beware, sir ;
There's wooden walls upon our seas,

And volunteers on shore, sir.
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,

And Criffel sink in Solway,
Ere we permit a foreign foe

On British ground to rally !

Fall de rail, &c.
Oh, let us not like snarling tykes

In wrangling be divided ;
Till slap, come in an unco loon,

And wi' a rung decide it.
Be Britain still to Britain true,

Amang oursels united ;
For never but by British hands

Maun British wrangs be righted.

Fall de rail, &c.
The kettle o' the kirk and state,

Perhaps a claut may fail in't ;
But deil a foreign tinkler loun

Shall ever ca' a nail in't.
Our fathers' bluid the kettle bought,

And wha wad dare to spoil it ? —
By heaven ! the sacrilegious dog

Shall fuel be to boil it.

Fall de rail, &c.
The wretch that wad a tyrant own,

And the wretch, his true-born brother,
Who would set the mob aboon the throne,

May they be datnn'd together !
Who will not sing, ' God save the King,'

Shall hang as high's the steeple ;
But while we sing, ' God save the King,'

We'll ne'er forget the People."

132 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

These are far from being " elegant" stanzas — there is even a
rudeness about them — but 'tis the rudeness of the Scottish
Thistle — a paraphrase of " nemo me impune lacesset." The
staple of the war-song is home-grown and home-spun. It
flouts the air like a banner not idly spread, whereon " the
ruddy Lion ramps in gold." Not all the orators of the day,
in Parliament or out of it, in all their speeches put together
embodied more political wisdom, or appealed with more
effective power to the noblest principles of patriotism in the
British heart.

" A gentleman of birth and talents" thus writes, in 1835,
to Allan Cunningham : " I was at the play in Dumfries,
October 1792, the Caledonian Hunt being then in town.
The play was As you like it — Miss Fontenelle, Kosalind
— when ' God save the King' was called for and sung. We all
stood up uncovered, but Burns sat still in the middle of the
pit, with his hat on his head. There was a great tumult, with
shouts of 'Turn him out' and 'Shame, Burns!' — which continu-
ed a good while. At last he was either expelled or forced to take
off his hat — I forget which." And a lady with whom Eobert
Chambers once conversed, " remembered being present in the
theatre of Dumfries, during the heat of the Eevolution, when
Burns entered the pit somewhat affected by liquor. On ' God
save the King' being struck up, the audience rose as usual, all
except the intemperate poet, who cried for ' Ca ira.' A tumult
was the consequence, and Burns was compelled to leave the
house." We cannot believe that Burns ever was guilty of
such vulgar insolence — such brutality; nothing else at all
like it is recorded of him ; and the worthy story-tellers are
not at one as to the facts. The gentleman's memory is de-
fective ; but had he himself been the offender, surely he
would not have forgot whether he had been compelled to
take off his hat, or had been jostled, perhaps only kicked
out of the play-house. The lady's eyes and ears were
sharper — for she saw " Burns enter the pit somewhat affected ]
by liquor," and then heard him " cry for Ca ira." By what
means he was " compelled to leave the house " she does not
say ; but as he was " sitting in the middle of the pit," he
must have been walked out very gently, so as not to have
attracted the attention of the male narrator. If this public
outrage on all decorum, decency, and loyalty, had been per-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 133

petrated by Burns, m October, one is at a loss to comprehend
how, in December, he could have been " surprised, confounded,
and distracted by Mr Mitchell, the Collector, telling me that
he has received an order for your Board to inquire into my
political conduct, and blaming me as a person disaffected to
government." The fact we believe to be this — that Burns,
whose loyalty was suspected, had been rudely commanded to
take off his hat by some vociferous time-servers — just as he
was going to do so — that the row arose from his declining to
uncover on compulsion, and subsided on his disdainfully
doffing his beaver of his own accord. Had he cried for
* Ca ira,' he would have deserved dismissal from the Excise ;
and in his own opinion, translation to another post — " Wha
will not sing God save the King, shall hang as high's the
steeple." The year before, " during the heat of the French
Ke volution," Burns composed his grand war-song — " Fare-
well, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies," and
sent it to Mrs Dunlop with these words : " I have just
finished the following song, which to a lady, the descendant
of Wallace, and many heroes of his truly illustrious line —
and herself the mother of several soldiers — -needs neither
preface nor apology." And the year after, he composed
" The Poor and Honest Sodger," " which was sung," says
Allan Cunningham, "in every cottage, village, and town.
Yet the man who wrote it was supposed by the mean and
the spiteful to be no well-wisher to his country ! " Why,
as men who have any hearts at all, love their parents in
any circumstances, so they love their country, be it great
or small, poor or wealthy, learned or ignorant, free or en-
slaved ; and even disgrace and degradation will not quench
their filial affection to it. But Scotsmen have good reason
to be proud of their country ; not so much for any particular
event, as for her whole historical progress. Particular events,
however, are thought of by them as the landmarks of that
progress ; and these are the great points of history " con-
spicuous in the nation's eye." Earlier times present " the
unconquered Caledonian spear ; " later, the unequal but gene-
rally victorious struggles with the sister country, issuing in
national independence ; and later still, the holy devotion of
the soul of the people to their own profound religious Faith,
and its simple Forms. Would that Burns had pondered more

134 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

on that warfare ! That he had sung its final triumph ! But
we must be contented with his " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace
bled ; " and with repeating after it with him, " So may God
defend the cause of truth and liberty, as he did that day !
Amen!"

Mr Syme tells us that Burns composed this ode on the 31st
of July 1793, on the moor road between Kenmure and Gate-
house. " The sky was sympathetic with the wretchedness of
the soil ; it became lowering and dark — the winds sighed
hollow — the lightning gleamed — the thunders rolled. The
poet enjoyed the awful scene — he spoke not a word — but
seemed rapt in meditation. In a little while the rain be-
gan to fall — it poured in floods upon us. For three hours
did the wild elements rumble their bellyful upon our defence-
less heads." That is very fine indeed ; and " what do you
think," asks Mr Syme, " Burns was about ? He was charg-
ing the English Army along with Bruce at Bannockburn."
On the second of August — when the weather was more sedate
— on their return from St Mary's Isle to Dumfries " he was
engaged in the same manner ; " and it appears from one of
his own letters, that he returned to the charge one evening in
September. The thoughts, and feelings, and images, came
rushing upon him during the storm — they formed themselves
into stanzas, like so many awkward squads of raw levies,
during the serene state of the atmosphere — and under the
harvest moon, firm as the measured tread of marching men,
with admirable precision they wheeled into line. This
account of the composition of the Ode would seem to clear
Mr Syme from a charge nothing short of falsehood brought
against him by Allan Cunningham. Mr Syme's words are,
" I said that in the midst of the storm, on the wilds of Ken-
mure, Burns was rapt in meditation. What do you think he
was about ? He was charging the English army along with
Bruce at Bannockburn. He was engaged in the same manner
in our ride home from St Mary's Isle, and I did not disturb
him. Next day he produced me the Address of Bruce to his
troops, and gave me a copy to Dalzell." Nothing can be
more circumstantial ; and if not true, it is a thumper. Allan
says, " Two or three plain words, and a stubborn date or two,
will go far, I fear, to raise this pleasing legend into the regions
of romance. The Galloway adventure, according to Syme,

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 135

happened in July ; but in the succeeding September, the poet
announced the song to Thomson in these words : " There is a
tradition which I have met with in many places in Scotland
that the air of ' Hey tuttie taittie' was Kobert Bruce's march
at the Battle of Bannockburn. This thought in my yester-
night's evening walk warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on
the theme of liberty and independence, which I threw into a
kind of Scottish ode — that one might suppose to be the royal
Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning.
I showed the air to Urbani, who was greatly pleased with it,
and begged me to make soft verses for it ; but I had no idea
of giving myself any trouble on the subject till the accidental
recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom, associated
with the glowing idea of some other struggles of the same
nature, not quite so ancient, roused up my rhyming mania."
Currie, to make the letter agree with the legend, altered yester-
night's evening walk into solitary wanderings. Burns was
indeed a remarkable man, and yielded no doubt to strange
impulses ; but to compose a song " in thunder, lightning, and
in rain," intimates such self-possession as few possess. We
can more readily believe that Burns wrote " yesternight's
evening walk" to save himself the trouble of entering into
any detail of his previous study of the subject, than that
Syme told a downright lie. As to composing a song in a
thunderstorm, Cunningham — who is himself " a remarkable
man," and has composed some songs worthy of being classed
with those of Burns, would find it one of the easiest and
pleasantest of feats ; for lightning is among the most harm-
less vagaries of the electric fluid, and, in a hilly country,
seldom singes but worsted stockings and sheep.

Burns sent the Address in its perfection to George Thomson,
recommending it to be set to the old air, " Hey tuttie taittie"
— according to Tradition, who cannot, however, be reasonably
expected " to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth" — Kobert Bruce's march at the Battle of Ban-
nockburn. A committee of taste sat on " Hey tuttie taittie" and
pronounced it execrable. "I happened to dine yesterday,"
says Mr Thomson, " with a party of your friends, to whom I
read it. They were all charmed with it ; entreated me to find
out a suitable air for it, and reprobated the idea of giving it a
tune so totally devoid of interest or grandeur as ' Hey tuttie

136 ESSAYS : CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

taittie.' Assuredly your partiality for this tune must arise
from the ideas associated in your mind by the tradition
concerning it, for I never heard any person — and I have
conversed again and again with the greatest enthusiasts
for Scottish airs — I say, I never heard any one speak of
it as worthy of notice. I have been running over the
whole hundred airs — of which I have lately sent you the
list — and I think Lewie Gordon is most happily adapted
to your ode, at least with a very slight alteration of the
fourth line, which I shall presently submit to you. Now
the variation I have to suggest upon the last line of each
verse, the only line too short for the air, is as follows :
Verse 1st, Or to glorious victory. 2d, Chains — chains and
slavery. 3d, Let him, let him turn and flee. 4th, Let him
bravely follow me. 5th, But they shall, they shall be free.
6th, Let us, let us do or die." " Glorious " and " bravely,"
bad as they are, especially " bravely," which is indeed most
bitter bad, might have been borne ; but just suppose for a
moment, that Robert Bruce had, in addressing his army " on
the morning of that eventful day," come over again in that
odd way every word he uttered, " chains — chains ; " " let him
— let him ; " " they shall— they shall ; " " let us— let us ; "
why, the army would have thought him a Bauldy 1 Action,
unquestionably, is the main point in oratory, and Bruce might
have imposed on many by the peculiar style in which it is
known he handled his battle-axe, but we do not hesitate to
assert that had he stuttered in ,that style, the English would
have won the day. Burns winced sorely, but did what he
could to accommodate Lewie Gordon.

" The only line," said Mr T., " which I dislike in the whole
of the song is ' Welcome to your gory bed.' Would not
another word be preferable to ' welcome ? ' " Mr T. pro-
posed " honour's bed ; " but Burns replied, " your idea of
'honour's bed' is, though a beautiful, a hackneyed idea;
so if you please we will let the line stand as it is." But
Mr T. was tenacious : " One word more with regard to your
heroic ode. I think, with great deference to the poet, that
a prudent general would avoid saying anything to his soldiers
which might tend to make death more frightful than it is.
' Gory ' presents a disagreeable image to the mind ; and to
tell them ' Welcome to your gory bed,' seems rather a dis-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 137

couraging address, notwithstanding the alternative which
follows. I have shown the song to three friends of ex-
cellent taste, and each of them objected to this line, which
emboldens me to use the freedom of bringing it again under
your notice. I would suggest ' Now prepare for honour's
bed, or for glorious victory.' " Quoth Burns grimly-—" My
ode pleases me so much that I cannot alter it. Your proposed
alteration would, in my opinion, make it tame. I have scru-
tinised it over and over again, and to the world some way or
other it shall go, as it is." That four Scotsmen, taken seriatim
et separation — in the martial ardour of their patriotic souls
should object to " Welcome to your gory bed," from an uncom-
municated apprehension common to the nature of them all and
operating like an instinct, that it was fitted to frighten Eobert
Bruce's army, and make it take to its heels, leaving the cause
of Liberty and Independence to shift for itself, is a coincidence
that sets at defiance the doctrine of ohances, proves history to
be indeed an old almanac, and national character an empty
name.

" Scots, wha hae wi' "Wallace bled,

Scots wham Bruce has aften led,

Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory !

Now's the day, and now's the hour ;
See the front o' battle lower ;
See approach proud Edward's power —
Chains and slavery !

Wha will be a traitor knave ?
Wha can fill a coward's grave ?
Wha sae base as be a slave ?
Let him turn and flee !

Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa',
Let him follow me !

By oppression's woes and pains !
By your sons in servile chains !
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free !

138 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Lay the proud usurpers low !
Tyrants fall in every foe !
Liberty's in every blow !
Let us do or die ! "

All Scotsmen at home and abroad swear this is the Grandest
Ode out of the Bible. What if it be not an Ode at all ? An
Ode, however, let it be ; then, wherein lies the power it
possesses of stirring up into -a devouring fire the perfer-
•oidum ingenium Scotorum ? The two armies suddenly stand
before us in order of battle — and in the grim repose preced-
ing the tempest we hear but the voice of Bruce. . The whole
Scottish army hears it — now standing on their feet — risen
from their knees as the Abbot of Inchaffray had blessed
them and the Banner of Scotland with its roots of Stone,
At the first six words a hollow murmur is in that wood of
spears. " Welcome to your gory bed 1 " a shout that shakes
the sky. Hush ! hear the King. At Edward's name what a
yell ! " Wha will be a traitor knave ? " Muttering thunder
growls reply. The inspired Host in each appeal anticipates
the Leader — yet shudders with fresh wrath, as if each re-
minded it of some intolerable wrong. " Let us do or die " —
the English are overthrown — and Scotland is free.

That is a very Scottish critique indeed — but none the
worse for that ; so our English friends must forgive it, and
be consoled by Flodden. The ode is sublime. Death and
Life at that hour are one and the same to the heroes. So
that Scotland but survive, what is breath or blood to them ?
Their being is in their country's liberty, and with it secured
they will live for ever.

Our critique is getting more and more Scottish still ; so to
rid ourselves of nationality, we request such of you as think
we overlaud the Ode to point out one word in it that would
be better away. You cannot. Then pray have the goodness
to point out one word missing that ought to have been there
— please to insert a desiderated stanza. You cannot. Then
let the bands of all the Scottish regiments play " Hey tuttie
taittie;" and the two Dunedins salute one another with a salvo
that shall startle the echoes from Berwick Law to Benmore.

Of the delight with which Burns laboured for Mr Thomson'
Collection, his letters contain some lively description. " Yoi
cannot imagine," says he, 7th April 1793, " how much this

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 139

business has added to my enjoyment. What with rny early
attachment to ballads, your book and ballad-making are now
as completely my hobby as ever fortification was my Uncle
Toby's ; so I'll e'en canter it away till I come to the limit of
my race (God grant I may take the right side of the winning
post), and then, cheerfully looking back on the honest folks
with whom I have been happy, I shall say or sing, ' Sae merry
as we a' hae been/ and raising my last looks to the whole
human race, the last words of the voice of Coila shall be,
* Good night, and joy be wi' you a' ! ' " James Gray was the
first who, independently of every other argument, proved the
impossibility of the charges that had too long been suffered to
circulate without refutation against Burns's character and
conduct during his later years, by pointing to these almost
daily effusions of his clear and unclouded genius. His
innumerable Letters furnish the same best proof; and when
we consider how much of his time was occupied by his profes-
sional duties, how much by perpetual interruption of visitors
from all lands, how much by blameless social intercourse with
all classes in Dumfries and its neighbourhood, and how fre-
quently he suffered under constitutional ailments affecting
the very seat and source of life, we cannot help despising the
unreflecting credulity of his biographers who, with such
products before their eyes, such a display of feeling, fancy,
imagination, and intellect continually alive and on the alert,
could keep one after another for twenty years in doleful
dissertations deploring over his habits — most of them at the
close of their wearisome moralising anxious to huddle all up,
that his countrymen might not be obliged to turn away their
faces in shame from the last scene in the Tragedy of the Life
of Robert Burns.

During the four years Burns lived in Dumfries he was never
known for one hour to be negligent of his professional duties.
We are but imperfectly acquainted with the details of the
business of a gauger, but the calling must be irksome ; and
he was an active, steady, correct, courageous officer — to be
relied on equally in his conduct and his accounts. Josiah
Walker, who was himself, if we mistake not, for a good many
years in the Customs or Excise at Perth, will not allow him
to have been a good gauger. In descanting on the unfortunate
circumstances of his situation, he says with a voice of
authority, —

140 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

His superiors were bound to attend to no qualification, but such
as was conducive to the benefit of the revenue ; and it would have
been equally criminal in them to pardon any incorrectness on account
of his literary genius, as on account of his dexterity in ploughing.
The merchant or attorney who acts for himself alone, is free to over-
look some errors of his clerk, for the sake of merits totally uncon-
nected with business ; but the Board of Excise had no power to
indulge their poetical taste, or their tenderness for him by whom it
had been gratified, at the expense of the public. Burns was there-
fore in a place where he could turn his peculiar endowments to little
advantage j and where he could not, without injustice, be preferred
to the most obtuse and uninteresting of his brethren, who surpassed
him in the humble recommendation of exactness, vigilance, and
sobriety. Attention to these circumstances might have prevented
insinuations against the liberality of his superior officers, for showing
so little desire to advance him, and so little indulgence to those
eccentricities for which the natural temperament of genius could be
pleaded. For two years, however, Burns stood sufficiently high in
the opinion of the Board, and it is surely by no means improper
that, where professional pretensions are nearly balanced, the
additional claims of literary talent should be permitted to turn
the scale. Such was the reasoning of a particular member of the
Board — whose taste and munificence were of corresponding extent,
and who saw no injustice in giving some preference to an officer
who could write permits as well as any other, and poems much
better.

Not for worlds would we say a single syllable derogatory
from the merits of the Board of Excise. We respect the
character of the defunct ; and did we not, still we should have
the most delicate regard to the feelings of its descendants,
many of whom are probably now prosperous gentlemen. It
was a Board that richly deserved, in all its dealings, the
utmost eulogies with which the genius and gratitude of Josiah
Walker could brighten its green cloth. Most criminal indeed
would it have been in such, a Board — most wicked and most
sinful — " to pardon any incorrectness -on account of Burns's
literary genius, as on account of his dexterity in ploughing."
Deeply impressed with a sense — approaching to that of awe —
of the responsibility of the Board to its conscience and its
country, we feel that it is better late than never, thus to
declare before the whole world, A.D. 1840, that from winter
1791 to summer 1796, the " Board had no power to indulge
their poetical taste, or their tenderness for him by whom it

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 141

had been gratified, at the expense of the public." The Board,
we doubt not, had a true innate poetical taste, and must have
derived a far higher and deeper delight from the poems than
the permits of Burns ; nay, we are willing to believe that it
was itself the author of a volume of poetry, and editor of a
literary journal.

But surpassing even Josiah Walker in our veneration of the
Board, we ask, what has all this to do with the character of
Burns? Its desire and its impotency to promote him are
granted ; but of what incorrectness had Burns been guilty,
which it would have been criminal in the Board to pardon ?
By whom, among the " most obtuse and uninteresting of his
brethren," had he been surpassed "in the humble recom-
mendation of exactness, vigilance, and sobriety ? " Not by a
single one. Mr Findlater, who was Burns's supervisor from
his admission into the Excise, and sat by him the night before
he died, says, —

In all that time, the superintendence of his behaviour, as an
officer of the revenue, -was a part of my official province, and it may
be supposed I would not be an inattentive observer of the general
conduct of a man and a poet so celebrated by his countrymen. In
the former capacity he was exemplary in his attention, and was even

jealous of the least imputation on his vigilance It was

not till near the latter end of his days that there was any falling
off in this respect, and this was amply accounted for in the pressure
of disease and accumulating infirmities. I will farther avow, that I
iiever saw him — which was very frequently while he lived at Ellis-
land — and still more so, almost every day, after he removed to
Dumfries, but in hours of business he was quite himself, and capable
of discharging the duties of his office ; nor was he ever known to
drink by himself, or ever to indulge in the use of liquor on a fore-
noon. I have seen Burns in all his various phases — in his convivial
moments — in his sober moods — and in the bosom of his family ;
indeed, I believe that I saw more of him than any other individual
had occasion to see, after he became an excise officer, and I never
beheld • any thing like the gross enormities with which he is now
charged. That when set down on an evening with a few friends
whom he liked, he was apt to prolong the social hour beyond the
bounds which prudence would dictate, is unquestionable ; but in his
family I will venture to say he was never otherwise than as attentive
and affectionate to a high degree.

Such is the testimony of the supervisor respecting the

142 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ganger ; and in that capacity Burns stands up one of its
very best servants before the Board. There was no call,
therefore, for Josiah's Jeremiad. But our words have not
been wasted ; for Bums's character has suffered far more from
such aspersions as these, which, easily as they can be wiped
away, were too long left as admitted stains on his memory,
than from definite and direct charges of specific facts ; aud it
is still the duty of every man who writes about him, to apply
the sponge. Nothing, we repeat, shall tempt us to blame or
abuse the Board. But we venture humbly to confess that we
do not clearly see that the Board would have been " gratifying
its tenderness at the expense of the public," had it, when told
by Burns that he was dying, and disabled by the hand of God
from performing actively the duties of his temporary super-
visorship, requested its maker to continue to him for a few
months his full salary — seventy pounds a-year — instead of
reducing it in the proportion of one-half — not because he was
a genius, a poet, and the author of many immortal productions
— but merely because he was a man and an exciseman, and
moreover the father of a few mortal children, who with their
mother were in want of bread.

Gray, whom we knew well and highly esteemed, was a very
superior man to honest Findlater — a man of poetical taste and
feeling, and a scholar — on all accounts well entitled to speak
of the character of Bums ; and though there were no bounds
to his enthusiasm when poets and poetry were the themes of
his discourse, he was a worshipper of truth, and rightly believed
that it was best seen in the light of love and admiration.
Compare his bold, generous, and impassioned eulogy on the
noble qualities and dispositions of his illustrious friend, with
the timid, guarded, and repressed praise, for ever bordering on
censure, of biographers who never saw the poet's face, and
yet have dared to draw his character with the same assurance
of certainty in their delineations as if they had been of the
number of his familiars, and had looked a thousand times, by
night and day, into the saddest secrets of his heart. Far
better, surely, in a world like this, to do more rather than less
than justice to the goodness of great men. No fear that the
world, in its final judgment, will not make sufficient deduction
from the laud, if it be exaggerated, which love, inspired by
admiration and pity, delights to bestow, as the sole tribute

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 143

now in its power, on the virtues of departed genius. Calumny
may last for ages — we had almost said for ever; lies have life
• even in their graves, and centuries after they have been in-
terred they will burst their cerements, and walk up and down,
in the face of day, undistinguishable to the weak eyes of
mortals from truths — till they touch ; and then the truths
expand, and the lies shrivel up, but after a season to reappear,
and to be welcomed back again by the dwellers in this
delusive world.

He was courted (says Gray) by all classes of men for the
fascinating powers of his conversation, but over his social scene
uncontrolled passion never presided. Over the social bowl, his wit
flashed for hours together, penetrating whatever it struck, like the
fire from heaven ; but even in the hour of thoughtless gaiety and
merriment I never knew it tainted by indecency. It was playful or
caustic by turns, following an allusion through all its windings ;
astonishing by its rapidity, or amusing by its wild originality and
grotesque yet natural combinations, but never, within my observa-
tion, disgusting by its grossness. In his morning hours, I never saw
him like one suffering from the effects of last night's intemperance.
He appeared then clear and unclouded. He was the eloquent
advocate of humanity, justice, and political freedom. From his
paintings, virtue appeared more lovely, and piety assumed a more
celestial mien. While his keen eye was pregnant with fancy and
feeling, and his voice attuned to the very passion which he wished
to communicate, it would hardly have been possible to conceive any
being more interesting and delightful. . . . The men with whom
he generally associated were not of the lowest order. He numbered
among his intimate friends many of the most respectable inhabitants
of Dumfries and the vicinity. Several of those were attached to him
by ties that the hand of calumny, busy as it was, could never
snap asunder. They admired the poet for his genius, and loved the
man for the candour, generosity, and kindness of his nature. His
early friends clung to him through good and bad report, with a zeal
and fidelity that prove their disbelief of the malicious stories
circulated to his disadvantage. Among them were some of the most
distinguished characters in this country, and not a few females,
eminent for delicacy, taste, and genius. They were proud of his
friendship, and cherished him to the last moment of his existence.
He was endeared to them even by his misfortunes, and they still
retain for his memory that affectionate veneration which virtue
alone inspires.

Gray tells us, too, that it came under his own view pro-

144 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

fessionally that Burns superintended the education of hia
children — and promising children they were, nor has that pro-
mise been disappointed — with a degree of care that he had never
known surpassed by any parent whatever ; that to see him in
the happiest light you had to see him, as he often did, in his
own house, and that nothing could exceed the mutual affection
between husband and wife in that lowly tenement. Yet of this
man, Josiah Walker, who claims to have been his friend as
well as James Gray, writes, " Soured by disappointment, and
stung with occasional remorse, impatient of finding little to
interest him at home, and rendered inconstant from returns of
his hypochondriacal ailment, multiplied by his irregular life,
he saw the difficulty of keeping terms with the world ; and
abandoned the attempt in a rash and regardless despair ! "

It may be thought by some that we have referred too fre-
quently to Walker's Memoir — perhaps that we have spoken of
it with too much asperity — and that so respectable a person
merited tenderer treatment at our hands. He was a respect-
able person, and for that very reason we hope by our stric-
tures to set him aside for ever as a biographer of Burns. He
had been occasionally in company with the Poet in Edinburgh,
in 1787, and had seen him during his short visit at Atholl House.
" Circumstances led him to Scotland in November 1795, after
an absence of eight years, and he felt strongly prompted " to
visit his old friend ; for your commonplace man immediately
becomes hand in glove with your man of genius, to whom he
has introduced himself, and ever after the first interview desig-
nates him by that flattering appellation "my friend."

For this purpose I went to Dumfries, and called upon him early in
the forenoon. I found him in a small house of one story. He was
sitting in a window-seat reading with the doors open, and the family
arrangements going on in his presence, and altogether without that
snugness and seclusion which a student requires. After conversing
with him for some time, he proposed a walk, and promised to conduct
me through some of his favourite haunts. We accordingly quitted the
town, and wandered a considerable way up the beautiful banks of the
Nith. Here he gave me an account of his latest productions, and re-
peated some satirical ballads which he had composed, to favour one of
the candidates at last election. These I thought inferior to his other
pieces, though they had some lines in which dignity compensated for
coarseness. He repeated also his fragment of an Ode to Liberty, with
marked and peculiar energy, and showed a disposition which, how-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 145

ever, was easily repressed, to throw out political remarks, of the same
nature with those for which he had been reprehended. On finishing
our walk, he passed some time with me at the inn, and I left him
early iu the evening, to make another visit at some distance from
Dumfries. On the second morning after I returned with a friend —
who was acquainted with the poet— and we found him ready to pass
a part of the day with us at the inn. On this occasion I did not
think him quite so interesting as he had appeared at the outset.
His conversation was too elaborate, and his expression weakened by
a frequent endeavour to give it artificial strength. He had been ac-
customed to speak for applause in the circles which he frequented,
and seemed to think it necessary, in making the most common re-
mark, to depart a little from the ordinary simplicity of language, and
to couch it in something of epigrammatic point. In his praise and
censure he was so decisive, as to render a dissent from his judgment
difficult to be reconciled with the laws of good breeding. His wit
was not more licentious than is unhappily too venial in higher circles,
though I thought him rather unnecessarily free in the avowal of his
excesses. Such were the clouds by which the pleasures of the evening
were partially shaded, but frequent coruscations of genius were visible
between them. When it began to grow late, he showed no disposi-
tion to retire, but called for fresh supplies of liquor with a freedom
which might be excusable, as we were in an inn, and no condition
had been distinctly made, though it might easily have been inferred,
had the inference been welcome, that he was to consider himself as
our guest ; nor was it till he saw us worn out that he departed
about three in the morning with a reluctance, which probably pro-
ceeded less from being deprived of our company, than from being
confined to his own. Upon the whole, I found this last interview
not quite so gratifying as I had expected ; although I discovered in
his conduct no errors which I had not seen in men who stand high
in the favour of society, or sufficient to account for the mysterious
insinuations which I heard against his character. He on this occa-
sion drank freely without being intoxicated — a circumstance from
which I concluded, not only that his constitution was still unbroken,
but that he was not addicted to solitary cordials ; for if he had tasted
liquor in the morning, he must have easily yielded to the excess of
the evening. He did not, however, always escape so well. About
two months after, returning at the same unseasonable hour from a
similar revel, in which he was probably better supported by his com-
panions, he was so much disordered as to occasion a considerable
delay in getting home, where he arrived with the chill of cold with-
out, and inebriety within, &c.

And for tins the devotee had made what is called " a pil-

VOL. VII. K

146 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

grimage to the shrine of genius " as far as Dumfries ! Is this
the spirit in which people with strong propensities for poetry
are privileged to write of poets, long after they have been
gathered to their rest ? No tenderness — no pity — no respect
— no admiration — no gratitude — no softening of heart — no
kindling of spirit — on recollection of his final farewell to
Eobert Burns ! If the interview had not been satisfactory, he
was bound in friendship to have left no record of it. Silence
in that case was a duty especially incumbent on him who had
known Burns in happier times, when " Dukes, and Lords, and
mighty Earls " were proud to receive the ploughman. He
might not know it then, but he knew it soon afterwards, that
Burns was much broken down in body and in spirit.

Those two days should have worn to him in retrospect a
mournful complexion ; and the more so, that he believed
Burns to have been then a ruined man in character, which he
had once prized above life. He calls upon him early in the
forenoon, and finds him "in a small house of one story (it
happened to have two) on a window-seat reading, with the
doors open, and the family arrangements going on in his pre-
sence." After eight years' absence from Scotlandj did not his
heart leap at the sight of her greatest son sitting thus happy
in his own humble household ? Twenty years after, did not
his heart melt at the rising up of the sanctified image ? No
— for the room was " altogether without that appearance of
snugness and seclusion which a student requires !" The Poet
conducted him through some of his beautiful haunts, and for
his amusement let off some of his electioneering squibs, which
are among the very best ever composed, and, Whiggish as
they are, might have tickled a Tory as they jogged along ;
but Jos thought them " inferior to his other pieces," and so
no doubt they were to the " Cottar's Saturday Night," and
" Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." Perhaps they walked as
far as Lincluden — and the bard repeated his famous fragment
of an " Ode to Liberty " — with " marked and peculiar energy."
The listener ought to have lost his wits, and to have leapt
sky-high. But he who was destined to "The Defence of
Order," felt himself called by the voice that sent him on that
mission, to rebuke the bard on the banks of his own river — for
"he showed a disposition which, however, was easily repressed,
to throw out political remarks, of the same nature with those

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 147

for which he had been reprehended" three years before by
the Board of Excise ! Mr Walker was not a Commissioner.
Burns, it is true, had been told " not to think ; " but here was
a favourable opportunity for violating with safety that imperial
mandate. Woods have ears, but in their whispers they betray
no secrets — had Burns talked treason, 'twould have been pity
to stop his tongue. The world is yet rather in the dark as to
" the political remarks for which he had been reprehended,"
and as he " threw out some of the same nature," why was the
world allowed to remain unenlightened ? What right had
Josiah Walker to repress any remarks made, in the confidence
of friendship, by Kobert Burns? And what power? Had
Burns chosen it, he could as easily have squabashed Josiah as
thrown him into the Nith. He was not to be put down by
fifty such ; he may have refrained, but he was not repressed,
and in courtesy to his companion, treated him with an old
wife's song.

The record of the second day is shameful. To ask any
person, however insignificant, to your inn, and then find fault
with him in a private letter for keeping you out of bed, would
not be gentlemanly ; but of such offence twenty years after his
death publicly to accuse Burns ! No mention is made of
dinner — and we shrewdly suspect Burns dined at home.
However, he gave up two days to the service of his friend,
and his friend's friend, and such was his reward. Why did
not this dignified personage " repress " Burns's licentious wit
as well as his political opinions ? If it was " not more licen-
tious than is unhappily too venial in higher circles," why
mention it at all ? What were . " the excesses " of which
he was unnecessarily free in the avowal ? They could not
have regarded unlawful intercourse with the sex — for "they
were not sufficient to account for the mysterious insinuations
against his character," all of which related to women. Yet
this wretched mixture of meanness, worldliness, and morality,
interlarded with some liberal sentiment, and spiced with spite,
absolutely seems intended for a vindication !

There are generally two ways at least of telling the same
story ; and 'tis pity we have not Burns's own account of that
long sederunt. It is clear that before midnight he had made
the discovery that his right and his left hand assessor were a
couple of solemn blockheads, and that, to relieve the tedium,

148 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

he kept plying them with all manner of bams. Both gentle-
men were probably in black, and though laymen, decorous as
deacons on religion and morality — defenders of the faith — sen-
tentious champions of Church and State. It must have been
amusing to see them gape. Nobody ever denied that Burns
always conducted himself with the utmost propriety in pre-
sence of those whom he respected for their genius, their learn-
ing, or their worth. Without sacrificing an atom of his inde-
pendence, how deferential, nay, how reverential, was he in his
behaviour to Dugald Stewart ! Had he and Dr Blair enter-
tained Burns as their guest in that inn, how delightful had
been the evening's record ! No such " licentious wit as is
unhappily too venial in higher circles" would have flowed
from his lips — no " unnecessarily free avowal of his excesses."
He would have delighted the philosopher and the divine with
his noble sentiments as he had done of old — the illustrious
Professor would have remembered and heard again the beauti-
ful eloquence that charmed him on the Braid Hills. There
can be nothing unfair surely in the conjecture, that these gen-
tlemen occasionally contributed a sentence or two to the stock
of conversation. They were entertaining Burns, and good
manners must have induced them now and then " here
to interpose " with a small smart remark — sentiment facete
—or unctuous anecdote. Having lived in " higher circles,"
and heard much of " the licentious wit unhappily too venial
there," we do not well see how they could have avoided giv-
ing their guest a few specimens of it. Grave men are often
gross — and they were both grave as ever was earthen ware.
Such wit is the most contagious of any ; and " budge doctors
of the Stoic fur," then express " Fancies " that are anything
but " Chaste and Noble." Who knows but that they were
driven into indecency by the desperation of self-defence — took
refuge in repartee — and fought the ganger with his own rod ?
That Burns, in the dead silence that ever and anon occurred,
should have called for " fresh supplies of liquor," is nothing
extraordinary. For there is not in nature or in art a sadder
spectacle than an empty bottle standing in the centre of a
circle, equidistant from three friends, one of whom had re-
turned to his native land after a yearning absence of eight
years, another anonymous, and the third the author of " Scotch
Drink" and the " Earnest Cry." Josiah more than insinuates

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 149

that he himself shy 'd the bottle. We more than doubt it — we
believe that for some hours he turned up his little finger as
frequently as Burns. He did right to desist as soon as he had
got his dose, and of that he was not only the best but the
only judge ; he appears to have been sewn up " when it
began to grow late ;" Burns was sober as a lark " about three
in the morning." It is likely enough that " about two months
after, Burns was better supported by his companions at a
similar revel " — so much better indeed in every way that the
revel was dissimilar ; but still we cling to our first belief, that
the two gentlemen in black drank as much as could have been
reasonably expected of them — that is, as much as they could
hold ; had they attempted more, there is no saying what might
have been the consequences. And we still continue to think,
too, that none but a heartless man, or a man whose heart had
been puffed up like a bladder with vanity, would have tagged
to the tail of his pitiful tale of that night, that cruel statement
about " cold without, and inebriety within," which was but the
tittle-tattle of gossiping tradition, and most probably a lie.

This is the proper way to treat all such memorabilia — with
the ridicule of contempt and scorn. Eefute falsehood first,
and then lash the fools that utter it. Much of the obloquy
that so long rested on the memory of our great National Poet
originated in frivolous hearsays of his life and conversation,
which in every telling lost some portion of whatever truth
might have once belonged to them, and acquired at least an
equal portion of falsehood, till they became unmixed calumnies
— many of them of the blackest kind. — got into print, which is
implicitly believed by the million — till the simple story, which,
as first told, had illustrated some interesting trait of his cha-
racter or genius, as last told, redounded to his disgrace, and
was listened to by the totally abstinent with uplifted eyes,
hands, and shoulders, as an anecdote of the dreadful debauch-
eries of Robert Burns.

That he did sometimes associate, while in Edinburgh, with
persons not altogether worthy of him, need not be denied, nor
wondered at, for it was inevitable. He was not for ever beset
with the consciousness of his own supereminence. Prudence
he did not despise, and he has said some strong things in her
praise ; but she was not, in his system of morality, the Queen
of Virtues. His genius, so far from separating him from any

150 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

portion of his kind, impelled him towards humanity, without
fear and without suspicion. No saint or prude was he to shun
the society of " Jolly companions every one." Though never
addicted to drinking, he had often set the table in a roar at
Tarbolton, Mauchline, Kirkoswald, Irvine, and Ayr, and was
he all at once to appear in the character of dry Quaker in
Edinburgh? Were the joys that circle round the flowing
bowl to be interdicted to him alone, the wittiest, the brightest,
the most original, and the most eloquent of all the men of his
day ? At Ellisland we know for certain that his domestic
life was temperate and sober ; and that beyond his own doors
his convivialities among " gentle and semple," though not
unfrequent, were not excessive, and left his character with-
out any of those deeper stains with which it has been since
said to have been sullied. It is for ever to be lamented that
he was more dissipated at Dumfries — how much more, and
under what stronger temptations, can be told in not many
words. But every glass of wine " or stouter cheer" he drank
— like mere ordinary men too fond of the festive hour — seems
to have been set down against him as a separate sin ; and the
world of fashion, and of philosophy too, we fear, both of which
used him rather scurvily at last, would not be satisfied unless
Burns could be made out — a drunkard ! Had he not been
such a wonderful man in conversation, he might have enjoyed
unhurt the fame of his poetry. But what was reading his
poetry, full as it is of mirth and pathos, to hearing the Poet 1
When all were desirous of the company of a man of such
genius and such dispositions, was it in human nature to be
always judicious in the selection or rejection of associates?
His deepest and best feelings he for the most part kept sacred
for communion with those who were held by him in honour
as well as love. But few were utterly excluded from the cor-
diality of one who, in the largeness of his heart, could sympa-
thise with all, provided he could but bring out, by the stroke
of the keen-tempered steel of his own nature, some latent
spark of humanity from the flint of theirs ; and it is easy to
see with what dangers he thus must have been surrounded,
when his genius and humour, his mirth and glee, his fun and
frolic, and all the outrageous merriment of his exhilarated or
maddened imagination, came to be considered almost as com-
mon property by all who chose to introduce themselves to

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 151

Robert Burns, and thought themselves entitled to do so be-
cause they could prove they had his poems by heart. They
sent for the gauger, and the gauger came. A prouder man
breathed not, but he had never been subjected to the cere-
monial of manners, the rule of artificial life ; and he was ready,
at all times, to grasp the hand held out in friendship, to go
when a message said come, for he knew that his " low-roof 'd
house" was honoured because by his genius he had greatly
glorified his people.

We have seen, from one characteristic instance, how shame-
fully his condescension must often have been abused ; and no
doubt but that sometimes he behaved imprudently in such
parties, and incurred the blame of intemperance. Frequently
must he have joined them with a heavy heart ! How little
did many not among the worst of those who stupidly stared
at the " wondrous guest " understand of his real character !
How often must they have required mirth from him in his
melancholy, delight in his despair! The coarse buffoon
ambitious to show off before the author of " Tarn o' Shanter,"
and " The Holy Fair" — how could it enter into his fat heart
to conceive, in the midst of his own roaring ribaldry, that the
fire-eyed son of genius was a hypochondriac, sick of life !
Why, such a fellow would think nothing next morning of im-
pudently telling his cronies that, on the whole, he had been
disappointed in the Poet. Or in another key, forgetting that
the Poet who continued to sit late at a tavern table, need own
no relationship but that of time and place with the proser who
was lying resignedly tinder it, the drunkard boasts all over
the city of the glorious night he had had with BURKS.

But of the multitudes who thus sought the society of Burns,
there must have been many in every way qualified to enjoy
it. His fame had crossed the Tweed ; and though a knowledge
of his poetry could not then have been prevalent over Eng-
land, he had ardent admirers among the most cultivated
classes, before whose eyes, shadowed in a language but im-
perfectly understood, had dawned a new and beautiful world
of rustic life. Young men of generous birth, and among such
lovers of genius some doubtless themselves endowed with the
precious gift, acquainted with the clod-hoppers of their own
country, longed to behold the prodigy who had stalked be-
tween the stilts of the plough in moods of tenderest or loftiest

152 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

inspiration ; and it is pleasing to think that the poet was not
seldom made happy by such visitors — that they carried back
with them to their own noblest land a still deeper impression
of the exalted worth of the genius of Caledonia. Nor did the
gold coin of the genius of Burns sustain any depreciation
during his lifetime in his own country. He had that to com-
fort him — that to glory in till the last ; and in his sorest
poverty, it must have been his exceeding great reward.
Ebenezer Elliott has nobly expressed that belief, and coupled
with it — as we have often done — the best vindication of Scot-
land,—

"B0T SHALL IT OF OUR SIRES BE TOLD

THAT THEY THEIR BROTHER POOR FORSOOK ?
No ! FOR THEY GAVE HIM MORE THAN GOLD ;

THEY READ THE BRAVE MAN'S BOOK."

What happens during their life — more or less — to all emin-
ent men, happened to Burns. Thinking on such things, one
sometimes cannot help believing that man hates to honour
man, till the power in which miracles have been wrought
is extinguished or withdrawn— and then, when jealousy, envy,
and all uncharitableness of necessity cease, we confess its
grandeur, bow down to it, and worship it. But who were
they who in his own country continued most steadfastly to
honour his genius and himself — all through what have been
called — truly in some respects, falsely in others — his dark
days in Dumfries— and on to his death? Not Lords and
Earls, not lawyers and wits, not philosophers and doctors —
though among the nobility and gentry, among the classes of
leisure and of learning, he had friends who wished him well,
and were not indisposed to serve him ; not the male genera-
tion of critics— not the literary prigs epicene — not of decided
sex the blues celestial — though many periods were rounded
among them upon the Ayrshire ploughman ; but the MEN OP
HIS OWN ORDER, with their wives and daughters — shepherds,
and herdsmen, and ploughmen — delvers and ditchers — hewers
of wood and drawers of water — soldiers and sailors — whether
regulars, militia, fencibles, volunteers — on board king's or
merchant's ship " far far at sea" or dirt gabbert — within a
few yards of the land on either side of the Clyde or the Cart —
the WORKING PEOPLE— whatever the instruments of their toil
— they patronised Bums then — they patronise him now —
they would not have hurt a hair of his head —they will not

THE GENIUS AXD CHARACTER OF BURNS. 153

hear of any dishonour to his dust — they know well what it is
to endure, to yield, to enjoy, and to suffer — and the memory
of their own bard will be hallowed for ever among the
brotherhood like a religion.

In Dumfries, as in every other considerable town in Scot-
land— and we might add England — it was then customary,
you know, with the respectable inhabitants, to pass a convi-
vial hour or two of an evening in some decent tavern or other
— and Burns's howf was the Globe, kept by honest Mrs
Hyslop, who had a sonsy sister, " Anna wi' the gowden
locks," the heroine of what in his fond deceit he thought was
the best of all his songs. The worthy townsfolk did not fre-
quent bar, or parlour, or club-room — at least they did not
think they did — from a desire for drink ; though doubtless
they often took a glass more than they intended, nay, some-
times even two ; and the prevalence of such a system of social
life, for it was no less, must have given rise, with others be-
sides the predisposed, to very hurtful habits. They met to
expatiate and confer on state affairs — to read the newspapers
— to talk a little scandal — and so forth— and the result was,
we have been told, considerable dissipation. The system was
not excellent ; dangerous to a man whose face was always
more than welcome ; without whom there was wanting the
evening or the morning star. -Bums latterly indulged too
much in such compotations, and sometimes drank more than
was good for him ; but not a man now alive in Dumfries ever
saw him intoxicated ; and the survivors all unite in declaring
that he cared not whether the stoup were full or empty, so
that there were conversation — argumentative or declamatory,
narrative or anecdotal, grave or gay, satirical or sermonic ;
nor would any of them have hoped to see the sun rise again
in this world, had Burns portentously fallen asleep. They
had much better been, one and all of them, even on the sober-
est nights, at their own firesides, or in their beds, and orgies
that seemed moderation itself in a howf would have been
felt outrageous in a home. But the blame, whatever be its
amount, must not be heaped on the head of Burns, while not
a syllable has ever been said of the same enormities steadily
practised for a series of years by the dignitaries of the
burgh, who by themselves and friends were opined to have
been from youth upwards among the most sober of the child-

154 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ren of Adam. Does anybody suppose that Burns would have
addicted himself to any meetings considered disreputable —
or that, had he lived now, he would have frequented any
tavern, except, perhaps, some not unfavoured one in the airy
realms of imagination, and built among the clouds ?

Malicious people would not have ventured during his life-
time, in underhand and undertoned insinuations, to whisper
away Burns's moral character, nor would certain memorialists
have been so lavish of their lamentations and regrets over his
evil habits, had not his political principles during his later
years been such as to render him with many an object of
suspicion equivalent, in troubled times, to fear and hatred. A
revolution that shook the foundations on which so many old
evils and abuses rested, and promised to restore to millions
their natural liberties, and by that restoration to benefit all
mankind, must have agitated his imagination to a pitch of
enthusiasm far beyond the reach of ordinary minds to conceive,
who nevertheless thought it no presumption on their part to
decide dogmatically on the highest questions in political
science, the solution of which, issuing in terrible practice, had
upset one of the most ancient, and, as it had been thought, one
of the firmest of thrones. No wonder that, with his eager and
earnest spirit for ever on his lips, he came to be reputed a
Democrat. Dumfries was a Tory Town, and could not tole-
rate a revolutionary — the term was not in use then — a Eadical
Exciseman. And to say the truth, the idea must have been
not a little alarming to weak nerves, of Burns as a dema-
gogue. With such eyes and such a tongue he would have
proved a formidable Man of the People. It is certain that he
spoke and wrote rashly and reprehensibly — and deserved a
caution from the Board. But not such tyrannical reproof;
and perhaps it was about as absurd in the Board to order
Burns not to think, as it would have been in him to order it
to think, for thinking comes of nature, and not of institution,
and 'tis about as difficult to control as to create it. He de-
fended himself boldly, and like a man conscious of harbouring
in his bosom no evil wish to the State. " In my defence to
their accusations I said, that whatever might be my senti-
ments of. republics, ancient or modern, as to Britain I abjured
the idea ; that a constitution which, in its original principles,
experience had proved to be in every way fitted for our hap-
piness in society, it would be insanity to sacrifice to an un-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 155

tried -visionary theory ; — that in consideration of my being
situated in a department, however humble, immediately in the
hands of people in power, I had forborne taking an active
part, either personally or as an author, in the present business
of reform ; but that when I must declare my sentiments, I
would say there existed a system of corruption between the
executive power and the representative part of the legislature
which boded no good to our glorious constitution, and which
every patriotic Briton must wish to see amended." His
biographers have had difficulty in forming their opinion as to
the effect on Burns's mind of the expression of the Board's
sovereign will and displeasure. Scott, without due considera-
tion, thought it so preyed on his peace as to render him despe-
rate— and has said " that from the moment his hopes of pro-
motion were utterly blasted, his tendency to dissipation hur-
ried him precipitately into those excesses which shortened
his life." Lockhart, on the authority of Mr Findlater, dissents
from that statement — Allan Cunningham thinks it in essen-
tials true, and that Burns's letter to Erskine of Mar " covers
the Board of Excise and the British Government of that day
with eternal shame." Whatever may have been the effect
of those proceedings on Burns's mind, it is certain that the
freedom with which he gave utterance to his political opin-
ions and sentiments seriously injured him in the estimation of
multitudes of excellent people, who thought them akin to doc-
trines subversive of all government but that of the mob. Nor
till he joined the Dumfries Volunteers, and as their Laureate
issued his popular song, that flew over the land like wild-fire,
" Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? " was he generally re-
garded as a loyal subject. For two or three years he had
been looked on with evil eyes, and spoken of in evil whispers
by too many of the good — and he had himself in no small
measure to blame for their false judgment of his character.
Here are a few of his lines to " The Tree of Liberty : "

" But vicious folk aye hate to see

The works of virtue thrive, man ;
The courtly vermin bann'd the tree,

And grat to see it thrive, man.
King Louis thought to cut it down,

When it was unco sma', man ;
For this the watchman crack'd his crown,

Cut aff his head and a', man.

156 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Let Britain boast her hardy oak,

Her poplar and her pine, man,
Auld Britain ance could crack her joke,

And o'er her neighbour shine, man.
But seek the forest round and round,

And soon 'twill be agreed, man,
That sic a tree cannot be found

'Twixt London and the Tweed, man,

Wae worth the loon wha wouldua eat

Sic wholesome dainty cheer, man ;
I'd sell my shoon frae aff my feet

To taste sic fruit I swear, man.
Syne let us pray, auld England may

Soon plant this far-famed tree, man ;
And blithe we'll sing, and hail the day

That gave us liberty, man."

So sunk in slavery at this time was Scotland, that England
could not sleep in her bed till she had set her sister free — and
sent down some liberators who narrowly escaped getting
hanged by this most ungrateful country. Such " perilous
stuff" as the above might have been indited by Palmer,
Gerald, or Margaret — how all unworthy of the noble Burns !
Of all men then in the world, the author of " The Cottar's
Saturday Night " was by nature the least of a Jacobin. We
cannot help thinking that, like Byron, he loved at times to
astonish dull people by daring things, to see how they
looked with their hair on end ; and dull people — who are not
seldom malignant — taking him at his word, had their revenge
in charging him with all manner of profligacy, and fabricating
vile stories to his disgrace ; there being nothing too gross for
the swallow of political rancour.

It is proved by many very strong expressions in his corre-
spondence, that the reproof he received from the Board of
Excise sorely troubled him ; and no doubt it had an evil in-
fluence on public opinion that did not subside till it was feared
he was dying, and that ceased for a time only with his death.
We have expressed our indignation — our contempt of that
tyrannical treatment; and have not withheld our respect,
our admiration, from the characteristic manliness with which
he repelled the accusations some insidious enemies had secretly
sent in to the quarter where they knew fatal injury might be

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 157

done to all his prospects in life. But was it possible that his
most unguarded, rash, and we do not for a moment hesitate
to say, blamable expression of political opinions adverse to
those maintained by all men friendly to the government, could
be permitted to pass without notice ? He had no right to
encourage what the government sought to put down, while he
was "their servant in a very humble department; " and though
he successfully repelled the slanders of the despicable creatures
who strove to destroy him, even in his high-spirited letter to
Erskine there is enough to show that he had entered into such
an expostulation with the Board as must have excited strong
displeasure and disapproval, which no person of sense, looking
back on those most dangerous times, can either wonder at or
blame. He says in his defence before the Board, " I stated
that, where I must- declare my sentiments, I would say there
existed a system of corruption between the executive power
and the representative part of the legislature, which boded no
good to our glorious constitution, and which every patriotic
Briton must wish to see amended." From a person in his
situation even such a declaration was not prudent, and pru-
dence was a duty ; but it is manifest from what he adds for
Erskine's own ear, that something more lay concealed in those
generalities than the mere words seem to imply. " I have
three sons, who I see already have brought into the world
souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of SLAVES. Can I look
tamely on, and see any machinations to wrest from them the
birthright of my boys — the little independent Britons, in
whose veins runs my blood ? No ; I will not, should my
heart's blood stream around my attempt to defend it. Does
any man tell me that my poor efforts can be of no service, and
that it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with
the concerns of a nation?" Eight or wrong — and we think
they were right — the government of the countiy had resolved
to uphold principles, to which the man who could not refrain
from thus fiercely declaring himself, at the very time all that
was dearest to him was in peril, could not but be held hostile ;
and so far from its being their duty to overlook such opinions,
because they were the opinions of Burns, it was just because
they were the opinions of Burns that it was their duty to re-
strain and reprove them. He continued too long after this to
be by far too outspoken — as we have seen ; but that his

158 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Scottish soul had in aught become Frenchified, we never shall
believe, but while we live shall attribute the obstinacy with
which he persisted to sing and say the praises of that people,
after they had murdered their King and their Queen, and had
been guilty of all enormities, in a great measure to a haughti-
ness that could not brook to retract opinions he had offensively
declared before the faces of many whom not without reason
he despised — to a horror of the idea of any sacrifice of that
independent spirit which was the very life of his life. Burns
had been insulted by those who were at once his superiors
and his inferiors, and shall Burns truckle to " the powers that
be?" — at any bidding but that of his own conviction swerve
a hair's -breadth from his political creed? No: not even
though his reason had told him that some of its articles were
based in delusion, and if carried into practice among his own
countrymen, pursuant to the plots of traitors, who were indeed
aliens in soul to the land he loved, would have led to the de-
struction of that liberty for which he, by the side or at the
head of his cottage compatriots, would have gladly died.

The evil consequences of all this to Burns were worse than
you may have imagined, for over and above the lies spring-
ing up like puddock-stools from domestic middens, an ephe-
meral brood indeed, but by succession perennial, and that
even now, when you grasp them in your hand, spatter vileness
in your eyes like so many devil's snuff-boxes — think how in-
jurious to the happiness of such a soul as his, to all its natural
habitudes, must have been the feuds carried on all around
him, and in which he with his commanding powers too largely
mingled, between political parties in a provincial town, con-
tending as they thought, the one for hearths and altars, the
other for regeneration of those principles, decayed or dead,
which alone make hearths and altars sacred, and their defence
worth the tears and the blood of brave men who would fain be
free. His sympathy was " wide and general as the casing
air ; "^ and not without violence could it be contracted " within
the circle none dared tread but they," who thought William
Pitt the reproach, and Charles Fox the paragon of animals.
Within that circle he met with many good men, the Herons,
Millers, Kiddells, Maxwells, Symes, and so forth ; within it,
too, he forgathered with many " a fool and something more."
Now, up to " the golden exhalation of the dawn" of his gauger-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 159

ship, Bums had been a Tory, and he heard in " the whisper
of a faction " a word unpleasing to a Whiggish ear, turncoat.
The charge was false, and he disdained it ; but disdain in eyes
that, when kindled up, burned like carriage lamps in a dark
night, frightened the whispering faction into such animosity
that a more than usual sumph produced an avenging epigram
upon him and two other traitors, in which the artist committed
a mistake of workmanship no subsequent care could rectify :
instead of hitting the right nail on the head, why, he hit the
wrong nail on the point, so no wooden mallet could drive it
home. From how much social pleasure must not Burns have
thus been wilfully self-debarred ! From how many happy
friendships ! By nature he was not vindictive, yet occasion-
ally he seemed to be so, visiting slight offence with severe
punishment, sometimes imagining offence when there was
none, and in a few instances, we fear, satirising in savage
verses not only the innocent, but the virtuous ; the very beings
whom, had he but known them as he might, he would have
loved and revered — celebrated them living or dead in odes,
elegies, and hymns — thereby doing holy service to goodness,
in holding up shining examples to all who longed to do well.
Most of his intolerant scorn of high rank had the same origin
— not in his own nature, which was noble, but in prejudices
thus superinduced upon it which in their virulence were mean
— though his genius could clothe them in magnificent diction,
and so justify them to the proud poet's heart.

It is seldom indeed that Lockhart misses the mark ; but in
one instance — an anecdote — where it is intended to present
the pathetic, our eyes perceive but the picturesque — we allude
to the tale told him by Davie Macculloch, son of the Laird of
Ardwall.

He told me that he was seldom more grieved than when, riding into
Dumfries one fine summer's evening to attend a county ball, he saw
Burns walking alone on the shady side of the principal street of the
town, while the opposite part was gay with successive groups of
gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the
night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognise him. The
horseman dismounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to
him to cross the street, said, " Nay, my young friend, that is all over
now," and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizell Baillie'a
pathetic ballad, beginning, " The bonnet stood ance sae fair on his

ICO ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

brow," and ending, "And werena my heart light I wad die" It •
little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain subjects
escape in this fashion. He immediately, after citing these verses,
assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner ; and taking
his young friend home with him, entertained him very agreeably
until the hour of the ball arrived, with a bowl of his usual pota-
tion, and bonny Jean's singing of some verses which he had recently .
composed.

'Tis a pretty picture in the style of Watteau. "The oppo-
site part gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies,
all drawn together for the festivities of the night." What
were they about, and where were they going ? Were they as
yet in their ordinary clothes, colts and fillies alike, taking
their exercise preparatory to the country - dances of some
thirty or forty couple, that in those days used to try the wind
of both sexes ? If so, they might have chosen better training-
ground along the banks of the Nith. Were they all in full
fig, the females with feathers on their heads, the males with
chapeaux bras—~" stepping westward " arm in arm, in succes-
sive groups, to the Assembly-room ? In whichever of these
two pleasant predicaments they were placed, it showed rare
perspicacity in Dainty Davie to discern that not one of them
appeared willing 'to recognise Burns — more especially as he
was walking on the other and shady side of the street, and
Davie on horseback. By what secret signs did the fair free-
masons— 'for such there be — express to their mounted brother
their unwillingness to recognise from the sunshine of their
promenade, the gauger walking alone in the shade of his ?
Was flirtation at so low an ebb in Dumfriess-shire, that the
flower of her beaux and belles, " in successive groups, drawn
together for the festivities of the night," could find eyes for a
disagreeable object so many yards of causeway remote ? And
if Burns observed that they gave him the cold shoulder — cut
him across the street — on what recondite principle of conduct
did he continue to walk there, in place of stalking off with a
frown to his Howf? And is it high Galloway to propose to a
friend to cross the street to do the civil " to successive groups
of gentlemen and ladies, not one of whom had appeared willing
to recognise him?" However, it was gallant under such dis-
couragement to patronise the gauger ; and we trust that the
" wicked wee bowl," while it detained from, and disinclined to,
did not incapacitate for the ball.

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 161

But whence all those expressions so frequent in his corre-
spondence, and not rare in his poetry, of self-reproach and rue-
ful remorse ? From a source that lay deeper than our eyes
can reach. We know his worst sins, but cannot know his
sorrows. The war between the spirit and the flesh often raged
in his nature — as in that of the best of beings who are made
— and no Christian, without humblest self-abasement, will
ever read his Confessions.

" Is there a whim-inspired fool,

Owre fast for thocht, owre hot for rule,

Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,

Let him draw near,
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,

And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,

That weekly this area throng,

O, pass not by !
But with a frater-feeling strong,

Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs himself life's mad career,

Wild as the wave ;
Here pause— and, through the starting tear,

Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn, and wise to know,

And keenly felt the friendly glow,

And softer flame ;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,

And stained his name !

Reader, attend — whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,

In low pursuit ;
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control,

Is wisdom's root."

A Bard's Epitaph I Such his character drawn by himself
in deepest despondency — in distraction — in despair calmed

VOL. VII. L

162 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

while he was composing it by the tranquillising power that
ever accompanies the action of genius. And shall we judge
him as severely as he judged himself, and think worse of him
than of common men, because he has immortalised his frailties
in his contrition ? The sins of common men are not remem-
bered in their epitaphs. Silence is a privilege of the grave
few seek to disturb. If there must be no eulogium, our name
and asje suffice for that stone ; and whatever may have been
thought of us, there are some to drop a tear on our forlorn
"hie jacet." Burns wrote those lines in the very prime of
youthful manhood. You know what produced them — his
miserable attachment to her who became his wife. He was
then indeed most miserable — afterwards most happy ; he
cared not then though he should die — all his other offences
rose against him in that agony ; and how humbly he speaks
of his high endowments, under a sense of the sins by which
they had been debased I He repented, and sinned again and
again ; for his repentance — though sincere — was not per-
manent ;. yet who shall say that it was not accepted at last ?
" Owre this grassy heap sing dool, and drap a tear," is an in-
junction that has been obeyed by many a pitying heart. Yet
a little while, and his Jean buried him in such a grave. A few
years more, and a mausoleum was erected by the nation for his
honoured dust. Now husband and wife lie side by side — " in
hopes of a joyful resurrection."

Burns belonged to that order of prevailing poets, with
whom " all thoughts, all passions, all delights " possess
not that entire satisfaction nature intends, till they effuse
themselves abroad, for sake of the sympathy that binds
them, even in uttermost solitude, to the brotherhood of man.
No secrets have they that words can reveal. They desire
that the whole race shall see their very souls — shall hear
the very beatings of their hearts. Thus they hope to live
for ever in kindred bosoms. They feel that a great power
is given them in their miseries — for what miseries has any
man ever harboured in the recesses of his spirit, that he has
not shared, and will share, with " numbers without number
numberless " till the Judgment Day !

Who reads unmoved such sentences as these ? " The fates
and characters of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts
when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 163

all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so woeful a narra-
tive as the lives of the Poets. In the comparative view of
wretches, the question is not what they are doomed to suffer,
but how they are formed to bear !" Long before the light of
heaven had ever been darkened or obscured in his conscience
by evil thoughts or evil deeds, when the bold bright boy, with
his thick black clustering hair ennobling his ample forehead,
was slaving for his parents' sakes — Robert used often to lie by
Gilbert's side all night long without ever closing an eye in
sleep ; for that large heart of his, that loved all his eyes
looked upon of nature's works living or dead, perfect as was
its mechanism for the play of all lofty passions, would get
suddenly disarranged, as if approached the very hour of
death. Who will say that many more years were likely to
have fallen to the lot of one so framed, had he all life long
drank, as in youth, but of the well-water — " lain down with
the dove, and risen with the lark?" If excesses, in which
there was vice and therefore blame, did injure his health,
how far more those other excesses in which there was so
much virtue, and on which there should be praise for ever !
Over-anxious, over-working hours beneath the mid-day sun,
and sometimes too, to save a scanty crop, beneath the mid-
night moon, to which he looked up without knowing it with
a poet's eyes, as he kept forking the sheaves on the high
laden cart that " Hesperus, who led the starry host" beheld
crashing into the barnyard among shouts of "Harvest Home."
It has been thought that there are not a few prominent
points of character common to Burns and Byron ; and though
no formal comparison between them has been drawn that we
know of, nor would it be worth while attempting it, as not
much would come of it, we suspect, without violent stretch-
ing and bending of materials, and that free play of fancy
which makes no bones of facts, still there is this resemblance,
that they both give unreserved expositions of their most secret
feelings, undeterred by any fear of offending others, or of bring-
ing censure on themselves by such revelations of the inner man.
Byron as a moral being was below Bums; and there is too often
much affectation and insincerity in his Confessions. " Fare
thee well, and if for ever, still for ever fare thee well," is not
elegiac, but satirical ; a complaint in which the bitterness is
not of grief, but of gall ; how unlike " The Lament on the

164 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

unfortunate issue of a Friend's Amour," overflowing with
the expression of every passion cognate with love's despair !
Do not be starled by our asking you to think for a little
while of Robert Burns along with — SAMUEL JOHNSON. Listen
to him, and you hear as wise and good a man as earth ever
saw for ever reproaching himself with his wickedness : " from
almost the earliest time he could remember he had been form-
ing schemes for a better life." Select from his notes, prayers,
and diaries, and from the authentic records of his oral dis-
course, all acknowledgments of his evil thoughts, practices,
and habits — all charges brought against him by conscience,
of sins of omission and commission — all declarations, excla-
mations, and interjections of agonising remorse and gloomy
despair — from them write his character in his epitaph — and
look there on the Christian Sage 1 God forbid that saving
truths should be so changed into destroying falsehoods.
Slothful — selfish — sensual — envious — uncharitable — unduti-
ful to his parents — thoughtless of Him who died to save
sinners — and living without God in the world ; — That is the
wretched being named Samuel Johnson — in the eyes of his
idolatrous countrymen only a little lower than the angels
— in his own a worm ! Slothful ! yet how various his know-
ledge ! acquired by fits and snatches — book in hand, and
poring as if nearly sand-blind — yet with eyes in their own
range of vision keen as the lynx's or the eagle's — on pages
no better than blanks to common minds, to his hieroglyphical
of wisest secrets — or in long assiduity of continuous studies,
of which a month to him availed more than to you or us a year
— or all we have had of life. — Selfish ! with obscure people,
about whom nobody cared, provided for out of his slender
means within doors, paupers though they thought it not,
and though meanly endowed by nature as by fortune, ad-
mitted into the friendship of a Sage simple as a child —
out of doors, pensioners waiting for him at the corners of
streets, of whom he knew little, but that they were hungry
and wanted bread, and probably had been brought by sin
to sorrow. — Sensual ! Because his big body, getting old,
"needed repairs," and because though " Rasselas Prince of
Abyssinia11 had been written on an empty stomach, which
happened when he was comparatively young and could not
help it, now that he had reached his grand climacteric, he

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 165

-was determined to show not to the whole world, but to large
parties, that all the fat of the earth was not meant for the
mouths of blockheads. — Envious ! of David Garrick ? Poh 1
poll ! Pshaw ! pshaw ! — Uncharitable ? We have disposed
of that clause of the verse in our commentary on " selfish." —
Undutiful to his parents ! He did all man could to support
his mother — and having once disobliged his father by sulkily
refusing to assist at his book-stall, half a century afterwards,
more or less, when at the head of English literature, and the
friend of Burke and Beauclerk, he stood bare-headed for an
hour in the rain on the site of said book-stall, in the market-
place of Lichfield, in penance for that great sin. As to the
last two charges in the indictment — if he was not a Christian,
who can hope for salvation in the Cross ? — If his life was that
of an atheist, who of woman born ever walked with God ? Yet
it is true he was a great sinner. " If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us ; but if we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Burns died in his thirty-eighth year. At that age what had
Johnson done to be for ever remembered? He had written
Irene, London, and the Life of Savage. Of Irene the world
makes little account — it contains many just and noble senti-
ments— but it is a Tragedy without tears. The Life is an
eloquent lie, told in the delusion of a friendship sealed by
participated sorrows. London is a satire of the true moral
vein — more sincerely indignant with the vices it withers than
its prototype in Juvenal — with all the vigour, without any of
the coarseness of Dryden — with " the pointed propriety of
Pope," and versification almost as musical as his, while not so
monotonous — an immortal strain. But had he died in 1747,
how slight had been our knowledge — our interest how dull —
in the Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson ! How slight our
knowledge ! We should never have known that in childhood
he showed symptoms " of that jealous independence of spirit
and impetuosity of temper which never forsook him" — as
Burns in the same season had showed that " stubborn sturdy
something in his disposition" which was there to the last;
— That he displayed then " that power of memory for which
he was all his life eminent to a degree almost incredible" —
as Burns possessed that faculty — so thought Murdoch — in

166 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

more strength than imagination ; — That he never joined the
other boys in their ordinary diversions, " but would wander
away into the fields talking to himself" — like Burns walking
miles "to pay his respects to the Leglen wood ;" — That when
a boy he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry
— as Burns was of Blind Harry ; — That he fell into " an in-
attention to religion or an indifference about it in his ninth
year," and that after his fourteenth "became a sort of lax.
talker against religion, for he did not much think about it,
and this lasted till he went to Oxford where it would not
be suffered" — just as the child Burns was remarkable for
an " enthusiastic idiot piety," and had pleasure .during some
years of his youth in puzzling his companions on points in.
divinity, till he saw his folly, and without getting his mouth
shut, was mute ; — That on his return home from Stourbridge
school in his eighteenth year " he had no settled plan of life,
nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day "
— like Burns, who, when a year or two older, in his perplexity
writes to his father that he knows not what to do, and is sick
of life ; — That his love of literature was excited by acciden-
tally rinding a folio Petrarch — as Burns's love of poetry
was by an octavo Shenstone ; — That he thereon became a
gluttonous book-devourer — as Burns did — " no book being
so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as
to damp his researches;" — That in his twentieth year
he felt himself " overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria,
with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience, and
with a dejection, gloom, and depair which rendered existence
misery" — as Burns tells us he was afflicted, even earlier — and
to the last — " with a constitutional melancholy or hypochon-
driasm that made rne fly to solitude " — with horrid flutterings
and stoppages of the heart that often almost choked him, so
that he had to fall out of bed into a tub of water to allay the
anguish ; — That he was at Pembroke College " caressed and
loved by all about him as a gay and frolicsome fellow " —
while " ah 1 Sir, I was mad and violent — it was bittei-ness
which they mistook for frolic" — just as Burns was thought
to be " with his strong appetite for sociality as well from
native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark,"
though when left alone desponding and distracted ; — " That
he was generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 107

circle of young students round him, whom he was entertain-
ing with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting
them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in
his maturer years he so much extolled " — as Burns was
sometimes seen at the door of a Public ridiculing the candles
of the Auld Light, and even spiriting the callants against the
Kirk itself, which we trust he looked on more kindly in future
years ; — That he had to quit college on his father's bankruptcy,
soon followed by death — as Burns in similar circumstances had
to quit Lochlea ; — " That in the forlorn state of his circum-
stances, jEtat. 23, he accepted of an offer to be employed as
usher in the school of Market-Bosworth," where he was
miserable — just as Burns was at the same age, not indeed
flogging boys, but flailing barns, " a poor insignificant devil,
unnoticed and unknown, and stalking up and down fairs and
markets;" — That soon after "he published proposals for
printing by subscription the Latin Poems of Politian at two
shillings and sixpence, but that there were not subscribers
enough to secure a sufficient sale, so the work never appeared,
and probably never was executed" — as Burns soon after issued
proposals for printing by subscription, on terms rather higher,
" among others the ' Ordination,' ' Scotch Drink,' ' the Cottar's
Saturday Night,' and an ' Address to the Deil,' " which vol-
ume ere long was published accordingly and had a great sale ;
— That he had, " from early youth, been sensible to the in-
fluence of female charms, and when at Stourbridge school was
much enamoured of Olivia Lloyd, a young Quaker, to whom
he wrote a copy of verses" — just as Burns was — and did — in
the case of Margaret Thomson, in the kail-yard at Kirkos-
wald, and of many others ; — That " his juvenile attachments
to the fair sex were however very transient, and it is certain
that he formed no criminal connection whatever ; Mr Hector,
who lived with him in the utmost intimacy and social free-
dom, having assured me that even at that ardent season his
conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect " — just so with
Burns, who fell in love with every lass he saw " come wading
barefoot all alane," while his brother Gilbert gives us the
same assurance of his continence in all his youthful loves ; —
That "in a man whom religious education has saved from
licentious indulgences, the passion of love when once it has
seized him is exceeding strong, and this was experienced by

168 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Johnson when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs Porter
after her first husband's death " — as it was unfortunately too
much the case with Burns, though he did not marry a widow
double his own age — but one who was a Maid till she met
Eob Mossgiel — and some six years younger than himself; —
That unable to find subsistence in his native place, or any-
where else, he was driven by want to try his fortune in Lon-
don, " the great field of genius and exertion, where talents of
every kind have the fullest scope, and the highest encourage-
ment," on his way thither " riding and tying " with David
Garrick — -just as Burns was impelled to make an experiment
on Edinburgh, journeying thither on foot, but- without any
companion in his adventure ; — That after getting on there in-
differently well, he returned " in the course of the next sum-
mer to Lichfield, where he had left Mrs Johnson," and staid
there three weeks, his mother asking him whether, when in
London, " he was one of those who gave the wall or those
who took it " — just as Burns returned to Mauchline, where he
had left Mrs Burns, and remained in the neighbourhood about
the same period of time, his mother having said to him on his
return, "Oh, Eobert;" — That he took his wife back with
him to London, resolving to support her the best way he
could, by the cultivation of the fields of literature, and chiefly
through an engagement as gauger and supervisor to Cave's
Magazine — as Burns, with similar purposes, and not dis-
similar means, brought his wife to Ellisland, then to Dum-
fries ; — That partly from necessity, and partly from inclination,
he used to perambulate the streets of the city at all hours of
the night, and was far from being prim or precise in his com-
pany, associating much with one Savage at least who had
rubbed shoulders with the gallows — just as Burns on Jenny
Geddes and her successor kept skirring the country at all
hours, though we do not hear of any of his companions having
been stabbers in brothel-brawls ; — That on the publication of
his " London," that city rang with applause, and Pope pro-
nounced the author — yet anonymous — a true poet, who would
soon be deterre, while General Oglethorpe became his patron,
and such a prodigious sensation did his genius make, that, in
the fulness of his fame, Earl Gower did what he could to set
him on the way of being elevated to a schoolmastership in
some small village in Shropshire or Staffordshire, " of which the

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 169

certain salary was sixty pounds a-year, winch would make him
happy for life" — so said English Earl Gower to an Irish Dean
called Jonathan Swift — just as Burns, soon after the publica-
tion of " Tarn o' Shanter," was in great favoxir with Captain
Grose — though there was then no need for any poet to tell
the world he was one, as he had been deterre a year or two
before, and by the unexampled exertions of Graham of Fintry,
the Earl of Glencairn being oblivious or dead, was translated
to the diocese of Dumfries, where he died in the thirty-eighth
year of his age ; the very year, we believe, of his, in which
Johnson issued the prospectus of his Dictionary ; — and here
we leave the Lexicographer for a moment to himself, and let
our mind again be occupied for a moment exclusively by the
Exciseman.

