134 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



schools ;" and here, he seizes, with eagerness, the opportunity of fur- 

 nishing the reader with a most glowing idea of the learned attainments 

 of the rustic tribe. **A common husbandman," says Mr. C, after 

 enumerating his mental acquirements, "a common husbandman is fre- 

 quently master of a little library ; history', divinity, and poetry, but 

 most so the latter, compose his collection. Milton and Young are favou- 

 rites ; the flowery meditations of Hervey, the religious romance of the 

 Pilgrim's Progress, are seldom absent, while of Scottish books, Ramsay, 

 Thomson, Fergusson, and now Burns, together with songs and ballad 

 books innumerable, are all huddled together, soiled with smoke, and 

 frail and tattered by frequent use." (P. 11.) When we hear that 

 *' Milton B.nd Young are favourites" with the followers of the plough-tail, 

 when at p. 48, we are instructed to believe that ** Poets of the highest 

 order and of polished elegance are as well known to them as the Bible," 

 and when in a note to Burns's "Address to the Deil" (v. 2, p. 29), we 

 are apprized, with pure nonchalance, that " the peasantry complain that 

 Milton has made Satan too acceptable to the fancy, and seem to prefer 

 him with his Monkish attributes — horns, cloven-foot, and tail" (no 

 great proof of their sense of the sublime, whatever it may be of their eru- 

 dition), we become sceptically inclined, draw a long breath, and set 

 about conjecturing how far a man's nationality may lead him. When it 

 is remembered that English is as a foreign tongue to the Scottish hus- 

 bandman, that with all the education within his reach he can necer attempt 

 its perusal without feeling his ideas in fetters or leading-strings, that to 

 him anything which it presents must be, in a great measure, an un- 

 certain glimmering, appearing and disappearing amidst clouds and 

 darkness, and leaving no accurate image on the mind, that Burns, 

 self-admitted to be " an excellent English scholar" experienced consi- 

 derable difficulty in writing English, having previously " to think in 

 Scotch," when we reflect on all this, and then add the fact, that to 

 relish and understand Milton and Young j the reader must be most inti- 

 mately acquainted with the idioms of the language in which they wrote, 

 we come to the unavoidable conclusion that although the *' Paradise 

 Losf and the '* Night Thoughts" may be found on the shelf of the hus- 

 bandman, they are little more than mystical volumes, Chaldee MSS., 

 or cabalistical scrolls over which the wonderer may pause and ponder, 

 and fondly imagine that he has picked out the meaning. Mr. C. himself 

 adds a prop to our argument, when he very frankly says, that "it was 

 not without reason that Murray ^ the Oriental scholar, declared that the 

 English of Milton was less easy to learn than the Latin of Virgil" (P. 29.) 

 We must pass over Mr. Cunningham's elaborate reference to the "moral 

 hue, aim, and pathos" of the poet's verse ; as well as the circumstance 

 that to the gentler passion Burns owed the first inspiration of his muse, 

 to note his proceeding *' to seek farther knowledge in a perilous place,'* 

 \\z. among the young and the heedless, " the ram-stam squad who 

 zig-zag on without any settled aim or a wish ungratified." (.P. 16.) 

 With these profitless and dangerous associates. Burns felt a thirst for 

 accomplishments far from accej)table to the stern simplicity of his father, 

 and a few lessons taken in his 17th year " at a country dancing school" 

 excited against him " a sort of dislike" on the part of his father, who, 

 he states, had " an unaccountable antipathy to these meetings." (V. vi. 

 p. 159, Burns's Letter to Dr. Moore.) Mr. Cunningham ventures to 

 assert that " the good man had no sincere dislike to the accom- 

 plishment," ** still that he tolerated rather than ai)proved of it," and 

 *• shook his head though he did not frown" (p. 17) ; but Burns felt the 

 weight of his displeasure, and his evidence is decisive. In Midsummer, 



