"Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in

tumbling on the floor of the room, and sweeping the sand with a

feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play

and spirit. He is also a very great scholar. He can read his

primer, and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd

remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and

play-fellows. He begins to be very ragged, and I hope I shall be

pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks." Or again:-

- "The brats, my girls, stand on each side of the table, and

Molly says what I am writing now is about her new coat. Bess is

with me till she has new clothes. Miss Moll has taken upon her

to hold the sand-box,* and is so impertinent in her office that I

cannot write more. But you are to take this letter as from your

three best friends, Bess, Moll, and their Father.

*In those days there was no blotting-paper, and sand was used to

dry the ink.

"Moll bids me let you know that she fell down just now and did

not hurt herself."

Soon after this Steele set out for Scotland, and although the

business which brought him could not have been welcome to many a

Scottish gentleman, he himself was well received. They forgot

the Whig official in the famous writer. In Edinburgh he was

feasted and feted. "You cannot imagine," wrote Steele, "the

civilities and honours I had done me there. I never lay better,

ate or drank better, or conversed with men of better sense than

there." Poets and authors greeted him in verse, he was "Kind

Richy Spec, the friend to a' distressed," "Dear Spec," and many

stories are told of his doings among these new-found friends. He

paid several later visits to Scotland, but about a year after his

return from this first short visit Steele had a great sorrow.

His wife died. "This is to let you know," he writes to a cousin,

"that my dear and honoured wife departed this life last night."

And now that his children were motherless, Steele, when he was

away from them, wrote to them, always tender, often funny,

letters. It is Betty, the eldest, he addresses, she is "Dear

Child," "My dear Daughter," "My good Girlie." He bids them be

good and grow like their mother. "I have observed that your

sister," he says in one letter, "has for the first time written

the initial or first letters of her name. Tell her I am highly

delighted to see her subscription in such fair letters. And how

many fine things those two letters stand for when she writes

them. M. S. is Milk and Sugar, Mirth and Safety, Music and

Songs, Meat and Sauce, as well as Molly and Spot, and Mary and

Steele." I think the children must have loved their kind father

who wrote such pretty nonsense to them.

So with ups and downs the years passed. However much money

Steele got he never seemed to have any, and in spite of all his

carelessness and jovialness, there is something sad in those last

years of his life. He quarreled with, and then for ever lost his

life-long friend, Joseph Addison. His two sons died, and at

length, broken in health, troubled about money, he went to spend

his last days in Carmarthen in Wales. Here we have a last

pleasant picture of him being carried out on a summer's evening

to watch the country lads and lasses dance. And with his own

hand, paralyzed though it was, he would write an order for a new

gown to be given to the best dancer. And here in Carmarthen, in

1729, he died and was buried in the Church of St. Peter.

BOOKS TO READ

Essays of Richard Steele, selected and edited by L. E. Steele.

Steele Selections from the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian,

edited by Austin Dobson.

Chapter LXVII POPE--THE "RAPE OF THE LOCK"

AS you have already guessed by the number of prose writers you

have been reading about, this age, the age of the last Stuarts

and the first Georges, was not a poetic one. It was an age of

art and posturing. It was an age of fierce and passionate party

strife--strife between Whig and Tory which almost amounted to

civil war, but instead of using swords and guns the men who took

part in the strife used pen and ink. They played the game

without any rules of fair play. No weapon was too vile or mean

to be used if by it the enemy might be injured.

You have often been told that it is rude to make personal

remarks, but the age of Anne was the age of personal remarks, and

they were not considered rude. The more cruel and pointed they

were, the more clever they were thought to be. To be stupid or

ugly are not sins. They ought not to be causes of scorn and

laughter, but in the age of Anne they were accepted as such. And

if the enemy was worsted in the fight he took his revenge by

holding up to ridicule the person of his victor. To raise the

unkind laughter of the world against an enemy was the great thing

to be aimed at. Added to this, too, the age was one of common

sense. All this does not make for poetry, yet in this age there

was one poet, who, although he does not rank among our greatest

poets, was still great, and perhaps had he lived in a less

artificial age he might have been greater still.

This poet was Alexander Pope, the son of a well-to-do Catholic

linen-draper. He was born in London in 1688, but soon afterwards

his father retired from business, and went to live in a little

village not far from Windsor.

Alexander was an only son. He had one step-sister, but she was a

good many years older than he, and he seems never to have had any

child companions or real childhood. He must always have been

delicate, yet as a child his face was "round, plump, pretty, and

of a fresh complexion."* He is said, too, to have been very

sweet tempered, but his father and mother spoilt him not a

little, and when he grew up he lost that sweetness of temper.

Yet, unlike many spoilt children, Pope never forgot the reverence

due to father and mother. He repaid their love with love as

warm, and in their old age he tended and cared for them fondly.

*Spence, Anecdotes.

As Pope was a delicate boy he got little regular schooling. He

learned to write by copying the printed letters in books, and was

first taught to read by an aunt, and later by a priest, but still

at home. After a time he was at school for a few years, but he

went from one school to another, never staying long at any, and

so never learning much. He says indeed that he unlearned at two

of his schools all that he had learned at another. By the time

he was twelve he was once more at home reading what he liked and

learning what he liked, and he read and studied so greedily that

he made himself ill.

Pope loved the stories of the Greek and Roman heroes, but he did

not care for the hard work needed to learn to read them in the

original with ease, and contented himself with translations. He

was so fond of these stories that while still a little boy he

made a play from the Iliad which was acted by the boys of one of

his schools.

Very early Pope began to write poetry. He read a great deal, and

two of his favorite poets were Spenser and Dryden. His great

idea was to become a poet also, and in this his father encouraged

him. Although no poet himself he would set his little son to

make verses upon different subjects. "He was pretty difficult in

being pleased," says Pope's mother, "and used often to send him

back to new turn them; 'These are not good rhymes,' he would

say."

There is a story told that Pope admired Dryden's poetry so much

that he persuaded a friend to take him one day to London, to the

coffee-house where Dryden used to hold his little court. There

he saw the great man, who spoke to him and gave him a shilling

for some verses he wrote. But the story is a very doubtful one,

as Dryden died when Pope was twelve years old, and for some time

before that he had been too ill to go to coffee-houses. But that

Pope's admiration for Dryden was very sincere and very great we

know, for he chose him as his model. Like Dryden, Pope wrote in

the heroic couplet, and in his hands it became much more neat and

polished than ever it did in the hands of the older poet.

Pope saw Dryden only once, even if the story is true; but with

another old poet, a dramatist, he struck up a great friendship.

This poet was named Wycherley, but by the time that Pope came to

know him Wycherley had grown old and feeble, all his best work

was done, and people were perhaps beginning to forget him. So he

was pleased with the admiration of the boy poet fifty years

younger than himself, and glad to accept his help. At first this

flattered Pope's vanity, but after a little he quarreled with his

old friend and left him. This was the first of Pope's literary

quarrels, of which he had many.

Already, as a boy, Pope was becoming known. He had published a

few short poems, and others were handed about in manuscript among

his friends. "That young fellow will either be a madman or make

a very great poet,"* said one man after meeting him when he was

about fourteen. All the praise and attention which Pope received

pleased him much. But he took it only as his due, and his great

ambition was to make people believe that he had been a

wonderfully clever child, and that he had begun to write when he

was very young. He says of himself with something of

pompousness, "I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came."

*Edmund Smith.

Pope's keenest desire was to be a poet, and few poets have rushed

so quickly into fame. He received few of the buffets which young

authors have as a rule to bear. Instead, many a kindly helping

hand was stretched out to him by the great men of the day, for

there was much in this young genius to draw out the pity of

others. He was fragile and sickly. As a full grown man he stood

only four feet six inches high. His body was bent and deformed,

and so frail that he had to be strapped in canvas to give him

some support. His fine face was lined by pain, for he suffered

from racking headaches, and indeed his life was one long disease.

Yet in spite of constant pain this little crooked boy, with his

"little, tender, crazy carcass," as Wycherley called it, wrote

the most astonishing poetry in a style which in his own day was

considered the finest that could be written.

It is not surprising then that his poems were greeted with kindly

wonder, mixed it may be with a little envy. Unhappily Pope saw

only the envy and overlooked the kindliness. Perhaps it was that

his crooked little body had warped the great mind it held, but

certain it is, as Pope grew to manhood his thirst for praise and

glory increased, and with it his distrust and envy of others.

And many of the ways he took to add to his own fame, and take

away from that of others, were mean and tortuous to the last

degree. Deceit and crooked ways seemed necessary to him. It has

been said that he hardly drank tea without a stratagem, and that

he played the politician about cabbages and turnips.*

*Lady Bolingbroke.

He begged his own letters back from the friends to whom they were

written. He altered them, changed the dates, and published them.

Then he raised a great outcry pretending that they had been

stolen from him and published without his knowledge. Such ways

led to quarrels and strife while he was alive, and since his

death they have puzzled every one who has tried to write about

him. All his life through he was hardly ever without a literary

quarrel of some sort, some of his poems indeed being called forth

merely by these quarrels.

But though many of Pope's poems led to quarrels, and some were

written with the desire to provoke them, one of his most famous

poems was, on the other hand, written to bring peace between two

angry families. This poem is called the Rape of the Lock--rape

meaning theft, and the lock not the lock of a door, but a lock of

hair.

A gay young lord had stolen a lock of a beautiful young lady's

hair, and she was so angry about it that there was a coolness

between the two families. A friend then came to Pope to ask him

if he could not do something to appease the angry lady. So Pope

took up his pen and wrote a mock-heroic poem making friendly fun

of the whole matter. But although Pope's intention was kindly

his success was not complete. The families did not entirely see

the joke, and Pope writes to a friend, "The celebrated lady

herself is offended, and, what is stranger, not at herself, but

me."

But the poem remains one of the most delightful of airy trifles

in our language. And that it should be so airy is a triumph of

Pope's genius, for it is written in the heroic couplet, one of

the most mechanical forms of English verse.

Addison called it "a delicious little thing" and the very salt of

wit.

Another and later writer says of it--"It is the most exquisite

specimen of filigree work ever invented. It is made of gauze and

silver spangles. . . . Airs, languid airs, breathe around, the

atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilet is described

with the solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of vanity,

and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of

heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no

splendour of poetic diction to set off the meanest things. . . .

