red-hot _protege_, and solacing
himself with the explanation that the poet was "the most inconsistent of
men." If you are so sensibly pained by the misconduct of your subject,
and so paternally delighted with his virtues, you will always be an
excellent gentleman, but a somewhat questionable biographer. Indeed, we
can only be sorry and surprised that Principal Shairp should have chosen
a theme so uncongenial. When we find a man writing on Burns, who likes
neither "Holy Willie," nor the "Beggars," nor the "Ordination," nothing
is adequate to the situation but the old cry of Geronte: "Que diable
allait-il faire dans cette galere?" And every merit we find in the book,
which is sober and candid in a degree unusual with biographies of Burns,
only leads us to regret more heartily that good work should be so
greatly thrown away.

It is far from my intention to tell over again a story that has been so
often told; but there are certainly some points in the character of
Burns that will bear to be brought out, and some chapters in his life
that demand a brief rehearsal. The unity of the man's nature, for all
its richness, has fallen somewhat out of sight in the pressure of new
information and the apologetical ceremony of biographers. Mr. Carlyle
made an inimitable bust of the poet's head of gold; may I not be
forgiven if my business should have more to do with the feet, which were
of clay?

YOUTH

Any view of Burns would be misleading which passed over in silence the
influences of his home and his father. That father, William Burnes,
after having been for many years a gardener, took a farm, married, and,
like an emigrant in a new country, built himself a house with his own
hands. Poverty of the most distressing sort, with sometimes the near
prospect of a gaol, embittered the remainder of his life. Chill,
backward, and austere with strangers, grave and imperious in his family,
he was yet a man of very unusual parts and of an affectionate nature. On
his way through life he had remarked much upon other men, with more
result in theory than practice; and he had reflected upon many subjects
as he delved the garden. His great delight was in solid conversation; he
would leave his work to talk with the schoolmaster Murdoch; and Robert,
when he came home late at night, not only turned aside rebuke but kept
his father two hours beside the fire by the charm of his merry and
vigorous talk. Nothing is more characteristic of the class in