-of every kind of evidence that would have conducted him to a conclusion differing from a foregone one. The writing is original, and may be replete with "style" for aught the present writer knows or cares to know; but error expressed with correct grammatical accidence and literary grace is still error. His teaching is as little redolent of the true Burns as of the true Jean Armour. Burns is said to have had no love for Jean, and Jean no love for Burns: their marriage had no root in nature, though prior to it Jean was the mother of four children of whom Burns was father; Burns's disloyalty to Jean both before and after marriage is fully insisted upon; and, to balance matters, Jean's disloyalty to Burns becomes a special creation. The fact of Burns graduating for Bedlam on the miscarriage of "the lines" in 1786, and though from their first intimacy onward Jean's love and will and destiny were those of Burns matter not to Stevenson, who stoutly maintains that the marriage was an error on the part of Burns due to a miscalculation of his moral strength. Burns is a Don Juan, except where the character associated with that name does not suit the writer's purpose; Jean is a facile, empty-headed girl, because the preface says so. After their marriage, every light in the soul of Burns, one after another, takes fright at Jean and leaps forth from its altar into blackness and extinction, whither Burns follows at greater leisure. Were the picture as true as the painter of it was gawkish, human emotion would require new channels and men be found weeping through their ears. But Nature teems with compensations. A glance at this awful picture suggests a glance at another, which we may call its correlative :-A man sits in darkness or in dimmest light; he is sick and vomits; a physician analyses; finds the discharged matter to be imperishable as Tam o' Shanter or Scots Wha Hae, or that cry of humanity, A Man's a Man. A rather strange picture, it may be said. Yes, but darkness breeds strange things. But, dropping metaphor, Stevenson has not told us why the feelings of Burns's heart, in which those fled mental lights originated, did not depart and become extinct during his life. Loveable and courageous as Stevenson is, he did not, and now cannot, tell us that. It were too cynical to suggest that he took to manufacturing scarecrows because he thought such a business might prove lucrative. The following letter, if carefully read, will throw some light on

this point. It was written by Stevenson on his being informed of the unsuitability of his article for the pages of the Encyclopædia. It is strangely pathetic and curiously characteristic, and bears the date 8th June, 1876

“I suppose you are perfectly right in saying there was a want of enthusiasm about the article. To say truth, I had, I fancy, an exaggerated idea of the gravity of an Encyclopædia and wished to give mere bones, and to make no statements that should seem even warm. And perhaps, also, I may have a little latent cynicism which comes out when I am at work. I believe you are right in saying I had not said enough of what is highest and best in him. Such a topic is disheartening; the clay feet are easier dealt with than the golden head."

Let every reader of this letter, who has not already considered, consider now how difficult is the writing of good biography. To surmount the difficulty involved in the moods of the person whose character is being delineated is an achievement nowhere to be found in the article to which the above letter refers; to surmount the difficulty involved in the moods of the person delineating that character is an achievement still higher, and, as the letter shows, Stevenson had made no effort to reach

Burns practised the Pauline art of being all things to all men; and by a too sinister clutching at the things Burns was to some men, Stevenson has missed the real Burns and has caught instead a scarecrow with Kyle-made breeches. His Jean Armour is equally unreal. She is not the blythe, truehearted, thrush-throated, springy-stepped maid of Mauchline, who, in a life drama with ill-composed prologue, acted with zeal and fidelity the part of exemplary mother, woman, and wife, but a heartless, soul-less, short-gowned something, that unconsciously hunted down into darkness the soul of our bestloved fellow countryman.

In the recently published "Life of Stevenson," written by his cousin, Mr. Graham Balfour, many claims are entered in his favour which may be disputed. Other claims put forward therein will be ungrudgingly allowed. The root and pith of Stevenson are genuinely Scottish, and this is likely to preserve his memory green amongst us. Another trait, however-his attractive personality-cannot continue to influence Scotsmen strongly after the present generation has followed him hence, when his title to remembrance will rest on his written works. His memory is, however, in good keeping, though the haste

and ardour shown by H. B. Baildon and others to make him instantly and perennially famous is not reassuring.

JAMES GORDON.

The following extract may interest your readers if they have not seen the book, "Robert Louis Stevenson," by

H. B. Baildon :-
:-

"Here, too, must we subscribe to one of Stevenson's main contentions that Burns's marriage with Jean Armour, if a generous action, was none the less an error. Whether Burns ever met the woman who could have saved him from himself and his circumstances is highly doubtful; but whoever it was, it was not the facile and yet, at one time, disloyal Jean. The woman to save Burns must have united refinement with tact and devotion, and sufficient intellect to help him in directing his genius (which flagged more from want of guidance and suggestion than from real decay), and with strength of purpose to keep him true to his better resolutions. Had such a woman existed, would she have married Burns? To a woman nurtured in delicacy and refinement would not the coarseness of the exploughman, with his retinue of ex-mistresses and bastard children, have been more revolting than the poet himself was attractive. A poet is a poet only in his exalted moments; an exciseman, an ex-ploughman, is an exciseman, an ex-ploughman, most of the twenty-four hours." (Pp. 89-90.)