It is the perfection of the mock-heroic."*

*Hazlitt.

Pope begins the poem by describing Belinda, the heroine, awaking

from sleep. He tells how her guardian sylph brings a morning

dream to warn her of coming danger. In the dream she is told

that all around her unnumbered fairy spirits fly guarding her

from evil--

"Of these am I, who thy protection claim,

A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.

Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air,

In the clear mirror of thy ruling star

I saw, alas! some dread event impend,

Ere to the main this morning sun descend.

But heaven reveals not what, or how, or where:

Warned by the sylph, oh pious maid, beware!

This to disclose is all thy guardian can:

Beware of all, but most beware of Man!"

Then Shock, Belinda's dog,

"Who thought she slept too long,

Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his tongue."

So Belinda rises and is dressed. While her maid seems to do the

work,

"The busy sylphs surround their darling care,

These set the head, and those divide the hair,

Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown'

And Betty's praised for labours not her own."

Next Belinda set out upon the Thames to go by boat to Hampton

Court, and as she sat in her gayly decorated boat she looked so

beautiful that every eye was turned to gaze upon her--

"On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,

Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore."

She was so beautiful and graceful that it seemed as if she could

have no faults, or--

"If to her share some female errors fall,

Look in her face, and you'll forget them all.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,

Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind

In equal curls, and well conspired to deck,

With shining ringlets, the smoothe iv'ry neck.

Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,

And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.

With hairy springes we the birds betray,

Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,

Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair."

The "Adventurous Baron" next appears upon the scene. He, greatly

admiring Belinda's shining locks, longs to possess one, and makes

up his mind that he will. And, as the painted vessel glided down

the Thames, Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay, only Ariel

alone was sad and disturbed, for he felt some evil, he knew not

what, was hanging over his mistress. So he gathered all his

company and bade them watch more warily than before over their

charge. Some must guard the watch, some the fan, "And thou

Crispissa, tend her fav'rite lock," he says. And woe betide that

sprite who shall be careless or neglectful!

"Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,

His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,

Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,

Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins,

Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,

Or wedged, whole ages in a bodkin's eye."

So the watchful sprites flew off to their places--

"Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend;

Some thrid* the mazy ringlets of her hair,

Some hang upon the pendants of her ear."

*Slipped through.

The day went on, Belinda sat down to play cards. After the game

coffee was brought, and "while frequent cups prolong the rich

repast," Belinda unthinkingly gave the Baron a pair of scissors.

Then indeed the hour of fate struck. The Baron standing behind

Belinda found the temptation too great. He opened the scissors

and drew near--

"Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair,

A thousand wings by turns blow back the hair;

And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear;

Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near."

But at last "the fatal engine" closed upon the lock. Even to the

last, one wretched sylph struggling to save the lock clung to it.

It was in vain, "Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in

twain." Then, while Belinda cried aloud in anger, the Baron

shouted in triumph and rejoiced over his spoil.

The poem goes on to tell how Umbriel, a dusky melancholy sprite,

in order to make the quarrel worse, flew off to the witch Spleen,

and returned with a bag full of "sighs, sobs, and passions, and

the war of tongues," "soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing

tears," and emptied it over Belinda's head. She--

"Then raging to Sir Plume repairs,

And bids her beau demand the precious hairs.

Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,

And the nice conduct of a clouded case,

With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,

He first the snuff-box opened, then the case."

Sir Plume, not famous for brains, put on a very bold, determined

air, and fiercely attacked the Baron--"My Lord," he cried, "why,

what! you must return the lock! You must be civil. Plague on

't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, give her the hair." And as he

spoke he tapped his snuff-box daintily.

But in spite of this valiant champion of fair ladies in distress,

the Baron would not return the lock. So a deadly battle followed

in which the ladies fought against the gentlemen, and in which

the sprites also took part. The weapons were only frowns and

angry glances--

"A beau and witling perished in the throng,

One died in metaphor, and one in song.

. . . . .

A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,

'Those eyes were made so killing,' was his last."

Belinda, however, at length disarmed the Baron with a pinch of

snuff, and threatened his life with a hair pin. And so the

battle ends. But alas!--

"The lock, obtained with guilt and kept with pain,

In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain."

During the fight it has been caught up to the skies--

"A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,

And drew behind a radiant trail of hair."

Thus, says the poet, Belinda has no longer need to mourn her lost

lock, for it will be famous to the end of time as a bright star

among the stars--

"Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair,

Which adds new glory to the starry sphere!

Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,

Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.

For after all the murders of your eye,

When, after millions slain, yourself shall die;

When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,

And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,

This lock the Muse shall consecrate to fame,

And midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name."

When Pope first published this poem there was nothing about

fairies in it. Afterwards he thought of the fairies, but Addison

advised him not to alter the poem, as it was so delightful as it

was. Pope, however, did not take the advice, but added the fairy

part, thereby greatly improving the poem. This caused a quarrel

with Addison, for Pope thought he had given him bad advice

through jealousy. A little later this quarrel was made much

worse. Pope translated and published a version of the Iliad, and

at the same time a friend of Addison did so too. This made Pope

bitterly angry, for he believed that the translation was

Addison's own and that he had published it to injure the sale of

his. From this you see how easily Pope's anger and jealousy were

aroused, and will not wonder that his life was a long record of

quarrels.

Pope need not have been jealous of Addison's friend, for his own

translation of Homer was a great success, and people soon forgot

the other. He translated not only the Iliad, but with the help

of two lesser poets the Odyssey also. Both poems were done in

the fashionable heroic couplet, and Pope made so much money by

them that he was able to live in comfort ever after. And it is

interesting to remember that Pope was the first poet who was able

to live in comfort entirely on what he made by his writing.

Pope now took a house at Twickenham, and there he spent many

happy hours planning and laying out his garden, and building a

grotto with shells and stones and bits of looking-glass. The

house has long ago been pulled down and the garden altered, but

the grotto still remains, a sight for the curious.

It has been said that to write in the heroic couplet "is an art

as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and

may be learned by any human being who has sense enough to learn

anything."* And although this is not all true, it is so far true

that it is almost impossible to tell which books of the Odyssey

were written by Pope, and which by the men who helped him. But,

taken as a whole, the Odyssey is not so good as the Iliad.

Scholars tell us that in neither the one nor the other is the

feeling of the original poetry kept. Pope did not know enough

Greek to enter into the spirit of it, and he worked mostly from

translation. Even had he been able to enter into the true spirit

he would have found it hard to keep that spirit in his

translation, using as he did the artificial heroic couplet. For

Homer's poetry is not artificial, but simple and natural like our

own early poetry. "A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not

call it Homer," said a friend** when he read it, and his judgment

is still for the most part the judgment of to-day.

*Macaulay.

**Bentley.

It was after he had finished the Odyssey that Pope wrote his most

famous satire, called the Dunciad. In this he insulted and held

up to ridicule all stupid or dull authors, all dunces, and all

those whom he considered his enemies. It is very clever, but a

poem full of malice and hatred does not make very pleasant

reading. For most of us, too, the interest it had has vanished,

as many of the people at whom Pope levied his malice are

forgotten, or only remembered because he made them famous by

adding their names to his roll of dunces. But in Pope's own day

the Dunciad called forth cries of anger and revenge from the

victims, and involved the author in still more quarrels.

Pope wrote many more poems, the chief being the Essay on

Criticism and the Essay on Man. But his translations of Homer

and the Rape of the Lock are those you will like best in the

meantime. As a whole Pope is perhaps not much read now, yet many

of his lines have become household words, and when you come to

read him you will be surprised to find how many familiar

quotations are taken from his poems. Perhaps no one of our poets

except Shakespeare is more quoted. And yet he seldom says

anything which touches the heart. When we enjoy his poetry we

enjoy it with the brain. It gives us pleasure rather as the

glitter of a diamond than as the perfume of a rose.

In spite of his crooked, sickly little body Pope lived to be

fifty-six, and one evening in May 1744 he died peacefully in his

home at Twickenham, and was buried in the church there, near the

monument which he had put up to the memory of his father and

mother.

There is so much disagreeable and mean in Pope that we are apt to

lose sight of what was good in him altogether. We have to remind

ourselves that he was a good and affectionate son, and that he

was loving to the friends with whom he did not quarrel. Yet

these can hardly be counted as great merits. Perhaps his

greatest merit is that he kept his independence in an age when

writers fawned upon patrons or accepted bribes from Whig or Tory.

Pope held on his own way, looking for favors neither from one

side nor from the other. And when we think of his frail little

body, this sturdy independence of mind is all the more wonderful.

From Pope we date the beginning of the time when a writer could

live honorable by his pen, and had not need to flatter a patron,

or sell his genius to politics or party. But Pope stood alone in

this independence, and he never had to fight for it. A happy

chance, we might say, made him free. For while his brother

writers all around him were still held in the chains of

patronage, Pope having more money than some did not need to bow

to it, and having less greed than others did not choose to bow to

it, in order to add to his wealth. And in the following chapter

we come to another man who in the next generation fought for

freedom, won it, and thereby helped to free others. This man was

the famous Dr. Samuel Johnson.

BOOKS TO READ

Pope's Iliad, edited by A. J. Church. Pope's Odyssey, edited by

A. J. Church.

NOTE.--As an introduction to Pope's Homer the following books may

be read:--

Stories from the Iliad, by Jeanie Lang. Stories from the

Odyssey, by Jeannie Lang. The Children's Iliad, by A. J. Church.

The Children's Odyssey, by A. J. Church.

Chapter LXVIII JOHNSON--DAYS OF STRUGGLE

SAMUEL JOHNSON was the son of a country bookseller, and he was

born at Lichfield in 1709. He was a big, strong boy, but he

suffered from a dreadful disease, known then as the King's Evil.

It left scars upon his good-looking face, and nearly robbed him

of his eyesight. In those days people still believed that this

dreadful disease would be cured if the person suffering from it

was touched by a royal hand. So when he was two, little Samuel

was taken to London by his father and mother, and there he was

"touched" by Queen Anne. Samuel had a wonderful memory, and

although he had been so young at the time, all his life after he

kept a kind of awed remembrance of a stately lady who wore a long

black hood and sparkling diamonds. The touch of the Queen's soft

white hand did the poor little sick child no good, and it is

quaint to remember that the great learned doctor thought it might

be because he had been touched by the wrong royal hand. He might

have been cured perhaps had he been taken to Rome and touched by

the hand of a Stuart. For Johnson was a Tory, and all his life

he remained at heart a Jacobite.