You will not suppose that we seriously insist on this par-
allel, as if the lines throughout ran straight ; or that we are
not well aware that there was far from being in reality such
complete correspondence of the circumstances — much less the '
characters of the men. But both had to struggle for their
very lives — it was sink or swim — and by their own buoyancy
they were borne up. In Johnson's case, there is not one dark
stain on the story of all those melancholy and memorable
years. Hawkins, indeed, more than insinuates that there was a
separation between him and his wife, at the time he associated
with Savage, and used with that profligate to stroll the streets ;
and that she was " harboured by a friend near the Tower ; "
but Croker justly remarks — " that there never has existed
any human being, all the details of whose life, all the motives
of whose actions, all the thoughts of whose mind, have been
so unreservedly brought before the public; even his prayers,
his n,ost secret meditations, and his most scrupulous self-
reproaches, have been laid before the world ; and there is not
to be found, in all the unparalleled information thus laid be-
fore us, a single trace to justify the accusation which Haw-
kins so wantonly and so odiously, and it may be assumed, so
falsely makes." However, he walked in the midst of evil —
he was familiar with the faces of the wicked — the guilty, as
they were passing by, he did not always shun, as if they were
lepers ; he had a word for them — poor as he was, a small coin
— for they were of the unfortunate and forlorn, and his heart
was pitiful. So was that of Burns. Very many years Heaven

170 ESSAYS: C1UTICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

allotted to the Sage, that virtue might be instructed by wis-
dom— all the good acknowledge that he is great — aud his
memory is hallowed for evermore in the gratitude of Christen-
dom. In his prime it pleased God to cut off the Poet — but
his genius too has left a blessing to his own people — and has
diffused noble thoughts, generous sentiments, and tender feel-
ings over many lands, and most of all among them who more
especially feel that they are his brethren, the Poor who make
the Kich, and like him are happy, in spite of its hardships,
in their own condition. Let the imperfections of his character
then be spared, if it be even for sake of his genius ; on higher
grounds let it be honoured ; for if there was much weakness,
its strength was mighty, and his religious country is privileged
to forget his frailties, in humble trust that they are forgiven.

We have said but little hitherto of Burns's religion. Some
have denied that he had any religion at all — a rash and cruel
denial — made in face of his genius, his character, and his life.
' What man in his senses ever lived without religion ? " The
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God " — was Burns an
atheist ? We do not fear to say that he was religious far be-
yond the common run of men, even them who may have had
a more consistent and better considered creed. The lessons
he received in the " auld clay biggin " were not forgotten
through life. He speaks — and we believe him — of his " early
ingrained piety " having been long remembered to good pur-
pose— what he called his " idiot piety " — not meaning thereby
to disparage it, but merely that it was in childhood an instinct.
" Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ! " is
breathed from the lips of infancy with the same feeling at its
heart that beats towards its father on earth, as it kneels in
prayer by his side. No one surely will doubt his sincerity when
he writes from Irvine to his father — " Honor'd sir, I am quite
transported at the thought, that ere long, perhaps soon, I shall
bid an eternal adieu to all the pains, and uneasinesses, and dis-
quietudes of this weary life ; for I assure you I am heartily
tired of it, and if I do not very much deceive myself, I could
contentedly and gladly resign it. It is for this reason I am
more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the
7th chapter of Eevelation, than with any ten times as many
verses in the whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble
enthusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that this world

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 171

lias to offer. ' 15. Therefore are they before the throne of
God, and serve him day and night in his temple ; and he that
sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 16. They
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall
the sun light on them, nor any heat. 17. For the Lamb that
is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead
them unto living fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes.' " When he gives lessons to
a young man for his conduct in life, one of them is, " The
great Creator to adore ; " when he consoles a friend on the
death of a relative, " he points the brimful grief- worn eyes to
scenes beyond the grave;" when he expresses benevolence to
a distressed family, he beseeches the aid of Him "who tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb;" when he feels the need of aid to
control his passions, he implores that of the " Great Governor
of all below ; " when in sickness, he has a prayer for the par-
don of his errors, and an expression of confidence in the good-
ness of God ; when suffering from the ills of life, he asks for'
the grace of resignation, " because they are thy will ; " when
he observes the sufferings of the virtuous, he remembers a
rectifying futurity ; — he is religious not only when surprised
by occasions such as these, but also on set occasions ; he had
regular worship in his family while at Ellisland — we know
not how it was at Dumfries, but we do know that there he
catechised his children every Sabbath evening ; nay, he does
not enter a Druidical circle without a prayer to God.

He viewed the Creator chiefly in his attributes of love,
goodness, and mercy. " In proportion as we are wrung with
grief, or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a superintending
Deity, an Almighty protector, are doubly dear." Him he
never lost sight of or confidence in, even in the depths of his
remorse. An avenging God was too seldom in his contem-
plations— from the little severity in his own character — from
a philosophical view of the inscrutable causes of human
frailty — and most of all, from a diseased aversion to what was
so much the theme of the sour Calvinism around him ; but
which would have risen up an appalling truth in such a soul
as his, had it been habituated to profounder thought on the
mysterious corruption of our fallen nature.

Sceptical thoughts as to revealed religion had assailed his
mind, while with expanding powers it " communed with the

172 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

glorious universe ; " and in 1787 he writes from Edinburgh
to a Mr James M'Candlish, student in physic, College, Glas-
gow," who had favoured him with a long argumentative infi-
del letter: " I, likewise, since you and I were first acquainted,
in the pride of despising old women's stories, ventured on
' the daring path Spinoza trod ; ' but experience of the weak-
ness, not the strength of human powers, made me glad to grasp
at revealed religion." When at Ellisland he writes to Mrs
Dunlop : " My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little
sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the
cold philosophisings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned
from earth ; the soul affianced to her God ; the correspondence
fixed with heaven ; the pious supplication and devout thanks-
giving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn ; — who
thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare
of public life ! No : to find them in their precious importance
and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure re-
cesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and distress."
And again, next year, from the same place to the same cor-
respondent : " That there is an incomprehensibly Great Being,
to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be intimately
acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal
machinery and consequent outward deportment of this crea-
ture he has made — these are, I think, self-evident proposi-
tions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between
vice and virtue, and consequently that I am an accountable
creature ; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as
well as from the evident imperfection, nay positive injustice,
in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral
worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond
the grave, must I think be allowed by every one who will
give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and
affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of His
doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated
wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though to ap-
pearance he was himself the obscurest and most illiterate of
our species : therefore Jesus was from God." Indeed, all his
best letters to Mrs Dunlop are full of the expression of reli-
gious feeling and religious faith ; though it must be confessed
with pain, that he speaks with more confidence in the truth of
natural than of revealed religion, and too often lets sentiments

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 173

inadvertently escape him, that, taken by themselves, would
imply that his religious belief was but a Christianised Theism.
Of the immortality of the soul he never expresses any serious
doubt, though now and then his expressions, though beauti-
ful, want their usual force, as if he felt the inadequacy of ,the
human mind to the magnitude of the theme. " Ye venerable
sages, and holy flamens, is there probability in your conjec-
tures, truth in your stories, of another world beyond death ;
or are they all alike baseless visions and fabricated fables ? If
there is another life, it must be only for the just, the amiable,
and the humane. What a flattering idea this of the world to
come ! Would to God I as firmly believed it as I ardently
wish it."

How, then, could honoured Thomas Carlyle bring himself
to affirm " that Burns had no religion ? " His religion was in
much imperfect — but its incompleteness you discern only in a
survey of all his effusions, and by inference ; for his particular
expressions of a religious kind are genuine, and as acknowledg-
ments of the superabundant goodness and greatness of God,
they are in unison with the sentiments of the devoutest
Christian. But remorse never suggests to him the inevitable
corruption of man ; Christian humility he too seldom dwells
on, though without it there cannot be Christian faith ; and he
is silent on the need of reconcilement between the divine
attributes of Justice and Mercy. The absence of all this
might pass unnoticed, were not the religious sentiment so
prevalent in his confidential communications with his friends
in his most serious and solemn moods. In them there is
frequent, habitual recognition of the Creator ; and who that
finds joy and beauty in nature has not the same ? It may be
well supposed that if common men are more ideal in religion
than in other things, so would be Burns. He who lent the
colours of his fancy to common things, would not withhold
them from divine. Something — he knew not what — he would
exact of man — more impressively reverential than anything
he is wont to offer to God, or perhaps can offer in the way of
institution — in temples made with hands. The heartfelt
adoration always has a grace for him — in the silent bosom —
in the lonely cottage — in any place where circumstances are
a pledge of its reality ; but the moment it ceases to be heart-
felt, and visibly so, it loses his respect, it seems as profanation.

174 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" Mine is the religion of the breast ; " and if it be not, what is
it worth ? But it must also revive a right spirit within us ;
and there may be gratitude for goodness without such change
as is required of us in the gospel. He was too buoyant with
immortal spirit within him, not to credit its immortal destina-
tion ; he was too thoughtful in his human love not to feel how
different must be our affections if they are towards flowers
which the blast of death may wither, or towards spirits which
are but beginning to live in our sight, and are gathering good
and evil here for an eternal life. Burns believed that by his
own unassisted understanding, and his own unassisted heart,
he saw and felt those great truths, forgetful of this great truth,
that he had been taught them in the Written Word. Had all
he learned in the " auld clay biggin " become a blank — all
the knowledge inspired into his heart during the evenings,
when " the sire turned o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, the big ha'-
bible, ance his father's pride," how little or how much would
he then have known of God and Immortality? In that
delusion he shared more or less with one and all — whether
poets or philosophers — who have put their trust in natural
Theology. As to the glooms in which his sceptical reason
had been involved, they do not seem to have been so thick —
so dense — as in the case of men without number who have by
the blessing of God become true Christians. Of his levities
on certain celebrations of religious rites, we before ventured
an explanation ; and while it is to be lamented that he did not
more frequently dedicate the genius that shed so holy a lustre
over "The Cottar's Saturday Night," to the service of religion,
let it be remembered how few poets have done so — alas I too
few — that he, like his tuneful brethren, must often have been
deterred by a sense of his own unworthiness from approaching
its awful mysteries — and above all, that he was called to his
account before he had attained his thoughtful prime.

And now that we are approaching the close of our Memoir,
it may be well for a little while clearly to consider Burns's
position in this world of ours, where we humans often find
ourselves, we cannot tell how, in strange positions; and where
there are on all hands so many unintelligible things going on,
that in all languages an active existence is assumed of such
powers as Chance, Fortune, and Fate. Was he more unhappy
than the generality of gifted men? In what did that un-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 175

happiness consist ? How far was it owing to himself or
others ?

We have seen that up to early manhood his life was
virtuous, and therefore must have been happy — that by
magnanimously enduring a hard lot, he made it veritably
a light one — and that though subject "to a constitutional
melancholy or hypochondriasm that made him fly to soli-
tude," he enjoyed the society of his own, humble sphere
with proportionate enthusiasm, and even then derived deep
delight from his genius. That genius quickly waxed strong,
and very suddenly he was in full power as a poet. No sooner
was passion indulged than it prevailed — and he who had so
often felt during his abstinent sore-toiled youth that " a blink
of rest's a sweet enjoyment," had now often to rue the self-
brought trouble that banishes rest even from the bed of labour,
whose sleep would otherwise be without a dream. " I have
for some time been pining under secret wretchedness, from
causes which you pretty well know — the pang of disappoint-
ment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse,
which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when
attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the
vagaries of the Muse." These agonies had a well-known
particular cause, but his errors were frequent, and to his own
eyes flagrant — yet he was no irreligious person — and ex-
claimed : " Oh ! thou great, unknown Power ! thou Almighty
God I who hast lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed
me with immortality ! I have frequently wandered from that
order and regularity necessary for the perfection of thy works,
yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me." What signified
it to him that he was then very poor ? The worst evils of
poverty are moral evils, and them he then knew not ; nay, in
that school he was trained to many virtues, which might not
have been so conspicuous even in his noble nature, but for
that severest nurture. Shall we ask, what signified it to him
that he was very poor to the last ? Alas ! it signified much ;
for when a poor man becomes a husband and a father, a new
heart is created within him, and he often finds himself
trembling in fits of unendurable, because unavailing fears.
Of such anxieties Bums suffered much ; yet better men than
Burns — better because sober and more religious — have
suffered far more ; nor in their humility and resignation did

176 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

they say even unto themselves " that God had given their
share." His worst sufferings had their source in a region
impenetrable to the visitations of mere worldly calamities ; and
might have been even more direful, had his life basked in the
beams of fortune, in place of being chilled in its shade. " My
mind my kingdom is " — few men have had better title to make
that boast than Burns ; but sometimes raged there plus quam
civilia bella — and on the rebellious passions, no longer
subjects, at times it seemed as if he cared not to impose
peace.

Why, then, such clamour about his condition — such outcry
about his circumstances — such horror of his Excisemanship ?
Why should Scotland, on whose " brow shame is ashamed to
sit," hang down her head when bethinking her of how she
treated him ? Hers the glory of having produced him ; where
lies the blame of his penury, his soul's trouble, his living
body's emaciation, its untimely death ?

His country cried, " All hail, mine own inspired Bard ! "
and his heart was in heaven. But heaven on earth is a mid-
region not unvisited by storms. Divine indeed must be the
descending light, but the ascending gloom may be dismal ; in
imagination's airy realms the Poet cannot forget he is a Man
— his passions pursue him thither — and " that mystical roof
fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to them
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." The
primeval curse is felt through all the regions of being ; and
he who, in the desire of fame having merged all other desires,
finds himself on a sudden in its blaze, is disappointed of his
spirit's corresponding transport, without which it is but a
glare ; and remembering the sweet calm of his obscurity, when
it was enlivened, not disturbed by scaling aspirations, would
fain fly back to its secluded shades, and be again his own
lowly natural self in the privacy of his own humble birth-
place. Something of this kind happened to Burns. He was
soon sick of the dust and din that attended him on his illumined
path ; and felt that he had been happier at Mossgiel than he
ever was in the Metropolis — when, but to relieve his heart of
its pathos, he sung in the solitary field to the mountain daisy,
than when, to win applause, on the crowded street he chanted
in ambitious strains —

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 177

" Edina ! Scotia's darling seat !

All hail thy palaces and towers,
Where once beneath a monarch's feet

Sat legislation's sovereign powers !
From marking wildly scatter'd flow'rs,

As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the lingering hours,

I shelter in thy honour'd shade."

He returned to liis natural condition when he settled at
Ellisland. Nor can we see what some have seen, any strong
desire in him after preferment to a higher sphere. Such
thoughts sometimes must have entered his mind, but they
found no permanent dwelling there ; and he fell back, not
only without pain, but with more than pleasure, on all the
remembrances of his humble life. He resolved to pursue it in
the same scenes, and the same occupations, and to continue to
be what he had always been — a Farmer.

And why should the Caledonian Hunt have wished to divert
or prevent him ? Why should Scotland ? What patronage,
pray tell us, ought the Million and Two Thirds to have
bestowed on their poet? With five hundred pounds in the
pockets of his buckskin breeches, perhaps he was about as
rich as yourself — and then he had a mine — which we hope you
have too — in his brain. Something no doubt might have been
done for him, and if you insist that something should, we are
not in the humour of argumentation, and shall merely observe
that the opportunities to serve him were somewhat narrowed
by the want of special preparation for any profession ; but
supposing that nobody thought of promoting him, it was simply
because everybody was thinking of getting promoted himself;
and though selfishness is very odious, not more so surely in
Scotsmen than in other people, except indeed that more is
expected from them on account of their superior intelligence
and virtue.

Burns's great calling here below was to illustrate the pea-
sant life of Scotland. Ages may pass without another arising
fit for that task ; meanwhile the whole pageant of Scottish life
has passed away without a record. Let him remain, therefore,
in the place which best fits him for the task, though it may
not be the best for his personal comfort. If an individual can

VOL. VII. M

178 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

serve his country at the expense of his comfort, he must, and
others should not hinder him ; if self-sacrifice is required of
him, they must not be blamed for permitting it. Burns fol-
lowed his calling to the last, with more lets and hindrances
than the friends of humanity could have wished ; but with a
power that might have been weakened by his removal from
what he loved and gloried in — by the disruption of his heart
from its habits, and the breaking up of that custom which with
many men becomes second nature, but which with him was
corroboration and sanctification of the first, both being but one
agency — its products how beautiful ! Like the flower and
fruit of a tree that grows well only in its own soil, and by its
own river.

But a Ganger ! What do we say to that ? Was it not
most unworthy ? We ask, unworthy what ? You answer, his
genius. But who expects the employments by which men
live to be entirely worthy of their genius — congenial with
their dispositions — suited to the structure of their souls ? It
sometimes happens — but far oftener not — rarely in the case
of poets — and most rarely of all in the case of such a poet as
Burns. It is a law of nature that the things of the world
come by honest industry, and that genius is its own reward,
in the pleasure of its exertions and its applause. But who
made Burns a gauger ? Himself. It was his own choice.
" I have been feeling all the various rotations and movements
within respecting the excise," he writes to Aiken soon after
the Kilmarnock edition. " There are many things plead
strongly against it," he adds, but these were all connected with
his unfortunate private affairs — to the calling itself he had no
repugnance — what he most feared was " the uncertainty of
getting soon into business." To Graham of Fintry he writes,
a year after the Edinburgh edition : " Ye know> I dare say, of
an application I lately made to your Board to be admitted an
officer of excise. I have according to form been examined by
a supervisor, and to-day I gave in two certificates, with a
request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I suc-
ceed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronising
friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and atten-
tion as an officer, I dare engage for ; but with anything like
business, except manual labour, I am totally unacquainted. .
I know, Sir, that to need your goodness is to have a claim on

THE GENIUS AXD CHARACTER OF BURXS. 179

it ; may I therefore beg your patronage to forward me in this
affair, till I be appointed to a division, where, by the lielp of
rigid economy, I will try to support that independence so dear
to my soul, but which has been too often distant from my
situation." To Miss Chalmers he writes : " You will condemn
me for the next step I have taken. I have entered into the
excise. I have chosen this, my dear friend, after mature
deliberation. The question is not at what door of fortune's
palace we shall enter in, but what door does she open for us ?
I got this without any hanging on, or mortifying solicitation :
it is immediate support, and though poor in comparison of the
last eighteen months of my existence, it is plenty in compari-
son of all my preceding life, besides the Commissioners are
some of them my acquaintance, and all of them my firm
friends." To Dr Moore he writes : " There is still one thing
would make me quite easy. I have an excise officer's com-
mission, and I live in the midst of a country division. If I
were very sanguine I might hope that some of my great
patrons might procure me a treasury warrant for supervisor,
surveyor-general, &c." It is needless to multiply quotations
to the same effect. Burns with his usual good sense took into
account, in his own estimate of such a calling, not his genius,
which had really nothing to do with it, but all his early cir-
cumstances, and his present prospects — nor does it seem at
any time to have been a source of much discomfort to himself;
on the contrary, he looks forward to an increase of its emolu-
ments with hope and satisfaction. We are not now speaking
of the disappointment of his hopes of rising in the profession,
but of the profession itself. "A supervisor's income varies,"
he says, in a letter to Heron of that ilk, " from about a hundred
and twenty to two hundred a-year ; but the business is an
incessant drudgery, and would be nearly a complete bar to
every species of literary pursuit. The moment I am appointed
supervisor, I may be nominated on the collector's list; and
this is always a business purely of political patronage. A
Collectorship varies much, from better than two hundred a-year
to near a thousand. They also come forward by precedency
on the list ; and have, besides a handsome income, a life of
complete leisure. A life of literary leisure, with a decent
competency, is the summit of my wishes." With such views,
Burns became a gauger as well as a farmer — we can see no

180 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

degradation in his having done so — no reason why whimper-
ing Cockneys should continually cry " Shame ! shame ! on
Scotland" for having let "Bunns" — as they pronounce him —
adopt his own mode of life. Allan Cunningham informs us that
the officers of excise on the Nith were then a very superior set
of men indeed to those who now ply on the Thames. Burns
saw nothing to despise in honest men who did their duty — he
could pick and choose among them — and you do not imagine
that he was obliged to associate exclusively or intimately with
ushers of the rod. Gaugers are gregarious, but not so gre-
garious as barristers and bagmen. The Club is composed of
gauger, shopkeeper, schoolmaster, surgeon, retired merchant,
minister, assistant-and-successor, cidevant militia captain, one
of the heroes of the Peninsula with a wooden leg, and haply a
horse marine. These are the ordinary members ; but among
the honorary you find men of high degree, squires of some
thousands, and baronets of some hundreds a-year. The rise
in that department has been sometimes so sudden as to
astonish the unexcised. A gauger, of a very few years' stand-
ing, has been known, after a quarter's supervisorship, to ascend
the collector's, and, ere this planet had performed another
revolution round the sun, the Comptroller's chair — from which
he might well look down on the Chancellor of England.

Let it not be thought that we are running counter to the
common feeling in what we have now been saying, nor blame
us for speaking in a tone of levity on a serious subject. We
cannot bear to hear people at one hour scorning the distinc-
tions of rank, and acknowledging none but of worth ; and at
another whining for the sake of worth without rank, and esti-
mating a man's happiness — which is something more than his
respectability — by the amount of his income, or according to
the calling from which it is derived. Such persons cannot
have read Burns. Or do they think that such sentiments as
" The rank is but the guinea stamp, the man's the gowd for a'
that," are all very fine in verse, but have no place in the prose
of life — no application among men of sense to its concerns ?
But in how many departments have not men to addict them-
selves almost all their lives to the performance of duties, which,
merely as acts or occupations, are in themselves as unintel-
lectual as polishing a pin ? Why, a pin-polisher may be a
poet — who rounds its head an orator^— who sharpens its point

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 181

a metaphysician. Wait his time, and you hear the first sing-
ing like a nightingale in the autumnal season ; the second
roaring like a bull, and no mistake ; the third, in wandering
mazes lost, like a prisoner trying to thread the Cretan laby-
rinth without his clue. Let a man but have something that
he must do or starve, nor be nice about its nature ; and be ye
under no alarm about the degradation of his soul. Let him
even be a tailor — nay, that is carrying the principle too far ;
but any other handicraft let him for short hours — ten out of
the eighteen (six he may sleep) for three-score years and ten
assiduously cultivate, or if fate have placed him in a ropery,
doggedly pursue ; and if nature have given him genius, he
will find time to instruct or enchant the world — if but good-
ness, time to benefit it by his example, " though never heard
of half a mile from home."

Who in this country, if you except an occasional states-
man, take their places at once in the highest grade of their
calling ? In the learned professions, what obscurest toil
must not the brightest go through 1 Under what a pres-
sure of mean observances the proudest stoop their heads !
The colour- ensign in a black regiment has risen to be
colonel in the Eifle-brigade. The middy in a gun-brig on
the African station has commanded a three-decker at Tra-
falgar. Through successive grades they must all go — the
armed and the gowned alike ; the great law of advancement
holds among men of noble and of ignoble birth — not with-
out exceptions indeed in favour of family, and of fortune too,
more or less frequent, more or less flagrant — but talent, and
integrity, and honour, and learning, and genius, are not often
heard complaining of foul play — if you deny it, their triumph
is the more glorious, for generally they win the day, and when
they have won it — that is, risen in their profession — what be-
comes of them then ? Soldiers or civilians, they must go
where they are ordered — in obedience to the same great law ;
they appeal to their services when insisting on being sent —
and in some pestilential climate swift death benumbs

" Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre."

It is drudgery to sit six, or eight, or ten hours a-day
as a clerk in the India House ; but Charles Lamb endured

132 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AXD IMAGINATIVE.

it for forty years, not without much headache and heart-
ache too, we dare say ; but Elia shows us how the un-
wearied flame of genius can please itself by playing in the
thickest gloom — how fancy can people dreariest vacancy
with rarest creatures holding communion in quaintest con-
verse with the finest feelings of the thoughtful heart — how
eyes dim with poring all day on a ledger, can glisten through
the evening, and far on into the night, with those alternate
visitings of humour and of pathos that for a while come and
go as if from regions in the spirit separate and apart, but ere
long by their quiet blending persuade us to believe that their
sources are close adjacent, and that the streams, when left to
themselves, often love to unite their courses, and to flow on
together with merry or melancholy music, just as we choose
to think it, as smiles may be the order of the hour, or as we
may be commanded by the touch of some unknown power
within us to indulge the luxury of tears.

Why, then, we ask again, such lamentation for the fate
of Burns ? Why should not he have been left to make his
own way in life like other men gifted or ungifted ? A man of
great genius in the prime of life is poor. But his poverty
did not for any long time necessarily affect the welfare or
even comfort of the poet, and therefore created no obligation
on his country to interfere with his lot. He was born and
bred in a humble station ; but such as it was, it did not
impede his culture, fame, or service to his people, or, rightly
considered, his own happiness ; let him remain in it, or leave it
as he will and can, but there was no obligation on others to take
him out of it. He had already risen superior to circumstances
— and would do so still ; his glory availed much in having
conquered them ; give him better, and the peculiar species
of his glory will depart. Give him better, and it may be,
that he achieves no more glory of any kind ; for nothing
is more uncertain than the effects of circumstances on char-
acter. Some men, we know, are specially adapted to adverse
circumstances, rising thereby as the kite rises to the adverse
breeze, and falling when the adversity ceases. Such was pro-
bably Burns's natiire — his genius being piqued to activity by
the contradictions of his fortune.

Suppose that some generous rich man had accidentally be-
come acquainted with the lad Robert Burns, and grieving to

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 183

think that such a rnind should continue boorish among boors,
had, much to his credit, taken him from the plough, sent him
to College, and given him a complete education. Doubtless
he would have excelled ; for he was " quick to learn, and wise
to know." But he would not have been SCOTLAND'S BURNS.
The prodigy had not been exhibited of a poet of the first
order in that rank of life. It is an instructive spectacle for
the world, and let the instruction take effect by the con-
tinuance of the spectacle for its natural period. Let the
poet work at that calling which is clearly meant for him
— he is " native and endued to the element" of his situation
— there is no appearance of his being alien or strange to it
— he professes proudly that his ambition is to illustrate the
very life he exists in — his happiest moments are in doing so
— and he is reconciled to it by its being thus blended with the
happiest exertions of his genius. We must look at his lot as
a whole — from beginning to end — and so looked at, it was not
unsuitable, but the reverse ; for as to its later afflictions, they
were not such as of necessity belonged to it, — were partly
owing to himself, partly to others, partly to evil influences
peculiar not to his calling, but to the times.

If Burns had not been prematurely cut off, it is not to be
doubted that he would have got promotion, either by favour,
or in the ordinary course ; and had that happened, he would
not have had much cause for complaint, nor would he have
complained that like other men he had to wait events, and
reach competence or affluence by the usual routine. He
would, like other men, have then looked back on his narrow
circumstances, and their privations, as conditions which, from
the first, he knew must precede preferment, and would no more
have thought such hardships peculiar to his lot, than the first-
lieutenant of a frigate, the rough work he had had to perform, on
small pay, and no delicate mess between decks, when he was a
mate, though then perhaps a better seaman than the Commodore.

With these sentiments we do not expect that all who hon-
our this Me.moir with a perusal will entirely sympathise ; but
imperfect as it is, we have no fear of its favourable reception
by our friends, on the score of its pervading spirit. As to the
poor creatures who purse up their unmeaning mouths — trying,
too, without the necessary feature, to sport the supercilious
— and instead of speaking daggers, pip pins against the

184 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

"Scotch" — they are just the very vermin who used to bite
Burns, and one would pause for a moment in the middle of a
sentence to impale a dozen of them on one's pen, if they hap-
pened to crawl across one's paper. But our Southern brethren
— the noble English — who may not share these sentiments*of
ours — will think "more in sorrow than in anger" of Burns's
fate, and for his sake will be loth to blame his mother land.
They must think with a sigh of their own Bloomfield, and
Clare ! Our Burns, indeed, was a greater far ; but they will
call to mind the calamities of their men of genius, of dis-
coverers in science, who advanced the wealth of nations, and
died of hunger — of musicians who taught the souls of the
people in angelic harmonies to commerce with heaven, and
dropt unhonoured into a hole of earth — of painters who glori-
fied the very sunrise and sunset, and were buried in places for
a long time obscure as the shadow of oblivion— and surpass-
ing glory and shame of all —

" OF MIGHTY POETS IN THEIR MISERY DEAD."

We never think of the closing years of Burns's life, without
feeling what not many seem to have felt, that much more of their
unhappiness is to be attributed to the most mistaken notion he
had unfortunately taken up, of there being something degrad-
ing in genius in writing for money, than perhaps to all other
causes put together, certainly far more than to his profes-
sional calling, however unsuitable that may have been to a
poet. By persisting in a line of conduct pursuant to that
persuasion, he kept himself in perpetual poverty ; and though
it is not possible to blame him severely for such a fault, origi-
nating as it did in the generous enthusiasm of the poetical
character, a most serious fault it was, and its consequences
were most lamentable. So far from being an extravagant
man, in the common concerns of life he observed a proper par-
simony ; and they must have been careless readers indeed,
both of his prose and verse, who have taxed him with lending
the colours of his genius to set off with a false lustre that pro-
fligate profuseness, habitual only with the selfish, and irre-
concilable with any steadfast domestic virtue.

" To oatch dame Fortune's golden smile,

Assiduous wait upon her ;

And gather gear by every wile

That's justified by honour :

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 185

Not for to hide it in a hedge,

Nor for a train attendant ;
BtJT FOR THE GLORIOUS PRIVILEGE

OF BEING INDEPENDENT."

Such was the advice he gave to a young friend in 1786, and
in 1789, in a letter to Kobert Ainslie, he says : " Your poets,
spendthrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend, forsooth,
to crack their jokes on prudence — but 'tis a squalid vagabond
glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money
matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respect-
ing character. I have no objections to prefer prodigality to
avarice, in some few instances : but I appeal to your own ob-
servation if you have not often met with the same disingenu-
ousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegra-
tive depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of pro-
fusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony." Similar
-sentiments will recur to every one familiar with his writings
all through them till the very end. His very songs are full
of them — many of the best impressively preaching in sweetest
numbers industry and thrift. So was he privileged to indulge
in poetic transports— ^to picture, without reproach, the genial
hours in the poor man's life, alas I but too unfrequent, and
•therefore to be enjoyed with a lawful revelry, at once obedi-
•ent to the iron-tongued knell that commands it to cease. So
was he justified in scorning the close-fisted niggardliness that
forces up one finger after another, as if chirted by a screw, and
then shows to the pauper a palm with a doit. " Take care of
the pennies, and the pounds will take care «f themselves," is
an excellent maxim ; but we do not look for illustrations of it
in poetry ; perhaps it is too importunate in prose. Full-
grown moralists and political economists, eager to promote
the virtue and the wealth of nations, can study it scientifically
in Adam Smith — but the boy must have two buttons to his
fob and a clasp, who would seek for it in Kobert Burns. The
bias of poor human nature seems to lean sufficiently to self,
and to require something to balance it the other way ; what
more effectual than the touch of a poet's finger. We cannot
relieve every wretch we meet — yet if we " take care of the
pennies," how shall the hunger that beseeches us on the
street get a bap ? If we let " the pounds take care of them-
selves," how shall we answer to God at the great day of
judgment — remembering how often we had let "unpitied

186 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

want retire to die" — the white-faced widow pass us unre-
lieved, in faded weeds that seemed as if they were woven of
dust?

In his poetry, Burns taught love and pity ; in his life he
practised them. Nay, though seldom free from the pressure
of poverty, so ignorant was h'e of the science of duty, that to
the very last he was a notorious giver of alms. Many an im-
postor must have preyed on his meal-girnel at Ellisland ; per-
haps the old sick sailor was one, who nevertheless repaid
several weeks' board and lodging with a cutter one-foot keel,
and six pound burthen, which young Bobby Burns — such is
this uncertain world — grat one Sabbath to see a total wreck
far off in the mid-eddies of the mighty Nith. But the idiot
who got his dole from the poet's own hand, as often as he
chose to come churming up the Vennel, he was no impostor,
and though he had lost his wits, retained a sense of gratitude,
and returned a blessing in such phrase as they can articu-
late " whose lives are hidden with God."

How happened it, then, that such a man was so neglectful
of his wife and family, as to let their hearts often ache while
he was in possession of a productive genius that might so
easily have procured for them all the necessaries and conve-
niences, and some even of the luxuries of life ? By the Edin-
burgh edition of his poems, and the copyright to Creech, he
had made a little fortune, and we know how well he used it.
From the day of his final settlement with that money- making,
story-telling, magisterial bibliopole, who rejoiced for many
years in the name of Provost — to the week before his death,
his poetry, and that too sorely against his will, brought him
in — ten pounds ! Had he thereby annually earned fifty — what
happy faces at that fireside ! how different that household I
comparatively how calm that troubled life 1

All the poetry, by which he was suddenly made so famous,
had been written, as you know, without the thought of money
having so much as flitted across his mind. The delight of
embodying in verse the visions of his inspired fancy — of
awakening the sympathies of the few rustic auditors in his ,
own narrow circle, whose hearts he well knew throbbed
with the same emotions that are dearest to humanity all over
the wide world— that had been at first all in all to him— the
young poet exulting in his power and in the proof of his power-

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 187

till as the assurance of his soul in its divine endowment waxed
stronger and stronger he beheld his country's muse with the
holly-wreath in her hand, and bowed his head to receive the
everlasting halo. " And take thou this she smiling said " —
that smile was as a seal set on his fame for ever — and " in the
auld clay biggin " he was happy to the full measure of his
large heart's desire. His poems grew up like flowers before
his tread — they came out like singing-birds from the thickets
— they grew like clouds on the sky — there they were in their
beauty, and he hardly knew they were his own — so quiet had
been their creation, so like the process of nature among her
material loveliness, in the season of spring when life is again
evolved out of death, and the renovation seems as if it would
never more need the Almighty hand, in that immortal union
of earth and heaven.

You will not think these words extravagant, if you have
well considered the ecstasy in which the spirit of the poet was
lifted up above the carking cares of his toilsome life, by the
consciousness of the genius that had been given him to
idealise it. " My heart rejoiced in Nature's joy " he says,
remembering the beautiful happiness of a summer day re-
posing on the woods ; and from that line we know how
intimate had been his communion with Nature long before
he had indited to her a single lay of love. And still as he
wandered among her secret haunts he thought of her poets —
with a fearful hope that he might one day be of the number —
and most of all of Fergusson and Eamsay, because they be-
longed to Scotland, were Scottish in all their looks, and all
their language, in the very habits of their bodies, and in the
very frame of their souls — humble names now indeed com-
pared with his own, but to the end sacred in his generous and
grateful bosom ; for at " The Farmer's Ingle" his imagination
had kindled into the " Cottar's Saturday Night ; " in the
" Gentle Shepherd " he had seen many a happy sight that
had furnished the matter, we had almost said inspired the
emotion, of some of his sweetest and most gladsome songs.
In his own everyday working world he walked as a man con-
tented with the pleasure arising in his mere human heart ;
but that world the poet could purify and elevate at will into
a celestial sphere, still lightened by Scottish skies, still
melodious with Scottish streams, still inhabited by Scottish

188 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

life — sweet as reality, dear as truth, yet visionary as fiction's
dream, and felt to be in part the work of his own creation.
Proudly, therefore, on that poorest soil the peasant poet bade
speed the plough — proudly he stooped his shoulders to the
sack of corn, itself a cart-load — proudly he swept the scythe
that swathed the flowery herbage — proudly he grasped the
sickle — but tenderly too he " turned the weeder clips aside,
and spared the symbol dear."

Well was he entitled to say to his friend Aiken, in the
dedicatory stanza of the Cottar's Saturday Night, —

" My loved, my honour'd, much respected friend !
No mercenary "bard his homage pays ;
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end,
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise."

All that he hoped to make by the Kilmarnock edition -was
twenty pounds to carry him to the West Indies, heedless of
the yellow fever. At Edinburgh fortune, hand in hand with
fame, descended on the bard in a shower of gold ; but he had
not courted "the smiles of the fickle goddess," and she soon
wheeled away with scornful laughter out of his sight for ever
and a day. His poetry had been composed in the fields, with
not a plack in the pocket of the poet ; and we verily believe
that he thought no more of the circulating medium than did
the poor mouse in whose fate he saw his own — but more,
unfortunate 1

" Still thou art blest compared wi' me !

The present only toucheth thee :

But och ! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear !

And forward, though I canna see,
I guess and /ear."

At Ellisland his colley bore on his collar, " Eobert Burns,
poet ; " and on his removal to Dumfries, we know that he
indulged the dream of devoting all his leisure time to poetry
— a dream how imperfectly realised! Poor Johnson, an,
old Edinburgh friend, begged in his poverty help to his
"Museum," and Thomson, not even an old Edinburgh
acquaintance, in his pride — no ignoble pride — solicited it
for his " Collection ; " and, fired by the thought of embellishing
the body of Scottish song, he spurned the gentle and guarded

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 189

proffer of remuneration in money, and set to work as he had
done of yore in the spirit of love, assured from sweet experience
that inspiration was its own reward. Sell a song ! — as well
sell a wildflower plucked from a spring-bank at sunrise. The
one pervading feeling does indeed expand itself in a song, like
a wildflower in the breath and dew of morning, which before
was but a bud, and we are touched with a new sense of beauty
at the full disclosure. As a song should always be simple,
the flower we liken it to is the lily or the violet. The leaves
of the lily are white, but it is not a monotonous whiteness —
the leaves of the violet, sometimes " dim as the lids of Cythe-
rea's eyes" — for Shakespeare has said so — are, when well and
happy, blue as her eyes themselves, while they looked lan-
guishingly on Adonis. Yet the exquisite colour seems of dif-
ferent shades in its rarest richness ; and even so as lily or
•violet shiftingiy the same, should be a song in its simplicity,
variously tinged with fine distinctions of the one colour of that
pervading feeling — now brighter, now dimmer, as open and
shut the valves of that mystery, the heart. Sell a song ! No
— no — said Burns — " You shall have hundreds for nothing —
and we shall all sail down the stream of time together, now
to merry, and now to sorrowful music, and the dwellers on its
banks, as we glide by, shall bless us by name, and call us of
the Immortals."

It was in this way that Burns was beguiled by the remem-
brance of the inspirations of his youthful prime, into the belief
that it would be absolutely sordid to write songs for money ;
and thus he continued for years to enrich others by the choicest
products of his genius, himself remaining all the while, alas 1
too poor. The richest man in the town was not more regular
in the settlement of his accounts, but sometimes on Saturday
nights he had not wherewithal to pay the expenses of the
week's subsistence, and had to borrow a pound-note. He was
more ready to lend one, and you know he died out of debt.
But his family suffered privations it is sad to think of — though
to be sure the children were too young to grieve, and soon fell
asleep, and Jean was a cheerful creature, strong at heart, and
proud of her famous Robin, the Poet of Scotland, whom the
whole world admired, but she alone loved, and, so far from
ever upbraiding him, welcomed him at all hours to her arms
and to her heart. It is all very fine talking about the delight

190 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

he enjoyed in the composition of his matchless lyrics, and tl
restoration of all those faded and broken songs of other ages,
burnished by a few touches of his hand to surpassing beauty ;
but what we lament is, that with the Poet it was not " No
song, no supper," but " No supper for any song " — that with
an infatuation singular even in the history of the poetic tribe,
he adhered to what he had resolved, in the face of distress
which, had he chosen it, he could have changed into comfort,
and by merely doing as all others did, have secured a com-
petency to his wife and children. Infatuation ! It is too
strong a word — therefore substitute some other weaker in
expression of blame ; nay, let it be — if so you will — some
gentle term of praise and of pity ; for in this most selfish world,
'tis so rare to be of self utterly regardless, that the scorn of.
pelf may for a moment be thought a virtue, even when indulged
to the loss of the tenderly beloved. Yet the great natural
affections have their duties superior over all others between
man and man ; and he who sets them aside, in the generosity
or the joy of genius, must frequently feel that by such derelic-
tion he has become amenable to conscience, and in hours when
enthusiasm is tamed by reflection, cannot escape the tooth of
remorse.

How it would have kindled all his highest powers, to havo
felt assured that by their exercise in the Poet's own vocation
he could not only keep want from his door " with stern alarum
banishing sweet sleep," but clothe, lodge, and board "the wife
and weans," as sximptuously as if he had been an absolute
supervisor ! In one article alone was he a man of expensive
habits — it was quite a craze with him to have his Jean dressed
genteelly — for she had a fine figure, and as she stepped along
the green, you might have taken the matron for a maid, so
light her foot, so animated her bearing, as if care had never
imposed any burden on her not ungraceful shoulders heavier
than the milk-pail she had learned at Mossgiel to bear on her
head. 'Tis said that she was the first in her rank at Dumfries
to sport a gingham gown, and Burns's taste in ribbons had
been instructed by the rainbow. To such a pitch of extrava-
gance had he carried his craze that, when dressed for church,
Mrs Burns, it was conjectured, could not have had on her person
much less than the value of two pounds sterling money ; and
the boys, from their dress and demeanour, you might have

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 191

mistaken for a gentleman's sons. Then he resolved they should
have the best education going ; and the Hon. the Provost, the
Bailies, and Town Council, he petitioned thus : " The literary-
taste and liberal spirit of your good town have so ably filled
the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very
great object for a parent to have his children educated in them ;
still, to me a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted
income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the
high school fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon
me. Some years ago your good town did me the honour of
making me an honorary burgess, will you then allow me to
request, that this mark of distinction may extend so far as to
put me on a footing of a real freeman in the schools ? " Had
not "his income been so stinted," we know how he would
have spent it.

Then the world — the gracious and grateful world — " won-
dered and of her wondering found no end," how and why it
happened that Burns was publishing no more poems. What
was he about ? Had his genius deserted him ? Was the vein
wrought out ? of fine ore indeed, but thin, and now there was
but rubbish. His contributions to Johnson were not much
known, and but some six of his songs in the first half-part of
Thomson appeared during his life. But what if he had him-
self given to the world, through the channel of the regular
trade, and for his own behoof, in Parts, or all at once, THOSE
Two HUNDRED AND FIFTY SONGS — new and old — original and
restored — with all those disquisitions, annotations, and ever
so many more, themselves often very poetry indeed — what
would the world have felt, thought, said, and done then? She
would at least not have believed that the author of " The Cot-
tar's Saturday Night " was — a drunkard. And what would
Burns have felt, thought, said, and done then ? He would
have felt that he was turning his divine gift to a sacred pur-
pose— he would have thought well of himself, and in that just
appreciation there would have been peace — he would have
said thousands on thousands of high and noble sentiments in
discourses and in letters, with an untroubled voice and a steady
pen, the sweet persuasive eloquence of the happy — he would
have done greater things than it had before entered into his
heart to conceive — his drama of " The Bruce " would have
come forth magnificent from an imagination elevated by the

192 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

joy that was in his heart — his " Scottish Georgics " woulc
have written themselves, and would have been pure Virgil
— " Tale upon Tale," each a day's work or a week's, we
have taken the shine out of " Tarn o' Shanter."

And here it is incumbent on us to record our sentiments
regarding Mr Thomson's conduct towards Burns in his worst
extremity, which has not only been assailed by " anonymous
scribblers," whom, perhaps he may rightly regard with con-
tempt ; but as he says in his letter to our esteemed friend, the
ingenious and energetic Eobert Chambers, to " his great sur-
prise, by some writers who might have been expected to pos-
sess sufficient judgment to see the matter in its true light."

In the " melancholy letter received through Mrs Hyslop,"
as Mr Thomson well calls it, dated April, Burns writes :
" Alas, my dear Thomson, I fear it will be some time before
I tune my lyre again. ' By Babel streams I have sat and
wept ' almost ever since I wrote you last (in February when
he thanked Mr Thomson for ' a handsome elegant present to
Mrs B.,' — we believe a worsted shawl). I have only known
existence by the pressure of the heavy hand of sickness, and
have counted time but by the repercussions of pain. Kheu^
matism, cold, and fever have formed to me a terrible combina-
tion. I close my eyes in misery, and open them without
hope." In his answer to that letter, dated 4th of May, Mr
Thomson writes : " I need not tell you, my good Sir, what con-, (
cern your last gave me, and how much I sympathise in your
sufferings. But do not, I beseech you, give yourself up to
despondency, nor speak the language of despair. The vigour
of your constitution I trust will soon set you on your feet
again ; and then it is to be hoped you will see the wisdom of tak-
ing due care of a life so valuable to your family, to your friends,
and to the world. Trusting that your next will bring agreeable
accounts of your convalescence, and good -spirits, I remain
with sincere regard, yours." This is kind as it should be ;
and the advice given to Burns is good, though perhaps, under
the circumstances, it might just as well have been spared.
In a subsequent letter without date, Burns writes : " I have
great hopes that the genial influence of the approaching
summer will set me to rights, but as yet I cannot boast of re-
turning health. I have now reason to believe that my com-
plaint is a flying gout : a sad business." Then comes that

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 193

most heart-rending letter, in which the dying Burns in terror
of a jail implores the loan of five pounds — and the well-known
reply. "Ever since I received your melancholy letter by
Mrs Hyslop, I have been ruminating 'in what manner I could
endeavour to alleviate your sufferings," and so on. Shorter
rumination than of three months might, one would think, have
sufficed to mature some plan for the alleviation of such suffer-
ings, and human ingenuity has been more severely taxed than
it would have been in devising means to carry it into effect.
The recollection of a letter written three years before, when the
Poet was in high health and spirits, needed not to have stayed
his hand. " The fear of offending your independent spirit "
seems a bugbear indeed. " With great pleasure I enclose a
draft for the very sum I had proposed sending ! ! Would I were
CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER but for one day for your
sake!!!"

Josiah Walker, however, to whom Mr Thomson gratefully
refers, says, " A few days before Burns expired he applied to
Mr Thomson for a loan of £5, in a note which showed the
irritable and distracted state of his mind, and his commendable
judgment instantly remitted the precise sum, foreseeing that
had he, at that moment, presumed to exceed that request, he
would have exasperated the irritation and resentment of the
haughty invalid, and done him more injury, by agitating his
passions, than could be repaired by administering more
largely to his wants." Haughty invalid ! Alas ! he was
humble enough now. " After all my boasted independence,
stern necessity compels me to implore you for Jive pounds I "
Call not that a pang of pride. It is the outcry of a wounded
spirit shrinking from the last worst arrow of affliction. In
one breath he implores succour and forgiveness from the man
to whom he had been a benefactor. " Forgive me this earnest-
ness— but the horrors of a jail have made me half-distracted.
FORGIVE ME ! FORGIVE ME I" He asks no gift — he but begs
to borrow — and trusts to the genius God had given him for
ability to repay the loan ; nay, he encloses his last song,
" Fairest Maid on Devon's Banks," as in part payment ! But
oh ! save Kobert Burns from dying in prison. What hauteur !
And with so " haughty an invalid " how shall a musical
brother deal, so as not " to exasperate his irritation and
resentment," and do him "more injury, by agitating his

VOL. VII. N

194 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

passions, than could be repaired by administering more largely
to his wants?" More largely! Faugh! faugh! Foreseeing
that he who was half-mad at the horrors of a jail, would go
wholly mad were ten pounds sent to him instead of five, which
was all " the haughty invalid " had implored, " with com-
mendable judgment," according to Josiah Walker's philosophy
of human life, George Thomson sent " the precise sum I " And
supposing it had gone into the pocket of the merciless haber-
dasher, on what did Josiah Walker think would "the haughty
invalid " have subsisted then — how paid for lodging without
board by the melancholy Solway-side ?

Mr Thomson's champion proceeds to say — " Burns had all
the unmanageable pride of Samuel Johnson, and if the latter
threw away with indignation the new shoes which had been placed
at his chamber door, secretly and collectively by his companions,
the former would have been still more ready to resent any
pecuniary donation with which a single individual, after
his peremptory prohibition, should avowedly have dared to
insult him with." In Boswell we read — "Mr Bateman's
lectures were so excellent that Johnson used to come and get
them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so
extreme, that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared
through them, he saw that his humiliating condition was per-
ceived by the Christ-Church men, and he came no more. He
was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a
pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indig-
nation." Hall, Master of Pembroke, in a note on this passage,
expresses strong doubts of Johnson's poverty at college having
been extreme ; and Crokor, with his usual accuracy, says,
"Authoritatively and circumstantially as this story is told,
there is good reason for disbelieving it altogether. Taylor
was admitted Commoner of Christ- Church, June 27, 1730 ;
Johnson left Oxford six months before." Suppose it true.
Had Johnson found the impudent cub in the act of depositing
the eleemosynary shoes, he infallibly would have knocked
him down with fist or folio as clean as he afterwards did
Osborne. But Mr Thomson was no such cub, nor did he
stand relatively to Burns in the same position as such cub to
Johnson. He owed Burns much money — though Burns would
not allow himself to think so ; and had he expostulated, with
open heart and hand, with the Bard on his obstinate — he

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 195

might have kindly said foolish, and worse than foolish disre-
gard, not only of his own interest, but of the comfort of his
wife and family — had he gone to Dumfries for the sole pur-
pose— who can doubt that " his justice and generosity " would
have been crowned with success ? Who but Josiah Walker
could have said that Burns would have then thought himself
insulted? Eesent a "pecuniary donation " indeed ! What is
a donation ? Johnson tells us, in the words of South : " After
donation there is an absolute change and alienation made of
the property of the thing given ; which being alienated, a man
has no more to do with it than with a thing bought with
another's money." It was Burns who made a donation to
Thomson of a hundred and twenty songs.

All mankind must agree with Mr Lockhart when he says —
" Why Burns, who was of opinion, when he wrote his letter
to Mr Carfrae, that ' no profits were more honourable than
those of the labours of a man of genius,' and whose own
notions of independence had sustained no shock in the receipt
of hundreds of pounds from Creech, should have spurned the
suggestion of pecuniary recompence from Mr Thomson, it is
no easy manner to explain ; nor do I profess to understand
why Mr Thomson took so little pains to argue the matter in
limine with the poet, and convince him that the time which
he himself considered as fairly entitled to be paid for by a
common bookseller, ought of right to be valued and acknow-
ledged by the editor and proprietor of a book containing both
songs and music." We are not so much blaming the back-
wardness of Thomson in the matter of the songs, as we are
exposing the blather of Walker in the story of the shoes. Yet
something there is in the nature' of the whole transaction that
nobody can stomach. We think we have in a great measure
explained how it happened that Burns " spurned the sugges-
tion of pecuniary recompence ; " and bearing our remarks in
mind, look for a moment at the circumstances of the case.
Mr Thomson, in his first letter, September 1792, says, " Profit
is quite a secondary consideration with us, and we are resolved
to spare neither pains nor expense on the publication." " We
shall esteem your poetical assistance a particular favour, be-
sides paying any reasonable price you shall please to demand
for it." Aiid would Robert Burns condescend to receive
money for his contributions to a work in honour of Scotland,

196 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

undertaken by men with whom " profit was quite a secondary
consideration?" Impossible. In July 1793, when Burns had
been for nine months enthusiastically co-operating in a great
national work, and had proved that he would carry it on to a
triumphant close, Mr Thomson writes : " I cannot express
how much I am obliged to you for the exquisite new songs
you are sending me ; but thanks, my friend, are a poor return
for what you have done. As I shall be benefited by the pub-
lication, you must suffer me to enclose a small mark of my
gratitude, and to repeat it afterwards when I find it convenient.
Do not return it — for BY HEAVEN if you do, our correspondence
is at an end." A bank-note for five pounds 1 "' In the name
of the prophet — FIGS ! " Burns, with a proper feeling, re-
tained the trifle, but forbade the repetition of it ; and every-
body must see, at a glance, that such a man could not have
done otherwise — for it would have been most degrading indeed
had he shown himself ready to accept a five-pound note when
it might happen to suit the convenience of an Editor. His
domicile was not in Grub Street.

Mr Walker, still further to soothe Mr Thomson's feelings,
sent him an extract from a letter of Lord Woodhouselee's :
" I am glad that you have embraced the occasion which lay
in your way of doing full justice to Mr George Thomson, who
I agree with you in thinking, was most harshly and illiberally
treated by an anonymous dull calumniator. I have always
regarded Mr Thomson as a man of great worth and most
respectable character ; and I have every reason to believe
that poor Burns felt himself as much indebted to his good coun-
sels and active friendship as a man, as the public is sensible he was
to his good taste and judgment as a critic." Mr Thomson, in
now giving, for the first time, this extract to the public, says :
" Of the unbiassed opinion of such a highly respectable gentle-
man and accomplished writer as Lord Woodhouselee, I cer-
tainly feel not a little proud. It is of itself more than sufficient
to silence the calumnies by which I have been assailed, first
anonymously, and afterwards, to my great surprise, by some
writers who might have been expected to possess sufficient
judgment to see the matter in its true light." He has reason
to feel proud of his Lordship's good opinion, and on the ground
of his private character he deserved it. But the assertions
contained in the extract have no bearing whatever on the

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 107

question, and they are entirely untrue. Lord Woodhouselee
could have had no authority for believing " that poor Burns felt
himself indebted to Mr Thomson's good counsels and active
friendship as a man." Mr Thomson, a person of no influence
or account, had it not in his power to exert any " active friend-
ship " for Burns ; and as to " good counsels," it is not to be
believed for a moment that a modest man like him, who had
never interchanged a word with Burns, would have presumed
to become his Mentor. This is putting him forward in the
high character of Burns's benefactor, not only in his worldly
concerns, but in his moral well-being ; a position which of
himself he never could have dreamt of claiming, and from
which he must, on a moment's consideration, with pain inex-
pressible recoil. Neither is " the public sensible " that Burns
was " indebted to his good taste and judgment as a critic."
The public kindly regard Mr Thomson, and think that in his
correspondence with Burns he makes a respectable figure.
But Burns repudiated most of his critical strictures ; and the
worthy Clerk of the Board of Trustees does indeed frequently
fall into sad mistakes, concerning alike poetry, music, and
painting. Lord Woodhouselee's "unbiassed opinion," then,
so far from being of itself " sufficient to silence the calumnies
of ignorant assailants, &c.," is not worth a straw.

Mr Thomson, in his five-pound letter, asks — " Pray, my
good sir, is it not possible for you to muster a volume of poetry?'1
Why, with the assistance of Messrs Johnson and Thomson, it
would have been possible ; and then Burns might have called
in his " Jolly Beggars." " If too much trouble to you," con-
tinues Mr Thomson, " in the present state of your health,
some literary friend might be found here who would select
and arrange your manuscripts, and take upon him the task of
editor. In the mean time it could be advertised to be published
by subscription. Do not shun this mode of obtaining the
value of your labour ; remember Pope published the Iliad by
subscription." Why, had not Burns published his own poems
by subscription ! All this seems the strangest mockery ever
heard of; yet there can be no doubt that it was written not
only with a serious face, but with a kind heart. But George
Thomson at that time was almost as poor a man as Robert
Burns. Allan Cunningham, a man of genius and virtue, in
his interesting Life of Burns, has, in his characteristic straight-

198 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

forward style, put the matter — in as far as it regards the money
remittance — in its true light, and all Mr Thomson's friends
should be thankful to him.

Thomson instantly complied with, the request of Burns ; he bor-
rowed a five-pound note from Cunningham (a draft), and sent it,
saying, he had made up his mind to enclose the identical sum the
poet had asked for, when he received his letter. For this he has been
sharply censured ; and his defence is, that he was afraid of sending
more, lest he should offend the pride of the poet, who was uncom-
monly sensitive in pecuniary matters. A better defence is Thomson's
own poverty : only one volume of his splendid work was then pub-
lished ; his outlay had been beyond his means, and very small sums
of money had come in to cover his large expenditure. Had he been
richer, his defence would have been a difficult matter. When Burns
made the stipulation, his hopes were high, and the dread of hunger,
or of the jail, was far from his thoughts ; he imagined that it became
genius to refuse money in a work of national importance. But his
situation grew gloomier as he wrote ; he had lost nearly his all in
Ellisland, and was obliged to borrow small sums, which he found a
difficulty in repaying. That he was in poor circumstances was well
known to the world ; and had money been at Thomson's disposal, a
way might have been found of doing the poet good by stealth : he
sent five pounds, because he could not send ten, and it would have
saved him from some sarcastic remarks, and some pangs of heart, had
he said so at once.

Mr Thomson has attempted a defence of himself about once
every seven years, but has always made the matter worse, by
putting it on wrong grounds. In a letter to that other Arca-
dian, Josiah Walker, he says — many years ago — " Now, the
fact is, that notwithstanding the united labours of all the
men of genius who have enriched my Collection, I am not even
yet compensated for the precious time consumed by me in poring
over musty volumes, and in corresponding with every amateur
and poet, by whose means I expected to make any valuable ad-
dition to our national music and song; — -for the exertion and
money it cost me to obtain accompaniments from the greatest
masters of harmony in Vienna ; and for the sums paid to en-
gravers, printers, and others." Let us separate the items of
this account. The money laid out by him must stand by it-
self— and for that outlay, he had then been compensated by
the profits of the sale of the Collection. Those profits, we do
not doubt, had been much exaggerated by public opinion, but

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 199

they had then been considerable, and have since been great.
Our undivided attention has therefore to be turned to " his
precious time consumed," and to its inadequate compensation.
And the first question that naturally occurs to every reader
to ask himself is — " in what sense are we to take the terms
' time,' ' precious,' and ' consumed ? ' ' Inasmuch as " time "
is only another word for life, it is equally " precious " to all
men. Take it then to mean leisure hours, in which men
seek for relaxation and enjoyment. Mr Thomson tells us
that he was, from early youth, an enthusiast in music and
in poetry ; and it puzzles us to conceive what he means
by talking of " his precious time being consumed " in such
studies. To an enthusiast, a " musty volume " is a treasure
beyond the wealth of Ind — to pore over " musty volumes "
sweet as to gaze on melting eyes — he hugs them to his heart.
They are their own exceeding great reward — and we cannot
listen to any claim for pecuniary compensation. Then who
ever heard, before or since, of an enthusiast in poetry avowing
before the world .that he had not been sufficiently compensated
in money " for the precious time consumed by him in corre-
sponding with Poets ? " Poets are proverbially an irritable
race ; still there is something about them that makes them
very engaging — and we cannot bring ourselves to think that
George Thomson's " precious time consumed " in correspond-
ing with Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Campbell, Joanna Baillie,
and the Ettrick Shepherd, deserved " compensation." As to
amateurs, we mournfully grant they are burthensome ; yet
even that burthen may uncomplainingly be borne by an
Editor who " expects by their means to make any valuable
addition to our national music and song ; " and it cannot be
denied that the creatures have often good ears, and turn off tol-
erable verses. Finally, if by " precious" he means valuable, in
a Politico-Economical sense, we do not see how Mr Thomson's
time could have been consumed more productively to himself;
nor, indeed, how he could have made any money at all by a dif-
ferent employment of it. In every sense, therefore, in which the
words are construed, they are equally absurd ; and all who read
them are forced to think of one whose " precious time was in-
deed consumed " — to his fatal loss — the too-generous, the self-
devoted Burns — but for whose "uncompensated exertions," The
Melodies of Scotland would have been to the Editor a ruinous

200 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

concern, in place of one which for nearly half a century must
have been yielding him a greater annual income than the Poet
would have enjoyed had he been even a Supervisor.

Mr Thomson has farther put forth in his letter to Robert
Chambers, and not now for the first time, this most injudi-
cious defence : —

Had I been a selfish or avaricious man, I had a fair opportunity,
upon the death of the poet, to put money in my pocket ; for I might
then have published, for my own behoof, all the beautiful lyrics he
had written for me, the original manuscripts of which were in my
possession. But instead of doing this, I was no sooner informed
that the friends of the poet's family had come to a resolution to
collect his works, and to publish them for the benefit of the family,
and that they thought it of importance to include my MSS. as being
likely, from their number, their novelty, and their beauty, to prove
an attraction to subscribers, than I felt it my duty to put them at
once in possession of all the songs, and of the correspondence be-
tween the poet and myself; and accordingly, through Mr John
Syme of Ryedale, I transmitted the whole to Dr Currie, who had
been prevailed on, immensely to the advantage of Mrs Burns and
her children, to take on himself the task of editor. For this sur-
rendering the manuscripts, I received, both verbally and in writing,
the warm thanks of the trustees for the family — Mr John Syme and
Mr Gilbert Burns — who considered what I had done as a fair return
for the poet's generosity of conduct to me.

Of course he retained the exclusive right of publishing the
songs with the music in his Collection. Now, what if he
had refused to surrender the manuscripts ? The whole world
would have accused him of robbing the widow and orphan,
and he would have been hooted out of Scotland. George
Thomson, rather than have done so, would have suffered
himself to be pressed to death between two millstones ;
and yet he not only instances his having " surrendered the
MSS," as a proof of the calumnious nature of the abuse
with which he had been assailed by anonymous scribblers,
but is proud of the thanks of " the trustees of the family,
who considered what I had done as a fair return for the
poet's generosity of conduct to me." Setting aside, then,
" the calumnies of anonymous scribblers," with one and all
of which we are unacquainted, we have shown that Josiah
Walker, in his foolish remarks on this affair, whereby he out-
raged the common feelings of humanity, left his friend just

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 201

where he stood before — that Lord Woodhouselee knew no-
thing whatever about the matter, and in his good nature has
made assertions absurdly untrue — that Mr Thomson's own
defence of himself is in all respects an utter failure, and
mainly depends on the supposition of a case unexampled
in a Christian land — that Lockhart with unerring finger
has indicated where the fault lay — and that Cunningham
has accounted for it by a reason that with candid judges
must serve to reduce it to one of a very pardonable kind ;
the avowal of which from the first would have saved a
worthy man from some unjust obloquy, and at least as
much undeserved commendation — the truth being now ap-
parent to all, that "his poverty, not his will, consented" to
secure, on the terms of non-payment, a hundred and twenty
songs from the greatest lyrical poet of his country, who dur-
ing the years he was thus lavishing away the effusions of his
matchless genius without fee or reward, was in a state border-
ing on destitution, and as the pen dropt from his hand, did not
leave sufficient to defray the expenses of a decent funeral.

