THE INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS.
"Poor Burns!" all exclaim after reading his life and his poems. Poor Burns! I too say; and the next minute I ask, impatiently, why he, so conscious of his God-given powers, should have miserably shortened his life one-half by ill-governed appetites and excesses. Why, if coining his brain into dollars, for the widow and fatherless, proved impossible, he should become so disgusted with manual labor, that even his filial, fraternal, and conjugal love could not dignify its repulsive features, since it needs must be. Why, with a loving, prudent, industrious, faithful wife to help him, he could not emulate her everyday but sublime heroism, not by paroxysms of effort, only to show us how well he might have done, but that steady, determined persistence which seldom fails of success. Why he, at once so great and so little, took pleasure and pride in wallowing in the mire, merely because strait-laced hypocrisy stepped daintily over it with white-sandalled feet. There was no greatness in this. It was but the angry kick of the impatient urchin upon the chair over which he had stumbled. Did his ambition to be written down a publican and a sinner lessen the ranks of the Pharisee? Could he look into the trusting faces of his innocent children, and feel no secret pang that for so petty and unworthy a motive he was content to hazard or forego their future respect? Had he none but himself to consult in such unworthy disposition of his time and talents? Was it manly in the midst of that loving group coolly to look forward to the possibility of an old age of beggary, and toleration by chance firesides, in the undignified character of jester or clown? Because a man is a "genius," must one indorse these things and write them down as "eccentricities" inseparable from it and to be lightly passed over? Must intellect necessarily be at variance with principle?
And yet—and yet—because I can say this, I do not fall a whit behind the most ardent admirer of his genius. But I do hold that he is to be held as accountable for his errors as the most ordinary farmer's boy who is unable to spell the name of the plough which he guides. Nor does this interfere with the heart-aching pity with which I look upon the soiled wings, so capable of soaring into a pure atmosphere, yet trailing their beauty in the dust. Nor does this keep my eyes from overflowing when some lofty or beautiful sentiment of his shines out diamond-like from the rubbish.
How could he? Why did he?
Softly—reverently let us answer. We so full of faults—always sinning—sometimes repenting. Softly let us answer. We who have not sinned only because we were not tempted. Softly—we whom pride, not principle, has saved. Softly—we whose lives the world writes fair, and perhaps God's eye leprously foul.
Country Matins.—He who sleeps at early dawn in the country, stops his ears to the prayers of Nature. That early tuneful waking! What can compare with it? Evening is soothing and sweet, with its stars and its calm; but the gradual brightness of the new day, softly stealing upon us, as the tints deepen and the songs strengthen, till the full orchestra is complete, oh! this is soul strengthening and sublime! We were weak of purpose, we were dispirited, the night before. Yesterday had overlapped its cares, and our tired shoulders shrank from the coming burden. But this bright resurrection heralded so thrillingly by soulless creatures! Shall we immortals only be thankless and dumb? We join the chorus! Care sits lightly at this blessed hour. All things for that day are possible to us—hard duty sweet. Blessed be God, then, for the sweet dawning of each new day!