At school Samuel learned easily and read greedily all kinds of

books. He loved poetry most, and read Shakespeare when he was so

young that he was frightened at finding himself alone while

reading about the ghost in Hamlet. Yet he was idle at his tasks

and had not altogether an easy time, for when asked long years

after how he became such a splendid Latin scholar, he replied,

"My master whipt me very well, without that, sir, I should have

done nothing."

Samuel learned so easily that, though he was idle, he knew more

than any of the other boys. He ruled them too. Three of them

used to come every morning to carry their stout comrade to

school. Johnson mounted on the back of one, and the other two

supported him, one on each side. In winter when he was too lazy

to skate or slide himself they pulled him about on the ice by a

garter tied round his waist. Thus early did Johnson show his

power over his fellows.

At sixteen Samuel left school, and for two years idled about his

father's shop, reading everything that came in his way. He

devoured books. He did not read them carefully, but quickly,

tearing the heart out of them. He cared for nothing else but

reading, and once when his father was ill and unable to attend to

his bookstall, he asked his son to do it for him. Samuel

refused. But the memory of his disobedience and unkindliness

stayed with him, and more than fifty years after, as an old and

worn man, he stood bare-headed in the wind and rain for an hour

in the market-place, upon the spot where his father's stall had

stood. This he did as a penance for that one act of

disobedience.

Johnson's father was a bookworm, like his son, rather than a

tradesman. He knew and loved his books, but he made little money

by them. A student himself, he was proud of his studious boy,

and wanted to send him to college. But he was miserably poor and

could not afford it. A well-off friend, however, offered to

help, and so at eighteen Samuel went to Oxford.

Here he remained three years. Those years were not altogether

happy ones, for Johnson's huge ungainly figure, and shabby,

patched clothes were matters for laughter among his fellow-

students. He became a sloven in his dress. His gown was

tattered and his linen dirty, and his toes showed through his

boots. Yet when some one, meaning no doubt to be kind, placed a

new pair at his door, he kicked them away in anger. He would not

stoop to accept charity. But in spite of his poverty and shabby

clothes, he was a leader at college as he had been at school, and

might often be seen at his college gates with a crowd of young

men round him, "entertaining them with wit and keeping them from

their studies."*

*Boswell.

After remaining about three years at college, Johnson left

without taking a degree. Perhaps poverty had something to do

with that. At any rate, with a great deal of strange, unordered

learning and no degree, and with his fortune still to make,

Samuel returned to his poverty-stricken home. There in a few

months the father died, leaving to his son an inheritance of

forty pounds.

With forty pounds not much is to be done, and Samuel became an

usher, or under-master in a school. He was little fitted to

teach, and the months which followed were to him a torture, and

all his life after he looked back on them with something of

horror.

After a few months, he left the school where he had been so

unhappy, and went to Birmingham to be near an old schoolfellow.

Here he managed to live somehow, doing odd bits of writing, and

here he met the lady who became his wife.

Johnson was now twenty-five and a strange-looking figure. He was

tall and lank, and his huge bones seemed to start out of his lean

body. His face was deeply marked with scars, and although he was

very near-sighted, his gray eyes were bright and wild, so wild at

times that they frightened those upon whom they were turned. He

wore his own hair, which was coarse and straight, and in an age

when every man wore a wig this made him look absurd. He had a

trick of making queer gestures with hands and feet. He would

shake his head and roll himself about, and would mutter to

himself until strangers though that he was an idiot.

And this queer genius fell in love with a widow lady more than

twenty years older than himself. She, we are told, was coarse,

fat, and unlovely, but she was not without brains, for she saw

beneath the strange outside of her young lover. "This is the

most sensible man that I ever saw in my life," she said, after

talking with him. So this strange couple married. "Sir," said

Johnson afterwards, "It was a love-marriage on both sides." And

there can be no doubt that Samuel loved his wife devotedly while

she lived, and treasured her memory tenderly after her death.

Mrs. Johnson had a little money, and so Samuel returned to his

native town and there opened a school. An advertisement appeared

in the papers, "At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young

gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages,

by Samuel Johnson." But Johnson was quite unfitted to be a

teacher, and the school did not prosper. "His schoolroom," says

another writer, "must have resembled an ogre's den," and only two

or three boys came to it. Among them was David Garrick, who

afterwards became a famous actor and amused the world by

imitating his friend and old schoolmaster, the great Sam, as well

as his elderly wife.

After struggling with his school for more than a year, Johnson

resolved to give it up and go to London, there to seek his

fortune. Leaving his wife at Lichfield, he set off with his

friend and pupil David Garrick, as he afterwards said, "With

twopence halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three

halfpence in thine."

The days of the later Stuarts and the first of the Georges were

the great days of patronage. When a writer of genius appeared,

noblemen and others, who were powerful and wealthy, were eager to

become his patron, and have his books dedicated to them. So

although the dunces among writers remained terribly poor, almost

every man of genius was sure of a comfortable life. But although

he gained this by his writing, it was not because the people

liked his books, but because one man liked them or was eager to

have his name upon them, and therefore became his patron. The

patron, then, either himself helped his pet writer, or got for

him some government employment. After a time this fashion

ceased, and instead of taking his book to a patron, a writer took

it to a bookseller, and sold it to him for as much money as he

could. And so began the modern way of publishing books.

But when Johnson came to London to try his fortune as a writer,

it was just the time between. The patron had not quite vanished,

the bookseller had not yet taken his place. Never had writing

been more badly paid, never had it been more difficult to make a

living by it. "The trade of author was at about one of its

lowest ebbs when Johnson embarked on it."*

*Carlyle.

Johnson had brought with him to London a tragedy more than half

written, but when he took it to the booksellers they showed no

eagerness to publish it, or indeed anything else that he might

write. Looking at him they saw no genius, but only a huge and

uncouth country youth. One bookseller, seeing his great body,

advised him rather to try his luck as a porter than as a writer.

But, in spite of rebuffs and disappointments, Johnson would not

give in. When he had money enough he lived in mean lodgings,

when he had none, hungry, ragged, and cold, he roamed about the

streets, making friends with other strange, forlorn men of

genius, and sharing their miseries.

But if Johnson starved he never cringed, and once when a

bookseller spoke rudely to him he knocked him down with one of

his own books. A beggar or not, Johnson demanded the respect due

to a man. At school and college he had dominated his fellows, he

dominated now. But the need of fighting for respect made him

rough. And ever after his manner with friend and foe alike was

rude and brusque.

The misery of this time was such that long years after Johnson

burst into tears at the memory of it. But it did not conquer

him, he conquered it. He got work to do at last, and became one

of the first newspaper reporters.

Nowadays, during the debates in Parliament there are numbers of

newspaper reporters who take down all that is said in shorthand,

and who afterwards write out the debates for their various

newspapers. In Johnson's day no such thing had been thought of.

He did not hear the debates, but wrote his accounts of them from

a few notes given to him by some one who had heard them. The

speeches which appeared in the paper were thus really Johnson's,

and had very little resemblance to what had been said in the

House. And being a Tory, Johnson took good care, as he

afterwards confessed, "that the Whig dogs should not have the

best of it." After a time, however, Johnson began to think this

so-called reporting was not quite honest, and gave it up. He

found other literary work to do, and soon, although he was still

poor, he had enough money to make it possible for his wife to

join him in London.

Among other things he wrote one or two poems and the life of

Richard Savage, a strange, wild genius with whom he had wandered

the streets in the days of his worst poverty. The tragedy called

Irene which Johnson had brought with him to London was at length

after twelve years produced by Garrick, who had by that time

become a famous actor. Johnson had, however, no dramatic genius.

"When Johnson writes tragedy," said Garrick, "'declamation roars

and passion sleeps':* when Shakespeare wrote, he dipped the pen

in his own heart." Garrick did what he could with the play, but

it was a failure, and although Johnson continued to believe that

it was good, he wrote no more tragedies.

*Garrick is here quoting from one of Johnson's own poems in which

he describes the decline of the drama at the Restoration.

The story of Irene is one of the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

After Mahomet had taken Constantinople he fell in love with a

fair Greek maiden whose name was Irene. The Sultan begged her to

become a Mohammedan so that he might marry her. To this Irene

consented, but when his soldiers heard of it they were so angry

that they formed a conspiracy to dethrone their ruler.

Hearing of this Mahomet resolved to make an end of the conspiracy

and rescue his throne from danger. Calling all his nobles

together he bade Irene appear before him. Then catching her by

the hair with one hand and drawing his sword with the other he at

one blow struck off her head. This deed filled all who saw it

with terror and wonder. But turning to his nobles Mahomet cried,

"Now by this, judge if your Emperor is able to bridle his

affections or not."

It seems as if there were here a story which might be made to

stir our hearts, but Johnson makes it merely dull. In his long

words and fine-sounding sentences we catch no thrill of real

life. The play is artificial and cold, and moves us neither to

wonder nor sorrow.

Johnson's play was a failure, but by that time he had begun the

great work which was to name him and single him out from the rest

of the world as Dictionary Johnson. To make a complete

dictionary of a language is a tremendous work. Johnson thought

that it would take three years. It took, instead, seven.

But during these seven years he also wrote other things and

steadily added to his fame. He started a paper after the model

of the Spectator, called the Rambler. This paper was continued

for about two years, Johnson writing all but five of the essays.

After that he wrote many essays in a paper called the Adventurer,

and, later still, for two years he wrote for another paper a

series of articles called the Idler.

But none of these can we compare with the Spectator. Johnson

never for a moment loses sight of "a grand moral end." There is

in his essays much sound common sense, but they are lumbering and

heavy. We get from them no such picture of the times as we get

from the Spectator, and, although they are not altogether without

humor, it is a humor that not seldom reminds us of the dancing of

an elephant. This is partly because, as Johnson said himself, he

is inclined to "use too big words and too many of them."

In the days when Johnson wrote, this style was greatly admired,

but now we have come back to thinking that the simplest words are

best, or, at least, that we must suit our words to our subject.

And if we tell a fairy tale (as Johnson once did) we must not use

words of five syllables when words of two will better give the

feeling of the tale. Yet there are many pleasant half-hours to

be spent in dipping here and there into the volumes of the

Rambler or the Idler. I will give you in the next chapter, as a

specimen of Johnson's prose, part of one of the essays from the

Idler. It is the story of a man who sets forth upon a very

ordinary journey and who makes as great a tale of it as he had

been upon a voyage of discovery in some untraveled land.