"We come now to contemplate his dying days ; and mourn-
ful as the contemplation is, the close of many an illustrious
life has been far more distressing, involved in far thicker
darkness, and far heavier storms. From youth he had been
visited — we shall not -say haunted— by presentiments of an
early death ; he knew well that the profound melancholy that
often settled down upon his whole being, suddenly changing
day into night, arose from his organisation ; — and it seems as
if the finest still bordered on disease — disease in his case per-
haps hereditary — for his father was often sadder than even
"the toil worn cottar" needed to be, and looked like a man
subject to inward trouble. His character was somewhat stern ;
and we can believe that in its austerity he found a safeguard
against passion, that nevertheless may shake the life it cannot
Wreck. But the son wanted the father's firmness ; and in his
veins there coursed more impetuous blood. The very fire of
genius consumed him, coming and going in fitful flashes ; his
genius itself may almost be called a passion, so vehement was
it, and so turbulent — though it had its scenes of blissful
quietude ; his heart too seldom suffered itself to be at rest ;
many a fever travelled through his veins ; his calmest nights
were liable to be broken in upon by the worst of dreams —

202 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

waking dreams from which there is no deliverance in a sudden
start — of which the misery is felt to be no delusion — which
are not dispelled by the morning light, but accompany their
victim as he walks out into the day, and among the dew, and
surrounded as he is with the beauty of rejoicing nature, tempt
him to curse the day he was born.

Yet let us not call the life of Burns unhappy — nor at its
close shut our eyes to the manifold blessings showered by
Heaven on the Poet's lot. Many of the mental sufferings that
helped most to wear him out, originated in his own restless
nature — "by prudent, cautious self-control" he. might have
subdued some and tempered others — better regulation was
within his power — and, like all men, he paid the penalty of
neglect of duty, or of its violation. But what loss is hardest
to bear? The loss of the beloved. All other wounds are
slight to those of the affections. Let fortune do her worst —
so that Death be merciful. Burns went to his own grave
without having been commanded to look down into another's
where all was buried. " I have lately drunk deep of the cup
of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter
and darling child, and that at a distance too, arid so rapidly,
as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her."
The flower withered, and he wept — but his four pretty boys
were soon dancing again in their glee — their mother's heart
was soon composed again to cheerfulness — and her face with-
out a shadow. Anxiety for their sakes did indeed keep prey-
ing on his heart ; — but what would that anxiety have seemed
to him, had he been called upon to look back upon it in anguish
because they were not f Happiness too great for this earth !
If in a dream for one short hour restored, that would have been
like an hour in heaven.

Burns had not been well for a twelvemonth ; and though
nobody seems even then to have thought him dying, on the
return of spring, which brought him no strength, he knew that
his days were numbered. Intense thought, so it be calm, is
salutary to life. It is emotion that shortens our days by hur-
rying life's pulsations — till the heart can no more, and runs
down like a disordered time-piece. We said nobody seems to
have thought him dying ; — yet after the event, everybody, on
looking back on it, remembered seeing death in his face. It
is when thinking of those many months of decline and decay,

203

that we feel pity and sorrow for his fate, and that along with
them other emotions will arise, without our well knowing
towards whom, or by what name they should be called, but
partaking of indignation, and shame, and reproach, as if some
great wrong had been done, and might have been rectified
before death came to close the account. Not without blame
somewhere could such a man have been so neglected — so for-
gotten— so left alone to sicken and die.

" Oh, Scotia ! my dear, my native soil !

For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent !
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content !"

No son of Scotland did ever regard her with more filial affec-
tion— did ever in strains so sweet sing of the scenes " that
make her loved at home, revered abroad " — and yet his mother
stretched not out her hand to sustain — when it was too late
to save — her own Poet as he was sinking into an untimely
grave. But the dying man complained not of her ingratitude ;
he loved her too well to the last to suspect her of such sin —
there was nothing for him to forgive — and he knew that he
would have a place for ever in her memory. Her rulers were
occupied with great concerns — in which all thoughts of self
were merged! and therefore well might they forget her Poet,
who was but a cottar's son and a ganger. In such forgetful-
ness they were what other rulers have been, and will be, — and
Coleridge lived to know that the great ones of his own land
coiild be as heartless in his own case as the " Scotch nobility "
in that of Burns, for whose brows his youthful genius wove a
wreath of scorn. " The rapt one of the godlike forehead, the
heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth " — but who among them
all cared for the long self-seclusion of the white-headed sage —
for his sick-bed or his grave ?

Turn we then from the Impersonation named Scotland — from
her rulers — from her nobility and gentry — to the personal
friends of Burns. Could they have served him in his straits ?
And how ? If they could, then were they bound to do so by
a stricter obligation than lay upon any other party ; and if
they had the will as well as the power, 'twould have been easy
to find a way. The duties of friendship are plain, simple,
sacred — and to perform them is delightful ; yet so far as we

204 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

can see, they were not performed here — if they were, let us
have the names of the beneficent who visited Burns eveiy
other day during the months disease had deprived him of all
power to follow his calling ? Who insisted on helping to keep
the family in comfort till his strength might be restored ? — for
example, to pay his house rent for a year ? Mr Syme of Eye-
dale told Dr Currie, that Burns had "many firm friends in
Dumfries," who would not have suffered the haberdasher to
put him into jail, and that his were the fears of a man in
delirium. Did not those " firm friends " know that he was of
necessity very poor ? And did any one of them offer to lend
him thirty shillings to pay for his three weeks' lodgings at the
Brow ? He was not in delirium — till within two days of his
death. Small sums he had occasionally borrowed and repaid
— but from people as poor as himself — such as kind Craig, the
schoolmaster, to whom, at his death, he owed a pound — never
from the more opulent townfolk or the gentry in the neighbour-
hood, of not one of whom is it recorded that he or she accom-
modated the dying Poet with a loan sufficient to" pay for a
week's porridge and milk. Let us have no more disgusting
palaver about his pride. His heart would have melted within
him at any act of considerate friendship done to his family ;
and so far from feeling that by accepting it he had become a
pauper, he would have recognised in the doer of it a brother,
and taken him into his heart. And had he not in all the
earth, one single such Friend? His brother Gilbert was
straggling with severe difficulties at Mossgiel, and was then
unable to assist him ; and his excellent cousin at Montrose had
enough to do to maintain his own family ; but as soon as he
knew how matters stood, he showed that the true Burns blood
was in his heart, and after the Poet's death, was as kind as
man could be to his widow and children.

What had come over Mrs Dunlop that she should have
seemed to have forgotten or forsaken him ? " These many
months you have been two packets in my debt — what sin of
ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend
I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas ! Madam, ill can I afford,
at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my

pleasures I na(j scarcely begun to recover

from that shock (the death of his little daughter), when I
became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever,

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 205

and long the die spun doubtful ; until, after many weeks of a
sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning
to crawl across my room, and once, indeed, have been before
my own door in the street." No answer came ; and three
months after he wrote from the Brow : " Madam — I have written
you so often without receiving any answer, that I would not
trouble you again but for the circumstances in which I am.
An illness which has long hung about me, in all probability
will speedily send me beyond that bourne whence no tra-
veller returns. Your friendship, with which for many years
you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my soul. Your
conversation, and especially your correspondence, were at once
highly entertaining and instructive. With what pleasure did
I use to break up the seal ! The remembrance yet adds one
pulse more to my poor palpitating heart. Farewell. K. B."
Currie says, " Burns had the pleasure of receiving a satisfac-
tory explanation of his friend's silence, and an assurance of the
continuance of her friendship to his widow and children ; an
assurance that has been amply fulfilled." That " satisfactory
explanation " should have been given to the world — it should
be given yet — for without it such incomprehensible silence
must continue to seem cruel ; and it is due to the memory of
one whom Burns loved and honoured to the last, to vindicate
on her part the faithfulness of the friendship which preserves
her name.

Maria Eiddel, a lady of fine talents and accomplishments,
and though somewhat capricious in the consciousness of her
mental and personal attractions, yet of most amiable disposi-
tions, and of an affectionate and tender heart, was so little
aware of the condition of the Poet, whose genius she could so
well appreciate, that only a few weeks before his death, when
he could hardly crawl, he had by letter to decline acceding to
her " desire, that he would go to the birthday assembly, on
the 4th of June, to show his loyalty ! " Alas ! he was fast
" wearin awa to the land o' the leal ;" and after the lapse of a
few weeks, that lady gay, herself in poor health, and saddened
out of such vanities by sincerest sorrow, was struck with his
appearance on entering the room. " The stamp of death was
imprinted on his features. He seemed already touching the
brink of eternity. His first salutation was — ' Well, Madam,
have you any commands for the next world ! ' ' The best men

206 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

have indulged in such sallies on the brink of the grave. Nor
has the utterance of words like these, as life's taper was flick-
ering in the socket, been felt to denote a mood of levity unbe-
coming a creature about to go to his account. On the contrary,
there is something very affecting in the application of such
formulas of speech as had been of familiar use all his days, on
his passage through the shadow of time, now that his being is
about to be liberated into the light of eternity, where our
mortal language is heard not, and spirit communicates with
spirit through organs not made of clay, having dropt the body
like a garment.

In that interview, the last recorded, and it is recorded well
— pity so much should have been suppressed — " he spoke of
his death without any of the ostentation of philosophy, but
with firmness as well as feeling, as an event likely to happen
very soon, and which gave him concern chiefly from leaving
his poor children so young and unprotected, and his wife in
so interesting a situation, in hourly expectation of lying in of
a fifth." Yet during the whole afternoon he was cheerful,
even gay, and disposed for pleasantry ; such is the power of
the human voice and the human eye over the human heart,
almost to the resuscitation of drowned hope, when they are
both suffused with affection, when tones are as tender as. tears,
yet can better hide the pity that ever and anon will be gush-
ing from the lids of grief. He expressed deep contrition for
having been betrayed by his inferior nature and vicious
sympathy with the dissolute, into impurities in verse, which
lie knew were floating about among people of loose lives, and
might on his death be collected to the hurt of his moral
character. Never had Burns been " hired minstrel of volup-
tuous blandishment," nor by such unguarded freedom of
speech had he ever sought to corrupt ; but in emulating the
ribald wit, and coarse humour of some of the worst old ballants
current among the lower orders of the people, of whom the
moral and religious are often tolerant of indecencies to a
strange degree, he felt that he had sinned against his genius.
A miscreant, aware of his poverty, had made him an offer of
fifty pounds for a collection, which he repelled with the horror
of remorse. Such things can hardly be said to have existence
— the polluted perishes — or shovelled aside from the socialities
of mirthful men, are nearly obsolete, except among thoee

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 207

whose thoughtlessness is so great as to be sinful, among whom
the distinction ceases between the weak and the wicked.
From such painful thoughts he turned to his poetry, that had
every year been becoming dearer and dearer to the people,
and he had comfort in the assurance that it was pure and
good; and he wished to live a little longer that he might
amend his Songs, for through them he felt he would survive
in the hearts of the dwellers in cottage-homes all over Scot-
land— and in the fond imagination of his heart Scotland to
him was all the world.

" He spoke of his death without any of the ostentation of
philosophy," and perhaps without any reference to religion ;
for dying men often keep their profoundest thoughts to them-
selves, except in the chamber in which they believe they are
about to have the last look of the objects of their earthly love,
and there they give them utterance in a few words of hope and
trust. While yet walking about in the open air, and visiting
their friends, they continue to converse about the things of this
life in language so full of animation, that you might think,
but for something about their eyes, that they are unconscious
of their doom — and so at times they are ; for the customary
pleasure of social intercourse does not desert them ; the sight
of others well and happy beguiles them of the mournful know-
ledge that their own term has nearly expired, and in that
oblivion they are cheerful as the persons seem to be who for
their sakes assume a smiling aspect in spite of struggling
tears. So was it with Bums at the Brow. But he had his
Bible with him in his lodgings, and he read it almost con-
tinually— often when seated on a bank, from which he had
difficulty in rising without assistance, for his weakness was
extreme, and in his emaciation he was like a ghost. The fire
of his eyes was not dimmed — indeed fever had lighted it
up beyond even its natural brightness ; and though his voice,
once so various, was now hollow, his discourse was still that
of a Poet. To the last he loved the sunshine, the grass, and
the flowers — to the last he had a kind look and a word for the
passers-by, who all knew it was Burns. Labouring men, on
their way from work, would step aside to the two-three houses
called the Brow, to know if there was any hope of his life ;
and it is not to be doubted that devout people remembered
him who had written the " Cottar's Saturday Night " in their

208 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

prayers. His sceptical doubts no longer troubled him — they
had never been more than shadows — and he had at last the
faith of a confiding Christian. We are not even to suppose
that his heart was always disquieted within him because of
the helpless condition of his widow and orphans. That must
have been indeed with him a dismal day on which he wrote
three letters about them so full of anguish ; but to give vent
to grief in passionate outcries usually assuages it, and tran-
quillity sometimes steals upon despair. His belief that he
was so sunk in debt was a delusion — not of delirium — but of
the fear that is in love. And comfort must have come to him
in the conviction that his country would not suffer the family
of her Poet to be in want. As long as he had health they
were happy though poor — as long as he was alive they were
not utterly destitute. That on his death they would be
paupers, was a dread that could have had no abiding place in
a heart that knew how it had beat for Scotland, and in the
power of genius had poured out all its love on her fields and
her people. His heart was pierced with the same wounds that
extort lamentations from the death-beds of ordinary men,
thinking of what will become of wife and children ; but like
the pouring of oil upon them by some gracious hand, must
have been the frequent recurrence of the belief — " On my
death people will pity them, and care for them for my name's
sake." Some little matter of money he knew he should leave
behind him — the two hundred pounds he had lent to his
brother ; and it sorely grieved him to think that Gilbert might
be ruined by having to return it. What brotherly affection
was there ! They had not met for a good many years ; but
personal intercourse was not required to sustain their friend-
ship. At the Brow often must the dying Poet have re-
membered Mossgiel.

On the near approach of death he returned to his own house,
in a spring-cart — and having left it at the foot of the street,
he could just totter up to his door. The last words his hand
had strength to put on paper were to his wife's father, and
were written probably within an hour of his return home.
" My dear Sir, — Do for heaven's sake send Mrs Armour here
immediately. My wife is hourly expected to be put to bed.
Good God ! what a situation for her to be in, poor girl, without
a friend I I returned from sea-bathing quarters to-day ; and

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURKS. 209

my medical friends would almost persuade me that I am
better ; but I think and feel that my strength is so gone, that
the disorder will prove fatal to me. — Your son-in-law, K. B."
That is not the letter of a man in delirium — nor was the letter
written a few days before, from the Brow, to " my dearest love."
But next day he was delirious, and the day after too, though,
on being spoken to he roused himself into collected and com-
posed thought, and was, ever and anon, for a few minutes
himself — Eobert Burns. In his delirium there was nothing
to distress the listeners and the lookers-on — words were heard
that to them had no meaning— -mistakings made by the part-
ing spirit among its language now in confusion breaking up
— and sometimes words of trifling import about trifling things
— about incidents and events unnoticed in their happening,
but now strangely cared for in their final repassing before
the closed eyes just ere the dissolution of the dream of a
dream. Nor did his deathbed want for affectionate and faith-
ful service. The few who were privileged to tend it did so
tenderly and reverently— now by the side of the sick wife,
and now by that of the dying husband. Maxwell, a kind
physician, came often to gaze in sadness where no skill could
relieve. Findlater — supervisor of excise — sat by his bedside
the night before he died ; and Jessie Lewars — daughter and
sister of a gauger— was his sick-nurse. Had he been her own
father she could not have done her duty with a more perfect
devotion of her whole filial heart — and her name will never
die, " here eternised on earth " by the genius of the Poet
who for all her Christian kindness to him and his had long
cherished towards her the tenderest gratitude. His children
had been taken care of by friends, and were led in to be near
him now that his hour was come. His wife in her own bed
knew it, as soon as her Kobert was taken from her ; and the
great Poet of the Scottish people, who had been born " in the
auld clay biggin " on a stormy winter night, died in a humble
tenement on a bright summer morning, among humble folk,
who composed his body, and according- to custom strewed
around it flowers brought from their own gardens.

Great was the grief of the people for their Poet's death.
They felt that they had lost their greatest man ; and it is no
exaggeration to say that Scotland was saddened on the day of
his funeral. It is seldom that tears are shed even close to the

VOL. VII. 0

210 ESSAYS : CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

grave, beyond the inner circle that narrows round it ; but that
day there were tears in the eyes of many far off at their work,
and that night there was silence in thousands of cottages that
had so often heard his songs — how sweeter far than any other,
whether mournfully or merrily to old accordant melodies they
won their way into the heart ! The people had always loved
him ; they best understood his character, its strength and its
weakness. Not among them at any time had it been harshly
judged, and they allowed him now the sacred privileges of the
grave. The religious have done so ever since, pitying more
than condemning, nor afraid to praise ; for they have confessed
to themselves, that had there been a window in their breasts
as there was in that of Burns, worse sights might have been
seen — a darker revelation. His country charged herself with
the care of them he had loved so well, and the spirit in which
she performed her duty is the best proof that her neglect — if
neglect at any time there were— of her Poet's wellbeing had
not been wilful, but is to be numbered with those omissions
incident to all human affairs, more to be lamented than blamed,
and if not to be forgotten, surely to be forgiven, even by the
nations who may have nothing to reproach themselves with in
their conduct towards any of their great poets. England,
" the foremost land of all this world," was not slack to join in
her sister's sorrow, and proved the sincerity of her own, not
by barren words, but fruitful deeds, and best of all by fervent
love and admiration of the poetry that had opened up so many
delightful views into the character and condition of our "bold
peasantry, their country's pride," worthy compatriots with her
own, and exhibiting in different Manners the same national
Virtues. ..' i

No doubt, wonder at a prodigy had mingled in many minds
with admiration of the ploughman's poetry ; and when they of
their wondering found an end, such persons began to talk
with abated enthusiasm of his genius and increased severity
of his character, so that, during intervals of silence, an under-
current of detraction was frequently heard brawling with an
ugly noise. But the main stream soon ran itself clear ; and
Burns has no abusers now out of the superannuated list ; out
°f it — better still — he has no patrons. In our youth we have
heard him spoken of by the big-wigs with exceeding conde-
scension ; now the tallest men know that to see his features

THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF BURNS. 211

rightly they must look up. Shakespeare, Spencer, and Milton,
are unapproachable ; but the present era is the most splendid
in the history of our poetry — in England beginning with
Cowper, in Scotland with Burns. Original and racy, each in
his own land is yet unexcelled ; immovably they both keep
their places — their inheritance is sure. Changes wide and
deep, for better and for worse, have been long going on
in town and country. There is now among the people more
education — more knowledge than at any former day. Their
worldly condition is more prosperous, while there is still among
them a deep religious spirit. By that spirit alone can they be
secured in the good, and saved from the evil of knowledge ;
but the spirit of poetry is akin to that of religion, and the
union of the two is in no human composition more powerful
than in "the Cottar's Saturday Night." "Let who may have
the making of the laws, give me the making of the ballads
of a people," is a profound saying ; and the truth it some-
what paradoxically expresses is in much as applicable to a
cultivated and intellectual as to a rude and imaginative age.
From our old traditional ballads we know what was dearest to
the hearts and souls of the people. How much deeper must
be the power over them of the poems and songs of such a man
as Bums, of himself alone superior in genius to all those
nameless minstrels, and of a nobler nature ; and yet more
endeared to them by pity for the sorrows that clouded the
close of his life.

SPEECH AT THE BURNS FESTIVAL.

[" The Bums Festival" — a meeting at which the people of Scotland of all
ranks assembled in large numbers to do honour to the memory of their great
national poet— was celebrated in the vicinity of Ayr on the 6th of August
1844. Not fewer than 80,000 persons were present on the occasion ; and
when they marched in procession with playing bands and streaming banners
past the platform on which the DiiM ajores of the jubilee were stationed, the
spectacle was in the highest degree exhilarating. It was a demonstration
worthy of the nation, and of the genius which the nation delighted to honour.
In the afternoon about 2000 of the assembly dined together in an elegant
pavilion extemporised for that purpose. The Earl of Eglinton was in tho
chair : Professor Wilson acted as croupier ; and it was then that ho
delivered the following oration, in proposing as a toast " The Sons of
Burns," who were present as guests at the entertainment.]

WERE this Festival but to commemorate the genius of Burns,
and it were asked) what need now for such commemoration,
since his fame is coextensive with the literature of the land,
and enshrined in every household ? — I might answer, that
although admiration of the poet be wide as the world, yet we,
his compatriots, to whom he is especially dear, rejoice to see
the universal sentiment concentred in one great assemblage
of his own people : that we meet in thousands and tens of
thousands to honour him, who delights each single one of us
at his own hearth. But this commemoration expresses, too,
if not a profounder, a more tender sentiment ; for it is to wel-
come his sons to the land he has illustrated, so that we may
at once indulge our national pride in a great name, and gratify
in filial hearts the most pious of affections. There was in
former times a custom of crowning great poets. No such
ovation honoured our bard, though he too tasted of human
applause, felt its delights, and knew the trials that attend it.
Which would Burns himself have preferred, a celebration like
this in his lifetime, or fifty years after his death ? I venture
to say, he would have preferred the posthumous as the finer
incense. The honour and its object are then seen in juster
proportion ; for death confers an elevation which the candid

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 213

soul of the poet would have considered, and suck honour he
would rather have reserved for his manes, than have encoun-
tered it with his living infirmities. And could he have fore-
seen the day, when they for whom at times he was sorely
troubled, should, after many years of separation, return to the
hut where himself was born, and near it, within the shadow of
his monument, be welcomed for his sake by the lords and
ladies of the land ; and — dearer thought still to his manly
breast — by the children and the children's children of people
of his own degree, whose hearts he sought to thrill by his first
voice of inspiration ; surely had the Vision been sweeter to
his soul than even that immortal one, in which the Genius of
the Land bound the holly round his head, the lyric crown that
it will wear for ever.

Of his three Sons sitting here, one only can remember their
father's face — those large lustrous eyes of his, so full of many
meanings as they darkened in thought, melted in melancholy,
or kindled in mirth, but never turned on his children, or on
their excellent mother, but with one of tender or intense affec-
tion. That son may even on this day have remembrance of
his father's head, with its dark clusters not unmixed with grey,
and those eyes closed, lying upon the bed of death. Nor,
should it for a moment placidly appear, is such image unsiiit-
able to this festival. For in bidding welcome to his sons to
their father's land, I feel that, while you have conferred on me
a high honour, you have likewise imposed on me a solemn
duty ; and, however inadequately I may discharge it, I trust
that in nought shall I do any violence to the spirit either of
humanity or of truth.

I shall speak reverently of Burns's character in hearing of
his sons ; but not even in their hearing must I forget what is
due always to established judgment of the everlasting right.
Like all other mortal beings, he had his faults — great even in '
the eyes of men — grievous in the eyes of Heaven. Never are '
they to be thought of without sorrow, were it but for the
misery with which he himself repented them. But as there
is a moral in every man's life, even in its outward condition
imperfectly understood, how much more affecting when we
read it in confessions wrung out by remorse from the greatly
gifted, the gloriously endowed ! But it is not his faults that are
remembered here — assuredly not these we meet to honour.

214 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

To deny error to be error, or to extenuate its blame, that
makes the outrage upon sacred truth ; but to forget that it
exists, or if not wholly so, to think of it along with that under-
current of melancholy emotion at all times accompanying our
meditations on the mixed characters of men — that is not only
allowable, but it is ordered — it is a privilege dear to humanity
— and well indeed might he tremble for himself who should
in this be deaf to the voice of nature crying from the tomb.

And mark how graciously in this does time aid the inclin-
ations of charity ! Its shadows soften what they may not
hide. In the distance, discordances that once jarred painfully
on our ears are now undistinguishable — lost in the music sweet
and solemn, that comes from afar with the sound of a great
man's name. It is consolatory to see that the faults of them
whom their people honour grow fainter and fainter in the
national memory, while their virtues wax brighter and more
bright ; and if injustice have been done to them in life (and
who now shall dare to deny that cruellest injustice was done
to Burns ?) each succeeding generation becomes more and
more dutiful to the dead — desirous to repair the wrong by
profounder homage. As it is by his virtues that man may
best hope to live in the memory of man, is there not something
unnatural, something monstrous, in seeking to eternise here
below, that of which the proper doom is obscurity and obli-
vion ? How beneficent thus becomes the power of example !
The good that men do then indeed " lives after them" — all
that was ethereal in their being alone survives — and thus
ought our cherished memories of our best men — and Burns
was among our best — to be invested with all consistent ex-
cellences ; for far better may their virtues instruct us by
the love which they inspire, than ever could their vices by
aversion.

To dwell on the goodnesses of the great shows that we are
at least lovers of virtue — that we may ourselves be aspiring
to reach her serene abodes. But to dwell on their faults, and
still more to ransack that we may record them, that is the low
industry of envy, which, grown into a habit, becomes malice,
at once hardening and embittering the heart. Such, beyond
all doubt, in the case of our great poet, was the source of
many " a malignant truth and lie," fondly penned, and care-
fully corrected for the press, by a class of calumniators that

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 215

may never be extinct ; for, by very antipathy of nature, the
mean hate the magnanimous, the grovelling them who soar.
And thus, for many a year, we heard " souls ignoble born to
be forgot " vehemently expostulating with some puny phan-
tom of their own heated fancy, as if it were the majestic shade
of Burns evoked from his Mausoleum for contumely and insult.
Often, too, have we been told by persons somewhat pre-
sumptuously assuming the office of our instructors, to beware
how we suffer our admiration of genius to seduce us from our
reverence of virtue. Never cease to remember — has been still
their cry — how far superior is moral to intellectual worth.
Nay, they have told us that they are not akin in nature.
But akin they are ; and grief and pity 'tis that ever they
should be disunited. But mark in what a hateful, because
hypocritical spirit, such advices as these have not seldom been
proffered, till salutary truths were perverted by misapplica-
tion into pernicious falsehoods. For these malignant coun-
sellors sought not to elevate virtue, but to degrade genius ;
and never in any other instance have they stood forth more
glaringly self-convicted of the most wretched ignorance of
the nature both of the one and the other, than in their wilful
blindness to so many of the noblest attributes of humanity in
the character of Burns. Both gifts are alike from heaven, and
both alike tend heavenward. Therefore we lament to see
genius soiled by earthly stain ; therefore we lament to see
virtue, where no genius is, fall before the tempter. But we,
in our own clear natural perceptions, refuse the counsels of
those who with the very breath of their warning would blight
the wreath bound round the heads of the Muses' sons by a
people's gratitude — who, in affected zeal for religion and
morality, have so deeply violated the spirit of both, by vile
misrepresentations, gross exaggerations, and merciless denun-
ciations of the frailties of our common nature in illustrious
men — men who, in spite of their aberrations, more or less de-
plorable, from the right path, were not only in their prevailing
moods devout worshippers of virtue, but in the main tenor of
their lives exemplary to their brethren. And such a man
was Burns. In boyhood — youth — manhood — where such
peasant as he ? And if in trouble and in trial, from which his
country may well turn in self-reproach, he stood not always
fast, yet shame and sin it were, and indelible infamy, were she

, 216 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

not now to judge his life as Christianity commands. Preyed
upon, alas ! by those anxieties that pierce deepest into the
noblest hearts, — anxieties for the sakes — even on account of
the very means of subsistence — of his own household and his
own hearth, — yet was he in his declining, shall we call them
disastrous years, on the whole faithful to the divine spirit with
which it had pleased Heaven to endow him — on the whole
obedient to its best inspirations ; while he rejoiced to illumine
the paths of poverty with light which indeed was light from
heaven, and from an inexhaustible fancy, teeming to the genial
warmth of the heart in midst of chill and gloom, continued to
the very last to strew along the weary ways of this world
flowers so beautiful in their freshness, that to eyes too familiar
with tears they looked as if dropped from heaven.

These are sentiments with which I rejoice to hear the sym-
pathy of this great assemblage thus unequivocally expressed
— for my words but awaken thoughts lodged deep in all con-
siderate hearts. For which of us is there in whom, known or
unknown, alas ! there is not much that needs to be forgiven ?
Which of us that is not more akin to Burns in his fleshly
frailties than in his diviner spirit ? That conviction regards
not merely solemn and public celebrations of reverential
memory — such as this ; it pervades the tenor of our daily life,
runs in our heart' s-blood, sits at our hearths, wings our loftiest
dreams of human exaltation. How, on this earth, could wo
love, or revere, or emulate, if, in our contemplation of tho
human being, we could not sunder the noble, the fair, the
gracious, the august, from the dregs of mortality, from the
dust that hangs perishably about him the imperishable ? We
judge in love, that in love we may be judged. At our hearth-
sides, we gain more than we dared desire, by mutual mercy ;
at our hearthsides, we bestow and receive a better love, by
this power of soft and magnanimous oblivion. We are our-
selves the gainers, when thus we honour the great dead. They
hear not — they feel not, excepting by an illusion of our own
moved imaginations, which fill up chasms of awful, impassable
separation ; but we, hear — we feel ; and the echo of the acclaim
which hills and skies have this day repeated, we can carry
home in our hearts, where it shall settle down into the com-
posure of love and pity, and admiration and gratitude, felt to
be due for ever to our great poet's shade.

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 217

In no other spirit could genius have ever dared, in elegies
and hymns, to seek to perpetuate at once a whole people's
triumph, and a whole people's grief, by celebration of king,
sage, priest, or poet, gone to his reward. From the natural
infirmities of his meanest subject, what King was ever free ?
Against the golden rim that rounds his mortal temples come
the same throbbings from blood in disease or passion hurrying
from heart to brain, as disturb the aching head of the poor
hind on his pallet of straw. But the king had been a
guardian, a restorer, a deliverer ; therefore his sins are
buried or burned with his body ; and all over the land he
saved, generation after generation continues to cry aloud
— " 0 king, live for ever ! " The Sage who, by long medi-
tation on man's nature and man's life, has seen how liberty
rests on law, rights on obligations, and that his passions must
be fettered, that his will be free — how often has he been over-
come, when wrestling in agony with the powers of evil, in that
seclusion from all trouble in which reverent admiration never-
theless believes that wisdom for ever serenely dwells ! The
Servant of God, has he always kept his heart pure from the
world, nor ever held up in prayer other than spotless hands ?
A humble confession of his own utter unworthiness would be
his reply alike to scoffer and to him who believes. But, un-
terrified by plague and pestilence, he had carried comfort into
houses deserted but by sin and despair ; or he had sailed away,
as ho truly believed for ever, to savage lands, away from the
quiet homes of Christian men — among whom he might have
hoped to lead a life of peace, it may be of affluence and honour
— for his Divine Master's sake, and for sake of them sitting in
darkness and in the shadow of death. Therefore his name dies
not, and all Christendom calls it blest. From such benefactors
as these there may seem to be, but there is not, a deep descent
to them who have done their service by what one of the greatest
of them all has called " the vision and the faculty divine " —
them to whom have been largely given the powers of fancy
and imagination and creative thought, that they might move
men's hearts, and raise men's souls, by the reflection of their
own passions and affections in poetry, which is still an in-
spired speech. Nor have men, in their judgment of the true
Poets, dealt otherwise with them than with patriot kings, be-
nign legislators, and holy priests. Them, too, when of the

218 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

highest, all nations and ages have reverenced in their grati-
tude. Whatever is good and great in man's being seems
shadowed in the name of Milton ; and though he was a very
man in the storms of civil strife that shook down the throne
at the shedding of the blood of kings, nevertheless, we
devoutly believe with Wordsworth, that

" His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."
But not of such as he only, who " in darkness, and with
danger compassed round," soared "beyond this visible
diurnal sphere," and whose song was of mercy and judg-
ment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is
pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven.
Still, as we keep descending from height to height in the
regions of song, we desire to regard with love the genius
that beautifies wherever it settles down ; and, if pity will
steal in for human misfortunes, or for human frailties re-
proach, our love suffers no abatement, and religious men
feel that there is piety in pilgrimage to such honoured
graves. So feel we now at this commemoration. For our
Poet we now claim the privilege, at once bright and austere,
of death. We feel that our Burns is brought within the
justification of all celebrations of human names ; and that,
in thus honouring his memory, we virtuously exercise the
imaginative rights of enthusiasm owned by every people that
has produced its great men.

And with a more especial propriety do we claim this justice
in our triumphal celebration of poets, who, like Burns, were
led by the character of their minds to derive the matter and
impulse of their song, in a stricter sense, from themselves.
For they have laid bare to all eyes many of their own weak-
nesses, at the side of their higher and purer aspirations.
Unreserved children of sincerity, by the very open-hearted-
ness which is one great cause of their commanding power,
• and contagiously diffuses every zealous affection originating
in their nobility of nature — by this grown to excess, made
negligent of instinctive self-defence, and heedless of miscon-
struction, or overcome by importunate and clinging tempta-
tions— to what charges have they not been exposed from
that proneness to disparaging judgments so common in
little minds 1 For such judgments are easy indeed to the
very lowest understandings, and regard things that are

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 219

•visible to eyes that may seldom have commerced with
things that are above. But they who know Burns as we
know him, know that by this sometimes unregulated and
unguarded sympathy with all appertaining to his kind, and
especially to his own order, he was enabled to receive into
himself all modes of their simple, but not undiversified life,
so that his poetry murmurs their loves and joys from a thou-
sand fountains. And suppose — which was the case — that
this unguarded sympathy, this quick sensibility, and this
vivid capacity of happiness which the moment brings, arid
the frankness of impulse, and the strength of desire, and the
warmth of blood, which have made him what he greatly is,
which have been fire and music in his song, and manhood,
and courage, and endurance, and independence in his life,
have at times betrayed or overmastered him — to turn against
him all this self-painting and self-revealing, is it not ungrate-
ful, barbarous, inhuman ? Can he be indeed a true lover of
his kind, who would record in judgment against STich a man
words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading
designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity ? — who
would ignobly strike the self-disarmed? — scornfully insult
him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers
secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost
parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who
do so ? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak,
and write of Eobert Burns ? — He who has reconciled poverty
to its lot, toil to its taskwork, care to its burden — nay, I
would say even — grief to its grave ? And by one Immortal
Song has sanctified for ever the poor man's Cot — by such a
picture as only genius, in the inspiring power of piety, could .
have painted ; has given enduring life to the image — how
tender and how true 1 — of the Happy Night passing by
sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed
Day, by God's appointment breathing a heavenly calm over
all Christian regions in their rest — nowhere else so pro-
foundly— and may it never be broken ! — as over the hills
and valleys of our beloved, and yet religious land !

It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns, and
his best critics, have not done, or desired to do, justice to his
character as well as to his genius ; and, accordingly as the
truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken, has he

220 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

appeared the nobler and nobler man. All our best poets,
too, have exultingly sung the worth, while they mourned
the fate of him, the brightest of the brotherhood. But
above, and below, and round about all that they have
been uttering, has all along been heard a voice, which they
who know how to listen for it can hear, and which has pro-
nounced a decision in his favour not to be reversed ; for on
earth it cannot be carried to "a higher tribunal. A voice heard
of old on great national emergencies, when it struck terror in-
to the hearts of tyrants, who quaked, and quailed, and quitted
for aye our land before " the unconquered Caledonian spear "
— nor, since our union with noblest England, ever slack to
join with hers and fervid Erin's sons, the thrice rrepeated
cry by which battle-fields are cleared ; but happier, far
happier to hear, in its low deep tone of peace. For then
it is like the sound of distant waterfalls, the murmur of sum-
mer woods, or the sea rolling in its rest. I mean the Voice of
the People of Scotland — the Voice of her Peasantry and her
Trades — of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow
— her Working Mon.

I presume not to draw their character. But this much I
will say, that in the long-run they know whom it is fitting
they should honour and love. They will not be dictated to
in their choice of the names that with them shall be house-
hold words. Never, at any period of their history, have they
been lightly moved ; but, when moved, their meaning was not
to be mistaken ; tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of
death ; though force may wrench the weapon from their hands,
no forpe can wrench the worship from their hearts. They may
not be conversant with our written annals ; but in our oral
traditions they are familiar with historic truths — grand truths
conceived according to the People's idea of their own, national
mind, as their hearts have kindled ;n imagination of heroic or
holy men. Imaginary but real— rf or we all believe that men
as good, as wise, as brave, have been amongst us as ever
fancy fabled for a people's reverence. What manner of men
have been their darlings ? It would be hard to say ; for their
love is not exclusive — it is comprehensive. In the national
memory live for eyer characters how widely different ! — with
all the shades, fainter or darker, of human infirmity ! For
theirs is not the sickly taste that craves for perfection where

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 221

110 frailties are. They do not demand in one and the same
personage inconsistent virtues. But they do demand sincer-
ity, and integrity, and resolution, and independence, and an
open front, and an eye that fears not to look in the face of
clay ! And have not the grave and thoughtful Scottish people
always regarded with more especial affection those who have
struggled with adversity — who have been tried by tempta-
tions from without or from within- — now triumphant, now
overcome — but, alike in victory or defeat, testifying by their
conduct that they were animated by no other desire so steadily
as by love of their country and its people's good ? Not those
who have been favourites of fortune, even though worthy of
the smiles in which they basked ; but those who rose superior
to fortune, who could not frown them down. Nor have they
withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of
chance and change, if, in abasement of condition, by doing its
duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature, and looked
round them on their honest brethren in poverty with pride.

And how will such a people receive a great National
Poet ? How did they receive Burns ? With instant exulta-
tion. At once, they knew of themselves, before critics and
philosophers had time to tell them, that a great Genius of
their own had risen, and they felt a sudden charm diffused
over their daily life. By an inexplicable law, humour and
pathos are dependent on the same constitution of mind ; and
in his Poems they found the very soul of mirth, the very soul
of sadness, as they thought it good with him to be merry,
or to remember with him, " tha.t man was made to mourn."
But besides what I have said of them, the people of Scotland
hold in the world's repute — signally so — the name of a reli-
gious people. Many of them, the descendants of the old
Covenanters, heirs of the stern zeal which took up arms for
the purity of the national faith — still tinged, it may be, by
the breath of the flame that then passed over the land — retain
a certain severity of religious judgment in questions of moral
transgression, which is known to make a part of hereditary-
Scottish manners — especially in rural districts, where manners
best retain their stamp. But the sound natural understanding
of the Scottish peasant, I use the liberty to say, admits, to
take their place at the side of one another, objects of his
liberal and comprehensive regard, which might appear, to

222 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

superficial observation and shallow judgment, to stand upon
such different grounds, as that the approbation of the one
should exclude the admiration of the other. But not so.
Nature in him is various as it is vigorous. He does not, with
an over-jealous scrutiny, vainly try to reduce into seeming
consistency affections spontaneously springing from many
sources. Truth lies at the bottom ; and, conscious of truth,
he does not mistrust or question his own promptings. An
awful reverence, the acknowledgment of a Law without
appeal or error — Supreme, Sacred, Irresistible — rules in his
judgment of other men's actions, and of his own. Neverthe-
less, under shelter and sanction of that rule, he feels, loves,
admires, like a man. Keligion has raised and guards in him
— it does not extinguish — the natural human heart. If the
martyrs of his worship to him are holy — holy, too, are his
country's heroes. And holy her poets — if such she have — who
have sung — as during his too short life above them all sang
Burns — for Scotland's sake. Dear is the band that ties the
humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in
the upper classes he is, perhaps, but one among a thousand
artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium
of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his
shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself
— his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial
for his drooping spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength.
Burns is his brother — his helper in time of need, when fret-
fulness and impatience are replaced with placidity by his
strains, or of a sudden with a, mounting joy. And far oftener
than they who know not our peasantry would believe, before
their souls awakened from torpor he is a luminous and benign
presence in the dark hut ; for, in its purity and power, his best
poetry is felt to be inspired, and subordinate to the voice of"
heaven.

And will such a people endure to hear their own Poet
wronged ? No, no. Think not to instruct them in the right
spirit of judgment. They have read the Scriptures, perhaps,
to better purpose than their revilers, and know better how to
use the lessons learned there, applicable alike to us all — the
lessons, searcliing and merciful, which proscribe mutual judg-
ment amongst beings, all, in the eye of absolute Holiness
and Truth, stained, erring, worthless : And none so well as

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 223

aged religious men in such dwellings know, from their own
experience, from what they have witnessed among their
neighbours, and from what they have read of the lives of good
and faithful servants, out of the heart of what moral storms
and shipwrecks, that threatened to swallow the strong
swimmer in the middle passage of life, has often been landed
pa+c at last, the rescued worshipper upon the firm land of quiet
duties, and of years exempt from the hurricane of the pas-
sions ! Thus thoughtfully guided in their opinion of him,
who died young — cut off long before the period when others,
under the gracious permission of overruling mercy, have be-
gun to redeem their errors, and fortified perhaps by a sacred
office, to enter upon a new life — they will for ever solemnly
cherish the memory of the Poet of the Poor. And in such
sentiments there can be no doubt but that all his countrymen
share ; who will, therefore, rightly hold out between Burns and
all enemies a shield which clattering shafts may not pierce.
They are proud of him, as a lowly father is proud of an illus-
trious son. The rank and splendour attained reflects glory
down, but resolves not, nor weakens one single tie.

Ay, for many a deep reason the Scottish people love their
own Robert Burns. Never was the personal character of
poet so strongly and endearingly exhibited in his song.
They love him, because he loved his own order, nor ever
desired for a single hour to quit it. They love him, because
he loved the very humblest condition of humanity, where
everything good was only the more commended to his manly
mind by disadvantages of social position. They love him,
because he saw with just anger, how much the judgments of
" silly coward man " are determined by such accidents, to the
neglect or contempt of native worth. They love him for his
independence. What wonder ! To be brought into contact
with rank and wealth — a world inviting to ambition, and
tempting to a thousand desires — and to choose rather to re-
main lowly and poor, than seek an easier or a brighter lot, by
courting favour from the rich and great — was a legitimate
ground of pride, if any ground of pride be legitimate. He
gave a tongue to this pride, and the boast is inscribed in words
of fire in the Manual of the Poor. It was an exuberant feel-
ing, as all his feelings were exuberant, and he let them
all overflow. But sometimes, forsooth ! he did not express

224 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

them in sufficiently polite or courteous phrase ! And that
too was well. He stood up not for himself only, but for the
great class to which he belonged, and which in his days — and
too often in ours — had been insulted by the pride of superior
station, when unsupported by personal merit, to every bold
peasant a thing of scorn. They love him, because he vindi-
cated the ways of God to man, by showing that there was
more genius and virtue in huts, than was dreamt of in the
world's philosophy. They love him for his truthful pictures
of the poor. Not there are seen slaves sullenly labouring, or
madly leaping in their chains ; but in nature's bondage, con- ,
tent with their toil, sedate in their sufferings, in their recrea-
tions full of mirth — are seen Free Men. The portraiture,
upon the whole, is felt by us — and they know it — to demand
at times pity as a due ; but challenges always respect, and
more than respect, for the condition which it glorifies. The
Land of Burns ! What mean we by the words ? Something
more, surely, than that Fortune, in mere blindness, had pro-
duced a great poet here ? We look for the inspiring land-
scape, and here it is ; but what could all its beauties have
availed, had not a people inhabited it possessing all the senti-
ments, thoughts, aspirations, to which nature willed to give »'.
voice in him of her choicest melody? Nothing prodigious,
after all, in the birth of such a poet among such a people.
Was anything greater in the son than the austere resignation
of the father ? In his humble compeers there was much of*
the same tender affection, sturdy independence, strong sense,
self-reliance, as in him ; and so has Scotland been prolific,,
throughout her lower orders, of men who have made a figui'e
in her literature and her history ; but to Burns nature gave a
finer organisation, a more powerful heart, and an ampler brain,
imbued with that mystery we call genius, and he stands forth
conspicuous above all her sons.

From the character I have sketched of the Scottish people,
of old and at this day, it might perhaps be expected that
much of their poetry would be of a stern, fierce, or even fero-
cious kind — the poetry of bloodshed and destruction. Yet
not so. Ballads enow, indeed, there are, imbued with the
true warlike spirit — narrative of exploits of heroes. But
many a fragmentary verse, preserved by its own beauty, sur-
vives to prove that gentlest poetry has ever been the produce

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 225

both of heathery mountain and broomy brae ; but the names
of the sweet singers are heard no more, and the plough has
gone over their graves. And they had their music too, plain-
tive or dirge-like, as it sighed for the absent, or wailed for
the dead. The fragments were caught up, as they floated
about in decay ; and by him, the sweetest lyrist of them all,
were often revivified by a happy word that let in a soul, or,
by a few touches of his genius, the fragment became a whole,
so exquisitely moulded, that none may tell what lines belong
to Burns, and what to the poet of ancient days. They all be-
long to him now, for but for him they would have perished
utterly ; while his own matchless lyrics, altogether original,
find the breath of life on the lips of a people who have gotten
them all by heart. What a triumph of the divine faculty thus
to translate the inarticulate language of nature into every
answering modulation of human speech ! And with such
felicity, that the verse is now as national as the music !
Throughout all these exquisite songs, we see the power of an
element which we, raised by rank and education into igno-
rance, might not have surmised in the mind of the people.
The love-songs of Burns are prominent in the poetry of the
world by their purity. Love, truly felt and understood, in the
bosom of a Scottish peasant, has produced a crowd of strains
which are owned for the genuine and chaste language of the
passion, by highly as well as by lowly born — by cultured and
by ruder minds — that may charm in haughty saloons, not less
than under smoke-blackened roofs. Impassioned beyond all
the songs of passion, yet, in the fearless fervour of remem-
bered transports, pure as hymeneals ; and dear, therefore, for
ever to Scottish maidens in hours when hearts are wooed and
won ; dear, therefore, for ever to Scottish matrons who, at
household work, are happy to hear them from their daugh-
ters' lips. And he, too, is the Poet of their friendships. At
stanzas instinct with blithe and cordial amities, more brotherly
the grasp of peasant's in peasant's toil-hardened hands ! The
kindliness of their nature, not chilled, though oppressed with
care, how ready at his bidding — at the repeated air of a few
exquisite but unsought-for words of his — to start up all alive !
He is the Poet of all their humanities. His Daisy has made
all the flowers of Scotland dear. His moorland has its wild
inhabitants, whose cry is sweet. For sake of the old dumb

VOL. VII. P

226 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

fellow- servant which his farmer gratefully addresses on enter-
ing on another year of labour, how many of its kind have been
fed or spared ! In the winter storm 'tis useless to think of
the sailor on his slippery shrouds ; but the " outland eerie
cattle" he teaches his feres to care for in the drifting snow.
In what jocund strains he celebrates their amusements, their
recreations, their festivals, passionately pursued with all their
pith by a people in the business of life grave and determined
as if it left no hours for play 1 Gait, dress, domicile, furniture,
throughout all his poetry, are Scottish as their dialect ; and
sometimes, in the pride of his heart, he rejoices by such
nationality to provoke some alien's smile. The sickle, the
scythe, and the flail, the spade, the mattock, and the hoe,
have been taken up more cheerfully by many a toil-worn
cottar, because of the poetry with which Burns has invested
the very implements of labour. Now and then, too, here and
there peals forth the clangour of the war-trumpet. But Burns
is not, in the vulgar sense, a military poet ; nor are the Scot-
tish, in a vulgar sense, a military people. He and they best
love tranquil scenes and the secure peace of home. They are
prompt for war, if war be needed — no more. Therefore two
or three glorious strains he has that call to the martial virtue
quiescent in their bosoms — echoes from the warfare of their
ancient self-deliverance — menacings — a prophetical Nemo me
impune lacesset, should a future foe dare to insult the beloved (
soil. So nourishes his poetry all that is tender and all that
is stern in the national character. So does it inspire his
people with pride and contentment in their own peculiar lot ;
and as that is at once both poetical and practical patriotism,
the poet who thus lightens and brightens it is the best of
patriots.

I have been speaking of Burns as the poet of the country —
and his is the rural, the rustic muse. But we know well that
the charm of his poetry has equal power for the inhabitants
of towns and cities. Occupations, familiar objects, habitual
thoughts, are indeed very different for the two great divisions
of the people ; but there is a brotherhood both of consanguinity
and of lot. Labour — the hand pledged to constant toil — the
daily support of life, won by its daily wrestle with a seemingly
adverse but friendly necessity — in these they are all commoners

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 227

\vith one another. He who cheers, who solaces, who inspirits,
who honours, who exalts the lot of the labourer, is the poet
alike of all the sons of indiistry. The mechanic who inhabits
a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din
from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his
rafter the caged linnet ; and the strain that should gush free
from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur
of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the
loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those
whose manner of life he entirely shares; but he sings a precious
memento to those who walk in other and less pleasant ways.
Give then the people knowledge, without stint, for it nurtures
the soul. But let us never forget, that the mind of man has
other cravings — that it draws nourishment from thoughts,
beautiful and tender, such as lay reviving dews on the droop-
ing fancy, and are needed the more by him to whom they are
not wafted fresh from the face of nature. This virtue of these
pastoral and rural strains to penetiate and permeate conditions
of existence different from those in which they had their origin,
appears wheresoever we follow them. In the mine, in the
dungeon, upon the great waters, in remote lands under fiery
skies, Burns's poetry goes with his countrymen. Faithfully
portrayed, the image of Scotland lives there; and thus she
holds, more palpably felt, her hand upon the hearts of her
children, whom the constraint of fortune or ambitious enter-
prise carries afar from the natal shores. Unrepining and un-
repentant exiles, to whom the haunting recollection of hearth
and field breathes in that dearest poetry, not with homesick
sinkings of heart, but with home-invigorated hopes that the
day will come when their eyes shall have their desire, and
their feet again feel the greensward and the heather-bent of
Scotland. Thus is there but one soul in this our great National
Festival; while to swell the multitudes that from morning
light continued flocking towards old Ayr, till at mid-day they
gathered into one mighty mass in front of Bums's Monument,
came enthusiastic crowds from countless villages and towns,
from our metropolis, and from the great City of the West,
along with the sons of the soil dwelling all round the breezy
uplands of Kyle, and in regions that stretch away to the
stormy mountains of Morven.

228 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Sons of Burns ! Inheritors of the name which we proudly
revere, you claim in the glad solemnity which now unites us,
a privileged and more fondly affectionate part. To the honour
with which we would deck the memory of your father, your
presence, and that of your respected relatives, nor less that of
her sitting in honour by their side, who, though not of his
blood, did the duties of a daughter at his dying bed, give an
impressive living reality ; and while we pay this tribute to the
poet, whose glory, beyond that of any other, we blend with
the renown of Scotland, it is a satisfaction to us, that we pour
not out our praises in the dull cold ear of death. Your lives
have been passed for many years asunder ; and now that you
are freed from the duties that kept you so long from one
another, your intercourse, wherever and whenever permitted
by your respective lots to be renewed, will derive additional
enjoyment from the recollection of this day — a sacred day
indeed to brothers, dwelling — even if apart — in unity and
peace. And there is one whose warmest feelings, I have the
best reason to know, are now with you and us, as well on your
own account as for the sake of your great parent, whose cha-
racter he respects as much as he admires his genius, though
it has pleased Heaven to visit him with such affliction as might
well deaden even in such a heart as his all satisfaction even
with this festival. But two years ago, and James Burnes was
the proud and happy father of three sons, all worthy of their
race. One only now survives ; and may he in due time return
from India to be a comfort, if but for a short, a sacred season,
$o his old age ! But Sir Alexander Burnes — a name that will
not die — and his gallant brother, have perished, as all the
world knows, in the flower of their life — foully murdered in a
barbarous land. For them many eyes have wept ; and their
country, whom they served so faithfully, deplores them among
her devoted heroes. Our sympathy may not soothe such
grief as his ; yet it will not be refused, coming to him along
with our sorrow for the honoured dead. Such a father of such
sons has far other consolations.

In no other way more acceptable to yourselves could I hope
to welcome you, than by thus striving to give an imperfect
utterance to some of the many thoughts and feelings that have
been crowding into my mind and heart concerning your

THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 22D

father. And I have felt all along that there was not only no
impropriety in my doing so, after the address of our noble
Chairman, but that it was even the more required of me that
I should speak in a kindred spirit, by that very address, alto-
gether so worthy of his high character, and so admirably
appropriate to the purpose of this memorable day. Not now
for the first time, by many times, has he shown how well he
understands the ties by which, in a country like this, men of
high are connected with men of humble birth, and how amply
he is endowed with the qualities that best secure attachment
between the Castle and the Cottage. We rise to welcome you
to your Father's land.

CHRISTOPHER OX COLONSAY.

F Y T T E I.

[JUNE 1834.]

[This ride, although enriched with many imaginative embellishments, is not all
a fable. The Professor actually tried the paces of Colonsay in a regular
match, against those of a thorough-bred filly, ridden by a sporting character
of local celebrity, on the road between Elleray and Ambleside, and came off
winner. This was in 1823 or 1824.]

IN our younger days we were more famous for our pedestrian
than for our equestrian feats ; liker Pollux than Castor. Yet
were we no mean horseman; riding upwards of thirteen stone,
we seldom mounted the silk jacket, yet we have won matches

— and eyewitnesses are yet alive of our victory over old Q ,

on the last occasion he ever went to scale — after as pretty a
run home — so said the best jiidges — as was ever seen at New-
market. Had you beheld us a half-century ago in a steeple-
chase, you would have sworn we were either the Gentleman
in Black, or about to enter the Crmrch. Then we used to
stick close to the tail of the pack, to prevent raw, rash lads
from riding over the hounds — and what a tale could we tell of
the day thou didst die, thou grey, musty, moth-eaten Fox-
face ! now almost mouldered away on the wall — there — below
the antlers of the Deer-king of Braemar, who, as the lead
struck his heart, leaped twenty feet up in the air, before his
fall was proclaimed by all the echoes of the forest. We hear
them now in the silence of the wilderness. Pleasant but
mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past,
saith old Ossian — and from the cavern of old North's breast
issueth solemnly the same oracular response ! For many a
joyous crew — are they not ghosts I

Gout and rheumatism were ours — we sold our stud, and

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 231

took to cobs. In the field AUT CJESAR AUT NULLUS had been
our motto — and when no more able to ride up to it, in a wise
spirit vre were contented with the high- ways and by-ways —
and Flying Kit, ere he had passed his grand climacteric — sic
transit gloria mundi — became celebrated for his jog-trot.

Thus for many years we purchased nothing above fourteen
hands and an inch — and that of course became the standard
of the universal horse-flesh in the country — nobody dreaming
of riding the high horse in the neighbourhood of Christopher
North. If at any time anything was sent to us by a friend
above that mark, it was understood the gift might be returned
without offence — though, to spare the giver mortification, we
used to ride the animal for a few days, that the circumstance
might be mentioned when he was sent to market ; nor need
we say that a word in our hand-writing to that effect entitled
the laying on of ten pounds in the twenty on his price. We
had an innate inclination towards iron-greys — on that was
engrafted an acquired taste for hog-manes — and on that again
was superinduced a desire for crop-ears — till ere long all these
qualifications were esteemed essential to the character of a
roadster, and within a circle of a hundred miles you met with
none but iron-grey, hog-maned, crop-eared, fourteen-hand-and-
an-inch cobs — even in carts, shandrydans, gigs, post-chaises,
and coaches — nay, the mail.

But though our usual pace was the jog-trot, think not that
we did not occasionally employ the trot par excellence — and eke
the walk. No cob would have been suffered standing-room
for a single day in our six-stalled stable who could not walk
five miles an hour, and trot fourteen ; and 'twas a spectacle
good for sore eyes, all the six slap-banging it at that rate,
while a sheet might have covered them, each bowled along by
his own light lad, by way of air and exercise, when the road
was dusty a rattling whirlwind that startled the birds in the
green summer-woods. For almost all the low roads in our
county were sylvan — those along the mountains treeless alto-
gether, and shaded here and there by superincumbent cliffs.

At the first big drop of blue-ruin from a thunder-cloud — so
well had they all come to know their master's ailment, that it
mattered not which of the six he bestrode — our friend below
us, laying back the stools of his ears, and putting out his nose
with a shake of his head, while his hog-mane bristled electric

232 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

in the gloomy light, in ten yards was at the top of his speed,
up-hill down- dale — without regard to turnpikes, all paid for at
BO much per annum — while children ceased their play before
cottage-doors, and boys on schoolhouse greens clapped their
hands, and waved their caps, to the thrice-repeated cry of
" There he goes ! Hurra for old Christopher North." For
even then we had an old look — it was so gash — though hover-
ing but on three-score — and our hair, it too was of the iron-
grey — "but more through toil than age" — nothing grizzling
the knowledge-box so surely, though slowly, as the ceaseless
clink-clank of that mysterious machinery — with its wheels
within wheels — instinct with spirit — the Brain. Oh ! if it
would but lie still — for one day in the seven — in Sabbath
rest ! Then too might that other perpetual miracle and mo-
bile— the Heart — hush its tumult — and mortal man might
know the nature as Well as the name of peace !

Among the many equine gifts made us, in those days, by
our friends on mainland and isle, was one of great powers and
extraordinary genius, whom, for sake of the giver, we valued
above all the rest — and whom we christened by the euphonious
name of his birthplace among the waves — Colonsay. A cob
let us call him, though he was not a cob — for he showed blood
of a higher, a Neptunian strain ; an iron-grey let us call him,
though he was not an iron-grey — for his shoulders, and flanks,
and rump, were dappled even as if he had been a cloud-steed
of the Isle of Sky ; a hog-mane let us call him, though he was
not a hog-mane, for wild above rule or art, that high-ridged
arch disdained the shears, and in spite of them showed at once
in picturesque union bearish bristle and leonine hair ; a crop-
ear let us call him, though he was not a crop-ear, for over one
only of those organs had the aurist achieved an imperfect
triumph, while the other, unshorn of all its beams, was indeed
a flapper, so that had you seen or heard it in the obscure
twilight, you would have crouched before the coming of an
elephant. His precise height is not known on earth even
unto this day, for he abhorred being measured, and after the
style in which he repelled various artful attempts to take his
altitude by timber or tape, no man who valued his life at a
tester would, with any such felonious intent, have laid hand
on his shoulder. Looking at him you could not help thinking
of the days " when wild 'mid rocks the noble savage ran ; "

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONS AT. 233

while you felt the idea of breaking him to be as impracticable
as impious — such specimen seemed he, as he stood before you,
of stubbornness and freedom — while in his eye was concentrated
the stern light of an indomitable self-will amounting to the
sublime.

To give even a slight sketch of the character of Colonsay
would far transcend the powers of the pen now employed on
these pages — for than Pope's Duke Wharton he was a more
incomprehensible antithesis. At times the summer cloud not
more calm than he — the summer cloud, moving with one
equable motion, all by itself, high up along a level line that
is invisible to the half-shut eyes of the poet lying on his back,
miles below among earth-flowers, till the heavenly* creature,
surely life-imbued, hath passed from horizon to horizon, away
like a dubious dream ! Then all at once — we are now speak-
ing of Colonsay — off like a storm- tost vapour along the cliffs,
capriciously careering across cataracted chasms, and then
whew ! whirling in a moment over the mountain-tops ! With
no kind of confidence could you — if sober— count upon him
for half a mile. Yet we have known him keep the not noise-
less tenor of his way, at the jog-trot, for many miles, as if to
beguile you into a belief that all danger of your losing your
seat was over for that day, and that true wisdom, dismissing
present fears, might be forming schemes for the safety of
to-morrow's ride. Yet, ere sunset, pride had its fall. Pre-
tending to hear something a-rustle in the hedge, or something
a-crawl in the ditch, or something a-flow across the road below
the stones, with a multitudinous stamp, and a multifarious
start, as if he had been transformed from a quadruped at the
most, into a centipede at the very least, he has wheeled round
on a most perilous pivot, within his own length, and with the
bit in his teeth, off due east, at that nameless pace far beyond
the gallop, at which a mile-long avenue of trees seems one
green flash of lightning, arid space and time annihilated ! You
have lost your stirrups and your wits — yet instinct takes the
place of reason — and more than demi-corpsed, wholly incorpo-
rated and entirely absorbed in the mane — the hair and bristle
of the boar-mane-leonine — you become pail and parcel of the
very cause of your own being hurried beyond the bounds of
this visible diurnal sphere — and exist but in an obscure idea
of an impersonation of an ultra-marine motion, which, in the

234 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

miserable penury of artificial language, men are necessitated
to call a gallop.

An absent man is a more disgusting, but not so dangerous
an animal, as an absent horse. Now, of all the horses we
ever knew, the most absent was Colonsay. Into what pro-
found reveries have we not seen him fall — while " his drooped
head sunk gradually low," till his long upper-lip almost
touched the road, as if he had been about to browse on dust
or dirt, yet nothing was farther from his mind than any such
intention — for his eyes were shut — and there he was jog-
trotting in the sunshine sound asleep I We knew better than
to ride him with spurs — and he knew better than to care for
the cuddy-heels of a gouty sexagenarian. His dappled coat
was sleek and bright as if burnished with Day and Martin's
patent greying — had those great practical chemists then flour-
ished, and confined their genius exclusively to the elucid-
ation of that colour. But his hide was hard as that of a
rhinoceros, and callous to a whip that would have cut a
Cockney to the liver. The leather was never tanned that
could have established a raw on those hips. Ply the thong
till your right hand hung idle as if palsied by your side — the
pace was the same — and milestone after milestone showed
their numerals, each at the appointed second. But " a change
came o'er the spirit of his dream. " — and from imagining him-
self drawing peats along a flat in Dream-land, he all at oncef
fell into the delusion that he was let loose from his day's darg
into the pleasant meadows of Idlesse, and up with his heels
in a style of funking more splendid in design and finished in
execution than any exhibition of the kind it has ever been our
lot to see out of Stony Arabia. The discovery soon made by
him that we were on his back, abated nothing of his vagaries,
but, on the contrary, only made them more vehement ; while
on such occasions — and they were not unfrequent — nor can
we account for the phenomenon on any other theory than the
one we have BOW propounded — his neighing outdid that of
his own sire — a terrific mixture of snuffing, snorting, blowing,
squeaking, grunting, groaning, roaring, bellowing, shrieking
and yelling, that indeed " gave the world assurance of a
horse," and murdered silence — for the echoes dared nc
answer — nor, indeed, could they be expected to understand-
or if they understood — to speak a language so portentous!

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 2S5

preternatural, and beyond the powers of utterance — though
great — of blind cliff or wide-mouthed cavern.

He was a ruiraculoxis jumper — of wooden gates and stone-
walls. He cleared six feet like winking ; and as to paling, or
hedges, or anything of that sort, he pressed upon them in a
sidelong sort of way peculiar to himself, now with shoulder
and now with rump, and then butting with his bull-like fore-
head, marched through the breach as coolly as a Gurwood or a
Mackie at the head of a forlorn-hope at Ciudad Eodrigo or
Badajos. To a ha-ha he cried "ha — ha!" and up or
down in red-deer fashion — through clover-field or flowering
shrubbery — all one to Colonsay. In a four-acre pasture,
twenty men, halter in hand, might in vain combine to catch
him ; and as for the old stale trick that rarely fails to entrap
the rest of his race — corn tossed d la tambourine — he would
give his forelock a shake, and wheeling right shoulder for-
wards, break through the cordon like a clap of thunder. Now
all this was very excusable — nay, perhaps praiseworthy —
while he was bare-backed and unbestridden ; but if, on pass-
ing an enclosure of an inviting aspect, whether of grass or
oats, he chose to be either gluttonously or epicurishly inclined,
the accident of your being on the saddle, and on your way
along the high-road to town or village where you had business
to transact, or to pay a visit, was then a trifle with him un-
worthy of a moment's consideration ; and then without a
moment's warning, he either jumped like a cat over the wall,
with his heels pushing down a few yards of coping ; or if a
good, stout, thickset thorn-hedge stood in the way of the
gratification of his appetite, he demolished it in like manner
as we had seen him demolish a hundred, and bore us through
the enemies' bayonets across the counterscarp, over the glacis,
up to the crest of the position where perhaps a tree stood by
way of standard, and then setting himself to serious eating,
no man could have pulled his nose from the ground, under a
Briareus.

Such conduct was at least intelligible ; but that is more
than we could ever bring ourselves to think of some of his
other acts — such, for example, as changing his mind, with-
out any assignable reason, when to all appearance jog-trotting
along, perfectly well pleased with his journey, and by means
of an easy roundish turn, without any bustle or symptom of

236 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

impatience whatever, changing his direction, and with imper-
turbable gravity mildly taking us home again, as if we were
of our own accord jogging back for our purse or pocket-book.
Such must have been one of the many suppositions at many
times ventured upon by roadside stone -breakers, once more
bowing their heads to us, so soon after our declination be-
hind the hill unexpectedly reappearing with our face to
the orient. The servants began to suspect that these re-
turns were made purposely by us that we might catch them
caterwauling ; and the housekeeper herself, we thought, some-
times looked sulky when our hem brought her to the door ; but
on divulging to her the secret, we were restored to our former
place in her esteem. The lintel of the stable-door was rather
low, and on two occasions our friend walked into his stall with
us lying extended on his back, with our hatless head over his
neck, the only position in which we could have evited death
— a knee-pan each time looking blue on its escape from dis-
location. Yet no sooner was the seemingly stable-sick steed
tied up in his stall, but with a Jack-Sheppard touch he jerked
his head out of the collar, and jumping over an old cairn-look-
ing wall, began chasing the cows, ever and anon turning up
his lip in the air as if he were laughing at the lumbering gait
of the great, big, fat, unwieldy animals straddling out of his
way, with their swollen udders, while the Damsel of the Dairy
flew shouting and waving her apron to the rescue, fearing that
the hoped-for quey-calf of the teeming Alderney might, in
her mother's fright, be untimeously born — nor hesitating to
aver that it was manifestly that wicked Colonsay's intent to
bring about such lamentable catastrophe. But we are assured
that he had no idea of Madame Fra^aise being " as ladies
wish to be who love their lords ; " for though the most in-
comprehensible of God's creatures, poor Colonsay had not an
atom of cruelty in his whole composition ; and, except when
he took it for a cleg, would not have hurt a fly.

His strength was even more surprising than his agility, and
we should have had no fears for the result in backing him for
five pulls at an oak root, against a First-prize Suffolk Puncl
True that his nerves were delicate, like those of almost
other people of genius ; but the nervous system, a subject,
by the by, that seems less and less understood every day,
is one thing, and the muscular system another — and the

CHRISTOPHER OX COLONSAY. 237

osseous system is a third, and sinews are a fourth ; in these
three he excelled all mare-born, and was in good truth the
NA<* OF THE AGE. If you had but seen him in the plough I
Single on the stiffest soil, with his nose almost touching his
counter, and his mighty forehand working far more magnifi-
cently than any steam-engine, for there you saw power and
heard it not, how he tore his unimpeded progress through
the glebe fast falling over in six-inch deep furrows, over
which Ceres rejoiced to see the sheeted sower, careless
of rooks, scatter golden in the sunshine the glancing
seed ! Then behind his heels how hopped the harrows !
Clods were soon turned to tufts, and tufts triturated into
soil, and soil so pulverised, that the whole four-and-twenty
acres, so laid down, smiled smooth as a garden, and might
have been sown with flowers ! Ploughing and harrow-
ing may truly be said to have been his darling amuse-
ments— illustrations of " labor ipse voluptas." So engaged,
he played his capricious pranks no more — he was an agri-
culturist indeed — for one look of Colonsay at that work, it
would have been well worth the while of the ghost of Trip-
tolemus to have beseeched Pluto for an hour's furlough on
earth — but sorely he would have wept after such sight to
return to the untilled world of shadows.

But he was dangerous — very — in a gig. On one occasion,
" under the opening eyelids of the morn" — we remember it
as if it had been yesterday — -just as a sleepy man in a yellow
shirt and a red night-cap was fumbling at the lock — impatient
of the dilatory nudity, Colonsay, careless or forgetful of the
gig behind him, towering higher than the toll-house, rising
up like the most potent of his progenitors, prepared himself
for a standing-leap, and cleared the pike at a spang ! Many
truths, says Aristotle, are more incredible than fictions, and
this one may be brought to the illustration of his Poetick.
We carried away none of our tackle — not a strap started —
not a buckle lost its tongue. The wheels — though great
spokesmen — said nothing ; — and the body of the gig " on
its smooth axle spinning slept" without being awakened ;
yet 'twas no glamour gate — a real red six-barred two- posted
heart-of-oak gate, that the week before had turned a runaway
post-shay into the lake, and shivered — in neither case without
some loss of life — a delirious shandrydan into atoms !

