CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 137 



every little casual remark or fugitive expression bearing the decent and 

 sober colouring of business, and prudential calculation on the part of the 

 poet ; not a scrap of his correspondence containing an allusion to 

 ** silk." "lawn," or '' carpet- weaving ;" to a ** trade in the shoe-way;'* 

 to "the quality of land," or the "rich soils of Scotland," but is 

 triumphantly arrested in its way, and placed before the reader as a proof 

 of "the observing farmer" who "had something of the world around 

 him." (38-9-) Indeed if all other merit were abstracted from Mr. 

 Cunningham, the merit of an affectionate, assiduous, and eager biographer, 

 who has "left no stone unturned" to do honor to the man whom he 

 commemorates, would remain in the sieve a pearl too magnitudinous to 

 escape. Burns admits freely that he " often courted the acquaintance of 

 that portion of mankind commonly known by the name of blackguards, 

 sometimes further than was consistent with the safety of his character" 

 (40) ; and this ill-advised measure Mr. Cunningham imagines to have 

 been the proceeding of a contemplative philosopher, who sought the 

 study of his species among " men of few virtues and many follies !" 

 Dyer, the biographer of Morland, aimed at a somewhat similar apology 

 for the debauchery and evil associations of the painter. We can well 

 imagine that " the people of Kyle were slow in appreciating this 

 philosophy," and although it is impossible to deny that Burns extracted 

 a portion of "fine gold" from the dross, and of honey from the vile 

 weed, it is equally impossible to deny that he was led into such company 

 by a predeliction for scenes of low and boisterous revelry, where the license 

 was unbridled, where principle was too frequently a jest, and purity an 

 anomaly, and where the "rigidly righteous" might, without incurring a 

 sneer, have seen ruin and depravity. Mr. Cunningham speaks of his 

 " studying character, and making sketches for future pictures of life and 

 manners" amidst these reckless and debasing orgies, but he forgets that 

 pictures drawn from such sources can profit no man ; but, like the un- 

 chastened groups of Brawer and Bega, of Ostade and Hemskirk, are, 

 too often, without moral and attraction, repulsive to pure taste, and 

 dangerous to the half-formed or wavering principle. Unhappily for the 

 tenor of Burns's after-life, he entered into these foul theatres of study, 

 and utterly forfeited the "respect" which he confesses, with bitterness, 

 he ever failed to command. Yet vice was, in all probability, unknown 

 to his heart : imprudence and a failure in moral self-estimation were the 

 rocks upon which he was shipwrecked. 



The prosperous state of Mossgiel was of -brief duration ; misfortune 

 had an evil effect upon Burns ; he " decided upon poetry" as his 

 vocation ; the farmer became a character of minor importance ; and the 

 institution of the "Tarbolton club," a society of " some half-dozen young 

 lads, sons of farmers," probably tended to withdraw him still more from 

 the serious engagements of life. 



We hasten by the record of what Mr. C. leniently terms Burns's 

 " folly," with merely noting that in his laboured, yet plausible effort to 

 shield him from the odium of his conduct on this occasion, he supplies, 

 unwittingly we believe, a facile weapon of defence to unabashed pro- 

 fligacy, and risks an incalculable injury to the moral constitution of 

 society. To " the desire of distinction strong in Burns J" Mr. C. ascribes 

 the poet's aberrations, and in illustration of this desire, he informs us 

 that " in those days he would not let a five-pound note pass through his 

 hands without bearing away a witty endorsement in rhyme : a drinking 

 glass always afforded space for a verse : the blank leaf of a book was a 

 favourite place for a stanza j and the windows of inns, and even dwell- 



