the
dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened,
the _little_ Babylon they severally builded by the glory of their
might, are all melted, or melting back into the primeval chaos, as
man's merely selfish endeavors are fated to do: and here was an action
extending, in virtue of its worldly influence, we may say, through all
time--in virtue of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal
as the Spirit of Goodness itself: this action was offered them to do,
and light was not given them to do it. Let us pity and forgive them.
But, better than pity, let us go and _do otherwise_. Human suffering
did not end with the life of Burns; neither was the solemn mandate,
"Love one another, bear one another's burdens," given to the rich
only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns to relieve, to
assuage by our aid or pity: but celestial natures, groaning under the
fardels of a weary life, we shall still find; and that wretchedness
which Fate has rendered _voiceless_ and _tuneless_, is not the least
wretched, but the most.

Still we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies chiefly
with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more,
rather than with less kindness, than it usually shows to such men. It
has ever, we fear, shown but small favor to its teachers: hunger and
nakedness, perils and reviling, the prison, the cross, the
poison-chalice, have in most times and countries, been the
market-place it has offered for wisdom, the welcome with which it has
greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer and
Socrates and the Christian apostles belong to old days, but the
world's martyrology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and
Galileo languish in priestly dungeons, Tasso pines in the cell of a
madhouse, Camoens dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. So neglected,
so "persecuted they the prophets," not in Judea only, but in all
places where men have been. We reckon that every poet of Burns's order
is, or should be, a prophet and teacher to his age--that he has no
right therefore, to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound
to do it great kindness--that Burns, in particular, experienced fully
the usual proportion of the world's goodness, and that the blame of
his failure, as we have said, lies not chiefly with the world.

Where then does it lie? We are forced to answer, With himself; it is
his inward, not his outward misfortunes, that bring him to the