238 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

We think we see him now — and OURSELVES on his back — a
green branch waving on his head, to keep the buzzers from,
settling round his eyes — our head bare then but for the beaver
— now shadowed with undying laiirels. That we should
have persisted for years in riding the animal, of whose cha-
racter we have now given you a very few traits, must seem
to all who do not know him and us, very like infatuation ;
but we are not ashamed to confess, that there had grown
up between us a strong mutual attachment, under the secret,
and, perhaps, at the time by both parties unsuspected influence
of similarity of sentiment and opinion and conduct on most of
the great affairs of life. To illustrate this congeniality would
require more time and space than we can now afford — suffice
it to say for the present, in half a sentence, Christopher and
Colonsay dearly loved — each his own wild will and his own
wild way ; and though in following them out, they were
often found to run counter, yet we generally were at one
in the end. Eough-shod, we should not have feared to ride
across the Frozen Ocean — shoeless, in spite of the simoom
through the Sandy Desert. Where there was danger, man
and horse were a Centaur. Bear witness, with a voice mut-
tering through vapours, ye cliffs of Scafell ! In your sunless
depths, 0 Bowscale Tarn, have not the two Undying Fish
seen our heads reflected at noonday among the pallid images
of the stars ?

Ay, when he chose he was, in good truth, the devil to go 1
Then the instant he saw the horn of a side-saddle he was as
gentle as a lamb. Soon as the blue gleam of that riding-habit
met his eye, he whinnied softly as a silly foal, and sunk on his
knees on the turf, to let the loveliest lady in the land ascend
her throne like a queen, and then, changed by joy into one of
the bright coursers of the Sun, away bore he at a celestial
canter that Light Divine, more beautiful than Aurora cloud-
carried through the gates of the dawn — " a new sun risen on
mid-day." 0 God of heaven ! how black — deep — insatiate—
the maw of the ever-hungry Grave !

But we come now to our Kecollections of the Trotting-
match, whereof all England rang from side to side — and
shall not delay you long by an account of the circumstances
under which it was made, though of them we must say some-
thing, and likewise something of our celebrated antagonists.

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 239

Sain Sitwell was well known in his day as one of the best
in all England. He had long had it all his own way in the
South, but coming on the wrong side of Kendal, he found
we were too far North for him, and caught a Tartar. His
favourite prad too was a grey, a mare, standing fifteen hands
and a half, and the story ran she had done seventeen miles in
the hour, with some minutes to spare, though she was rather
a rum one to look at, and some said a roarer. The day we made
the match she seemed somewhat sweaty, and by no means
costive ; but we had afterwards reason to suspect that such
symptoms were all gammon and spinnage. We were badgered
into it on a Saturday, and the affair was to come off on the fol-
lowing Wednesday — so there was little time for training —
nine miles out and in from the 9th to the 18th milestone on
the road from Kendal to Keswick. The bet between us and
Sam was a mere hundred gold guineas, and we had plenty of
offers of two to one from other quarters that Colonsay did not
accomplish the distance within the hour — but we despise by-
bets, and never suffer our skill to be diverted from the main-
chance. That Colonsay would do the distance in less time
than the Shuffler — for that was the name of the mare — we did
not doubt ; but whether he was to do the distance in an hour
or in half-a-dozen of hours, a day or a week, would depend,
we knew, on the Book of Accidents, which we had often found
to contain many chapters.

Sam Sitwell, though not a singular, was certainly rather a
suspicious character, and there used to be many such about
the Lakes. Being of the sect of the Gnostics, he seldom lost
a bet, and never paid one ; and as he was a better by profes-
sion, he lived on the spoil of simpletons. There was nothing,
Sam said, like buying everything for ready money — and he
had almost everything to sell — nor was he very particular
about a license ; but horses and carriages — some real, and
most imaginary — constituted his chief stock in trade, with
a few bonajide tenth-hand piano-fortes, a fiftieth-hand spinuet,
and a couple of indisputable hurdy-gurdies that had made the
tour of Europe. Sitwell and we were good friends enough,
for he was really, after all, no such very unpleasant fellow —
was uncommonly handsome, which is not a little in a man's
favour as the world wags — nay, had even an air distingue — was
never quarrelsome in our company, for which there might be

240 ESSAYS I CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

good reasons — and though his talk was about cattle, it was
never coarse. Indeed, in that respect Mr Sitwell was a gen-
tleman.

As soon as it was disseminated over the country, that wo
were to trot him for a hundred, the population was most anxious
to know — on which Cob ? And when Colonsay was announced,
such was the burst of national enthusiasm, that we believe he
would have been elected, had the choice of a champion out of
the Six been decided by universal suffrage. In his powers
the North of England reposed the most unquaking confidence
— on the question of the direction of those powers, the North
of England was abroad. His eccentricities he had taken no
care to conceal ; but many of them had been most erroneously
attributed to his master. Rumour, with her hundred tongues,
had, however, on the whole, done justice to his hundred ex-
ploits, though they, it was universally believed, were but in-
adequate exponents of his powers ; while his powers, though
gloriously expanded, appeared but to give intimation of his
capacities, — of which numbers without number numberless —
such was the not unorthodox creed of the Three Counties — •
were held to be folded up for future achievement and astonish-
ment, within the compactest bulk in which horse had ever
appeared on earth in quadrupedal incarnation.

He had been rather complaining for a fortnight past — and
Betty Hawkrigg, the most scientific veterinary surgeon in the»
three northern counties, had within that time given him some
powerful balls for what she learnedly called the mully-grubs.
But on the Tuesday morning he was gay as a lark — " and as
we looked there seemed a fire about his eyes." All that day
Will Ritson, unknown to us, had kept absolutely cramming
him with corn, which, considering that he had been taken off
grass on the Saturday evening, was more kind than considerate;
and on entering the stable to see his bed made for the night,
you may, with a lively imagination, form some faint idea of our
horror and astonishment as we beheld Colonsay, with his nose
in a bucket, licking up the remains of a hot mess of materials,
many of them to us anonymous, or worse than anonymous,
which, at the commencement of his meal, had, we were credibly
informed by a bystander, overflowed the vessel of administra-
tion. His sides were swollen as if they were at the bursting,
and the expression of his countenance was decidedly apoplectic.

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 241

We did not see how we could much mend the matter by knock-
ing down our training- groom ; and the question was, were we
to give the patient who to-morrow was to be the agent, a purge
or an emetic. As there was no time to be lost — the start was
to be at six — the former seemed the preferable plan ; but was
it practicable ? No. No mixture could so move the iron stom-
ach of Colonsay ; and though it was admitted on all hands,
that no drastic would much weaken him, yet 'twas judged
prudent, under all the circumstances, not to disturb his bowels,
and to leave nature to herself to get rid, before morning, in
her own quiet way, of some portion at least of that ill-timed
repletion. That this resolution was a wise one we soon found
— for Ritson, by way of comforting us, and justifying himself,
informed us, with a knowing smile, that he knew what he was
about better than to give a horse a mash the night before a
trotting- match for a hundred guineas, without putting into it
as much doctor's stuff as would clear him out, by peep of day,
as clean as a whistle. With this cheering assurance we went
to bed, leaving orders that we should be called at five.

Our dreams were disturbed, and even monstrous. Now we
were mounted on a serpent, that in mazy error strove to insi-
nuate its giant bulk through a thicket, in pursuit of another
reptile ridden by a wretch in scarlet, but was unable to pro-
gress after that amphisbasna dire, because of a huge knot in
its belly, formed by an undigested goat, which it had swal-
lowed, horns and all, the protruding points threatening to
pierce the distension of its speckled skin, and one of them
absolutely piercing it — and then a horrid gush of garbage and

blood. Then we seemed to be but, thank heaven, our

nightmare was scared from our convulsed vehicle by the
thunder of a charge of cavalry circling the house — and leaping
from the blankets to the window, we had a glimpse of Colon-
say, at the head of our Five Irongreys, as the living whirl-
wind was passing by, while the edifice shook from turret to
foundation-stone — and then all again was still in the morning
calm. Was this too a dream ? The dewdrops, as they lay on
the roses clustering round our latticed window, had that
undisturbing and soul-satisfying beauty that belongs to the
real world of life. So we huddled on our breeches, and out
into the morning, without our braces, to penetrate into the
heart of the mystery, and ascertain if this were indeed the
VOL. vir. 0

242 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

flesh and blood and bone Colonsay, or a grey phantom dappled
by the dawn, to cheat imagination's eyes. It was the veritable
and invincible Colonsay, who, somewhat blown, but very far
from bursting, came galloping to us " on the front." He had
let himself out of the unlocked stable, by lifting up the latch
— more majorum — with that long upper lip of his, lithe as a
proboscis, and as if prescient of the coming exploit that was
casting its shadow before, had been taking his gallop with the
squad to put himself into wind, and was now fit to trot against
the steed that carried the old woman of Berkely, with a per-
sonage before her who at present shall be strictly anonymous,
even though the goal were to have been in that place which
nor poet nor preacher ever mentions before ears polite. We
took him like Time by the forelock, and led him with out-
stretched neck to his stall, looking like a winner.

There is no treatise on training either of man or horse worth
a dram. For our own parts we never ran a match on an
empty stomach — and we never were so near being beat in our
lives as in a four-mile race on Knavesmire by a Yorkshire
clodhopper, who an hour before starting had breakfasted, as
was his wont, on beans and bacon, and half a gallon of butter-
milk. Ourselves alone, who heard it walloping and rumbling
behind us, can conceive the nature of the noise in his stomach,
on making play. Belshazzar, fools and knaves say, lost his
race t'other month, by having been given a pail of water.
Stuff 1 Had it been in him to win, he might have emptied a
trough, and then dined upon the stakes. Here was Colonsay
— three days only off grass that tickled his belly — allowed, we
verily believe, during the Three Days in which a revolution
was carried into effect in his metropolis, by Eitson to feed ad
libitum out of the corn-chest — the lid having been taken off its
hinges — mashed and physicked to an unknown extent at sun-
set— and lo ! at sunrise, like a swallow, a lark, a pigeon, or a
hawk, as gay, as lively, as agile, and as hungry — and yelling
to be off and away like an eagle about to leap from the cliff
and cleave the sky.

None but a fool will ride a trotting-match in a racing-saddle
— or with any bit but a snaffle — let his nag's mouth be leather
or lead. Our favourite saddle then was one that according to
authentic tradition had belonged to the famous Marquess of
Granby — and holsters and all weighed not far short of a couple

CHRISTOPHER ON COLOXSAY. 243

of stone. The stirrup-irons would have made a couple of three-
pound quoits. Between pommel and peak, you sat undislodg-
ably imbedded, and could be unhorsed but laterally — a feat,
however, which Colonsay, by what we used to call the " swing-
ing side-start," did more than once teach us, not only without
difficulty, but with the greatest ease and alacrity to perform.
No need for a crupper with such a shoulder as his, yet, to make
assurance doubly sure, a crupper there was, attached to a tail
that, ignorant of ginger, " wreathed its old fantastic roots so
high," ominous of conquest. "Our bosom's lord sat lightly on
his throne," as we showed what we once must have been, by
vaulting like a winged Mercury into the Marquisate, and
attended by our posse comitatus, proceeded towards the start-
ing-post visible to the eyes of the cognoscenti, in the shape
of an unelaborate milestone grey and green 'with the rust and
lichens of years.

Attended by our posse comitatus ! Why — look and behold !
all the world and his wife. And not that worthy couple alone,
but all the children. They want but somewhat higher cheek-
bones to be as good-looking a people as the Scotch. What —
pray — do you mean by the epithet raw — applied to ' bones ?
" Raw head and bloody bones," is not only an intelligible but
picturesque expression ; but we fear — them Cockney — that in
constantly saying " raw-boned Scotchman," thou pratest out
of thy little primer. Our bones are not raw, so let us lay thee
across our knee — with thy face to the floor. Hush ! no crying
— be mute as a marine under the cat. Now go home to your
mamma — that is, your wife — and on showing her the broad-
stone of honour, implore her, by her conjugal love and faith,
to whisper in thy ear, whether it be bone of her bone that she
weepeth to see so raw before her eyes, or flesh of her flesh.

But we have been digressing — and on our return see Sit-
well in a wrap-rascal, mounted on a mouse of a thing — a lad
leading the famous Shuffler mare in clothing, to the admiration
of the assemblage. At a signal from his master, the imp un-
dressed the Phenomenon, and there stood the spanking jade,
in a Newmarket saddle not more than four pounds with all
appurtenances — in beautiful condition — for the symptoms of
Saturday had been all assumed for a blind — but without effect
— for here it was diamond cut diamond — and Colonsay, though
perhaps still a little purfled, and not sufficiently drawn up in

244 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the flank, had manifestly made the most of the mash, and was
in high spirits. No wonder indeed that he was more than
usually elated; for we afterwards discovered that the humane
and speculative KitsOn, while we were taking breakfast, had
given him the better portion of a quart of gin — mixed with
water, it is true — beverage known by the appropriate name of
half-and-half. He hardly condescended to look at the Shuffler
— a single glance seemed to suffice to inspire our magnani-
mous animal with sentiments of consummate contempt for his
spindle-shanked antagonist, who, though he possibly might
have some speed, had obviously little or no bottom ; nor were
those sentiments moderated by the sudden transformation of
Sitwell into a regular Newmarket jockey, booted, buckskin'd,
jacketed, and capp'd — a very Buckle — shining in silk like a
spotted leopard ; and now mounted — though that was a
fashion of his own — whip in mouth, with squared elbows and
doubled fists, as if he were preparing to spar on horseback.

What a contrast did all this rodomontade, hectoring, and
parade, on the part of him Samuel Sitwell, afford to the
simple, almost bashful, bearing of us Christopher North ! We
rode in our mere Sporting- Jacket — and as we well knew there
is no saying what a day may bring forth, we slung our fishing-
basket on our shoulder, in one of our holsters stuck our fish-
ing-rod and umbrella, and in the other — 'twas its first season
— up-fixed the Crutch. We are no enemy to knee-breeches
— and pretty wear are white cords ; but having in the course
of oar travels been on the Don, we experienced such pleasure
in Cossacks, that our friend the Hetman — since the famous
Platow — presented us with several pair, which we occasionally
wear to this day — well known all over Scotland as North's
Eternals. In the general agitation of that morning, our valet
had forgotten to attach to our ankle-fringes our sole- straps, so
that long before the play was over, the Kussia-duck had
wriggled itself up both legs alike, into a knob on either knee,
that to appearance considerably impaired that symmetry for
which even then our limbs continued to be eminently distin-
guished. The ducks were white as innocence, for they had
been bleached on the sunny banks of lucid Windermere, and
only the day before had been fondly imagined by a party of
young ladies — Lakers from London— to be late-left patches of
virgin snow. It was not till the maidens walked up to them,

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAT. 245

that blushing they ' discovered their mistake — nor, had the
party at the same time discovered what they really were,
would it have been possible to analyse their emotions. The
stockings in which we rode were worsted — rig-and-fur — and
blue — and our feet were in high-lows laced with thunks. In
summer we wear no waistcoat except the bosom-and-body-
flannel-friend beneath our shirt, and our shirt, we need not
say, was cerulean-check, for we had seen a little service at
sea, and Pretty Poll with her own small fingers had figured
our flowing collar. On the front of our japanned hat might
be read in yellow letters — NIL TIMEO ; and thus equipped —
sans spur, sans whip — for one spur in the head is worth two
on the heel — tongue tells better than thong, and lip than
leather — pretty well back in the saddle — knees in — heels
down — and toes up — but that not much — with a somewhat
stern aspect, but a loose rein, sat cock-a-hoop on Colonsay
pawing in his pride, all that was mortal of Christopher North
— sidey-for-sidey with the semblance of Sammy Sitwell and
his mare Shuffler.

The spectacle was at once beautiful and magnificent. Far
as the eye could reach, not a living thing was visible on the
long line of road. But the walls and eminences all crowded,
yet motionless, with life ! What a confused brightness of
bonnets — each with its own peculiar ribbon — the whole many-
hued as our friend Mr Oliver's tulip-garden, now transferred
as by magic to Newington from Canaan 1 A wondrous beauty
is the beauty breathed all at once from thousands of beautiful
faces, affecting the soul of a man as one beauty and as one
face — till wavering — hovering for a while in sweet distraction
along and over the whole lovely lines, and columns, and
masses, and solid squares, he longs in ineffable and almost
objectless desire among so many objects to take the million
into his arms, and smother it with multitudinous kisses — leav-
ing no lip untasted — and no eye untouched — a kiss compre-
hensive as conception — an embrace capacious as creation —
when air, earth, and sea, are all three seen lying together
diffused in one spirit — the serenity of elemental Love and
primeval Peace !

Tents too — and flags flying from the apex of many a pyra-
mid ! Fruit and gingerbread stalls — and long lines of canvass-
backed houses fitted up for shops I That is Sail Street— and

246 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

we smoke Blanket Square. 0 Vanity Fair ! And is Chris-
topher North the tutelary saint of this assemblage I Is he the
loadstone that has attracted so many steel stays confining so
many lovely bosoms I Yet 'twill be a happy holiday I and
there will be wrestling in the ring — and the sun as he sinks
will bid the moon rise to preside over innocent orgies — and
the merry stars will join in the blue heaven the dancers on the
green earth ; and when the mirth and music all die — as die
they must — the owls will toohoo the dawn — and the dawn will
let drop her dews — and all Nature will be purely still as if all
the dancing and deray of St Christopher's day, eve, and night,
had been but the dream of a Shade !

Billy Balmer fired his signal pistol — and at the flash off we
went like a shot. Yes ! off we went — for Colonsay had not
been expecting the thunder and lightning quite within an
inch of his ear — and gave such a side-spang that he unhorsed
us and we unhorsed Sitwell — while in the shock Shuffler was
overthrown. Assuredly we had not laid our account with
coming into such rude collision so early in the day, though we
looked forward with confidence to much adventure and many
events of that kind during the course of the match, and before
sunset. Sam was a little stunned, and the mare did not seem
to like it ; but having been remounted we gave each other a
nod — and again — but not in the same sense — were off! In
the exultation of the moment, Billy shyed his beaver into the
air, which, describing a parabola in its descent, just shaved
Shuffler's nose, and made him swerve, till our off and Sam's
near leg got rather awkwardly entangled ; but having extri-
cated our Cossacks from his rowel, we shoved him off to his
own side : then, if not before, it may be safely said was THE
START — and it was manifest to all the sporting spectators that
the battle had begun. From the hubbub we gathered that
with aliens Shuffler had rather the call — it might be guineas
to pounds on the mare. We could not choose but smile.

For about a couple of hundred yards the course was down
hill — and well down hill too — the fall being about a foot in
the yard, which, though considerably off the perpendicular, you
will find on trial to be still farther off the horizontal, at least
very far indeed from being a flat. We had tossed up for the
choice of the starting-post ; and, having won, with a nice dis-
crimination of the character of the cattle, we had fixed on the

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 247

milestone crowning the crest of the celebrated Break-Neck-
Brae. The descent was at all times sprinkled with an excel-
lent assortment of well-chosen acute-angled pebbles, from a
pound weight up to half a stone ; to pick his way among
them would have been difficult to the most attentive quadru-
ped even at a slow walk — at a fast trot impossible ; and we
frankly confess, that, though we were far from hoping it might
happen, for that would have spoiled sport, we thought it not
unlikely that Shuffler, who had been fired, and was rather
bent in the knees — to say nothing of her hoofs, that had been
so often pared that they reminded us of the feet of a Chinese
lady of high rank — in coming down the hill would come down,
in which event we could not but contemplate the painful pro-
bability of her breaking at once her own neck, and that of her
master. As for Colonsay, his hoofs were of iron as well as his
shoes. Among his innumerable accomplishments, he had
never learned the art of stumbling ; and you had but to look
at his forehand to know that he would go to the grave without
ever so much as once saying his prayers. Down Break- Neck-
Brae we came clattering like slates down a roof — Shuffler
rather in advance — for we lay by to see the fun, in case of a
capsize ; and a capsize there was, and such a capsize as has
sent many an outrider to kingdom- come. After a long suc-
cession of stumbles — the whole series, however, being in fact
but one long-continued and far-extended stumble — during
which Sitwell, though he lost his stirrups, exhibited astonish-
ing tenacity — Shuffler, staggering as if she had been shot, but
still going on at no despicable speed, and struggling to
recover herself like a good one as she was and nothing else,
appeared to our dazzled optics to fling an absolute somerset,
and to fall over the ditch — at that spot fortunately without
anything that could be called a wall, though there was no
want of the materials for one — into a field, which we knew by
experience to be rather softish ; for more falls of man and
horse, separately or conjunctly, had occurred at that particular
juncture of the road — a turn — than along the whole line,
from Kendal to Keswick, and far more than the proportional
number of deaths or killings on the spot. We would fain
have stopped to ascertain whether or not the result had been
fatal ; but Colonsay seemed to think the accident in no way
uncommon, and would not be prevailed on to slacken his

248 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

pace. We had now, to all appearance, the issue in our own
hand ; but we had, in our anxiety for Sitwell, forgotten the
Cross Eoads at Cook's House.

Yes — in our anxiety for Sitwell. Would you have had us
pull up and ask him if he were dead ? That would indeed have
been humane ; but what if we could not pull up — nor you
either — had you been in our saddle, and instead of a Sumph a
Sampson ? This cant about cruelty is confined, we trust, to
the pestilential coxcombs in whose cowardly and calumnious
throats it must have been generated of spleen and bile. Fish-
ing is cruel — hunting is cruel — racing is cruel — boxing is
cruel — and pugilists are cut-throats. So writes the Grub
Street liar. Christopher in his Sporting- Jacket is cruel —
Christopher on Colonsay is cruel — Christopher with his crutch
is cruel — Christopher in the Crow's Nest is cruel — in the
Crow's Nest with Scoresby, keeping a look-out for icebergs,
and gazing on cathedrals painted with a pencil that Turner's
self might envy, by Frost on the polar sky !

Nobody with eyes in his head can have passed Cook's House
without looking at it with pleasure ; for there is a charm —
though we know not well in what it consists — in its common-
place unpretending character — seated by the roadside, a little
apart — with its back-garden of fruit-trees — and in front an open
space flanked with an ample barn, and noways demeaned by
one of the most comfortable pigsties that ever enclosed a litter
of squeakers. Let the roads be as dusty as they can be, still
you see no powder on those trees. Arid as for that meadow-
field over the way — irrigated by a perennial rill that keeps for
ever murmuring through the woods of St Catharine, below the
shadow of the Giant of Millar Ground, and thence with many
a lucid leap through the orchard behind the chapel-like farm-
house on the lake-side into the quiet of Windermere — a love-
lier meadow-field never adorned Arcadia in the golden agp,
nor yielded softer and greener footing to plume-pruning swan.
A little farther on, and lo the Cross Koads ! To the right the
way up into Troutbeck— to the left to Bowness — as a sign-
post— a sore perplexity to strangers — used of old to attempt
to tell — by means of a ruined inscription on a rotten plank
laughed at by the foliage of the living trees — a contrast be-
tween the quick and the dead. The bold breezes from Amble-
side were wooing our forehead ; but Colonsay, remembering

CHRISTOPHER ON COLOXSAT. 249

rack and manger in Mr Ullock's well-stored stable, lolled —
and taking the bit in his teeth — by which he at once became
independent, and changed his master into his slave — set off at
a hand-gallop to the White Lion.

Now of all the Inns in England, the best then, as now — to
us cheapest and also dearest of all — for there, at moderate
charges, we got all a wise man could desire — was the White
Lion of Bowness. Many a day — many a week — many a month
— whole summers and winters — springs and autumns — years —
decades — at a time — have we it inhabited — a private character
in a public place — not there unhonoured, though as yet to the
wide world unknown — unnoticed as a cloud among many clouds
to and fro sailing day or night sky, though haply in shape
majestic as any there — upturning its silver lining to the moon,
or by the sun now wreathed into snow, now bathed in fire.
But at that hour we had no business there — we knew even we
should be unwelcome — for the village stood deserted by all
but the houses, and they too had been at Orest-head had it
not been for disturbing the furniture — the Tower did not like
to leave behind the Church — the Church had business with
the Pulpit — the Pulpit was overlooking the Desk — and the
Desk busy in numbering the Pews. The White Lion continued
to hold his mouth open, and his tail brandished, without an
eye to look on him — rampant in vain — arid had he even roared,
he would have frightened only the sucking turkeys.

At this period of the match we have never been able to
ascertain what was the true state of the betting, but we believe
a considerable change took place in most men's books. There
— as we were afterwards told — was Shuffler in no promising
plight on the wrong side of the ditch, and Sam Sitwell in a
state of insensibility, with his bared arm in possession of Mr
Wright, the surgeon, whose lancet for a while failed to elicit
a single drop of blood. The odds which a few minutes before
had been guineas to pounds on Sam and Shuffler, changed with
the group there to guineas to groats on Kit and Colonsay; but
on the instantly subsequent bolting and disappearance of those
heroes, they were restored to the former quotation, and then bet-
ting on all sides grew dull and died. The most scientific calcu-
lator was at fault with such data — at a loss, a positive nonplus ;
whether to back the wounded — perhaps dying — or the absent
and certainly fled. Should Sam recover, and Shuffler, who

250 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

bled freely, be able to proceed — then, as they enjoyed the
advantage of being on the spot, it was certain they would
become favourites; for we, though fresh, were far off, and
prudence declined speculating on the probable period of our
revolution and return.

We indulged strong hopes that Colonsay, on the way to
Bowness, would turn in to Kayrigg, by which we should save
nearly a mile : nor were we disappointed ; for, saving us the
trouble of opening the gate, he put his breast to it, and we
found ourselves at the door of that hospitable and honoured
mansion. Most fortunately one of the young gentlemen was
just mounting to ride to see the start — and having communi-
cated to him the predicament in which we rode, we returned
together to the scene of action — for a strong friendship had
long subsisted between our steeds — and by the side of that
chestnut, Colonsay trotted along as if the two had been in har-
ness and followed by a phaeton. Loud cheers announced our
approach — and there was Sam on Shuffler — somewhat more
pale than wonted — and his head bandaged — but game to the
back-bone, and ready for a fresh start. Having shortly ex-
pressed our satisfaction at reseeing him alive, we gave the
office, and set off on the resumption of our match — and each
of us feeling our resolution earned by acclamation, we both
immediately made strong play.

The run from Cook's House to Troutbeck Bridge is a slight
slope all the way — and there is not prettier ground in all
England than that quarter of a mile, or thereabouts, for such
a match as was now again in progress. The inare led —
which was injudicious — but we have always suspected that
Sam's wits were still a- wool-gathering in the meadow whereon
he had had his fall. On approaching James Wilson's smithy,
we heard the forge roaring, and saw the Shuffler cocking her
ears as if she were going to shy. At that moment we were
close on her left flank, and as she swerved from the flash
of the furnace, we cried, " No jostling, Sam" — while Colonsay,
impatient of the pressure, returned it more powerfully, and, in
spite of all our efforts, ran the mare and himself in among a
number of carts, waggons, and wheelbarrows, to say nothing
of various agricultural instruments of a formidable character-
more especially a harrow reared up against the cheek of the
smithy door, fearfully furnished with teeth. This was rathe

CHRISTOPHER OX COLOXSAY. 251

getting more than tit for tat, and Sam getting quarrelsome, nay
abusive, we had to take our Crutch out of the holster, and sit
on the defensive. Meanwhile, though the pace had slackened,
we were still in motion, and, after some admirable displays of
horsemanship on both sides, we got free from the impedi-
menta, and Colonsay led across, not — as we say in Scotland
— -over the bridge. We would have given a trifle for a horn
of ale, at the Sun or Little Celandine, a public adjoining the
smithy, and kept by Vulcan — and so we do not doubt would
Sam, for the morning was hot, and told us what we might ex-
pect from meridian ; but false delicacy prevented us both from
pulling up, and the golden opportunity was lost. We ex-
acted a promise from ourselves not to behave so foolishly — not
to throw away our chance — on the next occasion that might
occur for slaking our thirst. And we looked forward to
Lowood.

One of the most difficult passages to execute in the whole
course of the piece now awaited us at the gate of Calgarth-
Park. Never once had we been able to induce Colonsay to
give that gate the go-by ; and we now felt him edging to-
wards it — drifting to leeward as it were — anxious to cast
anchor in some one of the many pleasant pastures embosomed
in those lovely woods. But we had placed at the entrance a
friend on horseback in ambuscade, who, the instant he saw our
topping, was to sally out, and lead in the direction of the
Grasmere Goal. This expedient Mr S. executed with his
accustomed skill and promptitude, and his beautiful bit of
blood being first favourite with Colonsay, the lure took to
admiration, and we kept all three rattling along at a slapping
pace, — the bay at a hand-gallop — not less than sixteen knots
— up Ecclerigg Brow, — the mare sticking to us like wax.
She seemed if anything to have the superior speed — but the
horse was more steady — and below the shadow of those noble
sycamores — as Sam was attempting to pass us — the Shuffler
broke ! We looked over our shoulder, and saw her turn as on
a pivot — but before she had recovered her top speed, we were
more than fifty yards in advance, and at that moment nothing
could be brighter than our prospects — alas I soon to be over-
cast !

Half-way between Ecclerigg and Lowood, say one-third of
the way nearer Lowood — is a piece of irregular unenclosed

252 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ground — an oasis though surrounded by no desert — at that
time not without a few trees, and studded with small groves
of more beautiful broom than ever yellowed Fairy Land.
Round it winds the road up to Briary-close, and away on by
Brathwaite-fold to the mile-long village of Upper Troutbeck,
at which painters have been painting for half a century and
more, and yet have left unshadowed and unlighted ninety-nine
parts in the hundred of its inexhaustible picturesque. On
that shaded eminence had a division of the Egyptian army
encamped — and lo ! their tents and their asses I and hark, the
clattering of pans ! for the men, forsooth, are potters, and the
women and children dexterous at the formation of hornspoons.
One bray was enough — it did the business ; in. fear blended
with disgust and indignation, Colonsay recoiled, and at full
gallop flashed by the Shuffler, whom he met making up her
lost ground, careless where he went, so that he could but
evade that horrid bray ; for, despite of the repeal of the Test
Act, of all the horses we have ever known, he was the most
intolerant of asses. It was not the blanket-tents that were to
blame — nor was it the pans or kettles — least of all, the harm-,
less hornspoons, or the innocent spoons of pewter. " We
never taxed them with the ill that had been done to us"; it
was that vile vicar — that base vicar of Bray — and his accursed
curate — who stretched their leathern coats almost to bursting
against us ; and in the bitterness of our execration, we called »
on goddess Nature to strike the wombs of all the long-eared
race with barrenness, that it might become obsolete on the
face of the earth, and nought remain but its name, a term of1
reproach and infamy, with scorn accumulating on the hateful
monosyllable Ass, till it should become unpronounceable, and •
finally be hissed out of the English language, and out of every
other language articulated by the children of men.

And what, we think we hear you ask, what became of Us ?
For a season we know not, for the pace was tremendous — but
had we been running parallel to the Liverpool and Man-
chester railroad, we had soon left out of sight the Rocket.
Yet Colonsay, even in the agony of passion, never utterly for-
got the main chance— and that with him was corn. Better
corn than Mr Clerk's of Ecclerigg was not grown in West
moreland. So he

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAr. 253

" Leant o'er its humble gate, and thought the while.
O that for me some home like this might smile ;
There should some hand no stinted boon assign
To hungry horse with terrors such as mine," &c. ;

and without uttering these words, but signifying these senti-
ments by a peal of neighing, he forced his way into the court-
yard, and soon brought the family to the door, whose amaze-
ment may be guessed on seeing us there, whom they had
fondly believed far ahead of the Shuffler, on the Plateau of
Waterhead !

A detachment of sons and servants was forthwith despatched
to order or bribe the gypsies to strike their tents — though even
in that event we doubted if any earthly inducement coxild per-
suade Colonsay to pass that haunted nook. Meanwhile, not
to be idle, we took our seat, as requested, by the side of
Mrs' Clerk, and fell to breakfast with what appetite we might
•^-nor was our appetite much amiss-1— and the breakfast was
most excellent. Are you fond of pease-pudding ? You are ;
then we need not ask your opinion of pork. Let no man kill
his own mutton — let all men kill their own bacon — which, in-
deed, is the only way to save it. An experienced eye can,
•without difficulty, detect thirst even when disguised in hunger
— and Mr Clerk nodded to a daughter to hand us a horn of
the home-brewed. "Here's to the grey-coats and blue
petticoats of Westmoreland ! " and the sentiment diffused a
general smile. We never desired to resemble that wild and
apocryphal animal the Unicorn — so we did not confine our-
selves to a single horn. We are not now much of a malt>
worm — but every season has its appropriate drink — and ale is
man's best liquor in the grand climacteric. 'Tis a lie to say
then it stupifies any but sumphs. Hops are far preferable to
poppies, in all cases but one — and that exception strengthens
the general rule — we mean the case of the inimitable English
Opimn-Eater. Yet even in those days we could, against his
Smyrnean laudanum, have backed our Ecclerigg ale. The
horn that held it seemed converted into ivory and rimmed with
gold. How it over-mantled with foamy inspiration ! How
sunk that dark but pellucid stream like music in the heart !
What renovation 1 what elevation 1 what adoration of all that
was mighty, and what scorn of all that was mean ! " Rule —

254 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE

rule, Britannia — Britannia, rule the waves ! " That was the
first song we volunteered — and all the household joined in the
chorus. Then sung we " Auld lang syne " — the only Scottish
air popular, as far as we know, in the cottages of England —
and it, we fear, chiefly because some of the words have to com-
mon and vulgar minds but a boisterous bacchanalian spirit
— whereas, believe us, they are one and all somewhat sad — and
the song may be sung so as to melt even a hard eye to tears.

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast " — and though
assuredly we did not seem, sitting there, to be on the fair way
or the highroad to victory, something within us told us we
should yet win the day. The whole family were equally con-
fident of our ultimate success ; and now a lassie from the
oasis came to tell us that the gypsies, grieved to think it had
caused our disaster, had removed their encampment — and
were desirous to give us all the help in their power, should we
think of attempting to get the grey horse past the braying-
place. This was cheering intelligence ; and Colonsay, having
finished a feed of corn, when brought looked more than ever
like a winner. Fortunately we thought at that moment of his
predilection for side-saddles and horse-women ; and having
arrayed and burdened him accordingly — pretty Ella Clerk riot
refusing to try a canter — we led him snorting past the Oasis
of Asses, and back again to the precise spot where he had
made the wheel — and there, after gently assisting Ella of]
Ecclerigg to gee down, and replacing the Marquess of Granby,
we mounted incontinent, and again surrendered up our whole
spirit to the passionate enthusiasm of the Match.

It was yet ten minutes to seven I Fifty minutes since
starting had been consumed, and we had performed — we
mean in the right direction — not much, if anything, above two
miles ! That seems no great going ; yet the average rate had
probably been about fifteen miles an hour — which if not great
is good going — and not to be sneezed at, on one of his best
ponies, by either Lord Caithness or the Duke of Gordon. For
you must remember the primal fall at the beginning of all—
which occupied, one way and another, several minutes — then
there was the episode to Rayrigg — and the delay that
occurred about the fresh— that is, the third start— at the
Cross-Koads at Cook's House — then you must add something
for the shying, and swerving, and shoving, at the smithy, and

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 255

for all that entanglement and extrication ; and when to all
these items you add the half-hour consuming and consumed
at Ecclerigg, you will find that not more than eight minutes
were occupied by positive match-trotting between the antique
milestone where took place the first great original start, and
the spot where occurred our latest disaster — if disaster it may
be called, that led to a breakfast in one of the pleasantest
cottages in Westmoreland, — close to the nearest ash-tree, on
the left-hand side, to the Oasis of Asses — alias the Donkey's
Isle.

Hitherto our mind had been so much engaged, that we had
had neither time nor opportunity to observe the day — and
knew little more of it than that it was dry, and dusty, and
hot. Now — we fell not to such perusal of her face as we
would draw it, but we chucked Miss Day tinder the chin, and
looking up she acknowledged our courteous civilities with a
heart-beaming smile ! The Day was not comely only, but
beautiful ; never saw we before nor since more heavenly blue
eyes, sunnier clouds of golden hair, or a nobler forehead ample
as the sky. The weather was not dry — for there had been
some rain during the early hours of the night, and its influence
still lay on the woods, along with that of the morning dew.
It was not dusty — how could it be, when every rill was singing
a new song ? If madmen will trot at the rate of fifteen miles
an hour, and gallop at the rate of fifty, they will perspire ; but
their odious condition does not prove the air to be hot ; and
now, at seven of a midsummer morning, it was cool as that of
a whole continent of cucumbers. Ah, far more than cool ! We
hear too much and too often of warm kisses ; but the sweetest
of all kisses in this weary world are the sweet, fresh, fragrant,
almost, but not quite, cold kisses of those virgin twin-sisters,
Air and Light.

Such, for a few moments, had been the innocent dalliance
of Aurora Day with Christopher North, when the eyes of that
amorist caught a peep of Lowood ; and over its then proud
lake-side pine-grove, now ruefully thinned, and the two or
three remaining trees, the ghosts of what they were — and the
worst of all ghosts are the dead alive — bower-embosomed half-
way up its own sylvan hill, the delightful Dove Nest. Collected
in front of the Inn, a vast crowd ! and in the midst of it — as
sure as that China oranges are cheap in Pekin — Sam Sitwell, on

256 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Shuffler, ready to start ! We felt we could afford to ride up to
him — and, besides, we were curious to hear him prate of his
hereabouts. Could it be that he was on his return from the
goal at Grasmere ? No. But we soon had a solution of the
mystery — or, rather, except to ourselves there was no mystery
at all. For, having met us flying home, as he was entitled to'
believe, at the rate of a young hawk's flight, Sam, who had
not then recovered the effects of that ugly fall, wisely decided
to breakfast at Lowood. And, according to his account,
which we fully credited, Mrs Ladyman had given him a superb
dejetine a la fourchette. Shuffler had all the while stood at the
door feeding kindly out of a nose-bag, to be ready at the first
symptom of our return ; and never saw we so great a change
wrought in so short a time, by judicious treatment, as well on
man as on horse. Sam was quite spruce — even pert — and
rosy about the gills as an alderman. As for Shuffler, we could
have thought we saw before us Eleanor herself, had that
glorious creature, who was then carrying everything before1
her, plates, cups, and all, not been of a different colour. Yet>*
we were proud to find that Christopher on Colonsay divided
the popular admiration, and as the rivals shook hands, a shout'
rent the sky.

We now remembered that it was Grasmere Fair-day, which
accounted for the crowd being greater than could have been
brought together perhaps even by the bruit of our match..
There could not have been fewer than a thousand souls, and
the assemblage began to drop off towards Ambleside. It
could not but occur to our humane minds that the lieges
would be subjected to great peril of life, were we to start at
score, and make play through the fragments of that crowd.
And start at score and make play we must, if we were now to
resume the contest, for our cattle were pawing to be let goj
and you might read desperate thoughts in the faces of the
riders. Hitherto the struggle had been severe, though it had
not been throughout exactly a neck-and-neck affair : it was
now a near thing indeed, for if we had been delayed half an
hour in Ecclerigg, so had Sitwell in Lowood ; and though
nothing had occurred to us so personally painful as his
accident, we had had severer Trials of Temper. In suffering
as in patience we might be fairly enough said to have been
on a par.

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAT. 257

At that moment a beautiful breeze, that had been born at
the head of Langdale, came carolling and curling across the
Lake, and met another as beautiful as itself from Belle-Isle,
so lovingly that the two melted into one, and brought the
Endeavour suddenly round Point- Battery, with all sails set,
and all colours flying, a vision glorifying all Lowood Bay.
Billy Balmer, all the while holding the rim of his hat, advo-
cated most eloquently a proposal emanating from mine host,
that the nags should be stabled for an hour or two, and that
we should give Mr Sitwell a sail. Indeed, he began to drop
hints that it would be easy by signal to collect the whole
musquito fleet ; and his oratory was so powerful that at the
close of one of his speeches — in reply — we verily believed
that a Trotting-match between horses was about to be changed
into a Kegatta like that of Coxves.

And a regatta there is, at bidding of the Invisibles of air,
whose breath is on the waters, now provided with a blue
ground, whitening with breakers, commonly called cat's-heads.
Five minutes ago, what shadowy stillness of vacant sleep —
now what sunny animation of busy lifeiness all over face
and breast of Winander ! What unfurling, and hoisting,
and crowding of canvass " in gentle places, bosoms, nooks, and
bays!" and, my eye, how every craft cocks her jib at the
Endeavour ! That is the Eliza — so named after one of the
finest women in England — since christened the " Ugly Cutter "
by some malignant eunuch, squeaking the lie as he broke a
vinegar cruet on her bows. That schooner is the Roscoe —
and Lorenzo was then alive with "his fine Roman hand" and
face ; and so was Palafox, whose name that three-masted
lateen-rigged beauty bears — see how, with the wind on her
beam, like a flamingo she flies ! Yet she cannot overhaul the
Liverpoolian — though that Wonder has not yet shaken out
two reefs in her mainsail that tell a silent tale of yesterday's
squalls. Is I was I what a confusion of moods and tenses !
But the Past is all one with the Present. Imagination does
what she likes with Time ; she gives a mysterious middle
voice to every verb — and genius pursues them through all
their conjugations, feeling that they have all one root — and
that the root of the Tree of Knowledge, of Good and of Evil
— planted in the heart, and watered sometimes with dewdrop-
looking tears, and as often with tears of blood !

VOL. vir. R

258 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

And lo ! beauty-laden — a life-boat indeed — behold the Barge !
The Nil Timeo ! — Old Nell, as she is lovingly called by all
the true sons of Winander ! The Dreadnought and Invincible
Old Nell Nil Timeo ! No awning but one of parasols ! Her-
self seemingly sunk by fair freight and bright burden down to
the rowlocks, but steady in her speed as a dolphin ; and is she
not beautifully pulled, ye Naiads? The admiral's gig re-
splendent now among a fleet of wherries, skiffs, canoes ; and
hark — while the female voices that can sing so divinely are all
mute — swelling in strong heroic harmony the Poet Laureate's
Song !

For ages, Winander, unsought was thy shore,
Nought disturb'd thy fair stream save the fishermen's oar,
Nor freighted with charms did the gay painted boat
To the soft beat of music triumphantly float ;

When the Goddess of Love

View'd the scene from above,

And determined from Cyprus her court to remove ;
Then selected a few, who were skilful and brave,
Her daughters to guard on the Westmoreland wave.

Though for far distant regions we ne'er set our sails,

Thy breast, O Winander ! encounters rude gales ;

When the swift whirlwind rushes from Langdale's dark form,

E'en the weather-worn sailor might start at the storm :

Yet in vain yields the mast

To the force of the blast

Whilst the heart to the moorings of courage is fast ;
And the sons of Winander are skilful and brave,
Nor shrink from the threats of the Westmoreland wave.

To us are consign'd the gay fete and the ball,
Where beauty enslaves whom no dangers appal ;
For when she submission demands from our crew,
" Nil timeo " must yield, conq'riug Cupid, to you.

Then, alas ! we complain

Of the heart-rending pain,

And confess that our motto is boasting and vaiu ;
Though the sons of Winander are skilful and brave,
Their flag must be bow'd to the gems of the wave.

To us it is given to drain the deep bowl,

The dark hours of midnight thus cheerfully roll ;

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 259

Our captain commands, we with pleasure obey,
And the dawning of morn only calls us away.

On our sleep-sealed eyes

Soon soft visions arise,

From the black fleet of sorrow we fear no surprise,
For the sons of Winander are joyous and brave,
As bold as the storm, and as free as the wave.

Whene'er we pass o'er, without compass, the line,
'Tis friendship that blows on an ocean of wine ;
The breakers of discord ne'er roar on the lee,
At the rudder whilst love, wine, and friendship agree :

Then let us combine

Love, friendship, and wine,

-On our bark then the bright star of pleasure shall shine ;
For the sons of Winander are faithful and brave,
And proud rides their flag on the Westmoreland wave.

And now " sharpening its mooned horns," the whole Fleet
.close inshore drops anchor; and all the crews give Christopher
three cheers. If this be not a regatta, pray what is a regatta ?
.Colonsay paws the beach as if impatient to board the Flag-
Ship like a horse-marine. The Shuffler draws up in style on
xnir right flank — " Steady, Sam ! Steady ! " Billy applies a
jed-hot poker to the touch-hole of the pattareroe — and in full
-view of the Fleet — AGAIN WE START.

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY,

FYTTE II.

[JOLT 1834.]

THE sliarp quadruplications of Colonsay's incomparable hoofs
tooling along the crown of the road, clattered from the cliffs
among the echoes of the pattareroe, while the Shuffler, studious
of the turf, pitched out in high style, noiseless as a deer on
the heather — and thus neck and neck at the rate of sixteen
miles an hour, we wheeled round Lowood Bay, leaving be-
hind us the Kegatta like a dream. Yet fragments of the vision
seemed to float on along with us, lustrous at intervals through
openings among the trees, and with our pride of horsemanship
was blended a sense of beauty in the fleeting groves. Fields
with pasturing and ruminating cattle seemed swimming away
southward, and idle horses neighed to us over hedges, and in
an instant were gone. We saw Sammy by our side as if we
saw him not ; for our eyes — with our whole heart, soul, and
mind concentrated in the dilated orbs — were now fixed be-
tween those long ears, laid back like those of a hare before
greyhounds up a hill, and we became a Trot. Oh ! that the
universe could have beheld us ! Such was the vainglorious
wish of one then imagining himself more than immortal —
when, without one preparatory motion indicative of his pur-
pose, off at right angles flew Colonsay, in ultra-gallop up the
formidable avenue to Dove's Nest, shaving a jaunting-car
full of parasolled people on their way down to the low country
— and then quiet On the flat before that domicile as an expired
whirlwind. There he stood smelling the turf, but not grazing
— licking the moist herbage with his foot-long tongue ! Our
presence of mind and decision of character had even in those
days become proverbial, and we ordered a wondering lad, who
came to the barn-door with his strawy hair on end, instantly

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. • 261

to biing a pail of meal-and- water. We sympathised with our
noble steed — for we knew by experience how intolerable is
extreme thirst. Up to his eyes in the pail, what power of
suction he displayed ! The mealy surface of the delicious
draught descended in rapid ebb ; and then upsetting the tub
— for it was a tub — playfully with his snorting nose — he put
about quick as the Liverpoolian herself on the liquid element
— and down that almost perpendicular approach — or rather
reproach to the vanished House — he re-flew — as if the devil
had been chasing him — which perhaps he was — and we heard
and felt by the crashing that we were now driving our way
through a wood. Facilis descensus Averni ! we inly breathed.
For missing that sharpest of all turns, he had forsaken the
avenue, and, demented, was taking a short cut to the highroad.
But though a short cut, it was a severe one ; for we knew the
ground well, having traversed it often in the season of wood-
cocks, and to effect a footing on the turnpike, it was necessary
to leap over an old lime-kiln, from the level thereof, some-
where about twenty feet high ! Colonsay knew nothing of
the danger, till he was within* a few yards of the brink ; and
had his heart failed him, we should have been mummies. But
with a suppressed shriek he took zY— while a Quaker with his
wife and family from Kendal, in a one-horse gig, beheld over-
head in the air a Flying Dragon. Oh ! the stun ! The soles
of our feet felt driven up into the crown of our head, while we
saw nothing but repeated flashes of lightning — and then what
mortal sickness ! Staggering arid shivering like a new-dropt
foal was poor Colonsay now, hardly able to sustain our weight —
and our belief is that both of us must have swooned. On re-
covering some of our senses, sorely perplexed were we to make
out the meaning of that enormous brim — that measureless
breadth of beaver that seemed to canopy us like a dingy sky.
Slowly it grew into the hat — head — and face of the most
benevolent of brethren — for Isaac Braithwaite was fanning us
with his George Fox ; and his two lovely daughters, calm in
their compassion — demure even in their despair — were stand-
ing beside him ; while Agatha, sweetest sister of charity, was
upholding in her lily hand a horn-cup of cordial, which, soon
as it touched our lips, diffused through our being a restoration
• !iat, reached the veiy core of our heart. " Friend Christopher,
. >u art pale! how feelest thou?" said a sweet low voice.

2G2 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" Not paler than thy hand, them ministering angel." No
smile met our reply — and verily it was a vain one — for her
ear was unacquainted with compliments, and familiar at all
times with the language and the tones of truth. No questions
were asked whence we came, though to them it must have
been a mystery, nor why in such fashion ; but on our faintly
murmuring that we were engaged in a trotting match, the
family looked at one another, and we understood the piteous
expression of their eyes. " I fear thou art feverish, Christo-
pher, and thou hadst better take thy place in our vehicle,"
said Isaac ; but our recovery had been almost as rapid as our
decline and fall — we were conscious of the return of the roses
to our cheeks — Colonsay was again firm on his feet — and we
promised to join our friends at some refreshment in the inn at
Grasmere. Our hat had been left on some tree in the wood,
and the cloudless sun, now advanced in heaven, smote our
aching temples. The family pitied our plight, and Isaac, the
good Samaritan, without saying a word, put his beaver on our
head ; and at that moment, Colonsay, fresh as a two-year-old,
shot forwards, casting up a not %namused eye on his master,
metamorphosed into a Broadbrim, and presenting the appear-
ance of an at once venerable and dashing Quaker.

No symptom of Shuffler— but gathering the shore, lo, the
Barge ! We were now racing the NIL TIMEO — " with all her
crew complete." How beautifully reg\ilar to time the level
flashes of the magnificent Ten-oared ! "Billy — star of steers-
men— lying in the stern-sheets — and at every long pull, strong
pull, and p\ill altogether, bending forwards, and retracting his
body — to give " Old Nell " an impulse ; but the Green Girl
of Windermere heeded it not, and beautifully bore along with
her all her shadowy pomp, burnishing the bays, and kindling
up with her far-felt beauty all the broad bosom of the lake.
There sat the Stewartsons, and the Robinsons, and the Dixons,
and the Longs, a strong and skilful brotherhood, that would
have pulled victoriously against any admiral's gig in the
sarvice — had the race been even three leagues" out and in, with
a stormy sea. But now all was calm as bright — and soon
subsided the troubled beauty in her wake — leaving no visible
pathway on the diamond deep. From her stern towered a
living Thistle — for Westmoreland in those days was part of
Scotland — and " NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSET" was the sentiment

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 263

peacefully breathed from every prickly flower resplendent on
a Plant, that in its stateliness deserved to be called a Tree.

But what crowd of cattle is this ? A drove of kyloes ! Tf
you try to count them, it must be not by scores, but hundreds.
Their lowing announces their country — and even from such
lips how pleasant to our ears the Scottish accent ! They are
ail Highlanders — every mother's son of them — and are rowting
Gaelic. Black the ground of the living mass, spotted and
interlaced with brown — and what a forest of horns ! We
thought for a moment of a thousand red-deer once seen by us
suddenly at sunrise rousing themselves among the shadows
of Ben-y-iGloe ! A majority of the kyloes were standing — but
a more than respectable, a formidable minority, were lying on
the road — and from their imperturbable countenances it was
manifest that the farthest idea in this world from their minds
was that of rising up — many chewing the cud. Like Welling-
ton in the centre of a solid square at Waterloo — though that
coming event had not then cast its shadow before — sat Sammy
Sitwell on Shuffler. It was impossible that he could have
wedged himself into the position he now occupied — and we
saw that he had been gradually surrounded — till he now shone
conspicuous as the Generalissimo of the Drove.

" Got pless your honour — Got pless your Grace," ejaculated
three stalwart Celts, brown on the face as gypsies, but with
bold blue eyes, suddenly illumined with the poetry and the
patriotism of the heather hills ; and who were they but Angus
of Glen-Etive and his twins ! Last time we shook hands with
them 'twas on the bridge — a single tree — a pine — across that
chasm, up whose cataract the salmon, like a bent bow, essays
to leap in vain, though fresh from Connal's roaring eddies,
and strong with the spirit of the sea. " A ponny loch, your
honour — a ponny loch — but what's it tae the Yetive, your
honour — and what's thae hillocks tae the Black Mount, your
honour ? But you'll no refuse tastin a drop o' the unchristened
cretur — sma' still — oh, but yon's a prime worm ! " And un-
buckling a secret belt round his waist, he handed it up to us,
nor were we slow to apply the mouth of the serpent to that of
the dragon.

" And all did say, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,

264 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

And close your eyes with holy dread ;
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drank the milk of Paradise."

Meanwhile the plot began to thicken, for our friends in the
gig came up, and likewise two post-shays with lakers from
Bowness. Multitudes of people, of all ages and sexes, were,
of course, fast congregating ; and on the other side of Water-
head turnpike gate, there were various arrivals of equipages
— foreign and domestic — all at a stand-still. Some dispute
having arisen, the tollman had shut the gate, so almost every
imaginable kind of impediment was placed in the way of the
match. After an exchange of mulls and spleuchans, we com-
municated to our countrymen the situation of affairs, and gave
them a slight sketch of the character of Colonsay, including
his birth and parentage — on which they offered to back us
against " the Merry- Andrew in the middle " a score of kyloes
to a calf. Angus whispering into our ear to follow him, and
Donald and Hamish taking their stations like henchmen, one
at each side of Colonsay, they all three began belabouring
with their rungs the hurdies of the kyloes, till they opened
out a lane for, us to advance, as at an ovation. Sam's situa-
tion became more dangerous and desperate than ever from the
pressure of the bestial — and a couple of the most diminutive
having got below Shuffler's belly, hoisted her up, so that she
must have appeared to the spectators in the galleries to be
attempting to scramble her way over the heads of the popu-
lation in the pit. But the gate, you will remember, was shut,
and the old soldier was inexorable. A nondescript vehicle,
drawn by four asses, had resisted tollage, and Wooden-leg
swore they might remain there till sunset. Seeing all argu-
ment was lost upon a man with a single idea, we gave a hint
to Ned Hurd, who made a pair of clean heels to and from Mr
Jackson's of Waterhead, bringing with him a blind sieve of
oats. Cautioning Ned to keep at a safe distance, we directed
the attention of Colonsay to the feed ; and then, backing him
to the rough edge of kyloes, we nodged him with our knee,
and slacking rein, charged the Pike. He cleared it as clean
as if he had been in shafts 1 The discharge of a whole park
of artillery would have been a pig's- whisper to the human roar
that then rent the sky.

We are at all times loth to indulge in self-laudation ; yet

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAT. 265

we feel that we shall be pardoned for saying that there are
few men who, had they been in our situation, would not have
trotted onwards without wasting a thought on Sam. But we
were of a nobler nature. Inextricably entangled among the
kyloes, he had not now a chance. It was clear to the most
prejudiced observer that we had the race in our own hand.
But with a magnanimity deserving this record, we turned
about on the saddle and made a speech. Its main purport
was a proposal to allow him ten minutes for extrication from
his present entanglement ; and we concluded with an offer,
that thenceforth the parties were to make their way at their
own pleasure to Grasmere — without regard to any general or
particular road — so that we kept to the trot. Nay, we pro-
posed that on all occasions when either or both of us might
chance to be going in a direction unequivocally devious from
the turnpike road, either or both, might gallop. Sam said it
was all fair — and so it was ; for though the Shuffler was the
faster galloper of the two, having been a plate mare, Col-
onsay knew the country better — and we had never known
him, in his wildest vagaries, get himself into a cul-de-sac.

All this while we had utterly forgotten what was on our
head. Nor should we have remembered it now, had not a
bright lady flung a kiss to us from her palm out of a carriage
window, when with a bow, uncovering " our grey discrowned
head," we beheld in our right hand the extraordinary concern
to which at the moment we were unable to give a name, and
had but a dim apprehension of its nature and office. The
truth, however, soon dawned upon us, and we delivered it to
Angus, who did not venture to form any conjecture respecting
its material or functions, with a request that he would trans-
mit it to the legitimate owner in the gig — which he did with
the assistance of the Twins, and to the astonishment of the
whole drove. We then bound round our temples a pink silk
handkerchief, half day and half night cap, with the fringe
nattily coming to a point between our shoulders — and looked
— so said Ned Kurd — prepared for mischief. Though much
drops out between the cup and the lip, it was not so now with
Colonsay. The meal-and-water at Dove's Nest, in quenching
his thirst had excited his hunger — and Ned, taking the bit out
of his mouth, presented him the sieve full of seed-oats, beauti-
ful as eggs in an ant-hill. Not to seem singular, we too

2G6 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

lunclied ; for we never leave home without a newspaper of
ham sandwiches, and the "mountain-dew" had " waukened
that sleeping dowg," our dormant appetite.

Seldom have we enjoyed ten minutes of more delightful re-
pose. " The innocent brightness of the newborn Day " was
growing into splendid Forenoonhood — with a richer array
both of lights and shadows. The eye did not miss the dew-
drops, so bright had they left the green earth on their
evanishing to heaven. u Our heart rejoiced in Nature's
joy " — and as for Winderinere, she would not have changed
places with the sky. Nor had she any need .to do so ; for
she and the sky now seemed one — and the two, blended to-
gether, forgot their own identity in a common world of clouds.
Not clouds of vapour, but clouds of light ! Alike celestial
the purity of the radiant whiteness and of the lucid azure,
attempered to perfect harmony as by an angel's breath !

And did Imagination so prevail over the senses, that we
saw nothing else there among air and water, trees and
clouds, but the imagery of her own creations ? Now and
then a visionary minute was indeed wholly a dream. But
gloamings came between of fair realities before our outward
eyes, for Windermere no\y bore on her bosom a hundred sail.
It seemed as if a Flight of Swans had dropped upon the lake,
and after their , aerial voyage were wantoning in the still
purer element, that wooed their now folded and their now
expanded wings. Nor when they were seen to be what
they were — not swans, but barks — were they in that dis-
enchantment less beautiful ; for they still seemed instinct
with spirit — to obey no will but their own — to enjoy each
other's joy — meeting and parting to give salutes and fare-
wells— in their loveliness to be capable of love — to admire
their own motions, as by a sense of the grace accompanying
them all — to feel the charm of the shifting scene they kept in
perpetual animation, and to be inspired by the poetry of the
many-figured evolutions performed as by magic at the bidding
of a breeze or a breath !

See 1 the wide lake is like two lakes separated by a line of
light ! Beyond the line is the blue region of the zephyrs,
whitened by little breakers — and as the Fleet, with all can-
vass set, is beating up to windward, the air is streamered with
flags. Between the line and the shore 'tis a perfect mirror —

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONS AY. 207

and becalmed there the sail-boat seems at anchor, and to envy
skiff and canoe as they steal by and around her with twinkling
oars. Yonder all the animation of a waking world I There
the repose of slumber ! Here the rest of sleep ! And now
currents of air come creeping over the clear calm — and
breathless spots appear upon the blue breeze till the pre-
vailing character of each is impaired — the line of separation
broken — and the two lakes, as fancy had chosen to see them,
are recreating themselves into one, till all disorder subsides,
and settles down into perfect harmony — and the gazer's heart
feels that of all the waters beneath the sun, assuredly, on
such a day as this, the loveliest is Windermere !

The ten minutes — but two — had now expired, and a sudden
thought struck us in connection with the everyday world,
which might turn to good account, viz., to purchase a score of
kyloes, to be summered on Applethwaite common — a common
then, apparently without stint or measure, open to the whole
world. We always are our own stake-holder — so we forked
out the blunt in the shape of five twenty-pound Bank of Eng-
land notes (the rest in gold remained in our fob), and putting
them into Angus's hairy paw, told him to leave in the red-
gated field near Orrest-head kyloe-flesh of that value, as we
had implicit confidence in his integrity and judgment. Angus
whispered in our ear that we should be no losers by the bargain,
for that he would so arrange matters that the gentleman in the
blue-silk jacket did not lose his situation till well on in the
afternoon. There Sammy sat like " Impatience on a monu-
ment, scowling at grief." Time having been called, we pulled
Colonsay's nose from the sieve, and hitting him on the rump
a thwack with the Crutch, away we went, amidst loud cheers,
on a new career of discovery and adventure.

Near the turnpike gate at Waterhead, the tourist cannot
have failed to observe that from the highroad a low road
diverges along the lake-side, and is soon lost to sight be-
tween two comfortable houses with their appurtenances and
a multitude of stone walls. For a hundred yards or there-
abouts the two roads are separated by some unenclosed
ground, of an irregular shape, on which there was then,
and may be now, a saw- pit, and generally a quantity of
planks set up to season or to be ready for shipment. Along
this piece of common Colonsay now took his way, not having

2G8 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

made up his mind which of the two roads he was to take, —
the upper road, leading direct to Ambleside — or the lower
road, leading, though not so direct, to Langdale. Now
Ambleside lies between Waterhead and Grasmere — where-
as Langdale-head is at least ten miles, as the bird flies,
in an opposite direction entirely ; so you can easily con-
ceive our anxiety respecting his ultimate decision. For
the first fifty yards our politician adhered to the juste milieu,
and we became apprehensive, that if he proceeded on that
course without turning either to the right or the extreme
gauche, that he would carry us slap-bang into, the saw-pit ;
while, again, were he to apostatise to either one side or another,
we saw not how we could escape running foul of a pile of
planks. Into the pit, which, though not bottomless, was
deep, he seemed resolved to go — why, we could not con-
jecture— as it was not reasonable to suppose that, imme-
diately after lunching on ' oats, he could have any very
urgent desire to dine on sawdust. The pit was unoccupied ;
for those top-sawyers, Mr Woodburn and his son, had gone to
Grasmere fair — and so had the Hartleys. It had a sloping
approach or entrance ; and to our discomfiture, and we need
hardly say to the astonishment of the people, Colonsay
trotting in with us, horse and rider disappeared, as it
were, into the bowels of the earth 1 There he stood as
in a stall, snuffing in vain for rack or manger. On look-
ing up, we saw many faces looking down, and we confess
that we felt shame, which has been beautifully called " the
sorrow of pride." We were in a sort of grave, and almost
wished to be buried. It was too narrow to admit of his
turning, and no power of persuasion could induce him to
back out. We heard voices above suggesting the possibility
of hoisting us up by ropes, but we were convinced that Colon-
say would not suffer ropes to be passed for that purpose
round his barrel. He would have spurned at such an in-
dignity with all his hoofs. Besides, where was the tackle
or machinery sufficiently strong to reinstate him on the sur-
face ? In this emergency, Billy left the Barge, and came to
our assistance with his sage counsel. He remembered hear-
ing Jonathan Inman say, two years before, that he had seen
Colonsay, who used to wander by moonlight all over the
country, at the grey of dawn going into that self-same pit,

CHRISTOPHER ON COLOXSAY. 269

and that his curiosity having been awakened, he, Jonathan,
had looked down upon him, Colonsay, and observed him de-
vouring a bundle of rye-grass and clover, which it is sup-
posed some tinker had cut, and deposited therein as a place
of concealment, to be ready for use on next day's encamp-
ment. The remembrance of that feast had been awakened
in his mind by the associating principle of contiguity of
place, and thus did Billy philosophically explain the pheno-
menon. Oats had lost their allurement, for our Cob, like
Louis the Fourteenth and his Father Confessor, could not
stomach toujours perdrix ; so a scythe was procured, and
a sheaf did the business. To the delight of the multi-
tude, he and we reappeared stern foremost, and as we saw
Sammy still safe among the kyloes, we allowed our friend,
who, though a great wit, had a long memory, to take his
fresh forage at his leisure. There was a tremendous row
at the turnpike-gate — for the foreigners in the ass -drawn
nondescript had got out and shown fight. The clamour
had frightened the kyloes, who no longer preserved close
order, and from the broken square, now canopied with a
cloud of dust, issued the Shuffler — Sam making strong play,
and to avoid the crowd of carriages, down the low road.
There was manifestly a strong struggle in Colonsay's mind
between the love of clover and the love of glory, but the
latter high active principle prevailed over the low appetite —
and off he clattered in his grandest style after the mare —
this being perhaps, considered merely in a sporting light,
the most interesting era of the match. The public anxiety
was wound up to the intensest pitch — no odds could be got
from the adherents of either party — and two to one were
eagerly offered, that we reached Grasmere — five miles —
before one o'clock. It was now nine by the shadow on that
unerring sundial, Loughrigg-Fell.

We do not know that we are personally acquainted with a
more trying bit of road, for such a Cob as Colonsay, than that
which, in days of yore, ran between Waterhead and Rothay
bridge. We allude not to what are called the sharp turns,
though the angles formed there by stone-walls were acute in-
deed, especially in the coping, sometimes consisting of slate
that might have served for the shaver of a guillotine ; nor to
the heaps of stones that used to accumulate mysteriously for

"270 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

inscrutable purposes by the sides of ditches, deep enough to
be dangerous, without such supererogatory cairns, though it
does seem a hard case to have your skull fractured before you
are drowned ; nor yet to the gable-ends of man-houses, hog-
houses, and barns, that suddenly faced the unsuspecting tra-
veller, with a blank yet bold look, without door or window,
that said, or seemed to say, " Thus far, and n'o farther, may'st
thou go ; " — but we are meditating now on the vast variety of
field-gates, most of them well-secured, we acknowledge, but
still many of them left open by stirk or laker, and giving
glimpses of pasturage, at sight of which the. most stoical
steed, however apathetic to ordinary temptations, could not
but be seized with an access of passion, hurrying him away
into headlong indulgence, to the oblivion of all other mortal
concerns — and especially are we meditating 011 one gate,
appropriately called the Wishing- Grate, in a wall encircling
a plain, in the centre of which that wonderful people, the
Romans, had built a camp. Often had it been our lot to
accompany aged antiquaries into that interesting plain, to
assist their eyes to trace those invisible military remains ;
and on such occasions Colonsay employed himself in eating
away the grass that now smiled on peaceful mounds, which
once, 'tis said, were warlike ramparts. As he had never one
single time, during his residence in Westmoreland, gone by
that gate without first going through or over it, how could we
hope that he would now so far deviate from his established
practice, as to continue his career, without paying a visit to
his favourite intrenchments, haunted, though he knew it not,
by the ghost of Julius Caesar ?

How best to guard against that danger our mind was occu-
pied in scheming, during the close contest on the difficult bit
of road now sketched ; and we could think of none better than
" the good old plan " of sticking close to the Shuffler's offside
at the approaching crisis, certain that if Colonsay did bolt —
and here it was with him a general rule, admitting of no ex-
ceptions— he would carry the mare along with him into the
Roman Camp. There was the Wishing-Gate, not twenty yards
ahead of us — shut and padlocked — and apparently repaired
— or rather, as it seemed, speck-and-span new — though luck-
ily there was nothing new about it but the paint. Up to this
time we had had no opportunity, except among the kyloes,

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 271

to enter into conversation with Sam ; but now, to throw him
off his guard, we became talkative — saying, as we laid our-
selves alongside of him, " Pray, Sitwell, what is your opinion
of things in general ? " But ere he could answer that simple
query, crash — smash went the Wishing-Gate before a side-
long charge of cavalry, and in full career,

" Shouldering our crutch, we show'd how fields were won."

