owed to themselves. With Burns again it was different. His morality, in most of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man; enjoyment, in a finer or a coarser shape, is the only thing he longs and strives for. A noble instinct sometimes raises him above this; but an instinct only, and acting only for moments. He has no Religion; in the shallow age, where his days were cast, Religion was not discriminated from the New and Old Light forms of Religion; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trembling adoration, but there is no temple in his understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a great Perhaps." He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart; could he but have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion; is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also was denied him. His poetry is a stray vagrant gleam, which will not be extinguished within him, yet rises not to be the true light of his path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or to seem, "independent;" but it was necessary for him to be at one with his own heart; to place what was highest in his nature, highest also in his life; "to seek within himself for that consistency and sequence, which external events would for ever refuse him." He was born a poet; poetry was the celestial element of his being, and should have been the soul of his whole endeavours. Lifted into that serene ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he would have needed no other elevation: Poverty, neglect, and all evil, save the desecration of himself and his Art, were a small matter to him; the pride and the passions of the world lay far beneath his feet; and he looked down alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp of man, with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympathy, with pity. Nay, we question whether for his culture as a Poet, poverty, and much suffering for a season, were not absolutely advantageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, have testified to that effect. "I would not for much," says Jean Paul," that I had been born richer." And yet Paul's birth was poor enough; for, in another place, he adds: "The prisoner's allow ance is bread and water; and I had often only the latter." But the gold that is refined in the hottest furnace comes out the purest; or, as he has himself expressed it, "the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage." A man like Burns might have divided his hours between poetry and virtuous industry; industry which all true feeling sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp of thrones: but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's banquets, was an ill-starred and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such banquets? What had he to do there, mingling his music with the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices, and brightening the thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from heaven? Was it his aim to enjoy life? To-morrow he must go drudge as an Exciseman! We wonder not that Burns became moody, indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules of society; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and run a-muck against them all. How could a man, so falsely placed, by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment or peaceable diligence for an hour? What he did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his character. Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly "respectability." We hope we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer: the highest worldly honours, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance: the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand.. And what does all this avail him? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal; and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top to reach the stars! Like Burns, he is only a proud man; might like him have "purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to study the character of Satan;" for Satan also is Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model apparently of his conduct. As in Burns's case too, the celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; both poet and man of the world he must not be; vulgar Ambition will not live kindly with poetic Adoration; he cannot serve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy; nay, he is the most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products of a world; but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now,— we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, whicn, erelong, will fill itself with snow! Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth: they had a message to deliver, which, left them no rest till it was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest lay smouldering within them; for they knew not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation, and they had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the camp of the Unconverted Yet not as high messengers of rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers, and in pleasant fellowship, will they live there; they are first adulated, then perse cuted; they accomplish little for others; they find no peace for themselves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we view the fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet ruined to so little purpose with all | average; nay, from doubting that he is less their gifts. It seems to us there is a stern guilty than one of ten thousand. Tried at a moral taught in this piece of history,-twice tribunal far more rigid than that where the told us in our own time! Surely to men of Plebiscita of common civic reputations are prolike genius, if there be any such, it carries nounced, he has seemed to us even there less with it a lesson of deep impressive significance. worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. Surely it would become such a man, furnished But the world is habitually unjust in its judgfor the highest of all enterprises, that of being ments of such men; unjust on many grounds, the Poet of his Age, to consider well what it is of which this one may be stated as the subthat he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts stance: It decides, like a court of law, by dead it. For the words of Milton are true in all statutes; and not positively but negatively, times, and were never truer than in this: "He, less on what is done right, than on what is, or who would write heroic poems, must make his is not, done wrong. Not the few inches of rewhole life a heroic poem." If he cannot first flection from the mathematical orbit, which so make his life, then let him hasten from this are so easily measured, but the ratio of these arena ; for neither its lofty glories, nor its to the whole diameter, constitutes the real fearful perils, are for him. Let him dwindle aberration. This orbit may be a planet's, its | into a modish ballad-monger; let him worship diameter the breadth of the solar system; or and be-sing the idols of the time, and the time it may be a city hippodrome; nay, the circle will not fail to reward him,-if, indeed, he can of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or endure to live in that capacity! Byron and paces. But the inches of deflection only are Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the measured; and it is assumed that the diameter fire of their own hearts consumed them; and of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will better it was for them that they could not. For yield the same ratio when compared with it is not in the favour of the great, or of the them. Here lies the root of many a blind, small, but in a life of truth, and in the inex- cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rous pugnable citadel of his own soul, that a seaus, which one never listens to with apByron's or a Burns's strength must lie. Let proval. Granted, the ship comes into harbour | the great stand aloof from him, or know how with shrouds and tackle damaged; and the to reverence him. Beautiful is the union of pilot is therefore blameworthy; for he has not wealth with favour and furtherance for litera- been all-wise and all-powerful; but to know ture; like the costliest flower-jar enclosing the how blameworthy, tell us first whether his loveliest amaranth. Yet let not the relation voyage has been round the Globe, or only to be mistaken. A true poet is not one whom Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs. they can hire by money or flattery to be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occa- | sional verses, their purveyor of table-wit; he cannot be their menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both parties, let no such union be attempted! Will a Courser of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Drayhorse? