mon sense, a note of the true lines along which our study of Burns should be carried. We are not among those blind worshippers of the poet who fail to discover any faults in his character, and deny that he did things which he ought not to have done, or that he wrote much which in many ways it would have been better for his good name and fame he had never committed to paper. We regard Burns as a man, with a full share of all the faults and follies of the men of his time, rather than one who was only a very little lower than the angels. His personal life was not a blameless one; his excesses were marked and condemned even in his own age, when people were far more tolerant of moral lapses and bacchanalian revelries than now; but such things had very little, if anything, to do with the prophetic fire, the "eternal gallop" in his veins, the spirit of poetry, the essence of song that lodged in that frail body and had to find utterance, in spite of many hindrances, because they would not be still. What matters it to us that Burns sometimes exceeded the bounds of propriety, what real interest have we in his failings? These did not win for him the love of his brother Scots and a place among the immortals. We consider it the highest tribute to his genius to contend that he was great as a poet, as a teacher, as an inspirer, in spite of those weaknesses of character, those faults and folliesthose sins of omission and commission which wrecked his life, as they wrecked so many other lives of his day and of

ours.

His life was a brief one-too brief for Scotland and the full development of his genius. Beginning near Ayr on Jan. 25th, 1759, it closed at Dumfries on July 21st, 1796. During that short interval the sunshine and the storm followed each other in sharp succession, the laughter and tears almost constantly intermingled, many golden moments were lost, but in spite of all the legacy which that life bequeathed to Scotland was more precious, more helpful, than that given by any other since the great reformer, John Knox, rested forever from his labors.

To a certain degree, indeed to a very great degree, the memory of Burns has suffered most at the hands of the very men who aimed to do it the most honor-the writers of his life, and the editors of his writings. By the first, mainly from a love of personal notoriety, a desire to be linked, in no matter how disagreeable a fashion to the greatest of

Scotia's bards, every petty detail of his career has been ferreted out and discussed, no matter how little it may really have concerned the public; every paltry anecdote has been retold, every little scrap of information has been made the most of, sometimes without even care being taken to make sure of its truthfulness. What life could stand this scrutiny, this light as fierce as ever beat on a throne, this merciless examination into even its slightest details with the minuteness of the work of a scalpel? By the editors of his writings, in their determination to give something new to the world, their thirst for "hitherto unpublished pieces," every scrap which came from the poet's pen, and much, it is to be feared, that never came from his pen at all, has been made to take its place in his works, among the very writings on which modern critics have to base their estimate of his poetic merit. Every edition that claims to be complete is disfigured by more or less of these "sweepings of the study," these scraps which were never seriously intended, even when authentic, for publication, and the result is that being, as it were, "in evidence " we have to weigh trivialities of that sort along with such masterpieces as "To Mary in Heaven" or "The Cottar's Saturday Night."

Every editor nowadays prides himself on what new material, in the shape of anecdote, or data, or poetry, he can secure and present to the world for the first time. Possibly, for commercial reasons, no publisher would care to undertake the risk of submitting an edition of which completeness was not its first and most conspicuous quality. So every paltry litterateur who has taken Burns under his wing has welcomed a scrap from his pen or even some miserable data if he could only announce that he was privileged to give such first to the world. But for many years past such data have not been to the poet's credit, and the verses generally stuff that its author would have consigned to the fire. It is Burns's poetry that the world is concerned about, not his carousals or his amours; but people generally give the first place to the latter, as if, forsooth, they were the cause of the divine gift which has done so much for Scotland.) It is claimed that to understand the poet we must estimate the man; but that is a theory which is not borne out by facts. We do not know who wrote the Book of Job, but that does not decrease our veneration and love for that magnificent

poem, and we question whether, if we did know the author, and were acquainted with his daily life, it would increase one iota our understanding of, and admiration for, that most ancient composition of the muse, apart altogether from the question of its inspiration. We know little of Shakespeare, hardly anything beyond a few dates, but that does not lessen our wonder at his matchless genius. Many other instances might be adduced on this point, and all would go to prove that for the sake of fully estimating the genius of 47 our bard it is only necessary for us to consider mainly Burns, the poet, and not, as is too generally the case, to devote most of our attention to Burns the man.

This does not necessarily imply that we are to entirely lose sight of the personal character of the poet by any means. More than all other men who ever attained eminence Burns wore his heart on his sleeve, and his writings were the outcome of his daily experience as he passed through the thirty-seven years of life-his allotted share. But there were events of which he did not sing that have excited enquiry, debate, and comment, matters which had no more to do with his character and his legacy to the world than the mud which gathered on his shoes as he strode along the country roads of Ayrshire or walked through the streets of Edinburgh or Dumfries. It is time, now that a century has elapsed since he went down to his grave, that the useless mud spots which the critics, and the biographers, and the enthusiasts, have so carefully preserved should be allowed to fall back into their parent dust. The poet has himself told us all we need really know, ahd so honestly, so truthfully, and, excepting in one case, so completely that we require no other guide to form a just estimate of his character, and of the value to Scotland and humanity of that life that was ushered in amidst the moaning and the howling of a wintry blast on the 25th of January, } 1759.