Old Hutton of Birmingham — though in his dotage he forgot
to mention it in his Memoirs — was sitting on a portable stool
erected on an eminence — reconstructing the circumvallation.
Providentially we saw him when about three yards — and so
did Colonsay, who took him so easily that we felt no change
in the gallop, nor did the antiquary stir from his ti-ipod. In
«uch cases apologies are foolish, so in good time we removed
any unpleasant impression our conduct might have made on
the good old man's mind, by painting to him, in words
brighter than oils, a picture of the Camp on the very day it
was brought to a perfect finish — and a sketch of the review
of the troops that took place that afternoon in the vale of
Ambleside. " Here, my dear sir," said we — " here stood the
Praetorian guard — there " — but at that moment we espied Sam
on the Shuffler, making for the ruins of the Wishing-Gate, and
appealed with hand and heel to Colonsay, if he had the heart
'to leave his master in the lurch ? Luckily the heads of a
number of umpires and referees were seen not far in the rear,
bobbing above the enclosure walls ; and the love of society, as
strong in man as in horse, instigated him to join the caval-
cade, which pulled up on our approach — and the match was
resumed, if possible with redoubled vigour. We could not
but feel grateful to Colonsay, and resolved not to baulk him
of any other enjoyment, however ill-timed it might at first
sight appear, which he might be promising himself at some
subsequent season of the struggle. Allowances were to be
made on both sides — we had our weaknesses and peculiarities
too — one good turn deserves another — and as he pitched out,
we patted him on the neck as tenderly as a mother pats her
child.

We had not proceeded above a hundred yards, fast gather-
ing the Shuffler, till we heard before us, behind us, and around
us, loud ciies of mysterious warning and alarm — and saw men

272 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

in shirts waving their arms, with expressive but unintelli-
gible gesticulations not a little appalling — yet mysterious ter*
ror is unquestionably one chief source of the sublime. " A
blast ! a blast I " and the truth flashed upon us with the ex-
plosion. Fragments of rock darkened the air, and came clat-
tering in all directions, curiously pointed, of smoking flint.
How the coping stones whizzed from the walls ! To shivers
flew part of a slate-fence within five yards of us, smitten by a
forty-two pounder, that buried itself in the dirt. Under a
heavy fire let no man bob his head, duck down, or run away.
We had learnt that lesson from much reading on war — and
Colonsay had been taught it by instinct — so we carried on,
and were soon out of range. But neither Sam nor the Shuffler
could stand such a cannonade, and were off at the anonymous
pace — across Eothay-bridge, and away to Clappersgate — a cir-
cuitous way to Grasmere, by which the most sanguine spirit
could hardly hope for ultimate success. And what if, in his
imperfect acquaintance with the country, he should get into
Little Langdale, and so over Hard-knot and Wry nose into
Eskdale, and then by Barnmoor Tarn into Wastdale-head.

There are many much more beautiful bridges in Westmore-
land than Eothay-bridge — we could mention a hundred — but
than the Vale of Ambleside, on which it stands, a much more
beautiful vale — nay, one half as beautiful — is not in the known
world. Wonderful how, without crowding, it can hold so1
many groves ! Yet numerous as they are, they do not injure
the effect of the noble single trees planted by the hand of
nature, who has a fine eye for the picturesque, just where they
should be, in the meadows kept by irrigation and inundation
in perennial verdure that would shame the emerald. The
only fault, easily forgiven, that we could ever find with the
Rothay herself, is, that she is too pellucid — for she often
eludes the sight, not when hidden, as she sometimes is, in
osiers, and willows, and alders, but when, in open sunshine,
singing her way to the Lake. Colonsay paused on the bridge,
that we might admire our beloved panorama ; and we re-
quested one detachment to follow our antagonist, and the mail
body of umpires and referees to proceed to Ambleside — for
wished for a while to be alone, and feed on the prospect
Colonsay, left to himself, opened the gate adjoining the ledge_
and walked sedately along the pasture, as if the coolness were

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 273

refreshing to his feet, after having so long and fast beaten the
dusty road. That feeling was in itself both meat and drink ;
and as the flies were rather troublesome, he made for a nook
overshadowed by a birk-tree, itself a bower — a weeping birch,
as it is called — but it sheds no tears but tears of dew or rain-
drop ; and not in sadness but in joy — the joyful sense of its
own beauty — lets fall its rich tresses, dishevelled you would
say, were it not that they all hang orderly in the calm, and
orderly wave in the wind — calm and wind alike delighting in
their delicate grace and pensile elegance. The river was
within a few yards of our stance — flowing, but scarcely seen
to flow — so gently did the stoneless banks dip down to en-
close the water in a circular pool, to which there appeared
neither inlet nor outlet — a perfect picture of peace. It was
enough to know that we were in the Vale of Ambleside ; but
our eyes saw nothing but the Naiad's Palace. It grew too
beautiful to be gazed on, and we looked up through the light
foliage, that showed the fleckered sky. There on a cleft
bough was a missel-thrush sitting on her nest, with her eyes
fixed on ours — and we knew, from their fond and fearless ex-
pression, that her breast was on her callow young. " May no
callant, cat, or owl, harry the happy and hopeful household I"
And she seemed to smile in our face as if she knew the mean-
ing of our words, and that we could keep a secret. But at that
moment we heard a doleful lamenting among the sylvan rocks
behind us — of two poor shilfas that had been robbed of their
all. What passions are in the woods !

Colonsay has fallen fast asleep. No doubt he is dreaming
— for 'tis a false dictum that sound sleep is dreamless — and
not till the senses are all shut up is the spirit wide-awake.
He is now on his native isle. Friends he left dapple-grey
come up to him milk-white. But why pursue such melan-
choly fancies ? He recognises the green hills on which his
unenclosed youth pastured — the moss-hags he used to over-
leap in his play — he snuffs with joy the unforgotten scent of
the kelp on the shore that he was wont sportively to scatter
as he raced with his compeers on the yellow sands — he dips
his nose in the sea, and rejoicing to find it salt, feels as if
foaled again. His mouth has never felt the bit, nor his back
the saddle — and away he flies with flowing mane and tail, free
as the osprey dashing into the deep. And now he sees the

VOL. VII. S

274 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

majestic figure of the Laird himself — and at his side Fingal,
the deer-hound. His neighings startle the Nereids in their
coral caves, and Neptune, rearing his hoary head above the
green-rolling billows, exults in the beauty of the breed of
Colonsay — a high-descended strain — and half-designs to lure
the rampant lion into the ebbing tide, that, yoked to Amphi-
trite's car, he may draw the Ocean Queen in van of that
Annual Procession to the Isles of the Blest, where the setting
sun smiles on the souls of the now peaceful Heroes !

Such might have been Colonsay's dream — if it were not, it
was ours ; yet why should we have wandered so far from
the Naiads' Palace ! Who gave it that name ? Ourselves, in
some visionary mood. But now those fancies forsook us —
beautiful as they were — for, gazing into the mirror, we beheld
such an Image ! What but the image of ourselves and Col-
onsay standing upside down — in the air ! For the water had
disappeared, — yet undisturbed as our reality beneath the
living tree that had ceased to whisper. Though not unknown
to us the science of optics, we were not prepared to see our-
selves partaking of the general inversion of inanimate nature !
A slight surprise always accompanies for a moment such
reflections ; yet how perfectly reconciled do we become to the
position of such shadowy worlds ! There can be little doubt
that in a few days we should love and admire the real world,
just the same as we do now, were all the human race to walk
along the earth on their heads, with their feet up to heaven 1

While thus delighting ourselves with contemplation of our
downward double, we became aware that it was a pool we
were looking into, by a trout like a fish balancing himself
half-way between soil and surface, with his head up the cur-
rent, and ever and anon wavering up till his back-fin was in
air — manifestly on the feed. He saw neither us nor our
shadow — intent on midges. " Thy days are numbered," we
inly said — and now we felt why ancient philosophers called
Prudence the Queen of Virtues. Not one man in a million, in
equipping himself for such a match, as was now on our part
in quiet course of performance, would have included in his
personal paraphernalia line and angle, and all manner of
artificial flies. The beautiful birch-tree was rather in our
way — yet that not much — and we were fearful of alarming
the missel. But that fear was needless, for, knowing our

CHRISTOPHER OX COLOXSAY. 275

inoffensive character, she and her mate — we heard now by
the fluttering and chirping — had been flying to and fro, feed-
ing their gaping youug, all the time of our dream. So we
jointed our Walton, and annexed our gossamer, and throwing
low, with no motion but of our wrist, dropt a single blue
midge on the now visible eddy, and let it circle away down
within easy reach of the simple and unsuspecting giant.
What profundity of ignorance is implied in the doctrine, that
the monarch of the flood lives on large flies ! They cannot
be too minute for the royal maw, provided he but knows that
they are insects. A minnow, again, in his impertinence and
presumption, will open his mouth, of which, large as it is pro-
portionally to his other members, he has miserably mistaken
the dimensions — to swallow a dragon-fly as big as a bird.
But soft ! he has it. A jerk so slight that we must not call it
a jerk — and we have hooked him inextricably by the tongue
in among the teeth. No fear of our gut. Whew ! there he
goes — and the merry music of the reel reminds us of the
goat-sucker's song, as, with mouth wide open, he sits at even-
ing on a paling, sucking in the moths.

Had you your choice, would you rather angle from a too
wakeful Cob, or from a Cob, like Colonsay, comatose ? Per-
haps this question may remind you of another almost as nice
— which we have heard mooted — " Whether would you have
your eyes torn out by pincers, or punched in by rule ?" Our
answer, after mature deliberation, was, " That we should like
to have one eye torn out by pincers, and the other punched in
by rule." We have angled, not without loss of temper, from
very restless animals ; yet 'tis perhaps more trying to hook a
first-class trout from a quadruped plunged in profoundest sleep.
A third case is, that of your sleep-walker — but we shall not
now discuss it, as its introduction would render the question
too complicate. As long as the hookee kept in the present
pool, 'twas well that Colonsay heard no " voice cry to all the
house — Sleep no more — Colons doth murder sleep." We
found our advantage in his unupbraiding conscience. But as
soon as his majesty set off to seek refuge in his distant domin-
ions, we wished that Somnus had lashed Colonsay with a
whip of scorpions. The fugitive king had it then all his own
way, like a bull in a china-shop. Conservatives as we have
ever been, we felt that the power of the Crown had increased,

276 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

was increasing, and ought to be diminished ; but where lay
the board of control ? Had he reposed due confidence in the
loyalty of the silent people of the provinces, and trusted to the
strongholds remote from the capital, he might have been at this
day on the throne. But his heart misgave him — and he came
back of his own accord to his own and the Naiads' Palace.
Even then he might have saved his life by taking the sulks.
But he was, though of a fearful, of a fiery nature ; he knew
not when to make resistance and when to yield ; and the con-
sequence was, that in twenty minutes from the time his tongue
first felt the barb, he turned up his yellow side, and floated
shorewards, " fat, and scant of breath." Even then a wallop
might have been his salvation ; but he had not spirit to make
one ; — and Bobby Partridge — who had been in vain trying
the worm — fortunately making his appearance just at that
moment with his well-known dodging step along the banks —
he dipped in his landing-net, and brought the Brobdignag
into another element, all shining with stars and crosses and
orders, like some great naval commander. His weight is un-
certain— for he never was in any scales but his own ; but
when pressed well down into our creel, his snout and tail
were visible — and we had to fasten the lid, not with peg,
but twine. Yet was he not a grey trout, as our few descrip-
tive touches have already shown — but a true son of Winander
— of the line of the mottled monarchs who have therein dis-
puted sovereignty with the long-jawed race of Jacks for many
thousand years.

Just then Colonsay must have been experiencing in his
sleep one of those not unsublime sensations that sometimes
suddenly assail the slumberer, falling over the edge of a pre-
cipice, or off a weathercock on a spire. For springing several
feet into the air, faster than any thought of ours he gave the
side-spang, and had almost realised his dream. Another
hand-breadth, and he had toppled into the Naiads' Palace.
Hurra ! Sammy Sitwell — standing on the stirrups — and work-
ing like Tommy Lye — comes flashing round the edge of the
wood, on his return from High Skelwith ; Colonsay, having
shaken off his somnolency, joins issue ; and once more the
Match ! the Match !

We met on the bridge — and nothing could be fairer than
the junction-start. But, alas 1 on beginning to make play, we

CHRISTOPHER OX COLOXSAY. 277

a discovery which, under any circumstances, and on any
horse, would have been unfortunate — in our present predica-
ment, likely to prove fatal. Colonsay had a knack — a sleight
of tongue — by which he could slip, ad libitum, almost any bit
out of his mouth ; and as we had forgotten to tighten the
buckles, there htmg the snaffle outside his jaws ; and with a
bridle so adjusted, what could Castor himself have done? No
more than Julius Caesar, who used, in his hot youth, to go,
like the old one, without saddle, with his face to the horse's
tail, and his hands tied behind his back. However, we said
nothing, and hasted to the crowd which we knew must be
collected in Ambleside — whither we were now going like a
couple of comets. How we rattled along Rottenrow ! Ben-
son's smithy right opposite — and a crowd of carts ! Sam
grew white on the jowl as a sheet. " Hold hard ! pull up—-
or we shall be smashed " — we cried in no feigned alarm ; ho
did so with a skill we could not but admire — and Colonsay,
taking all things into consideration, judged it advisable to
follow the example of the Shuffler — and thus no lives were
sacrificed — nor was the old woman dangerously hurt, though
her stall lost a leg, and there was a stramash among the
gingerbread kings.

The poor Shuffler mare, though pretty fresh, was now dis-
covered to be, nevertheless, in rather doleful dumps. Of her
four shoes she had lost two, somewhere or other, up among
the mountains, and the remaining pair were held by a very
precarious tenure. Mr Benson had a hind-leg on his hip in a
jiifey — and then a fore-leg ; the pincers did their duty ; and
now all-fours were as free from iron as the day she first saw
the light. But here again our magnanimity shone out in all
its native lustre. We scorned to take advantage of a series
of losses that might have befallen ourselves, and resolved to
stay by Sitwell, who, as far as we had had an opportunity to
observe, had hitherto conducted himself during the match
with considerable candour, and never broken into a gallop on
the direct line of operation. We had no right to object to each
other's by-play. We declare on our honour and conscience —
and after the lapse of twenty years, more or less, our country
will not be incredulous — that neither by voice nor look did
we give Mr Benson any hint how to reshoe the Shuffler.
True, we had long been good friends — wags calling him

278 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Vulcan and us Apollo — but with his style of shoeing we
never interfered, though on this occasion the issue proved
it to be worthy, not of our admiration only, but of our
gratitude. /•

And who should make their appearance at the smithy-door,
during the refit, but our dear friend, Green, the artist of the
clouds, in company with Hills, the celebrated cattleist, and
Havel, then at the head of the water-colourists — all three
great geniuses — and as pleasant men, each in his own way,
as ever leaned elbow on the social board. They had been out all
morning with their portfolios — but now was the time for them
to make themselves immortal — for what a subject for a grand
historical Composition ! No need for any sounding name —
call it simply the Smithy-Door. We beseeched the main
group, of which we were indeed ourselves the centre, and all
the subordinate and accessory breakings-off but belongings-
to it, to remain just as they were at that moment — for the
picture stood there already composed by the Spirit of the
Scene. All the three fortunate youths had to do was to
transfer it to paper. Nay — look at it almost from what point
you willed, still 'twas a picture ! In perfect power operated
there the principle of the pyramid ! Green eyed the scene
askance, and planted his tripod near the door of Mr Brown- '
rigg, the shoemaker, so that to the right he might get in his
favourite pines — among the loftiest in England — and to the j
left, as many of those old overhanging roofs and galleried
gables us the power of perspective might steal from the ancient
Ambleside, yet leave her rich as ever in all most beautiful to
artist's or poet's eyes. He had to take Us in front, but wo
could well bear foreshortening ; and it has been generally
thought that our face is finest in full view without shadow,
and so would have felt even Eembrandt. Some children had
gathered in a group — oh ! how graceful still art thou, pure
simple nature ! — and encouraged by the benign physiognomy
of Colonsay, one of them was holding up to him a bunch of
wild-flowers, which he kept mumbling with his long lip, just
to show his sense of the fair creature's kindness — and how all
their rosy faces smiled as he scented the moss rose-buds, tho
earliest of the perfect year ! Hills, again, studied the scene
from the Cock — a pleasant Inn— itself a jewel. Taken from
that point too, we were still the central figure — but we exhi-

CHRISTOPHEK ON COLONSAY. 279

bited a back-front — nor had we any reason to be ashamed of
our shoulders, nor Colonsay of his rear — harmonious in their
apt proportions. Shuffler and Sam, in their airy slimness,
contrasted well with our strength columnar ; and imagination
peopled the void between the visible extremes of horse with
many an intermediate kind of that most useful and ornamental
of all animals. A few human figures, and a couple of curs,
were hastily sketched in — and 'twas wonderful what an effect
was produced by the skilful introduction of a cuddy, pacing
leisurely by with his panniers, nor, in the midst of all the
animation, so much as once lifting his eyes from the ground.
But where sat Havel ? Kemoved some way down in front,
just opposite pretty Miss Preston's millinery-shop, whence the
scene assumed the shape of a circle, and fancy had room to
play with feeling, and imagination to expatiate among all
possibilities of the picturesque, without losing sight of the
main incidents and characters that gave an historical interest
to the whole. Never was Havel more happy ! There they
hang — all the three sketches — and though cheerful the scene
in itself, and mirth and merriment on every countenance, it
grows indistinct before our old eyes — not that they are always
dim, but hope is not now so ready with her sunshine as
memory with her tears.

But the scene was sketched, and the Shuffler shoed — and
the street, far as the eye could reach, cleared for the start.
That was not very far — for the houses, as if desirous to see
the fun, had stolen insensibly forwards, and the willow before
poor Green's door overhung the road more than usual, as it
closed the vista. What carts might lie beyond we knew and
cared not, only we hoped they might not be loaded with
timber. Yet hope, we felt, was strangely like fear — but " off
— off" was the cry — and the crowd could not contain their
admiration at the style in which we rose in our stirrups !
" North for ever ! " " Sammy for a shilling ! " " Done, done,
done ! " But the show of hands was in our favour ten to one;
and had the times been at all political in those parts — which,
thank heaven, they were not — we should have been carried
for the county.

Three wood-waggons loaded sky-high from Kydal Forest
with oak ! Coming down hill so as to occupy the whole area
of the market-place — and we meeting them at a trot fast as

280 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

any gallop ! Far advanced beyond them all was King Log
threatening the firmament. Colonsay " stooped his anointed
head as low as death," to avoid destruction — and with a
single coup d'oeil, seeing the impossibility of breaking even
the weakest part of the line, with miraculous command over ,
motion, converted the forward into the backward, and as if his
tail had been his head, set off smithy- wards, oversetting much
of the crowd; nor was it possible for us to restrain his
impetuosity — for the harder we pulled, the greater accelera-
tion he acquired — till he broke into such a gallop as will
never be forgotten, by those who had the good fortune to
behold it, till their dying day !

And were Sam and the Shuffler smashed to death by the
live timber — for alive it was, or it never could have swung
itself about in that way — or crushed beneath the wooden
wheels of waggons, each worse than the car of Juggernaut?
Not they. The mare had hunted with Meynel, and was a
treasure at timber. The northernmost waggon near the Old
Cross drooped its tail to within five feet of the ground, and
Sam, who was as skilful as fearless, shoved her at it, at the
critical moment just ere it rose again, cleared it like winking,
and disappeared I

In no long time Colonsay perceived that he was not going
in his usual way, and returned to the charge. Now the
waggons had been drawn up, so as to leave a lane for ourj
transit, and we again made play. Our dangers, it was not
unreasonable to hope, might be mostly over ; but we could
not conceal from ourselves that we had many difficulties still
to encounter — and one we saw even now was at hand. For
some years we had made it a practice, more honoured in the
observance than the breach, never, to pass the Salutation Inn,
without shaking hands, and taking a horn of ale with the
worthy landlord, our friend Wilcock; "nd there he stood on
the steps ! With great presence of mind he ordered a band of
haymakers to form a line, two deep, on the brow of the hill,
the front rank kneeling, with rakes, like muskets with fixed
bayonets, to receive and repel the expected charge. But Mrs '
Eennyson's heart gave way — and Colonsay, availing himself
of a weak point, broke through, and made good his customary
position below the sign. Nan was ready with the ale — three
horns — one for Mr North, one for her master, and one, larger

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 281

than the largest size, for Colonsay, who took his malt as kindly
as the best Christian that ever turned up a little finger.
Business being despatched, he gave his head a shake, as
much as to say, " Good-by," and set off neighing in pursuit of
the Shuffler.

We had now found out the pace that best suited such a
contest — a steady long swinging trot — six feet or thereabouts
at a stride — and we were only afraid we should too soon over-
take Sam. That fear, however, we had reason to dismiss the
moment it arose ; for lo ! on the crown of the hill — where the
road turns off perpendicularly to Kirkstone — a jaunting-car,
two gigs, a shandrydan, horsemen and horsewomen, all gaily
bedecked with white ribbons and stars on their breasts — a
marriage party — Tom Earle of Easdale and Rose Allardyce of
Goldrill-green — accompanied with their cortege — about to bo
made one by Parson Crakelt in Ambleside Church !

Will the world believe us when we say that we had utterly
forgotten our engagement formed a week before — to officiate
as Groom's Man ? But Fortuna favet fortibi(s-*~a,nd. there wo
were providentially at the very nick of time. To be sure, our
dress was not just quite the thing — being better adapted for
one match than the other ; but Mr Earle would not hear of
our proposal to exchange it, temporarily, for the apparel of one
of his friends, who had to fill a subordinate situation- — so just
as we were, except that we doused the pink cap, we accom-
panied the joyous assemblage to the Church.

A nobler-looking pair never stood before the altar. Tom
had thrown all the best men in the ring — and was certainly
the most elegant wrestler ever seen in the North of England.
Yet like all perfectly proportioned men, he showed no signs
of extraordinary strength, nay, seemed almost slender, though
on Mount Ida he could have contended with Paris. A milder
countenance or a sunnier you could not see on a summer's
. day ; and intellect of no common kind was enthroned on
that lofty forehead, radiant through clouds of curls dark as the
raven's wing. And if Tom Earle " gave the world assurance
of a MAN, so did Eose Allardyce of a woman. None of your
tiny thread-paper, artificial fairy-creatures, whom you may
dance on your thumb, and care not though they were to
evanish over your shoulder like shadows among the lady-fern;
but a substantial flesh-and-blood, bright and breathing, beau-

•282 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

tiful human being — fit for the wear and tear of life — and come
what may of weal and woe, grateful to enjoy and content to
suffer — one of the

"Sound healthy children of the God of heaven" —

\vho, in the dark hour, with a single smile, can bring the
rainbow over a cloud of tears.

It was with such thoughts and feelings as these pleasantly
passing through our heart, not without a shade of awe, that
we saw an old grey-headed man — not her father, for she was
an orphan — give away the bride. Nothing can be better than
the marriage ceremony — nor indeed every other part of the
ritual of the Church of England — a service which you may
seek to improve after you have brightened up a bit and
reduced to order the stars. And now that it was over, Rose
seemed even a sweeter flower. Her blushes had left her
cheeks somewhat paler than their wont — but the colour re-
turned at the bridegroom's kiss ; and that kiss was a signal
for us not to be idle, so we put Tom gently aside, and,
"preein' her bonny mou'," we went smacking our way round
the circle — an example which was no sooner set than followed
by the rest of the congregation, while the winged cherubs on
the walls laughed as if they had been so many Cupids, and a
Saint, who looked for usual rather grim, grew gay as a Hymen, i

The improvements, as they are called, of modern science,
have, even in mountainous countries, reduced, alas 1 most of !
the roads, once so precipitous, to nearly a dead level ! It was
not so in Westmoreland in the age of the Match. Bear wit-
ness from the stony world of the past, Thou Descent out of
Ambleside ! And where now can you find a truly sharp turn ?
All smoothed meanly off, without " mark or likelihood," against
which it is next to impossible to capsize ! True, that people
get killed yet — but " then 'tis the rate that does it ;" and
bridges are so built now that not one coach in a million leaps
the ledge — in the times we write of, an almost daily occur-
rence. But 'tis in vain to complain. Down that Descent out
of Ambleside, now drove like blazes the nuptial cavalcade.
None of the party were great whips — but they all knew well
how to manage the reins. They flung them loose on their
coursers' backs — simply taking care not to let them get
entangled with tails. The young couple led the way in the

CHRISTOPHER OX COLONS AY." 283

car, then a novelty — the gigs were in the centre — and the
shandrydan rattled in the rear. A squadron of cavalry cleared
the road before the carriages, and, with our usual prudence,
we followed the wheels. Not that we saw them, for seldom
have we been enveloped in a denser cloud of dust. But we
heard them, and so should we had we been all but stone-deaf.
Think not that we consulted our own safety in not joining the
vanguard. For though we were a single man, Colonsay now
carried double — the bridesmaid was behind us, with her soft
arm round our waist — and for her sake we blessed our stars
that we had that day mounted a crupper. We knew it was
mid-day, but in the heart of the whirlwind 'twas nearly night.
We could have believed, oh! fond dream of an enamoured
fancy ! that we were a young Arab, carrying away on the
desert-born his sole child from a chieftain's tent !

The noise died away like thunder behind a hill — the atmo-
sphere became clearer, and we were aware of entering a wood.
Colonsay affected sylvan scenery, " and, path or no path, what
cared he ?" was bearing his now precious burden into the forest-
gloom. Sweet Hannah became alarmed, but " we calmed her
fears, and she was calm," for no evil thought was in our heart
— " no maiden lays her scathe to us ; " and say, ye Dryads
who dwell in the blessed woods of Westmoreland, and have
seen us a thousand times roaming not unaccompanied through
all their glades, if you know not well that in our eyes — wor-
shippers as we were of all beauty — the holiest thing under
heaven was confiding Innocence !

Colonsay stood still as a lamb in the centre of a circle of
greensward, that had many years ago been the site of a char-
coal burning ; and it almost always happens that out of the
works of industry busying itself in the woods, arises a new
character of beauty, retaining, without any loss to the charm
of nature, an almost imperceptible touch — a faint vestige of
art. So was it here. A Poet — (but are we a poet ?) — could
not have created so still a spot out of the soft leaves of sleep.
The foliage looked as if it had never known but the vernal
breath of Dream-land. Yet what were they but simple
hazels — the commonest wood that grows — and nothing, we
have heard it said, can be very beautiful that is not somewhat
rare — a saying that the infant morning can refute, by shaking
from the foxglove millions of lovelier pearls than ever were

284 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

brought up by diver from Indian seas. But though the coppice
was of hazel, high over-head, and far around, an oak — too old
to let us think of its age — diffused almost a twilight. Yet not
so solemn as to hush the glad linnets' lays — and wide they
warbled, while each brooding bird listened but to its own
mate, and heard but the hymn meant for its own nest. And
now all are mute — -as if hushed by a profounder hymeneal
song ; for from some uncertain far-oif place the cushat coos —
and silence is listening along with us to the passionate music
so full all the while of affection — Ah ! heard' st thou ever,
Hannah ! a sound so sweet with love, and so strong with faith
— is there not a spell in the word conjugal— and thinkest
thou not, my child, that more delightful than to be brides-
maid— though this is the happiest holiday in thy life — would
it be, in a few months or so, to be thyself the Bride ?

But we must make no revelation of the tender colloquy
that there ensued — let it suffice to say, that we promised to
be present at the marriage, which we found was to be in Sep-
tember. " See, sir — .the bonny Con ! " And there sat a pert
squirrel on a mossy bough, who had overheard every word wo
said, and was now mocking us with antic grimaces, while his
brush curled gracefully over his head, and his bright burnished
fur showed that he was the bead of the woods, Colonsay,
who had merely retired from the dust, knowing it must be now
laid, resought the road — and hark ! the sound of a trumpet !

A couple of Cantabs trotting along in a Tandem ! That
soph handles the reins like a man destined to bo senior Avran-
ffler — and in him who blows the bugle we hear a gold medallist.
Fine fellows are they both as ever worked team or problem.
From the wood we take our station close before the leader, and
lo ! now a Random ! Colonsay has quite a classical character
— and unencumbered with traces, he looks like one of those
noble prancers on antique gem or basso relievo. The wheeler
has nothing to do in the shafts but to keep moving — the ci-
devant leader is now proud to be a follower — and the whip
enjoys his sinecure. Much gentlemanly nonsense are the
scholars talking to Hannah, and we fear, from the titter that
slightly thrills her frame, that they may be slyly quizzing the
elderly gentleman ; but youth will be youth — and we know
that, in the midst of all that winking of eyes and screwing of

CHRISTOPHER ON COLOXSAY. 285

mouths, they have a respect amounting to veneration for
Christopher North.

Ivy Cottage seems on its way to Ambleside, as we give it
the go-by — Rydal Water glimmers away towards Windermere
— and we are at the Nab. Lo ! below the shadow of the syca-
mores the marriage party — who had just then discovered that
we were missing, and loud congratulations hail our advent.
The Random is reduced to a Tandem — for Colonsay gives the
side- spang, and the Newtonians keep the noisy tenor of their
way towards Grasmere — while Nab-Scaur proves he can blow
the bugle too, and plays the Honey-Moon on the same key —
but what breath from human lips so wildly sweet as the
echoes !

Hannah slips off like a sun-loosened snow-wreath, and is in
the arms of a girl, lovelier even than herself, who had been
keeping house during the wedding, and arranging the parlour
for a dejetine at once rich and simple, while she had tastefully
garlanded the lintel and porch with flowers. Through the
jessamine-lattice window we looked in on the preparations, but
had strength of mind not to dismount ; and as soon as the
bridegroom learnt that we were engaged in a match, he re-
leased us from our remaining duties as his man, considering
that we had sufficiently shown our zeal in his service by the
part we performed in church. We then drank " Joy " in a
glass of delicious elder-flower wine, fairer and more fragrant
than Frontignac — and pausing for a moment to take in the
whole beautiful happiness of the scene into our heart — lake,
trees, hills, houses, humanities, heavens, and all — " swift as an
arrow from a Tartar's bow," we shot away towards White
Moss.

Where, thought we, may be Sam ? Symptoms saw we none
of the Shuffler — for feet of all kinds had for hours been disturb-
ing the dust — nor among all that trampling could a Red-man's
eye have noted the print of her hoof. But as we had not met
him, we could not doubt that he was only ahead — and the
chief difficulties to be encountered, it was cheering to learn,
awaited us both equally on our return. We scorn to ask
questions — nor could they indeed have been of any avail ; for
though we had overtaken many persons, we had met none —
the stream of life all flowing in one direction — towards Gras-

286 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

mere fair. It was known there that we were coming, for Ru-
mour trots faster even than Colonsay — nay, used to out-gallop
Childers and Eclipse.

And now we were on White Moss, and keeping a firm seat,
in case of a blast in the slate -quarries, when a sight met our
eyes at that rate altogether unintelligible, incomprehensible,
and unaccountable, but alarming in the most mysterious degree
to man and horse — even beyond a ghost. It seemed some-
thing hairy, and of a size so enormous, that its stature, like
Satan's, reached the sky. Could it be Satan ? No — the Prince
of the Air flies by night — this monster was moving on the
earth in the face of day. Colonsay saw it the instant we did,
and was rooted. Desperation fixed our eyes on the shape —
"if shape it might be called, which shape had none" — and,
thank heaven ! it gradually dwindled into a huge bear — •
standing upright on legs thicker than our body — handling
a pole across his breast like a pine ; and, oh ! spirit of Vestris
— dancing! Yes ! dancing to a tambourine and a hurdy-gurdy
— waltzing a solo — pirouetting — and soon as he saw us,
describing the figure of a foursome and fearsome Scotch reel,
jig-time — and then, as if setting to his partner, perpetrating
the Highland fling ! Never did Napoleon utter a more
original truth than when he said, that there is but one step
from the sublime to the ridiculous — Colonsay must have felt
that as keenly as we did — laughter convulsed our diaphragms j
— and so strange were the peals, that we thought the old
mountains would have fallen into hysterics.

Fancy "holds each strange tale devoutly true," told of fas-
cinations. "A serpent's eye shines dull and shy," saith Cole-
ridge, in " that singularly beautiful and original poem"
Christdbelle — and like a true poet he describes its effect on
that hapless ladye. Aristotle saw into the life of things when
he declared poetry to be more philosophical than history — but
he has nowhere said that fiction is more true than fact. Here,
however, we have to record a fact more extraordinary than any
fiction — and leave you to draw the moral. All imitation is
from sympathy — aud in illustration of that apothegm we
could write a book. But here was a fact more illustrative of
its truth than many volumes of the profoundest metaphysical
disquisition. Colonsay, who had been not only riveted, but,
as we said, rooted to the spot by sight of the bear, began to

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 287

egard him with a horrid sympathy — his inner being began to
ruin — his neigh became a growl — and rising on his hind-legs,

;nth his fore-legs mimicking paws, true to time and measure,

is his grotesque prototype before him, he began walking the

ninuet de la cour, and soon as tambourine and hurdy-gurdy
banged to a livelier tune, slid away into saraband !
You cannot be so unreasonable as to expect that we should

>e able to describe our feelings in such a predicament — com-
osed as the mixture was of so many ingredients hitherto sup-
osed to be unamalgamatable — of which a few were the in-

ernal senses of fear, fun, folly, horror, awe, melancholy, mirth,
•jlf-pity, shame, pride, wonder, novelty, absurdity, and sub-
mity — but so meagre a list of simple emotions can give you
o idea of the one composite. The spectators seemed nurne-

•ous — and you may faintly conceive what a dash of bitterness
thrown into our cup, already full to the brim with suffer-

ngs, by the appearance, on the edge of the crowd, of the

mmortal author of the Lyrical Ballads, and him since so cele-
rated as the English Opium-Eater. Their looks showed that
ley were under the delusion that this was a voluntary as well

is gratuitous exhibition ; whereas they were bound as poets,
hilosophers, and Christians, to have known that we were
nder the power of the Bear — Ursa Major being now mani-

estly the constellation that had ruled at our birth — and who

,an control his fate ?
But was ever sight more beautiful than what now rose

Before us high up in the firmament 1 A graceful girl in a

oreign garb, trousered, and turbaned, and stilted, walked
ancingly in the air, showering smiles, and warbling melody,
lie loveliest Savoyard that ever crossed seas far away from

ler own hut on the vine-clad hill. And as she smiled and
ang, she came circling towards us, with that aerial motion of

vhich every new gliding figure was like finer and wilder

•oetry, till, like a creature angelical, she hung in the sunshine
bove our head, and dropped round the neck of her thrall a
haplet of flowers, wreathed by fingers familiar with all the
aagic of the southern clime I The Bear ceased his gambols
—and Colonsay again grew horse. We gave the bright witch
;old, and were just about to bow to our illustrious friends —
fhen a mannikin, in a red jacket, jumped up behind us, and
way went Colonsay like a whirlwind. It was a monkey —

288 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

and Jacko, not anticipating the effect of his trick, clung to our
back with his arms round our neck — and his blear-eyed face
adhesive to our cheek — oh ! how unlike that face which half-
an-hour ago we bent back ours to meet — and from its balmy
mouth received a kiss in the dim wood !

What is this ? what is this ? We are swimming in a lake.
Grasmere Lake — we know it by its Island. Curse the incubus
— we shall be throttled. Could we but get our knife unclasped,
we would cut off the little miscreant's paws. Courage, Col-
onsay — courage — swim steady, we beseech you — have pity on
your poor master. Suchlike continued to be our ejaculations
along the edge of the line of water-lilies, which, even in his
affright, Colonsay instinctively kept clear of — and we rejoiced <
to perceive that he was making for the Island. Boats put out
from all the bays — and the first that neared us was Kobert;
Newton's, who had been fishing perch, and slipped anchor the?
moment he heard the plunge. But we warned him to keep off, <
lest Colonsay should sink him ; and now began a race of a
novel kind — Colonsay against a pair of oars — for a gallon of;
ale and a leash of mutton pies — who should first toucli thej|
beach. The craft was rather heading us, when crash wentjj
the wooden pin on which the Grasmereans then used to fix;
their oars, and Bobby fell back off the shaft with his heels in
the air, while, a light breeze having sprung up, he drifted con-
siderably to leeward. We could now count the corner-stone^
of the Barn ; Colonsay snorted as he smelt the pasture ; and
getting footing now on a shoal of fine gravel, more like a hip- '
popotamus than a mere land-horse, he galloped through a
brood of ducklings, and established himself on terra firma be-
yond the water-line, and in among the daffodillies, that crowded
round to kiss the victor's feet. Just then he gave himself
such a shake — like a Newfoundlander — that Jacko, who had
heedlessly relaxed his hold, was dislodged to a great distance
— and by-and-by sitting down disconsolately on a stone,
looked

" Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast."

But we had no compassion for the pest, and let him sit
shivering unheeded there in his wet regimentals, while we in-
tensely enjoyed that vital refreshment consequent on the
plunge-bath. Colonsay had leaped into the Lake, as we were
afterwards credibly informed, from a pretty high rock ; and

CHRISTOPHER OX COLON SAY. 289

we were assured by the same authority, that he had never
witnessed any sight more imposing than our Dive. Gras-
mere Lake is full of springs, so in spots not only cool, but cold
even in the dog-days ; and we, who had entered its sweet
waters, a child of dust, left them an etherealised creature of
the element. 'Twas now post meridian quarter less one, and
since six of the morning what had we not gone through?
Seven hours in the saddle — with nothing to eat but breakfast
and lunch, a few horns of ale, a suck of Glenlivet, and a tum-
bler of elder-flower wine. The strongest constitution cannot
be wholly proof against such privations, and we had felt, we
confess, a certain sinking of the heart — near the region of the
stomach — which had somewhat affected our spirits. But not
more sovereign remedy is " spermaceti for an inward bruise,"
than that spring-fed lake for lassitude and weariness even to
the verge of death. We could have imagined ourselves a
Minor on the eve of his majority, glorying in the thought of
the Gaudeamus nature was preparing for the morrow, when
the sun was to see him of age. Scores of crazy years, with all
their infirmities, had been drowned, or shaken off; Crutch
himself felt efflorescence, and as we held him up, we fancied
he began to bud. Yes ! we believe it now — so exults the
Eagle — when, moulting centuries that fall away from him
like feathers, he renews his youth.

We stood on the green navel of the lake. So clear the air,
and so keen our eyes, that without losing anything of their
grandeur, the encircling mountains showed all their beautiful
individualities ; distinctly was visible the tall lady-fern, as if
within hand-reach ; we saw, or thought we saw, the very
glossiness on the silver stems of the scattered birch-trees —
there was no mistaking one of all the many varieties of foli-
age ; apparent along the brighter verdure were the innumer-
ous sheep-paths ; it might be imagination, but we believed
our eye rested in its wanderings on the Fairy rings. The
Beautiful closed in upon us, and our heart leapt up to meet it,
our arms opened to fold it in our embrace. We were in love
with Nature, and she with us, and in our intercommunion we
became one living soul.

You may call this extravagant — and it may be so ; but ex-
travagant you can never call the sweet delight that breathed
on us from all the still island itself — with its serene scenery

VOL. VIT. T

290 ESSAYS: CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

— but a barn and outhouse, and a few firs — no more ; and
as for living creatures — on the low lying pasture, undulating
into uplands, some score of silly sheep. Of how few and sim-
ple materials may consist a pastoral picture, that shall deeply
stir the heart.

Never, in all our born days, heard we such a neighing and
whinnying of horses, mares, and foals ! In Tail-End — an
estate on the shores of the Mainland — resides a speculative
breeder — and yonder field sloping down to the lake is full of
all manner of manes and tales, not unobserved of Colonsay,
who has been startled by the outbreak of the music of his
mother-tongue, and lends his lungs to the concert. But that
cannot content him, and we must make up our minds for
another swim. However, this time he takes matters more
quietly, and walks slowly into the water, belly deep, sipping
some of it, and cooling his nose with now and then a dip, till
the bottom slides away from his hoofs, and he assumes the
otter.

The flotilla, in the form of a crescent " sharpening its
mooned horns," attends us to the landing-place — and having
thus at two innings fairly crossed the lake, we are once more
on the continent. But here new dangers surround us in the
shape of all sorts of quadrupeds — and a vicious horse, well
known by the name of the Baldfaced Stag, runs at us with his
teeth. Kising in the stirrups, like King Kobert Bruce on the-
approach of Sir Henry de Bohun, we deliver on his skull such
a whack of the Crutch, that he staggers and sinks on his knees
— while Colonsay, turning tail, flings out savagely, and puts
him hors de combat. Seeing their leader fall, the whole squad-
ron of cavalry take to ignominious flight, and we soon find
ourselves on the plateau in front of the house. And who
should we find there but two who had " been absent long, and
distant far" — SAMMY AND THE SHUFFLEK ! !

What a change had time, toil, and trouble wrought on the
once gallant pair ! Sam, had it been night-time, might have
passed for his own ghost. So reduced, he was a mere feather-
weight. " Poor putty-face ! " we involuntarily ejaculated-—
" sallower than thine own doeskins ! " Seeing us, he smiled
as if he were weeping — but not a word did he speak, and we
began to suspect that he had received a coup de soleil The
hospitable and humane resident — our much esteemed friend,

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY. 291

Mr Younghusband — whom we had not at first observed — we
now saw standing at a small distance, surveying Sam and
the Shuffler with a countenance in which there was no hope.
After mutual congratulations had been exchanged between us,
he informed us that he had presented Sitwell with various
refreshments, but that the infatuated man would neither eat
nor drink, and persisted in being speechless — that he had
offered to send for medical and clerical assistance (we thought
he whispered the word undertaker), but that the offer had
been met by that mournful but decided negative, a mute
shake of the head. Deaf, therefore, Sam was not — but he was
dumb — regularly done up— completely finished. Nor in less
piteous plight was the Shuffler. She still, indeed, had a leg
to stand on, but of all the four not one that could have obeyed
her will, had she attempted to walk. She had hobbled to
that extreme point, beyond which exhausted nature could not
go an inch. She was alive, and that was all that could be
safely asserted either of her or Sam. That shoeing had
finally done its business — the iron cramps had proved too
much for her corns and bunions ; though fired on all fours, no
sinews could stand for so many hours the unrelieved pressure :
moreover, she had foundered — and except in the tail, which
shook violently, the patient now appeared in general paralysis.
Sitwell was not cruel — but he had committed a sad error in
going round by the Close, and taking the left bank of the
Lake. Besides, he had been carried away, as he afterwards
told us, by a trail-hunt.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and we pru-
dently and generously offered »to let him off for fifty. No
human foresight could predict what might happen to ourselves
on the way home. Sam revived at the proposal, and in pre-
sence of a good witness nodded assent. But nods are often
deceptive and illusory altogether, so we insisted on the blunt.

" Slowly his fobs the fumbling hand obey,
And give the struggling shiners to the day."

But shall we miss the festivities of Grasmere Fair ? Forbid
it, heaven. Mr Younghusband, with Herculean arms, lifts
Mr Sitwell off the saddle, and places him behind Mr North,
promising himself to follow. The sun is shedding intolerable
day, and we unfurl our umbrella. Sam, whose strength is

292 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

fast returning, carries the parasol — we flourish the Crutch.
Colonsay, after a few funks, gets under weigh, and in three
minutes is in the heart of the Fair. What a crowd round the
Victor ! Nobody looks at the bear. But there is the Witch
of Savoy in the air, waving her turban, heedless of her leman
angrily lamenting for Jacko. On all sides we see " the old
familiar faces." Conspicuous above all, that honoured States-
man, John Green — who assists us to dismount — and, leaning
on his arm, we walk into the mouth of the Ked Lion. Then,
facing about, we bow to the Fair, who ratifies our victory
" with nine times nine ; " and at that moment we wished to
die, " lest aught less great should stamp us mortal."

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS.

[OCTOBEB 1834.]

POETS win to themselves by their works a personal regard
and affection from all who have derived delight from their
genius. All their readers may be said to be their friends ;
and admiration is almost always mingled with love. Nor
is it wonderful that it should be so. We converse with
them in their purest and highest and holiest moods ; we are
familiar only with the impress of their character, stamped,
without alloy of baser matter, on gold. We speak now, it is
manifest, but of those poets — and thank heaven the greatest
are among the number — who have been faithful to their
calling on earth — have not profaned the god-given strength
by making it subservient to unworthy or unhallowed ends —
nor kindled any portion of the sacred fire on the altars of
impurity or superstition. Genius and imagination do not
save their possessors from sin. That fatal disease is in all
human veins — and circulates with the blood from all human
hearts. But genius and imagination can beautify even virtue
— that is the noblest work they were intended to perform for
man — and poetry has performed it far beyond any other power
that spiritualises life. A great or good poet, in his hours of
inspiration — and that word has been allowed by the wisest —
is as free as mortal man may be — except when under the still
holier influence of religion, its services, and its ministrations
— from all that ordinarily pollutes, or degrades, or enslaves
our moral being ; — and we are willing, not without deep
reason, to believe that the revelations he then makes be-
fore our eyes of the constitution of his soul are true — that
by them he is to be judged on earth what manner of man
he is ; — so that should aught at other times appear per-
plexing in his character or conduct, and inconsistent with
that ideal which his own genius, in its purest apparition,

294 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

induced and enabled us to form of him in our fancy, we
are bound — unless all belief be baseless — in spite of much
that may trouble us in what we cannot understand or re-
concile— to hold fast our faith in the virtue of the superior
powers of his being — nor fear that the glory is but " false
glitter," because, like everything beneath the sun, it may
for a while be clouded or eclipsed.

The personal character of our most illustrious poets has,
with very few exceptions — and in those cases there are
mournful mysteries never perhaps to be understood in this
"unintelligible world" — been all that we who owe them
an unappreciable debt of gratitude — best paid in brotherly
love and Christian charity — could desire ; and if some flaws
and frailties have been shown by the light of genius, that
would have been invisible or unnoticed in ordinary men,
it is worse than weak, it is wicked, to point with pleasure
to stains on the splendour. " Blessings be with them and
eternal praise," is the high sentiment of enlightened humanity
towards the memory of all such benefactors. There is no wis-
dom in weighing in scales misnamed of justice, and neither of
gold nor diamond, the virtties against the vices of any one of
our fellow-creatures. The religion of nature prompts no such
balancing of praise and blame, even with the living — there-
fore surely not with the dead ; nor does the religion of the
New Testament. Yet unholy inquisition is too often made
even into the secrets hidden in the heart of genius — and from
wan cheek, or troubled eye, or distracted demeanour, or con-
duct outwardly " wanting grace," have unjust inferences been
cruelly drawn, calculated to lower what was in truth highest,
and to cloud what was in truth brightest in the nature of some
glorious creature, who, if clearly known to the whole world,
would have been held worthy of the whole world's love.

" Call it not vain ! they do not err,
Who say that when a poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies ! "

Mute nature mourns not; but with the tears in our eyes for
some great loss — she seems to weep with us — with sobs in
our heart, every whisper in the woods sounds like a sigh.
The day our Minstrel was buried, there was no melancholy

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 295

upon Dryburgh tower or woods. Yet thinking on his death, to
us Scotland even now seems sad. Another great poet — and
another — have since disappeared. Yet a little while, and
lights no less resplendent will go out in dust. Scott, Crabbe,
Coleridge — names for so many years pronounced with a proud,
kind emphasis, as if it raised us in our own estimation to love
and honour such compatriots — now but names, and with almost
a mournful sound !

" Nor draw their frailties from their dread abode."
That line has lost not a breath of its holy power by perpetual
repetition from millions of lips. Frailties, no doubt, had those
Sons of the Morning, though framed in " all the pomp and
prodigality of heaven" — even like the humblest of their
brethren, whose lot it was in life to live like paupers in mind
on the alms of niggard nature. The frailties of the low obscure
are safe in the grave. Some love-planted flowers flourish
awhile over their dust, and then fade away for ever, like their
memories, that live but in a few simple and unrepining hearts.
| But the famous tombs of the Genii are sometimes visited by
pilgrims that are not worshippers — and who come not there
in entire reverence. All eyes are not devoutly dim that read
the letters on such monuments — all hearts are not holily in-
spired when dreaming on such dust — and Envy, that knows
not itself to be Envy, sometimes seeks in vain to believe that
the genius, now sanctified by death, was not in life but another
Iname for transcendent virtue.

No man was ever more beloved by his friends — and among
ithem were many of the great as well as the good — than the
poet Coleridge. We so call him ; for he alone perhaps of all
imen that ever lived was always a poet — in all his moods — and
they were many — inspired. His genius never seemed to burn
low — to need fuel or fanning ; but gently stirred, uprose the
;magic flame — and the flame was fire. His waking thoughts
had all the vividness of visions, all the variousness of dreams
— but the Will, whose wand in sleep is powerless, reigned
over all those beautiful reveries, which were often like reve-
lations; while Fancy and Imagination, still obedient to Reason,
the lawgiver, arrayed earth and life in such many-coloured
radiance that they grew all divine.

But others are better privileged than we are to speak of
those wonderful displays, spontaneous as breathing, of those

296 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

wonderful endowments ; and therefore we now refrain from
giving further utterance to our admiration of the only eloquence
we ever heard that deserved the name — and assuredly from
no lack of love. A holier duty is incumbent on them who
were nearest and dearest to him ; ere long we know it will be
worthily done ; and then it will be confessed by all who have
an ear to hear and a heart to feel

" The still sad music of humanity,"

that he who was so admirable a poet, was one of the most
amiable of men. Who, now, can read unm.oved, "his own^
humble and affectionate epitaph?" — well so called by one who
was to him even as one of his own sons — written with calm
heart but trembling hand — a month or two before his death I

" Stop, Christian passer-by ! Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he ; —
O lift in thought a prayer for S. T. C.
That he, who many a year, with toil of breath,
Found death in life, may here find life in death !
Mercy for praise — to be forgiven for fame,
He asked, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same."

Nor are we going now to compose a critical essay on the
genius of Coleridge. For many years it has been understood
by all who know what poetry is ; and all that future ages can
do for his fame, will be to extend it. His exquisite sensibi-
lities of human affection will continue to charm, as they have
charmed, all kindred spirits — who feel that the common chords
of the heart, touched by a fine finger, can discourse most ex-
cellent music ; but in coarser natures, though kind — " and
peace be to them, for there are many such " — some even of
his loveliest lays will awaken no answering emotion of delight
— though ,

" Like unto an angel's song
That bids the heavens be mute ! "

The imagery he raises before their eyes will be admired— Tor
almost all eyes communicate with some inner sense of beauty;
but the balmy breath in which it is enveloped, adding sweet-
ness to the Spring, will escape unfelt — and so will the ethe-
real colouring that belongs not to the common day ; for to be
aware of the presence of that air and that light — so spiritual

COLEKIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 297

— you must, " in a wise passiveness," be yourself a poet.

Thus—

" Oft, with patient ear,

Long listening to the viewless skylark's note,
(Viewless, or haply for a moment seen,
Gleaming on sunny wings), in whisper'd tones,
I've said to my beloved — ' Such, sweet girl !
The unobtrusive song of happiness,
Unearthly minstrelsy ! then only heard,
When the soul seeks to hear ; when all is hush'jl,
And the heart listens.' "

Even his Love Poems, though full of fondness and tenderness,
to overflowing, nor yet unimpassioned, are not for the multi-
tude ; they are either so spiritualised as to be above their
sympathies, or so purified as not to meet them ; but to all
those who are imaginative in all their happiness — to whom
delight cannot be delusion — where in Poetry is there another
such Lay of Love as Genevieve ?

" All thoughts, all passions, all delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame ! "

All Poets who have held close communion with what is called
inanimate nature, have given her, not only life, but a mind, a
heart, and a soul ; and though Philosophers, for doing so,
have been very generally called Atheists, few have accused of
irreligion the mere ppetical creed. Only think of calling
"Wordsworth an Atheist ! He, far beyond one and all of all
other men, has illustrated the Faith of Universal Feeling. In
Coleridge there are many fine touches of the same attributive
Fancy ; but his conceptive power, though strong and bright,
was not equal to that of his Master — " that mighty Orb of
Song." It is a strange assertion to make at this time of day,
" that no writer has ever expressed the great truth, that man
makes his world, or that it is the imagination which shapes
and colours all things, more vividly than Coleridge. Indeed,
he is the poet who, in the age in which we live, brought for-
ward that position into bight and action." The writer had
surely forgot Shakespeare ; nor, had he remembered him,
could he well have said this in the glorious face of Words-
worth. That Imagination

298 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" bodies forth
The form of things unknown, turns them to shapes."

" and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," is
the finest of all possible expressions of the oldest of all possible
truths — and no Poet ever sang who did not exemplify it. But
we agree with the enlightened and amiable critic, that Cole-
ridge has, throughout all his Poetry, delightfully exhibited
such creative process of the Imaginative Faculty, and, in one
rich and rare passage, expounded most philosophically, and
illustrated most poetically, a great and universally-acknow-
ledged Truth. Here it is : —

" A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
"Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear —

0 Lady ! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green :
And still I gaze — and with how blank an eye !
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That gave away their motion to the stars ;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between, -
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen :
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue ;

1 see them all so excellently fair,

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are !

My genial spirits fail ;

And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ?

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west :
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within,

O Lady ! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live :
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud !
And would we aught behold, of higher worth

COLERIDGE S POETICAL WORKS. 299

Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,

Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth,
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,

Enveloping the Earth —
And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element !

O pure of heart ! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be !
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous Lady ! Joy that ne'er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady ! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,

A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud —
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud —

We in ourselves rejoice !
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light."

But there is one region in which Imagination has ever loved
to walk — now in glimmer, and now in gloom — and now even
in daylight — but it must be a nightlike day — where Coleridge
surpasses all poets but Shakespeare — nor do we fear to say,
where he equals Shakespeare. That region is the preternatural.
Some of Scott's works strongly excite the feelings of supersti-
tious fear and traditional awe ; witness the Ballad of " Glen-
finlas," and the Lady in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. So
do the " Thorn," " Lucy Gray," " Hartleap Well," and the
" Danish Boy," of Wordsworth — which overflow, too, with
many other exquisite kinds of imaginative feeling, besides
the superstitious. But in prodigious power and irresistible,
the Ancient Mariner bears off the bell from them all, which
he tolls till the sky grows too dismal to be endured ; and
what witch, at once so foul and so fair, so felt to be fatal in
her fearful beauty, an apparition of bliss and of bale — as the

300 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

stately Lady Geraldine ? What angel — in her dread so deli-
cate— in her distress so graceful — as she — the Dove of her
own Dream — fascinated to death by that hissing serpent —
like the meek, pure, pious Christabel — whose young virgin
life has been wholly dedicated to her Father and her God ?

But here are Coleridge's Poetical Works lying before us —
and our chief wish in what we have now been saying, and are
going to say, is, that all the young lovers of poetry will pro-
vide themselves with the three volumes — and study them till
they come to feel and understand all therein contained, more
profoundly than we, their grey-headed adviser, who were
familiar with "all of wonderful and wild" before they were born.

These delightful volumes are divided into four compart-
ments— Juvenile Poems — Sibylline Leaves — Miscellaneous
Poems — and Dramas, original or translations. All the com-
positions in the first were the product of boyhood, or early
youth ; many in the second of a season of life that belonged
still to the strong spring of manhood ; and all the rest — with
a few assuredly beautiful, but perhaps not very important, ex-
ceptions— were the rich growth of life's summer, ripened in
the sunshine of rejoicing genius, yet even the most luxuriant
not untouched with a shade of sorrow, and their loveliness
not undimmed with tears. Strange and sad to think, that all
the poetry of this divinely endowed spirit should have been
breathed into utterance before his thirtieth year ! For other '
thirty years and upwards, many a profound response was
given forth by his voice from the temple's inner shrine — and
recorded in language that will never die. Much of that philo-
sophy is poetry, too, and of the highest ; but it is lawful in
those who loved him — and looked up to him as one of the
largest lights of the age — to lament that his harp, so many-
stringed, and which he could sweep with a master's hand,
should so long have been mute, especially while it seemed all
the while to need but a breath to reanimate

" The soul of music, sleeping in the chords."

Without caring about the order of time — for over all the
poetry of Coleridge, whether boy or man, when conversant
with nature, hangs the same one beautiful spirit of love and
delight — let us look at some more of his inspirations, and see
how his very senses are refined by his imagination.

COLERIDGE'S FOETICAL WORKS. 301

Coleridge had not what is commonly called an ear for
music ; and the more's the pity. An ear for music is a great
mystery, but the want of it is a greater mystery still — espe-
cially in poets ; and yet, if you believe them and their friends,
many true poets have possessed not that source of delight — •
the purest that flows in the soul. Yet music affected him
deeply — and his " Lines composed in a Concert-room," as
rich as simple, must be far dearer to St Cecilia than Dryden's
and Pope's pompous odes. The poem appears steeped in
music, like a full-blown rose in dew. The second and third
stanzas we have always felt to be expressed too strongly ; yet
a friend of our heart told us that the instant transition from
them, in their almost grating harshness, made by enchanted
memory to far-off passages in evanished being, in their coming
back still more divine, never fails to transport him into a bliss-
ful world.

" Nor cold, nor stern my soul ! yet I detest

These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng,
Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast,
In intricacies of laborious song.

These feel not Music's genuine power, nor deign
To melt at Nature's passion- warbled plaint ;

But when the long-breathed singer's uptrilled strain
Bursts in a squall — they gape for wonderment.

Hark ! the deep buzz of vanity and hate !

Scornful, yet envious, with self-torturing sneer
My lady eyes some maid of humbler state,

While the pert captain, or the primmer priest,

Prattles accordant scandal in her ear.

O give me, from this heartless scene released,
To hear our old musician, blind and gray

(Whom stretching from my nurse's arms I kissed),
His Scottish tunes and warlike marches play,

By moonshine, on the balmy summer-night,
The while I dance amid the tedded hay

With merry maids, whose ringlets toss in light.

Or lies the purple evening on the bay
Of the calm glossy lake, O let me hide

Unheard, unseen, behind the alder-trees,
For round their roots the fisher's boat is tied,

302 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. .

On whose trim seat doth Edmund stretch at ease,
And while the lazy boat sways to and fro,

Breathes in his flute sad airs, so wild and slow,
That his own cheek is wet with quiet tears.

But O, dear Anne ! when midnight wind careers,
And the gust pelting on the outhouse shed

Makes the cock shrilly on the rain-storm crow,

To hear thee sing some ballad full of woe,
Ballad of shipwrecked sailor floating dead

Whom his own true-love buried in the sands !
Thee, gentle woman, for thy voice re-measures
Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures

The things of Nature utter ; birds or trees
Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves,
Or where the stiff grass mid the heath-plant waves,

Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze."

These exquisite lines are placed among the Sibylline
Leaves — but here are some exceedingly sweet, which we find
among the Juvenile Poems. Even in moods little elevated —
and in which the current of thought and feeling flows gently
along simple scenery — the true poet is recognised in the
whole tone of his inner being, musically tempered to repose
that belongs to a quieter world than' this, yet brings this, as
if by a silent operation of nature, within that undisturbed
sphere. This earth, without becoming unsubstantial or aerial,
waxes wondrous still and pure — all unlike the earth men
tread with wayfaring weary feet — yet green with human
hopes, murmuring with human joys, and not without the
whisper of sorrows secreted in the glimmering glades of the
old woods. Of this character — like music by moonlight — are
the " Lines to a Beautiful Spring in a Village."

" Once more, sweet Stream ! with slow foot wandering near
I bless thy milky waters cold and clear.
Escaped the flashing of the noontide hours,
With one fresh garland of Pierian flowers
(Ere from thy zephyr-haunted brink I turn)
My languid hand shall wreath thy mossy urn.
For not through pathless grove with murmur rude
Thou soothest the sad wood-nymph, Solitude ;
Nor thine unseen in cavern depths to well,
The hermit-fountain of some dripping cell !
Pride of the Vale ! thy useful streams supply
The scattered cots and peaceM hamlet nigh.

COLERIDGE S FOETICAL WORKS. 303

The elfin tribe around thy friendly banks
With infant uproar and soul-soothing pranks,
Released from school, their little hearts at rest,
Launch paper navies on thy waveless breast,
The rustic here at eve with pensive look
Whistling lorn ditties leans upon his crook,
Or starting pauses with hope-mingled dread
To list the much-loved maid's accustomed tread ;
She, vainly mindful of her dame's command,
Loiters, the long-filled pitcher in her hand.
Unboastful Stream ! thy fount with pebbled falls
The faded form of past delight recalls,
What time the morning sun of Hope arose,
And all was joy ; save when another's woes
A transient gloom upon my soul imprest,
Like passing clouds impictured on thy breast.
Life's current then ran sparkling to the noon,
Or silvery stole beneath the pensive Moon :
Ah ! now it works rude brakes and thorns among,
Or o'er the rough rock bursts and foams along ! "

These lines were composed in very early life — and some of
them might possibly be improved in the expression ; but here
is an Inscription absolutely perfect : —

" This Sycamore, oft musical with bees, —
Such tents the Patriarchs loved ! O long unharmed
May all its aged boughs o'er-canopy
The small round basin, which this jutting stone
Keeps pure from falling leaves ! Long may the Spring,
Quietly as a sleeping infant's breath,
Send up cold waters to the traveller
With soft and even pulse ! Nor ever cease
Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance,
Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's page,
As merry and no taller, dances still.
Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the Fount.
Here twilight is and coolness : here is moss,
A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.
Thou may'st toil far and find no second tree.
Drink, Pilgrim, here ; here, rest ! and if thy heart
Be innocent, here too shalt thou refresh
Thy Spirit, listening to some gentle sound,
Or passing gale, or hum of murmuring bees !"

If you do not feel that such compositions as these, unpre-

304 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

tending and humble as they are, are nevertheless the finest
poetry, you had better burn your books at once — all your
books of the bards — and confine yourself to practical
chemistry. Congenial with them, but of a higher character,
are many passages of "Fears in Solitude " — a composition of
a later date — when the poet indeed was in the prime of
youthful manhood. As yet he could have been benefited but
little by the conversation of Wordsworth — yet the poem is in-
spired with the true Wordsworthian spirit— and the versifica-
tion, without being very various or pauseful, is felt to obey,
in all its movements, the commands of a gentle, or a grave, or
an indignant mood — the poet's love of country, though pas-
sionate, being throughout ennobled by his love of humankind.

" Oh ! my countrymen !
We have offended very grievously,
And been most tyrannous. From east to west
A groan of accusation pierces Heaven ! "

But our object now is to show the kind of communing
Coleridge then held with nature, rather than the views he
took of the character and conduct of this nation. Such sen-
timents as we have now quoted kindle forth, and burst out,
through the calm in which his gentler genius envelops the
whole region of his natal land. That England should not
have been true to the cause of humanity — and in much he
believed she had been false — gave rise in his heart to grief '
and anger — moral both ; but as they ebbed — or subsided — or
were exhausted in eloquent outpourings — more beautiful be-
fore the eyes of his imagination reappeared England's hills,
and vales, and fields — because of the almost unfilial fit of in-
dignation in which he, " not sure a man ungently made," had
dared to reprobate his country's crimes. With love in his
heart he begins, and with love in his heart he concludes the
strain — and it is those exquisite passages we wish to lay be-
fore them we love, as most characteristic at once of the
genius and the disposition of the poet.

" A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place
No singing sky-lark ever poised himself.
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 305

All golden with the never-bloomless furze,

Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell,

Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate

As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax,

When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,

The level sunshine glimmers with green light.

Oh ! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook !

Which all, methinks, would love ; but chiefly he,

The humble man, who, in his youthful years

Knew just so much of folly, as had made

His early manhood more securely wise !

Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,

While from the singing-lark (that sings unseen

The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),

And from the sun, and from the breezy air,

Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame :

And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,

Made up a meditative joy, and found

Religious meanings in the forms of nature !

And so, his senses gradually wrapt

In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,

And dreaming hears thee still, O singing-lark ;

That singest like an angel in the clouds ! "

This is in itself a poem. But the times were troubled ; and
no man — so felt the Poet — was entitled long to indulge even
in such dreams, though they were from heaven. Therefore he
breaks the spell of that deep enchantment of peace, and cries
to himself in the solitude —

" My God ! it is a melancholy thing
For such a man, who would full fain preserve
His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
For all his human brethren — oh ! my God !
It weighs upon the heart that he must think
What uproar and what strife may now be chasing
This way or that way o'er these silent hills."

The " Fears in Solitude " were conceived during the alarm
of an Invasion — and the danger lay in our own sins. The Poet
therefore tells his brethren " most bitter truths, but without
bitterness " — some of which it might be for their good were
they to be told again ; for though the evil has changed its
form and aspect, it is the same evil still, and springs from the

VOL. VIL u

306 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

same deep roots — that almost seem ineradicable — in the
human heart. But here comes the delightful close — an In-
vocation, and a Warning, and a Blessing, that the patriot
sons of Britain may sing aloud, while her cliffs fling back the
seas.

" But, 0 dear Britain ! O my Mother Isle I

Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy

To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,

A husband, and a father ! who revere

All bonds of natural love, and find them all

"Within the limits of thy rocky shores.

0 native Britain ! O my Mother Isle !

How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy

To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,

Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,

Have drunk in all my intellectual life,

All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,

All adoration of the God in nature,

All lovely and all honourable things,

"Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel

The joy and greatness of its future being ?

There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul

Unborrowed from my country. O divine

And beauteous island ! thou hast been my sole

And most magnificent temple, in the which

1 walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me !

" May my fears,

My filial fears, be vain ! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree : which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

" But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
The fruitlike perfume of the golden furze :
The light has left the summit of the hill,
Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,
Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
Farewell awhile, O soft and silent spot !
On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
Homeward I wind my way, and lo ! recalled
From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,
I find myself upon the brow, and pause

COLEEIDGES POETICAL WORKS. 307

Startled ! And after lonely sojourning

In such a quiet and surrounded nook,

This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,

Dim tinted, there the mighty majesty

Of that huge amphitheatre of rich

And elmy fields, seems like society —

Conversing with the mind, and giving it

A livelier impulse and a dance of thought !

And now, beloved Stowey ! I behold

Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms

Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ;

And close behind them, hidden from my view,

Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe

And my babe's mother dwell in peace ! With light

And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,

Remembering thee, O green and silent dell !

And grateful that by nature's quietness

And solitary musings, all my heart

Is softened, and made worthy to indulge

Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

" Keflections on having left a Place of Ketirement " — " the
Lime-tree Bower my Prison" — and the " Nightingale" — are
all full of the same delight in nature — a delight which grew
more and more creative of beauty — making the food it fed
on, and devoutly worshipping the only true — that is, the
imaginary world. In these and other compositions of equal
and kindred excellence, the poet's heart and imagination
minister to each other ; emotions and images come upon us
with united power ; and even when metaphysical, more than
seems safe in the poetry of passion, there is such a warmth
and glow in the winged words, wheeling in airy circles not
inextricably involved, that Mind or Intellect itself moves us in
a way we should not have believed possible, till we experience
the pleasure of accompanying its flights — or rather of being
upborne and wafted on its dovelike but eagle-strong wings.
The law of association is illustrated in the " Nightingale "
more philosophically than by Hartley or Brown ; and how
profound to the understanding heart is the truth in that one
line — sure as Holy Writ — were man but faithful to his
Maker,

" In nature there is nothing melancholy."

In not one of the poems we have yet quoted or mentioned,

308 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

can it be truly said that there is any approach to the sublime.
Indeed, only in the " Fears in Solitude " might we be justified
in expecting such a strain — and the subjects of some of the
other pieces necessarily exclude both sentiment and imagery
of that character. In the " Fears in Solitude" there is, as we
have seen, much stately and sustained beauty ; and we are not
only roused, but raised by the pealing music. In the happiest
passages, even on reflection, we miss little that might or should
have been there — though something ; and it would be ungrate-
ful to criticise in our cooler moments what so charmed us in
our glow, or to doubt the potency of the spell that had so well
done its master's work. In much of what we have not quoted
— though the whole is above pitch and reach of common ;
powers — there is a good deal of exaggeration, and we fear some
untruth — as if sense were sometimes almost sacrified to sound ,
— and the poet's eyes blinded with the dust raised by the;
whirlwind of passion, carrying him along the earth, and not,
up the ether. But in one poem, Coleridge, in a fit of glorious
enthusiasm, has reached the true sublime. Out of the Bible, |
no diviner inspiration was ever worded than the " Hymn be-
fore sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni." We doubt if there be
any single strain equal to it in Milton or Wordsworth. If
there be, it is Adam's Hymn in Paradise. The instantaneous
Impersonation of Mont Blanc into a visible spirit, brings our!
whole capacity of adoration into power, and we join mighty!
Nature in praise and worship of God. As the hymn continues
to ascend the sky, we accompany the magnificent music on
wings up the holy mountain, till in its own shadow it dis-
appears, and

" We worship the invisible alone."

That trance is broken, and the Earthen Grandeur reappears,
clothed with all attributes of beauty and of glory, by words
that create and kindle as they flow, as if language were
omnific.

" Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald : wake ! oh wake, and utter praise ! "

How does not imagination embrace, with a spirit of worship,
all those lifeless things — now lifeless no more — and how they
all sympathise with the Poet's song —

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 309

" Ye pine-groves ! with your soft and soul-like sounds !
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder God."

Yet the sublime is often tinged with the beautiful — and the
beautiful is often prevalent for glimpses — for the hymn is a
hymn of love as well as of awe ; and both emotions are but
one as we exclaim, —

" Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost."
But why waste our weak words in vain — when here is the
Hymn — once heard by us from the poet's own lips, by sunrise
among the coves of Helvellyn — and can it be that the fire soft
as music, and the music clear as fire, that burned and breathed
there, are extinguished — and those lips now cold and mute !

" Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course ? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Eave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful Form !
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently ! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge ! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity !

0 dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer

1 worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy :
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing — there
As hi her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven !

Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise
Thou owest ! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy ! Awake,
Voice of sweet song ! Awake, my Heart, awake !
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

310 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale !
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink :
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald : wake ! oh wake, and utter praise !
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth ?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ?
Who made thee parent of pei*petual streams 1

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad !
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever ?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam 1
And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ?

Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain —
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge !
Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts !
Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? —
God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God !
God ! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice !
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds !
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God !

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm !
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds !
Ye signs and wonders of the element !
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise !

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 311

Thou, too, hoar Mount ! \vith thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast—
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain ! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me — Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth !
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God."

"We do not know that there is a truly great ode in our
language ; but there are many noble ones, and among them
must be placed one of the three odes of Coleridge. Laud to
the skies, ye who choose, the odes of Dryden and Pope ; but
to our eyes they are lost before they reach the lower strata of
clouds. Were we to liken them to balloons, we should say
that the silk is well inflated, and better painted ; but that the
aeronauts, on taking their seats, are too heavy for the power
of ascension, so that luckily the cords are not cut, and the
globes are contented to adhere to the daedal earth. Gray's
odes are far finer, and, though somewhat too formal, perhaps,
the Welsh bard is full of Greek fire. Some of Mason's cho-
ruses are sonorous, and swing along not unmajestically ; and
Tom Warton caught no small portion of the true lyrical spirit
— witness his Kilkerran Castle song. But Collins far sur-
passed them all — and his odes are all exquisitely beautiful —
except his Ode to Freedom, and it is sublime. Let us call it,
then, and contradict ourselves, the only truly great ode in the
English language. Wordsworth's Ode on the Immortality of
the Soul is pervaded by profoundest thought — philosophical
in its spirit throughout — in many parts poetical in his very
finest vein — and in some, more than is usual with him, impas-
sioned ; but the poet does not carry, much less hurry, us along
with him — the movements are sometimes too slow and labo-
rious, though stately and majestic — and though often many of

312 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the transitions are lyrical — nay, though, as a whole, it is a
grand lyrical poem, it is not an Ode, and nobody will call it
so who has read Pindar. His " Dion " is an Ode, but is defi-
cient in impetuosity ; and that Image of the Swan on Locar-
no's wave, beautiful as it is in itself, is too elaborate for its
place, nor yet enough original to open with such pomp such
an ambitious strain. But we shall have an article on Odes in
an early Number — in which we hope to make good all we
have said, and far more — and shall not then forget Campbell,
who, in our estimation, stands next to Collins.

Coleridge has written three Odes — " Dejection," "France,"
"The Departing Year." We have already quoted part of
" Dejection ; " — and perhaps the finest part of what is all good
— nor have we room for more — except a wild passage about
the Wind, which nobody would have thought of writing, or
could have written, but Coleridge. But, strangely touching
in itself, it not only occupies too much space in the Ode,
but is too quaint for a composition of such high and solemn
character.

" Mad Lutanist ! who in this month of showers,
Of dark brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak'st devil's yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among ;

Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds 1
Thou mighty Poet, e'en to frenzy bold !
What tell'st thou now about ?
'Tis of the rushing of a host in rout,
With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds —
At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold !
But hush ! there is a pause of deepest silence !
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,
With groans and tremulous shudderings— all is over —
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud !
A tale of less affright,
And temper'd with delight,
As Otway's self had framed the tender lay,
'Tis of a little child,
Upon a lonesome wild,

Not far from home, but she hath lost her way,
And now moans low, in bitter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear."

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 313

The transition from this fanciful rather than imaginative
dallying with the midnight wind, to an invocation to gentle
Sleep, whom he prays to visit his beloved,

" While all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
Silent as if they watched the sleeping earth,"

is very tender and very beautiful ; and the feeling is perfected
in peace at the harmonious close of the ode, which is as natu-
ral as its commencement is artificial. It begins thus —

'• "Well ! if the bard was weather-wise who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds that ply a busier trade,
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this ^Eolian lute,
Which better far were mute."

Surely that is, if not affected, far from being easy language ;
and, to our ear, the very familiar exclamation " Well 1 " is not
in keeping with the character of what is — or ought to be —
that of an ode. What follows is even less to our mind.

" For, lo ! the new moon, winter bright !
And overspread with phantom light
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread,
But rimm'd and circled by a silver thread),
I see the old moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming on of rain," &c.

How inferior the effect of this overwrought picture (and in his
poetry nothing is underwrought — for he was only at times too
lavish of his riches), to that of the verse he expands from " the
grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens 1 "

" Late, late yestreen, I saw the new moon,
With the old moon in her arm ;
And I fear, I fear, my master dear,
We shall have a deadly storm."

In the ballad, the " deadly storm " is predicted from one omen,
and in the fewest possible words — and in as few is told the
sinking of the ship. In the ode, the meteorological notions,
though true, and poetically wordedj are got up with too much

314 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

care and effort — and the storm passed, and played the part
of Much ado about Nothing, among cliff-caves and tree-tops
that soon returned to their former equanimity. 'Tis an inge-
nious and eloquent exercitation of the fancy — touched, as we
have seen, and more than touched, in parts imbued, with the
breath of a higher power — but it wants that depth, truth, and
sincerity of passion, without which there can be no " great ode."

This Ode deals with dreams — day dreams and night dreams
— and dreams are from Jove — thoughts and feelings glanced
back from heaven on earth — for on earth was their origin and
first dominion ; but on their return to earth they are of higher
and holier power, because etherealised ; dreams dearest to
the poet as a man, with his own environments, of which home,
and the hopes of home — with love illumined — are the strongest
and the chief. They have all a personal interest to him ; in
them is his very being, and his very being is theirs — at least
it is his desire and design to indulge and declare that belief
— though we have not hesitated to hint that " the higher
mood" is not sustained, — and hence imperfect execution — so
that while many parts are eminently beautiful, something,
nay much, is felt to be wanting — and the Ode — so call it —
though brilliant, and better than brilliant — with all his genius
— is not a sincere, satisfying, and consummate Whole.

In the " Departing Year," the Poet takes a wider sweep —
or we should perhaps speak more truly were we to say, that in
it his personal individuality is merged in his citizenship or
patriotism — and that again swallowed up in his philanthropy
or enthusiasm in the cause of liberty all over the world. In
the prefixed argument we are told, " the Ode commences with
an address to the Divine Providence, that regulates with one
vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some
of them may appear to mortals. The second strophe calls on
men to suspend their present joys and sorrows, and devote
them for a while to the cause of human nature in general.
The first epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, twho died of an
apoplexy on the 17th of November 1796; having first concluded
a subsidiary treaty with the kings combined against France. The
first and second antistrophe describe the image of the depart-
ing year, and as in a vision. The second epode prophesies, in
anguish of spirit, the downfall of the country." No " Great
Ode" could have such an argument. It is false and hollow,

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 315

and altogether delusive. There was here no true spirit of
prophecy — and the poet who is deceived by appearances, in
vain aspires to soar into the Empyrean. The wings of genius
must be imped with the plumes of truth — else the flight will
be short and low, and fluttering it will fall to earth.

Perhaps we have just now employed too strong an image ;
but of bad politics it is not possible to make good poetry ; and
though Coleridge's politics were never bad — how could they,
being those of a man of genius and virtue ? — they were even
at this period very imperfect, and very imperfect, therefore, is
this political poem. The death by apoplexy of the Empress
of Eussia, on the 17th November 1796 — as stated in the
obituary to the Ode — is exulted over in the Ode itself with
undignified violence of declamation, which in spite of very
magnificent mouthing sounds very like a scold : —

" Stunned by death's twice mortal mace,
No more on murder's lurid face
Th' insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye !"

" The exterminating fiend is fled —
Foul her life and dark her doom."

All true. But how unlike Isaiah in his ire ! "We fear, too,
that the feeling is a false one, in which he addresses, on that
event, the manes of them who died on " Warsaw's plain : " —

" And them that erst at Ismael's tower,
When human ruin choked the streams,
Fell in conquest's glutted hour."

The poet who calls upon ghosts must, in his invocation,
speak like a heaven-commissioned prophet. His words must
sound as if they had power to pierce the grave, and force it to
give up its dead. To evoke them, shrouded or unshrouded,
from the clammy clay — bloodless or clotted with blood — needs
a mighty incantation. The dry bones would not stir — not a
corpse would groan — at such big but weak words as these : —

" Spirits of the uncoffined slain,

Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,
Oft, at night, in misty train,

Rush around her narrow dwelling."

316 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" Nightly armies of the dead
Dance like death-fires round her tomb !
There with prophetic song relate,
Each some tyrant murderer's fate."

" Sudden blasts of triumph," indeed, swelling from the un-
coffined slain 1 Alas ! dismal is Hades — and neither vengeance
nor triumph dwell with the dead. But if fancy will parley
with the disembodied, and believe that they will obey her call,
let her speak not with the tongue of men, but of angels —
and on an occasion so great, at a time so portentous, that the
troubled hearts of the living may be willing to think that a
human being can " create a soul under the ribs of death." But
here there is no passion — no power. " The mighty armies of
the dead " keep rotting on. Their dancing days are over.
Yet if they could indeed become " death-fires," dance would
they not round the tomb of the imperial murderess — nor would
they with " prophetic song relate each some tyrant murderer's
doom." If true Polish patriot ghosts, with Kosciusko at their
head, they would rather have implored heaven to let them be
their own avengers — and that one spectre, pursued by many
spectres, might fix on the mercy-seat its black eye-sockets in
vain.

The time was when even Coleridge, alas ! could say,

" Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
0 Albion ! ! "

Nor better, higher comfort, at the close could he find, than to
desert his lost country, and

" Eecentre my immortal mind
In the deep Sabbath of meek self-content."

Yet there are many flashes of elevated thought in the midst
of smoky clouds whose turbulence is not grandeur, and one
strain, and one only, approaches the sublime.

" Departing Year ! 'twas on no earthly shore

My soul beheld thy vision ! Where alone,

Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits : thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan

Thou storied'st thy sad hours ! Silence ensued,

Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude,
Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone.

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 317

Then, his eye wild ardours glancing,

From the choired gods advancing,
The Spirit of the earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful before the cloudy seat.

Throughout the blissful throng,
Hushed were harp and song ;

Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven,
(The Mystic words of Heaven)
Permissive signal make :

The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake !
' Thou in stormy blackness throning
Love and uncreated Light,
By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of night !
By peace with proffered insult scared,
Masked hate and envying scorn !
By years of havoc yet unborn !
And hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared !
But chief by Afric's wrongs,

Strange, horrible, and foul !
By what deep guilt belongs
To the deaf Synod, " full of gifts and lies ! "
By wealth's insensate laugh ! by torture's howl !

Avenger, rise !

For ever shall the thankless Island scowl,
Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow ?
Speak ! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud !

And on the darkling foe
Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud !

O dart the flash ! O rise and deal the blow !
The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries [

Hark ! how wide Nature joins her groans below !
Rise, God of Nature ! rise.' "

We have said that this is almost sublime ; yet we have never
been able to read it without a sense — more or less painful — not
of violation of the most awful reverence, for that would be too
strong a word — but of too daring an approximation to the
" cloudy seat" by a creature yet in the clay. The lips of the
poet must indeed be touched with a coal from heaven, who
invokes the Most High, and calls upon the God of Nature to
avenge and redress Nature's wrongs. A profounder piety than
was possible with the creed the poet then held, would have

318 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

either sealed his lips, or inspired them with higher because
humbler words. Insincere he never was ; but in those days
his philosophical and poetical religion spoke in words fitter
for the ear of Jove than Jehovah. And that the mood in which
he composed this passage was one — not of true faith, but of
false enthusiasm — is manifest from the gross exaggeration of
the feeling which is said to have followed the passing away of
the vision. These lines should yet be struck out of the Ode :

" The voice had ceased, the vision fled ;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs ;

My ears throb hot ; my eye-balls start ;
My brain with horrid tumult swims ;
Wild is the tempest of my heart ;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death !
No stranger agony confounds

The soldier on the war-field spread,
When all foredone with toil and wounds,

Deathlike he dozes among heaps of dead !
(The strife is o'er, the daylight fled,

And the night-wind clamours hoarse !
See ! the starting wretch's head

Lies pillowed on a brother's corse ! )"

Shelley, we are told, "pronounced the 'France' to be the
finest English Ode of modern times." Not if Gray and Collins
belong to modern times — but assuredly it is a noble composi-
tion. " France, " is a misnomer. It is in truth an Ode to
Liberty — and a palinode. We quote it entire — for it will be
new to tens of thousands — never, we believe, having before
been so quoted in any periodical.

" Ye Clouds ! that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control
Ye Ocean waves ! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws !
Ye Woods ! that listen to the night-birds singing,
^ Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind !

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 319

Where, like a man beloved of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,

How oft, pursuing fancies holy,
My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,

Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,
By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound !

0 ye loud Waves ! and O ye Forests high !
And O ye Clouds that far above me soared !

Thou rising Sun ! thou blue rejoicing Sky !
Yea, everything that is and will be free !
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty.

When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared,

And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea,

Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free,
Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared !
With what a joy my lofty gratulation

Una wed I sang, amid a slavish band :
And when to whelm the disenchanted nation,

Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand,
The Monarchs marched in evil day,
And Britain joined the dire array ;

Though dear her shores and circling ocean,
Though many friendships, many youthful loves

Had swoln the patriot emotion

And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves ;
Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat

To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance,
And shame too long delayed and vain retreat !
For ne'er, O Liberty ! with partial aim

1 dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame ;

But blessed the paeans of delivered France,
And hung my head and wept at Britain's name.

* And what,' I said, ' though Blasphemy's loud scream

With that sweet music of deliverance strove !

Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove
A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream !

Ye storms that round the dawning east assembled,
The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light ! '

And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled,
The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright ;

When France her front deep-scarr'd and gory

320 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory ;

When, insupportably advancing,
Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp ;

While timid looks of fury glancing,
Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp,
Writhed like a wounded dragon in its gore ;

Then I reproached my fears that would not flee ;
' And soon,' I said, ' shall Wisdom teach her lore
In the low huts of them that toil and groan !
And, conquering by her happiness alone,

Shall France compel the nations to be free,
Till Love and Joy look round, and call the earth their own.'

Forgive me, Freedom ! O forgive those dreams !

I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,

From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent —
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams !

Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished,
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows

With bleeding wounds ; forgive me, that I cherished
One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes !

To scatter rage, and traitorous guilt,

Where Peace her jealous home had built ;

A patriot-race to disinherit
Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear ;

And with inexpiable spirit

To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer —
O France that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind,

And patriot only in pernicious toils,
Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind ?

To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey ;
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils

From freemen torn ; to tempt and to betray ?

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game
They burst their manacles and wear the name

Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain !
O Liberty ! with profitless endeavour

Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour ;

But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever

Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.
Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee,
(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee),

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 321

Alike from Priestcraft's happy minions,
And factious BUxsphemy's obscener slaves,

Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,
The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves !
And there I felt thee ! — on that sea-cliff's verge,

"Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above,
Had made one murmur with the distant surge !
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty ! my spirit felt thee there."

It is indeed a noble Ode — and we agree with Shelley.
Notice — but you have noticed it — though notice is a puny
word but pretty expressive — how it revolves upon itself — and
is circular, like music — and like the sky, if earth did not
break the radiant round. The last strain is in the same spirit
as the first — and did nothing intervene, there would be felt
needless repetition of imagery and sentiment. But much
intervenes — the whole main course and current of the Ode.
You float along with the eloquent lyrist, who is at once im-
passioned and imaginative — full of ire, and full of hope ; and
you end where you began — on the sea-cliffs edge, with the
foam so far below your feet you but see it roar — for to your
ear the waves are silent as the clouds far far farther above
your head ; and all above and below and around, at the close
now, as the opening then, earth, sea, and air — mute and
motionless, or loud and driving — bespeak or betoken, are or
symbolise — " the spirit of divinest Liberty ! "

Yet, after all, this is not the highest mood of imagination.
In the highest she would have scorned the elements. Earth,
sea, air, would to her have been nothing, while she saw in all
their pomp the free faculties of the soul. Or the elements
would have been her slaves — and the slaves of liberty — or, if
you will, their servants, their ministers ; and the winds and
the waves would then have been indeed magnificent — in
their glorious bondage working for man, the chartered child
of God.

In an ode of the highest kind — of which the subject is ex-
ternal to the Poet — a kingdom or country — say France — the
Poet, while he would make himself felt in the power of his
pervading and creative spirit, would not choose to be, as

VOL. VII. X.

•

322 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Coleridge is in this ode — not the most prominent personage
merely — but the sole. It is different in such an ode as
Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality ; for to enable us to
comprehend them at all, he must bring them forth from his own
soul, and show how they rose there, and how he felt them, and
what they are in him, that we may compare the mysteries of
our own life's earliest experiences with his — and regard them
with clearer knowledge, and profounder awe, from discerning
that our spirits are, and ever have been, in sympathy with
that of Nature's Priest. But in " France," an Ode, Coleridge
should not have spoken so much of himself — both of the pre-
sent and the past — nor set himself right before the Spirit of
Liberty, whom he fears he had offended in his " Ode to the
Departing Year," or some other strain, in which he had ex-
pressed opinions proved false by events. Collins loved lib-
erty as well as Coleridge ; but in his glorious ode, he seldom,
and shortly — only once or twice, and momentarily — is heard
in his personality, and the voice is oracular as from a shrine.
It may seem to some that we have not done justice to these
Odes ; and it is not improbable that the fault may in some
degree lie with ourselves — that pur fancy and imagination are
not sufficiently alive to such modes of poetical feeling and
thought — too much devoted in their delight to other kinds of
composition, to be either willing or able to follow or accompany
such flights. But if we have underrated their merits, we make
bold to say, that the chief cause of our having done so, is our
admiration — in which' we yield to none — of the original genius
of Coleridge. That genius was too original transcendently
to excel in Poetry, of which the model had been set, the
mould cast, by the great poets of old — and which had been
cultivated with high success by some gifted spirits of our own
time. In his odes, his genius is engaged in imitation. It
works in a fine spirit, but in trammels ; his Pegasus is in
training, and he takes his gallop in grand style ; but Imagina-
tion hears afar off in the dust the hoofs of the desert-born. In
short, be his Odes what they may, no one, on reading or
hearing them read — nay, not even on hearing them recited by
his own sweetest voice of purest silver — ever felt that un-
definable delight that steals into the soul, and overflows it like
one of its own unquestioned dreams, from " a repeated strain"
of the veritable Coleridge.

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 323

Nay, we could almost find in our heart to extend the spirit
of these remarks even to the " Remorse." So many great
tragedies have been composed, and in so many styles of great-
ness— and such multitudes that are not great, but good — that
it may be safely predicted that another great one will never
be called into existence on any model now known — however
numerous may be the future good. Coleridge wisely shunned
Shakespeare ; and we defy you to mention two dramas more
unlike than " Macbeth " and " Remorse." But that drama is
constructed on the model of Rowe and Otway. Neither in it,
therefore, any more than in his odes, is Coleridge seen in the
power of the originality of his genius — as to conception of
design. But he is so seen in the mode of his execution, and
in great splendour, though not in all his might. The play is
full of poetry, nor is it deficient in action ; for though the in-
cidents are not many, they are striking or impressive — and
there is a current felt setting in towards the shore of death.
The characters of the good and of the guilty brothers are
finely conceived and contrasted, and in nature. The catas-
trophe is brought about well, and is just; and Pity and Terror
are relieved by an awful Joy, in the deliverance of the virtuous,
and the prospect of their happy life. But the power of the
play lies in the metaphysical exhibition of the passion of
Remorse — in a character of very peculiar conformation ; and
though the workings of that mind may sometimes be some-
what too curiously, elaborately, and ostentatiously dealt with
by the poet, who is then himself seen engaged in his magic,
yet the beauty of the language, and the music of the versifi-
cation— though neither the one nor the other are so dramatic
as they might be — never lose their charm over us ; and as
we grow familiar with the rich, and ornamented, and even
gorgeous style of the work, we forget that our living flesh-and-
blood brethren speak not so — and are beguiled into the belief
that such is their natural speech.

The Remorse, which is to be shown at work, is expressed,
at the beginning, in a few words — and to evolve the mean-
ings lying latent in these few words is the grand object of
the drama.

" Remorse is as the heart in which it grows ;

If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews

Of true repentance ; but if proud and gloomy,

324 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

It is a poison-tree, that, pierced to the inmost,
"Weeps only tears of blood."

The heart of Ordonio is " dark and gloomy ; " and on his
death, inflicted by retributive justice, his noble brother
solemnly pronounces the valedictory moral : —

" In these strange dread events,
Just Heaven instructs us with an awful voice,
That conscience rules us even against our choice.
Our inward monitress to guide or warn,
If listened to ; but if repelled with scorn,
At length as dire Eemorse she reappears,
Works on our guilty hopes and selfish fears !
Still bids remember ! and still cries, Too late !
And while she scares us, goads us to our fate."

The play contains many passages of the most exquisite
poetry — so very beautiful, indeed, that we care not for the
impropriety of their introduction, considered dramatically — if
there be impropriety in time or place — and feel that they
justify themselves by the delight they impart. Here is a
Soliloquy which first met our eyes in the Lyrical Ballads,
before the " Eemorse " was performed — and miserably per-
formed we remember it was, though the scenery was good,
and the music not amiss — that mournful Miserere, so Shake-
spearean— and which may be chanted, without losing any of
its holy charm, after the dirge sung by the spirit of air ia
Prospero's enchanted Island.

" Here, sweet spirit, hear the spell,
Lest a blacker charm compel !
So shall the midnight breezes swell
"With thy deep long-lingering knell.

And at evening evermore,

In a chapel on the shore,

Shall the chanter, sad and saintly,

Yellow tapers burning faintly,

Doleful masses chant for thee,

Miserere, Domine !

Hark ! the cadence dies away

On the quiet moonlight sea :
The boatmen rest their oars and say

Miserere, Domine ! "

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 325

The Soliloquy is spoken by Alvar in a dungeon, in which
he has been thrown by his wicked brother Ordonio.

" ALV. And this place my forefathers made for man !
This is the process of our love and wisdom
To each poor brother who offends against us —
Most innocent, perhaps — aud what if guilty ?
Is this the only cure 1 Merciful God !
Each pore and natural outlet shrivelled up
By ignorance and parching poverty,
His energies roll hack upon his heart
And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot !
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks ; —
And this is their best cure ! uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,
And savage faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon
By the lamp's dismal twilight ! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul
Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed
By sights of evermore deformity ! —
With other ministrations thou, O nature,
Healest thy wandering and distempered child :
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets ;
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters !
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonised
By the benignant touch of love and beauty."

" Most musical, most melancholy ! " and melancholy be-
cause of the music — for all divine music is so — in which the
loveliest images of rejoicing gladness are enshrined. In
Wordsworth you may meet with some kindred strain as sweet
and high — at once elegy and hymn ; yet there are tones here
indescribably touching, that characterise the beauty as an
emanation, in its most celestial mood, of the genius of Cole-
ridge.

Teresa, the tender and the true, and by her tenderness and
truth sustained in her long distress, in that sorest of all trials,
when a wild crazed hope will break in on what would else be

326 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the stillness of despair, is invested throughout with a mourn-
ful interest ; and the scene where her father, Valdez, vainly
renews his persuasions, that she would marry Ordonio, seeing
that Alvar must be dead, is a charming specimen of that
mingled poetry and pathos, which reminds one, but without
any thought of its being an imitation, of the style of Massin-
ger.

" TER. I hold Ordonio dear ; he is your son,
And Alvar's brother.

VAL. Love him for himself,

Nor make the living wretched for the dead.

TER. I mourn that you should plead in vain, Lord Valdez ;
But heaven hath heard my vow, and I remain
Faithful to Alvar, be he dead or living.

VAL. Heaven knows with what delight I saw your loves,
And could my heart's blood give him back to thee
I would die smiling. But these are idle thoughts !
Thy dying father comes upon my soul
With that same look with which he gave thee to me ;
I held thee in my arms a powerless babe,
"While thy poor mother, with a mute entreaty,
Fixed her faint eyes on mine. Ah ! not for this,
That I should let thee feed thy soul with gloom
And with slow anguish wear away thy life,
The victim of a useless constancy.
I must not see thee wretched.

TER. There are woes

111 bartered for the garishness of joy !
If it be wretched with an un tired eye
To watch those skiey tints, and this green ocean ;
Or in the sultry hour beneath some rock,
My hair dishevelled by the pleasant sea-breeze,
To shape sweet visions, and live o'er again
All past hours of delight ! If it be wretched
To watch some bark, and fancy Alvar there,
To go through each minutest circumstance
Of the blest meeting, and to frame adventures
Most terrible and strange, and hear him tell them ;
(As once I knew a crazy Moorish maid
Who dress'd her in her buried lover's clothes,
And o'er the smooth spring in the mountain cleft
Hung with her lute, and played the selfsame tune
He used to play, and listened to the shadow
Herself had made)— if this be wretchedness,

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 327

And if indeed it be a wretched thing

To trick out mine own deathbed, and imagine

That I had died, died just ere his return !

Then see him listening to my constancy,

Or hover round, as he at midnight oft

Sits on my grave, and gazes at the moon ;

Or haply in some more fantastic mood,

To be in Paradise, and with choice flowers

Build up a bower where he and I might dwell,

And there to wait his coming ! O my sire !

My Alvar's sire ! if this be wretchedness

That eats away the life, what were it, think you,

If in a most assured reality

He should return, and see a brother's iniant

Smile at him from my arms ?

Oh what a thought !"

In early youth Coleridge conceived the highest idea of the
genius of Schiller, and one of the finest of his sonnets was
composed after his first perusal of The Robbers. But what can
we say of his Translation of Wallenstein ? That it is the best
translation ever made ; and that in it, the poem appears only
somewhat more majestic — like the image of the noble hero
himself reflected in a perfect mirror that, without distorting,
magnifies.

But though we have now been enriching our pages (why
will good people say that Maga is too sparing of poetry ?) with
specimens of compositions that would of themselves have
given Coleridge a high place among the poets, we have
scarcely spoken at all, and quoted not one word, of those that
set him among the highest ; nor need we surely at this day,
at any length either speak of, or quote from, Christabel and
the Ancient Mariner ; yet while tens of thousands on tens
of thousands of copies of poems, of far inferior excellence, in
pamphlet shape and size, were fluttering far and wide over all
the fashionable and unfashionable world, and Byron — Byron
— Byron was in all literary and illiterary parties, morning,
noon, and night, the catchword and reply — when Medora, and
the names of other interesting lemans of pirates and robbers,
were sighed or whispered from all manner of mouths — how
seldom was heard the name of Coleridge — and then as if it
belonged to some man "in a far countree !" and how rarely,
though both sounds are beautiful — Christabel and Geraldine

328 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

— were they murmured by maid or matron ! Yet maids and
matrons all were devoted to romance, and so sensitive to the
preternatural, that they wept to see the moonlight through
the ghostlike hand of a heroine who held it up for no other
reason in the world than to show that she had died a natural
death of love ! Byron himself — the idol of the hour — rejoiced
to declare Christabel singularly wild and beautiful ; Scott, that
it had inspired the " Lay ; " all our true poets delighted in the
vision which they loved too well to loudly praise — for admira-
tion is mute, or speaks in its trance but with uplifted eyes.
But the sweet, soft, still breath of praise, like that of purest
incense, arose from many a secret place, where genius and
sensibility abided, and Coleridge, amidst the simpers of the
silly, and the laughter of the light, and the scorn of the
callous, and the abuse of the brutal, and the blackguardism of
the beggar-poor — received the laurel crown woven by the
hands of all the best of his brother bards — and wore it ever
after cheerfully but without pride — round his lofty forehead
— and it was green as ever the day he died.

Christabel is indeed, what Byron said it was, a singularly
wild and original poem. No other words could so well charac-
terise it. It did not appear in a dearth, but at a time when
a flush of poetry overspread the land. Genius as high, as
various, and as new as had ever adorned any era, was then
exultingly running its victorious career — taking its far-sweep-
ing aerial nights over its native seas and mountains — or bring-
ing within the dominion of its wings the uttermost ends of the
earth. All our best living poets had done their greatest —
they had all achieved fame — some universal ; and each bard
had his own band of more devoted worshippers. The poets
themselves knew right well, and so did almost all the poetical
minds in England, that there was not within the four seas
a brighter genius than Coleridge. But why had the sweet
singer so long been mute ? We know not — and it is far
better for us all that we know not — much of what is always
happening in one another's hearts ; nor do we always dis-
tinctly understand — even while we feel it most — what is
happening in our own. Perhaps Coleridge was not ambitious
— perhaps the love of fame was not one of the most active
principles of his nature — perhaps despondency too often
dimmed the visions that were for ever passing before the

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 329

poet's eyes, and that in happier hours would have become all
glorious with the light of song — or pleasanter to those who
loved him, to believe that his visions were often too ethereal,
in their floatings-by over the heaven of his imagination, to
bear being worded even by him who knew better than all his
compeers the most hidden mysteries of words — of those finest
words that by their utterance give power to thought and deli-
cacy to feeling, and in the very language of our lips lend our
souls assurance that their origin is divine.

Christdbel resembles no other poem, except inasmuch as it
is a poem. Here was a new species of poetry, and the speci-
men was felt to be perfect. It was as if some bright consum-
mate flower had been added to the families of the field — dis-
covered growing by itself — with its own peculiar balm, and its
own peculiar bloom — mournful as moonlight — delicate as the
dawn — yet strong as day — and in its silken folds, by its own
beauty, preserved unwithered in all weathers. Or may we
liken the music of Christabel to that of some new instrument,
constructed on a dream of the harps, on which in forgotten
ages the old harpers played — ere all those castles were in
ruins — and when the logs now lying black in the mosses were
green trees rejoicing in the sky ? True, at least, it is, that
in all the hanging gardens of poetry — Imagination — the head-
gardener — declares there is but one single Christabel.

What means the poem ? Coleridge himself could not have
answered that question — for it is a mystery. What is the
meaning of any mood of Superstition? Who shall explain
fear? One flutter shall make you dumb as frost. If ghosts
come from graves — or fiends from regions deeper than all
graves— or if heaven lets visit earth its saints and angels —
and such has ever been the creed of Imagination — you must
not hope, nay, you will not desire, that such intercommunion
as may then befall shall bear any but a strange, wild, sad re-
semblance to that of life with life — when both are yet mortal,
and the voices of both have as yet sounded but on this side
of the boundary between time and eternity.

From the first moment you see her, do you not love Chris-
tabel ? No wonder — for if you did not love her, you could
have none — or but a hollow heart. Look at her !

" Is the night chilly and dark ?
The night is chilly, but not dark.

330 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

The thin grey cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full ;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is grey :
'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel,

"Whom her father loves so well,

What makes her in the wood so late,

A furlong from the castle gate ?

She had dreams all yesternight

Of her own betrothed knight ;

And she in the midnight wood will pray

For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak,
But moss and rarest mistletoe ;
She kneels beneath the huge oak-tree,
And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,

The lovely lady, Christabel !

It moaned as near, as near can be,

But what it is, she cannot tell. —

On the other side it seems to be,

Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree."

You love her, and you fear for her in her fear — yet what the
dread, and what the danger, you know not, but that they are
not from the common things of this world.

" The lady sprang up suddenly."
" It moaned as near as near can be."

What but an evil spirit could have terrified her so in such a
trance, and with her unfinished prayer forgotten, forced her to
her feet ? The moan was wicked — perhaps from some hideous
witch-hag, to look on whose ugsomeness would be to die.

" Hush, beating heart of Christabel !
Jesu, Maria, shield her well !
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
What sees she there ?

COLERIDGE S POETICAL WORKS. 331

There she sees a damsel bright,

Drest in a silken robe of white,

That shadowy in the moonlight shone :

The neck that made that white robe wan,

Her stately neck and arms were bare ;

Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were,

And wildly glittered here and there

The gems entangled in her hair.

I guess, 'twas frightful there to see

A lady so richly clad as she —

Beautiful exceedingly !

' Mary mother, save me now !

(Said Christabel), And who art thou '{'

The lady strange made answer meet,
And her voice was faint and sweet."

What poet ever before made "frightful" such an Appari-
tion ? " and her voice was faint and sweet." Yet Christabel
had that " moan " among the beatings of her heart — or worse,
its suspension of all beatings, when, won by sight so bright,
and sound so sweet, she said, nor more in her own new fear could
say, " stretch forth thy hand and have no fear." The Lady's
tale is touching, but in some strange way, that genius by a
few sprinklings of dubious words effects, discoloured with
tinges of untruth, unsuspected by the simple Christabel — for
she is simple as innocence ; and all the while the two are
gliding together out of the wood — across the moat — the court
— the hall — from stair to stair — till they reach her chamber-
door — and

" Her gentle limbs she did undress,
And lay down in her loveliness "

— an impression of something evil designed against the good
continues to be conveyed by circumstances so carelessly
dropped, that each in itself may mean, perhaps, nothing ; but
the whole, by fine affinities working together as one, now con-
vince us, and now leave us in doubt among a crowd of vague
apprehensions, that in Geraldine's exceeding beauty is veiled
one of the powers of darkness, and that Christabel is about to
suffer some unimaginable woe. The story of the five warriors
on white steeds furiously driving her on on her white palfrey
— "and once we crossed the shade of night;" — her affected

332 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

— for we feel somehow it is not real — ignorance of all about
them, and of when, and where, and why they left her — and
yet it may be true ; — " her gracious stars the lady blest "-
hardly the words of a Christian lady on such a rescue, yet
haply blameless ; — her sinking down on the threshold as if
beneath the weight of wicked intent towards her who merci-
fully lifts her up in her arms ; — her incapacity of prayer —

" And Christabel devoutly cried
To the Lady by her side,
' Praise we the Virgin all divine
Who hath rescued thee from thy distress ! '
' Alas, alas P said Geraldine,
' / cannot speak for weariness1 " —

yet she had been speaking eloquently — and yet faintness from
fatigue may have come over her — who can say ? — not Chris-
tabel, who fears not now, and only pities ; — the moaning of
the old mastiff in her sleep, of which we had before been told
that she howls — as some say — " at seeing of my lady's
shroud" — the shroud of Christabel's mother, who died the hour
she herself was born ; — from the ashes of the dead fire in the
hall a tongue of light shooting out as the stranger lady passed
by — and by that light her eye seen — and manifestly it is an
evil eye — the dimming of the silver lamp "fastened to an
angel's feet," as Geraldine sinks down upon the floor below,
unable to bear the holy light ; — her agitation, and transforma-
tion into a demoniac muttering curses at mention by Chris-
tabel of her mother's name, and proffer of " a wine of virtuous
powers, my mother made it of wild-flowers," and which are
all laid by the compassionate creature to the charge of that
" ghastly ride ; " — the restoration of the possessed to her
senses, and more than her former beauty — when

" The lady wiped her moist cold brow,
And faintly said, ' 'tis over now !'
Again the wild-flower wine she drank :
Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,
She was most beautiful to see,
Like a lady from a far countree," —

all these occurrences happening momentarily in utter still-
ness and solitariness — ominous of far-away evil nearing and
nearing — and many other half-lines — or single words freighted

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 333

with fear, — all sink down our heart for sake of the sinless
Christabel — yet all have not prepared us for the shock that
then comes — a horror hinted, not revealed — and indescribable
as something shuddered at in sleep.

" But through her brain of weal and woe

>So many thoughts moved to and fro,
That vain it were her lids to close ;
So half-way from the bed she rose,
And on her elbow did recline
To look at the lady Geraldine.

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around ;
Then drawing in her breath aloud
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast ;
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,

Behold ! her bosom and half her side

A sight to dream of, not to tell !

O shield her ! shield sweet Christabel !"

Christabel is a dream — and so is the Ancient Mariner —
though the poet does not call them dreams — and how many
worlds, within the imagination of a great poet, are involved
in the wide world of sleep 1 A poet's dream, put into poetry,
is seen to be as obedient to laws as a philosopher's meditation
put into prose — and though made up of the wild and wonder-
ful, consistent with itself, as the gravest mood of speculative
thought. A fairy's palace, and a mermaid's grot, are con-
structed by processes as skilful and scientific as the towers
and temples of the cities of men — and the visionary architec-
ture is as enduring as the Pyramids. Of the beauty or the
grandeur of a thousand dreams, one beautiful or grand dream
is built ; and there it gleams or glooms among entities recog-
nised as illustrative of the mystery of life — unsubstantial, but
real — a fiction, but a truth. Imagination is no liar — a vera-
cious witness she of events happening in her own domain —
invisible to sense — and incredible to reason — till she pictures
them in her own light ; and then seeing is believing, and the
miraculous creates its own faith. The ordinary rules of evi-
dence are set aside — improbability is a word without meaning
-1 — and there is felt to be no limit to the possibilities of nature.

334 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Unnatural ! Nothing is unnatural that stirs our heartstrings
— her voice it is, if from some depth within us steals a re-
sponse. The preternatural — and the supernatural — thank
Heaven — is an empire bounded only by the soul's desires —
and what may bound the soul's desires ? Not the night of
baffled darkness, that lies, in infinitude, behind all the stars.

Coleridge has told us, in his Biographia Literaria, that he
and Wordsworth used, during the first year of their friendship,
frequently to converse on the two cardinal points of poetry,
the power of exciting sympathy by a faithful adherence to ;
the truth of nature, and the power of giving .the interest of
novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden
charm, he beautifully says, — " which accident of light and
shade, while moonlight or sunset diffused over a true and
familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability
of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The
thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect),
that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the
one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, ,
supernatural ; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in -
the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of just •
emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, sup- •
posing them real, and real in this sense they have been to i
every human being who, from whatever source of delusion,
has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency, f
For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary
life ; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be
found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a medi-
tative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them
when they present themselves. In this idea originated the
plan of the ' Lyrical Ballads ; ' in which it was agreed, that
my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters
supernatural, or, at least, romantic ; yet so as to transfer from
our inward nature a purer interest, and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that
willing suspension of belief for the moment, which constitutes
poetic faith. Mr Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to pro-
pose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to
things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the
supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the
lethargy of custom, and diverting it to the loveliness and the

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 335

wonders of the world before us ; an inexhaustible treasure,
but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and
selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear
not, and hearts that'neither feel nor understand."

How gloriously Wordsworth has achieved his gracious ob-
ject, all the world knows ; in poetry that, beyond that of any
other man, has purified and elevated all those feelings that
constitute our faith in the goodness of God, as displayed in the
external world, and in the internal senses by which we hold
communion with nature. Coleridge fell far short of the com-
pletion of his magnificent design — from other causes than
want of power ; but Christabel is a fragment of the beautiful
belonging to it, and the Ancient Mariner a whole of the sub-
lime, in a region where the sublimities are as endless as the
shapes of Cloudland which Fancy every moment can modify
into a new world by a breath.

Coleridge was commanded by his genius to choose the sea,
and sing of the power superstition holds in the empire of the
hoary deep. " There was a Ship, quoth he," and at his bid-
ding she sailed away into the realms of frost and snow. No
good Ship the Endeavour circumnavigating the globe. No
Fury bound on voyage of discovery to the Pole. No name
hath she — captain's name too unknown — " the many men so
beautiful," the only notice of the number of her crew — and
such epithets are bestowed on them only as on deck they all
lie dead. The sole survivor narrates " her travel's history,"
and he is —

" Long, and lank, and brown
As is the ribbed sea-sand."

The Ancient Mariner is laden with countless years ; genera-
tion after generation has left him wandering to and fro over
many lands; and his life, long as the raven's, has been all
one dream of that dreadful voyage — silent as the grave — till
ever and anon the ghastly fit waxes into words, and then
" he hath strange powers of speech." To him the sweet and
sacred festivities of the human world have no meaning — no
being : —

" ' The bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin ;

The guests are met, the feast is set :

May'st hear the merry din.'

336 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

He holds him with his skinny hand,
' There was a ship,' quoth he !
' Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon ! '
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye —
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child :
The Mariner hath his will.

The wedding-guest sat on a stone :
He cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man, .
The bright-eyed Mariner."

The magician has prepared his spell in his cave obscure
remote from our ken, and the first words of the incantation
have wrought a charm beneath which imagination delivers
herself up in a moment, and surrenders herself, in full faith,
to all the wonders and terrors that ensue, chasing to and fro
in an empire chiller even with fear than with frost. " The
bright-eyed mariner 1 " Ay, well may his eyes be bright —
for has he not for scores of years been mad — and the " Spirit
that dwells in frost and snow " his keeper — but the walls of
the house, in which he wanders ruefully about, wide and wild
as the wasteful skies.

" The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop,
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top."

These are the last sweet images of the receding human
world, and for one day — and many more — happily sails the
bark away into the main.

" The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he !
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea !
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon."

In a few words, what a length of voyage ! The ship is in
another world — and we too are not only out of sight, but out
of memory of land. The wedding-guest would fain join the
music he yet hears — but he is fettered to the stone.

w

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 337

" The bride hath paced into the hall,
Bed as a rose is she ;
Nodding their heads, before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

The wedding-guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear ;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner."

We have a dim remembrance either of having read or written
something to this effect — twenty years, or less, or more ago —
that the actual surface -life of the world is here brought close
into contact with the life of sentiment — the soul that is as
much alive, and enjoys and suffers as much, in dreams and
visions of the night as by daylight. One feels with what a
heavy eye the Mariner must look and listen to the pomps —
merry-makings — even to the innocent enjoyments — of those
whose experience has only been of things tangible. One feels
that to him another world — we do not mean a supernatural,
but a more exquisitely and deeply natural world, has been
revealed, and the repose of his spirit can only be in the con-
templation of things that are not to pass away. The sad and
solemn indifference of his mood is communicated to his hearer,
and we feel, even after reading what he had heard, it were
better " to turn from the bridegroom's door." But we are
thinking now — as we were then — on the most mournful and
pathetic close of the poem, whereas we began to speak of the
beginning — and come ye with us on board, and drive south-
ward in storm.

" And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong :
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast.
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold :

VOL. VII. Y

338 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen :
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken —
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around :

It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd,

Like noises in a swound ! "

It has been said by the highest of all authorities — even Words-
worth himself — that in this wonderful poem, the imagery is
somewhat too laboriously accumulated — but we are glad not to
feel that objection ; arid in due humility, we venture to say
that it is not so. The Ancient Mariner had told his tale many
a time and oft to auditors seized on all on a sudden, when
going about their ordinary business, and certainly he never
told it twice in the self-same words. Each oral edition was
finer and finer than all the preceding editions, and the imagery
in the polar winter of his imagination, kept perpetually agglo-
merating and piling itself up into a more and more magnifi-
cent multitude of strange shapes, like icebergs magnifying
themselves by the waves frozen as they dash against the
crystal walls.

Neither can we think, with our master, reverent follower
and affectionate friend as we are, that it is a fault in the
poem, that the Ancient Mariner is throughout passive — always
worked upon, never at work. Were that a fault, it would
indeed be a fatal one, for in that very passiveness — which is
powerlessness — lies the whole meaning of the poem. He
delivers himself up — or rather his own one wicked act has
delivered him up, into the power of an unerring spirit, and he
has no more will of his own, than the ship who is id the hands
of the wind.

" And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so ;
Nine fathoms deep he had followed us,
From the land of mist and snow."

Death and Death-in-Life are dicers for his destiny, and he
lies on deck— the stake. All he has to do is to suffer and to

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 339

endure ; and even after his escape, when " the ship goes
down like lead," he continues all life long a slave.

" God save thee, Ancient Mariner,
from the fiends that plague thee thus."

We remember the time when there was an outcry among
the common critics, " What ! all for shooting a bird ! " We
answered them then as now — but now they are all dead and
buried, and blinder and deeper even than when alive — that no
one who will submit himself to the magic that is around him,
and suffer his senses and his imagination to be blended to-
gether, and exalted by the melody of the charmed words,
and the splendour of the unnatural apparitions, with which
the mysterious scene is opened, will experience any revulsion
towards the very centre and spirit of this haunted dream — " I
SHOT THE ALBATROSS." All the subsequent miseries of the
crew, we then said, are represented as having been the conse-
quence of this violation of the charities of sentiment; and
these are the same miseries that were spoken of by the said
critics, as being causeless and unmerited. There is, we now
repeat, without the risk of wanting the sympathies of one
single human being — man, woman, or child' — the very essence
of tenderness in the sorrowful delight with which the Ancient
Mariner dwells upon the image of the pious bird of good omen,
as it

" Every day for food or play,
Came to the Mariner's hollo ! "

and the convulsive shudder with which he narrates the
treacherous issue, bespeaks to us no more than the pangs
that seem to have followed justly on that inhospitable
crime. It seems as if the very spirit of the universe had
been stunned by his wanton cruelty, as if earth, sea, and
sky had all become dead and stagnant in the extinction of
the moving breath of love and gentleness.

" "Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot : O Christ !
That ever this should be !

340 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night ;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so ;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

And every tongue, through utter droirght,
Was withered at the root ;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.

Ah ! well-a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."

The sufferings that ensue are painted with a power far
transcending that of any other poet who has adventured on '
the horrors of thirst, inanition, and drop-by-drop wasting away
of clay bodies into corpses. They have tried by luxuriating
among images of misery to exhaust the subject — by accumula-
tion of ghastly agonies — gathered from narratives of ship-
wrecked sailors, huddled on purpose into boats for weeks on
sun-smitten seas — or of shipfuls of sinners crazed and delirious,
staving liquor-casks, and in madness murdering and devouring
one another, or with yelling laughter leaping into the sea.
Coleridge concentrated into a few words the essence of torment
— and showed soul made sense, and living but in baked dust
and blood.

"With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail ;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood !
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail ! a sail !

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call :
Gramercy ! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all."

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 341

This is the true Tragedy of Kemorse — and also of Repent-
ance. Thirst had dried, and furred, and hardened his throat
the same as the throats of the other wretches — but God had
cracked too his stony heart, and out of it oozed some drops
of blood that could be extorted but by its own moral misery.
" I bit my arm, I sucked the blood," and why ? Not to quench
that thirst, but that he might call a sail ! a sail ! Remorse
edged his teeth on his own flesh — Remorse mad for salvation
of the wretches suffering for his sin ; and in the act there was
Repentance. But Remorse and Repentance, what are they to
Doom ? They neither change nor avert — and seeing them-
selves both baffled, again begin to ban and to curse, till there
is a conversion ; and out of perfect contrition arise, even in
nature's extremest misery, resignation and peace.

* * * *

" Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea !
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men so beautiful !

And they all dead did lie :

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on ; and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away ;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray ;
But or ever a prayer had gush'd,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,

And the balls like pulses beat ;

For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

Lay like a load on my weary eye,

And the dead were at my feet.

The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they :
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

3-12 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell

A spirit from on high ;

But oh ! more horrible than that

Is the curse in a dead man's eye !

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,

And yet I could not die.

The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide :
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside —

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread ;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship

I watched the water-snakes :

They moved in tracts of shining white,

And when they reared, the elfish light

Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire :

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

They coiled and swam ; and every track

Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things ! no tongue

Their beauty might declare :

A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware.

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray ;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea."

In reference to another senseless objection, we may be
pardoned for saying, what all but idiots know, that the crime
of one man involves in its punishment the death of hundreds
and thousands — on shore and at sea — even in the ordinary
course of nature — and while death is their doom, life is his, as
in this strangest of all shadows of the wild ways of Providence.

COLERIDGE'S POETICAL WORKS. 343

Nor were the rest of the crew innocent, for they approved the
deed — they suffer and die — and after death, the chief criminal
beholds their beatified spirits ; but he who in wantonness and
madness killed the beautiful bird, that came out of the snow-
cloud whiter than snow, and kept for days sailing along with
the ship on wings whiter than ever were hers in the sunshine
—he lives on — a heavier doom — and in his ceaseless trouble
has but one consolation, and out of it the hope arises that
enables him to dree his rueful penance — the Christian hope
that his confession may soften other hearts in the hardness, or
awaken them from the carelessness of cruelty, and thus be of
avail for his own sake before the throne of justice and of mercy
at the last day.

" O wedding-guest ! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea :
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tig sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company !

To walk together to the kirk,

And all together pray,

While each to his great Father bends,

Old men, and babes, and loving friends,

And youths and maidens gay !

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding guest !
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth alL"

TUPPER'S GERALDINE.

[ DECEMBER 1838. ]

COLERIDGE'S Christdbel is the most exquisite of all his inspira-
tions ; and, incomplete as it is, affects the imagination more
magically than any other poem concerning the preternatural.
We are all the while in our own real and living world, and
in the heart of its best and most delightful affections. Yet
trouble is brought among them from some region lying beyond
our ken, and we are alarmed by the shadows of some strange
calamity overhanging a life of beauty, piety, and peace. We
resign all our thoughts and feelings to the power of the
mystery — seek to enjoy rather than to solve it — and desire
that it may be not lengthened but prolonged, so strong is
the hold that superstitious Fear has of the human heart,
entering it in the light of a startling beauty, while Evil shows
itself in a shape of heaven ; and in the shadows that Genius
throws over it, we know not whether we be looking at Sin or
Innocence, Guilt or Grief.

Coleridge could not complete Christabel. The idea of the
poem, no doubt, dwelt always in his imagination — but the poet
knew that power was not given him to robe it in words. The
Written rose up between him and the Unwritten ; and seeing
that it was "beautiful exceedingly," his soul was satisfied,
and shunned the labour — though a labour of love — of a new
creation.

Therefore 'tis but a Fragment — and for the sake of all that
is most wild and beautiful, let it remain so for ever. But we
are forgetting ourselves ; as many people as choose may
publish what they call continuations and sequels of Christabel
— but not one of them will be suffered to live. If beyond a
month any one of them is observed struggling to protract its

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 345

rickety existence, it will assuredly be strangled, as we are
about to strangle Mr Tupper's Geraldine.

Mr Tupper is a man of talent, and in his Preface writes,
on the whole judiciously, of Christabel. " Every word tells —
every line is a picture : simple, beautiful, and imaginative,
it retains its hold upon the mind by so many delicate feelers
and touching points, that to outline harshly the main branches
of the tree, would seem to be doing the injustice of neglect to
the elegance of its foliage, and the microscopic perfection of
every single leaf. Those who now read it for the first time
will scarcely be disposed to assent to so much praise ; but the
man to whom it is familiar will remember how it has grown
to his own liking — how much of melody, depth, nature, and
invention, he has found from time to time hiding in some
simple phrase or unobtrusive epithet." In no poem can
" every line be a picture ; " and there is little or no meaning
in what Mr Tupper says above about the tree ; but our wonder
is, how, with his feeling of the beauty of Christabel, he could
have so blurred and marred it in his unfortunate sequel. " My
excuse," he says, " for continuing the fragment at all, will be
found in Coleridge's own words to the preface of the 1816
pamphlet edition, where he says, ' I trust that I shall be able
to embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the course
of the present year ' — a half-promise which, I need scarcely
observe, has never been redeemed." Mr Tupper continues : " In
the following attempt I may be censured for rashness, or com-
mended for courage ; of course, I am fully aware, that to take
up the pen where COLERIDGE has laid it down, and that in
the wildest and most original of his poems, is a most difficult,
nay, dangerous proceeding ; but upon these very character-
istics of difficulty and danger I humbly rely ; trusting that, in
all proper consideration for the boldness of the experiment, if
I be adjudged to fail, the fall of Icarus may be broken ; if I
be accounted to succeed, the flight of Daedalus may apologise
for his presumption." " Finally," he says, " I deem it due to
myself to add, what I trust will not be turned against me,
viz., that, if not written literally currents calamo, GERALDINE
has been the pleasant labour of but a very few days.

Mr Tupper does not seem to know that Christabel " was
continued" many years ago, in a style that perplexed the
public and pleased even Coleridge. The ingenious writer

346 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

meant it for a mere jeu de sprit1 ; but Geraldine is dead
serious, and her father hopes an immortal fame. We neither
" censure him for rashness nor commend him for courage," but
are surprised at his impertinence, and pained by his stupidity
— and the more for that he possesses powers that, within their
own proper province, may gain him reputation. We like him,
and hope to praise him some day — nay, purpose to praise him
this very day — therefore we shall punish him at present but
with forty stripes. He need not fear a fall like that of Icarus,
for his artificial wings have not lifted his body fairly off the
ground — and so far from soaring through the sky like a
Daedalus, he labours along the sod after the fashion of a
Dodo. In the summer of 1797, Coleridge wrote the first part
of Christabel — in 1800, the second — and published them in
1816 — so perfected, that his genius, in its happiest hours,
feared to look its own poem in the face, and left it for many
long years, and at last, without an altered or an added word,
to the delight of all ages. Mr Tupper's " Geraldine has been
the pleasant labour of a very few days ! " — (Loud cries of Oh !
oh! oh!)

Mr Tupper in the Third Canto shows us the Lady Geraldine
beneath the oak — the scene of the Witch's first meeting with
Christabel. You remember the lines in Coleridge.2 And
how, when the Witch unbound her cincture,

" Her silken robe and inner vest
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold ! her bosom and half her side,
A sight to dream of, not to tell 1
O shield her ! shield sweet Christabel ! "

These few words signify some unimaginable horror — and
never did genius, not even Shakespeare's, so give to one of its
creations, by dim revelation mysteriously diffused, a fearful
being that all at once is present " beyond the reaches of our
souls " — something fiendish in what is most fair, and blasting
in what is most beautiful.

Powerful as Prospero was Coleridge ; but what kind of a
wand is waved by Mr Tupper ?

" Thickly curls a poisonous smoke,
And terrible shapes with evil names

1 See Blackwootfs Magazine, vol. v. p. 286. 2 Quoted ante, p. 330.

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 347

Are leaping around in a circle of flames,
And the tost air whirls, storm-driven,
And the rent earth quakes, charm-riven, —
And — art thou not afraid ? "

Previous to these apparitions, the wolf has been hunting,
the raven croaking, the owl screeching, the clock of course
tolling twelve,

" And to her cauldron hath hurried the witch,
And aroused the deep bay of the mastiff bitch ; "

The moon is gibbous, and looks " like an eyeball of sorrow,"
and yet is called " sun of the night," — most perversely — and
oh 1 how unlike the sure inspiration of Coleridge ! While,
with the " Sun of the Night " shining, Geraldine is absurdly
said to be —

" Fair truant — like an angel of light,
Hiding from heaven in dark midnight."

One touch of the Poet's would have shown the scene in all the
power of midnight, by such an accumulation of ineffective and
contradictory imagery thus utterly destroyed. S. T. C. made
the Witch dreadful — M. F. T. makes her disgusting.

" All dauntless stands the maid
In mystical robe array'd,
And still with flashing eyes
She dares the sorrowful skies,
And to the moon like one possest, ,

Hath shown — O dread ! that face so fair
Should smile above so shrunk a breast,

Haggard and brown, as hangeth there —
O evil sight ! — wrinkled and old,
The dug of a witch, and clammy cold, —
Where in warm beauty's rarest mould
Is fashioned all the rest."

" Muttering wildly through her set teeth,
She seeketh and stirreth the demons beneath."

.Why — were not already "terrible shapes with evil names
leaping around a circle of flames ? " But

" Now one nearer than others is heard
Flapping this way, as a huge sea-bird,
Or liker the dark-dwelling ravenous shark
Cleaving through the waters dark."

348 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Of her or him we hear no more — and it is well — but who that
ever saw a shark in the sea would say that his style of motion
was like that of a huge sea-bird flapping its wings ? Geraldine
feels " the spell hath power," and

" Her mouth grows wide, and her face falls in,
And her beautiful brow becomes flat and thin,
And sulphurous flashes blear and singe
That sweetest of eyes with its delicate fringe,
Till, all its loveliness blasted and dead,
The eye of a snake blinks deep in her head ;
For raven locks flowing loose and long
Bristles a red mane, stiff and strong,
And sea-green scales are beginning to speck
Her shrunken breasts, and lengthening neck ;
The white round arms are sunk in her sides,—

As when in chrysalis canoe
A may-fly down the river glides,

Struggling for life and liberty too, —
Her body convulsively twists and twirls,
This way and that it bows and curls,
And now her soft limbs melt into one
Strangely and horribly tapering down,
Till on the burnt grass dimly is seen
A serpent-monster, scaly and green, k
Horror !— can this be Geraldine ? "

You remember the dream of Bracy the Bard in Christdbel —
told by himself to Sir Leoline ?

" In my sleep I saw that dove,
That gentle bird, whom thou dost love,
And call'st by thy own daughter's name —
Sir Leoline ! I saw the same
Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan
Among the green herbs in the forest alone.
Which when I saw and when I heard,
I wondered what might ail the bird ;
For nothing near it I could see,

Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old Tree.1
And in my dream methought I went
To search out what might there be found ;
And what the sweet bird's trouble meant
That thus lay fluttering on the ground.

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 349

I went and heard , and could descry
No cause for her distressful cry ;
But yet for her dear Lady's sake
I stooped, methought, the dove to take,
When lo ! I saw a bright green snake
Coiled around its wings and neck,
Green as the herbs on which it couched,
Close by the dove's its head it crouched ;
And with the dove it heaves and stirs,
Swelling its neck as she swelled hers !
I woke ; it was the midnight hour,
The clock was echoing in the tower ;
But though my slumber was gone by,
This dream it would not pass away —
It seems to live upon my eye !
And thence I vowed this self-same day,
With music strong and saintly song
To wander through the forest lone,
Lest aught unholy loiter there."

How beautiful the picture ! The expression how perfect !
How full of meaning the dream ! Mr Tupper does not know
it was a dream of love in fear ; and interpreting it literally,
transforms Geraldine into a "bright green snake ! " and such
a snake !

The "dragon-maid" coils herself round the " old oak stump,"
splitting it to the heart, which, it seems, is hollow and black
— and after a while

" The hour is fled, the spell hath sped ;
And heavily dropping down as dead,
All in her own beauty drest,
Brightest, softest, loveliest,
Fair faint Geraldine lies on the ground,
Moaning sadly ;
And forth from the oak
In a whirl of thick smoke

Grinning gladly,

Leaps with a hideous howl at a bound
A squat black dwarf of visage grim,
With crutches beside each twisted limb
Half hidden in many aflame-coloured raff, — •
It is Eyxa the Hag ! "

350 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Kyxa the hag is the Witch's mother — by whom the deponent
saith not — and undertakes to clothe her with all beauty — in
the shape of Geraldine — that she may win the love of the
Lady Christabel's betrothed knight, and enjoy his embraces —
only that

" Still thy bosom and half thy side
Must shrivel and sink at eventide,
And still, as every Sabbath breaks,
Thy large dark eyes must blink as a snake's."

She tells her, too, to beware of the hymning of the Holy

Bard—

" For that the power of hymn and harp
Thine innermost being shall wither and warp,
And the same hour they touch thine ears,
A serpent thou art for a thousand years."

Such is Canto Third, and it explains — as we understand it
— what occurred immediately before the meeting of Christabel
and the Witch beneath the oak, as described in the First Canto
by Coleridge. But how the Dragon Maid was so beautiful
before her mother endowed her with the borrowed mien of
Geraldine, we do not know ; nor are we let into the secret of
the cause of her hatred of Christabel in particular, more than
of any other lovely Christian lady with a Christian lover, of
whom there must have been many at that day among the
Lakes. The Canto seems to us throughout to the last degree
absurd.

It pleased Coleridge to give to each of his two Cantos a
conclusion, in a separate set of verses ; and Mr Tupper does
the same. But oh ! what verses ! He speaketh of hatred — or
jealousy — or some infernal passion or another, which, among
other evil works,

" Floodeth the bosom with bitterest gall,
It drowneth the young virtues all,
And the sweet milk of the heart's own fountain,
Choked and crushed by a heavy mountain,
All curdled, and harden' d, and blacken' d, doth shrink
Into the Sepia's stone-bound ink ! ! " &c.

Think of these lines as Coleridge's,

" The creature of the God-like forehead ! "

TAPPER'S GERALDINE. 351

Part Fourth beginneth thus —

" The eye of day hath opened grey,

And the gallant sun
Hath trick'd his beams by Kydal's streams,

And waveless Conistou ;
From Langdale Pikes his glory strikes,

From heath and giant hill,
From many a tairn, and stone-built cairn,

And many a mountain rill :
Helvellyn bares his forehead black,
And Eagle Crag, and Saddleback,
And Skiddaw hails the dawning day,
And rolls his robe of clouds away."

Mr Tupper knows nothing of the localities — and should have
consulted Green's Guide before sitting down to " continue "
ChristabeL Coniston has no connection with Rydal's streams,
nor have they any connection with Sir Leoline's Castle in
Langdale — much less has Helvellyn — and least of all have
Saddleback and Skiddaw. No doubt the "eye of day" saw
them all, and many a place beside ; but this slobbering sort of
work is neither poetry nor painting — mere words.

A stranger knight with a noble retinue arrives at the Castle
gate, and " leaps the moat," — an unusual feat. And who is he ?
Amador, " a foundling youth," who having been exposed in in-
fancy " beneath the tottering Bowther-stone," and picked up by
Sir Leoline, in due course of time fell in love with Christabel,
and, on discovery of their mutual affection, had been ordered
by the wrathful Baron away to the Holy Land, not to return

" Till name and fame and fortune are his."

The progress of the loves of the " handsome (!) youth and the
beauteous maid" is described circumstantially — and we are
told that, when climbing the mountains together, they did not

" Guess that the strange joy they feel
The rapture making their hearts reel,
Springs.from aught else than — sweet Grasmere,
Or hill and valley far and near,
Or Derwent's banks, and glassy tide,
Lowdore and hawthorn'd Ambleside."

Such simplicity is rare, even nowadays, in young people on
whom " life's noon is blazing bright and fair." But so it was,

352 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Mr Tupper assures us in lines that will bear comparison with
anything of the kind in any language.

" Thus they grew up in each other,

Till to ripened youth
They had grown up for each other ;

Yet, to say hut sooth,
She had not loved him, as other

Than a sister doth,
And he to her was hut a brother,

With a brother's troth :
But selfish craft, that slept so long,
And, if wrong were, had done the wrong,
Now, just awake, with dull surprise

Read the strange truth,
And from their own accusing eyes

Condemned them both, —
That they, who only for each other

Gladly drew their daily breath,
Now must curb, and check, and smother

Through all life, love strong as death ;
"While the dear hope they just have learnt to prize,

And fondly cherish,
The hope that in their hearts deep-rooted lies,

Must pine and perish :
For the slow prudence of the worldly wise
In cruel coldness still denies
The foundling youth to woo and win
The heiress daughter of Leoline."

To part them was as hard as to bid

" The broad oak stump, as it stands on the farm,
Be rent asunder by strength of arm ;"

the wrench as severe as that needed

" To drag the magnet from the pole,
To chain the freedom of the soul,
To freeze in ice desires that boil,
To root the mandrake from the soil," &c.

But Amador, after ten years' absence — so Christabel was no
girl — now returned "with name and fame and fortune" — for

" The Lion- King, with his own right hand,
Had dubbed him Knight of Holy Land,

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 353

The crescent waned where'er he came,
And Christendom rung with his fame,
And Saladin trembled at tlie name
Of Amador de Eamothaim ! "

Having leapt the moat, and flung himself from his horse,

"In the hall

He met her ! — but how pale and wan !—
He started back, as she upon

His neck would fall ;
He started back, — for by her side
(O blessed vision !) he espied

A thing divine, —

Poor Christabel was lean and white,
But oh, how soft, and fair, and bright,

Was Geraldine !
Fairer and brighter as he gazes
All celestial beauty blazes

From those glorious eyes,
And Amador no more can brook
The jealous air and peevish look

That in the other lies ! "

This is rather sudden, and takes the reader aback — for though
)oor Christabel had had a strange night of it, she was a lovely
creature the day before, and could not have grown so very
lean and white" in so short a time. Only think of her look-
ng "peevish "I But —

" A trampling of hoofs at the cullice-port,
A hundred horse in the castle court !
From border wastes a weary way,

Through Halegarth wood and Knorren moor,
A mingled numerous array,
On panting palfreys black and grey,

With foam and mud bespattered o'er,
Hastily cross'd the flooded Irt,
And rich Waswater's beauty skirt.
And Sparkling-Tairn, and rough Seathwaite,
And now that day is dropping late,
Have passed the drawbridge and the gate."

Sere again Mr Tupper shows, somewhat ludicrously, his tin-
acquaintance with the Lake-Land, and makes Sir Eoland per-
form a most circuitous journey.

VOL. VII. Z

354 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

You know that Sir Leoline and Sir Roland had been friends
in youth, and cannot have forgotten Coleridge's exquisite
description of their quarrel and estrangement. He would
have painted their reconciliation in a few lines of light. But
attend to Tupper — and remember the parties are, each of them,
bordering, by his account, on fourscore.

" Like aspens tall beside the brook,
The stalwarth warriors stood and shook,
And each advancing feared to look

Into the other's eye ;
Tis fifty years ago to-day
Since in disdain and passion they
Had flung each other's love away

With words of insult high ;
How had they long'd and pray*d to meet !
But memories cling ; and pride is sweet ;
And — which could be the first to greet

The haply scornful other ?
What if De Vaux were haughty still, —
Or Leoline's unbridled will
Consented not his rankling ill

In charity to smother ?

Their knees give way, their faces are pale,

And loudly beneath the corslets of mail,

Their aged hearts in generous heat

Almost to bursting boil and beat ;

The white lips quiver, the pulses throb,

They stifle and swallow the rising sob, —

And there they stand, faint and unmann'd,

As each holds forth his bare right hand 1

Yes, the mail-clad warriors tremble,

All unable to dissemble

Penitence and love confest,

As within each aching breast

The flood of affection grows deeper and stronger

Till they can refrain no longer,

But with, — ' Oh, my long-lost brother ! '

To their hearts they clasp each other,

Vowing in the face of heaven

All forgotten and forgiven !

Then the full luxury of grief

That brings the smothered soul relief,

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 355

"Within them both so fiercely rushed
That from their vanquish' d eyes out-gushed
A tide of tears, as pure and deep
As children, yea as cherubs weep ! "

Sir Eoland tells Sir Leoline that his daughter Geraldine could
not help being amused with Bard Bracy's tale that she was
in Langdale, seeing that she was sitting at home in her own
latticed bower ; but the false one imposes on the old gentle-
man with a pleasant story, and, manifest impostor and liar
though she be, they take her — do not start from your chair —
•for the Virgin Mary !