Chapter LXIX JOHNSON--THE END OF THE JOURNEY

"I SUPPED three nights ago with my friend Will Marvel. His

affairs obliged him lately to take a journey into Devonshire,

from which he has just returned. He knows me to be a very

patient hearer, and was glad of my company, as it gave him an

opportunity of disburdening himself, by a minute relation of the

casualties of his expedition.

"Will is not one of those who go out and return with nothing to

tell. He has a story of his travels, which will strike a home-

bred citizen with horror, and has in ten days suffered so often

the extremes of terror and joy, that he is in doubt whether he

shall ever again expose either his body or his mind to such

danger and fatigue.

"When he left London the morning was bright, and a fair day was

promised. But Will is born to struggle with difficulties. That

happened to him, which has sometimes, perhaps, happened to

others. Before he had gone more than ten miles, it began to

rain. What course was to be taken? His soul disdained to turn

back. He did what the King of Prussia might have done; he

flapped his hat, buttoned up his cape, and went forwards,

fortifying his mind by the stoical consolation, that whatever is

violent will be short."

So, with such adventures, the first day passes, and reaching his

inn, after a good supper, Will Marvel goes to bed and sleeps

soundly. But during the night he is wakened "by a shower beating

against his windows with such violence as to threaten the

dissolution of nature." Thus he knows that the next day will

have its troubles. "He joined himself, however, to a company

that was travelling the same way, and came safely to the place of

dinner, though every step of his horse dashed the mud in the

air."

In the afternoon he went on alone, passing "collections of

water," puddles doubtless, the depth of which it was impossible

to guess, and looking back upon the ride he marvels at his rash

daring. "But what a man undertakes he must perform, and Marvel

hates a coward at his heart.

"Few that lie warm in their beds think what others undergo, who

have, perhaps, been as tenderly educated, and have as acute

sensations as themselves. My friend was now to lodge the second

night almost fifty miles from home, in a house which he never had

seen before, among people to whom he was totally a stranger, not

knowing whether the next man he should meet would prove good or

bad; but seeing an inn of a good appearance, he rode resolutely

into the yard; and knowing that respect is often paid in

proportion as it is claimed, delivered his injunctions to the

ostler with spirit, and, entering the house, called vigorously

about him.

"On the third day up rose the sun and Mr. Marvel. His troubles

and dangers were now such as he wishes no other man ever to

encounter." The way was lonely, often for two miles together he

met not a single soul with whom he could speak, and, looking at

the bleak fields and naked trees, he wished himself safe home

again. His only consolation was that he suffered these terrors

of the way alone. Had, for instance, his friend the "Idler" been

there he could have done nothing but lie down and die.

"At last the sun set and all the horrors of darkness came upon

him. . . . Yet he went forward along a path which he could no

longer see, sometimes rushing suddenly into water, and sometimes

encumbered with stiff clay, ignorant whither he was going, and

uncertain whether his next step might not be the last.

"In this dismal gloom of nocturnal peregrination his horse

unexpectedly stood still. Marvel had heard many relations of the

instinct of horses, and was in doubt what danger might be at

hand. Sometimes he fancied that he was on the bank of a river

still and deep, and sometimes that a dead body lay across the

track. He sat still awhile to recollect his thoughts; and as he

was about to alight and explore the darkness, out stepped a man

with a lantern, and opened the turnpike. He hired a guide to the

town, arrived in safety, and slept in quiet.

"The rest of his journey was nothing but danger. He climbed and

descended precipices on which vulgar mortals tremble to look; he

passed marshes like the Serbonian bog,* where armies whole have

sunk; he forded rivers where the current roared like the Egre or

the Severn; or ventured himself on bridges that trembled under

him, from which he looked down on foaming whirlpools, or dreadful

abysses; he wandered over houseless heaths, amidst all the rage

of the elements, with the snow driving in his face, and the

tempest howling in his ears.

*Lake Serbonis in Egypt. Sand being blown over it by the winds

gave it the appearance of solid ground, whereas it was a bog.

"A gulf profound as the Serbonian bog. . . .

Where armies whole have sunk." -- MILTON.

"Such are the colours in which Marvel paints his adventures. He

has accustomed himself to sounding words and hyperbolical images,

till he has lost the power of true description. In a road,

through which the heaviest carriages pass without difficulty, and

the post-boy every day and night goes and returns, he meets with

hardships like those which are endured in Siberian deserts, and

missed nothing of romantic danger but a giant and a dragon. When

his dreadful story is told in proper terms, it is only that the

way was dirty in winter, and that he experienced the common

vicissitudes of rain and sunshine."

I am afraid you will find a good many "too big" words in that.

But if I changed them to others more simple you would get no idea

of the way in which Johnson wrote, and I hope those you do not

understand you will look up in the dictionary. It will not be

Johnson's own dictionary, however, for that has grown old-

fashioned, and its place has been taken by later ones. For some

of Johnson's meanings were not correct, and when these mistakes

were pointed out to him he was not in the least ashamed. Once a

lady asked him how he came to say that the pastern was the knee

of a horse, and he calmly replied, "Ignorance, madam, pure

ignorance." "Dictionaries are like watches," he said, "the worst

is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite

true."

With some words, instead of giving the original meaning, he gave

a personal meaning, that is he allowed his own sense of humor,

feelings or politics, to color the meaning. For instance, he

disliked the Scots, so for the meaning of Oats he gave, "A grain

which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland

supports the people." He disliked the Excise duty, so he called

it "A hateful tax levied by wretches hired by those to whom

excise is paid." For this last meaning he came very near being

punished for libel.

When Johnson thought of beginning the dictionary he wrote about

it to Lord Chesterfield, a great man and fine gentleman of the

day. As the fashion was, Johnson had chosen this great man for

his patron. But Lord Chesterfield, although his vanity was

flattered at the idea of having a book dedicated to him, was too

delicate a fine gentleman to wish to have anything to do with a

man he considered poor. "He throws anywhere but down his

throat," he said, "whatever he means to drink, and mangles what

he means to carve. . . . The utmost I can do for him is to

consider him a respectable Hottentot." So, when Johnson had

called several times and been told that his lordship was not at

home, or had been kept waiting for hours before he was received,

he grew angry, and marched away never to return, vowing that he

had done with patrons for ever.

The years went on, and Johnson saw nothing of his patron. When,

however, the dictionary was nearly done, Lord Chesterfield let it

be known that he would be pleased to have it dedicated to him.

But Johnson would have none of it. He wrote a letter which was

the "Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of Lord

Chesterfield, and, through him, of the listening world, that

patronage would be no more!"*

*Carlyle.

"Seven years, my Lord, have now passed," wrote Johnson, "since I

waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door;

during which time I have been pushing on my work through

difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought

it at last to the verge of publication without one act of

assistance, one word of encouragement, and one smile of favour.

Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.

. . .

"Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man

struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the

ground cumbers him with help? The notice which you have been

pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind;

but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy

it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known,

and do not want it."

There was an end of patronage so far as Johnson was concerned,

and it was the beginning of the end of it with others. Great Sam

had roared, he had asserted himself, and with the publication of

his dictionary he became "The Great Cham* of literature."**

*A Tartar word for prince or chief.

**Smollett.

He had by this time founded a club of literary men which met at

"a famous beef-steak house," and here he lorded it over his

fellows as his bulky namesake had done more than a hundred years

before. In many ways there was a great likeness between these

two. They were both big and stout (for Sam was now stout). They

were loud-voiced and dictatorial. They both drank a great deal,

but Ben, alas, drank wine overmuch, as was common in his day,

while Sam drank endless cups of tea, seventeen or eighteen it

might be at a sitting, indeed he called himself a hardened and

shameless tea-drinker. But, above all, their likeness lies in

the fact that they both dominated the literary men of their

period; they were kings and rulers. They laid down the law and

settled who was great and who little among the writers of the

day. And it was not merely the friends around Johnson who heard

him talk, who listened to his judgments about books and writers.

The world outside listened, too, to what he had to say, and you

will remember that it was he who utterly condemned Macpherson's

pretended poems of Ossian, "that pious three-quarters fraud"* of

which you have already read in chapter IV.

*A. Lang.

Johnson had always spent much of his time in taverns, and was now

more than ever free to do so. For while he was still working at

his dictionary he suffered a great grief in the death of his

wife. He had loved her truly and never ceased to mourn her loss.

But though he had lost his wife, he did not remain solitary in

his home, for he opened his doors to a queer collection of waifs

and strays--three women and a man, upon whom he took pity because

no one else would. They were ungrateful and undeserving, and

quarreled constantly among themselves, so that his home could

have been no peaceful spot. "Williams hates everybody," he

writes; "Levett hates Desmoulins and does not love Williams;

Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them." It does

not sound peaceful or happy.

Some years after the death of Johnson's wife his mother died at

the age of ninety, and although he had not been with her for many

years, that too was a grief. The poor lady had had very little

to live on, and she left some debts. Johnson himself was still

struggling with poverty. He had no money, so to pay his mother's

few debts, and also the expenses of her funeral, he sat down to

write a story. In a week he had finished Rasselas, Prince of

Abyssinia.

The story of Rasselas is that of a prince who is shut up in the

Happy Valley until the time shall come for him to ascent the

throne of his father. Everything was done to make life in the

Happy Valley peaceful and joyful, but Rasselas grew weary of it;

to him it became but a prison of pleasure, and at last, with his

favorite sister, he escaped out into the world. The story tells

then of their search for happiness. But perfect happiness they

cannot find, and discovering this, they decide to return to the

Happy Valley.

There is a vein of sadness throughout the book. It ends as it

were with a big question mark, with a "conclusion in which

nothing is concluded." For the position of the prince and his

sister was unchanged, and they had not found what they sought.

Is it to be found at all? The story is a revelation of Johnson

himself. He never saw life joyously, and at times he had fits of

deep melancholy which he fought against as against a madness. "I

inherited," he said, "a vile melancholy from my father, which has

made me mad all my life, at least not sober," and his long

struggle with poverty helped to deepen this melancholy.

But a year or two after Rasselas was written, a great change came

in Johnson's life, which gave him comfort and security for the

rest of his days. George III had come to the throne. He thought

that he would like to do something for literature, and offered

Johnson a pension of three hundred pounds a year.

