the world begins to suffer; calumny is busy with him; for a miserable man makes more enemies than friends. Some faults he has fallen into, and a thousand misfortunes; but deep criminality is what he stands accused of, and they that are not without sin cast the first stone at him! For is he not a well-wisher to the French 10 Revolution, a Jacobin, and therefore in that one act guilty of all? These accusations, political and moral, it has since appeared, were false enough; but the world hesitated little to credit them. Nay, his convivial Maecenases themselves were not the last to do it. There is reason to believe that, in his later years, the Dumfries aristocracy had partly withdrawn themselves 20 from Burns, as from a tainted person no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That painful class, stationed, in all provincial cities, behind the outmost breastwork of gentility, there to stand siege and do battle against the intrusions of grocerdom and grazierdom, had actually seen dishonor in the society of Burns, and branded him with their veto; had, as we 30 vulgarly say, cut him!

Alas! when we think that Burns now sleeps "where bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart," and that most of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already lie at his side, where the breastwork of gentility is quite thrown down-who would not sigh over the thin delusions and foolish toys that divide heart from o heart, and make man unmerciful to his brother!

It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would ever reach. maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. His spirit was jarred in its melody; not the soft breath of natural

10. Jacobin, a Lember of the club in Paris to which the most violent leaders of the French Revolution belonged. 26. grocerdom and grazierdom, the classes engaged in trade and farming. 32. where bitter indignation, etc., a translation, from the Latin, of Dean Swift's epitaph.

feeling, but the rude hand of fate, was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what harmony was in him, what music even in his discords! How sc the wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the wisest; and all men felt and knew that here also was one of the Gifted! "If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled!" Some brief 60 pure moments of poetic life were yet appointed him, in the composition of his songs. We can understand how

he grasped at this employment; and how, too, he spurned all other reward for it but what the labor itself brought him. For the soul of Burns, though scathed and marred, was yet living in its full moral strength, though sharply conscious of its errors and abasement; 70 and here in his destitution and degradation was one act of seeming nobleness and self-devotedness left even for him to perform. He felt, too, that with all the "thoughtless follies" that had "laid him low," the world was unjust and cruel to him; and he silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not as a hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he strive for so the glory of his country; so he cast from him the poor sixpence a day, and served zealously as a volunteer. Let us not grudge him this last luxury of his existence; let him not have appealed to us in vain! The money was not necessary to him; he struggled through without it; long since, these guineas would have been gone; and now the high-mindedness 90 of refusing them will plead for him in all hearts forever.

We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for matters had now taken such a shape with him as could not long continue. If improvement was not to be looked for, nature could only for a limited time maintain this dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. We are not medically informed whether any con10 tinuance of years was, at this period,

probable for Burns; whether his death. is to be looked on as in some sense an accidental event, or only as the natural consequence of the long series of events that had preceded. The latter seems to be the likelier opinion; and yet it is by no means a certain one. At all events, as we have said, some change could not be very distant. 20 Three gates of deliverance, it seems to us, were open for Burns: clear poetical activity; madness; or death. The first, with longer life, was still possible, though not probable, for physical causes were beginning to be concerned in it; and yet Burns had an iron resolution; could he but have seen and felt that not only his highest glory, but his first duty, and the true 30 medicine for all his woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for his mind was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third gate was opened for him; and he passed, not softly, yet speedily, into that still country where the hailstorms and fire-showers do not reach and the heaviest laden wayfarer at length lays down his load!

NOTES AND QUESTIONS
EXPLANATORY NOTES

The essay from which this selection is taken first appeared in the Edinburgh Review for December, 1828. For the development of critical journals in the early nineteenth century, see page 527. In the literary essays by Macaulay, Hazlitt, Carlyle, and others that appeared in these journals it was customary for the author to begin with comments on some recent book

and then to proceed to discuss the author or his subject in a carefully organized critical essay. Carlyle's essay begins with an account of the Life of Burns, recently published by J. G. Lockhart, who was the son-in-law of Scott and the author of one of the best biographies of that writer.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

1. How did Burns show his lack of a single aim in life? How was the problem of earning a living settled for earlier writers, like Pope, Johnson, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper? Would, or would not, Carlyle's stricture apply to them? 2. Would an education have enabled Burns to change the whole course of English literature?

