_Leonidas_. There is an account of him, with specimens of his work,
in Ward's _English Poets_. Nothing can better illustrate Carlyle's
lack of a judicial habit of mind than his coupling Glover's name with
Gray's. Read once more the _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_,
and form your own idea of the correctness of Carlyle's opinion.
[68] Apparently Carlyle's memory was treacherous, like that of
ordinary mortals: man and work are both given incorrectly here.
_Human Nature in its Fourfold State_, by Thomas Boston (1677-1732),
is still a classic of the Calvinistic theology.
[69] The names are all readily found in any cyclopædia; except
possibly that of Charles Batteux (1713-1780), who, as might be
inferred from the text, was a French literary critic of the same
school as Boileau.
[70] At one time Hume's residence in France, where he composed his
_Treatise on Human Nature_.
[71] Chapter xi. of Book I. of Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ has
the title _Of the Rent of Land_. _The Natural History of Religion_
is by Hume.
[72] In spite of the example of Burns, the publisher of _Waverley_
hesitated for some time to accept the manuscript, on account of the
Scotch dialect interwoven in it. Now, on the contrary, a local
dialect seems a commendation to a work of fiction.
[73] Burns, in his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore (August 2,
1787), says, in reference to _The History of Sir William Wallace_,
one of his first books: "The story of Wallace poured a Scotch
prejudice in my veins, which will boil along there till the
flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." The reader will by this
time have noticed Carlyle's carelessness about small points.
[74] This may refer to Burns's poetical epistles to David Sillar and
John Lapraik, obscure poets of his own time; or, more probably, to
his erecting a memorial, at his own expense, over the neglected grave
of Fergusson.
[75] _Answer to Verses addressed to the Poet by the Guidwife of
Wauchope House_.
[76] Burns himself says of his early days, in his autobiographical
letter to Dr. Moore: "The great misfortune of my life was never to
have an aim."
[77] Perhaps Carlyle is misled in his estimate of Burns by his own
high conception of the vocation of the man of letters. The
profession of literature is hardly older than our own century; Dr.
Johnson is really the first example of it. For a man, unsupported by
a patron, to make poetry his means of subsistence, was almost unknown
in the eighteenth century. Burns was too proud to depend on a
patron, and his refusal to accept money for his contributions to
Johnson's _Museum_ and Thomson's _Scottish Airs_ was only in accord
with the ideas of his time; besides, he feared that such a proceeding
would injure his spontaneity. To receive pay for a volume of poems,
originally written without reference to publication, was quite a
different matter.
Carlyle, in his lecture on _The Hero as Man of Letters_, in _Heroes
and Hero-Worship_, develops his own point of view more fully.
[78] Burns himself says of his father: "I have met with few who
understood Men, their manners and their ways, equal to him."
[79] These words seem like a prophecy of Carlyle's own career, which
was just beginning when this essay was written.
[80] See _The Cotter's Saturday Night_.
[81] Wordsworth: _Resolution and Independence_ (1807 edition). Our
editions read: "Following his plough, along the mountain side." The
reference in the poem is to Burns.
[82] Apparently the "best evidence" is conflicting. Burns, in his
autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore, says of himself as a boy: "I
was, perhaps, the most ungainly, awkward being in the parish." And
Murdock, Burns's schoolmaster, in a letter printed in Currie's _Life_
and reproduced in Lockhart's, says: "Robert's ear was remarkably
dull, and his voice untamable.... Robert's countenance was generally
grave and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful
mind."
[83a] The phrases are drawn from Burns's letter to Dr. Moore.
[83b] The phrases are drawn from Burns's letter to Dr. Moore.
[84] _Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr_. The last line should
read:--
Farewell, the bonie banks of Ayr.
[85] Shakespeare, Richard II. iv. 1. Carlyle was a man of enormous
reading, and no one can hope to recognize _all_ his allusions. But
the two books to which he, like most of the great writers of modern
England, refers most frequently, are within the reach of every one:
they are the Bible and Shakespeare.
[86] Lockhart, chap. v.
[87] Ovid, _Tristia_, IV. x. 51.
[88] Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), professor of philosophy at Edinburgh
University. He was succeeded by Dugald Stewart.
[89] Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811) was an amateur artist and
caricaturist of some note.
[90] The poem may be found in Chalmers's _British Poets_, vol. xvi.,
under the title _The Country Justice_. There the second line reads:
"Perhaps that parent mourn'd her soldier slain." John Langhorne
(1735-1779) and his brother William made the translation of
Plutarch's _Lives_ which, in spite of its dreary style, is still the
one in general use.
[91] Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) painted in 1787 a bust portrait of
Burns, which is the likeness most commonly reproduced.
[92] Quoted in Lockhart, chap. v.
[93] Lockhart gives in a foot-note (at end of chap. iv.) the
following quotation from a letter of Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale,
August 17, 1773:--
"This morning I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who
does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor
scholar in Latin, Greek, and French. He was originally a poor
scholar himself. I looked on him with reverence."
[94] Cf. John v. 1-9.
