rons.

Hints of a power of verbal wit, which, had it been sharpened in such
a perpetual word-battle as that amid which Shakespeare lived from the
age of twenty, might have rivalled Shakespeare's own; which even now
asserts its force by a hundred little never-to-be-forgotten phrases
scattered through his poems, which stick, like barbed arrows, in the
memory of every reader. And as for his tenderness--the quality
without which all other poetic excellence is barren--it gushes forth
toward every creature, animate and inanimate, with one exception,
namely, the hypocrite, ever alike "spiacente a Dio e ai nemici sui;"
and therefore intolerable to Robert Burns's honesty, whether he be
fighting for or against the cause of right. Again we say, there are
evidences of a versatile and manifold faculty in this man, which,
with a stronger will and a larger education, might have placed him as
an equal by the side of those great names which we mentioned together
with his at the commencement of this article.

But one thing Burns wanted; and of that one thing his age helped to
deprive him--the education which comes by reverence. Looking round
in such a time, with his keen power of insight, his keen sense of
humour, what was there to worship? Lord Jeffrey, or whosoever was
the author of the review in the "Edinburgh," says disparagingly, that
Burns had as much education as Shakespeare. So he very probably had,
if education mean book-learning. Nay, more, of the practical
education of the fireside, the sober, industrious, God-fearing
education, and "drawing out" of the manhood, by act and example,
Burns may have had more under his good father than Shakespeare under
his; though the family life of the small English burgher in
Elizabeth's time would have generally presented, as we suspect, the
very same aspect of staid manfulness and godliness which a Scotch
farmer's did fifty years ago. But let that be as it may, Burns was
not born into an Elizabethan age. He did not see around him Raleighs
and Sidneys, Cecils and Hookers, Drakes and Frobishers, Spensers and
Jonsons, Southamptons and Willoughbys, with an Elizabeth, guiding and
moulding the great whole, a crowned Titaness, terrible, and strong,
and wise--a woman who, whether right or wrong, bowed the proudest, if
not to love, yet still to obey.

That was the secret of Shakespeare's power. Heroic himself, he was
born into an age of heroes. You see it in his works. Not a play but