applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, ductility and precision with which it can be varied, distributed and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal and crush masses of obdurate metal before it,-draw out without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge an anchor, cut steel into ribands and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves." It would be hard to set bounds to the blessings which the inventions of this man have conferred not upon his country, but upon humanity. They have multiplied, many times the productivity of human labor in every field of industry, they have enormously reduced and are further reducing the element of mere drudging toil, and they have increased in every rank of life the sum of man's comforts and enjoyments, and the measure of his happiness. Of all the sons of Britain, whose lineaments are presented in the marbles of Westminster Abbey, there is none who has a greater claim upon our gratitude than James Watt. His long life was one unbroken course of well-doing for his fellowmen. Robert Burns had written, but had not published when Doctor Johnson died. Would the Doctor have found his verse crude, because it was in a dialect the Doctor may have thought barbarous, could he have resisted the wonderful appeal of the Scottish songster? I do not believe it. And indeed I cannot help but think that the greater part of Johnson's manifestation of prejudice against the Scotch was mere pretense. He was fond of controversy and felt that he must maintain any opinion he had once expressed. Besides he loved to play with his follower Boswell, to try his forbearance and friendship, and there was no way to do this so well as by taunts upon his nationality. But the genius of Burns needs not the seal of any man's approval. He had the power of insight which discovers charm and beauty, where to the common vision things are ugly or barren, and he had the power of expression which made others see things as he saw them, and so made the world brighter and better for them. A greater genius he by far than George Buchanan. The Latin verse of Buchanan impressed Johnson with its learning, but it is dead today as the language in which it was written, while the songs of Burns, if the tongue cannot give them tune, sing themselves in the hearts of Britain's sons and daughters widely as they have wandered over the world and the fame of the Lowland bard is fixed as first and unrivalled in English lyric verse, fixed as that of Shakespeare in dramatic poetry. The themes of Burns' songs were humble and domestic. He found his highest inspiration in the peasant life of the time, into which his lot had been cast. It was for another bard to sing of the picturesque past of the country as seen through the glamour of high life. Through Sir Walter Scott, who was a lad of thirteen at Johnson's death, we were to hear the Lay of the Last Minstrel and to meet with Marmion and Douglas, the Lady of the Lake, and the Knight of Snowdown and Rhoderick Dhu. And more than this, we were to get from him that wonderful store of historic fiction, which presented to us the life of every century from the eleventh to his own, saving only the thirteenth, and of nearly every country of Europe and even of then far away India. The last of the Waverly novels was prepared for the press in 1831 and more than a hundred years have passed since they first appeared, but they are read and reread with as fresh interest by the present generation as by that generation for which they were written and for whom their author was for a long time the mysterious Wizard of the North. In another field of literature another Scotch lad, younger by two years than Walter Scott, was to make his mark. Francis Jeffrey was not the first in time of literary critics, as the Edinburgh Review was not the first of Reviews in time. But Jeffrey did, with the help of other Scotchmen and with the help of Englishmen who were glad to become their allies, elevate literary and political criticism to a position of higher dignity and greater power; and for years, two Scotch publications, the Edinburgh Review, edited by Jeffrey, and Blackwood's Magazine, edited by John Wilson, were supreme in this field, and as they were in that time they have nothing to fear from comparison with the magazines and reviews that lie upon our tables today. The Scotchmen of whom I have thus briefly spoken were men of Johnson's time, whom he knew or might have known; the work of some of them was open to his knowledge, the work of others came too late for him. There was one other to whom I have referred, who has a peculiar claim to consideration here, for he also did a great work and was a man of genius and through him the Scotch have had a Scriptural revenge upon Doctor Johnson, returning indignities with benefits, heaping coals of fire upon his head, and that is James Boswell, the laird of Auchinleek. But for this Scotchman, Doctor Johnson would be today a faint and half extinct tradition. His writings are little more read than those of George Buchanan. We recall now and then an eccentric definition from his Dictionary, the opening paragraph of his Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, a few lines from the Vanity of Human Wishes, and that perhaps is all. But