" Her beauty hath conquer'd : a sunny smile
Laughs into goodness her seeming guile.
Ay, was she not in mercy sent
To heal the friendships pride had rent 1
Is she not here a blessed saint
To work all good by subtle feint ?
Yea, art thou not, mysterious dame,
Our Lady of Furness ? — the same, the same !
O holy one, we know thee now,
O gracious one, before thee bow,
Help us, Mary, hallowed one,
Bless us for thy wondrous Son " —

At that word, the spell is half-broken, and the dotards, who
been kneeling, rise up ; the Witch gives a slight hiss,
instantly recovers her gentleness and her beauty, and both
in love with her, like the elders with Susanna.

" Wonder-stricken were they then,
And full of love, those ancient men,
Full-fired with guilty love, as when

In times of old

To young Susanna's fairness knelt
Those elders twain, and foully felt
The lava-streams of passion melt
Their bosoms cold."

They walk off as jealous as March hares, and Amador, a
fitting wooer, supplies their place.

" His head is cushioned on her breast,

Her dark eyes shed love on his,
And his changing cheek is prest
By her hot and thrilling kiss,

366 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE,

While again from her moist lips
The honey -dew of joy he sips,
And views, with rising transport -warm,
Her half-unveiled bewitching form."

At this critical juncture Christabel comes gliding ghostlike
up to him — and Amador, most unaccountably stung —

" Stung with remorse,

Hath dropt at her feet as a clay-cold corse ; "

she raises him up and kisses him — Geraldine, with " an in-
voluntary hiss and snake-like stare," gnashes her teeth on the
loving pair. Bard Bracy plays on his triple-stringed Welsh
harp a holy hymn — Geraldine is convulsed, grows lank and
lean —

" The spell is dead— the charm is o'er,

Writhing and circling on the floor,

While she curl'd in pain, and then was seen no more."

Next day at noon Amador and Christabel are wed — the
spirit of the bride's mother descending from heaven to bless
the nuptials — the bridegroom is declared by her to be Sir
Koland's son —

" The spirit said, and all in light
Melted away that vision bright ;
My tale is told."

Such is Geraldine, a Sequel to Coleridge's Christabel ! It
is, indeed, a most shocking likeness — call it rather a horrid
caricature. Coleridge's Christabel, in any circumstances be-
neath the sun, moon, and stars, "lean and white, and peevish" !!
— a most impious libel. Coleridge's Geraldine " like a lady
from a far countree" — with that dreadful bosom and side-
stain still the most beautiful of all the witches — and in her
mysterious wickedness powerful by the inscrutable secret of
some demon-spell over the best of human innocence — the
dragon-daughter of an old red-ragged hag, hobbling on wooden
crutches ! Where is our own ? Coleridge's bold English
Barons, stiff in their green eld as oaks, Sir Leoline and Sir
Roland, with rheumy eyes, slavering lips, and tottering knees,
shamelessly wooing the same witch in each other's presence,
with all the impotence of the last stage of dotage !

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 357

" She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothed knight ;
And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away ! "

That is all we hear of him from Coleridge — Mr Tupper brings
before us the " handsome youth" (yes ! he calls him so), with

" a goodly shield,

Three wild-boars or, on an azure field,
While scallop-shells on an argent fess
Proclaim him a pilgrim and knight no less I!
Enchased in gold on his helmet of steel
A deer-hound stands on the high-plumed keel ! " &c.

And thus equipped — booted and spurred — armed cap-a-pie,
he leaps the moat— contrary to all the courtesies of chivalry
— and, rushing up to the lady who had been praying for him
for ten years (ten is too many), he turns on his heel as if he
had stumbled by mistake on an elderly vinegar- visaged cham-
bermaid, and makes furious love before her face to the lady on
whose arm she is fainting ; — and this is in the spirit of — Cole-
ridge ! It won't do to say ATiador is under a spell. No such
spell can be tolerated — and so far from being moved with pity
for Amador as infatuated, we feel assured that there is not one
Quaker in Kendal, who, on witnessing such brutality, would
not lend a foot to kick him down stairs, and a hand to fling him
into the moat among the barbels.

As for the diction, it is equally destitute of grace and power
— and not only without any colouring of beauty, but all blotch
and varnish, laid on as with a shoe-brush. All sorts of images
and figures of speech crawl over the surface of the Sequel,
each shifting for itself, like certain animalculae set a-racing on
a hot plate by a flaxen-headed cowboy ; and though there are
some hundreds of them, not one is the property of Mr Tupper,
but liable to be claimed by every versifier from Cockaigne to
Cape Wrath.

Let us turn, then, to his ambitious and elaborate address to
Imagination, and see if it conspicuously exhibit the qualities of
the poetical character.

" Thou fair enchantress of my willing heart,
Who charmest it to deep and dreamy slumber,
Gilding mine evening clouds of reverie, —

358 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Thou lovely Siren, who, with still small voice

Most softly musical, dost lure me on

O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea,

Or quaking sands of untried theory,

Or ridgy shoals of fixt experiment

That wind a dubious pathway through the deep, —

Imagination, I am thine own child :

Have I not often sat with thee retired,

Alone, yet not alone, though grave most glad,

All silent outwardly, but loud within,

As from the distant hum of many waters,

Weaving the tissue of some delicate thought,

And hushing every breath that might have rent

Our web of gossamer, so finely spun ?

Have I not often listed thy sweet song

(While in vague echoes and ^Eolian notes

The chambers of my heart have answered it),

With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering pulse,

As the coy village maiden's when her lover

Whispers his hope to her delighted ear 1 "

Imagination is here hailed first as a " fair enchantress,"
then as a " lovely siren," and then as the poet's mother — " I
am thine own child." In the next paragraph — not quoted —
she is called " angelic visitant ; " again he says, " me thy
son;" immediately after, "indulgent lover, I am all thine
own ; " and then —

" Imagination, art thou not my friend,
In crowds and solitude, my comrade dear,
Brother and sister, mine own other self,
The Hector to my soul's Andromache ? "

These last lines are prodigious nonsense ; and we could not
have believed it possible so to burlesque the most touching
passage in all Homer. Nor can we help thinking the image
of Martin Farquhar Tupper, Esq., M.A., author of " Proverbial
Philosophy "—

" With eye as bright in joy, and fluttering pulse,
As the coy village maiden's" —

rather ridiculous — with Imagination sitting by his side, and
whispering soft nothings into his ear.

" With still small voice" is too hallowed an expression to

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 359

be properly applied to a "lovely siren ;" nor is it the part of
a siren to lure poets on

" O'er the wide sea of indistinct idea,
Or quaking sands of untried theory,
Or ridgy shoals of fixt experiment,
That wind a dubious pathway through the deep."

We do not believe that these lines have any real meaning ;
and then they were manifestly suggested by two mighty ones
of Wordsworth —

" The intellectual power through words and things
"Went sounding on its dim and perilous way."

Imagination is then " Triumphant Beauty, bright Intelli-
gence," and

" The chastened fire of ecstasy suppressed
Beams from her eye,"

which is all true ; but why thus beams her eye ?

" Because thy secret heart,
Like that strange light, burning yet unconsumed,
Is all on flame, a censer filled with odours,
And to my mind, who feel thy fearful power,
Suggesting passive terrors and delights,
A slumbering volcano," &c.

Here the heart of Imagination is — if we rightly understand
it — the burning bush spoken of in the Old Testament — a
censer filled with odours — and a slumbering volcano ! That
is not poetry. But here comes to us an astounding personifi-
cation— which we leave, without criticism, to be admired —
if you choose.

" Thy dark cheek, ,

Warm and transparent, by its half-formed dimple
Reveals an under- world of wondrous things
Ripe in their richness, — as among the bays
Of blest Bermuda, through the sapphire deep,
Ruddy and white, fantastically branch
The coral groves : thy broad and sunny brow,
Made fertile by the genial smile of heaven,
Shoots up an hundred-fold the glorious crop
Of arabesque ideas ; forth from thy curls
Half hidden in their black luxuriance

360 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

The twining sister-graces lightly spring,

The Muses, and the Passions, and Young Love,

Tritons and Naiads, Pegasus, and Sphinx,

Atlas, Briareus, Phaeton, and Cyclops,

Centaurs, and shapes uncouth, and wild conceits :

And in the midst blazes the star of mind,

Illumining the classic portico

That leads to the high dome where Learning sits :

On either side of that broad sunny brow

Flame-coloured pinions, streaked with gold and blue,

Burst from the teaming brain ; while under them

The forked lightning, and the cloud-robed thunder,

And fearful shadows, and unhallowed eyes,

And strange foreboding forms of terrible things

Lurk in the midnight of thy raven locks."

Here and there we meet with a rather goodish line — as for
example —

" Thou hast wreathed me smiles,
And hung them on a statue's marble lips."

And again —

" Hast made earth's dullest pebbles bright like gems."
And still better, perhaps —

" Hast lengthened out my nights with life-long dreams."

We are willing, but scarcely able, to be pleased with the
following image :

" First feelings, and young hopes, and better aims,
And sensibilities of delicate sort,
Like timorous mimosas, which the breath,
The cold and cautious breath of daily life,
Hath not, as yet, had power to blight or kill,
From my heart's garden ; for they stood retired,
Screened from the north by groves of rooted thoughts."

You admire it ? — then probably you will admire this too —

" So, too, the memory of departed joy,
Walking in black with sprinkled tears of pearl,
Passes before the mind with look less stern,
And foot more lightened, when thine inward power,
Most gentle friend, upon the clouded face
Sheds the fair light of better joy to come,
And throws round Grief the azure scarf of Hope."

TTJPPER S GERALDINE. 361

How far better had that thought been, if expressed in sim-
plest language, and without any figure at all !
The Invocation ends thus, —

" As the wild chamois bounds from rock to rock,
Oft on the granite steeples nicely poised,
Unconscious that the cliff from which he hangs
"Was once a fiery sea of molten stone,
Shot up ten thousand feet and crystallised
When earth was labouring with her kraken brood ;
So have I sped with thee, my bright-eyed love,
Imagination, over pathless wilds,
Bounding from thought to thought, unmindful of
The fever of my soul that shot them up
And made a ready footing for my speed,
As like the whirlwind I have flown along
Winged with ecstatic mind, and carried away,
Like Ganymede of old, o'er cloud-capt Ida,
Or Alps, or Andes, or the ice-bound shores
Of Arctic or Antarctic, — stolen from earth
Her sister-planets and the twinkling eyes
That watch her from afar, to the pure seat
Of rarest Matter's last created world,
And brilliant halls of self-existing Light."

We call that bad. Like a chamois — like a whirlwind — like
Ganymede ! Show us a flight — without telling us what it is
like — and leave us to judge for ourselves whether or no you
are a poet and can fly.

Does Imagination inspire " The Song of an Alpine Elf ? "
The Alpine Elf sings —

" My summer's home is the cataract's foam,

As it floats in a frothing heap ;

My winter's rest is the weasel's nest,

Or deep with the mole I sleep."

We daresay there are moles and weasels among the Alps,
but one does not think of them there ; and had Mr Tupper
ever taken up a weasel by the tail, between his finger and
thumb, he would not, we are persuaded, have conceived it
possible that any Elf, accustomed to live during summer in the
froth of a cataract, could have been " so far left to himself"
as to have sought winter lodgings with an animal of such an
intolerable stink. And what are the Alpine Elf s pursuits ?

362 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" I ride for a freak on the lightning streak,

And mingle among the cloud,
My swarthy form with the thunderstorm,
Wrapp'd in its sable shroud."

A very small thunderstorm indeed would suffice to wrap his
Elfship in its sable shroud ; but is he not too magniloquent
for a chum of the mole and the weasel ? What would be the
astonishment of the mole to see his bed- fellow as follows —

" Often I launch the huge avalanche,

And make it my milk-white sledge,
When unappall'd to the Grindelwald

I slide from the Shrikehorn's edge."

By his own account he cannot be much more than a span long
— and we are sceptical as to his ability to launch an avalanche,
though we are aware that avalanches hold their places by a
precarious tenure. However, the sight of so minute a gentle-
man sliding unappalled on a huge avalanche from the Grindel-
wald to the Shrikehorn's edge, would be of itself worthy a
journey to Switzerland. But what a cruel little wretch it is !
not satisfied with pushing the ibex over the precipice, he does
not scruple to avow,

" That my greatest joy is to lure and decoy

To the chasm's slippery brink,
The hunter hold, when Ms weary and old,

And there let him suddenly sink
A thousand feet — dead ! — he dropped like lead,

Ha ! he couldn't leap like me ;
With broken back, as a felon on the rack,

He hangs on a split pine-tree."

Why shove only the old hunter over the chasm ? 'T would be
far better sport, one would think, to an Alpine elf, to precipi-
tate the young bridegroom. " Ha 1 he couldn't leap like me,"
is a fine touch of egotism and insult — and how natural !
" And there 'mid his bones, that echoed with groans,

I make me a nest of his hair ;
The ribs dry and white rattle loud as in spite,

When I rock in my cradle there :
Hurrah, hurrah, and ha, ha, ha !

I'm in a merry mood,
For I'm all alone in my palace of bone,
That's tapestried fair with the old man's hair,
And dappled with clots of blood."

TUPPER'S GERALDIKE. 363

At what season of the year ? During summer his home is in
a " frothing heap ; " during winter he sleeps with the weasel
or moudiwarp. It must be in spring or autumn that he makes
his nest in a dead man's hair. How imaginative I

Turn we now to a reality, and see how Mr Tupper, who
likened himself to a chamois, deals with a chamois-hunter.
He describes one scaling " Catton's battlement " before the
peep of day, and now at its summit.

" Over the top, as he knew well,
Beyond the glacier in the dell

A herd of chamois slept ;
So down the other dreary side,
With cautious step, or careless slide,

He bounded, or he crept"

And now he scans the chasm'd ice ;
He stoops to leap, and in a trice

His foot hath slipp'd, — O heaven !
He hath leapt in, and down he falls
Between those blue tremendous walls,

Standing asunder riven.

But quick his clutching nervous grasp
Contrives a jutting crag to clasp,

And thus he hangs in air ; —
O moment of exulting bliss !
Yet hope so nearly hopeless is

Twin-brother to despair.

He look'd beneath, — a horrible doom !
Some thousand yards of deepening gloom,

Where he must drop to die !
He look'd above, and many a rood
Upright the frozen ramparts stood

Around a speck of sky.

Fifteen long dreadful hours he hung,
And often by strong breezes swung

His fainting body twists,
Scarce can he cling one moment more,
His half-dead hands are ice, and sore

His burning bursting wrists.

His head grows dizzy, — he must drop,
• He half resolves, — but stop, O stop,
Hold on to the last spasm,

364 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Never in life give up your hope, —
Behold, behold a friendly rope
Is dropping down the chasm !

They call thee, Pierre, — see, see them here,
Thy gathered neighbours far and near,

Be cool, man, hold on fast :
And so from out that terrible place,
With death's pale paint upon his face,

They drew him up at last.

And he came home an altered man,
For many harrowing terrors ran

Through his poor heart that day ;
He thought how all through life, though young,
Upon a thread, a hair, he hung,

Over a gulf midway :

He thought what fear it were to fall
Into the pit that swallows all,
Unwing'd with hope and love ;
And when the succour came at last,
O then he learnt how firm and fast
Was his best Friend above."

That is much better than anything yet quoted, and cannot
be read without a certain painful interest. But the composi-
tion is very poor.

" 0 heaven !
He hath leapt in ! "

Well — what then ? " and down he falls ! " Indeed ! We do
not object to " between those blue tremendous walls," but
why tell us they were " standing asunder riven? " We knew
he had been on the edge of the " chasm'd ice." " 0 moment
of exulting bliss I " No — no — no. " Many a rood " — per-
pendicular altitude is never measured by roods, nor yet by
perches. Satan " lay floating many a rood " — but no mention
of roods when " his stature reached the sky." " His head
grows dizzy" — ay that it did long before the fifteen hours
had expired. "But stop, 0 stop" is, we fear, laughable —
yet we do not laugh — for 'tis no laughing matter — and " never
in life give up your hope" is at so very particular a juncture
too general an injunction. " Be cool, man, hold on fast " is a
leetle too much, addressed to poor Pierre, whose " half dead

TUPPER'S GERALDINE. 365

hands were ice," and who had been hanging on by them for
fifteen hours.

K And so from out that terrible place,
With death's pale paint upon his face,
They drew him up at last" —

is either very good or very bad — and we refer it to Words-
worth. The concluding stanzas are tame in the extreme,

" For many harrowing terrors ran
Through his poor heart that day ! "

"We can easily believe it ; but never after such a rescue was
there so feeble an expression from poet's heart of religious
gratitude in the soul of a sinner saved.

The " African Desert " and " The Suttees " look like Ox-
ford Unprized Poems. The Caravan, after suffering the deceit
of the mirage, adust are aware of a well.

" Hope smiles again, as with instinctive haste
The panting camels rush along the waste,
And snuff the grateful breeze, that sweeping by
Wafts its cool fragrance through the cloudless sky.
Swift as the steed that feels the slacken'd rein
And flies impetuous o'er the sounding plain,
Eager as, bursting from an Alpine source,
The winter torrent in its headlong course,
Still hasting on, the wearied band behold
— The green oase, an emerald couch'd in gold !
And now the curving rivulet they descry,
That bow of hope upon a stormy sky,
Now ranging its luxuriant banks of green
In silent rapture gaze upon the scene :
His graceful arms the palm was waving there
Caught in the tall acacia's tangled hair,
While in festoons across his branches slung
The gay kossom its scarlet tassels hung ;
The flowering colocynth had studded round
Jewels of promise o'er the joyful ground,
And where the smile of day burst on the stream,
The trembling waters glitter'd in the beam."

There is no thirst here — our palate grows not dry as we
read. What passion is there in saving that the camels rushed
along the waste,

366 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" Swift as the steed that feels the slacken'd rein,
And flies impetuous o'er the sounding plain ? "

" Not a bit." And still worse is

" Eager as bursting from an Alpine source
The winter torrent in its headlong course ;

for there should have been no allusion to water anywhere else
but there ; the groan and the cry was for water to drink; and had
Mr Tupper/eZf for the caravan, men and beasts, no other water
would have been seen in his imagination — it would have been
impossible for him to have thought of likening the cavalcade to
Alpine sources and winter torrents — he would have huddled
it all headlong, prone, or on its hands, hoofs, and knees, into
the water of salvation. " The green oase, an emerald couch' d
in gold ! !" Water ! Water ! Water ! and there it is !

" That bow of hope upon a stormy sky ! ! !"
They are on its banks — and

" In silent rapture gaze upon the scene ! ! !"

And then he absolutely paints it ! not in water colours — but in
chalks. Graceful arms of palms — tangled hair of acacia —
scarlet tassels of kossoms in festoons — and the jewels of pro-
mise of the flowering colocynth ! ! !

Stammering or stuttering certainly is an unpleasant defect
—or weakness in the power of articulation or speech, and we
don't believe that Dr Browster could much mend it ; but some
of the most agreeable men we know labour under it, and we
suspect owe to it no inconsiderable part of their power in con-
versation. People listen to their impeded prosing more cour-
teously, and more attentively, than to the prate of those "whose
sweet course is not hindered ; " and thus encouraged, they
grow more and more loquacious in their vivacity, till they
fairly take the lead in argument or anecdote, and are the
delight and instruction of the evening, as it may hap, in
literature, philosophy, or politics. Then, a scandalous story,
stuttered or stammered, is irresistible — every point tells — and
blunt indeed, as the head of a pin, must be that repartee that
extricates not itself with a jerk from the tongue-tied, sharp as
the point of a needle.

GERALDINE. 367

We beg to assure Mr Tupper that his sympathy with the
" Stammerer " would extort from the lips of the most suave
of that fortunate class, who, it must be allowed, are occasion-
ally rather irritable, characteristic expressions of contempt ;
and that so far from thinking their peculiarity any impedi-
ment, except merely in speech, they pride themselves, as well
as they may, from experience, on the advantage it gives them
in a colloquy, over the glib. If to carry its point at last be
the end of eloquence, they are not only the most eloquent, but
the only eloquent of men. No stammerer was ever beaten in
argument — his opponents always are glad to give in — and
often, after they have given in, and suppose their submission
has been accepted, they find the contrary of all that from a
dig on the side, that drives the breath out of their body, and
keeps them speechless for the rest of the night, while the
stream of conversation, if it may be called so, keeps issuing
in jets and jerks, from the same inexhaustible source, pausing
but to become more potent, and delivering, per hour, we fear
to say how many imperial gallons into the reservoir.

Therefore we cannot but smile at " the Stammerer's Com-
plaint " — as put into his lips by Mr Tupper. He is made to
ask us —

" Hast ever seen an eagle chain'd to earth 1

A. restless panther to his cage immured ?

A swift trout by the wily fisher check' d ?

A wild bird hopeless strain its broken wing ? "

We have ; but what are all such sights to the purpose ? An
eagle chained cannot fly an inch — a panther in a cage can
prowl none — a trout " checked " — basketed we presume —
is as good as gutted — a bird winged is already dished — but
a stammerer, " still beginning, never ending," is in all his
glory when he meets a consonant whom he will not relinquish
till he has conquered him, and dragged him in captivity at the
wheels of his chariot,

" While the swift axles kindle as they roll."
Mr Tupper's Stammerer then is made to say,

" Hast ever felt, at the dark dead of night,
Some undefined and horrid incubus
Press down the very soul, — and paralyse
The limbs hi their imaginary flight
From shadowy terrors hi unhallowed sleep ? "

368 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

We have ; but what is all that to the purpose, unless it be to
dissuade us from supping on pork-chop ? Such oppression
on the stomach, and through it on all the vital powers, is the
effect of indigestion, and it is horrible ; but the Stammerer
undergoes no such rending of soul from body, in striving to
give vent to his peculiar utterance — not he indeed — 'tis all
confined to his organs of speech — his agonies are apparent,
not real — and he is conscious but of an enlivening emphasis
that, while all around him are drowsy, keeps him wide
awake, and banishes Sleep to his native land of Nod. We
ourselves have what is called an impediment in our speech —
and do " make wry faces," but we never thought of exclaim-
ing to ourselves,

" Then thou canst picture — ay, in sober truth,
In real, unexaggerated truth, —
The constant, galling, festering chain that binds
Captive my mute interpreter of thought ;
The seal of lead enstamp'd upon my lips,
The load of iron on my labouring chest,
The mocking demon, that at every step
Haunts me, — and spurs me on — to burst in silence?

Heaven preserve us ! is the world so ill off for woes — are they
so scant — that a Poet who indites blank verse to Imagination,
can dream of none worthier his lamentations than the occa-
sional and not unfrequent inconveniences that a gifted spirit
experiences from a lack of fluency of words ?

" I scarce would wonder, if a godless man
(I name not him whose hope is heavenward),
A man whom lying vanities hath scath'd
And harden'd from all fear, — if such an one
By this tyrannical Argus goaded on,
Were to be wearied of his very life,
And daily, hourly foiled in social converse,
By the slow simmering of disappointment,
Become a sour'd and apathetic being,
Were to feel rapture at the approach of death,
And long for his dark hope, — annihilation."

What if he were dumb f

Mr Tupper is a father, and some of his domestic verses are
very pleasing — such as his sonnet to little Ellen, and his
sonnet to little Mary ; but we prefer the stanzas entitled

TUPPER S GERALDINE. 369

" Children," and quote them as an agreeable sample, premis-
ing that they would not have been the worse of some little
tincture of imaginative feeling ; for, expressive as they are of
mere natural emotion, they cannot well be said to be poetry.
We object, too, to the sentiment of the close, for thousands of
childless men are rich in the enjoyment of life's best affec-
tions ; and some of the happiest couples and the best we have
ever known, are among those from whom God has witheld the
gift of offspring. Let all good Christian people be thankful
for the mercies graciously vouchsafed to them ; but beware of
judging the lot of others by their own, and of seeking to con-
fine either worth, happiness, or virtue, within one sphere of
.domestic life, however blessed they may feel it to be;

" For the blue sky bends over all,"
and our fate here below is not determined by the stars.

CHILDREN.

" Harmless, happy little treasures,

Full of truth, and trust, and mirth,
Eichest wealth, and purest treasures,
In this mean and guilty earth.

How I love you, pretty creatures,

Lamb-like flock of little things,
Where the love that lights your features

From the heart in beauty springs.

On these laughing rosy faces

There are no deep lines of sin,
None of passion's dreary traces

That betray the wounds within ;

But yours is the sunny dimple

Radiant with untutor'd smiles,
Yours the heart, sincere and simple,

Innocent of selfish wiles ;

Yours the natural curling tresses,

Prattling tongues, and shyness coy,
Tottering steps, and kind caresses,

Pure with health and warm with joy.

The dull slaves of gain, or passion,

Cannot love you as they should,
The poor worldly fools of fashion

Would not love you if they could :
VOL. TII. 2 A

370 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Write them childless, those cold-hearted,

Who can scorn Thy generous boon,
And whose souls with fear have smarted,

Lest — Thy blessings come too soon.

While he hath a child to love him,

No man can be poor indeed ;
While he trusts a Friend above him,

None can sorrow, fear, or need.

But for thee, whose hearth is lonely

And unwarm'd by children's mirth,
Spite of riches, thou art only

Desolate and poor on earth :

All unkiss'd by innocent beauty,

All unloved by guileless heart,
All uncheer'd by sweetest duty,

Childless man, how poor thou art ! "

We like the following lines still better ; and considered
" as one of the moods of his own mind," they may be read
with unmingled pleasure.

WISDOM'S WISH.

" Ah, might I but escape to some sweet spot,

Oasis of my hopes, to fancy dear,
Where rural virtues are not yet forgot,

And good old customs crown the circling year ;
Where still contented peasants love their lot,

And trade's vile din offends not nature's ear,
But hospitable hearths, and welcomes warm
To country quiet add their social charm ;

Some smiling bay of Cambria's happy shore,

A wooded dingle on a mountain-side,
Within the distant sound of ocean's roar,

And looking down on valley fair and wide,
Nigh to the village church, to please me more

Than vast Cathedrals in their Gothic pride,
And blest with pious pastor, who has trode
Himself the way, and leads his flock to God ;

There would I dwell, for I delight therein !

Far from the evil ways of evil men,
Untainted by the soil of others' sin,

My own repented of, and clean again :

GERALDINE. 371

With health and plenty crown'd, and peace within,
Choice books, and guiltless pleasures of the pen,
And mountain-rambles with a welcome friend,
And dear domestic joys, that never end.

There, from the flowery mead, or shingled shore,
To cull the gems that bounteous nature gave,

From the rent mountain pick the brilliant ore,
Or seek the curious crystal in its cave ;

And learning nature's Master to adore,

Know more of Him who came the lost to save ;

Drink deep the pleasures contemplation gives,

And learn to love the meanest thing that lives.

No envious wish my fellows to excel,
No sordid money-getting cares be mine ;

No low ambition in high state to dwell,

Nor meanly grand among the poor to shine :

But, sweet benevolence, regale me well

With those cheap pleasures and light cares of thine,

And meek -eyed piety, be always near,

With calm content, and gratitude sincere.

Rescued from cities, and forensic strife,

And walking well with God in nature's eye,

Blest with fair children, and a faithful wife,

Love at my board, and friendship dwelling nigh,

Oh thus to wear away my useful life,
And, when I'm called in rapturous hope to die,

Thus to rob heaven of all the good I can,

And challenge earth to show a happier man ! "

But the best set of stanzas in the volume are those entitled
"Ellen Gray." The subject is distressing, and has been treated
so often — perhaps too often — as to be now exhausted — or if
not so, nothing new can be expected on it, except either from
original genius, or from a spirit made creative by profoundest
sympathy and sorrow for the last extremities of human misery.
We do not think the idea very happy of " Contrasted Son-
lets" — such as, Nature — Art; The Happy Home — The
/retched Home ; Theory — Practice ; Kiches — Poverty ;
'hilanthropic — Misanthropic ; Country — Town, and so on ;
id 'tis an ancient, nay, a stale idea, though Mr Tupper evi-
sntly thinks it fresh and new, and luxuriates in it as if it
sre all his own. Sometimes he chooses to show that he is

372 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ambidexter — and how much may be said on both sides —
leaving the reader's mind in a state of indifference to what
may really be the truth of the matter — or disposed to believe
that he knows more about it than the Sonnetteer. The best
are " Prose" and " Poetry" — and they are very good — so is
"Ancient," but " Modern" is very bad.

Mr Tupper has received much praise from critics whose
judgment is generally entitled to great respect — in the Atlas,
if we mistake not — in the Spectator — and in the Sun. If
our censure be undeserved — let our copious quotations justify
themselves, and be our condemnation. Our praise may seem
cold and scanty; but so far from despising Mr Tupper's
talents, we have good hopes of him, and do not fear but that
he will produce many far better things than the best of those
we have selected for the approbation of the public. Perhaps
our rough notes may help him to discover where his strength
lies ; and, with his right feelings, and amiable sensibilities,
and fine enthusiasm, and healthy powers when exercised on
familiar and domestic themes, so dear for ever to the human
heart, there seems no reason why, in good time, he may not
be among our especial favourites, and one of " the Swans of
Thames " — which, we believe, are as big and as bright as
those of the Tweed.

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS. '

[SEPTEMBER isw.]

THE Baron, in a series of letters to his son Augustus, desires
to instruct him "how to become an overmatch for anybody
who, in any shape, may aim, either at his life, his purse, or
other property, or at unfair impediments to his justifiable pur-
suits, or at the disturbance of his peace of mind in any way,
or of his enjoyments generally." He disclaims all rivalry
with Lord Chesterfield, whose chief aim was to give his son
the ostentatious accomplishments of a fine gentleman. Such
accomplishments the Colonel is far from despising, but he
rightly prefers to them all " unsophisticated ideas of honour."
Neither does he seek to make his Augustus a disciple of the
Tom and Jerry school, a thoroughbred Pickle, or a knowing
varmint. But, "just as a merchant possessed of superior
knowledge may be deemed richer than a more opulent rival,
whose information is contracted, so, by the cool and judicious,
as well as adroit application of even inferior physical powers,
shall you be taught and enabled to subdue even gigantic, but
ignorant opponents." And the worthy Baron says, " I will
exert my best endeavours to show you how you can effect all
this, yet without adopting any but fair and honourable means."
It is long since we have read a more amusing and instructive
series of letters, and we recommend the volume to the study
of the youth of Great Britain and Ireland before they make a
visit to the metropolis. Our article must be a short one, but
we shall return to the consideration of some of the most in-
teresting subjects treated of in the Helps and Hints, and for
the present confine ourselves to the precautions which are
necessary in walking the streets of great cities — the general
rules and cautions to be observed on the highways and

1 Helps and Hints how to Protect Life and Property, d-c. By LIEUT. -CoL.
BARON DE BERENGER.

374 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

roads — and the best modes of defending yourself against
the attacks which may be made on you in either of those
situations.

" Never," saith the experienced Baron, " walk with your
hands in your pockets." If you do, the thieves will take you
for a flat, " that is, a weak-minded person, and likely to be
operated upon successfully." Let there be nothing absurd in
your dress, for by the outward pickpockets judge the inward
man. On one occasion, the Colonel himself, when looking into
the window of a print-shop, felt a tug, " and nimbly catching
a young man's hand in my pocket, I forcibly retained it there,
he begging all the while to be forgiven, and in very strenuous
but submissive terms. Foolishly, being rather what is called
upon good terms with myself, I somewhat pompously demanded
to know what he could possibly see in my face to warrant his
hopes of taking advantage of my folly. Hesitating a little,
he replied, ' If you will but forgive me, sir, I will candidly
tell you, and it may save you loss hereafter. Why, as to your
face, sir, it is well enough, but your wearing pumps and silk
stockings on a rainy day, and in such muddy streets, made
me make sure of having met in you with a good flat.' "

Instead of allowing your tailor to make outside pockets to
your morning frocks or coats, order him, quoth the Baron,
some what, imperiously, to place them inside. Our tailor has
done so with the only morning frock or coat we have, and the
consequence of such an arrangement or disposition of the
parts is, that we are unable to pick our own pocket. That
our snuif-box is there we know and feel, as it keeps bobbing
against the calf of our leg, but to get anything near it with
our hand has always hitherto baffled our utmost dexterity. We
have to take off our patent safety, previous to every pinch, lay it
across our knees, and after much manipulation, contrive to ex-
tricate Horn Tooke from the cul-de-sac. " Nevertheless, you
must not rely upon being secure even then ; for pickpockets
are as crafty as they are nimble ; " yet we cannot but think
it a little hard that every hand should seem to know the way
into those pockets but our own. The only true ephemeral
is your beautiful white blue-spotted silk handkerchief!

" Avoid," saith the Baron, " every unnecessary display of money,
since no solid excuse can be offered for so dangerous an act of care-
lessness or so pitiful a gratification of vanity. This practice is but

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS. 375

too common with persons of weak intellects or with perfect novices ;
and if, instead of being the result of thoughtlessness, their aim is to
impress others with an idea of their consequence, it counteracts the
very effect they endeavour to promote ; for just as every thinking
observer concludes that the being the owner of a horse, or the master
of a servant, must be something quite new with a person who more
frequently than others introduces 'my horse' or 'my servant' into
his conversation, so to him it cannot fail to become a confirmation
that the possession of large sums must either be unusual or of recent
date with persons who so sillily can expose themselves to additional
risks by thus inviting and provoking the ingenuity of sharpers and
thieves of every description. Numerous, frightfully numerous, are
the instances of murders committed in Great Britain and abroad
under no instigation but that caused by the inconsiderate display of
much cash, or of the boast of possessing it ; for which reason it is
more prudent to keep even your own servants in ignorance upon such
points than to caution them against divulging, since mere innocent
swagger on their part, or intoxication, may produce calamities —
results that may throw whole families into mourning and conster-
nation."

Have all your wits about you on leaving the bank,
banking-houses, army and navy agencies, or similar places
where you have been receiving money. Come out with a rue-
ful countenance, as if you had found that you had long ago
overdrawn your account. Dividend-hunters will see written
on your face " No effects." Slip into a coach with a suicidal
air, and tell Jehu to drive to the Stairs, as if in desperation
you wished the public to know that your only friend on earth
now was the Thames.

" Never pull out your watch to satisfy any inquirer. Tell
him the time by guess," says the benevolent Baron, " continu-
ing your walk all the while." To all questions about the
road or any street, or name of any resident, without slacken-
ing your pace give a brief answer, expressive of total igno-
rance of that particular part of the world. Allow no man to
put any letter or parcel into your hand with a request that
you will have the kindness to explain the address.

A still more useful advice to young, and likewise to elderly
gentlemen, we give in the Baron's own forcible words.

For many reasons, of which the following is a sufficient one,
never let fair strangers, who may accost you in the streets, under
pretended acquaintance, or other excuses, lay hold of your arm.

376 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Shake them off with a bow, and the assurance that they are mistaken,
and cross the road directly ; nay, as those ladies hunt in couples,
they may endeavour to honour you by attempts to take you between
them by each seizing upon one of your arms. You cannot avert too
nimbly all the favours about to be conferred upon you, be it by these
charmers themselves, or by some less elegant confederate, male or
female, close at hand, and who, if a male, may, at night especially,
bully, perhaps maltreat you, for having presumed to intrude your-
self, as will be maintained by all, upon ladies to whom he may claim
a close and endearing alliance. And in this pretended husband,
father, or brother, you may behold some coarse, ruffian-looking
fellow, of prize-fighting make and shape — one whose confident man-
ner will betray the reliance which pervades his mind that his pecu-
liar je ne scai quoi will impress you with such unfeigned respect
as to paralyse all remonstrances on your part, even if a bare-faced
removal of your purse, pocket-book, or watch, should have been
discovered by you in good time, so as absolutely to be engaged in
endeavours to obtain restitution.

From these few specimens a judgment may be formed of the
value of the Baron's advice, suggested by much experience,
how to walk with safety to person and pocket the perilous
streets of London. Equally excellent are his general rules
and cautions to be observed on the highways and roads near
the outskirts of London. They are precisely such as we used
always to observe half a century ago — more or less — when
the highways and byways were far rifer than now with all
sorts of danger.

Avoid at all times gateways, corners of streets, mews, lanes,
and all obscure recesses, for they are the lurking-places of
thieves, robbers, perhaps murderers. Not that they are at all
times so haunted — but your business may be effectually done
in one encounter — and therefore " accustom yourself never to
pass such places without expecting the possibility of some
such attack."

Keep the crown of the carriage-road — if wheels be unfre-
quent ; and, if compelled to walk the causeway, keep the side
farthest from the ditch. So may you prevent the rascals from
surrounding you, and be able at once to make play.

Never suffer any man to come in close contact with you,
whether he be walking before or behind ; — if he hang on your
steps — cross over — and if he do the same, outwalk him if you
cau. If you hear his step too close upon you, face about, and

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS. 377

make a sudden halt, " as if to examine something, yet looking
at him firmly as he comes on towards you, thus to make him
pass you ; but doing all this without any flurry or menace."
If he has not screwed his courage to the sticking-place, he
will probably wish you good-night and pass on. Be in no
haste to follow him — but step into the first public, and take a
cheerer. But, continues the bold Baron, " if a fellow on the
highway hangs down his head as if to baulk your scrutiny,
and still continues about you, prepare yourself instantly to
make the most desperate resistance ; for he not only has deter-
mined on attacking you, but he will conclude his robbery with
maltreatment — perhaps as long as symptoms of life appear,
for fear you should swear to his person." It is often, there-
fore, a point not merely of delicacy, but of difficulty and dan-
ger, to look a fellow on the highway in the face on either a
cloudy or clear night. If you do not, you cannot tell whether
he intends to murder you or not ; and if you do, he is sure to
murder you if he can : for he cannot fail to remark that you
are studying his phiz, that you may with a safe conscience
swear to his person at the Old Bailey. "Wherefore the con-
siderate Baron counselleth " any timid or feeble person to
refrain from scrutinising the features of robbers. They should
not appear to know — if even they should recognise him — any
felonious assailant, much less be so foolish as to call him by
name." Yet here again it is dangerous to affect ignorance.
They see through your cowardly hypocrisy, and fracture your
skull.

What, then, are the best modes of self-defence against
attacks, whether on the streets or on the highways and roads ?
— and this brings us to the third part of the Baron's discourse,
from which we are selecting a few characteristic specimens.
In it he draws his practical conclusions. And in the first
place he directs our attention to " our tools or rather weapons."
" The stick," he says well, " is an excellent weapon." " A
stick," he does not hesitate to say — " in able hands, is nearly
as good as a sword." Nay, in the hands of an inferior broad-
swordsman, it is — he maintains — even better. How so ? Be-
cause a stick inflicts nearly equal pain by a blow from any
part of the circumference, wherefore it has been jocosely called
a sword having an edge all round. The best kind of sticks
— are oak, ash, and hazel saplings, black thorn, and sound

378 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

ratans. Katans, however sound, are apt to fly ; but they suit
persons whose arms are deficient in muscle, for they can be
recovered quickly after a cut, and they cut sharp. We have
always been partial to oak, though we have done good execu-
tion with ash, but " my own fancy," says the Colonel, " is in
favour of the blackthorn." Its knobs save the knuckles, and
it is your true Tom Tough. Black ratans are seldom sound —
and most of the other canes are too springy for parrying and
making true cuts. Great nicety of hand and eye are required
in the selection of a well-shaped and sound stick ; and some
men, as if by intuition, will put their hand at once on the best
plant in a hundred. " When I speak," adds de Berenger, " of
a stick for defence, I need hardly tell you that the sticks of the
present fashionable kind are least likely of all to support that
denomination in the hour of danger. Nor do I mean a long
and ill-shaped stick, such as the famed Colonel Hanger, after-
wards Lord Coleraine, used to carry when riding on his grey
galloway, and which he assured me he regularly ' steeped in
port wine to make it tough.' I mean plain oak, crabsticks, or
thorn, or ratans." Good sticks should taper something more
than they commonly do; the points should be strong but
slight, and the ferules small ; the hand end should have a ten-
dency to the oval, that it may lie more sword-like in the palm;
and a leathern thong and tassel is necessary, that, by passing
your hand through it, and giving one or two twists, you may
" secure its retention sword-knot like." A knob at the handle
end is an impediment ; and to load the end with lead, " if not
absolutely cowardly, is at least foolish," for it deducts from the
severity of a cut from the point : such a loaded stick can only
be used like a hammer, at close quarters ; if you miss your
blow you are gone, and there is nothing like off" fighting, espe-
cially against odds.

The Baron holds tuck sticks in sovereign contempt. " A
good swordsman, armed with a good blackthorn, may smile at
being attacked by two, nay, even three tuck sticks, — one good
parry to each will place the owners at his mercy : attacks from
a tuck stick being with the point, you have only to use almost
any of the small-sword disarming parries, quickly closing upor
your assailant at the same time, in order to seize his right
with your left hand, and after throwing the hilt end of youi
Btick a little out of your hand, to strike it, with a back-handec

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS. 379

blow forcibly into his face or teeth ; and, as he staggers from
you, to lay him at your feet, with either a severe cut on his
head, or by giving point at his face with the proper end of
your stick," armed with its small sharp ferule.

The Baron once owed his life to an unsound ratan. "It
broke near the point, while I was applying a severe cut at the
ribs of the most formidable of several footpads, whose ferocious
attack gave me little hopes of extrication, nay, of life. It
was saved, however, by mere chance ; for poising my broken
stick to ascertain its length, it being dusk, the powerful fellow,
who must have been a trooper from his bludgeon skill, took it
for a feint, and throwing himself open by guarding his head,
I seized the opportunity to give point at his face with the
splintered end. It must have torn his face all to pieces ; for,
with a deep groan, he staggered a few paces, turned, and ran
away, and his companions scampered also, to my great relief,
for they had nearly felled me by some very severe blows. On
my return home, my servant discovered pieces of skin, with
much whisker hair, forced into the splinters of the stick, show-
ing that the wound, although resulting from the impulse of the
moment, must have been a very dreadful one."

On an emergency, there are worse weapons than an umbrella.
We never carry one now, and when we used to do so, do not
remember having ever unfurled it in a shower. We used to
whack with it the shoulders of raffs, as with the flat of a sabre,
till they knew not whether to laugh or cry — whether we were
in jest or earnest. Only in extremities we gave point. But
we doff our bonnets to the Baron, and cheerfully acknowledge
his superior skill and more original genius with the umbrella.
" It may be opened quickly to serve as a shield to hide your
pulling a pistol out of your pocket (taking care how you cock
it safely with one hand) thereupon to shoot a robber, either
through or under it — taking great care to hit him. I found it
a valuable weapon, although by mere chance ; for, walking
along in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly
turned upon me, out of a street which I had just approached ;
by instinct more than judgment, I gave point at him severely,
opened as the umbrella was, which, screening me at the same
time, was an article from which he did not expect thrusts, but
which, although made at guess, for I could not see him, turned
him over and over, and before he could recover himself, his

380 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him ; the whole
being the work of even few seconds : but for the umbrella, the
horrors of hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."

Umbrellas are usually carried in wet weather, and dogs
usually run mad, if ever, in dry. So perhaps the safest plan
is to carry an umbrella all the year through — like Wellington.
Speaking of dogs, we find on page 242 some useful advice how
to treat them when they are unreasonable — the " most effica-
cious mode" is quite a picture. " Dogs attacking you should
be hit with a stick over the fore-legs, or over the nose or ear.
The first application, however, is not only more easily exe-
cuted, but also more distressing, even to a bull-dog." There
is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a
word or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with
a bull-dog, but a young lady of our own species. " If you can
seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it
sharply, he cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it;
therefore, by keeping him thus well pinched, you may lead
him wherever you like ; or you may, with the other hand,
seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus without
danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at extri-
cation. But here comes " a ridiculous, and with most dogs
efficacious mode." " Look at them with your face from be-
tween your opened legs, holding the skirts away, and
running at them thus backwards, of course head below,
stern exposed, and above, and growling angrily ; most dogs,
seeing so strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes
below the mouth, &c., are so dismayed, that, with their tails
between their legs, they are glad to scamper away, some even
howling with affright. I have never tried it with a thorough-
bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them ; though I have
practised it and successfully with most of the other kinds : it
might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."

One can hardly write about bull-dogs without thinking
about bulls ; and the Baron in the same letter — the 14th —
entitled " Miscellaneous advice, and especially as to extrica-
tion from perilous situations," treats of the perils of horned
cattle.

Bulls, cows, deer, and horned animals, generally charge with as
much stupidity as desperation ; you may avoid or even avert their
horns, the first by activity and judgment, the second by a sharp cut

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS. 381

at the tip of the horn, which, owing to the force applied to the ex-
tremity of a lever, jars and hurts them, but it requires great expert-
ness and decision ; so far you may succeed, but you cannot resist,
much less overcome, the weight and impetus of their charge : a
winding run, with many and sudden turns, will serve you some-
thing ; a coat, a hat — nay even and particularly a red handkerchief,
dropped in your flight, will arrest the attention of the animal, to give
you time to gain ground, whilst it is goring or smelling what you
have thrown before it ; but the best way is, to make for a large
tree, if one is near, in order to stand closely before it, and even
to irritate the animal to a charge, thereupon nimbly to slip on one
side and behind the tree, which, receiving the charge, most likely
will fling the assailant down, with the shock returned upon itself.
I have been saved in a similar way from the fury of a bull, by mak-
ing towards and placing myself before the wall of Bellsize park, for,
as the bull dropped his head ! and charged ! ! [for bear in mind there
is no interval between the indication and a most rapid execution !]
I made a side leap of six feet and more, to scramble away as fast as
I could ; but my fear was quite unnecessary, for, having broken one
of his horns, and stunned himself otherwise, I left him laying with
his tongue out and motionless : whether he recovered, or paid the
forfeit of his life for his unprovoked malice, I had neither curiosity
nor relish to ascertain, for he had given me a long and distressing
heat to reach this wall, and which, by zigzags only, I effected ; for
he had more speed than myself, although then I was rather a superior
runner, but, by overshooting the turn at each zigzag, he lost ground.
Had he not been so very fast, I might have resorted to another mode,
that of taking off my coat, and of throwing it over his horns ; if ever
you do the latter, you must not expect to wear it again, nor should I
advise its use if you have any valuables in the pockets. Some re-
commend that you should leap over the bull's lowered head on to
his back : it may do, if you can make sure of not falling off, for slip
off you must of course ; but, like hitting the beast a sharp blow
across the fore-legs, it will do, and is an excellent application of
gymnastics, provided you can make sure, for if you fail you are
lost, or you are at his mercy at any rate. It is something like
laying down, although not quite so tame, for that answers some
times, that is, as a dernier resort, and provided you lay motionless ;
and then you should hold your breath, and also keep your face to-
wards the ground. Make up your mind to being not only well
smelled over by a bull or ox, but also turned over with the horns,
and trampled upon, and, if that is all, you may get up contented
when he is out of sight, for he may watch you suspiciously and
cunningly ; but with a wild boar, and certainly not with a stag,
especially a red one, I should not like to experimentalise in this

382 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

way, although I have heard it recommended : most of the other
methods may be found useful with these animals, as well as with
oxen and bulls, but, like cows, most of these keep their eyes open
when they charge, whilst a bull or an ox shuts them, an intimation
you ought not to forget !

But let us return from this episode to modes of self-defence
on the highways and roads against human assailants. If
stopped on horseback by footpads, cuts five or six at the
face with your whip — " a little lead may be tolerated in
the handle" — are the most destructive. If you are armed
with a hammer- ended hunting-whip you may hit where you
can — but anywhere rather than on the head of footpad, for
ten to one the crown of his hat is stuffed with hay, or straw,
or wool, to fend a blow aimed at the top of his head. A
country squire has been known to capture a footpad by
throwing the lash of his hunting-whip round his neck, and
then riding him down ; but the Colonel " does not recom-
mend that expedient," though in one case crowned with
success. " Had the squire," says he, " seized the muzzle
of the footpad's pistol in an averting direction, and followed
it up by spurring his horse against and over him, it would
have been by far the safest way." Unless you are satisfied
you are ball-proof, don't imitate the squire.

The moment you are attacked by another footpad, seize his
pistol with one hand — if possible in the direction of his head —
at all events, away from your own — and with your other well-
clenched fist hit him a sharp blow on the throat, upwards, so
as to be stopped by his chin — the nails of your fingers of
course towards yourself, and the back of your hand down-
wards, as is known to every natural pugilist. Up fly his
heels, you kneel on his throat — secure the pistol — tie his
hands behind his back with his own fogle, and march him to
the station-house.

This mode of disposing of a footpad, and several others, are
illustrated by very spirited plates. But should you be obliged
to run away before superior numbers, let one — the best runner
of course — gain a little upon you; then seem to make a
desperate effort to get away, which will cause him to use
what is called the top of his speed ; let him come near you at
that speed, and suddenly, but cleverly, drop before him on
your hands and knees. " Swift as an arrow from a Tartar's

DE BERENGER'S HELPS AND HINTS. 383

bow," the astonished footpad cuts the air, and falling on his
face some ten yards in advance, he presents on your arrival a
pleasing spectacle — " for his face will be all cut in pieces — you
improve your advantage in every way you can" — and having
battered his held well with your blackthorn, pursue your
journey at double-quick time.

The great difficulty is to know how to deal with the swell
mob. If hemmed in by numbers, grasp your stick by the
middle, and thrust or poke with either end without cere-
mony or discrimination, chiefly directing such thrusts or
pokes at their faces and stomachs. " Smart blows" may
occasionally be dealt, but " they will not serve so well as
forcible thrusts" — all the while keep kicking away at shins
— and, says the Baron, " by active and determined industry
you will soon make yourself an opening." If with your left
hand you can get at your snuff you cannot do better than
throw it in the eyes of the swell mob in a close. But take
care not to waste your ammunition — nor remit the use of
your sapling — till " smarting under blindness and sneezing
they will open a gap for you, anxious as they will be to get
away whilst labouring under so perplexing a situation."

Hitherto you have been attacked on foot or horseback, and
have always come off victorious — so may you, if you but obey
de Berenger, on finding yourself in presence of the enemy —
cooped up in a post-chaise — or " open to the gales of fiercely-
breathing war " in a gig. The first point to be determined is
— "Shall I resist?" — and the Baron "most anxiously and
earnestly beseeches you to answer, without vanity or stint of
candour, the following questions, which you ought to put to
yourself ; for on the self-probing correctness of your inward
reply, not only your property, but your life may depend."
Say to yourself, 1st, — looking at your double-barrelled pistols
— " May I rely on having sufficient firmness and self-posses-
sion to use them ? 2d, Do I possess skill sufficient to use
them to the purpose ?" If the answers to these questions are
at all unsatisfactory, at once deliver. If the " man within the
breast " be resolute, then let the ghost of Abershaw himself
stop you, and you will let the moonlight shine through him at
the first pop. Attend to the Colonel.

Footpads, upon stopping a carriage, generally open one of the
doors, one of their party remaining about the heads of the horses :

384 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the moment they do so, coolly and steadily fire at the man whose
pistol seems most to be directed towards you — present, sloping
downwards, and rather below than at or above his chest : if you
hit him, he will be disabled, although his life may be spared. If he
fires at and misses you, drop as if wounded into^he bottom of the
carriage, and before he or they have recovered from their guilty sur-
prise, you may, whilst lying at the bottom, shoot one or two of the
footpads near the door ; and the horses, probably startled by the
firing, or urged by the driver, may knock down those near their
heads ; if so your carriage should start off, remain at the bottom of
it, for if any of the gang fire at the back of the carriage — as was
done by the noted Jerry Abershaw, who killed some gentlemen that
way, you are less likely to be hit than if you place yourself on the
seat.

In an open four-wheeled carriage these modes, it is allowed,
are more difficult — in a gig more so still; — indeed some of
them impossible — but genius and presence of mind will enable
the Stopped to adapt his conduct to the peculiar circumstances
of each case as it occurs, and to strew the high-road with
footpads. But suppose you have taken " one, and why not
two prisoners," how are you to convey them to headquarters ?
Suppose you gained the night single-handed and on foot.
Why, then, you must play the Prussian corporal. " They
either make the men themselves (taken in battle), and a
pistol pointed at a footpad would make him do it — or the
corporals, cut off all the buttons from the waistband of the
prisoners' small-clothes, and they slit the waistband down the
hind part besides, taking away the braces also. This com-
pels the fellows in marching to hold up their small-clothes
with both their hands, an attitude which precludes their
attacking, and impedes their running away."

We find that we have reached the limits set to this article,
and grieve that it is not now in our power to show how per-
sons falling into the water may, though they cannot swim,
easily save themselves from drowning — how, with common
coolness, any man may escape from a house on fire, and carry
with him at least one woman ; and how you may kill or cap-
ture any number of thieves who may have the rashness to
enter your domicile at dead of night. But the truth is, we
have given you but a glimpse of the contents of this library
of useful and entertaining knowledge in one volume. Pur-
chase it — for it is cheap at 14s., with its numerous embellish-

DE BEREXGER S HELPS AND HINTS. 385

ments, by Mr Bonner and others, after designs by MESSRS
G. AND K. CEUIKSHANK, ALKEN, HAGHE, FUSSELL, AND DE
BERENGER.

One lesson, however, we must read you from the Baron, for
the art it teaches is indispensable to the domestic comfort of
every man moving in civilised life. " To TURN A PERSON OUT
OF A ROOM, at times may become necessary ;" and how may it
be best performed ?

I shall state several ways of doing it, wherefore you can employ
either, just as circumstances favour any particular mode. For ex-
ample : if you perceive a favourable opportunity to seize the right
hand of a troublesome person with your own right, do so, and,
quickly lifting it, pass your left hand and arm under his right, to
seize him by the collar with your left, fixing your antagonist's right
elbow on your left arm at the same time. Now, by having placed
the end of your own thumb upon the back of his right hand, you
will have the power of twisting his hand outwards, and of pressing
it downwards at the same time, your left arm becoming the fulcrum
to his elbow, which giving him extraordinary pain, will raise him on
his toes, and thus you can move him out of a room before you, so
long as you keep his arms straight, and which you should not omit
on any account. Or, seize a person by the collar of his coat, at the
back of his neck, with one hand, and with the other lay hold of that
part of his small-clothes, and just under his waistband, where they
are roomy instead of tight ; hoist him up by the latter hold, so as to
bring him nearly on tiptoe, and, with a firm hold of his collar, push
him forward, and off his balance, at the same time : to prevent himself
from falling, he must move forward, and thus, by means of pushing
and hoisting, you can easily steer him out of the room, or whichever
way you please ; you may, if he is of great weight, or you are afraid
of his turning round to hit you, lay your own weight against his
back, pushing him thus, as well as driving him on by the modes just
stated.

VOL. VII. 2 B

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT BOME.1

[DECEMBEB 18*2.]

A MAN of genius told us, a good many years ago, that ours
is a mechanical age, and, in his own eloquent way, gave us
some of his reasons for thinking so ; but, unfortunately, few
of his followers have much of his wit or wisdom, and all of
them have so long kept repeating pragmatically his dicta,
that, but for the love we bear him, we should have lost our
temper with Thomas Carlyle. Thank Heaven, it is a mecha-
nical age ; but, thank Heaven, it is likewise an intellectual
and imaginative age ; as ages go — even a moral and religious
age. Consider that the vital functions of our souls and bodies
are still dependent on machinery not worked by steam. It
seems but poor philosophy to believe that mind can suffer loss
in its nobler faculties from its power over matter — that the
discoveries and inventions of physical science enlarge not the
sphere of our spiritual being. With what, out of ourselves,
have we human beings been contending since the birth of
time, but with the difficulties of nature ? As we continue to
conquer more and more of them, so much power is left free
to be employed in the harder conquest over the evils inherent
in our own hearts. Again, then, we say, thank Heaven, it is a
mechanical age — a practical age — an age of Utilitarians. The
earth, as if to shame the seers in our own time, has by know-
ledge been made more and more productive of necessaries,
comforts, and luxuries, after her fertility was said to be ex-
hausted ; and the great law is now seen to be, that as civilisa-
tion advances, population creates subsistence. Meanwhile,
has the soil of the soul become barren? — and if so, from want
of cultivation, or from having been overcropped ?

We know not well how many years compose an age. And
does it not, eagle-like, renew its youth? The present age

1 Lays of Ancient Rome. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 387

seems in its prime — yet we remember it holding its head high
fifty years ago. To observe its character truly, and to the
life, you must be conversant with all it has said and done.
Be not so foolish, we beseech you, as to imagine, for a moment,
that it is dead when it is but asleep — that it is asleep when it
is but silent. Then, surely, there is an allowable resting on
its arms, in august repose, after victories won. The age may
be thinking, and therefore still and mute, till, all of a sudden,
it rises up, and speaks like the sea.

Never again, as ye love us, say that the age has no imagina-
tion. It is the age of genius. A more poetical age never
flourished. Thought and passion are prevalent in its highest
literature. It rejoices in its

" Serene creators of immortal things."

Some of the greatest lately dropped the body — some are pre-
paring to follow — few will be seen ten years hence — probably
not one ; yet the nations, while they are yet weeping, forget
their grief, and remember that nature lets . not her sweet and
solemn singers die, but has destined them a life here below to
fade but with the stars.

But, haply, you hold that the age we have been speaking of
is past. You see numbers of young men and women ; and,
regarding them collectively, you call them the present age.
The old and elderly seem to you lingering survivors of a
time, along with which they had better have departed in the
course of nature — and, impatient of their stay, you would
forget them if you could ; or you say, their day is over, while
another and brighter sky salutes the new sons of the morning.

What say you, then, to them who call yours a mechanical
age, and yourselves a generation of manufacturers ? To re-
fute them, produce your poets. Alas ! of poets there are
plenty — enow and to spare ; but sad and strange to say, few
will listen to the nightingales. In plain prose, poetry is
declared a drug. The supply, it is averred, has outrun the
demand. Oh, horror, there is a glut ! — and Apollo shuts up
shop, having appeared as apothecary in the Gazette — in the
list of bankruptcies superseded I

Now, ours is a different opinion altogether on this matter.
We assert there is no glut of the real commodity — the genuine
article; but flimsy counterfeits of all the favourite patterns

388 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

have been so multiplied, that people are afraid to buy, and
stand far aloof ; and we need not dwell on prices in a market-
place, how spacious soever, which is peopled exclusively by
sellers.

But leaving the consideration of the law of supply and
demand to the political economists, let us look in the face of
the Pensive Public, and say whether or no we discern there
any symptoms of indifference or disgust to poetry and poets.
She doth wear, we confess it, a somewhat sourish aspect ; but
on what poetry, and on what poets, may the melancholy maid
be musing ? On the Small-beer School, or haply, on that of
Imperial Pop? These Schools insist on being heard at all
hours, even on the most solemn occasions ; and what, we ask,
can be more unseasonable than the sudden clunk or crack of a
cork, during a formal forenoon call, an evening conversazione,
a marriage, or a funeral ? The beer may, like that of Trinity,
be a very pretty beer, but it ought to learn to take things
quietly, and be less ambitious ; seldom doth brown stout, in
that obstreperous style, seek to burst on the world — Glenlivet
never. Yet sometimes to such report doth the Pensive Public
her ear not ungraciously incline ; and, putting forth her lily
hand, she lifteth to her rosy mouth that of the importunate
blackamoor ; when, lo and behold ! the contents have vanished
in froth, and she kisses a barmy deposit.

But there is better poetry than the above to be had for love
or money. Its cultivators "the primrose path of dalliance
tread." They are " all for love and a little for the bottle" —
nature is the mistress they adore — and with a phial in the left
hand, of rose-water or prussic acid, they seem, while inditing
a sonnet, intent on suicide. They excel in the pathetic and
the sweetly pretty ; but some of the more highly gifted among
them are addicted to delineations of the darker passions, and
their forte is the intense. Keep that threne some inches further
from your noses and eyes, or they will water as at the contact
of a vinaigrette. Remarkable inconsistencies of genius ! That
threne was indited by a curled darling with pink cheeks, who
has occasionally performed the part of a peristrephic image in
the window of a friseur !

Where shall we place " the mob of gentlemen who write
with ease? " They have no connection with the swell mob,
though that incorporation has its poets too ; but are persons of

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 389

birth and breeding, and the best of them border on an agree-
able mediocrity, that in manuscript appears tip-top composi-
tion. But, somehow or other, it does not stand being printed,
and comes out very wish-washy from the press. Yet among
them are prize poets, men who in their Club continue to culti-
vate the fine classical vein that distinguished them in their
College. Nevertheless, Shelley and Keats are their idols;
and they, too, must needs sing of the Sensitive Plant and Ruth.

Next come the professional poets. Most of them are young
men from thirty to fifty years of age, who, having figured
with effect in some chosen periodical while yet mere boys
pretty well on in their third decade, come forth, when able to
stand by themselves, in a separate volume, in the full effulgence
of youthful manhood. Half a century ago, poets half a century
old were gazed at reverentially by the risen generation, less
perhaps on account of their genius than of their grey hairs.
Nay, poets of a quarter of a century were respected for their
years, and their images were combined in public imagination
with those of a wife and small family. Nowadays they are
regarded as precocious children, and the leading Eeviews break
out with prophecies of glory awaiting them in future years,
when they shall be nearing man's estate. People in the pro-
vinces, who have not been let into the secret, start on their
introduction to " one of the most promising of our young
poets," at beholding a bald or bush-headed man of middle age,
in spectacles, and, if not with an indisputable pot-belly, yet
" corpulent exceedingly," and, by rude guess, fourteen stone
avoirdupois. Some are indeed slender ; but, with few excep-
tions, they agree in this — in case of a militia they are safe
from the ballot.

For a good many years have we been praising the Young
Poets — not without a sense of the ludicrous, patting their
peurile heads. "Lyart haffets wearing thin and bare," look
queer on an Apollo adolescens, fat fair and forty, blushing
from his first maiden attempt before the eyes of the town.
Why, "when our auld cloak was new," a poet was supposed
to have reached the age of puberty at twenty — ere that term
Campbell had realised the Pleasures of Hope — soon after it,
Akenside the Pleasures of Imagination. A poet of thirty was
reckoned quite an old stager, entreated by miss in her teens
not to dance lest he should crack the Achillean tendon, or

390 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

bring down the floor. Now he leaves the dinner- table with
the ladies, and hands the tea-cups.

" Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage."

To be serious — what have our Young Poets done ? They
pray for a soul like a sea, and out it squirts in a sonnet. They
tell you that it flows like a river ; but you know a canal when
you see it, and a cut, too, before the water has been let on
from the reservoir. A pond with a drooping willow, and a
leash of wooden ducks, is a pretty close scene — quite a picture
— but not for the pencil of a Turner. In landscape-painting
by a great poet, we look for a breadth of canvass — or, which
is the same thing, or better, " a region" on an oblong that
might be put into your pocket. Our Young Poets, as Fanny
Kemble used to say of herself in her Journal, potter, potter, pot-
ter, and all about themselves ; morning, noon, and night, they
potter, potter, potter all about their own dear, sweet, consump-
tive, passionate, small, infantile selves — trying at times to look
fierce, nay facetious ; and in the very whirlwind of passion, suf-
ficiently tropical to lift up a curl tastefully disposed on their
organ of identity three inches broad, are they seen picking obso-
lete-looking words out of a pocket edition of Walker's Pronounc-
ing Dictionary — an artifice among the cognoscenti called " tip-
ping the quaint." And thus are they occupiedfor years ! — never
for a moment conjecturing that possibly they may have immor-
tal souls to be lost or saved. A pin-point burnisher appears
in comparison a many-sided man, plying a various and com-
prehensive handicraft, in which mind ministers to metal, and
on material substance all the spiritual faculties are brought
into full play.

Our friends, the Young Poets, will forgive in the Old Man
these splenetic moods of his own mind, " between malice and
true love," worth a thousand eulogies from any other quill,
and reconcilable not only with kind affection, but with high
admiration. Why, ye are all boys of our own, ye dogs ; and
Crusty Christopher has celebrated your names — so he need
not now mention them — over " whatever clime the sun's bright
circle warms." And now we perceive that we have brought
ourselves, by a pleasant circumbendibus, sweepingly round to

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 391

the very point from which we started in our initial sentence ;
and if there were any mystery before in the fact — if fact it be
— that poetry is a drug, and a drug at discount, we think we
have afforded the solution.

The lovers of poetry have fallen back on the old bards yet
living, or but lately dead. By searching out, they find nothing
in you Young Poets of equal excellence with the treasures
lying in the works of your immediate predecessors, open to
the whole world's use. Concealed beauties are nature's de-
lights ; but they are concealed by her, not that human eyes
may miss them in the places of their nativity, but because by
her fiat they love the shade, and li ve by glimpses of light that
know the way into their most shy recesses. Lift up the leaf,
and there is the flower. The buds are encaged in dew, but
the blossoms affront the sun softly shining through trees ; and
in the forest glade, that bank, all spring long, has been gor-
geous with unburning fire.

The lovers of poetry have fallen back on still older bards.
Think ye Shakespeare and Milton are without their wor-
shippers ? God forbid they should be talked about as men
talk about politics and the weather ! But in how many thou-
sand libraries — great and small — are they to be found ? Be-
queathed unawares from generation to generation — neglected
by whole families during whole lifetimes — by their successors
rescued from idle oblivion, their names again household words,
and their spirits household gods !

" Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays !
Oh ! might my name be number'd among theirs,
Then gladly would I end iny mortal days."

So prayed Wordsworth — not in vain. Few are they who
might blamelessly join in that prayer — that is, with justifiable
hope of its fulfilment.

One grievous fault may be found with all our Young Poets —
they want fire. Steel and flint seldom meet in their hands ;
when they do, the sparks fall on matter that will not ignite.
Or we may say of them, that they walk into dark corridors
with unlighted candles — with torches that will not flare up —
with lamps unprovided with oil, as if the bearers thought the

392 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

polished burnish would the gloom illumine. They look like
patients enjoying a partial recovery from ague — " Poor Tom's
a-cold!"

And yet, such is the indestructible love of poetry in the
hearts of men, that, in spite of all their wants, our Young
Poets have been hailed with loud acclaim, and their merits,
so far from having been overlooked or undervalued, have been
allowed, and rated much above their intrinsic worth. There-
fore the hearts of more than one of the worthiest have burned
within them, not, alas ! with more fervent heat of inspiration,
but with flickering fires of vanity, thought by them to be pride;
and, making golden calves of themselves, they have bowed
down and worshipped their own reflections in brazen mirrors,
artistically contrived for the solemn rites of self-adoration.
Tell them they are calves — and sucking-calves, too — and they
low against you with voices corroborative of the truth they
deny. We pity Narcissus — but have no patience with the
self-idolatry of the son of a cow.

No poet who hopes for immortality should ever look into $
glass, except for a few minutes, on Saturday night, when
beautifying his visage by a shave. Whereas, our Young Poets
are seldom away from it — perpetually " holding the mirror up
to nature," and falling " to such perusal of their face as they
would draw it." We verily believe they see it in their dreams.
It haunts every house in which they happen to take a night's
lodging ; and, in cases of indigestion, it grins at them through
the physiognomy of the nightmare.

The world and we are beginning, we suspect, to be wearied
of the Young Poets ; and, in such peevish moods as will occa-
sionally steal upon the most benign, we captiously inquire
into their age. We give parish-clerks shillings to search
parish-registers, and we fling in their teeth extracts establish-
ing their conversion to Christianity before the present century
had seen the sun. By deducting a few lustres from our own
longevity, we find that the difference between our age and
theirs is not worth mentioning ; and, on their calling us Old
Christopher, we ask them to explain. We then offer to show
legs — challenge the most agile to the Houlachan, and set the
question at rest for ever, by throwing a somerset.

