Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

What raging must his veins convulse,
That still eternal gallop:

Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail,

Right on ye scud your seaway;
But in the teeth o' baith to sail,
It maks an unco leeway.

How bitter, though unconscious, is the self-condemnation which he puts into the mouth of Holy Willie'!

[ocr errors]

Has

smug self-satisfaction-the supreme self-contentment of the elect-ever been so effectively portrayed?

O thou wha in the Heavens dost dwell,

Wha, as it pleases best thysel',

Sends ane to Heaven and ten to Hell,

A' for thy glory,

And no for onie guid or ill

They've done afore thee!

I bless and praise thy matchless might,
Whan thousands thou hast left in night,
That I am here before thy sight,

For gifts an' grace,

A burnin' an' a shinin' light

To a' this place. . .

...

But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I'm fash'd wi' fleshly lust,
An' sometimes, too, wi' warldly trust,
Vile self gets in;

But thou remembers we are dust,

Defil'd in sin. . .

Maybe thou lets this fleshly thorn

Beset thy servant e'en and morn,

Lest he owre high and proud should turn,

'Cause he's sae gifted;

If sae, thy hand maun e'en be borne,

Until thou lift it.

For pure humour of a more kindly sort commend us, for

N

example, to the Address to the Toothache,' and to certain passages in The Twa Dogs' and Tam O'Shanter.' No notice of Burns's work, however, would be even tolerably complete without a reference to his epigrams, which are mainly of the biting sort, with (generally) more of indignation than of humour in them. Into these Burns seems

to have distilled in many cases the concentrated essence Of a noted coxcomb' he writes:

of his scorn.

Light lay the earth on Billy's breast,
His chicken-heart so tender;
But build a castle on his head,
His skull will prop it under.

On an inn at Inverary:

Whoe'er he be that sojourns here,

I pity much his case,
Unless he came to wait upon

The Lord their God, his Grace.

There's naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;
If Providence has sent me here,
'Twas surely in his anger.

On the Earl of Galloway:

[ocr errors]

Bright ran thy line, O Galloway,
Through many a far-famed sire !
So ran the far-famed Roman Way,
So ended in a mire!

On one Wee Johnny :'

Whoe'er thou art, O reader, know

That death has murdered Johnnie!

An' here his body lies full low—

For soul he ne'er had ony.

On the other hand, Burns could now and then be as complaisant as, on other occasions, he was severe. On a certain Miss Scott he wrote:

O had each Scot of ancient times

Been, Jeanie Scott, as thou art, The bravest heart on English ground Had yielded like a coward.

Again, on a lady looking up the text at church :

Fair maid, you need not take the hint,
Nor idle texts pursue;

'Twas guilty sinners that he meant,
Not angels such as you!

CHAPTER VIII.

BYRON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Byron the greatest wit and humourist of his generationHis individuality of style and thought-Don Juan'The Vision of Judgment- English Bards'-Epigrams -Thomas Moore-Compared with Byron- From the Hon. Henry. -'—Epigrams-'I could resign that eye of blue'-'The Anti-Jacobin Review'-Canning, Frere, and Gifford The Loves of the Triangles'-'The Progress of Man'-James and Horace Smith-' Rejected Addresses' Horace in London'-Epigrams-Theodore Hook-Clubs'-Charles

[ocr errors]

Morris-The Contrast'

Henry Luttrell-Letters to Julia'-Epigrams-Thomas
Haynes Bayly-Lord Harry has written a Novel'-
'Don't talk of September' - Catherine Fanshawe —
Elegy'-Lord Holland-Epigrams-Richard Harris
Barham Ingoldsby Legends'-Reginald Heber-Epi-
grams-Richard Brinsley Sheridan- The Duenna-
The School for Scandal'-Epigrams-Colman the
Younger-The Fat Single Gentleman'-Robert Southey
-'To a Goose'-' The Devil's Thoughts'-'The Devil's
Progress'-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-Epigrams-Leigh
Hunt The Feast of the Poets'-'Blue Stocking Revels.'

[ocr errors]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »