What raging must his veins convulse, Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail, Right on ye scud your seaway; How bitter, though unconscious, is the self-condemnation which he puts into the mouth of Holy Willie'! 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, For gifts an' grace, A burnin' an' a shinin' light To a' this place. . . ... But yet, O Lord! confess I must, 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, On an inn at Inverary: Whoe'er he be that sojourns here, I pity much his case, The Lord their God, his Grace. There's naething here but Highland pride, On the Earl of Galloway: Bright ran thy line, O Galloway, 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, 'Twas guilty sinners that he meant, 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 Morris-The Contrast' Henry Luttrell-Letters to Julia'-Epigrams-Thomas |