Charles II., writes to his sovereign of ness, and a sharpness of outline in the un nommé Miltonius whose dangerous form, a good-sense and moderation in the writings had made him more infamous thought, the brisk movement, the frankthan the regicides themselves. Flau- ness that conceals nothing, the good-humor, bert patronizingly observed that Scott decidedly had imagination, and that although "Pickwick contained some fine things, it was spoiled by its lack of plan. These examples are chosen at hazard, but any one of moderately wide reading might easily multiply them, and more pertinently. On the other hand, we may set over against such errors of judgment Sainte-Beuve's wonderful appreciation of Pope and Cowper; M. Taine's fine portrait and criticism of Milton; M. Jusserand's estimate of the importance of the novels of Elizabethan England; and we may also note M. Emile Montégut's recognition in a luminous passage of criticism, so long ago as 1855, of the causes that would ultimately produce the Robert Elsmeres and the David Grieves of our own day.

Since the publication of M. Angellier's book we have heard much ridicule of the notion that a Frenchman could possibly appreciate Burns. Even if such was the case - and we hold that, in regard to Burns, it is far from being so— no one can in justice disregard M. Angellier's pregnant remark, made by

no

joviality, gauloiserie, and clearness, all
make him less of an anomaly in French
literature than he is in English. In addi-
desultory life, his bohemian temperament,
tion, his passionate heart, his irregular and
careless and ever in opposition, his attitude
towards women, are all in accordance with
the notions generally held of the French.
He would find in France brothers, persons
of the same blood and of the same way of
life, companions, not to say comrades. In
England he has none, or they are less strik-
ing. Amid the wonder of all he is isolated,
a phenomenon having no connection with
any one. The perfervidum ingenium Seo-
itself something that is French or at least
torum, by which he is explained, possesses
Celtic. A celebrated Scotch geologist, de-
voted to the poetry of his native land,
remarked to us recently that Burns was
more like a Frenchman than an English-
man. Is it necessary to hasten to add that
we put forward no sort of claim to Burns?
We only desire to make use of received
ideas on the two literatures to mark clearly
the quality of a writer; and it is one more
proof of the defects of wide general opin-
ions on races, that they are only obtained
by ignoring transpositions such as these.

If, then, there is any truth in these observations, it is not necessarily so means in self-justification, be it great an absurdity for a Frenchman to understood, that "there is a greater devote some years of his life to the likeness between two men of different study of Burns. From one point of races and similar temperament than view, indeed, it must be more useful between two men of the same race and and intelligible to us than to those of different temperaments." For hun- Frenchmen who are unable to read the dreds of years there was a close his- poems in the original. Let us hasten torical connection between Scotland to add that we are by no means of those and France; there is an old saying superior minds that hold translations quoted by Shakespeare: "If that you in high contempt. Indeed we are hetwill France win, then with Scotland erodox enough to believe that it is betfirst begin;" the nations seemed to ter to be acquainted with a literature understand one another. And there through the medium of translation than was much in the temperament of Burns not to be acquainted with it at all. But that would find an echo in the hearts of although a literal, unmetrical translaFrenchmen. As M. Angellier puts it: tion of Burns's exquisite songs, for Burns would seem better fitted to take example, may preserve the thought his place in French literature. He forcibly and substance, it can give no idea of reminds us of Regnier, of Villon, at times the form and melody, of the simplicity of Saint-Amant and of Olivier Basselin. and tenderness of the original. With Something of liveliness and unconstraint in the epistles, the "Cottar's Saturday his work, a certain robustness, a concise-Night," and other of the descriptive

poems, the translator is in better case. | nutely their aspect and scenery. We Songs are the most untranslatable of follow Burns from Alloway to Mount things, and to love and appreciate Burns, Heine, and Béranger at their proper value, we must perforce be able to read them in their native tongue.

It seemed to us that, taking into account the place his name holds in the world, Burns was not sufficiently known in France. The few existing studies on the subject are cursory; the greater number of them appeared before the latest documents, many of them of importance, were published. It seemed to us also, that even after the English biographies, of which many are admirable, it might be possible to make clearer some of the spiritual conjunctures of his life. That desire decided us to undertake this work. Doubtless also, in some obscure fashion, a secret sympathy with his original and great mind helped to urge it

on us.