Johnson was now a man of fifty-four. He was acknowledged as the

greatest man of letters of his day, yet he was still poor. Three

hundred pounds seemed to him wealth, but he hesitated to accept

it. He was an ardent Tory and hated the House of Hanover. In

his dictionary he had called a pension "an allowance made to any

one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood

to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his

country." A pensioner he had said was "A slave of state hired by

a stipend to obey his master." Was he then to become a traitor

to his country and a slave of state?

But after a little persuasion Johnson yielded, as the pension

would be given to him, he was told, not for anything that he

would do, but for what he had done. "It is true," he said

afterwards, with a smile, "that I cannot now curse the House of

Hanover; nor would it be decent for me to drink King James's

health in the wine that King George gives me money to pay for.

But, sir, I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of

Hanover, and drinking King James's health, are amply overbalanced

by three hundred pounds a year."

Johnson had always been indolent. It was perhaps only poverty

that had forced him to write, and now that he was comfortably

provided for he became more indolent still. He reproached

himself, made good resolutions, and prayed over this fault, but

still he remained slothful and idle. He would lie abed till two

o'clock, and sit up half the night talking, and an edition of

Shakespeare which he had promised years before got no further on.

An edition of another man's works often means a great deal of

labor in making notes and comments. This is especially so if

hundreds of years have passed since the book was first written

and the language has had time to change, and Johnson felt little

inclined for this labor. But at length he was goaded into

working upon his Shakespeare by some spiteful verses on his

idleness, written by a political enemy, and after long delay it

appeared.

Just a little before this a young Scotsman named James Boswell

got to know the great man. He worshiped Johnson and spent as

much time with him as he could. It was a strange friendship

which grew up between these two. The great man bullied and

insulted yet loved the little man, and the little man accepted

all the insults gladly, happy to be allowed to be near his hero

on any conditions whatever. He treasured every word that Johnson

spoke and noted his every action. Nothing was too small or

trivial for his loving observation. He asked Johnson questions

and made remarks, foolish or otherwise, in order to draw him out

and make him talk, and afterwards he set down everything in a

notebook.

And when Johnson was dead Boswell wrote his life. It is one of

the most wonderful lives ever written--perhaps the most

wonderful. And when we have read it we seem to know Johnson as

well as if we had lived with him. We see and know him in all his

greatness and all his littleness, in all his weakness and all his

might.

It was with Boswell that Johnson made his most famous journey,

his tour to Scotland. For, like his namesake, Ben, he too

visited Scotland. But he traveled in a more comfortable manner,

and his journey was a much longer one, for he went as far as the

Hebrides. It was a wonderful expedition for a man of sixty-four,

especially in those days when there were no trains and little

ease in the way of traveling, and when much of it had to be done

on rough ponies or in open boats.

On his return Johnson wrote an account of this journey which did

not altogether please some of the Scots. But indeed, although

Johnson did not love the Scots, there is little in his book at

which to take offense.

Johnson's last work was a series of short lives of some of the

English poets from the seventeenth century onwards. It is

generally looked upon as his best. And although some of the

poets of whom he wrote are almost forgotten, and although we may

think that he was wrong in his criticisms of many of the others,

this is the book of Johnson's which is still most read. For it

must be owned that the great Sam is not much read now, although

he is such an important figure in the history of our literature.

It is as a person that we remember him, not as a writer. He

stamped his personality, as it is called, upon his age. Boswell

caught that personality and preserved it for us, so that, for

generation after generation, Johnson lives as no other character

in English literature lives. Boswell gave a new meaning to the

word biographer, that is the writer of a life, and now when a

great man has had no one to write his life well, we say "He lacks

a Boswell."

Boswell after a time joined the famous club at which Johnson and

his friends met together and talked. Johnson loved to argue, and

he made a point of always getting the best of an argument. If he

could not do so by reason, he simply roared his opponent down and

silenced him by sheer rudeness. "There is no arguing with

Johnson," said one of his friends, Oliver Goldsmith, "for when

his pistol misses fire he knocks you down with the butt end of

it." And perhaps Goldy, as Johnson called him, had to suffer

more rudeness from him than any of his friends to save Bozzy.

Yet the three were often to be found together, and it was

Goldsmith who said of Johnson, "No man alive has a more tender

heart. He has nothing of the bear but his skin."

And indeed in Johnson's outward appearance there was much of the

bear. He was a sloven in dress. His clothes were shabby and

thrown on anyhow. "I have no passion for clean linen," he said

himself. At table he made strange noises and ate greedily, yet

in spite of all that, added to his noted temper and rude manners,

men loved him and sought his company more than that of any other

writer of his day, for "within that shaggy exterior of his there

beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's."*

*Carlyle.

After Johnson received his pension we may look upon him as a

lumbering vessel which has weathered many a strong sea and has

now safely come to port. His life was henceforth easy. He

received honorary degrees, first from Dublin and then from

Oxford, so that he became Dr. Johnson. For two-and-twenty years

he enjoyed his pension, his freedom and his honors; then, in

1784, surrounded by his friends, he died in London, and was

buried in Westminster Abbey.

BOOKS TO READ

Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. A Journey to the Western Islands

of Scotland.

Chapter LXX GOLDSMITH--THE VAGABOND

THE kind of book which is most written and read nowadays is

called a novel. But we have not yet spoken much about this kind

of book for until now there were no novels in our meaning of the

word. There were romances such as Havelok the Dane and Morte

d'Arthur, later still tales such as those of Defoe, and the

modern novel is the outcome of such tales and romances. But it

is usually supposed to be more like real life than a romance. In

a romance we may have giants and fairies, things beyond nature

and above nature. A novel is supposed to tell only of what could

happen, without the help of anything outside everyday life. This

is a kind of writing in which the English have become very

clever, and now, as I said, more novels than any other kinds of

book are written. But only a few of these are good enough to

take a place in our literature, and very many are not worth

reading or remembering at all.

The first real novel in the modern sense was written by Samuel

Richardson, and published in 1740. Quickly after that there

arose several other novel writers whose books became famous.

These still stand high in the literature of our land, but as

nothing in them would be interesting to you for many years to

come we need not trouble about them now. There is, however, one

novel of this early time which I feel sure you would like, and of

it and its author I shall tell you something. The book I mean is

called The Vicar of Wakefield, and it was written by Oliver

Goldsmith.

Oliver Goldsmith was born in 1728 in Pallas, a little out-of-the-

way Irish village. His father was a clergyman and farmer, with a

large family and very little money. He was a dear, simple,

kindly man.

"A man he was to all the country dear,

And passing rich with forty pounds a year."

Two years after Oliver was born his father moved to Lissoy,

another and better parish. Little Oliver began to learn very

early, but his first teacher thought him stupid: "Never was

there such a dull boy," she said. She managed, however, to teach

him the alphabet, and at six he went to the village school of

Lissoy. Paddy Byrne, the master there, was an old soldier. He

had fought under Marlborough, he had wandered the world seeking

and finding adventures. His head was full of tales of wild

exploits, of battles, of ghosts and fairies too, for he was an

Irishman and knew and loved the Celtic lore. Besides all this he

wrote poetry.

To his schoolmaster's stories little Oliver listened eagerly. He

listened, too, to the ballads sung by Peggy, the dairymaid, and

to the wild music of the blind harper, Turlogh O'Carolan, the

last Irish minstrel. All these things sank into the heart of the

shy, little, ugly boy who seemed so stupid to his schoolfellows.

He learned to read, and devoured all the romances and tales of

adventure upon which he could lay hands, and in imitation of his

schoolmaster he began to write poetry.

For three years Oliver remained under the care of his vagabond

teacher. He looked up to him with a kind of awed wonder, and

many years afterwards he drew a picture of him in his poem The

Deserted Village.

"There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,

The village master taught his little school.

A man severe he was, and stern to view;

I knew him well, and every truant knew:

Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace

The day's disasters in his morning face;

Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;

Full well the busy whisper circlin round

Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.

Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,

The love he bore to learning was in fault;

The village all declared how much he knew:

'Twas certain he could write, and cypher too;

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,

And ev'n the story ran--that he could gauge:

In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill;

For ev'n though vanquish'd, he could argue still;

While words of learned length and thund'ring sound,

Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,

That one small head should carry all he knew."

But after three years of school under wonderful Paddy Byrne,

Goldsmith became very ill with smallpox. He nearly died of it,

and when he grew better he was plainer than ever, for his face

was scarred and pitted by the disease. Goldsmith had been shy

before his illness, and now when people laughed at his pock-

marked face he grew more shy and sensitive still. For the next

seven years he was moved about from school to school, always

looked upon by his fellows as dull of wit, but good at games, and

always in the forefront in mischief.

At length, when Goldsmith was nearly seventeen, he went to

Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. As you know, in those days

sizars had to wear a different dress from the commoners.

Oliver's elder brother had gone as a commoner and Oliver had

hoped to do the same. But as his father could not afford the

money he was obliged, much against his will, to go as a sizar.

Indeed had it not been for the kindness of an uncle he could not

have gone to college at all.

Awkward and shy, keen to feel insults whether intended or not,

Goldsmith hated his position as sizar. He did not like his tutor

either, who was a coarse, rough man, so his life at college was

not altogether happy. He was constantly in want of money, for

when he had any his purse was always open to others. At times

when he was much in need he wrote street ballads for five

shillings each, and would steal out at night to have the joy of

hearing them sung in the street.

Goldsmith was idle and wild, and at the end of two years he

quarreled with his tutor, sold his books, and ran away to Cork.

He meant to go on board a ship, and sail away for ever from a

land where he had been so unhappy. But he had little money, and

what he had was soon spent, and at last, almost starving, having

lived for three days on a shilling, he turned homewards again.

Peace was made with his tutor, and Goldsmith went back to

college, and stayed there until two years later when he took his

degree.

His father was now dead and it was necessary for Oliver to earn

his own living. All his family wished him to be a clergyman, but

he "did not deem himself good enough for it." However, he

yielded to their persuasions, and presented himself to his

bishop. But the bishop would not ordain him--why is not known,

but it was said that he was offended with Goldsmith for coming to

be ordained dressed in scarlet breeches.

