The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Commencing an essay with an anecdote is a
peculiarity common to many of our modern
writers, and is borrowed from Mr. Macaulay,
who largely indulges in the practice. But Mr.
Macaulay's anecdotes are connected with the se-
quel; and we confess that we should prefer the
older method of beginning either with " Robert
" Burns was born &e.," or else with a general
remark. "A winter day," and "the boy
Jeffrey," mark the style of the artificial littera-
teur. There is one shape in which " admira-
tion" has not shown itself upon Burns. There
have been anecdotes, general observations,
and illustrative notes of Burns, but in an
exact sense his songs have never been criti-
cally examined ; and one conversant with
modern poetry would have a rich harvest of
critical remark in examining the way in which
Burns sings of nature and love, as contrasted
with other lyric poets throughout Europe.
Mr. Wilmott then proceeds :

Robert Burns was born January 25th, 1759, the eldest
child of William and Agnes Burns, or harness, as they
were accustomed to spell the name. His father, bailiff and
gardener of a country gentleman, Mr. Ferguson, rented a
few acres of land, on which he had built a small hovel of
clay and straw.

What race] did Burns belong to ? Was he of
Highland extraction or was he a Lowlander?
Or is it true, as has been asserted, and argued
with eminent ability, that Burns belonged to
the descendants of those Irish " Byrnes," or
" O'Byrnes," who settled in Scotland? Mr.
Willmott might have glanced at this in-
teresting question. He should have also stated
that his father is immortalised in • the
" Cotter's Saturday Night." It is true that Mr.
Willmott supplies a note (page 96) from the
letter of Gilbert Burns to Dr. Currie, in which
the fact is incidentally stated, but so im-
portant a fact should have been stated in the
sketch of the poet's life. The essay then pro-
ceeds, and, like nearly all that comes from Mr.
Willmott's pen, it is pleasing and graceful,
but smacking everywhere of the amateur.
There is not enough in his essay on the man
Burns, and rather too much upon the author.
It would have been better to have marked his
individualism morb distinctly.

For example, Mr. Willmott might have
easily accumulated a page of interesting detail
about Burns, in addition to what is recorded
here
Few faces are more familiar to poetical readers than the
broad, massive, earnest countenance of Burns. A plain-
spoken and rough acquaintance said that he was a good-
looking, fine fellow, " rather black an' ill-coloured; " and
Professor Walker recognised the weather-beaten features
of a master of a trading vessel. His black hair, slightly
sprinkled with grey, was spread over his forehead, and
suited the large dark eye, which really glowed under the
impulse of pleasure or anger. "I have seen," wrote
Scott, " the most distinguished men of my time ; and I
never saw such another eye in a human head." His
figure was tall—nearly five feet ten inches—but an un-
graceful stoop diminished his height to the observer.
Like many poets, he was not captivated by science, or
skill in music. An old strathspey awoke exquisite
pleasure, and " Rothemurche's Rant " put him in raptures.
In this feeling he resembled Scott, who was melted by the
simplest tune, while a complicated harmony seemed to be
a babble of sounds.

The famous Duchess of Gordon recorded
her admiration of Burns's conversational power
in a saying that cannot be quoted in the present
age, and we thihk that there is evidence to
show that (with the exception of Professor
Wilson) no other mau of literary genius in
the last seventy years was so rivetting in
social intercourse. His sentiments on religion
deserve notice, because, though heterodox,
his opinions were most favorably contrasted
with those of the cold literary Deists of the
last century. Thus, he wrote :
That there is an incomprehensibly great Being, to whom
I owe my existence, and that he must be intimately ac-
quainted with the operations and progress of the internal
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this
creature which he has made—these are, I think, self-
evident propositions. That there is a real and eternal dis-
tinction between virtue and vice, and consequently that I
am an accountable creature—that from the seeming natare

of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfec-
tion, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of
affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must
be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave—
must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give him-
self a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm,
that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doc•
trine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated
wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though,
to appearance, he himself was the o►ecureat and most
illiterate of our species, therefore, Jesus Christ was
from tiod.