Oliphant, and are with him at Lochlea, Irvine, Mossgiel, and Mauchline. Edinburgh, as it must have appeared to Burns on his first memorable visit after the publication of the volume of poems that made the peasant the lion of the season, is picturesquely portrayed, with its manners, its customs, its intellectual society. The conversation of that society is compared with that of Paris:

There was a highly developed conversational life somewhat resembling that of the French. But instead of gay, sparkling, brilliant sentences, full of sallies and surprises, instead of the vivid wit and fancy that animated French drawing-rooms, conversation in Edinburgh was more serious and sedate, more nearly approaching a regular discussion, with as much boldness and paradox perhaps, but of a more formal turn, of a more dogmatic tone. Neither wit nor charm nor elegance were wanting, but they were exercised with a kind of professional discipline and order. The leaders of conversation were not, as at Paris, bohemians like Rousseau, Diderot, Duclos, Galiani, Beaumarchais; they were judges, clergymen, professors, lawyers, all more or less wearing the dignity and the black robes of a learned profession; neither must we forget the religious atmosphere in which this society lived and moved and had its being. But granting that difference, Edinburgh was certainly at that time, with Paris, the town of Europe where the art of conversation was cultivated to the highest perfection, and where it formed one of the elements of social life.

The tavern life and drinking habits of the Scotch capital at that period are vividly described, and in them M. Angellier finds some excuse for Burns's deplorable weakness. His travels on the Border and in the Highlands are followed by his meeting with Mrs. Maclehose (Clarinda); their letters and

The murder is out, for it is that same secret sympathy that lends M. Angellier's book its interest and its charm. Indulgence and a large-hearted sympathy for the grave faults of Burns the man, clear recognition and sincere appreciation of Burns the poet, give a permanency and a value to a work that might so easily have been superfluous. The author makes little or no claim to the discovery of new matter, beyond the quotation of certain entries their interviews are sufficiently romanin the registers of Mauchline Church relating to the Jean Armour episode; these, he erroneously supposes, have never before appeared in any biography of the poet. M. Angellier has made pilgrimages to all the places in which Burns lived, and describes most mi

LIVING AGE.

VOL. LXXXIII.

tic if somewhat unimpassioned, and the episode terminated, curiously enough, with Burns's marriage with Jean Armour, and his settling as a farmer at Ellisland. But farming turned out a failure, and as he had shared the profits of his volume of poems with his brother 4307

we must, first of all, clearly recognize that
the history of a character, like that of an
organism or of a society, is not a clean
page, a resting-place of purity, but an
oscillating balance of life and death, a com-
bat of good and evil, the difficult liberation
of a little order from much disorder, the
mingling of the light and shadows that fill
the years, and in the midst of which the
universe rolls on its course. No life, no
epoch, realizes good. They fulfil their duty
if they gain and leave behind them some
progress; they are not to be judged by the
point at which they stop, but by the amount
of road they traversed. The true verdict
on every man is that the good counterbal-
ances or lessens the evil, that one fault,
nay, many faults, do not destroy a soul
that can point to effects towards the good;
that a life is a whole, of which the general
effect, the intention, the average, so to say,
must be taken into account.
And then, it is so dangerous, so pre-
sumptuous, to judge harshly of others.
How impossible a thing it is to know
for certain the springs and motives of
the men's actions! In the words of
Burns himself,

Gilbert, Burns was in straits. An ap-wise and tender estimate. M. Angelpointment in the excise was offered lier warns us that to judge a character and accepted; to undertake such work must have been no small sacrifice to the poet, and it is to be deplored that the post presented much temptation to excess in drinking. Poverty and illhealth assailed him, the farm was abandoned forever, and Burns and his family finally took up their abode at Dumfries. It was there that we get the first practical signs of his sympathy with the French Revolution. The particular way in which the event touched Burns is well put by his French critic: A remarkable circumstance! Here again, the uncultured obscure peasant, performing his lowly labors in the depths of Scotland, was in entire sympathy with the highest minds of his epoch. He possessed the supreme gift of poets, a comprehension of the particle of eternal justice that rolls through human anarchy. Like his brethren in poetry, Coleridge and Wordsworth, he had discerned it. Their souls had also been torn by the conflict between their love of country and their enthusiasm in the cause of humanity. They, too, had sacrificed the lesser sentiment to the greater. ... But with Burns the pain could not take a purely intellectual form, or culminate in a deep, meditative sadness, as with Wordsworth, or pour itself out in lyric passion as with Coleridge. Cultivated men make of their minds a retired sanctuary where joys and sorrows are far removed from actual life, a

