discloses his system of advertising, and explains it by some examples, is one of the best that has been presented on any stage in the department of comedy. As regards dialogue, The School for Scandal is almost on the same level. But, on the other hand, the characters are somewhat formal; and poetical justice is satisfied quite in accordance with the well-known saying, that vice gives place to virtue, after excessive enjoyment of a good dinner. There are some excellent situations in the piece, among which we may mention the famous scene (Act II., scene 2), in Lady Sneerwell's drawing-room, in which the feminine "School for Scandal" gives a full-dress representation of its art. There are also the passages between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, in which this strange married couple, in the short space of two minutes, change from foes to friends, and back again from friends to foes: it might have emanated from one of the best French writers of drawing-room comedies. Best of all is the great scene in Act IV., that overpowering piece of comic drama, the counterpart of the merry medley in Beaumarchais' Mariage de Figaro, which, by the way, appeared about seven years later. The play ends, in a somewhat disappointing manner, with the unexplained stage repentance of Lady Teazle, the head of "The School for Scandal." Sheridan was just the man to write a classical comedy: but unfortunately the taste of the public compelled him to make use of certain mechanical expedients which, at the present day, impress us unfavourably in The School for Scandal. Sheridan himself had no doubt that he deprived the piece of its proper artistic finish by such expedients as, for instance, the aforesaid stage repentance of Lady Teazle and the stage improvement of her scandalous tongue; for, in the epilogue pronounced by her, he tells the audience that it is only to please them that he has chosen so feeble an ending to the play. The piece is certainly conceived in a tragic rather than a comic spirit. BIBLIOGRAPHY. On NOVELS generally: J. C. Jeaffreson, Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria; S. Lanier, The English Novel and the Principle of its Development; P. F. Rowland, English Novelists from 1700-1850; W. Raleigh, The English Novel (up to the time of Sir W. Scott). RICHARDSON.-Latest edition by L. Stephen; Eric Schmidt, Richardson, Rousseau, und Göthe; M. Gassmeyer, Richardson's Pamela, ihre Quellen und ihr Einfluss. FIELDING.-Complete edition by L. Stephen; Thackeray's English Humourists; F. Laurence, The Life of H. Fielding; A. Dobson, Fielding (in English Men of Letters); E. Gosse, works, with introduction; Saintsbury, works. SMOLLETT.-Last complete edition by Browne (1873); D. Hannay, Life of Smollett; Wershofen, Smollett et Lesage; Smeaton, biography; works, with introduction by W. E. Henley (in progress). STERNE.-Globe edition; Tristram Shandy, German by Gelbcke;_Sentimental TH CHAPTER IV ROBERT BURNS (1759-96) 'HE century which opened without inspiration was to close with the embodiment of the purest poetry. ROBERT BURNS, the Scotch peasant, was a poor farmer's son, born in a mud cottage, which was blown down in a storm three days afterwards. He died at the age of thirty-seven, in his native country, in a state of poverty and distress; he had never crossed the borders of Scotland, he was ignorant both of Latin and Greek; indeed, his knowledge of English was but scanty. Almost till the last he followed the plough; yet he was every inch a man and a great poet. The attempt to explain everything connected with Burns as due to his times and surroundings, the famous "milieu," is a hopeless failure. For what was Burns indebted to his times? For nothing; not even for the language ennobled by a past of five centuries, for he composed his best songs in the unliterary dialect of his native land. The only things which had any marked effect on Burns were the old Scotch ballads; besides which he was acquainted with Allan Ramsay and Shakespeare. But tens of thousands of cultivated Scotchmen had also read the whole of these; and only one of them is named Burns! Let us then leave it to others, wise after the event, to explain why this particular poet was what he was, why "he was bound to be so "; and let us be satisfied with the pleasure of reading the splendid work he has achieved. We must either speak lovingly of Robert Burns, or else be silent about him. It is said (with wondrous sagacity!) that he had a few human weaknesses; that he kissed more pretty girls than he should; and that, in his exuberant enjoyment of life (or, it may be, to drown the thought of the bitter experiences of that life), he often drank a glass more than was good for him. But he has himself done penance for that, even if his premature death