Armour died and Highland Mary lived, the former could have been posthumously condemned (in less degree perhaps) on the self-same grounds. Elizabeth Paton's child was born on May 22nd, 1785 * (not in November, 1784, as stated by Mr Henley), consequently the halting, the hesitation, and the short notice were about equal in both cases. As it turned out, all Jean's children were born in wedlock k; had it been otherwise, it would better have fitted into Mr Henley's dominant theory that the peasant women of Scotland of necessity inherited the peculiar qualities of their "lewd," &c. ancestors, and could not possible help themselves. Conscious of the flimsiness of the proof against Highland Mary, he turns to the contemporary conduct of Burns for corroboration. He points out that, im mediately Jean deserted him, he set himself to look for another wife, and quotes from his correspondence in proof. Further extracts (dated February, March, and April, 1786) from certain hysterical and strongly-worded epistles are adduced as evidence that he still "loved Jean to disstraction," though strongly resenting her seeming inconstancy and ingratitude. The trump card, however, is Burns's letter to David Brice, of date 12th June, 1786— a date, be it observed, nearly a calendar month subsequent to the parting with Highland Mary. This letter must be read in its entirety to realise to the full the contending emotions of the writer. To divorce selected phrases from their context is to produce erroneous impressions. The purport of the fragments selected by Mr Henley is to suggest the belief that Burns's attachment to Highland Mary was mere feigning, or something worse. Why should it be set down to his discredit that he retained a lingering affection for a woman whom he describes to John Arnot, a few weeks before, as a wife" now lost to him through her own perfidy, as he believed? 66 He tells Brice in the plainest of terms that all is now over between them, at * Agreement between Robert Burns and Elizabeth Paton, dated December 1st, 1786, witnessed by James Smith and Gavin Hamilton. (Original still in existence). the same time evincing the most tender concern about her future. The burning of "the lines Idid not dissolve the irregular marriage, and Burns was well aware of that. Daddie Auld was not, or he never would have granted the illegal certificate of bachelorhood Burns carried with him to Edinburgh. To account for the "jugglings of the male human heart" is a task beyond our powers, and we do not mean to try. We content ourselves with the If, testimony of the facts, which speak for themselves. A young man pays his addresses to two village maidens; one is latterly preferred (no matter why), and the other neglected for a time; the favoured one at length falls short of her lover's expectations (no matter how) and jilts him; he turns with penitence to the other in his hour of humiliation, and is forgiven all his transgressions. in thus suggesting, we are accused of dealing with the impossible, all we can say is that such impossibilities were, are, and ever will be, everyday occurrences amongst all classes and conditions of women and men. He was as manly and sincere in his relations with Highland Mary as he was with Jean Armour. That the former did not live to reap the reward of her self-sacrifice was not the least of the causes of that remorse of Burns, regarding which so many uncharitable surmises have been ventilated. In the unpublished portion of his letter to Gavin Hamilton (not John Ballantine, as hitherto believed),* written during this period of trouble, he says: "Do not despise me, Sir. I am indeed a fool, but a knave is an infinitely worse character than anybody, I hope, will dare to give the unfortunate— Robert Burns.' This condemnation of himself at this trying point in his career should have its due weight in every estimate of the erratic and contradictory impulses which seem to have alternately governed his conduct. 66 Paragon or no paragon is surely a severe test to apply to any woman; useless, moreover, to the majority, whose values lie between the top of the scale and the immovable *See "Notes and Queries "in last year's Chronicle. zero. There is no compromise possible between the Dunoon Mariolater and Mr Henley. The mistake of the former (who, by the way, must have died at Dunoon, for we have heard nothing of him since) was in removing his paragon from the empyrean and making of it a graven image. Henley's mistake was his persistent insistence that if Mary Campbell was no paragon she was bound to be the other thing. Of Beatrice, who also died young, we know little or nothing save what Dante has told us, but we need nobody to tell us that, if she had not been a rich man's daughter, she would likely have trod the earth as barelegged as Mary is said to have been. Hence