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LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS.

Mostly by

THOMAS CARLYLE.







New York:
Delisser & Procter, 508 Broadway.
1859.




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


The readers of the "Household Library" will certainly welcome a Life of
Burns. That his soul was of the real heroic stamp, no one who is familiar
with his imperishable lyric poetry, will deny.

This Life of the great Scottish bard is composed of two parts. The first
part, which is brief, and gives merely his external life, is taken from
the "Encyclopedia Britannica." The principle object of it, in this place,
is to prepare the reader for what follows. The second part is a grand
spiritual portrait of Burns, the like of which the ages have scarcely
produced; the equal of which, in our opinion, does not exist. In fact,
since men began to write and publish their thoughts in this world, no one
has appeared who equals Carlyle as a spiritual-portrait painter; and,
taken all in all, this of his gifted countryman Burns is his master-piece.
I should not dare to say how many times I have perused it, and always with
new wonder and delight. I once read it in the Manfrini Palace, at Venice,
sitting before Titian's portrait of Ariosto. Great is the contrast between
the Songs of Burns and the _Rime_ of the Italian poet, between the fine
spiritual perception of Carlyle's mind and the delicate touch of Titian's
hand, between picturesque expression and an expressive picture; yet this
very antithesis seemed to prepare my mind for the full enjoyment of both
these famous portraits; the sombre majesty of northern genius seemed to
heighten and be heightened by the sunset glow of the genius of the south.

Besides giving the article from the "Encyclopedia Britannica," as a kind
of frame for the portrait of Burns, we will here add, from the "English
Cyclopedia," a sketch of Carlyle's life. A severe taste may find it a
little out of place, yet we must be allowed to consult the wishes of those
for whom these little volumes are designed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carlyle, (Thomas,) a thinker and writer, confessedly among the most
original and influential that Britain has produced, was born in the parish
of Middlebie, near the village of Ecclefechan, in Dumfries-shire,
Scotland, on the 4th of December, 1795. His father, a man of remarkable
force of character, was a small farmer in comfortable circumstances; his
mother was also no ordinary person. The eldest son of a considerable
family, he received an education the best in its kind that Scotland could
then afford--the education of a pious and industrious home, supplemented
by that of school and college. (Another son of the family, Dr. John A.
Carlyle, a younger brother of Thomas, was educated in a similar manner,
and, after practising for many years as a physician in Germany and Rome,
has recently become known in British literature as the author of the best
prose translation of Dante.) After a few years spent at the ordinary
parish school, Thomas was sent, in his thirteenth or fourteenth year, to
the grammar school of the neighboring town of Annan; and here it was that
he first became acquainted with a man destined, like himself, to a career
of great celebrity. "The first time I saw Edward Irving," writes Mr.
Carlyle in 1835, "was six-and-twenty years ago, in his native town, Annan.
He was fresh from Edinburgh, with college prizes, high character, and
promise: he had come to see our school-master, who had also been his. We
heard of famed professors--of high matters, classical, mathematical--a
whole Wonderland of knowledge; nothing but joy, health, hopefulness
without end, looked out from the blooming young man." Irving was then
sixteen years of age, Carlyle fourteen; and from that time till Irving's
sad and premature death, the two were intimate and constant friends. It
was not long before Carlyle followed Irving to that "Wonderland of
Knowledge," the University of Edinburgh, of which, and its "famed
professors," he had received such tidings. If the description of the
nameless German university, however, in "Sartor Resartus," is to be
supposed as allusive also to Mr. Carlyle's own reminiscences of his
training at Edinburgh, he seems