CXLIV
One of the greatest poets the world has seen in modern times is, to my mind, Robert Burns, a Scotch peasant, who died of want. He had a salary of seventy pounds as exciseman—for himself, his wife and four children. One cannot help saying, by the way, that Napoleon was more liberal towards his enemy Chénier. Burns had none of the English prudery about him. His was a Roman genius, without chivalry and without honour. I have no space here to tell of his love-affairs with Mary Campbell and their mournful ending. I shall merely point out that Edinburgh is on the same latitude as Moscow—a fact which perhaps upsets my system of climates a little.
"One of Burns' remarks, when he first came to Edinburgh, was that between the men of rustic life and those of the polite world he observed little difference; that in the former, though unpolished by fashion and unenlightened by science, he had found much observation and much intelligence; but that a refined and accomplished woman was a being almost new to him, and of which he had formed but a very inadequate idea." (London, November 1st, 1821, Vol. V, p. 69.)
CXLV
Love is the only passion that mints the coin to pay its own expenses.
CXLVI
The compliments paid to little girls of three furnish exactly the right sort of education to imbue them with the most pernicious vanity. To look pretty is the highest virtue, the greatest advantage on earth. To have a pretty dress is to look pretty.
These idiotic compliments are not current except in the middle class. Happily they are bad form outside the suburbs—being too easy to pay.
CXLVII
Loretto, September 11th, 1811.