Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

in my possession, including essays and “appreciations.” If, in that biography, he criticises the poems of Burns-judging from the work before me I can well understand the low estimate of his "life." For instance, here is a curious extract, which that eminent literary body, “The Jolly Beggars" of Mauchline, will read with special interest :

"Kennedy, whose Flyting with Dunbar is preserved in Ramsay's Evergreen, is not the only poet that Ayrshire has produced. The poems of Robert Burns, a native of the parish of Mauchline, in Kyle, are in every person's hands."

That was in 1792, the year of Heron's journey. Heron then launches into "criticism,” and there is a delicious flavour of patronage in all he writes. Heron, the literary hack, on Burns, is worthy of a "leeterary" anniversary oration :-

"The poems which brought Mr Burns into fashion-for a winter-have all considerable merit. The poem on the rustic rites and festivity of Hallowe'en is finely fanciful and most divertingly comic, but, the subject was indeed rich in materials for the man of fancy and humour. As a tale ('Tam o' Shanter') it wants, indeed, the inimitable arch simplicity of the tales of Fontaine. But it has beauties of a higher kind. Burns seems to have thought, with Boccace and Prior, that some share of the indelicacy was a necessary ingredient in a tale. Pity that he should have debased so fine a piece by anything having even the remotest relation to obscenity!"

66

Heron appears to have gone from Mauchline to Lugar Braes," and launches out in a criticism of James Boswell and his works, curious to read in these times. "If," he writes, "there has been a descent from becoming dignity in Mr Boswell's making himself the humble follower of Dr Johnson, and the historian of all his petty habits, our lively countryman has been sufficiently punished by the ridicule which it has drawn upon him;" which is interesting in the face of realised facts and Carlyle's essay on Boswell.

Evening Times, September 6th, 1910.

BALLOCHMYLE.

THE "AULD BRIG" RESTORATION.

Some delay having taken place in the preparation of these blocks, they could not be inserted in their proper place, but rather than omit them we give them here. No. I shows one of the shafts sunk through the piers; No. 2, the grouting of the cement under pressure; No. 3, the roadway laid bare; and No, 4, a general view of the operations.

[graphic][merged small]
[graphic][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][merged small]
[graphic][merged small]
« PredošláPokračovať »