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the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, the _little_ Babylon they severally builded by the glory of their might, are all melted, or melting back into the primeval chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavors are fated to do: and here was an action extending, in virtue of its worldly influence, we may say, through all time--in virtue of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself: this action was offered them to do, and light was not given them to do it. Let us pity and forgive them. But, better than pity, let us go and _do otherwise_. Human suffering did not end with the life of Burns; neither was the solemn mandate, "Love one another, bear one another's burdens," given to the rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns to relieve, to assuage by our aid or pity: but celestial natures, groaning under the fardels of a weary life, we shall still find; and that wretchedness which Fate has rendered _voiceless_ and _tuneless_, is not the least wretched, but the most. Still we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more, rather than with less kindness, than it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small favor to its teachers: hunger and nakedness, perils and reviling, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice, have in most times and countries, been the market-place it has offered for wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer and Socrates and the Christian apostles belong to old days, but the world's martyrology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and Galileo languish in priestly dungeons, Tasso pines in the cell of a madhouse, Camoens dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so "persecuted they the prophets," not in Judea only, but in all places where men have been. We reckon that every poet of Burns's order is, or should be, a prophet and teacher to his age--that he has no right therefore, to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound to do it great kindness--that Burns, in particular, experienced fully the usual proportion of the world's goodness, and that the blame of his failure, as we have said, lies not chiefly with the world. Where then does it lie? We are forced to answer, With himself; it is his inward, not his outward misfortunes, that bring him to the
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