was not caused by his own fault; and many of his English biographers amerce him yet for it, to the present day. Even Carlyle, his stricter countryman, has written an essay on Burns, in which he has thought it his duty to measure the poet by the rigid standard of an average pious country parson. But what a superfluous piece of folly, to pronounce sentence on the morals of a great poet, who has so long been dead! Burns has replied to such attacks, which were not wanting in his lifetime, in an excellent poem: To the unco guid. Its last stanzas run as follows: Then gently scan your brother man, Who made the heart, 'tis He alone He knows each chord, its various tone, We never can adjust it; What's done, we partly may compute, In one of his letters he expresses himself still more strongly on the old Puritanical venom of England, and even of Scotland; the Pharisaical "pulling out of the mote." He declared that the only things found in perfection in his country were stupidity and hypocrisy; that, as regards the Muses, people knew just as much about a rhinoceros as they did about a poet. In a longer letter to a friend, Burns has left most valuable records of his outer life; they have been prefixed to most editions of his poems, with the title "Autobiography." From these and Lockhart's Life of Burns, we take the following short sketch : Robert Burns (originally Burnes) was born on January 25th, 1759, in the little village of Alloway, not far from the Scotch town of Ayr; his parents being very poor peasants. He spent his youth in following the plough, and attended the village school till his eleventh year, where he learned all it could teach him. In addition to this, he read Allan Ramsay, and (unfortunately) Pope, though happily he added Shakespeare to the others. At the age of fifteen, he wrote his first love poem on a pretty girl, who had been working near him in the fields at harvest time. In speaking positively of the "influences" which made Burns a poet it is sufficient to name love as the most important. Later in life, he himself acknowledged that in order to write poetry he only needed the sight of a pretty woman's face. Of a hot-blooded temperament from his youth upwards, and unable to resist the smiles of a woman, he suffered himself to pass from one love to another, without breaking a single heart, not even his own. All the Latin he knew was Amor vincit omnia (his own words). Things went badly on his father's farm; and Robert Burns determined to emigrate to Jamaica. Then the fate of the poet was decided 1 A little. by a letter from an Edinburgh author expressing his appreciation of Burns's first collection of songs (1786). He went to Edinburgh, where he was received with interest and applause; he was invited from house to house, overwhelmed with flattery,-and then left to himself. The admiration for the peasant-poet, which curiosity had excited, soon gave place to the arrogance with which Scotch aristocratic society looked down on the plebeian. All accounts agree in stating that Burns always behaved correctly, and as a gentleman, in the principal circles of leading society in Edinburgh, as well as among her learned professors. There he forbore to manifest his inflexible, manly pride, which, conscious of its own worth, asserts its personal rights against all prejudices, not defiantly, but nevertheless with dignity. His excellent song, For a' that! originated from this feeling; it is a song which has inspired with pride and courage a thousand humiliated hearts, a song to be learnt by heart! Is there, for honest poverty, HONEST POVERTY That hangs his head, and a' that? Our toils obscure, and a' that, Wear hoddin grey,' and a' that; For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; You see yon birkie 2 ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that, Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof3 for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star and a' that; Their dignities and a' that, As come it will for a' that,- It's coming yet, for a' that, When man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that. About the same time, Schiller, who was born in the same year as Burns, wrote his verses on Männerstolz vor Königstronen. Poverty was composed by Burns on horseback in a storm of rain. Honest The poet found no real help at Edinburgh; but he calmly returned to his home and the plough, feeling that that was the best place for him, and that as a poet he would there find the purest inspiration for his songs. In 1788 he married a girl he had loved in his early youth, built his own cottage, and worked with the sickle and the plough, as he had been accustomed to do from his childhood. A second edition Conceited fellow. 3 Blockhead. 5 Gain the day. 1 Coarse woollen cloth. 4 Try. |