The late Robert Chambers, the ablest of the modern editors of Burns, essayed this task, and to a certain extent succeeded, only he deemed it, with the instincts of a publisher, his duty to preserve the mud spots and reprint all the study sweepings he could hear about or lay hands upon. He is not to be blamed for this altogether, for in 1850, when his great edition of the poet's writings was completed, Burns was still, to a certain extent, an enigma to his coun

trymen. It was believed that there was something back of what was known, and everyone was anxious to discover what that something exactly was. Then Chambers wanted his edition to be complete, the very sentiment that has, more than aught else, helped, unconsciously, perhaps, to detract from the true meed of Burns's fame. During the poet's own lifetime, between the contents of the first, second and third editions, Burns gave to the world eightyeight distinct poems or songs under his own editorial care. These alone sufficiently established his position as the "high priest of Scottish song." Then to Johnson's Museum he contributed one hundred and sixty-seven songs, and to Thomson's "Melodies" thirty-nine-two hundred and six in all. These two hundred and ninety-four pieces were all given to the world under his auspices, that is to say he sanctioned their publication, deemed them all more or less fit utterances from the poetic fire that burned within him. One of the most recent "complete " editions contains five hundred and sixty-four distinct poems, or two hundred and seventy more than Burns himself consigned to print. The first collected edition of the poet's writings, the earliest attempt to write the full story of his career, was given to the world in 1800 by that leal-hearted Scot, Dr. Currie. It was not a perfect work by any means. The biographer and editor lived too near the poet's own time to be perfectly outspoken in many matters which later writers had no need of regarding. He was anxious to conciliate everyone and so ensure the success of his venture and yield the greatest benefit to the widow and orphans of the poet for whose behoof his labors were undertaken. But its purpose was honest. Its shortcomings were superficial, such as could be remedied even in these days by a few notes and its aim was to endear the memory of the poet and not to uplift a memorial to its editor. Since then Dr. Currie's labors and edition have been the subject of much detraction and ill-natured criticism. Allan Cunningham, James Hogg, J. G. Lockhart, George Gilfillan, Hately Waddell, W. S. Douglas, Alex. Smith, Professor Blackie, and countless others of more or less eminence in the world of letters, have all tried to throw further light on the poet's career, or to add to the extent of his published writings. They have certainly accomplished, each in more or less degree, these objects, yet with the exception of "The Jolly Beggars" and half a

dozen other pieces which Dr. Currie rejected on account of their indelicacy or religious bearing, we could fain leave the fame of the poet to the verdict based on the four volumes issued by that best and wisest of all the admirers of Robert Burns.

We have no interest in the revels at Poosie Nancy's beyond the fact that the revels there inspired or suggested "The Jolly Beggars," and we have no concern about the details of these merrymakings, for the pleasures of what is called low life have a monotonous similarity in all ages and countries. It is nothing to us whether the poet was for a time a nightly visitor at Nancy's "houff" and rubbed shoulders on terms of equality with the gangrel bodies he met there. Nor have we any concern about how frequently in the later days he was seen in the Globe Tavern, Dumfries, for experience has shown us how very apt such stories are to be exaggerated, and, besides, they bore no part in making the fame of Burns. When tales of such debaucheries are retailed we cannot help thinking of an earlier time in the poet's career when he was accused of riot and undue partiality for the cup, and how all such stories were crushed by the simple testimony of Gilbert Burns that at the period in question his gifted brother was "not at all given to drinking." These few words from an honest man are worth a bushel of statements rashly uttered without warrant. So it would be found of the stories of riot during the "dark hours of Dumfries " were their stories honestly told. We prefer Jean Armour's evidence on this point to all the ghouls have dug up. "Burns" she told her sisterin-law, Mrs. Begg, "never indulged unless when he was in congenial company, and although he was often out at convivial meetings he never on a single occasion, however late he might be of coming home, failed in a custom he invariably observed before coming to bed, of going into the room where his children slept and satisfying himself that they were all comfortably tucked in and sleeping soundly." This is evidence that would be deemed irrefutable in ordinary cases. But even were there convivialities and "jinks of which Jean knew not, their honest recital might possibly prove that the poet indulged too freely, but they would fail to show, as the labors of many of his so-called admirers fain would demonstrate, that he was nothing better than a barroom loafer, a common drunkard, a pot-house sot. They