After this failure Oliver tried teaching and became a tutor, but

in a very short time he gave that up. Next his uncle, thinking

that he would make a lawyer of him, gave him 50 pounds and sent

him off to London to study law there. Goldsmith lost the money

in Dublin, and came home penniless. Some time after this a

gentleman remarked that he would make an excellent medical man,

and again his uncle gave him money and sent him off to Edinburgh,

this time as a medical student. So he said his last good-by to

home and Ireland and set out.

In Scotland Goldsmith lived for a year and a half traveling

about, enjoying life, and, it may be, studying. Then, in his

happy-go-lucky way, he decided it would be well to go to Holland

to finish his medical studies there. Off he started with little

money in his pocket, and many debts behind him. After not a few

adventures he arrived at length in Leyden. Here passing a

florist's shop he saw some bulbs which he knew his uncle wanted.

So in he ran to the shop, bought them, and sent them off to

Ireland. The money with which he bought the bulbs was borrowed,

and now he left Leyden to make the tour of Europe burdened

already with debt, with one guinea in his pocket, and one clean

shirt and a flute as his luggage.

Thus on foot he wandered through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland,

Italy, and France. In the villages he played upon his flute to

pay for his food and his night's lodging.

"Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,

And dance, forgetful of the noon-tide hour.

Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze,

And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,

Has frisk'd beneath the burthen of threescore."*

*The Traveller.

In the towns where no one listened to his flute, and in Italy

where almost every peasant played better than he, he entered the

colleges and disputed. For in those days many of the colleges

and monasteries on the Continent kept certain days for arguments

upon subjects of philosophy "for which, if the champion opposes

with any dexterity, he can gain a gratuity in money, a dinner,

and a bed for one night."

Thus, from town to town, from village to village, Goldsmith

wandered, until at the end of a year he found himself back among

his countrymen, penniless and alone in London streets.

Here we have glimpses of him, a sorry figure in rusty black and

tarnished gold, his pockets stuffed with papers, now assisting in

a chemist's shop, now practicing as a doctor among those as poor

as himself, now struggling to get a footing in the realm of

literature, now passing his days miserably as an usher in a

school. At length he gained more or less constant work in

writing magazine articles, reviews, and children's books. By

slow degrees his name became known. He met Johnson and became a

member of his famous club. It is said that the first time those

two great men met Johnson took special care in dressing himself.

He put on a new suit of clothes and a newly powdered wig. When

asked by a friend why he was so particular he replied, "Why, sir,

I hear that Goldsmith is a very great sloven, and justifies his

disregard for cleanliness and decency by quoting my example. I

wish this night to show him a better example." But although

Goldsmith was now beginning to be well known, he still lived in

poor lodgings. He had only one chair, and when a visitor came he

was given the chair while Oliver sat on the window ledge. When

he had money he led an idle, easy life until it was spent. He

was always generous. His hand was always open to help others,

but he often forgot to pay his just debts. At length one day his

landlady, finding he could not pay his rent, arrested him for

debt.

In great distress Goldsmith wrote to Johnson begging him to come

to his aid. Johnson sent him a guinea, promising to come to him

as soon as possible. When Johnson arrived at Goldsmith's

lodging, "I perceived," he says, "that he had already changed my

guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him.

I put the cork into the bottle, desired him to be calm, and began

to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He

then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he

produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merits, told the

landlady I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller

sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he

discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in high tone

for having used him so ill."

The novel which thus set Goldsmith free for the moment was the

famous Vicar of Wakefield. "There are an hundred faults in this

thing," says Goldsmith himself, and if we agree with him there we

also agree with him when he goes on to say, "and an hundred

things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless.

A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very

dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites

in himself the three greatest characters upon earth: he is a

priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn

as ready to teach, and ready to obey: as simple in affluence,

and majestic in adversity." When we have made the acquaintance

of the Vicar we find ourselves the richer for a lifelong friend.

His gentle dignity, his simple faith, his sly and tender humor,

all make us love him.

In the Vicar of Wakefield Goldsmith drew for us a picture of

quiet, fireside family life such as no one before, or perhaps

since, has drawn. Yet he himself was a homeless man. Since a

boy of sixteen he had been a wanderer, a lonely vagabond,

dwelling beneath strange roofs. But it was the memory of his

childish days that made it possible for him to write such a book,

and in learning to know and love gentle Dr. Primrose we learn to

know Oliver's father, Charles Goldsmith.

Chapter LXXI GOLDSMITH--"THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD"

"I CHOSE my wife," says Dr. Primrose in the beginning of the

book, "as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine, glossy

surface, but such qualities as would wear well. To do her

justice, she was a good-natured, notable woman; and as for

breeding, there were few county ladies who could show more. She

could read any English book without much spelling; but for

pickling, preserving, and cooking, none could excel her. She

prided herself also upon being an excellent contriver in

housekeeping; though I could never find that we grew richer with

her contrivances."

Of his children he says, "Our eldest son was named George, after

his uncle, who left us ten thousand pounds. Our second child, a

girl, I intended to call, after her aunt, Grissel; but my wife,

who had been reading romances, insisted upon her being called

Olivia. In less than another year we had another daughter, and

now I was determined that Grissel should be her name; but a rich

relation taking a fancy to stand god-mother, the girl was by her

direction called Sophia; so that we had two romantic names in the

family; but I solemnly protest I had no hand in it. Moses was

our next; and, after an interval of twelve years, we had two sons

more." These two youngest boys were called Dick and Bill.

This is the family we learn to know in the "Vicar." When the

story opens Olivia is just eighteen, Sophia seventeen, and they

are both very beautiful girls. At first Dr. Primrose is well off

and lives comfortably in a fine house, but before the story goes

far he loses all his money, and is obliged to go with his family

to a poor living in another part of the country. Here, instead

of their handsome house, they have a tiny four-roomed cottage,

with whitewashed walls and thatched roof, for a home. It is a

very quiet country life which they have now to live, and yet when

you come to read the book you will find that quite a number of

exciting things happen to them.

The dear doctor soon settles down to his changed life, but his

wife and her beautiful daughters try hard to be as fine as they

were before, and as grand, if not grander, than their neighbors.

This desire leads to not a few of their adventures. Among other

things they decide to have their portraits painted. This is how

Dr. Primrose tells of it: "My wife and daughters happening to

return a visit to neighbour Flamborough's, found that family had

lately got their pictures drawn by a limner, who travelled the

country, and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a-head. As

this family and ours had long a sort of rivalry in point of

taste, our spirit took the alarm at this stolen march upon us;

and, notwithstanding all I could say, and I said much, it was

resolved that we should have our pictures done too.

"Having therefore engaged the limner (for what could I do?) our

next deliberation was, to show the superiority of our taste in

the attitudes. As for our neighbour's family, there were seven

of them; and they were drawn with seven oranges, a thing quite

out of taste, no variety in life, no composition in the world.

We desired to have something in a higher style, and after many

debates, at length came to a unanimous resolution, of being drawn

together, in one large historical familypiece. This would be

cheaper, since one frame would serve for all, and it would be

infinitely more genteel; for all families of any taste were now

drawn in the same manner.

"As we did not immediately recollect an historical subject to hit

us, we were contented each with being drawn as independent

historical figures. My wife desired to be represented as Venus,

and the painter was instructed not to be too frugal of his

diamonds in her stomacher and hair. Her two little ones were to

be as cupids by her side; while I in my gown and band, was to

present her with my books on the Whistonian controversy. Olivia

would be drawn as an amazon, sitting upon a bank of flowers,

dressed in a green Joseph,* richly laced with gold, and a whip in

her hand. Sophia was to be a shepherdess, with as many sheep as

the painter could put in for nothing; and Moses was to be dressed

out with a hat and white feather.

*A coat with capes worn by ladies in the eighteenth century for

riding.

"Our taste so much pleased the Squire that he insisted on being

put in as one of the family, in the character of Alexander the

Great, at Olivia's feet. This was considered by us all as an

indication of his desire to be introduced into the family; nor

could we refuse his request. The painter was therefore set to

work; and as he wrought with assiduity and expedition, in less

than four days the whole was completed. The piece was large; and

it must be owned he did not spare his colours; for which my wife

gave him great encomiums.

"We were all perfectly satisfied with his performance; but an

unfortunate circumstance had not occurred until the picture was

finished, which now struck us with dismay. It was so very large,

that we had no place in the house to fix it. How we all came to

disregard so material a point is inconceivable; but certain it

is, we had been all greatly remiss. The picture, therefore,

instead of gratifying our vanity, as we hoped, leaned, in a most

mortifying manner, against the kitchen wall, where the canvas was

stretched and painted, much too large to be got through any of

the doors, and the jest of all our neighbours. One compared it

to Robinson Crusoe's long-boat, too large to be removed; another

thought it more resembled a reel in a bottle; some wondered how

it could be got out, but still more were amazed how it ever got

in."

For the rest of the troubles and adventures of the good Vicar and

his family you must go to the book itself. In the end all comes

right, and we leave the Vicar surrounded by his family with Dick

and Bill sitting on his knee. "I had nothing now this side the

grave to wait for," he says; "all my cares were over; my pleasure

was unspeakable." Even if you do not at first understand all of

this book I think it will repay you to read it, for on almost

every page you will find touches of gentle humor. We feel that

no one but a man of simple childlike heart could have written

such a book, and when we have closed it we feel better and

happier for having read it.

But delightful though we find the Vicar of Wakefield, the

bookseller who bought it did not think highly enough of it to

publish it at once. Meanwhile Goldsmith published a poem called

The Traveller. His own wanderings on the Continent gave him the

subject for this poem, for Goldsmith, like Milton, put something

of himself into all his best works. The Traveller was such a

success that the bookseller though it worth while to publish the

Vicar of Wakefield.

Goldsmith was now famous, but he was still poor. He lived in a

miserable garret doing all manner of literary work for bread.

Among the things he wrote was a play called The Good Natured Man.

It was a success, and brought him in 500 pounds.

Goldsmith now left his garret, took a fine set of rooms,

furnished them grandly, and gave dinner-parties and card-parties

to his friends. These were the days of Goldy's splendor. He no

longer footed it in the great world in rust black and tarnished

gold, but in blue silk breeches, and coat with silken linings and

golden buttons. He dined with great people; he strutted in

innocent vanity, delighted to shine in the world, to see and be

seen, although in Johnson's company he could never really shine.

