[[7]] "The Caledonian Hunt, an association of the principal of the nobility and gentry of Scotland, extended their patronage to our bard. He repaid the notice by a dedication of the enlarged and improved [the first Edinburgh] edition of his poems."—Currie's Life of Burns.
[[8]] In Scotland writer is used loosely of law agents, solicitors, attorneys, and the like, and sometimes even of their principal clerks. Burns alludes to the Ayr writers in The Brigs of Ayr.
[[9]] The Edinburgh Review owed much of its success to Archibald Constable, its first printer. Constable rose to be one of the chief publishers of his time, and is especially famous for his connection with Scott, but became bankrupt in 1826. Constable's Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications in Literature, Science, and the Arts has a pathetic interest as being the poor fulfilment of a scheme that he had formed, before his failure, of a series of cheap volumes that should sell, he told Scott, "not by thousands or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands—aye, by millions."
[[10]] Author of Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois. (London, 1818.)
[[11]] Carlyle's judgment on Lockhart's work seems to have improved with reflection. In a letter to his brother, June 10, 1828, he writes: "Lockhart had written a kind of Life of Burns, and men in general were making another uproar about Burns; it is this Book (a trivial enough one) which I am to pretend reviewing."
[[12]] The apologetic expressions in the early part of this essay may, as Mr. H. W. Boynton well suggests in his excellent edition, be relics of Jeffrey's editing.
[[13]] Carlyle is always extreme in his judgments, and here is unjustly contemptuous of men whom, as the quotation from Scott below (p. 60) will show, Burns always regarded as his models, and whom he often directly and openly imitated. Ramsay has been admired by men as different as Pope and Leigh Hunt; and Stevenson, whose estimate of these men in his essay on Some Aspects of Robert Burns it would be well to read, places the "poor lad Fergusson" even higher than Ramsay.
[[14]] Here Carlyle touches on the source of his own power,—the maxim that the pleasure of criticism deprives us of that of vivid appreciation does not apply to him.
[[15]] The Tragic Fragment printed in Burns's works was written when he was only nineteen. And in 1790 Burns told friends that he was preparing to write a play on a subject drawn from Scottish history.
[[16]] Though Carlyle never changed his opinion of a true poet, his later writings show a very different estimate of the value of conquerors to the world. After his removal to London, he writes but little on literature, and is usually full of scorn for the profession of letters. He tends to idealize mere strength of will and brute force of character, if accompanied by sincerity. He praises the power of silent action; and his favorite heroes are men of deeds, like Cromwell and Frederick.