[[92]] Quoted in Lockhart, chap. v.
[[93]] Lockhart gives in a foot-note (at end of chap. iv.) the following quotation from a letter of Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, August 17, 1773:—
"This morning I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor scholar in Latin, Greek, and French. He was originally a poor scholar himself. I looked on him with reverence."
[[94]] Cf. John v. 1-9.
[[95]] Words of Burns quoted in Lockhart, chap. vii.
[[96]] "If Burns had much of a farmer's skill, he had little of a farmer's prudence and economy. I once inquired of James Corrie, a sagacious old farmer, whose ground marched with Elliesland, the cause of the poet's failure. 'Faith,' said he, 'how could he miss but fail, when his servants ate the bread as fast as it was baked? I don't mean figuratively, I mean literally. Consider a little. At that time close economy was necessary to have enabled a man to clear twenty pounds a year by Elliesland. Now Burns's own handywork was out of the question; he neither ploughed, nor sowed, nor reaped, at least like a hard-working farmer; and then he had a bevy of servants from Ayrshire. The lasses did nothing but bake bread, and the lads sat by the fireside, and ate it warm, with ale. Waste of time and consumption of food would soon reach to twenty pounds a year.'"—(Letter to Lockhart from Allan Cunningham, quoted in Lockhart's Life, chap, vii.)
[[97]] In reality Burns occasionally borrowed money; but at his death he left only a few small debts.
[[98]] There is one little sketch by certain "English gentlemen" of this class, which, though adopted in Currie's narrative, and since then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible disposition to regard as imaginary: "On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of fox-skin on his head, a loose greatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns." Now, we rather think, it was not Burns. For, to say nothing of the foxskin cap, the loose and quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are we to make of this "enormous Highland broad-sword" depending from him? More especially, as there is no word of parish constables on the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to his own midriff or that of the public! Burns, of all men, had the least need, and the least tendency, to seek for distinction, either in his own eyes or those of others, by such poor mummeries.—[Carlyle's note.]
Carlyle thinks this petty vanity inconsistent with Burns's wise self-control at Edinburgh. But we cannot reason thus in the case of a man with so variable a temperament, and the anecdote is fairly well authenticated.
[[99]] Mæcenas was the great literary patron of the Augustan age of Rome. Virgil addressed to him his Georgics, and Horace honors his name repeatedly.