Sam was a great talker, and it was said Goldsmith "wrote like an

angel and spoke like poor Poll." His friends called him Doctor,

although where he took his medical degree no one knows, and he

certainly had no other degree given to him as an honor as Johnson

had. So Johnson was Dr. major, Goldsmith only Dr. minor.

But soon these days of wealth were over; soon Goldsmith's money

was all spent, and once again he had to sit down to grinding

work. He wrote many things, but the next great work he published

was another poem, The Deserted Village.

The Deserted Village, like The Traveller, is written in the

heroic couplet which, since the days of Dryden, had held its

ground as the best form of English poetry. In these poems the

couplet has reached its very highest level, for although his

rimes are smooth and polished Goldsmith has wrought into them

something of tender grace and pathos which sets them above the

diamond-like glitter of Pope's lines. His couplets are

transformed by the Celtic touch.

The poem tells the story of a village which had once been happy

and flourishing, but which is now quite deserted and fallen to

ruins. The village is thought by some people to have been

Lissoy, where Oliver had lived as a boy, but others think this

cannot be, for they say no Irish village was ever so peaceful and

industrious as Goldsmith pictures his village to have been. But

we must remember that the poet had not seen his home since

childhood, and that he looked back upon it through the golden

haze of memory. It is in this poem that we have the picture of

Oliver's old schoolmaster which I have already given you. Here,

too, we have a picture of the kindly village parson who may be

taken both from Oliver's father and from his brother Henry.

Probably he had his brother most in mind, for Henry Goldsmith had

but lately died, "and I loved him better than most other men,"

said the poet sadly in the dedication of this poem--

"Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,

And still where many a garden flower grows wild;

There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,

The village preacher's modest mansion rose.

A man he was to all the country dear,

And passing rich with forty pounds a year;

Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wish'd to change, his place:

Unpractis'd he to fawn, or seek for power,

By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;

Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize,

More skill'd to raise the wretched than to rise.

His house was known to all the vagrant train;

He chid their wand'rings, but relieved their pain:

The long-remember'd beggar was his guest,

Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;

The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud,

Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd;

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,

Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away,

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shoulder'd his crutch, and shoed how fields were won.

Pleased with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe;

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,

And ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side;

But in his duty prompt, at every call,

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all;

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,

His looks adorn'd the venerable place;

Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway,

And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray.

The service past, around the pious man,

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;

Ev'n children followed with endearing wile,

And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile.

His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest;

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest:

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

Goldsmith's last great work was a comedy named She Stoops to

Conquer. It is said that the idea for this play was given to him

by something which happened to himself when a boy.

The last time that Goldsmith returned home from school he made

his journey on horseback. The horse was borrowed or hired, but

he had a guinea in his pocket, and he felt very grown up and

grand. He had to spend one night on the way, and as evening came

on he asked a passing stranger to direct him to the best house,

meaning the best in the neighborhood. The stranger happened to

be the village wag, and seeing the schoolboy swagger, and the

manly airs of sixteen, he, in fun, directed him to the squire's

house. There the boy arrived, handed over his horse with a

lordly air to a groom, marched into the house and ordered supper

and a bottle of wine. In the manner of the times in drinking his

wine he invited his landlord to join him as a real grown-up man

might have done. The squire saw the joke and fell in with it,

and not until next morning did the boy discover his mistake. The

comedy founded on this adventure was a great success, and no

wonder, for it bubbles over with fun and laughter. Some day you

will read the play, perhaps too, you may see it acted, for it is

still sometimes acted. In any case it makes very good reading.

But Goldsmith did not long enjoy the new fame this comedy brought

him. In the spring of 1774, less than a year after it appeared,

the kindly spendthrift author lay dead. He was only forty-five.

The beginning of Goldsmith's life had been a struggle with

poverty; the end was a struggle with debt. By his writing he

made what was in those days a good deal of money, but he could

not keep it. To give him money was like pouring water into a

sieve. "Is your mind at ease," asked his doctor as he lay dying.

"No, it is not," answered Goldsmith. Those were his last words.

"Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith," wrote Johnson, "there is little to

be told more than the papers have made public. He died of a

fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind.

His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were

exhausted. Sir Joshua* is of opinion that he owed not less than

two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before?"

*Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous painter.

Goldsmith was buried in the graveyard of the Temple church, but

his tomb is unmarked, and where he lies no one knows. His

sorrowing friends, however, placed a tablet to his memory in

Westminster, so that his name at least is recorded upon the roll

of the great dead who lie gathered there.

BOOK TO READ

The Vicar of Wakefield (Everyman's Library).

Chapter LXXII BURNS--THE PLOWMAN POET

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to min'?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And days o' lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,

And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wander'd mony a weary foot,

Sin auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, etc.

We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,

Frae mornin' sun til dine:*

But seas between us braid hae roar'd,

Sin auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, etc.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere,**

And gie's a hand o' thine;

And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught,***

For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, etc.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,****

And surely I'll be mine;

And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

*Dinner.

**Companion.

***Drink.

****Measure.

NO song, perhaps, is so familiar to English-speaking people as

that with which this chapter begins. In the back woods of

Canada, in far Australia, on the wide South African veldt,

wherever English-speaking people meet and gather, they join hands

to sing that song. To the merriest gathering it comes as a

fitting close. It is the hymn of home, of treasured friendships,

and of old memories, just as "God save the King" is the hymn of

loyalty, and yet it is written in Scots, which English tongues

can hardly pronounce, and many words of which to English ears

hardly carry a meaning. But the plaintive melody and the

pathetic force of the rhythm grip the heart. There is no need to

understand every word of this "glad kind greeting"* any more than

there is need to understand what some great musician means by

every note which his violin sings forth.

*Carlyle.

The writer of that song was, like Caedmon long ago, a son of the

soil, he, too, was a "heaven-taught ploughman."*

*Henry Mackenzie.

While Goldsmith lay a-dying in London, in the breezy Scottish

Lowlands a big rough lad of fifteen called Robert Burns was

following his father's plow by day, poring over Shakespeare, the

Spectator, and Pope's Homer, of nights, not knowing that in years

to come he was to be remembered as our greatest song writer.

Robert was the son of a small farmer. The Burns had been farmer

folk for generations, but William Burns had fallen on evil days.

From his northern home he drifted to Ayrshire, and settled down

in the village of Alloway as a gardener. Here with his own hands

he built himself a mud cottage. It consisted only of a "room"

and a kitchen, whitewashed within and without. In the kitchen

there was a fireplace, a bed, and a small cupboard, and little

else beyond the table and chairs.

And in this poor cottage, in the wild January weather of 1759,

wee Robert was born. Scarcely a week later, one windy night, a

gable of his frail home was blown in. So fierce was the gale

that it seemed as if the whole wall might fall, so, through the

darkness, and the storm, the baby and his mother were carried to

a neighbor's house. There they remained for a week until their

own cottage was again made fit to live in. It was a rough entry

into the world for the wee lad.

For some time William Burns went on working as a gardener, then

when Robert was about seven he took a small farm called Mount

Oliphant, and removed there with his wife and family.

He had a hard struggle to make his farm pay, to feed and clothe

little Robert and his brothers and sisters, who were growing up

fast about him. But, poor though he was, William Burns made up

his mind that his children should be well taught. At six Robert

went daily to school, and when the master was sent away somewhere

else, and the village of Alloway was left without any teacher,

William Burns and four neighbors joined together to pay for one.

But as they could not pay enough to give him a house in which to

live, he used to stay with each family in turn for a few weeks at

a time.

Robert in those days was a grave-faced, serious, small boy, and

he and his brother Gilbert were the cleverest scholars in the

little school. Chief among their school books was the Bible and

a collection of English prose and verse. It was from the last

that Burns first came to know Addison's works for in this book he

found the "Vision of Mirza" and other Spectator tales, and loved

them.

Robert had a splendid memory. In school hours he stored his mind

with the grand grave tales of the Bible, and with the stately

English of Addison; out of school hours he listened to the tales

and songs of an old woman who sang to him, or told him stories of

fairies and brownies, of witches and warlocks, of giants,

enchanted towns, dragons, and what not. The first books he read

out of school were a Life of Hannibal, the great Carthagenian

general, and a Life of Wallace, the great Scottish hero; this

last being lent him by the blacksmith. These books excited

little Robert so much that if ever a recruiting sergeant came to

his village, he would strut up and down in raptures after the

drum and bagpipe, and long to be tall enough to be a soldier.

The story of Wallace, too, awoke in his heart a love of Scotland

and all things Scottish, which remained with him his whole life

through. At times he would steal away by himself to read the

brave, sad story, and weep over the hard fate of his hero. And

as he was in the Wallace country he wandered near and far

exploring every spot where his hero might have been.

After a year of two the second schoolmaster went away as the

other had done. Then all the schooling the Burns children had

was from their father in the long winter evenings after the farm

work for the day was over.

And so the years went on, the family at Mount Oliphant living a

hard and sparing life. For years they never knew what it was to

have meat for dinner, yet when Robert was thirteen his father

managed to send him and Gilbert week about to a school two or

three miles away. He could not send them both together, for he

could neither afford to pay two fees, nor could he spare both

boys at once, as already the children helped with the farm work.

At fifteen Robert was his father's chief laborer. He was a very

good plowman, and no one in all the countryside could wield the

scythe or the threshing-flail with so much skill and vigor. He

worked hard, yet he found time to read, borrowing books from

whoever would lend them. Thus, before he was fifteen, he had

read Shakespeare, and Pope, and the Spectator, besides a good

many other books which would seem to most boys of to-day very

dull indeed. But the book he liked best was a collection of

songs. He carried it about with him. "I pored over them," he

says, "driving in my cart, or walking to labour, song by song,

verse by verse."

Thus the years passed, as Burns himself says, in the "cheerless

gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave."

Then when Robert was about nineteen his father made another move

to the farm of Lochlea, about ten miles off. It was a larger and

better farm, and for three or four years the family lived in

comfort. In one of Burns's own poems, The Cotter's Saturday

Night, we get some idea of the simple home life these kindly God-

fearing peasants led--

"November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;*

The short'ning winter-day is near a close;

The miry bests retreating frae the pleugh;

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose;

The toil-worn Cotter 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.

*Whistling sound.

"At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' 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 care beguile,

An' makes him quite forget his labour and his toil.

*Stagger.

**To run with outspread arms.

Belyve,* the elder bairns come drapping in,

At service out, amang the farmers roun';

Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie** rin

A cannie*** errand to a neebor town:

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown,

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e

Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown,

Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,****

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

*In a little.