3. What does Carlyle mean by "made truce with necessity"? What are some of the unalterable conditions which young people (and others) have to get used to? How did Burns learn that he had to abide by the consequences of his acts?

4. Burns's trouble with the New-Light clergy came in 1785. The Old-Lights upheld the strict traditions of the Scotch Presbyterian faith. The New-Lights were more liberal, relying on reason more than authority. Burns wrote several poems ridiculing the Old Lights. "His Farewell to the Banks of Ayr" was completed in 1786, when he was planning to embark in a few days for Jamaica. What kept him from going to the West Indies?

5. Do you find Lockhart's or Scott's account of Burns at Edinburgh the more interesting? Why? What evil effect does Carlyle find in this winter in Edinburgh?

6. In March, 1788, Burns gave his brother Gilbert 180 pounds, so that he might continue with his mother at Mossgiel. In April the poet married Jean Armour. Why, according to Carlyle, was this good start not continued?

7. In February, 1792, Burns seized a smuggler's brig in the Solway, near his headquarters at Dumfries. He bought four small cannons which were on it, and sent them to the French Convention out of his sympathy with the struggle of the French people against the despotic old regime. The collision with his superiors was not very serious, as he was never reprimanded. To what do you attribute the social disfavor into which he fell? Do you think the possibilities before Burns in 1795 were restricted to the three Carlyle mentions? How does he make you feel about Burns's death?

8. What illustrations do you find here of Carlyle's profuse imagery? His ability to characterize? His earnestness? His eloquence? How does his style differ from Milton's? Defoe's?

9. Glance back over Macaulay's life of Johnson (page 324) and then draw up a report on Macaulay and Carlyle as biographers. Which is in more complete sympathy with his subject? Which gives the best portrait? Which is more interested in the moral questions of life? Which is the more imaginative and eloquent?

Further Reading

I. OTHER BOOKS BY CARLYLE

Past and Present. Book II of this volume, which re-creates the life of a medieval monastery, is among the most interesting of Carlyle's writings.

Boswell's Life of Johnson. Carlyle's differences from Macaulay as a critic are best seen in this review of Boswell's famous biography. The French Revolution. Carlyle's character as an historian may be seen from the graphic account of the flight of the King from Paris (Part II, Book V) or of the Reign of Terror (Part III, Book V).

Sartor Resartus. If you are interested in Carlyle the man, read the autobiographical romance that forms the second part of this work, particularly the chapters entitled "The Everlasting No," "Center of Indifference," and "The Everlasting Yea."

II. ABOUT CARLYLE

GARNETT, RICHARD: Life of Carlyle (Great Writers Series).

NICHOL, JOHN: Thomas Carlyle (English Men of Letters Series). This book and the preceding one are the best sources for extended study of the life of Carlyle. For some of Carlyle's most interesting letters, read the Letters of Thomas Carlyle to His Youngest Sister.

CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY

[From Past and Present]

If I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was to continue henceforth the one serious principle of our existence, I should reckon it idle to solicit remedial measures from any government, the disease being insusceptible of remedy. Government can do much, but it can in no wise do all.

1. Mammonism, the worship of Mammon, the god of wealth.

But

Government, as the most conspicuous object in society, is called upon to 10 give signal of what shall be done; and, in many ways, to preside over, further, and command the doing of it. the government cannot do, by all its signaling and commanding, what the society is radically indisposed to do. In the long run every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, "Like people like government."— 20 The main substance of this immense problem of organizing labor and, first of all, of managing the working classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it; by those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie potentially extant in those two 30 classes, who are to obey such enactment. A human chaos in which there is no light, you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it; order never can arise there.

