the odd world peopled by the biographers of Robert Burns. The
nature of Burns, one would think, was simplicity itself; it could
hardly puzzle a ploughman, and two sailors out of three would call
him brother. But he lit up the whole of that nature by his
marvellous genius for expression, and grave personages have been
occupied ever since in discussing the dualism of his character, and
professing to find some dark mystery in the existence of this,
that, or the other trait--a love of pleasure, a hatred of shams, a
deep sense of religion. It is common human nature, after all, that
is the mystery, but they seem never to have met with it, and treat
it as if it were the poet's eccentricity. They are all agog to
worship him, and when they have made an image of him in their own
likeness, and given it a tin-pot head that exactly hits their
taste, they break into noisy lamentation over the discovery that
the original was human, and had feet of clay. They deem "Mary in
Heaven" so admirable that they could find it in their hearts to
regret that she was ever on earth. This sort of admirers
constantly refuses to bear a part in any human relationship; they
ask to be fawned on, or trodden on, by the poet while he is in
life; when he is dead they make of him a candidate for godship, and
heckle him. It is a misfortune not wholly without its
compensations that most great poets are dead before they are
popular.

If great and original literary artists--here grouped together under
the title of poets--will not enter into transactions with their
audience, there is no lack of authors who will. These are not
necessarily charlatans; they may have by nature a ready sympathy
with the grossness of the public taste, and thus take pleasure in
studying to gratify it. But man loses not a little of himself in