Life of Robert BurnsAmerican Book Exchange, 1879 - 203 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
affection Allan Ramsay already ance appeared beauty believe better British British literature brother Burns's Byron Carlyle Carlyle's character clear critic curlew dark death discern Dugald Stewart Dumfries Edinburgh English Eolian existence external farm Fate father favor feeling flattered friends genius gift glory Göthe heart heroic highest honor humor jects John Sterling kind learned less light literary literature live look man's Mauchline means ment mind moral Mossgiel muse nature ness never noble passions perhaps period person pieces pity poems poetic poetry political poor rank Religion rhymed Robert Burns rustic Sartor Sartor Resartus scene Scot Scotland Scottish Scottish literature seems Shakspeare sing Sir Walter Scott Songs of Burns soul speak spirit strength strong Tam O'Shanter Tarbolton thing Thomas Thomas Carlyle thought tion true poet truth verses virtue whole wonder words worldly write young
Popular passages
Page 157 - I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.
Page 110 - Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the .¿Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident; or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities: a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.
Page 149 - Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales, Her heathy moors and winding vales ; The scenes where wretched fancy roves, Pursuing past, unhappy loves ! Farewell, my friends ! Farewell, my foes ! My peace with these, my love with those — The bursting tears my heart declare, Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr ! THE FAREWELL.
Page 34 - The collection of songs was my vade mecum. I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the true tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my criticcraft, such as it is.
Page 184 - ... 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.
Page 31 - I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, was ' The Vision of Mirza,' and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, ' How are Thy servants blest, 0 Lord!
Page 86 - Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling : the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps.
Page 32 - Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier, while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.
Page 30 - In my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, ind superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elfcandles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery.
Page 87 - Si vis me flere, \s applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every poet, to every writer, we might say : Be true, if you would be believed. /Let a man but ( speak forth with genuine earnestness , the thought, the emotion, the actual condition, of his own heart; and other/ men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him.