se the higher ranks among us of having
ruined Burns by their selfish neglect of him. We have already stated
our doubts whether direct pecuniary help, had it been offered, would
have been accepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall
readily admit, however, that much was to be done for Burns; that many
a poisoned arrow might have been warded from his bosom; many an
entanglement in his path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful; and
light and heat shed on him from high places would have made his humble
atmosphere more genial; and the softest heart then breathing might
have lived and died with some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant
further, and for Burns, it is granting much, that with all his pride
he would have thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any one who
had cordially befriended him: patronage, unless once cursed, needed
not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor promotion he
desired in his calling might have been granted: it was his own scheme,
therefore, likelier than any other to be of service. All this it might
have been a luxury--nay, it was a duty, for our nobility to have done.
No part of all this, however, did any of them do or apparently
attempt, or wish to do: so much is granted against them.

But what then is the amount of their blame? Simply that they were men
of the world, and walked by the principles of such men; that they
treated Burns as other nobles and other commoners had done other
poets; as the English did Shakespeare; as King Charles and his
cavaliers did Butler; as King Philip and his Grandees did Cervantes.
Do men gather grapes of thorns? or shall we cut down our thorns for
yielding only a _fence_ and haws? How indeed, could the "nobility and
gentry of his native land" hold out any help to this "Scottish bard,
proud of his name and country"? Were the nobility and gentry so much
as able rightly to help themselves? Had they not their game to
preserve, their borough interests to strengthen; dinner, therefore, of
various kinds, to eat and give? Were their means more than adequate to
all this business, or less than adequate? Less than adequate in
general: few of them in reality were richer than Burns; many of them
were poorer: for sometimes they had to wring their supplies, as with
thumbscrews, from the hard hand, and, in their need of guineas, to
forget their duty of mercy, which Burns was never reduced to do. Let
us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved and shot,