Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-01-25

,ther, who had no adventitious claims to ( nobility, save the nobility of genius, will l De remembered and honored to-day, not ( only by the people who claim him as their own, but by peoples, the world over, who and revere the true mission of poetry. Lord Byron scared into the re- gions of metaphysics, beyond the ken of the multitude Robert Burns entered the hut of the peasant as we'll as the mansion of the peer, and sang of home loves and home duties in homely style and spirit. And yet this difference is not the only | cause of the apparent difference of appre- citation.
 Lord Byron, of noble rank himself, re- garded the ''right divine'' of nobility as sham he felt as we'll as Bur did that the liking can mak' a belted knight-a duke and earl and a that'-but that an honest mans creation was beyond the power of royalty He departed, too, from the tradi- tion of his order and gave sympathy to op- pressed nationalities; he may be said to have given his life for the land whose de- cadence he sang so sweetly; and flair Greece sad relic of departed worth" had no greater calamity than the death of her poet at Missoloughi. But Byron had heart also for Irish suffering. "1 love thee and thine, though thou art not my land, he proclaims in that fercest of all poetic phillipics-"The Irish Avatar;" and still apostrophizing the ''Niobe of Nations" he confessed:
 My voice, though but humble, was raised for thy right
 My vote as freeman had voted thee free.
 This hand though but feeble, would arm in thy fight;
 for thee.
 His only speech and only vote in the House of Lords were for the emancipation of the Irish Catholic; he had the daring, too, to denounce his king as ''the fourth of the fools and oppressors called George" and he prophesied the uprootal of mon archy and the substitution of a peoples sovereignty. The royalty and oligarchy of England could not brook this. The poets remains were denied resting place in England's pantheon, Westminster Abbey, and his memory has since been neglected on the plea of immoral teachings and of that still more terrible accusation revived
 some years ago by Mrs Harriett Beecher Stowe. But Byron lives in loving mem
 ory notwithstanding.
 Robert Burns was, as we have suggested,
 the poet of the people, and at every hearth
 side in Scotland his songs are sung and
 his sentiments cherished. Whether ac-
 companying ''Tam O'Shanter' in his
 affrighted flight, or in that devotional circle
 of ''The Cotter's Saturday Night"-enjoy-
 ing the sarcasms on the ''unco guid" and
 'rigidly righteous in Holy Willies
 Prayer-drinking in instruction from the
 Epistle to Young Friend, or excited to
 patriotic feeling by 'Scots wha ha'e wi
 Wallace bled'-it is all the same; natural
 ness is in the ascendant, and the nation is
 moved. This evening Waterbury will do
 it's part in honor of the poets memory.
 Atonement will be made everywhere to the
 dead poets name for the neglect that al-
 lowed genius to starve on $350 a year for
 the uncongenial work of an exciseman;
 and the Burns Club of our city will in part
 fulfil the prophetic lines:-
 There was lad was born in Kyle,
 But what n day O what n a style;
 doubt it's hardly worth the while, } To be sac nice wi Robin.
 , He'll haze misfortunes great and sma',
 But aye heart above them a; He'll be credit to us a.
 We'll a be proud O Robin. We'll friends of the Burns Club while revelling tonight in your great poets memory remember that though, unlike Byron, he did not say word for poor Ire land he left notwithstanding an evange in which she may claim part. When yor listen to the appeal of ''Scots Wha ha'e' remember that the ''proud Edwards power-chains and slavery'' is to-day, in thu hands of Queen Victoria, the power O. chains and slavery in Ireland. There i no statute of limitation to the denuncia tion of tyranny-no geographical bounda ries for the assertion of human freedom Be true to the teachings of your poet ant
 give sympathy to Ireland. You know how
 your fathorS naCoQ AnQ feSlSCoQ Cut naughty Southron." You are versed il your Jacobite minstrelsy and know al about the usurpation of George the First ''the wee wee German lairdie." Wha
 Scotland felt then Ireland feels now unde the reign and rule of the lairdies de scendant. Give, we say, to Ireland reversion of the sentiment and let it be al the stronger that countryman of yours the brutal Balfour-has been selected fo
 the hangman's task of reducing the coun
 try whence you in fact derive your nam to chains and slavery.
 l JOHN BRIGHT says that MT Gladstone Ina, : recently given no definite answer regardin t Irish affairs, probably because he fear g that frank reply might injure his caus f and party Forty years ago MT Brigh g gave very definite answer on the sam e subject when he protested both by voic : and petition against Sir George Gray's Coe1 e cion Bill, and against the Suspension c f Habeas Corpus. He then seized upon ever