**Carefully.

***Not difficult.

****Wages paid in money.

"With joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet,

An' each for other's weelfare kindly spiers:*

The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd, fleet;

Each tells the uncos** that he sees or hears;

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;

Anticipation forward points the view.

The mother, wi' her needle and her sheers,

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new:***

The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

*Asks after.

**Strange things.

***Makes old clothes look almost as good as new.

. . . . . . .

"The cheerfu' supper done,, wi' serious face,

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;

The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,

The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride:

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His layart haffets* wearing thin an' bare;

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales** a portion with judicious care;

And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air.

*The gray hair on his temples.

**Chooses.

. . . . . . .

"Then homeward all take off 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."

As Robert grew to be a man the changes in his somber life were

few. But once he spent a summer on the coast learning how to

measure and survey land. In this he made good progress. "But,"

he says, "I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind."

For it was a smuggling district. Robert came to know the men who

carried on the unlawful trade, and so was present at many a wild

and riotous scene, and saw men in new lights. He had already

begun to write poetry, now he began to write letters too. He did

not write with the idea alone of giving his friends news of him.

He wrote to improve his power of language. He came across a book

of letters of the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and these he pored

over, eager to make his own style good.

When Robert was twenty-two he again left home. This time he went

to the little seaport town of Irvine to learn flax dressing. For

on the farm the father and brothers had begun to grow flax, and

it was thought well that one of them should know how to prepare

it for spinning.

Here Robert got into evil company and trouble. He sinned and

repented and sinned again. We find him writing to his father,

"As for this world, I despair of ever making a figure in it. I

am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the

gay. I shall never again be capable of entering into such

scenes." Burns knew himself to be a man of faults. The

knowledge of his own weakness, perhaps, made him kindly to other.

In one of his poems he wrote--

"Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman;

Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,*

To step aside is human:

One point must still be greatly dark,

The moving why they do it;

And just as lamely can ye mark

How far perhaps they rue it.

*A very little wrong.

"Who made the heart, 'tis He alone

Decidedly can try us:

He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring its various bias:

Then at the balance let's be mute,

We never can adjust it;

What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted."

Bad fortune, too, followed Burns. The shop in which he was

engaged was set on fire, and he was left "like a true poet, not

worth a sixpence."

So leaving the troubles and temptations of Irvine behind, he

carried home a smirched name to his father's house.

Here, too, troubles were gathering. Bad harvests were followed

by money difficulties, and, weighed down with all his cares,

William Burns died. The brothers had already taken another farm

named Mossgiel. Soon after the father's death the whole family

went to live there.

Robert meant to settle down and be a regular farmer. "Come, go

to, I will be wise," he said. He read farming books and bought a

little diary in which he meant to write down farming notes. But

the farming notes often turned out to be scraps of poetry.

The next four years of Burns's life were eventful years, for

though he worked hard as he guided the plow or swung the scythe,

he wove songs in his head. And as he followed his trade year in

year out, from summer to winter, from winter to summer, he

learned all the secrets of the earth and sky, of the hedgerow and

the field.

How everything that was beautiful and tender and helpless in

nature appealed to him we know from his poems. There is the

field mouse--the "wee sleekit,* cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,"

whose nest he turned up and destroyed in his November plowing.

"Poor little mouse, I would not hurt you," he says--

*Smooth.

"Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin;

Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!"

And thou poor mousie art turned out into the cold, bleak, winter

weather!--

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In providing foresight may be vain;

Gang aft agley,*

An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain

For promised joy."

*Go often wrong.

It goes to his heart to destroy the early daisies with the plow--

"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 bonnie gem.

"Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,

The bonnie lark, companion meet,

Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,

Wi' spreckl'd breast,

When upward springing, blythe, to greet

The purpling east.

"Cauld blew the bitter-biting North

Upon thy early, humble birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm,

Scarce rear'd above the parent earth

Thy tender form.

"The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield,

High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield;

But thou, beneath the random bield*

O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field,**

Unseen, alane.

"There, in thy scanty mantle cauld,

Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,

Thou lifts thy unassuming head

In humble guise;

But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies!"

*Shelter.

**Bare stubble field.

Burns wrote love songs too, for he was constantly in love--often

to his discredit, and at length he married Jean Armour, Scots

fashion, by writing a paper saying that they were man and wife

and giving it to her. This was enough in those days to make a

marriage. But Burns had no money; the brothers' farm had not

prospered, and Jean's father, a stern old Scotsman, would have

nothing to say to Robert, who was in his opinion a bad man, and a

wild, unstable, penniless rimester. He made his daughter burn

her "lines," thus in his idea putting an end to the marriage.

Robert at this was both hurt and angry, and made up his mind to

leave Scotland for ever and never see his wife and children more.

He got a post as overseer on an estate in Jamaica, but money to

pay for his passage he had none. In order to get money some

friends proposed that he should publish his poems. This he did,

and the book was such a success that instead of going to Jamaica

as an unknown exile Burns went to Edinburgh to be entertained,

fêted, and flattered by the greatest men of the day.

All the fine ladies and gentlemen were eager to see the plowman

poet. The fuss they made over him was enough to turn the head of

a lesser man. But in spite of all the flattery, Burns, though

pleased and glad, remained as simple as before. He moved among

the grand people in their silks and velvets clad in homespun

clothes "like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the

laird"* as easily as he had moved among his humble friends. He

held himself with that proud independence which later made him

write--

*Scott.

"Is there for honest poverty

That hangs his head, and a' that?

The coward slave, we pass him by,

We dare to be poor for a' that!

For a' that, and a' that,

Our toils obscure, and a' that,

The rank is but the guinea stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that.

"What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hodden grey, and a' that;

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,

A man's a man for a' that:

For a' that and a' that,

Their tinsel show, and a' that;

The honest man, though e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that."

After spending a brilliant winter in Edinburgh, Burns set off on

several tours through his native land, visiting many of the

places famous in Scottish history. But, as the months went on,

he began to be restless in his seeming idleness. The smiles of

the great world would not keep hunger from the door; he feared

that his fame might be only a nine days' wonder, so he decided to

return to his farming. He took a farm a few miles from Dumfries,

and although since he had been parted from his Jean he had

forgotten her time and again and made love to many another, he

and she were now married, this time in good truth. From now

onward it was that Burns wrote some of his most beautiful songs,

and it is for his songs that we remember him. Some of them are

his own entirely, and some are founded upon old songs that had

been handed on for generations by the people from father to son,

but had never been written down until Burns heard them and saved

them from being forgotten. But in every case he left the song a

far more beautiful thing than he found it. None of them perhaps

is more beautiful than that he now wrote to his Jean--

"Of a' the airts* the wind can blaw,

I dearly like the wet,

For there the bonnie lassie lives,

The lassie I lo'e best:

The 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 bonnie flower that springs

By fountain, shaw,*** or green,

There's not a bonnie bird that sings

But minds me o' my Jean."

*Directions.

**Roll.

***Wood.

But farming and song-making did not seem to go together, and on

his new farm Burns succeeded little better than on any that he

had tried before. He thought to add to his livelihood by turning

an excise man, that is, an officer whose work is to put down

smuggling, to collect the duty on whisky, and to see that none

upon which duty has not been paid is sold. One of his fine

Edinburgh friends got an appointment for him, and he began his

duties, and it would seem fulfilled them well. But this mode of

life was for Burns a failure. In discharge of his duties he had

to ride hundreds of miles in all kinds of weathers. He became

worn out by the fatigue of it, and it brought him into the

temptation of drinking too much. Things went with him from bad

to worse, and at length he died at the age of thirty-six, worn

out by toil and sin and suffering.

In many ways his was a misspent life "at once unfinished and a

ruin."* His was the poet's soul bound in the body of clay. He

was an unhappy man, and we cannot but pity him, and yet remember

him with gratitude for the beautiful songs he gave us. In his

own words we may say--

*Carlyle.

"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."

Burns was a true son of the soil. There is no art in his songs

but only nature. Apart form his melody what strikes us most is

his truth; he sang of what he saw, of what he felt and knew. He

knew the Scottish peasant through and through. Grave and

humorous, simple and cunning, honest and hypocritical, proud and

independent--every phase of him is to be found in Burns's poems.

He knew love too; and in every phase--happy and unhappy, worthy

and unworthy--he sings of it. But it is of love in truth that he

sings. Here we have no more the make-believe of the Elizabethan

age, no longer the stilted measure of the Georgian. The day of

the heroic couplet is done; with Burns we come back to nature.

BOOK TO READ

Selected Works of Robert Burns, edited by R. Sutherland. (This

is probably the best selection for juvenile readers.)

Chapter LXXIII COWPER--"THE TASK"

WHILE Burns was weaving his wonderful songs among the Lowland

hills of Scotland, another lover of nature was telling of placid

English life, of simple everyday doings, in a quiet little

country town in England. This man was William Cowper.

Cowper was the son of a clergyman. He was born in 1731 and

became a barrister, but it seemed a profession for which he was

little fitted. He was shy and morbidly religious, and he also

liked literature much better than law. Still he continued his

way of life until, when he was thirty-two, he was offered a post

as Clerk of the Journals of the House of Lords. He wished to

accept the post, but was told he must stand an examination at the

bar of the House of Lords.

This was more than his nervous sensitive nature could bear.

Rather than face the trial he decided to die. Three times he

tried to kill himself. Three times he failed. Then the darkness

of madness closed in upon him. Religious terrors seized him, and

for many months he suffered agonies of mind. But at length his

tortured brain found rest, and he became once more a sane man.

Then he made up his mind to leave London, and all the excitements

of a life for which he was not fit, and after a few changes here

and there he settled down to a peaceful life with a clergyman and

his wife, named Unwin. And when after two years Mr. Unwin died,

Cowper still lived with his widow. With her he moved to Olney in

Buckinghamshire. It was here that, together with the curate,

John Newton, Cowper wrote the Olney hymns, many of which are

still well loved to-day. Perhaps one of the best is that

beginning--

"God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform;

He plants His footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm."

It was written when Cowper felt again the darkness of insanity

closing in upon him. Once again he tried to end his life, but

again the storm passed.

Cowper was already a man of nearly fifty when these hymns first

appeared. Shortly afterwards he published another volume of

poems in the style of Pope.