sanctuary to which they sometimes retreat to enjoy their pride or to conceal their disgust. Burns had no such refuge. Actual life was too close to his mind, he could not get away from it, and his thoughts found expression in his acts. The conflict did not produce in him, as in Wordsworth, a moral disturbance, sorrowful doubtless, but restricted to the speculative view of things. It caused in Burns a daily irritability.

Inexorable fate drew her meshes closer round him. Tortured by disease and by fears for the future of his children, for with all his faults he was a good father, he died before attaining his prime.

For the most part of them, Burns's biographers regard him as either angel or devil. Those who love justice and can sympathize with and pardon human weakness, will ever turn to Carlyle's

One point must still be greatly dark,

The moving why they do it.

M. Angellier sums up the character of Burns so ably and so eloquently that we cannot forbear quoting at some length. After stating that pride and the passions were the mainsprings and rulers of Burns's life, he thus continues:

To moderate and direct such violent emotions, a solid moral discipline was needed. It was entirely wanting: he had neither doctrine nor will. He was ever the plaything of his passions. He never once turned on them to make head against them. He had no consolidation of character. His was a receptive nature, capable of energetic reaction. His heart was a cross-road where the winds of all the climes passed, met, and fought together. The line of his life was

a broken track of a series of chances and
accidents.
actual sensation which is the great quality
The incomparable vivacity of
of his literary productions was the great
vice of his conduct. He was seized, irre-
sistibly carried away, by it. Emotions in
passing through him took possession of

him. He always belonged entirely to the present, without heed of the future, sometimes without remembrance of the past. . . . His generosity only existed in its spontaneity and impulse. Prolonged or thought-out generosity, that is, sacrifice, he did not possess.

think of his sincerity, his straightforwardness, his kindness to men and beasts, his disdain of all meannesses, his hatred of knavery, in itself an honor, his disinterestedness, his fine impulses, his lofty inspiration, the intense ideality necessary to keep his soul above his destiny; when we think that he experienced those generous sentiments to the point that they actually were his intellectual life, and that so ardently did he feel them that his soul was a furnace in which precious metals were smelted and came forth jewels, we say to ourselves that he was of the flower of mankind and of great goodness; . . . what he did not succeed in or what he did not undertake is

As his personality was strong and powerful, submission to the exigencies of his instincts and imagination often led him into the greatest error of his life- egoism. He was a generous egoist, a man of disinterested tendencies but of selfish conduct. He lacked forgetfulness of self, the sense, we do not say of sacrifice or even of effacement of self, but of subordination of self. He could never yield up even his most triv-nothing by the side of what he accomial and transient desires to the vital and plished. . . . enduring interests of others. There was no common measure between him and them. And that want of consideration for others, the suffering inflicted by him on others, is what weighs heaviest on his memory. A hermit, a Stylites, can detach himself from his fellows, and live isolated in his cave or on his pillar. A man living in the midst of men cannot do so. And by reason of the influence he exercised over those with whom he came in contact, Burns could do so less than others. He who had the objectivity of intellect that enabled him to create beings, had none of heart; in certain decisive cases he was almost unconscious of existences outside his own. Indeed it must be said that he sacrificed the pain and sadness of others to his need for poetry, and nourished the dreams of which he formed his works on human tears. If we look closely, few poets are exempt from such cruelty; perhaps few men are. But they scarcely turn the pain they create to so rare a use, or change the tears they cause to flow into pearls of which they later form diadems and necklaces for those who shed them. He was the first of the line of modern poets who made love the sole occupation of their life. He was also the first to make passion the excuse for his bad actions; and we are not speaking here of literary influence or inspiration, but only of moral condition. There again he anticipated Byron and the school of Continental poets who imitated him, down to Musset and George Sand. . . .

