who was moved to tears by some passages of it. And the judgment of the author of "The Pleasures of Hope" was expressed with equal warmth by the author of "The Pleasures of Memory." "My father," said Rogers, "used to recommend Pope's Homer to me; but with all my love of Pope, I never could like it. I delight in Cowper's Homer; I have read it again and again."

[Southey's edition of Cowper, originally published in fifteen volumes and reprinted in eight volumes (Bohn's Standard Library), is the best that we possess. It contains an interesting biography, written in the pure style of which Southey was so consummate a master. The poet's correspondence, and his translations of the "Iliad " and "Odyssey," will be found in this edition. An able and original memoir of Cowper, by John Bruce, is prefixed to a beautiful edition of his poems, with illustrative notes, 3 vols. (Bell and Son).

The Globe Cowper, edited with notes, contains all the original poems and translations with the exception of the Homer, and has a short but admirably written biography by the Rev. William Benham. Mr. Benham's point of view is, I think, a true one throughout. A biography of Cowper has also appeared in "English Men of Letters," written by Professor Goldwin Smith.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE GEORGIAN POETS (Continued).

ROBERT BURNS.

Robert Burns, 1759-1796.

COWPER and Burns were contemporaries, and although there was a great gulf of years between them, the poems by which both are remembered were published nearly at the same time. The "Task" appeared in 1784; Burns's first volume was published in 1786. No two men could be more unlike in temperament, in character, in the impulses which prompted their verse; but it has been rightly said that they were poetic brothers in the love of nature, in the sincerity with which they uttered what they felt, in their detestation of hypocrisy and affectation. The peasant, who

"Walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough upon the mountain-side,"

owes nothing of his fame to his position. In reading Burns we do not think of what he was, but of what

S

he did. Cowper was conscious of this when people were treating the Scottish poet as a prodigy, and affecting to honour him by their patronage. In 1787 he writes, "I have read Burns's poems, and have read them twice; and though they be written in a language that is new to me, and many of them on subjects much inferior to the author's ability, I think them on the whole a very extraordinary production. He is, I believe, the only poet these kingdoms have produced in the lower rank of life since Shakespeare (I should rather say since Prior), who need not be indebted for any part of his praise to a charitable consideration of his origin and the disadvantages under which he has laboured." Cowper adds a wish, which probably no one now shares, that the poet had written in what he calls pure English, and not in his native dialect. "Poor Burns," he says, "loses much of his deserved praise in this country through our ignorance of his language. I despair of meeting with any Englishman who will take the pains that I have taken to understand him. His candle is bright, but shut up in a dark lantern. I lent him to a very sensible neighbour of mine, but his uncouth dialect spoiled all; and before he had half read him through he was quite ram-fcezled."

Readers unfamiliar with the dialect will not readily understand some of the expressions used by Burns. Even the "Waverley Novels," when the scene is laid in Scotland, need a glossary, and Burns uses his native Doric more frequently than Scott. As a

rule, however, the difficult words in the poet's best poems can readily be mastered without any risk of the student being ram-feezled, which is Scottish for "fatigued." I say his best poems, since these alone the student will be advised to study. Urged by men whose lack of Christian charity was more conspicuous than their love of truth, Burns at one time debased his genius by attacking with much humour and much irreverence some of the religious customs of his country. That there is a measure of truth in his satires no one can doubt, and occasionally he struck home with tremendous power. It has been said that these poems exposed hypocrisy, but the Oxford professor of poetry says truly, that the good they may have done in this way is perhaps doubtful, while "the harm they have done in Scotland is not doubtful, in that they have connected in the minds of the people so many coarse and even profane thoughts with objects which they had regarded till then with reverence." Equally to be regretted, on account of their evil influence, are his drinking songs and some of his love songs. Nor is this all. In the exuberance of his animal spirits, and sometimes in the bitterness of his soul, Burns wrote much ranting rubbish and much coarse invective, which the unkind labour of editors has rescued from the oblivion in which the poet would fain have left it. Few men have been granted a stronger intellect than Burns; he could judge impartially of his work, and it would have vexed him sorely could he have

known that the folly, and often worse than folly, of the hour would live side by side with some of the manliest and sweetest verses ever penned by poct.

The story of his life has been frequently told, and never better told, perhaps, than by Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law and biographer, who writes of Scotland's greatest poet with discretion as well as enthusiasm. In our brief summary we shall follow his pages, correcting them here and there by the light of more recent information.

Robert Burns was born January 25, 1759, in a clay-built cottage, erected by his father, on the banks of the Doon, near the town of Ayr. It was partially wrecked by a storm a few days after the poet's birth, and the mother was carried with her infant to the shelter of a neighbouring hovel. Robert was blessed with sensible and God-fearing parents. The beautiful portrait of the father lives for ever in the "Cotter's Saturday Night;" the mother, "a very sagacious woman," is said to have nourished the imagination of her firstborn son with ballads. and traditionary tales. Robert was one of a large family, and from his carliest years became acquainted with poverty and sorrow. Every Scottish peasant, however humble his lot, gets some amount of cducation. William Burness (for so he spelt his name) fought "one long sore battle with untoward circumstances, ending in defeat," but he did not neglect his children. His two eldest sons, Robert and Gilbert, obtained in the few leisure hours of their young lives a fair amount of what is known