927

There is the glow of moral feeling as well as
force of perception in that passage, which
takes it away from the frigidity of Blair or the
heartless levity of a French infidel. Burns
emphatically was a man, and as such must
have adorel. Mr. Willmott gives his pen
much liberty in his severe strictures on the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland :

Born and brought up a Presbyterian, the Gospel came
to him in the roar of black Russell and the invectives of
Father Auld. In no dress could the creed look fair or en-
gaging. A man of taste, in a kirk, has a feeling of being
snowed up in an unfurnished house, without a fire. A
chill strikes him from the cold building and the colder
worship. In one of the poet's journals, we hear him pour-
ing out his intense disgust :—" What a poor, pimping
business is a Presbyterian place of worship: dirty,
narrow, squalid, stuck in a corner of old Popish grandeur,
such as Linlithgow, and, much more, Melrose. His
greatest countrymen have shared his dislike : Byron
remembered the fiery Calvinism of his boyhood with a
sense of personal injury; the heart of Scott yearned for
that nobler and purer ritual which has breathed into its
prayers the devotion and the language of the Apostles ; and
the sentiments of Jeffrey are kuown to have been of the
same kind.

Presbyterianism in Burns's time Was coarser and fiercer
than m ours. Vulgar in attire, wrathful in look, menacing
in speech—it combined in its visage the most repulsive
features of •he faith. Nor had it always inward virtue
to atone for the outward offence. The elders frequently
showed the curiosity of the Inquisition; and in some of
the ministers might be seen the tyranny of the cowl, with-
out the romance.

" Vulgar in attire " is an odd reproach from a
clergyman of the Church of England against
the spirit and practices of another Church; and
on the next page Mr. Willmott says :
But the vulgar and rabid fanaticism by which the poet
was surrounded, had taken olit of religion the beauty and
the love. Her clothing was not "of wrought gold," and
she never appeared in raiment of needlework, nor in the
company of beautiful attendants.
Again harping on the " vulgar " character of
Presbyterianism. Mr. Willmott might recol-
lect that Scotland was not so overrun with
" vulgar " infidelity, and with Tom Paineism
as our own country sixty years ago. But his
logic is often rather feeble. He continues :
Perhaps in no men of his age would the religious life,
fitly planted and nurtured, have found a fruitfuller home.
The soil was rich and deep. He wrote—" My great con-
stituent elements are pride and passion. The first I have
endeavoured to humanise into integrity and honour ; the
last makes me a devotee, to the warmest degree of en-
thusiasm, in love, religion, or friendship—either of them,
or all together, as I happen to be inspired."

" Pride and passion " are difficult elements to
subdue ; and the assertion that "no man of
" his age " (!) would have given religion
" a fruitfuller home " than Burns, seems
rather strange after the poet's own confession
The proviso, " if fitly planted and nurtured,"
proves nothing. Any question can be solved
to a superficial mind, with a proper allowance
of " ifs and " perhapses."
Mr. Willmott might with advantage have
quoted the opinions of great minds on Burns
The poet himself wrote an " Elegy on the
Year 1788" :
For Lords or Kings I dinna mourn,
E'en let them the—for that they're born :
But oh ! prodigious to refiec' !
A Towmont, Sirs, is gene to wreck !
0 Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space
What dire events hae taken place !
Of what enjoyments thou haat reft us !
In what a pickle thou bast left us !
Little could Burns have guessed that in 1788
should have been born such a master-poet as
Byron, a nature in many respects similar to
his own fiery compound of " pride and
passion." One was a peer, and the other
(poetically) an " Ayrshire ploughman " Both
shone with astounding splendour; one died
at thirty-six, and the other at thirty-eight. We
feel interest in knowing that Byron said—
" Fight who will about words and forms,
" Burns's rank is in the first class of his art.
Mr. Willmott does not cite the remark, as
possibly he thinks, like Mr. Lockhart, " that
"to accumulate all that has been said of
" Burns, even of men like himself, of the first
" order, would fill a volume." Yet we should
like to see a cento of these dicta. Thus, in
his note on " The Jolly Beggars," Mr. Willmott
writes:—

