has the same clear eye, the same open heart, that he has for man. His love of nature is intense, but very simple and direct; no subtilizings nor refinings about it, nor any of that nature-worship which, soon after his time, came in. Quite unconsciously, as a child might, he goes into the outward world for refreshment, for enjoyment, for sympa thy. Everywhere in his poetry nature comes in, not so much as a being independent of man, but as the background of his pictures of life and human character. MRS. OLIPHANT'S COMPARISON OF BURNS AND COWPER. [These two poetical reformers and precursors of the revolution never met, but are said to have entertained mutual admiration of each other's genius. Burns's first volume of poems was published at Kilmarnock in 1786, two years after the appearance of Cowper's “Task.”] No two men in the world were ever more unlike than the English gentleman, gently bred and well connected, but indolent, timid, and helpless, and the impassioned peasant, full of strong desires and impulses, rash, headstrong, and daring, whose lamp of genius was infinitely more vivid, and his place in poetry greater, but whose warm flesh and blood encumbered his way even more than madness and misery did that of his contemporary. They never met, and knew little of each other; nevertheless their work had a similar influence. The one in his blue bonnet, the other in his invalid nightcap, they stand at the great gates which had been neatly barred and bolted by the last generation, and pushing them abroad upon their unwilling hinges, made English poetry free as she had been before. The mind of Burns and his career launches us into an entirely changed atmosphere and new scene. He was a son of the soil, without education, without culture, without friends; all he had in the world, save a well-knit frame and arms strong to work, was genius, against which there was every possible obstacle placed, that it should not be able to do itself justice. Cowper did not begin to write till he was over fifty; Burns was done with poetry and all things earthly at thirty-seven. The one was a mild and feminine nature, without passion or any fleshly impulse; the other a strong and headlong being made up of them. It is strange to note how they worked together, in absolute unconsciousness of their joint mission. It is difficult even to realize that "The Task" was published only two years before that volume of varied and desultory verse which raised the Ayrshire ploughman at once to the rank of poet, not in his own district or country alone, but for the world. We will not ask which of the two was the greatest wonder; though, indeed, in our own mind we have little doubt on the subject, and cannot but feel that a fresh, new, and impassioned spirit was the natural fountain from which new life might be expected to spring.... Burns came, like Homer, from the very fountain-head of life; nobody had taught him a note; he had his music from nature, and he took his theme from nature. He was as little afraid of the homeliest facts of his landscape as Cowper was, and as observant of every change of the atmosphere; but the principle which Cowper applied only to the external country, Burns employed for the inner man, reproducing all that was in him with a dauntless freedom more remarkable still. And Burns was so much. the greater poet, and had in him such a sweep and rush of inspiration, as well as such a superior force of life, and all the added impetuosity of passion, that his advent was far more startling and effective than that of his gentler fellow. One wonders, if they had ever met, what would have been their mutual impressions. Would Burns have set down the mild recluse as one of the unco good, or Cowper stigmatized his brother as a rural rake? Nothing could be more likely; and yet in his heart there was nothing that so touched the one as true religion, and nothing that more attracted the other than the life and vigor in which he was himself so deficient. They were both equally withdrawn, though in ways so different, from the excitements and emulations of literary coteries. Silence surrounded them in their walks, though the middle-aged Englishman's was but an invalid stroll by the flat river side or over the tranquil fields, while the young ploughman "walked in glory and in joy, following his plough along the mountain-side;" but they were equal rebels to the world, and all its conventional ways. ... Cowper is placed beside Burns in the bead-roll, because, so distant as they were from each other, they both helped-or, rather, they wrought between them-the permanent enfranchisement of poetry, her right to see things as they were, and to express herself as she pleased, in whatsoever manner liked her, reserving her power to touch the innermost soul, whether she went back to lift the mantle of Milton, or picked up a homely medium of utterance on the roadside. No harp, no lute was longer necessary. We got rid of the antique attendance of "the muse." A new life and a new freedom came into the language, and the bondage of Pope, and precedent, and the best models was loosed from the soul. Burns died in 1796, Cowper not till 1800. It would be hard to say which life was most tried, most unfortunate, most sad. Had either man-he who stormed his life out in mid-career, or he who drank out all the dregs of mournful age-known how to rule his own spirit, how different might have been the record! But Cowper had the excuse of mental disease, whereas no apology can be made for Burns, except that which pity makes for the victim of a defective will in all circumstances. This fatal deficiency equalizes all human qualities, and makes the man of genius, alas! only a little more luckless, not better, than the veriest fool. BOOKS OF REFERENCE. Biographies of Burns: By Dr. Currie, Allan Cunningham, Alexander Smith, and Principal Shairp-the latest, and edited in 1879 by Morley, in the "English Men of Letters" Series. Essays: By Thomas Carlyle, Professor Taine, Charles Kingsley, Hugh Miller, and Macaulay. S. A. Brooke's "Theology in the Eng- Mrs. Oliphant's "Literary History of John Wilson, Lord Jeffrey, H. A. | Cunningham's "Land of Burns." |