CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 57 



The Works of Robert Burns, with his Life, by Allan Cunningham. 

 London : Cochrane and M'Crone, Waterloo-place. 1834. 



In the true spirit of a Scotchman, Mr. Cunningham has produced and 

 given to the world, his life and works of ** the national bard " of Cale- 

 donia. That the former was scarcely necessary must be generally 

 admitted ; all that could well and wisely be said of the poet was said before 

 Cunningham took the pen in his hand to rescue the fame of his country- 

 man from the censures of less prejudiced writers ; but the edition of the 

 latter, enriched with nearly one hundred and fifty originil poems, and 

 rendered still more complete, curious, and valuable, by being thickly 

 interwoven with various readings, illustrative criticism, and notes 

 biographical and historical, is certainly an inestimable gift to the people 

 of Scotland and the admirers of genius. *' Cunningham's edition of 

 Burns " is the one which we would purchase ourselves, and recommend 

 to another ; not so with his ** Life," for however acceptable it maybe on 

 the north of the Tweed, it is too glowing, too eager, too inconsiderate in 

 its partiality to be received unhesitatingly by us of the south. In spite 

 of numerous little adroitnesses and precautions, the blaming where 

 blame is a feather, the candid admission of errors in agricultural specu- 

 lations, the pointing out flaws perceptible through the microscope only — 

 in spite of these and a thousand similar manoeuvres, the zeal of the 

 idolator is apparent, and we feel that he has bowed down to, and wor- 

 shipped the ** graven image" which his own hands have erected. As 

 might have been surmised, the halo of poetry and romance, a something 

 which we are sensible is unreal, — glittering, fantastic, and visionary, 

 floats round this memoir. The lights and shades, the positions, the 

 expression, — all are too studied — too much after the picturesque to be 

 otherwise than artificial — of this we should have been convinced /rowi 

 internal evidence alone, but all preceding accounts of the peasant-bard 

 reduce mere presumption to sober certainty. The warmest friend of 

 the poet, not utterly blind to the unfortunate lapses which flung a 

 shade on his credit, and sowed the seed of his heavy crop of misfor- 

 tunes, must admit that his townsman has taken his portrait most 

 perfectly con-amore j correcting the rudeness of outline, harmonising 

 the features, dispensing with the little drawbacks, purifying the com- 

 plexion, straightening the nose, heightening the smile on the lip and 

 the light in the eye, elevating the forehead, disposing the hair in the 

 grand gusto, and throwing round the figure a certain air of the dis- 

 tingue which never did, nor could by any sorcery, appertain to the 

 original. And, finally, to perfect his amiable attempt we see that he 

 has placed it on an eminence, and flooded it with more than a mere 

 natural lustre, calling upon all men to recognise, and burn incense before 

 the deity he has set up. Theie is so much of commendable nationality 

 in this fondness for the man, and enthusiasm for the bard, and so little 

 error can, in reality, be promulgated by a memoir following the able and 

 satisfactory accounts of which we are in possession, that we can with 

 diflSculty persuade ourselves to fence with the warm-hearted biographer, 

 who labours earnestly to convince us that Burns was any thing but what 

 he has been represented. We have been amused and interested by Mr. 

 Cunningham's pages ; — his gleanings, his anecdotes, and reflections, 

 his chivalrous outbreakings in behalf of his gifted countryman, his 

 ardent apostrophes, his palliations and pleadings, his yearnings of ten- 

 derness, his revellings in the bright hours of the bard, his ill-concealed 

 despondency and regrets as the clouds of adversity gather and burst 

 over the head of the unfortunate poet, and his ultimate exultation in the 



NO. I. I 



