e. One-half the
thought is, we doubt not, just. Save for the madness of Charles,
Cromwell would have died a devout farmer, and Hampden a most
respectable country gentleman, who would have been gratefully
remembered for half an age over half a county, and then consigned to
forgetfulness. But the poets rarely die, however disadvantageously
placed, without giving some sign. Rob Don, the Sutherlandshire bard,
owed much less to nature than Milton did, and so little to learning that
he could neither read nor write; and yet his better songs promise to
live as long as the Gaelic language. And though both Burns and
Shakespeare had very considerable disadvantages to struggle against, we
know that neither of them remained 'mute' or 'inglorious,' or even
less extensively known than Milton himself. It is, we believe, no easy
matter to smother a true poet. The versifiers, placed in obscure and
humble circumstances, who for a time complain of neglected merit and
untoward fate, and then give up verse-making in despair, are always
men who, with all their querulousness, have at least one cause of
complaint more than they ever seem to be aware of,--a cause of
complaint against the nature that failed to impart to them 'the
divine vision and faculty.' There are powers, however, admirably
fitted to tell with effect in the literature of the country, for they
have served to produce the most influential works which the world
ever saw--works such as the _Essay_ of Locke, the _Peace and War_ of
Grotius, and the _Spirit of Laws_ of Montesquieu--which, with all
their apparent robustness, are greatly less hardy than the poetic
faculty, and which, unless the circumstances favourable to their
development and exercise be present, fail to leave behind them any
adequate record of their existence. It is difficult to imagine a
situation in life in which Burns would not have written his songs, but
very easy to imagine situations in which Robertson would not have
produced his _Scotland_ or his _Charles V._, nor Adam Smith his _Wealth
of Nations_. We have no faith whatever in 'mute, inglorious Miltons;'
but we do hold that there may be obscure country churchyards in which
untaught Humes, guiltless of the _Essay on Miracles_, may repose, and
undeveloped Bentleys and Warburtons, whose great aptitude for
acquiring or capacity for retaining knowledge remained throughout life a
mere ungratified thirst.

It has remained for the present age to throw one bar more in