Sir Walter Scott was unable to conceive any good reason
why Dr. Currie did not introduce this cantata into his
collection. For humorous description and nice discrimi-
nation of character, he thought it inferior to no poem of
the same length is the whole range of English verse ; and
the mirth of the songs, combined with the vividness of the
pictures, he considered to be unequalled. This is very ex •
aggerated praise; and few readers, I should suppose, will

928

admit the truth of Scott's remark, that " even in describing
the movements of such a group, the native taste of the poet
has never suffered his pen to slide into anything coarse or
disgusting." See Scott's " Prose INorks," :vii. 244. Mr.
Lockhart is yet more profuse of admiration, and doubts if
Shakespeare, out of such materials, could have constructed
a piece "in which the sympathy-awakening power could
have been displayed more triumphantly ." And Allan
Cunningham outstrips his predecessors, by affirming that
" nothing in the language, in life and character, approaches
this song," the Beggar's Opera being a " burial compared to
it." Surely this is the burlesque of criticism, and only
brings it into contempt.
Our opinion there coincides with that of Mr.
Willmott, and we observe that in some of the
English editions of Burns, intended for
popular circulation, " The Jolly Beggars " is
omitted. It is, however, a genre piece, and has
merit in what has been called " the poetry of
" the kennel."

Burns has chiefly been written about by
Currie, Dugald Stewart, Carlyle, Lockhart, and
Wilson. We have never seen an adequate
criticism on the art of his songs. Mr. Will-
mott says :

The difficulty of comprehension is specially felt in the
poems of humour and common life; where a phrase, or a
proverb, to the familiar ear brings with it a train of home
recollections and pleasures. In such cases, the dialect is
the family accent. Frequently, however, the hindrance is
scarcely perceived. In " The Cotter's Saturday Night,"
nearly every stanza has a different tone. Sometimes he
writes pure and simple English ; another passage requires
a glossary ; and occasionally he combines the two languages,
and blends, with admirable effect, pathos, sublimity, beauty,
and homeliness. Dryden said pleasantly of Theocritus,
that even his Doric dialect has an incomparable sweetness
in his clownishness—like a fair shepherdess in her country
russet, talking in a Yorkshire tone. The Scottish songs
of Burns suggest the same agreeable comparison ; and a
freshness sparkles in every word, like dew cn the heather-
bell. The "latitudinarianism " of the dialect is very ac-
commodating to the poet, who is able by this Scottish privi-
lege to marry the most opposite and discordant rhymes.
Sjenser had set the bold example of new spelling a word
whenever the exigencies of sound required it; and Burns
treated his syllables with the same freedom.
True enough : but there was far more atten-
tion to the laws of poetical method in his
songs than hasty readers would suppose.
Take, for example, the favorite popular song,
" A Red, Red Rose " :-
0, my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June :
0, my hive's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I :
And I will lure thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi the sun :
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall ran.
And fare thee weel, my only luve !
And fare thee weel awhile I
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.
Passionate intensity could not be more artis-
tically expressed. The alliterative iteration
in " red, red rose," the recurrence of " luve"
six times, the skilful repetition of the line,
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

and the rapid change of imagery throughout
the song, all mark a thorough proficient in
the art of song-writing.

