fecit indignatio versum." -JUVENAL (Junius, a Roman satirist, 38-120), Sat. i. 79. If nature denies the ability, "indignation makes verses. 99 Page 39, line 1. Johnson (Samuel, 1709–1784). A biographer, essayist, critic, versifier, and lexicographer. He is reported to have said, "Dear Bathurst was a man to my heart's content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig; he was a very good hater."-BOSWELL: Life of Johnson. 1. 13. Furies of Eschylus. Eschylus (525-426) is accounted the greatest of Greek tragic poets. The allusion is to his tragedy called The Eumenides, in which the Furies compose the chorus. Page 40, line 17. Cacus. A giant and son of Vulcan, who, according to Roman mythology, lived near the spot where Rome was built. He stole from Hercules some of the cattle that had belonged to Geryon, dragging them backward into his cave under the Aventine, so that their tracks appeared to lead outward. But Hercules found them by their lowing and choked to death the thief, incendia vana vomentem. For the particulars of the story see Æneid, Book VIII., lines 190-267. 1. 18. sturt. Struggle. 1. 19. Nimrods. Nimrod was a mighty hunter. Gen. x. 8, 9. I Chron. i. 10. Page 41, line 4. Thebes. The chief city of Boeotia. The fortunes and misfortunes of Edipus, king of Thebes, and his race, furnished many themes for the tragic poets. Pelops' line. This line included Atreus, Agamemnon, Orestes, and Ephigenia. Cf. Milton's lines in Il Penseroso: "Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy Page 43, line 9. he is not the Tieck but the Musäus of this tale. Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) and Johann Karl August Musäus (1735-1787) were German authors; the former was a poet and critic; the latter was noted chiefly for his Folk-Tales of the Germans. About three years before writing the Essay on Burns, Carlyle was engaged in translating representative works of both (cf. Introduction, p. xxii.). The translations, together with an essay on each by Carlyle, constitute Vol. I. of the German Romances, from which the following passages are quoted, in order that those who are not "our German readers" may feel in some degree the force of the distinction between the two authors: "A very slight power of observation will suffice to convince us that Tieck is no ordinary man; but a true Poet, a Poet born as well as made. . . . He is no mere observer and compiler; rendering back to us, with additions or subtractions, the Beauty which existing things have of themselves presented to him; but a true Maker, to whom the actual and external is but the excitement for ideal creations, representing and ennobling its effects." Of Musäus, "His style sparkles with metaphors, sometimes just and beautiful, often new and surprising; but it is laborious, unnatural, and diffuse. . . Musäus is, in fact, no poet; he can see, and describe with rich graces what he sees; but he is nothing, or very little, of a Maker. His imagination is not powerless it is like a bird of feeble wing, which can fly from tree to tree: but never soars .. for a moment into the æther of Poetry, to bathe in its serene splendor, with the region of the Actual lying far below, and brightened into beauty by radiance not its own. raucle carlin. Fearless old crone. wee 99 Page 44, line 16. "A pigmy scraper with his fiddle." Apollo. 1. 17. Son of Mars. A soldier. 1. 19. Poosie-Nansie. The name of the keeper of the alehouse. Page 45, line 2. Caird. A travelling tinker. 1. 4. brats and callets. 1. 12. Teniers (David, 1610-1690). A noted Flemish genre, landscape, and portrait painter. 1. 17. Beggars' Opera. A satirical opera by John Gay (1728). Cf. Century Cyclopædia of Names. 1. 18. Beggars' Bush. A comedy by Fletcher and others, performed at court in 1622. Cf. Century Cyclopædia of Names. Page 46, line 17. Ossorius the Portugal Bishop (Osorio, Jeronymo, 1506-1580). Called the Cicero of Portugal. Page 48, line 19. Fletcher (Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 1653–1716). A Scottish writer whose chief claim to lasting fame appears to hang upon the following remark, which was made in a letter to the Marquis of Montrose: "I knew a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation." Page 49, line 25. Our Grays and Glovers. Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is best known as the writer of The Elegy in a Country Churchyard. For a fairer estimate of his work, see Matthew Arnold's Essay on Thomas Gray. Richard Glover (1712-1785). Cf. Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature. Page 50, line 4. Goldsmith (Oliver, 1728-1774). Compare his verses with those of Pope, for example, or his Vicar of Wakefield with Johnson's Rasselas, to find out why he was an "exception." 1. 5. Johnson. Cf. note on p. 39, line 1. The Rambler was a semi-weekly, issued 1750-1752 and following in the track of Addison's and Steele's Spectator. The Latinized style of the essays in the Rambler is noted for its studied avoidance of common English words. Rasselas (1759) is a romance, the scene of which is laid in the Orient. 1. 16. Boston (Thomas, 1676-1732). A noted Scotch Presbyterian divine. He wrote Human Nature in its Fourfold State in 1720. 1. 24. Lord Kames (Henry Home, 1696-1782). A Scottish judge and philosophical writer; author of Elements of Criticism. Page 51, line 1. Hume (David, 1711-1776). A Scottish philosopher and historian. See the last two paragraphs of Carlyle's Essay on Boswell's Johnson for an interesting comparison between Hume and Johnson. Robertson (William, 1721-1793). A Scottish historian and clergyman. Smith (Adam, 1723-1790). A celebrated Scottish political economist, one of the founders of the science. His chief work is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). 1. 11. Racine (Jean Baptiste, 1639-1699). A French tragic poet. Voltaire (François Marie Arouet de, 1694–1778). A French poet, essayist, and critic. Batteux (Charles, 17131780). A French critic, chiefly noted as a writer on esthetics. Boileau-Despréaux (Nicholas, 1636-1711). A French critic, satirist, and poet. 1. 13. Montesquieu (Baron de la Brède et de, Charles de Secondat, 1689-1755). A French philosopher. Mably (Gabriel Bonnot, Abbé de, 1709–1785). A French publicist. 1. 15. Quesnay (François, 1694–1774). A French political economist; founder of the school of physiocrats. Adam Smith's indebtedness to Quesnay is denied by John Rae in his Life of Adam Smith, p. 215. London, 1895. 1. 19. La Flèche. A town in the department of Sarthe, France, on the Loire, where Hume spent three years. He describes himself as wandering about there "in solitude, dreaming the dream of his philosophy"; and there he composed his first work, the Treatise of Human Nature. Page 54, line 3. A wish, etc. From his epistle To the Guidwife of Wauchope House. 1. 10. bear. Barley. Page 55, l. 22. he never attains to any clearness regarding himself, etc. Yet in his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore (which is quoted in Currie's Life) he wrote: "It was ever my opinion that the great, unhappy mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance or mistaken notions of themselves. To know myself, had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself, alone; I balanced myself with others; I watched every means of information, how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assiduously Nature's design, where she seemed to have intended the various lights and shades in my character." |