Henley's nickname is quite uncalled for; shoes and stockings would not have improved her one whit. As the opinion of the valet is fatal to the hero, so information gleaned from the man or woman in the street does not usually add a single inch to the stature of the paragon. We take Beatrice at Dante's valuation; why not Mary at Burns's? This much we venture to say--if Beatrice had lived to be a toothless grandmother, Dante would never have chosen her as his guide in the Divine Comedy. This conveys a hint of the locus classicus of the paragon-the beloved mortal whose "shade " poets have always glorified. The earthly prototype is transformed by death into a being ethereal, visionary, angelic-mythical, if you will have it SO. Burns left his feminine ideal innominate, and it were better she had remained so. To resurrect her periodically as a bare-legged peasant nursing babies or milking cows-the average hireling of a feeing fair-is to make a mouldy mummy of her, tear to tatters the “ white robes " woven for her by the Poet, snatch her from her place of blissful rest," and dump her down in her graveclothes on the barren rocks of Dunoon. Paragon here or paragon there, the choice is between the Mary Campbell who died and was buried, and the Highland Mary who still lives and will live for ever. Chacun à son goût. 66 66 EDITOR VOLUME ANNOTATED BY, BURNS. (Observer, Vol. IX., MDCCLXXXVIII.) THE HERE has been recently brought under our notice a volume from the library of the Poet, which was presented in 1860 by Wm. Glencairn Burns to Dr Henderson, the historian of Dunfermline, who was then residing at St. Helens, Lancashire. Regarding its authenticity there is no question. The letter from the donor is attached to the covers, as well as the postage label of the book—all in good preservation. The letter informs us that the volume "bears my father's signature on the title-page, and I well recollect having seen it in his library before I went to India." The annotations, which are few and laconic, are written in pencil somewhat faded by the lapse of years. The autograph on the title-page, however, is in ink and perfectly legible. On page 17, in criticising a poetic rhapsody, written in the manner of Cowper's Task, Burns jots on the margin, " fine," opposite this passage :— 'Oh, Albion! oh, blest isle, on whose white cliffs Peace builds her halcyon nest." On page 18, another passage in the same composition receives the same commendation : The same strong blast that beds the knotted oak Firm in his clay-bound cradle, nerves the arm Of the stout hind, who fells him to the ground.” On page 102, the editor gives a quotation from Mnesimachus, an ancient Greek comedian, describing the feasting of a company of banditti or bravos, in which the furnishing of the table is set forth in detail: "Instead of knives we're armed with naked swords, and swallow firebrands in the place of food; Daggers of Crete are serv'd us for confections, and for a plate of pease a fricassee of shatter'd spears; &c. . . . . Burns labels this on the margin, " Bombastic." Further on, the editor falls foul of Ben Jonson for his propensity "to carp at Shakespeare," pretending to "exalt such a farago of vulgar ribaldry as Bartholomew Fair above such exquisite productions as The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing." Following out his purpose, he quotes Jonson's witch scene in the Masque of the Queens, and sets against it Shakespeare's setting of the same scene in Macbeth, without, however, mentioning that play. Burns writes on the margin, "Shakespere's Macbeth." The last number of Jonson's witches' chorus, which runs— About, about, and about! Till the mists arise and the lights fly out. The images neither be seen nor felt, Around, around! Till a music sound, And the pace be found To which we may dance And our charms advance ;-" ୮ 66 There are a Burns characterises, at the foot of the page, as Stupid Nonsense," and it looks as if he were right. few additional passages in the book marked with pencil, without further comment. On page 136, the editor has another thrust at Ben Jonson concerning the authorship of a well-known lyric, in the course of which he makes certain revelations which must come as a surprise to the general reader. with the following preface : He begins "I was surprised the other day to find our learned poet, Ben Jonson, had been poaching in an obscure collection of love-letters written by the sophist Philostratus, in a very rhapsodical stile, merely for the purpose of stringing together a parcel of unnatural, farfetched conceits, more calculated to disgust a man of Jonson's classic taste than to put him upon the humble task of copying them and then fathering the translation. The little poem he has taken from this despicable sophist is now become a very popular song, and is |