NOTES AND COMMENT (Heavy numerals refer to page; light ones to line) 1, 2. Butler: Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the author of Hudibras, was a clever satirist of the Puritans and therefore gave pleasure to King Charles, who in spite of promises, suffered him to live in neglect and poverty for seventeen years. Dryden, in petitioning for the payment of his own over-due pension, caustically remarks, "It is enough for one age to have starved Mr. Butler and neglected Mr. Cowley." 1, 6. The inventor of a spinning-jenny. James Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning-jenny, suffered, in his own day, quite as badly as Burns, for he was driven out of Lancashire by the workmen who dreaded the introduction of machinery which would displace them. 1, 19. Sixth narrative: Heron's in 1797; Currie's in 1800; Cromek's in 1808; Walker's in 1811; Peterkin's in 1815; Lockhart's in 1828. The Centenary Edition of Burns, edited by W. E. Henley and T. F. Henderson, gives the latest and best narrative of Burns's life. 1, 21. Lockhart: John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), the son-inlaw and biographer of Sir Walter Scott. 2, 5. Hero to his valet. The phrase came into vogue through Voltaire who derived it from Montaigne. It may be compared with the explanation as to why men do not fall in love with the poet's mistress: "Sure, they would do so, but that, By the ordinance of fate, There is some concealed thing, So each gazer limiting, He can see no more of merit, Than beseems his worth and spirit." -George Withers. 2, 13. Sir Thomas Lucy and John a Combe. "Tradition says that Shakespeare joined some wild young fellows in breaking into Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlecote, about three miles from Stratford, and stealing his deer, for which, and for writing an im possibly bad ballad against Sir Thomas, the latter so persecuted the poet that he had to leave Stratford." (Furnivall.) Lucy is thought to be the original of Justice Shallow in The Merry Wives of Windsor. John a Combe was a wealthy citizen of Stratford for whom Shakespeare wrote a semi-humorous epitaph. 2, 22. The Honorable Excise Commissioners. They have general charge of the collection of the excise or internal revenue duties on ale, spirits, and tobacco. 2, 23. Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt. See Introduction, page xxix. 2, 25. Ayr Writers: a Scotch term for solicitors, law agents; here Burns's friends, Gavin Hamilton and Robert Aiken, to the latter of whom he dedicated The Cotter's Saturday Night. 2, 25. The New and Old Light Clergy: the Progressive and the Conservative factions in the Scotch church. In Twa Herds, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Holy Fair, Burns attacks the Old Light party. Compare Barrie's Auld Licht Idylls. 3, 1. Dr. Currie: James Currie (1756-1805), a physician and author of a life of Burns, prefixed to a four-volume edition of Burns's work (1800). The proceeds, £800, were given to Mrs. Burns and her family, the author keeping none for himself. 3, 2. Mr. Walker: Josiah Walker, an intimate friend of the poet, who wrote a life of Burns for an edition of his poems published in 1811. 4, 3. Constable's Miscellany: a novel enterprise at that time for reprinting standard literature or new work in popular form and at cheap prices. Sir Walter Scott invited Lockhart to Abbotsford in 1825, to meet "Constable and James Ballantyne, who were to be there on a quiet consultation on some matters of great importance." Constable's Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications in Literature, Science, and the Arts was planned, and Lockhart agreed to write for it a Life of Burns. This was published in 1828. Constable was one of the most well-known British publishers,-the original publisher of the Edinburgh Review (for which Carlyle wrote his Burns, December, 1828), of the fifth and sixth editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and of many of Scott's novels. The failure of this publishing house plunged Scott into debt for £130,000, for the payment of which he began his heroic task of writing. 6, 22. Born in an age. Carlyle characterizes the eighteenth century as "the withered, unbelieving, second-hand, eighteenth century, with its artificial paste-board figures and productions." 6, 28. Ferguson: Robert Ferguson or Fergusson (1750-1774), author of The Farmer's Ingle, from which Burns is said to have taken the idea of his Cotter's Saturday Night. 6, 28. Ramsay: Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), author of The Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral, and The Tea Table Miscellany. "To Ramsay and to Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very uncommon degree, not only following their tradition and using their measures, but directly and avowedly imitating their pieces. . . . When we remember Burns's obligation to his predecessors, we must never forget his immense advances on them."-R. L. Stevenson: Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 7, 31. Sir Hudson Lowe: Governor of St. Helena and warden of Napoleon in captivity. 7, 33. Amid the melancholy main. "As when a shepherd of the Hebrid Isles, 7, 33. Spectacle of pity and fear." Aristotle speaks of pity and fear as the essential qualities in producing the true tragic effect.— Poetics, VI. 8, 32. The Daisy. See To a Mountain Daisy, page 77. 8, 33. Wee, cowering. See To a Mouse, page 75. 9, 1. Thole: to endure. 9, 1. Dribble: to drizzle. 9, 1. Cranreuch: hoar frost. 9, 1. Winter. See Winter: a Dirge. 9, 6. Him that walketh. See Psalm cix, 3. "It (winter) is my best season for devotion," writes Burns; "for my mind is wrapped up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who in the pompous language of Scripture 'walks on the wings of the wind.' At such a time was Winter composed.”—Common place Book, April, 1874. 9, 15. Arcadian illusion: Arcadia, a district in the heart of the Peloponnesus, shut in on all sides by mountains, where dwelt a simple, pastoral people fond of music and dancing. The word has become a synonym for ideal simplicity and rustic beauty. 9, 21. Over the lowest provinces of man's existence. In his preface to The Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth makes a strong plea for choosing subjects from humble life and from rustic life, because "there the essential passions of the human heart find a better soil in which they can attain maturity, are less under restraint." At the beginning of the eighteenth century, no characters from lowly life appear in poetry, except the conventional shepherd. Burns was one of the leaders in letting down the barriers which had excluded the poor and the lowly from the domain of art. 10, 9. His glowing heart. See Scott's account (page 46, line 20) of the effect produced on Burns by the picture of the dead soldier and his dog beside him. 10, 17. And this was he. If a housewife tried out a pail of mutton tallow or brewed some home-made ale, Burns had to assess the trifling but vexatious tax on it. 10, 25. A poor mutilated fraction. Both Burns and Keats were cut off before the maturity of their powers and met the fate that Keats feared, in the lines: "When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain." 11, 30. Not from hearsay, but from sight and experience. That the writer does not need to go far afield for his best material is ever to be borne in mind, as Burns himself illustrates. "The contemporaries of Burns were surprised that he should visit so many celebrated mountains and waterfalls, and not seize the opportunity to make a poem. Indeed, it is not for those who have a true command of the art of words, but for peddling, professional amateurs, that these pointed occasions are most useful and inspiring. . Whether it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, a sheep struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly soldiers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a drunken man, or only a village cockcrow in the morning, he could find language to give it freshness, body, and relief."-R. L. Stevenson: Familiar Studies of Men and Books. Compare also the famous lines of Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet: "Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write." 12, 8. Si vis me flere [dolendum est primum ipsi tibi]. This quotation from Horace's Ars Poetica may be freely paraphrased: "If you would have me weep, you too must weep;" that is, the author's feeling must be deep and genuine in order to move others. 13, 11. Harolds. Childe Harold is the title of one of Byron's best-known poems. Byron, who had died four years before this essay, stood in Carlyle's mind for the mood of sentimental revolt, instead of for the mood of work, which Carlyle insisted on. 13, 12. Giaours. The Giaour is the title of a narrative poem |