because of this Scotch laird and because of what he did, Johnson is the best known man of the Eighteenth Century. He lives for us, and he lives only, in Boswell's life of him, a book of which it is to be said, that it is the best of its kind ever written in any language. In the field of biography, it stands without a rival. Johnson would have scouted the idea that he was to owe his fame to this man, who.when both were living owed his position among men of letters to his obsequious attendance upon him. Johnson was a lexicographer, essayist, poet, dramatist, conversationalist, the great Cham of literature, the autocrat of intellectual society, whose opinion was the final judgment upon every question in dispute. Boswell was looked upon as the lackey of this great man, with just enough of mind to qualify for the place. For twenty years they were in intimate personal relation. Boswell knew Johnson much as a valet knows his master and Johnson knew Boswell much as the master knows his valet. But here the master was a hero to his valet. No indifference could cool the ardor of Boswell's affection, and no indignity could provoke him to leave from following after his master. His fidelity seems at times servile as that of a dog and our feeling for him has often a tinge of contempt. But through it all he had a purpose and he realized it. He proposed to himself to write the Life of Johnson, and he wrote it, and through this book, for all posterity, Johnson is the child of Boswell, the valet has become father to the master. In its pages we see the great Doctor, in his waking and even in his sleeping hours, at home and abroad, at work and at rest, in sickness and in health, in good humor and in ill. We know his walk and his talk, his great cane and his great words, his scrofula marked face and his snuff colored clothes. We know all his haunts and habits, his taste in food and drink, his choice of books and friends, his manners and his morals, and we know that this great gruff man is a kind man and a good one, and we bear with him as did Boswell, and we bear with Boswell, because of his vital book, which gives us a man of a century that has gone, to know him as no other book makes us know a man, as a familiar and a friend, and not as a mere steel engraving with a catalogue of virtues inscribed beneath. And so, let us because of Johnson according to the Scotch, forgive the Scotch according to Johnson. 1914 GUESTS at the Burns Night of 1914 were Charles Nagel, Max Kotany, Clark McAdams, James D. Grant and Rev. Dr. J. F. Dickie, senior pastor of the American church at Berlin. Among many others who sent greetings this year to the Burns Club of St. Louis were Lord Rosebery, Lord Dunfermline, Sir James Sivewright, and Professors Wilson and Lawson of the Glasgow University. The address of this Night was delivered by Henry King, editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. It was almost the last of Captain King's appearances as a speaker, a career which began in the first year of the Civil war when he was known in Central Illinois as "the boy orator" and when he was in demand at the patriotic meetings to give voice to recruiting enthusiasm. Rev. Dr. Dickie recited with Scotch spirit "The Songs of Robert Burns" and at the earnest plea of the members gave the verses for publication in the Burns Nights book. Manuscript Poems Attributed Through Archer Wall Douglas, one of the members, the club recently came into the possession of poems attributed to Burns and not found in the usual editions of Burns. Joseph Welsh of Pasadena, a correspondent of Mr. Douglas, knowing his interest in all that pertains to the poet, sent him two poems which Mr. Douglas promptly added to the literary Burnsiana of the club. Mr. Welsh explained that these poems were sent to him by his brother who lives in Glasgow and who is something of an antiquarian and a lover of Burns. One of these poems is "Words o' Cheer." Another is Burns' reply "To a Lord's Invitation." The original of this poem is said to be in the possession of Mrs. John Moffatt of St. Andrews. Burns, the explanation is, had been invited by a nobleman to go on an Rock. On returning to the the servants' hall to dine. excursion with a party to Bass castle, the poet was directed to When the lord and his guests had finished dinner, Burns was called in to entertain. He handed to the lord this poem, turned and left the castle. The authenticity of this poem was claimed by Robert Dunn, president of the Aberdeen Border Counties Association. Mr. Dunn read the lines at a meeting of the association. He said the grandfather of Mr. Moffatt had copied it from the manuscript of Robert Burns. But D. McNaught, of Kilmaurs, editor of the Burns Chronicle and the Scottish authority on Burns, commented upon the discovery of a new Burns poem and gave this terse opinion: "This Robert Burns, who is on such good terms with himself, is certainly not the poet." To a Lord's Invitation Manuscript Poem Attributed to Burns, Presented by Joseph Welsh of Pasadena, through A. W. Douglas, to the Burns Club of St. Louis. My lord, I would not fill your chair, I cannot well translate to speech, "Tis deeds, not birth, that make men low. A peasant, 'tis my pride to be; Look round and round your hall and see I was not fit, it seems, to dine |