[Born in Ireland, 1728. Died in London, 1774. Aged 45.]
Poor dear Oliver! What shall we say of him, with his kindly benevolence,
his manly independence, his honest feeling, his childish vanity, his
naughty extravagance, his irregularities, his blunders, his idleness,
his industry, his zeal for the improvement and advancement of the whole
world, and his improvident neglect of himself. Goldsmith had fits of
genius:--moments of an inspiration, or a possession, that appeared to
produce in him powers, not ordinarily there. In the conduct of life he
seemed born to be the world’s victim: he lay under the world. His gifted
pen in his hand, he rose above it. The tender sensibility that indites
his verse agrees too well to his story. The playful humour, and the
sharp, never rough, never malignant, satire, take by surprise. He then
had the laughers on his side--too often, unfortunately, against him. His
poems of “The Traveller” and “The Deserted Village” are a species by
themselves, or each a species. The vein of reflexion, of personal
feeling, and of poetical viewing, with native simplicity of expression
and musical sweetness, is common to the two. The dirge of the deserted
hamlet sowed the seed of “The Pleasures of Memory;” and the wandering
poet, feeding his verse from his travels, was repeated in “Childe
Harold.” Goldsmith’s “Retaliation,” written upon his friends of the St.
James’s Coffee House, in requital of the epitaphs they had provided for
himself, is the most brilliant and masterly summing up of characters in
pointed words and streaming verse that the language possesses. The
“Vicar of Wakefield” is the smiled-at, honoured, and loved inmate of
every English home.
[By W. Behnes.]
410*. ROBERT BURNS. _Poet._
[Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, 1759. Died at Dumfries, 1796. Aged 37.]
The ploughman-poet of Scotland; in whom the labour of the limbs appeared
to invigorate the intelligence, and the bleak air of poverty to cherish
the blossoms of genius. Shakspeare rose from the bosom of the people to
delineate kings and queens. Burns, born some steps lower, dwelt, even in
his verse, to the last, amongst his own order. That is his dignity and
his glory. The life of the Scottish peasant as it remains represented by
his pencil, and in his person, seizes the imagination and the sympathies
of the educated world. He has drawn the heart of the high towards the
low. He has raised the low to their just esteem in the opinion of the
high. But besides this moral aspect, he has gained, as a poet,
immeasurably, by rooting his foot to the fields which he furrowed. The
conflict, so maintained in our thoughts between his social position and
his endowments and aspirations, sheds a continual illumination of wonder
upon his writings. But more! His happiest subjects and strains draw life
and meaning from the soil of which they are the self-sown flowers. Not
merely that solitary agricultural Idyl, with its homely-pathetic and
homely-picturesque--“The Cotter’s Saturday Night,”--but the fanciful
tenderness of his lament over the Daisy and the Mouse;--but the wild and
reckless daring of imagination in that cordial rencounter with the dread
foe Death--that blending of the humorous, the supernaturally grotesque
and the terrific in Tam O’Shanter--of the rustic, the gracious, the
solemn, even the sublime--in the Vision of Coila--these most
characteristic feats of poetical skill and genius--which stand apart,
defying competition and claiming rank for the name of Burns, amongst the
illustrious on Parnassus--all are made possible by originating from and
by reflecting his native condition. His songs are tender, passionate,
musical; chaunting his own or imaginary rustic loves. The torrent of his
spirit, that, pouring along the channels of thought and song, became an
elate and exalting enthusiasm, hurried him on the paths of common life
into excesses, dilapidating the humble home and the proud householder.
He first published his poems--now in every peasant’s cottage throughout
Scotland--in his 27th year, and his fame was instantaneous. Later in
life, the favour and patronage of the Scottish nobility and gentry were
able to confer upon him a place in the Excise, of no less than £70
a-year: in the discharge of which distinguished public function, and in
the enjoyment of which splendid public remuneration--then his only
certain support--the one-laurelled modern singer of the time-honoured
Scottish tongue sank, from his darkening noon, into the grave.
[This Bust is by David Dunbar.]