We have not space to comment on Burns as
a poet, and we have confined ourselves to the
" editing" of the volume before us. We must
say that Mr. Willmott seems to have missed,
like other commentators, the specialty of
Burns. In admiration for the genius of the
Scotch poet the laws of class and culture seem
annihilated. No other poet so powerfully
touches the unlettered mind, and never were
high and puissant critics so unanimous in
wreathing laurels on a bard. What other poet
like him is a favorite in colleges and cabins, can
dazzle with Pindaric tire, and melt with pastoral
sweetness ? Mr. Pitt (as cited by Mr. Will-
mott) was right in saying that "since Shake-
" speare no verse had the appearance of
" coming so sweetly from Nature" as that of
Burns. That must be wonderful genius which
can fascinate the first-rate orator and make
the labourer iu the field rejoice over its
utterance.

Wordsworth's lines on Burns (with which
Mr. Willmott closes his essay) aro nearly the
finest things ever written on Burns We
quote them, as they ought to be better
kn wn. The third stanza is perfectly true,
and is poetically expressed

THE PRESS.

Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight—
Think rather of those moments bright
When to the consciousness of right

His course was true,—
When Wisdom prospered in his sight,
And Virtue grew.
Yea, freely let our hearts expand,
Freely as in youth's season bland,
When side by side, his Book in hand,
We wont to stray,
Our pleasure varying at command
Of each sweet Lay.
Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen;
lie rules 'mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives ;

Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.
Sweet Mercy 1 to the gates of Heaven
This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of Earth's bitter leaven
Efface for ever.

But why to him confine the prayer,
When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear
On the frail heart the purest share
With all that live ?
The best of what we do and are,
JUST GOD FORGIVE!
These are most beautiful and affecfng lines,
and leave us in a mood above mere criticism.

Popular Astronomy. By Francois Arago.
Translated from the Original and Edited by

Admiral W. H. Smyth and R. Grant, Esq.
Two Vols. Vol. T. London : Longmans.
WE have been waiting for the second volume
of this work, which will conclude Arago's
Astronomy; but as it has not yet appeared,
though several months have elapsed since the
issue of the volume before us, we gladly take
advantage of the dull season in publishing to
express our admiration of this masterly work,
so far as it has gone, and of the very satisfac-
tory manner in which it has been produced by
the editors.

The " Popular Astronomy" of Arago already
ranks high among scientific classics. It is as
an astronomer that Arago's name will descend
with most honour to posterity. He was
thoroughly master of the subject, and it is
characteristic of his intellect that, having com
prehended every part of any particular branch
of physics, he laboured to place his hearers
and readers in as good a position as himself,
and to tell them both all that he knew, and,
what was next in importance to true know-
ledge, all that he did not know. He relates
an amusing anecdote to excuse the frequency
with which he has to confess his ignorance of
astronomical phenomena :

In the time of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, a
lady of the Court who had been to visit the Observatory
demanded of Mairan, " Tell me," I pray, "what are the
belts ofJupiter ?" "I do not know," immediately replied
the Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. " Why," re-
plied the cu►ious lady, "is Saturn the only planet sur-
rounded by a ring?" " I do not know," was still the reply
of Mairan. The lady growing impatient, then said to him,
with a certain degree of rudeness, " What purpose does it
serve, sir, to be an academician ?" "It serves, madam,
to reply—l do not know."

But when Arago had to say, " I do not know,"
we may be quite sure that the limits of in-
quiry had been reached in his time, and that
no astronomer was in a position to return a
more satisfactory answer.
He commences his lectures by insisting
that " clearness is the politeness of those who
" address themselves to the public with a view
" to its instruction," and, accordingly, he takes
care that his meaning shall be always intelli-
gible. Occasionally we find repetitions which
cannot be regarded otherwise than as blots ;
but the fault is trivial in comparison with the
great advantage of that full and copious ex-
planation which he systematically affords on
all the topics he handles. He appears to be
of the opinion of Bossuet, that a work well
divided and tabulated is already half learnt,
as his subjects are dissected in an elaborate
and useful table of contents. Proposing to
make his Astronomy universally intelligible,
he is careful to give definitions in the first
instance, but herein seems to fall into the
error of those persons who suppose that, to
communicate the results or the faets of know-
ledge, is to communicate the knowledge
itself. It is one thing for a person to receive

SATURDAY,

definitions, and another to have that thorough
comprehension of them which only can arise
from their familiar use in mathematical pro-
cesses.