Weigh his errors, his faults, as heavily as you like, the scale containing the pure gold out balances that containing the base lead. Admiration increases in proportion as you examine his fine qualities. When you

And who can say, that in the lives of men like Burns, as in those of Rousseau, Byron, Musset, George Sand, if we knew more of them-in those of Shakespeare or Molière - there may not be a profound usefulness even in their weakness? They fulfil a different function from those of Dante, Milton, and Corneille, but one equally indispensable. Those lives offer an austere model and a noble vindication of duty. But the others offer perhaps more human sentiments: the knowledge of the failings of the best of us, a powerlessness to refuse them pardon, and as a result the practice of pity. How great a loss, not in beauty and artistic charm, but in necessary goodness, it would be to the soul of the human race if those men had not by their fascination compelled it to feel pity for their suffering!. . . It is to them that humanity in part owes its compassionate heart. . . . No one contributed more than Burns to the sacred work. Thus, in spite of the severity called up by some of his actions, the verdict of mankind will be merciful.

Difficult as it is in translation and in more or less disjointed quotations to give an adequate idea of M. Angellier's vivacity and of his warm sympathy with his subject, it will perhaps be patent that M. Angellier is a powerful and eloquent counsel, and that his point of view is psychologically interesting. But we are not sure that the

pleading was necessary. The poetry of Burns holds an uncontested place in the literature of the world his songs are on the lips and in the hearts of high

and low alike; and had his life or his | too well known to need repetition here. temperament been other than it was, it Great as are Béranger and Heine, is possible that art might have been Burns is greater, and to find his peers the poorer. we must go back to the great Elizabethans.

II.

WHILE desiring to express a sense of the interest and of the excellent workmanship, to say nothing of the literary charm, of the biography, it is perhaps the second volume of the work, consisting of a careful and elaborate critical estimate of Burns's poetry, that will give M. Angellier's book its greatest value in the eyes of its British readers.

After an elaborate disquisition on the literary origins of Burns, and on Scottish popular poetry, dealing of course with the immediate poetical ancestors of Burns, Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, M. Angellier comes to the wise conclusion that whatever may have been his debt to them, Burns owed more to the spectacle of life, to his own passions, to the thousand aspects of nature, than to books. He then proceeds to discuss human life in Burns, and observes with absolute truth that what chiefly strikes us in reading Burns is a feeling of intense and eager life, almost turbulent in its tumult and movement. His subjects are the outcome of reality, penetrated Critics, to whatever branch of art they with the facts of real life. There is no devote themselves, are merely kneaders of repose. He was placed by destiny in a dough and distributors of the consecrated position excellently calculated to debread. It is their task to reveal the beauti-velop that particular bent of his genius. ful, to divide it into parts, to bring it within the reach of him who, launched in action or fully taken up by labor, has no time to seek it himself; yet he demands it, in order to give to his ambitions or his desires a brilliance and a setting, or a refuge and a consolation.

He, at the outset, disclaims any attempt at scientific criticism, and by way of illustration takes the opportunity to point out the faults of M. Taine's critical methods. M. Angellier prefers the aesthetic criticism, and declares that:

It

He took his happy and novel metaphors from his daily toil, and in earning his bread learned his language. He described the life immediately round him, and as in some senses a purely national, nay, a purely local poet. A small village is often better for the obM. Angellier divides Burns's liter-servation of men than a big city. In ary production into two classes. First, the latter, individuality becomes rapthe pieces written before his visit to idly obscured; while in the former, Edinburgh, comprising the familiar men keep their native imprint. epistles and short descriptive poems; they are the longest of his works, were all inspired by actual occurrences, and make Burns the best painter of the manners of his country. Second, the poems written after the visit to Edinburgh, consisting mainly of songs, relating not to particular acts, but to feelings that are simple and common to most. By these poems, the critic finds that Burns is the chief song-writer of his land, and one of the chief song-ger. writers of all lands. "It may be said The humor of Burns is characterized that each of his songs had its birth in a melody;" music and verse were indeed born together. Carlyle's estimate of Burns's influence as a song-writer is

must also be remembered that Burns, like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Dickens, among the great English painters of reality, received no literary education, had no literary ideal. Such men do not strive after literary perfection, but after truth. Burns's characters are not, M. Angellier points out, poetical peasants, as in the pastorals of George Sand; nor are they philosophic vagabonds, as in the songs of Béran

as merry and gay, his raillery as without ill temper; he is no moralist, but a purely picturesque painter like Teniers and Ostade. In the forcibleness and