The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-29

the rude gaze of the gloating eye, or (horrid) by the unhallowed lips of that satyr, man."
 But upon what literature did our gen. ius feed that he became so great? He tells us in a letter to MT. John Murdock written in January, 17S3, when he was barely twenty-four years of age, that "my favorite authors are of the senti- mental kind, such as Shenstone, partic- ularly his elegies Thompson; Man of Feeling, a book I prize next to the Bi- ble: A Man of the World; Sterne, es- pecially his Sentimental Journey; Mo Pherson's Ossian. These are the glori- ous models after which I endeavor to form my conduct, and it is incongru- ous it is absurd, to suppose that the man whose mind glows with sentiments | lighted up at their sacred flame, the man whose heart distends with benevo- lence to the whole human race, he who can soar above this little scene of things, can he descend to mind the pal try concerns about which the terra filial race fret and fume and vex themselves Oh, how the glorious triumph swells my heart! I forget that am poor insig- | nifcant devil unnoticed and unknown, | stalking up and down the fairs and markets when I happen to be in them, reading page or two of mankind, and | catching the manners living as they rise, whilst the men of business jostle | ne on every side as an idle encumbrance in their way"
 l The story of Burns as poet is more than a twice told tale, Scott, in his minstrelsy, sings the history of Scot lands past. Burns in his poems breathes the hopes and the aspirations of the sons of Scotland for the future. Burns reached the hearts of the masses be- cause his poems were in the language | of the common people. The only poems of Lowell which touched the hearts of the American people were those of Hosea Bigelow, couched in the vernac- ular of New England.
 Critics may not agree which of his poems should be given primacy of rank shall not discuss here whether it is Hallowe'en Tam O'Shanter's Famous Ride or the Jolly Beggars. Many of his poems were the children of years of thought and breeding. He had habit like that of many writers, of keeping a common place book, In which he jotted down ideas which he frequently put into meter. Thus we find in his com mon place book under date of April, 17SS, he wrote, "If anything on earth deserves the name of rapture or trans- port. 1t is the feeling of green eighteen in the company of the mistress of his heart, when she repays him with an equal return of affection" Nearly three years later he put the thought into meter in the following stanza: 70 happy 1ovel where love like this is
 found;
 o heartfelt rapturesl bliss beyond
 comparei
 I've paced much this weary, mortal
 round,
 And sage experience bids me this de-
 clare
 "If heaven a draught of heavenly
 pleasure spare One cordial in this melancholy vale,
 Iris when youthful, loving, modest
 pair
 In others arms, breathes out the tender
 tale,
 Beneath the millz-white thorn that
 scents the eyeping gale"
 Burns was an heig to all the wisdom and weakness of the ages. Born of the plain people of his native land, he shared the poverty, and sometimes bit terness of their lot; wept with them in their sorrows, shared with. them their pride In the glories of Bruce and the valor of Wallace; sang with them the old songs of Scotia, joined, hand in hand and heart to heart in all their merry-makings, and like Keats, Chat tenton and Shelly his sun set before the high noon of his manhood was upon him.
 There are those who think they measure the character of Burns by the poems written in the idioms and lam gtiage of his countrymen, those songs which tickle the fancy and lightly move the heart to laughter, but to my mind there is more of the real spirit, the in- ner man of Burns, in ''Fhe Cottar's Saturday Night" and kindred poems on serious subjects, than in the quaint stories of Halloween and Tam O'shan- ter's Mare Where can you find In our language a picture of family life and ove of home and it's enduring happiness, of trust in God and the future, than in the concluding stanzas of this beauti- ful poem?
 The prlest-lil1e father reads the sacred
 page,
 How Abram was the friend of God on
 high;
 Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or, how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of heavens aveng-
 ing ire:
 Or Jobs pathetic plaint, and wailing
 cry;
 Or rapt Isaiahs wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the
 sacred Tyre. Perhaps the Christian volume is the
 theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man
 was shed; How He, who bore in heaven the sec-
 ond name
 Had not on earth whereon to lay His |
 head How His first followers and servants |
 sped;
 The precepts sage they wrote to many |
 land;
 How He, who lone in Patmos ban