The four first books of this volume are pre-
liminary to the Astronomy itself. They are
on Geometry, Mechanics and Horology,
Elements of Optics, and Astronomical Instru-
ments. The author then enters on his; main
subject, and treats successively of the stars,
the nebulae, the sun, comets, and the planets.
The information on all these heads is com-
plete, and given in a manner so fascinating as
to compel the reader to proceed with any sub-
ject he has once commencel

The book on Comets has attracted us the
most. Mott of our readers will be familiar
with his calculation instituted to dispel the
alarm felt that the earth might be destroyed
by a comet, that supposing a comet to ap.
proach nearer the sun than the earth, there
was yet but one chance out of 281 millions of
chances that it would strike the earth ; and
this doctrine of chances was independent of
the design which we must suppose presided
over the original constitution of the universe.
Remarking on the vulgar fancies which in
our day have attended the advent of comets,
he gave utterance to a sentiment which our
Faraday has had to repeat with increased
pungency in reference to the excitement which
has attended table-turning and other mystic
follies of a like kind :

Under the brilliant and superficial varnish with which
the purely literary studies of our colleges almost invariably
invest all classes of society, we generally find— let us be
brief—a complete ignorance cf those beautiful phenomena,
of those grand laws of nature, which are our best safeguard
against prejudice.

In a style more fanciful than he usually in-
dulges in, he inquires what might be the con-
dition of our earth supposing it were brought
within the scope of a comet of immense
dimensions, and thus became its satellite.
As a basis of his reasoning, he takes the
comet of 1680, which performs its revolution
round the sun in a period of 575 years. Our
year would then be of that length. Newton
computed that when that comet was nearest
the sun it experienced a heat equal to 2,000
times that of red-hot iron. But Arago con-
tends that all such computations are based on
very uncertain grounds, and intimates that
modifying influences would in all probability
take place to screen the earth from so high a
temperature. The following is new to us on
the mean temperature of space, nor have we
ever met with the facts or calculations on
which Fourier based his conclusion :
Fourier has established, by ingenious considerations,
that the mean temperature of space is not so low as it has
been imagined to be. He is of opinion that it is not much
inferior to that of the terrestrial poles. He fixes it at 50
deg. below the zero point of the centigrade thermometer,
If the sun were suddenly extinguished this degree of cold
would be felt as well in the region wherein Mercury, Venus,
the Earth perform their revolutions as in the region which
is furrowed by Uranus, or in regions 100 times, 1,000 times
more remote still. It follows, then, that the comet of
1080, by transporting the earth to its aphelion, would do
neither more nor less than expose the terrestrial planet to
a cold of 50 deg, as it is subject to in the present day in
every point of its annual course. Thus, in order to
diminish the cold of 50 deg., we should only have to take
into consideration the inherent heat of the earth, and the
portion of the heat acquired at the perihelion, which was
not yet dissipated in space.
The author concludes
Neither the comet nor the earth will consequently ex-
perience any of those colds which terrify the imagination.
They will be simply of the same temperature as the sue•
rounding regions of space. A thermometer placed on
their surfaces will mark upon them a temperature 50 deg.
below zero ; for, except from physical changes, which we
here leave wholly out of consideration, a body can never
become colder than the space which surrounds it, and
with which it is in continual communication by way of
radiation.

In 18'20 Captain Franklin and his companions endured
at Fort Enterprise colds at 49'•7 centigrade below zero.
The mean temperature of the month of December at that
locality was 35 deg. below zero. On the other hand, those
who may be desirous of consulting the notice which I have
devoted to the temperatures of different kinds of animals,
will see that it has been demonstrated by experiment that
under certain hygrometric circumstances man is capable
of supporting a heat of 130 deg. centigrade, a heat 30 deg.
greater than that of boiling water. Thus nothing serves
to establish that if the earth became a satellite of the
comet of 1680, the human race would disappear from
thermometric influences.