[95] Words of Burns quoted in Lockhart, chap. vii.
[96] "If Burns had much of a farmer's skill, he had little of a
farmer's prudence and economy. I once inquired of James Corrie, a
sagacious old farmer, whose ground marched with Elliesland, the cause
of the poet's failure. 'Faith,' said he, 'how could he miss but
fail, when his servants ate the bread as fast as it was baked? I
don't mean figuratively, I mean literally. Consider a little. At
that time close economy was necessary to have enabled a man to clear
twenty pounds a year by Elliesland. Now Burns's own handywork was
out of the question; he neither ploughed, nor sowed, nor reaped, at
least like a hard-working farmer; and then he had a bevy of servants
from Ayrshire. The lasses did nothing but bake bread, and the lads
sat by the fireside, and ate it warm, with ale. Waste of time and
consumption of food would soon reach to twenty pounds a
year.'"--(Letter to Lockhart from Allan Cunningham, quoted in
Lockhart's _Life_, chap, vii.)
[97] In reality Burns occasionally borrowed money; but at his death
he left only a few small debts.
[98] There is one little sketch by certain "English gentlemen" of
this class, which, though adopted in Currie's narrative, and since
then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible
disposition to regard as imaginary: "On a rock that projected into
the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular
appearance. He had a cap made of fox-skin on his head, a loose
greatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous
Highland broad-sword. It was Burns." Now, we rather think, it was
_not_ Burns. For, to say nothing of the foxskin cap, the loose and
quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are we to make of this
"enormous Highland broad-sword" depending from him? More especially,
as there is no word of parish constables on the outlook to see
whether, as Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to his own midriff or
that of the public! Burns, of all men, had the least need, and the
least tendency, to seek for distinction, either in his own eyes or
those of others, by such poor mummeries.--[Carlyle's note.]
Carlyle thinks this petty vanity inconsistent with Burns's wise
self-control at Edinburgh. But we cannot reason thus in the case of
a man with so variable a temperament, and the anecdote is fairly well
authenticated.
[99] Mæcenas was the great literary patron of the Augustan age of
Rome. Virgil addressed to him his _Georgics_, and Horace honors his
name repeatedly.
[100] Lockhart (chap. viii.) devotes much time to confuting them.
[101] Lockhart, chap. viii.
[102] _Ubi sœva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit_.
Swift's Epitaph. [Carlyle's note.]
[103] _A Bard's Epitaph_.
[104] The parody is from _The Merchant of Venice_, iv. 1.
[105] Cf. page 1, above.
[106] Cf. Matthew vii. 16.
[107] An echo from Burns's dedication to the first Edinburgh edition
of his poems. Cf. page 3, above.
[108] Cf. Daniel iv. 30.
[109] The first half of this precept occurs eight times in the New
Testament; the second only in Galatians vi. 2.
[110] This cry of indignation at the absorption of men in the cares
of this world, and their indifference to higher things, occurs
repeatedly in Carlyle.
[111] Every reader should have a clear idea, not necessarily of the
details in the lives of these men, but of the general significance of
each in the history of the world.
[112] Matthew v. 12; and compare Luke vi. 23.
[113] There is an allusion to Ephesians iv. 8.
[114] This moral is worked out with wonderful power in _Sartor
Resartus_.
[115] The word means simply _restorer_; but Carlyle uses it to denote
a man who uses his literary talent merely to give amusement, not to
inculcate truth. Here again is a veiled sneer at Byron and Scott.
[116] See _Paradise Lost_, vii. 24-31.
[117] The _Araucana_ is the best of a score of epics written in the
reign of Philip II. of Spain in imitation of the Italian poets
Ariosto and Tasso. Its author, Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga
(1533-1595), writes of the Spanish campaigns against the Indians of
Arauco, in which he himself took part. The early part of the poem
was written in the field, in the manner that Carlyle describes. The
_Araucana_ is now little read; and its author is no way comparable to
the great epic poets of Italy and England.
[118] Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) is one of Carlyle's
favorite authors, and one of those who influenced him most. He is
the subject of Carlyle's first essay in the _Edinburgh Review_
(1827), and is treated again in another and a greater essay in the
_Foreign Review_ (1830). These two papers by Carlyle remain among
the best accounts of Richter accessible in English.
[119] "I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about
me, in order to study the sentiments, the dauntless magnanimity, the
intrepid unyielding independence, the desperate daring, and noble
defiance of hardship in that great personage--Satan."--Letter of
Burns, quoted in Lockhart, chap. vi.
Bitter epigrams like this on Byron become a characteristic of
Carlyle's style in his later writings.
[120] Milton's real words are: "I was confirmed in this opinion, that
he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in
laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities,
unless he has in himself the experience and the practice of all that
which is praiseworthy."--_Apology for Smectymnuus_.
[121] Shipping ports in southern England. Carlyle is writing from
the point of view of a Scotchman.
[122] _Vaucluse_ (_Valclusa_ in Italian) is a town in southeast
France where the great Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374) lived for
some time, and where he did much of his best work. Its fountain is
celebrated in his poems.