nciling them here.

Burns was born poor, and born also to continue poor, for he would not
endeavor to be otherwise: this it had been well could he have once for
all admitted and considered as finally settled. He was poor, truly;
but hundreds even of his own class and order of minds have been
poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it--nay, his own father
had a far sorer battle with ungrateful destiny than his was; and he
did not yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all moral
intents prevailing against it. True, Burns had little means, had even
little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation; but so
much the more precious was what little he had. In all these external
respects his case was hard, but very far from the hardest. Poverty,
incessant drudgery, and much worse evils, it has often been the lot of
poets and wise men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke
was banished as a traitor, and wrote his "Essay on the Human
Understanding," sheltering himself in a Dutch garret. Was Milton rich
or at his ease when he composed "Paradise Lost"? Not only low, but
fallen from a height; not only poor, but impoverished: in darkness and
with dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, and found fit
audience, though few. Did not Cervantes finish his work a maimed
soldier, and in prison? Nay, was not the "Araucana," which Spain
acknowledges as its epic, written without even the aid of paper; on
scraps of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any
moment from that wild warfare?

And what then had these men which Burns wanted? Two things; both which
it seems to us are indispensable for such men: they had a true
religious principle of morals, and a single not a double aim in their
activity. They were not self-seekers and self-worshippers, but seekers
and worshippers of something far better than self. Not personal
enjoyment was their object; but a high heroic idea of religion, of
patriotism, of heavenly wisdom, in one or the other form, ever hovered
before them; in which cause they neither shrunk from suffering, nor
called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful, but
patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so to spend and be
spent. Thus the "golden calf of self-love," however curiously carved,
was not their Deity, but the Invisible Goodness, which alone is man's
reasonable service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, whose
streams refreshed into gladn