But it is my firm conviction that the "hell of England" will cease to be that of "not making money"; that we shall get a nobler hell and a nobler heaven! I anticipate light in the human chaos, 40 glimmering, shining more and more; under manifold true signals from without that light shall shine. Our deity no longer being Mammon-O heavens, each man will then say to himself: "Why such deadly haste to make money? I shall not go to hell, even if I do not make money! There is another hell, I am told!" Competition, at railway speed, in all branches of 50 commerce and work will then abate— good felt hats for the head, in every sense, instead of seven-feet lath-andplaster hats on wheels, will then be discoverable! Bubble-periods, with

55. Bubble-periods, periods of inflation, of rapidlyrising prices.

misery; desperation quenched in annihilation. Behold it, I bid thee, behold there, and consider! What is it that thou have a hundred thousand-pound bills laid up in thy strong-room, a hundred scalps hung up in thy wigwam? I value not them or thee. Thy scalps and thy thousand-pound bills are as yet nothing, if no nobleness 10 from within irradiate them; if no chivalry, in action, or in embryo ever struggling toward birth and action, be there.

Love of men cannot be bought by cash payment; and without love men cannot endure to be together. You cannot lead a fighting world without having it regimented, chivalried; the thing, in a day, becomes impossible; 20 all men in it, the highest at first, the very lowest at last, discern consciously, or by a noble instinct, this necessity. And can you any more continue to lead a working world unregimented, anarchic? I answer, and the heavens and earth are now answering, "No!" The thing becomes not “in a day" impossible; but in some two generations it does. Yes, when fathers 30 and mothers, in Stockport hunger

cellars, begin to eat their children, and Irish widows have to prove their relationship by dying of typhus fever; and amid governing "corporations of the best and bravest," busy to preserve their game by "bushing," dark millions of God's human creatures start up in mad Chartisms, impracticable sacred months, and Manchester insurrections; 40 and there is a virtual industrial aristocracy as yet only half-alive, spellbound amid money-bags and ledgers; and an actual idle aristocracy seemingly near dead in somnolent delusions, in trespasses and double-barrels; "slid

30. Stockport, in England, See Explanatory Note 3, page 566, 36. bushing, protecting their own interests. Landholders protected their game by obstructions of bushes or thorns. 38. Chartism, radical political reform idea. 39. Manchester insurrections. See Explanatory Note 3, page 567.

ing,' on inclined planes, which every new year they soap with new Hansard's jargon under God's sky, and so are "sliding" ever faster toward a "scale" and balance-scale whereon is 50 written Thou art found wanting--in such days, after a generation or two, I say, it does become, even to the low and simple, very palpably impossible! No working world, any more than a fighting world, can be led on without a noble chivalry of work, and laws and fixed rules which follow out of that--far nobler than any chivalry of fighting was. As an anarchic multi- 60 tude on mere supply-and-demand, it is becoming inevitable that we dwindle in horrid suicidal convulsion and selfabrasion, frightful to the imagination, into Choctaw workers. With wigwams and scalps-with palaces and thousand-pound bills; with savagery, depopulation, chaotic desolation! Good heavens, will not one French Revolution and Reign of Terror suffice us, 70 but must there be two? There will be two if needed; there will be twenty if needed; there will be precisely as many as are needed. The laws of nature will have themselves fulfilled. That is a thing certain to me.

Your gallant battle hosts and work hosts, as the others did, will need to be made loyally yours; they must and will be regulated, methodically secured in 80 their just share of conquest under you

joined with you in veritable brotherhood, sonhood, by quite other and deeper ties than those of temporary day's wages! How would mere redcoated regiments, to say nothing of chivalries, fight for you, if you could discharge them on the evening of the battle, on payment of the stipulated shillings-and they discharge you on 90 the morning of it! Chelsea hospitals,

48. Hansard's jargon, official report of the proceedings of the British Parliament, so-called from the name of the first compiler. 91. Chelsea, the part of London where Carlyle lived.