ius or erudition
adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, it is true, at the age of
thirty-seven; on the same day died an English curate we could name, a
surpassing scholar, and of stainless virtue, blind, palsied, "old and
miserably poor"--without as much money as would bury him; and no wonder,
for he never had the salary of a Scotch Exciseman.

Two blacks--nay twenty--won't make a white. True--but one black is as
black as another--and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse
with impunity the Northern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us
knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield? He was
not in genius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns--but he was
beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen
produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker
that ever handled an awl. The "Farmer's Boy" is a wonderful poem--and
will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield
in comfort, and scatter flowers along the smooth and sunny path that led
him to the grave? No. He had given him by some minister or other, we
believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other--most
uncongenial with all his nature and all his habits--of which the shabby
salary was insufficient to purchase for his family even the bare
necessaries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a
sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be
made by narrowest circumstances--and all the while Englishmen were
scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that
at his own earnest desire made Burns an Exciseman. Nay, when Southey,
late in Bloomfield's life, and when it was drawing mournfully to a
close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five
pounds, how many purse-strings were untied? how much fine gold was
poured out for the indigent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles the
sum out of sight--for it was not sufficient to have bought the
manumission of an old negro slave.

It was no easy matter to deal rightly with such a man as Burns. In those
disturbed and distracted times, still more difficult was it to carry
into execution any designs for his good--and much was there even to
excuse his countrymen then in power for looking upon him with an evil
eye. But Bloomfield led a pure, peaceable, and blameless life. Easy,
indeed, would it have been to make him happy--but he was