It strikes us as an omission in this elaborate
Look on Comets that Arno attempts no ex-
planation of their probable use in the plane-

SEPT. 27, 1856.

Lary system. though doubtless they have a
purpose to fulfil.
, The work is eminently fitted for the library.
As a pure physicist, Arago had no superior,
and it is impossible to read his lucid develop-
ment of the higher phenomena of Nature
without being instructed and pleased in an
almost equal degree by the great truths un-
folded and by the lucid demonstration with
which they are in a manner beaten and rivetted
into the reader's mind.

1. The Senses and the Intellect. By A. Bain,
M.A. London: J. W. Parker and Son.
2. The Science of Mind. By H. Hill. London:
Longmans.

(Second Notice.)

Ws return for a short space to this subject, as
our remarks last week seem to have been mis-
understood. The objections urged to them
are of two kinds, very opposite to each other.
They are said to incline to materialism, inas-
much as it was argued that mental philosophy
should be based on nervous organisation ;
and to favour ultra-idealism, as all sensation
was said to reside within us. The latter
charge is the most strongly urged.

In referring tastes, odours, sounds, and vision
wholly to their respective organs (as ordinarily
we refer sensations of pain to the body and
not to the external objects which affect it
injuriously), we had not the least thought of
doubting, with Berkely, the existence of
matter. On the • contrary, we said that the
existence of matter—as substance or form—
was the first and most direct act of conscious•
ness. We observe that in Mr. Bain's volume
the opinion of Mill (one of the most acute of
our metaphysicians) is quoted, that resistance
(which is but the perception of matter) is of
primary importance to us. Mill remarks:—

There is no feeling of our nature of more importance to
us than that of resistance. Of all our sensations it is the
most unintennitted ; for whether we sit, or lie, or stand,
or walk, still the feeling a resistance is present to us.
Everyth ng we touch at the same time resists; and every
thing we hear, see, taste, or smell, suggests the idea of some.
thing that resists. It is through the medium of resistance
that every act by which we subject to our use the objects
and laws of nature is performed. And of the complex
state% of emsciousness there is hardly one in which the
feeling or idea of resistance is not included.

We do but carry the principle, so acutely
enunciated by Mill, into practical effect, when
we refer all the varied sensations of our organi-
sation to resistance,—that is, to a sense of
touch. Go to the bottom of all our sensa-
tions, and wo find nothing but resistance or
touch. As we said last week, the tongue is
touched by substances of peculiar form, and
hence the varied sensations of taste ; the nose
is touched by the forms of particles issuing
from particular substances, and hence all our
sensations of odour ; the ear is touched by
pulsations of air, which produce (primarily
through the fine mechanism of the ear) all the
infinite varieties of sound of which we are
conscious ; and the eye is touched by light
(that light being physically affected iu some
way as yet inexplicable to us by external sub-
stances), and hence all our experience of vision.
In each case it is matter, and matter alone,
which occasions sensation; it is resistance, or
touch, which is concerned in every act of sen-
sation.

Of the existence of matter itself we are
certain by all the evidence of consciousness.
All our faculties testify to it ; and we are, as
Mill says, continually reminded of its pre-
sence. But no matter, if our view be correct,
has in itself either taste, or odour, or sound, or
colour. It has shape, and it has degrees
of hardness and softness, but the other
qualities which we associate with matter
(as we associate the tones of a violin
with the instrument) are, it is probable, not in-
herent in matter, but are the effects of its par-
ticular varieties of substance on our exqui-
sitely constructed organs of sense. As, in a
spiritual sense, the kingdom of God is said to
be within us—in a philosophical sense, all the
beauty and harmony of the universe may be
said to reside in our constitution.
This conclusion seems to result naturally
from any analytical examination of the organs
of sense. We instanced last week one of the
grossest. It cannot be doubted that the