It is always possible to run counter to Carlyle and even to Burns himself on the wisdom of the latter's marriage with Jean Armour; but that the position can never be assumed without grave peril is clear from the above passage. To plant a Chilian araucaria beside a British oak expecting that the latter will thereby become a Mediterranean pine, has no basis in nature and no antecedent in history to recommend it. After her marriage with him, Jean lived and suffered with Burns while he lived, and revered his memory after his death. It is by no means clear, on the other hand, that the hypothetical person here prescribed as a suitable wife for Burns would have accomplished any one of these things. Besides, if necessitation exists at all in human relations it is stronger in moral obligation than elsewhere; stronger in the humane instinct that led Burns to marry Jean Armour than in the frail critical submission signed Stevenson as executor and Baildon as witness.

J. G.

To show how delightfully varied is the view from the Burns Chair of Moral Philosophy, we quote the anti-climax from Henley's essay. (Pp. 291-92.)

"The conclusion is obvious. The Novelist turned Critic is still the Novelist. Consciously or not, he (Stevenson) develops preferences, for, consciously or not, he must still create. Stevenson's preferences were with Rab Mossgiel. And the result was a grave-but not, I hope, a lasting-injustice to an excellent and very womanly woman and a model wife." [ED.]

AFTER A CENTURY.

Is he forgotten? Ask the Scot sojourning
In torrid zone, or 'mid the Arctic snows;
Ask the lone exile whose sad heart is turning
To the dear mother land at life's dark close.

Ask the grim soldier, weary vigil keeping—
The sailor, wrestling with the ocean's power--
The mother watching by her infant sleeping-

The lover, wandering forth at gloaming's hour.

Ask! And the answer comes, perchance unspoken;
With smiles or tears 'tis given, and understood
The golden harp of sympathy, unbroken,

Responds with every string the master's mood.

Forgotten! Nay, while seasons run their courses,
While generations pass, and centuries roll,
His living words shall reach the hidden sources
That make all men one kin from pole to pole.

JANET A. M'CULLOCH, Wolverhampton.

THE

PROPOSED BURNS LECTURESHIP.

AT

T the annual meeting of the Burns Federation, held in the Windsor Hotel, Glasgow, on 27th June, 1901, Mr. William Freeland, on being called upon to report progress in the matter of his scheme for a Burns Lectureship said:

"Your desire will, no doubt, be to learn whether there is anything new to communicate regarding the proposal to found a Lectureship in the name of the National Bard, for the teaching of Scottish Language, Literature, and History, in the University of Glasgow or elsewhere. As there may be a few gentlemen present who are not well acquainted with the genesis of the idea, perhaps you will permit me to indulge in a brief recapitulation. Let me say then that the scheme originated in the Bridgeton Burns Club, and is the authentic flower of its constitution, wherein the good seed was sown thirty-one years ago. Being a member and ex-president of the club, I am enabled to say that our funds, which now amount to a considerable sum, have been carefully husbanded for educational and academic purposes. But we were not therefore prevented from contributing towards the erection of much Burns statuary. At length, however, it occurred to one of our oldest and most experienced members (Rev. William Leggatt) that the time had come when some change should be made in the method of honouring the memory of the Poet. This, it was seen, could very well be done by linking his name to some national and patriotic interest. Burns loved his country, its history and its songliterature-all three of which were to him a perpetual fountain of inspiration. Well, we found in the constitution of our club the living germ of our dream. Let us, we said, connect the name of Burns in some way with the subjects which were to him the breath and soul of his higher life. The result was the idea of a Lectureship, if not a Chair. I had the privilege of laying the matter before the Federation at Mauchline, and then of expounding it at Dumfries. Having at that meeting considered the question, the Federation unanimously resolved to adopt it as one coming properly within the range of their policy. Captain Sneddon, our secretary, then sounded various clubs on the subject, and received no unfavourable reply, though some clubs required time to consider the question. We have reason to hope that they are not neglecting it. In certain cases handsome contributions were promised, and our expectation is that sooner or later this grand purpose of the Federation will be realised. It might be askedthough I do trust that nobody will hazard the question-whether enough has not been done in memory of Burns. So extraordinary a query would