Old Christopher, indeed ! Do not, most pensive of Publics,
accuse us of pride. We are railing in humility of heart at the
sons of little men, for strutting on tiptoe, with smirking faces,

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 393

among the shadows of the mighty, and among the selves of
the mighty yet moving sedately in flesh and blood on this our
green round earth. Why, ours has been and is the Age of
Gods, and Demigods, and Heroes, and Men. Nor among the
Hoi polloi has there been a want of tall fellows. Why, then,
all this strutting* and smirking on the part of pigmies ? How
dare their Forlorn Hope, even to the maddening blare of many
penny-trumpets, seek to storm Mount Parnassus ?

Now, would you believe it, all this is intended for a preface
or introduction to a short critique on Macaulay's " LAYS OF
ANCIENT HOME I"

What ! Poetry from Macaulay ? Ay — and why not ? The
House hushes itself to hear him, even when " Stanley is the
cry." If he be not the first of critics (spare our blushes), who
is? Name the Young Poet who could have written THE
ARMADA, and kindled, as if by electricity, beacons on all the
brows of England till night grew day ?

The Young Poets, we said, all want fire. Macaulay, then,
is not one of the set ; for he is full of fire. The Young Poets
too, are somewhat weakly ; he is strong. The Young Poets
are rather ignorant ; his knowledge is great. The Young
Poets mumble books; he devours them. The Young Poets
dally with their subject ; he strikes its heart. The Young
Poets twiddle on the Jew's harp ; he sounds the trumpet.
The Young Poets are arrayed in long singing-robes, and look
like women ; he chants succinct — if need be — for a charge.
The Young Poets are still their own heroes ; he sees but the
chiefs he celebrates. The Young Poets weave dreams with
shadows transitory as clouds; with substances he builds
realities lasting as rocks. The Young Poets are imitators
all ; he is original. The Young Poets steal from all and
sundry, and deny their thefts. He robs in the face of day.
Whom ? Homer.

We said just now — he is original. In his Preface, he traces
what appears to him to have been the process by which the
lost Ballad-poetry of Rome was transformed into history.
And the object of his Ballads is to reverse the process — to
transform some portions of early Roman history back into the
poetry out of which they were made.

All scholars know that Niebuhr speaks of the lays and
legends out of which grew the fabulous history of old Rome.
He calls Livy's account of the battle at the Lake Regillus,

394 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

"a rich and beautiful epical narrative;" and says, "the
gigantic battle, in which the gods openly take part, and de-
termine the result, closes the Lay of the Tarquins ; and I am
convinced that I am not mistaken in conjecturing, that, in the
old poem, the whole generations who had been warring with
one another ever since the crime of Sextus, were swept away
in this Mort of heroes." " Lays of Ancient Kome," then, is not
a thought of Macaulay's ; but the thought, though suggested
before, would not have appeared capable and worthy of execu-
tion except to a man of genius and a scholar, one who had a
strong power of placing himself under the full influence of an
imagined situation, and whose elaborate and accurate study
of antiquity furnished him with an ample and authentic store
of names and incidents, dress and drapery, manners and feel-
ings. The seed scattered abroad found here a fit and fertile
soil to receive it.

Let Niebuhr flourish; let truth, in its most rigid and
critical particularity, be sought for and sifted. But, after all,
the legends of a nation like Eome will be as full of truth as
the dry bones of authoritative history. As history in general
is said to be less truthful than poetry, so the fictions which
were formed and cherished among a great people, though
false in their details, may be more true in the spirit than the
letter of the best attested discoveries which had been lost
sight of in popular tradition.

That much of early Eoman history must be fabulous, all
men always knew ; for they had no letters for centuries — no
historians till centuries later — and all public monuments had
been destroyed by fire. All, then, was left to tradition ; and
what faith could be placed in tradition, reaching back so far ?

Tradition, it is easy to see, must, from many causes, still
stray further and further from the truth in each succeeding
generation. What innumerable unintentional inaccuracies
must occur in each successive narrator's statement of the
facts — from the gathering on them of obscurity, through which
they loom larger than life, or sink into the shade, or are par-
tially discerned, or recede into oblivion I Then how perpetual
is the action of imagination upon every narrative ! A slight
variation in the circumstances of the event suggests a new
meaning in it; and the event itself is then altered in its
outline to sustain that idea of its significance. Sometimes

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT EOME. 395

that is done involuntarily ; oftener, perhaps, the process is
wilfully indulged, as nothing more than an innocent ingenious
restoration of the traces which time had obliterated.

But more powerful in its operation than all these influences,
is the natural disposition in men to find something great and
marvellous in the antiquity — in the "mighty youth" of a
great nation. Otherwise it would seem as if the present
greatness wanted an adequate cause.

" Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem !"

There are proud regards of the olden time natural to a people
possessed of empire ; and, as Livy pleasantly observes, we
must just admit the one as we submit to the other. There
was here justice in the fiction. If Romulus was not, he ought
to have been, the Son of Mars.

Much of the early Roman history, then, is pure fable ; but
much of it also must have a basis of truth. When pure fable,
must it be omitted from history ? Livy thought not. . But the
obviously fabulous he generally gives as tradition (fama tenet"),
and traditions are a legitimate part of history when they are
given as such. The pursuit of the fabulous in Roman history
is not of the noblest, and sometimes it signally fails. Thus
the story of Horatius Codes was denied, because Polybius, who
wrote before Livy, says that Porsena completely conquered the
Romans, as if the two things were not perfectly compatible.

Out of a natural reverence of antiquity, springs, it would
seem, a disposition in men to find in its history the marvel-
lous in incident, as well as the marvellous in human character
and achievement. Is not the pure fable often in the incidents?
the mixed in the character and situation of the great men ? In-
cident being the natural element of fiction ; and hence the
coinage easiest, and afterwards ready for the apprehension of
all minds.

The legends of early Rome are well adapted to imaginative
treatment, as themselves are the offspring of imagination.
They have already received their first purgation from the
dross of reality — they have been smelted, and lie prepared for
another glowing furnace. Or may we not rather say, that the
whole life and meaning of the early heroes of Rome are repre-
sented in the few isolated events and characters which have
come down ; and what a source of picturesque exaggeration

396 ESSAYS : CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

to these events and characters there is in the total want of all
connected history ! They have thus acquired a pregnancy of
meaning which renders them the richest subjects of poetic
contemplation ; and to evolve the sentiment they embody in
any form we choose, is a proper exercise of the fancy. For
the same reason, is not the history which is freest of the inter-
preting reflection that characterises most modern histories,
and presents most strictly the naked incident, always that
which affords the best, and, as literature shows, the most fre-
quent subjects of imagination ?

The Eoman character is highly poetical — bold, brave, and
independent — devoid of art or subtlety — full of faith and hope
— devoted to the cause of duty, as comprised in the two great
points, of reverence for the gods and love of country. Shake-
speare saw its fitness for the drama ; and these " Lays of
Ancient Rome " are, in their way and degree, a further illus-
tration of the truth. Mr Macaulay might have taken, and we
trust will yet take, wider ground ; but what he has done, he
has done nobly, and like " an antique Eoman."

Who, when looking back upon the nations, with the view of
understanding what that specific character of greatness may
have been, which in the highest power of human achievement
rested, in simple heroic magnanimity, most absolutely upon
itself, feels not his imagination drawn irresistibly to the old
warriors and statesmen — real or fabulous he cares not — the
more fabulous the more real— of Republican Rome ? Wield-
ing, as they did, the only unmatched power that was ever
known upon earth, nursed in arms and danger, sustaining
each in his person the celebrity of a great ancestral name,
and growing up alike to the highest charges of civil and
military command — there could not well be a birth, a morn-
ing, and a noon of life, in which the spirit of the human heart
might rise more gloriously and steadfastly in the conscious-
ness and the capacity of a great destination. They knew
nothing higher nor greater than the lot to which they were
born, and they saw nothing above themselves ; they stood at
the top of earthly pre-eminence. Serving their ambitious
country, they were called to enterprise without bounds ; they
must know no fear, nothing unachievable. The renown and
the safety of the republic rested on the single leader of one
day's battle. They must feel themselves to be invincible.

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF AXCIEXT KOME. 397

And these are indeed the characters which \ve find in these
heroic minds : no height of daring was above their hope to
climb ; no invasion of peril could appal them ; and whatever
duty might be laid upon them, they felt themselves equal to
the charge. What is extraordinary is, that among such
numbers of intrepid, ardent, and unconquerable minds, en-
gaged too in prosecuting ambitious wars, so many should
have been found, in whom it does not seem that ambition had
a place. They served their country's passion for conquest
and renown, and yet kept themselves temperate, austere, and
just. We cannot but think that we are to ascribe to the
virtuous and simple manners of the early republic, that
peculiar character of these great men, their own virtuous
simplicity. We imagine nothing above the powers of their
minds, or their noble desires, in those spirits which have made
the earth blaze with their course. These ancient fathers of
Rome are their equals. Whence is it, then, that their great-
ness did not break forth in ceaseless and consuming flames ?
Because the hand that had thrice triumphed returned to the
plough ; and the dictator must leave his new-turned furrows
to take upon him the deliverance of Rome. It was the
simple virtue of those stern but pure times — a virtue never
forgotten — that was able, like a mighty spell, to control the
grandeur of those unconquerable spirits, and confine them
within themselves. And hence it is not possible for us to
read their history, without feeling that there rests upon them
the august renown of a moral greatness. They were sages in
the calm and meditative quiet of their little field, as they were
awful rulers while they held, in their might of princely counsel,
the sway of the state — as they were dread leaders in the front
of victorious fight. We can find no other explanation of what
is scarce elsewhere to be found, nowhere else in such frequent
example, the very height of heroic greatness with the simple
plainness and contented obscurity, if the expression could be
used, of these men, who, when they had discharged their part
to their country, were indifferent further to their own glory.

But will we never have done ? To the book.

The Ballad of Horatius is supposed to have been made
about the year of the city CCCLX. — about a hundred and twenty
years after the era it celebrates, and just before the taking of
Rome by the Gauls. Lars Porsena of Clusiuin has sworn by

398 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the Nine Gods to restore the Tarquins, and over all his
dominions summoned his array. The Gathering is good, and
proud may be the King ; for

" There be thirty chosen prophets,

The wisest of the land,
Who always by Lars Porsena,

Both morn and evening stand :
Evening and morn the Thirty

Have turned the verses o'er :
Traced from the right on linen white

By mighty seers of yore.

And with one voice the Thirty

Have their glad answer given :
' Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena ;

Go forth, beloved of Heaven !
Go ; and return in glory

To Clusium's royal dome ;
And hang round Nurscia's altars

The golden shields of Korne.' "

The alarm in Kome is well described in a few picturesque
stanzas, and the flocking in " from all the spacious champaign"
of the terrified rustics, with their goods and chattels, old men,
women, and children. Astur has stormed Janioulum ; and the
Fathers rush from the Senate to the walls.

" Outspoke the Consul roundly,

' The bridge must straight go down ;
For since Janiculum is lost,

Nought else can save the town.' "

The enemy's van approaches the bridge — and Porsena in
his ivory car is conspicuous, with Mamilius the Latian prince,
and Sextus the ravisher, at his side.

" But when the face of Sextus

Was seen among the foes,
A yell that rent the firmament

From all the town arose.
On the house-tops was no woman

But spat towards him aud hissed ;
No child but screamed out curses,

And shook its little fist."

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 399

Nothing can be simpler than the soul-stirring stanzas in
which Horatius offers to defend the pass till they hew down,
the bridge, and Spurius Lartius and Herminius step forth to
join him, with a few sufficient words.

Meanwhile Fathers and Commons have not been idle, but
with hatchet, bar, and crow, have been hacking away at the
planks and props — a cry from the walls warns the Three to
recross, and Lartius and Herminius having done their duty,
obey it, but Horatius stands fast.

" Then with a crash like thunder,

Fell every loosen'd beam,
And, like a dam, the mighty wreck

Lay right athwart the stream ;
And a long shout of triumph

Rose from the walls of Rome,
As to the highest turret-tops

"Was splash'd the yellow foam !"

There are critics who think they have paid a ballad of some
six hundred lines, like this, the highest of all possible compli-
ments, when they have said that they read it once and again
right through, from beginning to end, without fatigue or ennui,
and without skipping a single stanza — a week only having
intervened between perusals. And nothing more common
than to hear people in general speak of one perusal as the
utmost demand any human composition can be privileged to
make on any human patience. The instant they happen to
take up a book they have " read before," that very instant
they drop it, as if their hand were stung. Why, Sir Walter
kept reciting his favourite old ballads almost every day in his
life for forty years, and with the same fire about his eyes, till
even they grew dim at last. He would have rejoiced in
" Horatius," as if he had been a doughty Douglas. We have
read it till we find we have got it by heart, and, as our memory
is nothing remarkable, all the syllables must have gone six
times through our sensorium.

We do dearly love to see a poem of action get over the
ground. The bridge down, there was no time to lose, and no
time is lost. Horatius is in no hurry — but he hastes. All is
sudden and quick — the sight of his home — the prayer — the
plunge — the silence — the cheers — the swim — the dry earth —

400 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

the shouting — the weeping— the elevation through the gate of
the Kiver who saved his hero. A tender touch or two come in
here and there ; and we especially applaud " his gory hands."
Striking out in that style across good Father Tiber in flood,
one might have thought his hands would need no more wash-
ing ; but they did — and slight fingers and fair ones cleansed
them in a silver basin ; nor wanted his head, we venture to
say, that night such pillow as once assuaged Mars, months
before Komulus was born.

Porsena was a noble personage ; and he " shines well where
he stands," throughout the ballad. Much is made of his power
and state on the march, for he knew what kind of city he
sought to storm.- But his magnanimity is grandly displayed
by his behaviour at the bridge — in contrast with the false
Sextus, cruel and pusillanimous ever. The conclusion of the
ballad is eminently beautiful.

" The Battle of the Lake Eegillus" is supposed to have been
produced about ninety years after the "Lay of Horatius," and to
have been chanted at the solemnities annually performed on
the Ides of Quintilis, in commemoration of the appearance of
Castor and Pollux on the great day decisive of the fate of the
Tarquins. All the knights, clad in purple, and crowned with
olive, met at a temple of Mars in the suburbs, and thence rode
in state to the Forum, where the Temple of the Twins stood.
This pageant was, during several centuries, considered as one
of the most splendid sights of Home.

The Lay opens abruptly, in the ballad style : —

" Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note !

Ho, lictors, clear the way !
The knights will ride, in all their pride,

Along the streets to-day.
To-day the doors and windows

Are hung with garlands all,
From Castor in the Forum,

To Mars without the wall."

Transition is finely made to the career of the Twins from the
East, on the Great day —

" To -where, by Lake Regillus,
Was fought the glorious fight ;"

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 401

and, after some most impressive lines on the peaceful beauty
in which the famous field has been lying for two hundred years,
the poet sings of the origin of the war with the Latines (the
demand by the Thirty Cities on Rome to receive the Tar-
quins), and the march of the Romans, under Aulus, the Dicta-
tor, to give them battle near the Lake. A splendid description
ensues of the Latin host ; and we cannot help quoting from it
one most striking stanza : —

'' Lavinium and Circeium

Had on the left their post,
With all the banners of the marsh,

And banners of the coast.
Their leader was false Sextus,

That wrought the deed of shame :
With restless pace, and haggard face,

To his last field he came.
Men say he saw strange visions,

Which none beside might see :
And that strange sounds were in his ears,

Which none might hear but he.
A woman fair and stately,

But pale as are the dead,
Oft through the watches of the night

Sate spinning by his bed.
And as she plied the distaff,

In a sweet voice and low,
She sang of great old houses,

And fights fought long ago.
So spun she, and so sang she,

Until the East was grey ;
Then pointed to her bleeding breast,

And shrieked, and fled away."

Such fighting as forthwith ensues we have not read of for
many a day. Mr Macaulay, in his prefatory note, tells us,
almost in the words of Niebuhr (whose words he more than
once uses without seeming to be aware of it), that the " Battle
of the Lake Regillus," in Livy, is in all respects a Homeric
battle, except that the combatants are on horseback instead of
chariots. The mass of fighting men is hardly mentioned.
The leaders single each other out, and engage hand to hand.
The great object of the warriors on both sides, he adds, is, as

VOL. VII. 2 C

402 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

in the Iliad, to obtain possession of the spoils and bodies of
the slain ; and several circumstances are related, which forcibly
remind us of the great slaughter round the corpses of Sarpedon
and Patroclus.

The day is black on Kome ; and the Dictator, looking north,
asks Cossus, captain of the guard, what he sees " through
yonder storm of dust come from the Latian right?" The
banner of Tusculum — and, before the plumed horsemen, him
of the golden helmet, purple vest, and dark-grey charger,
Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name. The Dictator bids
his captain ride southward, where Herminius. is engaged
with the Lavinians, and summon him to oppose Mamilius.
Full soon

" The cheering

Eose with a mighty swell ;
Herminius comes, Herminius,

Who kept the bridge so well !

All round them paused the battle,

While met in mortal fray
The Eoman and the Tusculan,

The horses black and grey.

Down fell they dead together

In a great lake of gore ;
And still stood all who saw them fall

While men might count a score ! "

Like master like man, is an old homely saying — and we add,
like rider like horse. Mamilius was a fiery spirit — so was Her-
minius— and they killed one another so suddenly, .that they
gave us no time to study and discriminate their characters, as
they might have been exhibited in a protracted combat. But,
if like rider like horse be an admitted truth, the Roman was
the superior man of the two — the better to conduct a retreat
or pursue a victory.

" Fast, fast, with heels wild spurning,

The dark-grey charger fled :
He burst through ranks of fighting men ;

He sprang o'er heaps of dead.
His bridle far out-streaming,

His flanks all blood and foam,

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 403

He sought the southern mountains,

The mountains of his home.
The pass was steep and rugged,

The wolves they howled and whined ;
But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass,

And he left the wolves behind.
Through many a startled hamlet

Thunder'd his flying feet :
He rush'd through the gate of Tusculuru,

He rush'd up the long white street ;
He rush'd by tower and temple,

And paused not from his race
Till he stood before his master's door

In the stately market-place.
And straightway round him gather* d

A pale and trembling crowd,
And when they knew him cries of rage

Brake forth, and wailing loud :
And women rent their tresses

For their great prince's fell ;
And old men girt on their old swords,

And went to man the walL

But, like a graven image,

Black Auster kept his place,
And ever wistfully he look'd

Into his master's face.
The raven-mane that daily,

With pats and fond caresses,
The young Herminia wash'd and comb'd,

And twined in even tresses,
And deck'd with coloured ribands

From her own gay attire,
Hung sadly o'er her father's corpse

In carnage and in mire."

Titus Tarquinius — too good for such a race — springs forth
to seize Black Auster, but Aulus of the Seventy Fights in-
dignantly strikes him dead. Then stroking the raven mane,
the Dictator says to Auster —

" ' Now bear me well, Black Auster,

Into yon thick array,
And thou and I will have revenge
For thy good lord this day.'

404 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

So spake he ; and was buckling

Tighter black Auster's band,
When he was aware of a princely pair

That rode at his right hand.
So like they were, no mortal

Might one from other know :
White as snow their armour was :

Their steeds were white as snow.
Never on earthly anvil

Did such rare armour gleam ;
And never did such gallant steeds

Drink of an earthly stream.

Then the fierce trumpet-flourish

From earth to heaven arose,
The kites know well the long stern swell

That bids the Romans close.
Then the good sword of Aulus

Was lifted up to slay :
Then, like a crag down Apennine,

Eush'd Auster through the fray.
But under those strange hoi-semen

Still thicker lay the slain ;
And after those strange horses

Black Auster toil'd in vain.
Behind them Rome's long battle

Came rolling on the foe,
Ensigns dancing wild above,

Blades all in line below.
So comes the Po in flood-time

Upon the Celtic plain :
So comes the squall, blacker than night,

Upon the Adrian main.
Now, by our Sire Quirinus,

It was a goodly sight
To see the thirty standards

Swept down the tide of flight.
So flies the spray of Adria

When the black squall doth blow ;
So corn-sheaves in the flood-time

Spin down the whirling Po."

That is the way of doing business. A cut-and -thrust style,
without any flourish — Scott's style, when his soul was

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 405

up, and the first words came like a vanguard impatient for
battle ; as

" When down came the Templars, like Kedron in flood,
And dyed their long lances in Saracen blood."

The apparition of the Twins is seen by poetical eyes, and felt
by a martial heart. God-like they are, yet men-like too. The
Komans rejoice in the aid from heaven — if from heaven these
strange horsemen be — but old Aulus fights as well as either —
and Black Auster charges close at the heels of the steeds as
white as snow.

The Dioscuri sustain their divinity as nobly in the city as by
the lake.

" Here, hard by Vesta's temple,

Build we a stately dome
Unto the Great Twin Brethren
Who fought so well for Rome.
And when the months returning

Bring back this day of fight,
The proud Ides of Quintilis,

Mark'd evermore with white,
Unto the Great Twin Brethren

Let all the people throng,
With chaplets and with offerings,

With music and with song ;
And let the doors and windows

Be hung with garlands all,
And let the Knights be summon'd

To Mars without the wall :
Thence let them ride in purple
With joyous trumpet-sound,
Each mounted on his war-horse,
And each with olive crown'd ;
And pass in solemn order
Before the sacred dome,
Where dwell the Great Twin Brethren
Who fought so well for Eome."

The great occupation of the power of man in early society,
is to make war. Of course, his great poetry will be that which
celebrates war. The mighty races of men, and their mightiest
deeds, are represented in such poetry. It contains " the glory
of the world," in some of its noblest ages. The whole Iliad is
war. If we consider warlike poetry merely as breathing the

406 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

spirit of fighting — the fierce ardour of combat — we fall to a
much lower measure of human conception. The songs of
Tyrtasus, goading into battle, are simply of this kind ; and
their class is evidently not a high one. Far above them
must have been those poems of the ancient German nations,
which were chanted in the front of battle, reciting the acts of
old heroes, to exalt their courage. These, being breathed out
of the heart of passion of a people, must have been good.
The spirit of fighting was there involved with all their most
ennobling conceptions ; and yet was purely pugnacious. One
would conceive that, if there could be found anywhere in
language the real breathing spirit of lust for fight, which is in
some nations, . there would be conceptions and passion of
blood-thirst — which are not in Homer. There are flashes of
it in ^Eschylus. Lord Byron could have done it notably.
We discern two distinct species of martial composition. One
simply martial, which is a sort of voice to the spirit of war —
of which there must have been many among the early states
of Italy and Greece — national hymns and songs, with which the
whole warlike feeling of the people was associated ; something
like the effect of the " Marseillais Hymn." And the other — the
poetry of genius — which merely uses war, because there is
grandeur in it ; and partly, because it happens to be that
species of greatness which has fallen under its own observa-
tion. This cannot properly be called martial — though it be-
comes martial at moments — truly addressing itself to the
fighting nature of man. As to warlike poetry in these days
of ours, it is not possible to doubt that there are many mighty
poetical scenes to be derived from our warfare. A single
mighty battle like Waterloo, deciding the fates that were in
arbitration, might be the subject of a poem ; because the
contemplation of the destinies of nations is of the matter
of poetry ; and it is conceivable there might be a poem of the
most exalted kind, by some Homer, in which the destinies of
man, and the philosophy of the events of the Kevolution, should
be sung incomparably, and in the midst of which a battle of
Waterloo, graphic even in its description, should have place ;
because such a battle, locally, and in a point of time, deciding
such destinies by prowess of men, amidst fires and death, is in
the highest degree poetical, bringing the usually indefinite
shapes of the great agencies and processes of national events

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 407

for a moment into distinct and palpable reality, giving to the
indefinite invisible powers a momentary presence in human
life. In such a battle there might be a few famous names of
men ; and very technical terms of war might be introduced,
inasmuch as they are words comprehending powers. This is
merely to say that modern war may be made a subject of de-
scription in great poetry ; but that is a very different matter
from warlike poetry. The battle of Trafalgar would be a
better instance — which, in some sort, neither began nor ended
anything, but which was a sort of consummation of national
prowess. That would have had its magnitude in itself. Such
a poem could not have been a narrative one, which becomes
at once a gazette : but it might have been to a great degree
graphic. The purport of it would have been the power of
England upon the ocean ; and it would have been a song
of glory. In such a poem, the character and feelings of
British seamen would have had agency, and very minute ex-
pression of the feelings with which they fight would have been
in place. In fact, the life of such a poem would have been
wanting, if it had not contained a record of the nature of the
children of the ocean — the stragglers in war and in storm. It
seems to us more difficult to ground, a poem under the auspices
of the Duke of York or Lord Hill. The character of sailors,
severed as it is from all other life, has more of a poetical whole :
their fleet, too, borne on the ocean — being human existence
resting immediately upon great elementary nature — and con-
nected immediately with her great powers, and even to the
eye single in the ocean solitudes — all is at once, and almost
in itself, poetical. But military war is much harder to con-
ceive of in poetry. Our army is not an independent existence,
having for ages a peculiar life of its own. It is merely an
arm of the nation, which it stretches forth when need re-
quires. Thus, though there are high qualities in our soldiery,
there is scarcely the individual life which fits a body of men
to belong to poetry. In Schiller's Camp of Wallenstein there
is individuality of life given to soldiery with good effect. We
do not see that the army of Lord Wellington, all through the
war of the Peninsula — though the most like a continued
separate life of anything we have had in the military way
— comes up to poetry. We think that if our army can be
viewed poetically, it must be merely considering it as the

408 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

courage of the nation, clothed in shape, and acting in visible
energy — to that tune there might be warlike strains for the
late war ; but then it would have nothing of peculiar military
life, but would merge in the general life of the nation. There
would be no camp life.

All which conclusions are rather inconclusive ; because it is
plain, that if any poet, breathing the spirit of battle, knew in-
timately the Peninsular War, it would rest entirely with him-
self to derive poetry from it or not. Every passion that is
intense may be made the groundwork of poetry ; and the
passion with which the British charge the French with
bayonets or sabres is, or may be believed to be, suffi-
ciently intense to ground poetry upon. But it could not
go a great way. It would merely furnish some chants of
battle ; and the introduction of our land-fighting into any
great poetry, would, as we conjecture, require the inter-
mingling of interests not warlike.

Of the circumstances that give a real character of greatness
and sublimity to war, it may scarcely be necessary to speak.
The imagination of all nations of men has acknowledged their
grandeur. Even philosophical poets, treating with disdain
the blind tumult of conflicting powers in which war consists
— as Milton, who often speaks scornfully of war — yet avail
themselves of its poetical greatness. It is, indeed, that blind
fierce tumult that gives to war its essential grandeur. If
there were nothing but an intellectual guidance of great
powers, it would not have the same dread sublimity. But the
unconquerable powers of courage and thought, struggling and
maintaining their own supremacy in the midst of horrible and
raging destruction, is essentially sublime ; and the very lowness
of the powers that are engaged in the conflict are requisite
to this peculiar character. The pain — the rending of limbs
and flesh — the material elements of destruction — the sword's
remorseless edge — the lance driven through all defence —
and yet more, perhaps, the bayonet piercing the naked
breasts — bullets that fly like the arrows of chance — and
the dread artillery that shatters away whole legions of men
in its tempestuous sweep, — these, and the agonies of animal
nature — writhings, groans, and shrieks, and savage exulta-
tion— flames, and sulphurous clouds — and the roar of battle,
— all these things magnify the greatness of those spiritual

MACAULAY'S LAYS "OF ANCIENT ROME. 409

powers that walk in their unblemished majesty in the midst
of this horrible strife : to all of which is to be added the
effect of the beauty of material power — the splendour of
arms and array — the magnificence of horses charging
through clouds of smoke, throngs of men, or rivers — the
admiration with which we look upon the strength, stature,
and speed of 'men, when ministering to the work of their
spirit. The very thundering of cannon is sublime, because
it is a voice of destructive power — as the peal that rolls
through the heavens — the bellowing of volcanoes — the flash
in which the concentrated energy of destruction is visible to
the eye.

But let us return to our book. Mr Macaulay says, that a
collection, consisting exclusively of war-songs, would give an
imperfect, or rather an erroneous notion of the spirit of the
old Latin ballads ; for the patricians, during a century and a
half after the expulsion of the kings, held all the high military
commands, and plebeians, however distinguished by valour
and knowledge of war, could serve only in subordinate posts.
The warriors mentioned in the two preceding Lays were all
members of the dominant order ; and a poet who was singing
their praises, whatever his own political opinions might be,
would naturally abstain from insulting the class to which they
belonged, and from reflecting on the system which had placed
such men at the head of the legions of the commonwealth.
He therefore supposes that a popular Poet has made a New
Song on the election of Lucius Sextinus Lateranus and Caius
Licinius Calvus Stolo, Tribunes of the People, for the fifth
time, in the year of the city CCCLXXII. ; and, for that Song,
the Poet — himself a plebeian — availing himself of the license
of such an occasion, and burning with hatred of the Patrician
Order, chooses the subject of all others best fitted to annoy
Appius Claudius Crassus — grandson of the infamous decemvir
— who had been in vain opposing the re-election of the men
of the people — and to " cut the Claudian family to the heart."
Just as the plebeians are bearing the two champions of liberty
through the Forum, the Poet takes his stand on the spot where,
according to tradition, Virginia, more than seventy years ago,
was seized by the pandar of Appius, and recites to the crowd
the Lay of which we here have the surviving fragments.

He begins fiercely, and, by a few strong strokes, brings

410 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" the worst of all the wicked Ten " before the eyes of his
auditors. His language is at first somewhat coarse, as it
ought to be — and not the worse for that ; but all at once his
voice softens, and his words grow gentle, as he sees a vision
of the young Virginia.

" Just then, as through one cloudless chink in a black stormy sky
Shines out the dewy morning-star, a fair young girl came by.
With her small tablets in her hand, and her satchel on her arm,
Home she went bounding from the school, nor dreamed of shame

or harm ;

And past those dreaded axes she innocently ran,
With bright, frank brow that had not learned to blush at gaze of

man ;

And up the Sacred Street she turned, and, as she danced along,
She warbled gaily to herself lines of the good old song,
How for a sport the princes came spurring from the camp,
And found Lucrece, combing the fleece, under the midnight lamp.
The maiden sang as sings the lark, when up he darts his flight,
From his nest in the green April corn, to meet the morning light ;
And Appius heard her sweet young voice, and saw her sweet young

face,

And loved her with the accursed love of his accursed race,
And all along the Forum, and up the Sacred Street,
His vulture eye pursued the trip of those small glancing feet."

Here some verses of the Lay are supposed to be lost ; and
then conies an animated narrative of the commotion caused
by the seizure of Virginia by Marcus, the creature of Appius
Claudius, on pretence of her being his slave. The crowd
are awed by the sound of the Claudian name — but

" Forth through the throng of gazers the young Icilius press'd
And stamp'd his foot, and rent his gown, and smote upon his

breast,

And sprang upon that column, by many a minstrel sung,
Whereon three mouldering helmets, three rusting swords are hung,
And beckon'd to the people, and in bold voice and clear
Pour'd thick and fast the burning words which tyrants quake to

hear.

' Now, by your children's cradles, now by your fathers' graves,
Be men to-day, Quirites, or be for ever slaves !
For this did Servius give us laws ? For this did Lucrece bleed ?
For this was the great vengeance done on Tarquin's evil seed 1

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 411

For this did those false sons make red the axes of their sire ?
For this did Scaevola's right hand hiss in the Tuscan fire 1
Shall the vile fox-earth awe the race that storm'd the lion's den ?
Shall we, who could not brook one lord, crouch to the wicked Ten ?
Oh for that ancient spirit which curb'd the Senate's will !
Oh for the tents which in old time whiten'd the Sacred Hill !
In those brave days our fathers stood firmly side by side ;
They faced the Marcian fury ; they tamed the Fabian pride :
They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from Rome ;
They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shiver'd fasces home.
But what their care bequeath'd us our madness flung away :
All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in a day.
Exult, ye proud Patricians ! The hard-fought fight is o'er.
We strove for honours — 'twas in vain : for freedom — 'tis no more.
No crier to the polling summons the eager throng ;
No Tribune breathes the word of might that guards the weak from

wrong.

Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath your will.
Kiches, and lands, and power, and state — ye have them : — keep

them still.

Still keep the holy fillets ; still keep the purple gown,
The axes, and the curule chair, the car, and laurel crown :
Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is done,
Still fill your garners from the soil which our good swords have won.
Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leech-craft may not cure,
Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the poor.
Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers bore ;
Still let your dens of torment be noisome as of yore ;
No fire when Tiber freezes ; no air in dog-star heat ;
And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for free-born feet.
Heap heavier still the fetters ; bar closer still the grate ;
Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruel hate.
But, by the Shades beneath us, and by the Gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your yet more cruel love !
Have ye not graceful ladies, whose spotless lineage springs
From Consuls and High Pontiffs, and ancient Alban kings 1
Ladies, who deign not on our paths to set their tender feet,
Who from their cars look down with scorn upon the wondering

street,

Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold,
And breathe of Capuan odours, and shine with Spanish gold ?
Then leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to life —
The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife,
The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vexed soul endures,
The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours.

412 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with pride ;
Still let the bridegroom's arms enfold an unpolluted bride.
Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame,
That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to

flame,

Lest when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair,
And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the wretched

dare!'"

Out of Scripture, neither man nor woman, we believe, can
bear to read of Jephtha's daughter. Iphigenia at Aulis is a
spectacle from which we avert our eyes — and thinking of it,
we could almost pardon Clytemnestra for despatching Aga-
memnon. Brutus condemns his sons to death with shut doors
— to us, at least, the court that day is closed. It is too horrid
for us to hear Medea murdering her children — for ears com-
municate to the soul as dismally as eyes — witness panics. We
shall not say a word of the smothering of Desdemona. Call
them sacrifices — not murders — but shudder. In Eome a
father's power was great — and sacred in his soul the virginity
of a daughter. Slavery and pollution are in themselves worse
than death — and we do not condemn Virginius. The legend
accompanies well that of Lucretia, and could have risen and
prevailed only among a virtuous people.

" Straightway Virginius led the maid a little space aside,
To where the reeking shambles stood, piled up with horn and

hide,

Close to yon low dark archway, where, in a crimson flood,
Leaps down to the great sewer the gurgling stream of blood.
Hard by, a flesher on a block had laid his whittle down :
Virginius caught the whittle up, and hid it in his gown :
And then his eyes grew very dim, and his throat began to swell,
And in a hoarse changed voice he spake, ' Farewell, sweet child !

Farewell !

Oh ! how I loved my darling ! Though stern I sometimes be,
To thee, thou know'st, I was not so. Who could be so to thee ?
And how my darling loved me ! How glad she was to hear
My footstep on the threshold when I came back last year !
And how she danced with pleasure to see my civic crown,
And took my sword; and hung it up, and brought me forth my

gown !

MACAULAYS LAYS OF ANCIENT EOME. 413

Now all those things are over — yes, all thy pretty ways,

Thy needlework, thy prattle, thy snatches of old lays ;

And none will grieve when I go forth, or smile when I return,

Or watch beside the old man's bed, or weep upon his urn.

The house that was the happiest within the Eoman walls,

The house that envied not the wealth of Capua's marble halls,

Now, for the brightness of thy smile, must have eternal gloom,

And for the music of thy voice, the silence of the tomb.

The time is come. See how he points his eager hand this way !

See how his eyes gloat on thy grief, like a kite's upon the prey !

"With all his wit, he little deems, that, spurned, betrayed, bereft,

Thy father hath in his despair one fearful refuge left.

He little deems that in this hand I clutch what still can save

Thy gentle youth from taunts and blows, the portion of the

slave ;

Yea, and from nameless evil, that passeth taunt and blow—
Foul outrage which thou know'st not, which thou shalt never

know.
Then clasp me round the neck once more, and give me one more

kiss ;

And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way but this.'
With that he lifted high the steel, and smote her in the side,
And in her blood she sank to earth, and with one sob she died."

This is the only passage in the volume that can be called —
in the usual sense of the word — pathetic. It is, indeed, the
only passage in which Mr Macaulay has sought to stir up that
profound emotion. Has he succeeded ? We hesitate not to
say he has, to our heart's desire. Pity and terror are both
there — but pity is the stronger ; and, though we almost fear
to say it, horror there is none — or, if there be, it subsides
wholly towards the close, which is followed by a feeling of
peace. This effect has been wrought simply by letting the
course of the great natural affections flow on, obedient to the
promptings of a sound, manly heart, unimpeded and undiverted
by any alien influences, such as are but too apt to steal in upon
inferior minds when dealing imaginatively with severe trouble,
and to make them forget, in the indulgence of their own self-
esteem, what a sacred thing is misery.

In the hubbub is heard a father's curse — and the howl of
Appius Claudius, mad with rage and fear, as Virginius strides
off to call vengeance from the camp.

414 ESSAYS : CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

" By this the flood of people was swollen from every side,
And streets and porches round were filled with that overflowing

tide ;

And close around the body gathered a little train
Of them that were the nearest and dearest to the slain.
They brought a bier and hung it with many a cypress crown,
And gently they uplifted her, and gently laid her down.
The face of Appius Claudius wore the Claudian scowl and sneer,
And in the Claudian note he cried, ' What doth this rabble here ?
Have they no crafts to mind at home, that hitherward they stray 1
Ho ! lictors, clear the market-place, and fetch the corpse away ! '
The voice of grief and fury till then had not been loud ;
But a deep sullen murmur wandered among the crowd,
Like the moaning noise that goes before the whirlwind on the deep,
Or the growl of a fierce watch-dog but half aroused from sleep.
But when the lictors at that word, tall yeomen all and strong,
Each with his axe and sheaf of twigs, went down into the throng,
Those old men say, who saw that day of sorrow and of sin,
That in the Eoman Forum was never such a din.
The wailing, hooting, cursing, the howls of grief and hate,
Were heard beyond the Pincian hill, beyond the Latin gate.
But close around the body, where stood the little train
Of them that were the nearest and dearest to the slain,
No cries were there, but teeth set fast, low whispers, and black

frowns,

And breaking up of benches, and girding up of gowns.
'Twas well the lictors might not pierce to where the maiden lay,
Else surely had they been all twelve torn limb from limb that

day.
Eight glad they were to struggle back, blood streaming from their

heads,

With axes all in splinters, and raiment all in shreds.
Then Appius Claudius gnaw'd his lip, and the blood left his cheek ;
And thrice he beckon'd with his hand, and thrice he strove to

speak :

And thrice the tossing Forum set up a frightful yell.
' See, see, thou dog ! what hast thou done ; and hide thy shame in

hell!
Thou that wouldst make our maidens slaves must first make slaves

of men.

Tribunes! Hurra for Tribunes ! Down with the wicked Ten !'
And straightway, thick as hailstones, came whizzing through the

air
Pebbles, and bricks, and potsherds, all round the curule chair :

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT EOME. 415

And upon Appius Claudius great fear and trembling came ;

For never was a Claudius yet brave against aught but shame.

Though the great houses love us not, we own, to do them right,

That the great houses, all save one, have borne them well in fight.

Still Caius of Corioli, his triumphs, and his wrongs,

His vengeance, and his mercy, live in our camp-fire songs.

Beneath the yoke of Furius oft have Gaul and Tuscan bow'd ;

And Koine may bear the pride of him of whom herself is proud.

But evermore a Claudius shrinks from a stricken field,

And changes colour like a maid at sight of sword and shield.

The Claudian triumphs all were won within the City-towers ;

The Claudian yoke was never press'd on any necks but ours.

A Cossus, like a wild-cat, springs ever at the face ;

A Fabius rushes like a boar against the shouting chase ;

But the vile Claudian litter, raging with currish spite,

Still yelps and snaps at those who run, still runs from those who

smite.

So now 'twas seen of Appius. When stones began to fly,
He shook, and crouch' d, and wrung his hands, and smote upon his

thigh.

' Kind clients, honest lictors, stand by me in this fray !
Must I be torn in pieces ? Home, home, the nearest way ! '
While yet he spake, and look'd around with a bewildered stare,
Four sturdy lictors put their necks beneath the curule chair ;
And fourscore clients on the left, and fourscore on the right,
Array'd themselves with swords and staves, and loins girt up for

fight.

But, though without or staff" or sword, so furious was the throng,
That scarce the train with might and main could bring their lord

, along.
Twelve times the crowd made at him ; five times they seized his

gown :

Small chance was bis to rise again, if once they got him down :
And sharper came the pelting ; and evermore the yell —
' Tribunes ! we will have Tribunes ! ' — rose with a louder swell :
And the chair tossed as tosses a bark with tattered sail
When raves the Adriatic beneath an Eastern gale,
When the Calabrian sea-marks are lost in clouds of spume,
And the great Thunder-Cape has donn'd his veil of inky gloom.
One stone hit Appius in the mouth, and one beneath the ear ;
And ere he reach'd Mount Palatine he swoou'd with pain and fear,
His cursed head, that he was wont to hold so high with pride,
Now, like a drunken man's, hung down, and sway"d from side to

side ;

416 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

And when his stout retainers had brought him to his door,
His face and neck were all one cake of filth and clotted gore.
As Appius Claudius was that day, so may his grandson be.
God send Rome one such other sight, and send me there to see ! "

No such mob-orator and poet, in our days, have our Tribunes
of the People. Such spokesmen might do the state some mis-
chief— haply some service. Thank Heaven, the history of our
party feuds can show no comparable crime ; yet there is no
want of fuel in the annals of the poor, if there were fire to set
it ablaze. What mean we by mob ? The rabble ? No ! The
rascal many ? No ! no ! The swinish multitude ? No ! no !
no ! Burke never in all his days called the lower orders of
Parisians, at any period of the Revolution, " the swinish multi-
tude." His words are, "that swinish multitude" — at one
particular hour, a multitude of wild, two-legged animals, danc-
ing, all drunk with blood, round a pole surmounted with the
bright-haired head of a princess, who had all her life been a
sister of charity to the poor. Mob is mobile. It matters not
much how it is composed, provided only it be of the common
run of men and women, and that they have, or think they have,
wrongs to be redressed or avenged.

But let us compose ourselves with the " Prophecy of Capys"
— a Lay sung at the Banquet in the Capitol, on the day when
Manius Curius Dentatus, a second time Consul, triumphed over
King Pyrrhus and the Tarentines, in the year of the city
CCCCLXXIX. " On such a day," says Macaulay, " we may sup-
pose that the patriotic enthusiasm of a Latin poet would vent
itself in reiterated shouts of lo Triumphe, such as were uttered
by Horace on a far less exciting occasion, and in boasts re-
sembling those which Virgil, two hundred and fifty years
later, put into the mouth of Anchises. The superiority of
some foreign nation, and especially of the Greeks, in the
lazy arts of peace, would be admitted with disdainful can-
dour ; but pre-eminence in all the qualities which fit a people
to subdue and govern mankind, would be claimed for the
Romans."

Yes, say we, the mighty effects of imagination may be
observed in the lofty patriotism of that great Republic, which
rose from such small beginnings, and at length looked down
from its seven hills on a conquered world. Among her noble

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 417

warriors, the sublime idea of mighty Home seemed almost to
justify and consecrate the deeds she commanded, and the
iniquitous wars that were to extend her destined glory. Though
continually in arms, her children seldom fought to defend their
country ; their battles were waged to yoke people after people
to the car of her triumphs. Men just, and wise, and virtuous,
and kind, in the relations of private life, went forth as the
•willing servants of her ambitious greatness ; and, in the midst
of her long-continued victory, felt their spirits elated and sus-
tained by love of that country which knew no law but the
desire of still- spreading dominion. Their justice and their
wisdom lay prostrate under the delusive imagination of a
sacred right in that country to command their obedience —
under the belief that the gods befriended, and fate had decreed
her greatness. They bowed down, in the worship of their
souls, before that majestic greatness which was to overshadow
land after land ; and knew of no right violated, and no duty
left undone, while, keeping their allegiance, they obeyed her
fierce mandates to subdue or to destroy. One image was in
their souls : Rome, great and glorious, fulfilling her conquer-
ing destinies. To that they devoted their unprized life. In
that they were content to find their perpetual fame. In that
they accomplished the law of their severe and arduous virtue.
When we remember what men they were whom that "high and
palmy state" sent forth to execute her triumphs, our mind
is filled with wonder, in contemplating the lofty character of
their invincible souls ; when we consider in what service they
grew to their lofty stature, our wonder is augmented ; but it
may cease, if we consider the power which imagination may
hold over the whole spirit of a magnanimous and mighty
people ; and when we consider what was that awful idea of
their country, which held bound, as under a spell, the imagin-
ation of the whole Roman race. Their great poet has, indeed,
admirably expressed the conception of this never-forgotten
principle of Roman minds, this ruling purpose and belief of
their spirits through all time, when he has led the founder of
the line into the shades, and there his father, the old Anchises,
shows him the future heroes of his race, the spirits of the un-
born warriors of Rome, and prophetically describing their

VOL. VII. 2 D

418 ESSAYS: CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

fame, he breaks out at last into an inspired exclamation which
might seem as directing, with oracular power and preternatural
command, the spirit of their deeds through their victorious
career of ages to come.

" Tu regere imperio populos, Bomane, memento.
Hse tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos."

This conception of the City of Mars, as of a power endowed
for conquest and dominion, seems to have been perpetually
present to the imagination of those great spirits,, and to have
transformed the virtue of their heroic patriotism into the ser-
vice of a gigantic and unprincipled ambition.

Perhaps the "Prophecy of Capys" is the loftiest Lay of the
Four. The child of Mars, and foster- son of the she- wolf, is
wonderfully well exhibited throughout in his hereditary quali-
ties ; and grandly in the Triumph, where the exultation breaks
through, that all this gold and silver is subservient to the
Roman steel — all the skill and craft of refinement and ingenuity
must obey the voice of Roman valour. There are many such
things scattered up and down Horace's Odes ; but we can
scarcely remember any that are more spirited, more racy, or
more characteristic, than these Lays ; and perhaps the nobility
of the early Roman character is as fondly admired and fitly
appreciated by an English freeman, as by a courtier of the
reign of Augustus.

It is a great merit of these poems that they are free from
ambition or exaggeration. Nothing seems overdone — no
tawdry piece of finery disfigures the simplicity of the plan that
has been chosen. They seem to have been framed with great
artistical skill — with much self-denial, and abstinence from
anything incongruous — and with a very successful imitation
of the effects intended to be represented. Yet every here and
there images of beauty, and expressions of feeling, are thrown
out that are wholly independent of Rome or the Romans, and
that appeal to the widest sensibilities of the human heart. In
point of homeliness of thought and language, there is often a
boldness which none but a man conscious of great powers of
.writing would have ventured to show.

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 419

In these rare qualities, The Lays of Ancient Rome resemble
Lockhart's Spanish Ballads, which must have been often ring-
ing in Macaulay's ears, since first he caught their inspiring
music more than twenty years ago — when, " like a burnished
fly in pride of May," he bounced through the open windows of
Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Two such volumes all a sum-
mer's day you may seek without finding among the works I of
" our Young Poets." People do not call Lockhart and Macaulay
poets at all — for both have acquired an inveterate habit of
writing prose in preference to verse, and first-rate prose too ;
but then the genius of the one man is as different as may be
from that of the other — agreeing, however, in this, that each
exhibits bone and muscle sufficient, if equitably distributed
among ten " Young Poets," to set them up among the " rural
villages" as strong men, who might even occasionally exhibit
in booths as giants.

A FEW WOEDS ON SHAKESPEARE,

[ MAT 1819. J

SHAKESPEARE is of no age. He speaks a language which
thrills in our blood in spite of the separation of two hundred
years. His thoughts, passions, feelings, strains of fancy, all
are of this day, as they were of his own — and his genius may
be contemporaiy with the mind of every generation for a
thousand years to come. He, above all poets, looked upon
men, and lived for mankind. His genius, universal in intel-
lect and sympathy, could find, in no more bounded circum-
ference, its proper sphere. It could not bear exclusion from
any part of human existence. Whatever in nature and life
was given to man, was given in contemplation and poetry to
him also, and over the undimmed mirror of his mind passed all
the shadows of our mortal world. Look through his plays,
and tell what form of existence, what quality of spirit, he is
most skilful to delineate ? Which of all the manifold beings
he has drawn, lives before our thoughts, our eyes, in most un-
pictured reality ? Is it Othello, Shylock, Falstaff, Lear, the
Wife of Macbeth, Imogen, Hamlet, Ariel ? In none of the
other great dramatists do we see anything like a perfected art.
In their works, everything, it is true, exists in some shape or
other, which can be required in a drama taking for its interest
the absolute interest of human life and nature ; but, after all,
may not the very best of their works be looked on as sublime
masses of chaotic confusion, through which the elements of.
our moral being appear ? It was Shakespeare, the most un-
learned of all our writers, who first exhibited on the stage
perfect models, perfect images of all human characters, and of
all human events. We cannot conceive any skill that could
from his great characters remove any defect, or add to their

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. 421

perfect composition. Except in him, we look in vain for the
entire fulness, the self-consistency, and self-completeness of
perfect art. All the rest of our drama may be regarded rather
as a testimony of the state of genius — of the state of mind of
the country, full of great poetical disposition, and great tragic
capacity and power — than as a collection of the works of an
art. Of Shakespeare and Homer alone it may be averred, that
we miss in them nothing of the greatness of nature. In all
other poets we do ; we feel the measure of their power, and
the restraint under which it is held ; but in Shakespeare and
in Homer, all is free and unbounded as in nature ; and as we
travel along with them, in a car drawn by celestial steeds, our
view seems ever interminable as before, and still equally far
off the glorious horizon.

If we may be permitted to exceed the measure of the occa-
sion to speak so much of Shakespeare himself, may we presume
yet farther, and go from our purpose to speak of his individual
works ? Although there is no one of them that does not bear
marks of his unequalled hand — scarcely one which is not re-
membered by the strong affection of love and delight towards
some of its characters, yet to all his readers they seem marked
by very different degrees of excellence, and a few are distin-
guished above all the rest. Perhaps the four that may be
named, as those which have been to the popular feeling of his
countrymen the principal plays of their great dramatist, and
which would be recognised as his master-works by philoso-
phical criticism, are Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear. The
first of these has the most entire tragic action of any of his
plays. It has, throughout, one awful interest, which is begun,
carried through, and concluded with the piece. This interest
of the action is a perfect example of a most important dramatic
unity, preserved entire. The matter of the interest is one which
has always held a strong sway over human sympathy, though
mingled with abhorrence, the rise and fall of ambition. Men
look on the darings of this passion with strong sympathy, be-
cause it is one of their strongest inherent feelings — the aspir-
ing of the mind through its consciousness of power, shown in
the highest forms of human life. But it is decidedly a histori-
cal, not a poetical interest. Shakespeare has made it poetical
by two things chiefly — not the character of Macbeth, which

422 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

is itself historical — but by the preternatural agencies with
which the whole course of the story is involved, and by the
character of Lady Macbeth. The illusion of the dagger and
the sleep-walking may be added as individual circumstances
tending to give a character of imagination to the whole play.
The human interest of the piece is the acting of the purpose
of ambition, and the fate which attends it — the high capacities
of blinded desire in the soul — and the moral retribution which
overrules the affairs of men. But the poetry is the inter-
mingling of preternatural agency with the transactions of life
— threads of events spun by unearthly hands — the scene of
the cave which blends unreality with real life — the prepara-
tion and circumstances of midnight murder — the superhuman
calmness of guilt, in its elated strength, in a woman's soul —
and the dreaminess of mind which is brought on those whose
spirits have drunk the cup of their lust. The language of the
whole is perhaps more purely tragic than that of any other
of Shakespeare's plays — it is simple, chaste, and strong —
rarely breaking out into fanciful expression, but a vein of
imagination always running through. The language of Mac-
beth himself is often exceedingly beautiful. Perhaps some-
thing may be owing to national remembrances and associa-
tions ; but we have observed, that in Scotland at least, Mac-
beth produces a deeper, a more breathless, and a more per-
turbing passion, in the audience, than any other drama.

If Macbeth is the most perfect in the tragic action of the
story, the most perfect in tragic passion is Othello. There is
nothing to determine unhappiness to the lives of the two prin-
cipal persons. Their love begins auspiciously ; and the
renown, high favour, and high character of Othello seem to
promise a stability of happiness to himself and the wife of his
affections. But the blood which had been scorched in the
veins of his race, under the suns of Africa, bears a poison that
swells up to confound the peace of the Christian marriage-bed.
He is jealous ; and the dreadful overmastering passion, which
disturbs the steadfastness of his own mind, overflows upon
his life, and hers, and consumes them from the earth. The
external action of the play is nothing — the causes of events
are none ; the whole interest of the story, the whole course of
the action, the causes of all that happens, live all in the breast

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. 423

of Othello. The whole destiny of those who are to perish lies
in his passion. Hence the high tragic character of the play
— showing one false illusory passion ruling and confounding
all life. All that is below tragedy in the passion of love is
taken away at once by the awful character of Othello, for such
he seems to us to be designed to be. He appears never as a
lover — but at once as a husband — and the relation of his love
made dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his marriage,
is also dignified as it is a soldier's relation of his stern and
periloxis life. It is a courted, not a wooing, at least uncon-
sciously-wooing love, and though full of tenderness, yet it is
but slightly expressed, as being solely the gentle affection of
a strong mind, and in no wise a passion. " And I loved her
that she did pity them." Indeed, he is not represented as
a man of passion, but of stern, sedate, immovable mood. " I
have seen the cannon, that, like the devil, from his very arm
puffed his own brother — and can he be angry?" Montalto
speaks with the same astonishment, calling him respected for
wisdom and gravity. Therefore it is no love story. His love
itself, as long as it is happy, is perfectly calm and serene, the
protecting tenderness of a husband, It is not till it is dis-
ordered that it appears as a passion. Then is shown a power
in contention with itself — a mighty being struck with death,
and bringing up from all the depths of life convulsions and
agonies. It is no exhibition of the power of the passion of
love — but of the passion of life vitally wounded, and self-over-
mastering. What was his love ? He had placed all his faith
in good — all his imagination of purity, all his tenderness of
nature, upon one heart, — and at once that heart seems to him
— an ulcer. It is that recoiling agony that shakes his whole
body — that having confided with the whole power of his soul,
he is utterly betrayed — that having departed from the pride
and might of his life, which he held in his conquest and
sovereignty over men, to rest himself upon a new and gracious
affection, to build himself and his life upon one beloved heart,
having found a blessed affection which he had passed through
life without knowing, and having chosen in the just and pure
goodness of his will to take that affection instead of all other
hopes, desires, and passions, to live by, that at once he sees it
sent out of existence, and a damned thing standing in its

424 ESSAYS: CBITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

place. It is then that he feels a' forfeiture of all power, and
a blasting of all good. If Desdemona had been really guilty,
the greatness would have been destroyed, because his love
would have been unworthy — false. But she is good, and his
love is most perfect, just, and good. That a man should place
his perfect love on a wretched thing, is miserably debasing,
and shocking to thought ; but that, loving perfectly and well,
he should, by hellish human circumvention, be brought to
distrust, and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most
mournful indeed — it is the infirmity of our good nature,
wrestling in vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover,
he would, had Desdemona been false, have been the mere
victim of fate ; whereas, he is now in a manner his own
victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness — his injured
love is terrible passion — and disordered power engendered
within itself to its own destruction, is the height of all tra-
gedy. The character of Othello is perhaps the most greatly
drawn, the most heroic of any of Shakespeare's actors, but it
is, perhaps, that one also of which his reader last acquires the
intelligence. The intellectual and warlike energy of his mind
— his tenderness of affection — his loftiness of spirit — his frank
generous magnanimity — impetuosity like a thunderbolt, and
that dark fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting even his
imagination, compose a character entirely original, most diffi-
cult to delineate, but perfectly delineated.

Hamlet might seem to be the intellectual offspring of
Shakespeare's love. He alone, of all his offspring, has Shake-
speare's own intellect. But he has given him a moral nature,
that makes his character individual. Princely, gentle, and
loving, full of natural gladness, but having a depth of sensi-
bility which is no sooner touched by the harsh events of life
than it is jarred, and the mind for ever overcome with melan-
choly. For intellect and sensibility blended throughout, and
commensurate, and both ideally exalted and pure, are not able
to pass through the calamity and trial of life ; unless they are
guarded by some angel from its shock, they perish in it, or
undergo a worse change. The play is a singular example of
a piece of great length, resting its interest upon the delinea-
tion of one character. For Hamlet, his discourses, and the
changes of his mind, are all the play. The other persons —

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. 425

even his father's ghost, are important through him. And in
himself, it is the variation of his mind, and not the varying
events of his life, that affords the interest. In the represen-
tation, his celebrated soliloquy is perhaps the part of the play
that is most expected, even by the common audience. His
interview with his mother, of which the interest is produced
entirely from his mind — for about her we care nothing — is in
like manner remarkable by the sympathy it excites in those
for whom the most intellectual of Shakespeare's works would
scarcely seem to have been written. This play is perhaps
superior to any other in existence for unity in the delineation
of character.

We have yet to speak of the most pathetic of the plays of
Shakespeare — Lear. A story unnatural and irrational in its
foundation, but, at the same time, a natural favourite of tra-
dition, has become in the hands of Shakespeare a tragedy of
surpassing grandeur and interest. He has seized upon that
germ of interest which has already made the story a favourite
of popular tradition, and unfolded it into a work for the pas-
sionate sympathy of all — young, old, rich, and poor, learned
and illiterate, virtuous and depraved. The majestic form of
the kingly-hearted old man — the reverend head of the broken-
hearted father — " a head so old and white as this " — the
royalty from which he is deposed, but of which he can never
be divested — the father's heart which, rejected and trampled
on by two children, and trampling on its one most young and
duteous child, is, in the utmost degree, a father's still — the
two characters, father and king, so high to our imagination
and love, blended in the reverend image of Lear — loth in their
destitution, yet both in their height of greatness — the spirit
blighted and yet undepressed — the wits gone, and yet the
moral wisdom of a good heart left unstained, almost unobscured
— the wild raging of the elements, joined with human outrage
and violence to persecute the helpless, unresisting, almost
unoffending sufferer ; and he himself in the midst of all imagin-
able misery and desolation, descanting upon himself, on the
whirlwinds that drive around him — and then turning in ten-
derness to some of the wild motley association of sufferers
among whom he stands; — all this is not like what has been
seen on any stage, perhaps in any reality, but it has made a

426 ESSAYS: CEITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

world to our imagination about one single imaginary individual,
such as draws the reverence and sympathy which should seem
to belong properly only to living men. It is like the remem-
brance of some wild perturbed scene of real life. Everything
is perfectly woeful in this world of woe. The very assumed
madness of Edgar, which, if the story of Edgar stood alone,
would be insufferable, and would utterly degrade him to us,
seems, associated as he is with Lear, to come within the con-
secration of Lear's madness. It agrees with all that is brought
together ; the night — the storms — the houselessness — Glo'ster
with his eyes put out — the fool — the semblance of a madman,
and Lear in his madness, are all bound together by a strange
kind of sympathy, confusion in the elements of nature, of
human society and the human soul. Throughout all the play,
is there not sublimity felt amidst the continual presence of all
kinds of disorder and confusion in the natural and moral world ;
a continual consciousness of eternal order, law, and good ?
This it is that so exalts it in our eyes. There is more iust-

v *J

ness of intellect in Lear's madness than in his right senses —
as if the indestructible divinity of the spirit gleamed at times
more brightly through the ruins of its earthly tabernacle. The
death of Cordelia and the death of Lear1 leave on our minds, at
least, neither pain nor disappointment, like a common play
ending ill — but, like all the rest, they show us human life
involved in darkness and conflicting with wild powers let
loose to rage in the world ; a life which continually seeks
peace, and which can only find its good in peace — tending
ever to the depth of peace, but of which the peace is not here.
The feeling of the play, to those who rightly consider it, is
high and calm, — because we are made to know, from and
through those very passions which seem there convulsed, and
that very structure of life and happiness that seems there
crushed, — even in the law of those passions and that life, this
eternal Truth, that evil must not be, and that good must be.
The only thing intolerable was, that Lear should, by the very
truth of his daughter's love, be separated from her love : and
his restoration to her love, and therewith to his own perfect

1 For some admirable observations on this subject, see the Essays of Charles
Lamb — a writer to whose generous and benign philosophy, English dramatio
literature is greatly indebted.

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. 427

mind, consummates all that was essentially to be desired — a
consummation, after which the rage and horror of mere matter-
disturbing death, seems vain and idle. In fact, Lear's killing
the slave who was hanging Cordelia — bearing her in dead in
his arms — and his heart bursting over her — are no more than
the full consummation of their reunited love — and there father
and daughter lie in final and imperturbable peace. Cordelia,
whom we at last see lying dead before us, and over whom we
shed such floods of loving and approving tears, scarcely speaks
or acts in the play at all — she appears but at the beginning
and the end — is absent from all the impressive and memorable
scenes ; and to what she does say, there is not much effect
given ; — yet, by some divine power of conception in Shake-
speare's soul, she always seems to our memory one of the prin-
cipal characters — and while we read the play, she is continually
present to our imagination. In her sister's ingratitude, her
filial love is felt — in the hopelessness of the broken-hearted
king, we are turned to that perfect hope that is reserved for
him in her loving bosom — in the midst of darkness, confusion,
and misery, her form is like a hovering angel, seen casting its
radiance on the storm.

Turning from such noble creations as these, it is natural to
ask ourselves, is the age of dramatic literature gone by, never
to be restored ? Certainly the whole history of our stage,
from the extinction of that first great dynasty, down to this
very day, shows rather a strong dramatic disposition, than a
strong dramatic power ; and the names of Eowe, Otway, Lee,
and Lillo, are perhaps as far above the most favoured of this
age, as they are beneath all those of the age of Elizabeth. It
is not to be denied that the whole mind of the country is
lowered since those magnificent times ; and that its intellectual
character has become more external. With respect to the
drama, the state of society was then more favourable to it,
passing from the strong and turbulent life of early times, yet
having much of their native vigour, and much of their pristine
shape and growth. The reality of life is seldom shown to our
eyes ; and each now sees, as it were, but a small part of the
whole. He sees a little of one class. The dark study of the
constitution of our life is no longer to our taste, nor -within the
measure of our capacity ; and therein lie the causes of their

428 ESSAYS : CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

hopelessness who believe that the tragic drama is no more.
Some have thought that the vast number of standard plays is
the cause why new plays are not produced. But genius does
not work on a consideration of the supply in the market, of the
stock on hand. In whatever way it has power to bring itself
into sympathy with the heart of the people, so as to dwell in
their love and delight, it will go to its work in obedience to
such impulses; and surely there is always change enough
from one generation to another to make a new field for
dramatic composition, or for any kind of literature, so as to
enable a mind of power to write more entirely to the pas-
sions of his contemporaries, than any one living before him
has done.

It seems to us that the poetry of our days has not dealt
enough with life and reality. They surely contain elements
of poetry, if we had poets who were capable of bringing to use
the more difficult materials of their art. Some critics have
conceived that the matter of poetry might become exhausted ;
but the opinion is not likely to gain much credit amongst us.
The bolder opinion, that all conditions of human life, for ever,
will contain the inexhaustible matter of that art, seems more
suitable to our genius. There has been a decided tendency
in our own days to prove the capacity of some apparently un-
favourable states of life. But it may be questioned whether
the experiment has yet found eminent success. What is
wanting to poetry in ages like ours, seems to be rather the
proper composition of the minds of poets, than a sufficiency of
matter in the life from which they would have to paint. The
minds of civilised men are too much unpoetical, because the
natural play of sensitive imagination in their minds is, in early
years, suppressed. They are cultivated with poetry indeed,
but that is an unproductive cultivation. Every mind has, by
nature, its own springs of poetry. And it may be conceived,
that if nature were suffered to have a freer development in our
minds, we should grow up, looking upon our own life with that
kind of deep emotion with which, in earlier ages, men look
upon the face of society ; with something like a continuance
of those strange and strong feelings with which, as children,
we gazed upon the life even of our own generation. We begin
in imagination; but we outgrow it. We pass into a state
which is not of wisdom, but one in which imagination and

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. 429

natural passion are suppressed and extinct, and a sort of
worldly temper and tone of mind, a substitute for wisdom, is
adopted — like it, only in its immunity from youthful illusions.
But wisdom retains the generosity of youth without its dreams,
whereas this worldly wit of ours parts with youth and gene-
rosity together ; and yet, while it dispels those pardonable
dreams, does not exempt us from deceptions of its own, and
from passions which have the ardour, but not the beauty of
youth.

What Poet of the present day is there, who, grasping reso-
lutely with the reality of life, such as our own age brings it
forth, has produced true, simple, and powerful poetry ? Two
have made approaches to this kind, Cowper and Wordsworth.
But the poetry of Cowper wants power. And though Words-
worth has expressly applied himself to this part of poetry, yet
the strongest passion of his own mind is the passion for nature ;
and his most powerful poetry may be called almost contem-
plative. He is the poet of meditation. His sympathy with
passions is very imperfect. And the poetry which he has
drawn from present life, which, assuredly, he has much con-
templated and studied, is more of a touching gentleness than
of power. It is, moreover, human life blended, and almost lost
in nature. It is nowhere the strength of life brought out to be
the very being of poetry. Of those of our poetical writers,
who, with some power indeed of glowing imagination, have
wrought pictures of other scenes of the world, we hold it not
necessary to speak. They have escaped from reality. Burns
appears to us the only one who, looking steadfastly upon the
life to which he was born, has depictured it, and changed it
into poetry.

This appears to us the true test of the mind which is born
to poetry, and, is faithful to its destination. It is not born to
live in antecedent worlds, but in its own ; in its own world,
by its own power, to discover poetry ; to discover, that is, to
recognise and distinguish the materials of life which belong to
imagination.

Imagination discovering materials of its own action in the
life present around it, ennobles that life, and connects itself
with the on-goings of the world ; but escaping from that life,
it seems to us to fly from its duty, and to desert its place of
service.

430 ESSAYS: CKITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE.

The poetry which would be produced by imagination, con-
versing intimately with human life, would be that of tragedy.
But we have no tragic poet. Schiller is, perhaps, the only
great tragic poet who has lived in the same day with ourselves.
And wild and portentous as his shapes of life often are, who is
there that does not feel that the strange power by which they
hold us is derived from the very motions of our blood, and that
the breath by which we live breathes in them ? He has thrown
back his scenes into other times of the world : but we find
ourselves there. It is from real, present life, that he has bor-
rowed that terrible spell of passion by which he shakes so
inwardly the very seat of feeling and thought. The tragic
poets of England, in the age of our dramatic literature, have
shown the same power ; and they drew it from the same source ;
from imagination submitted to human life, and dwelling in the
midst of it.

The whole character of our life and literature seems to us
to show in our cultivated classes a disposition of imagination
to separate itself from real life, and to go over into works of
art. It may appear to some a matter of little consequence ;
and perhaps they will think that it is then beginning to confine
itself to its right province. We think there are many who will
not be so easily satisfied ; and to whom it will appear that
such a separation, if it be indeed taking place, cannot be effected
without grievous injury to the character of our minds. We
think it possible that the great overflow of poetry in this age
may be in part from this cause. And there seems to us already
a great disappearance of imagination from the character of all
our passions.

But life is still strong. And wherever men are assembled
in societies, and are not swallowed up in sloth or most debas-
ing passion, there the great elements of our nature are in
action : and much as in this day, to look upon the face of life,
it appears to be removed from all poetry, we cannot but be-
lieve that, in the very heart of our most civilised life — in our
cities — in each great metropolis of commerce — in the midst of
the most active concentration of all those relations of being
which seem most at war with imagination — there the materials
which imagination seeks in human life are yet to be found.

It were much to be wished, therefore, for the sake both 6f

A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. 431

our literature and of our life, that imagination would again be
content to dwell with life — that we had less of poetry, and that
of more strength ; and that imagination were again to be found
as it used to be, one of the elements of life itself ; a strong
principle of our nature living in the midst of our affections and
passions, blending with, kindling, invigorating, and exalting
them all. Then might the spirit of dramatic literature be
revived.

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