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all lands; will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for earthly appetites, from door to door? But we must stop short in these considera- | tions, which would lead us to boundless lengths. We had something to say on the public moral character of Burns; but this also we must for bear. We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the With our readers in general, with men of right feeling anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration, he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves; this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye: For this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines! THE LIFE OF HEYNE.* [FOREIGN REVIEW, 1828.] THE labours and merits of Heyne being better known, and more justly appreciated in England, than those of almost any other German, whether scholar, poet, or philosopher, we cannot but believe that some notice of his life may be acceptable to most readers. Accordingly, we here mean to give a short abstract of this volume, a miniature copy of the "biographical portrait," but must first say a few words on the portrait itself, and the limner by whom it has been drawn. Professor Heeren is a man of learning, and known far out of his own Hanoverian circle, indeed, more or less to all students of history, -by his researches on Ancient Commerce, a voluminous account of which from his hand enjoys considerable reputation. He is evidently a man of sense and natural talent, as well as learning; and his gifts seem to lie round him in quiet arrangement, and very much at his own command. Nevertheless, we cannot admire him as a writer; we do not even reckon that such endowments as he has are adequately represented in his books. His style both of diction and thought is thin, cold, formal, without force or character, and painfully reminds us of college lectures. He can work rapidly, but with no freedom, and, as it were, only in one attitude, and at one sort of labour. Not that we particularly blame Professor Heeren for this, but that we think he might have been something better: These "fellows in buckram," very numerous in certain walks of literature, are an unfortunate, rather than a guilty class of men; they have fallen, perhaps unwillingly, into the plan of writing by pattern, and can now do no other; for, in their minds, the beautiful comes at last to be simply synonymous with the neat. Every sentence bears a family-likeness to its precursor; most probably it has a set number of clauses; (three is a favourite number, as in Gibbon, for "the muses delight in odds;") has also a given rhythm, a known and foreseen music, simple but limited enough, like that of ill-bred fingers drumming on a table. And then it is strange how soon the outward rhythm carries the inward along with it; and the thought moves with the same stinted, hamstrung rub-a-dub as the words. In a state of perfection, this species of writing comes to resemble power-loom weaving: it is not the mind that is at work, but some scholastic machinery which the mind has of old constructed, and is from afar observing. Shot follows shot from the unwearied shuttle; and so the web is * Christian Gottlob Heyne, biographisch dargestellt von Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren. (Christian Gottlob Heyne, biographically portrayed by Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren.) Göttingen. woven, ultimately and properly, indeed, by the wit of man, yet immediately, and in the meanwhile, by the mere aid of time and steam. But our Professor's mode of speculation is little less intensely academic than his mode of writing. We fear he is something of what the Germans call a Kleinstädter-mentally as well as bodily, a "dweller in a little town." He speaks at great length, and with undue fondness, of the "Georgia Augusta," which, after all, is but the University of Göttingen, an earthly, and no celestial institution: it is nearly in vain that he tries to contemplate Heyne as a European personage, or even as a German one; beyond the precincts of the Georgia Augusta, his view seems to grow feeble and soon die away into vague inanity; so we have not Heyne, the man and scholar, but Heyne, the Göttingen Professor. But neither is this habit of mind any strange or crying sin, or at all peculiar to Göttingen; as, indeed, most parishes of England can produce more than one example to show. And yet it is pitiful, when an establishment for universal science, which ought to be a watch-tower where a man might see all the kingdoms of the world, converts itself into a workshop, whence he sees nothing but his toolbox and bench, and the world, in broken glimpses, through one patched and highly discoloured pane! Sometimes, indeed, our worthy friend rises. into a region of the moral sublime, in which it is difficult for a foreigner to follow him. Thus he says, on one occasion, speaking of Heyne: "Immortal are his merits in regard to the catalogues"-of the Göttingen library. And, to cite no other instance, except the last and best one, we are informed, that, when Heyne died, the guardian angels of the Georgia Augusta waited in that higher world to meet him with blessings." By day and night! There is no such guardian angel, that we know of, for the University of Gottingen; neither does it need one, being a good solid seminary of itself, with handsome stipends from Government. We had imagined, too, that if anybody welcomed people into heaven, it would be St. Peter, or at least some angel of old standing, and not a mere mushroom, as this of Göttingen must be, created since the year 1739. But we are growing very ungrateful to the good Heeren, who meant no harm by these flourishes of rhetoric, and, indeed, does not often indulge in them. The grand questions with us here are, Did he know the truth in this matter? and was he disposed to tell it honestly? To both of which questions we can answer without reserve, that all appearances are in his favour. He was Heyne's pupil, colleague, son-in-law, and so knew him intimately for thirty years he has every feature also of a just, quiet, truth-loving man; so that we see little reason to doubt the authenticity, the innocence, of any statement in his volume. What more have we to do with him then, but to take thankfully what he has been pleased and able to give us, and, with all despatch, communicate it to our readers. produced, and could find none to buy it! Sometimes a fresh attempt was made through me or my sister; I had to return to the purchasers with the same piece of ware, to see whether we could not possibly get rid of it. In that quarter there is a class of so-called merchants, who, however, are in fact nothing more than forestallers, that buy up the linen made by the poorer people at the lowest price, and endeavour to sell it in other districts at the highest. Often have I seen one or other of these petty tyrants, with all the pride of a satrap, throw back the piece of goods offered him, or imperiously cut off some trifle from the price and wages required for it. Necessity constrained the poorer to sell the sweat of his brow at a groschen or two less, He was born at Chemnitz, in Upper Saxony, and again to make good the deficit by starving. in September, 1729; the eldest of a poor weav-It was the view of such things that awakened er's family, poor almost to the verge of destitution. Heyne's Life is not without an intrinsic, as well as an external interest; for he had much to struggle with, and he struggled with it manfully; thus his history has a value independent of his fame. Some account of his early years we are happily enabled to give in his own words; we translate a considerable part of this passage, autobiography being a favourite sort of reading with us. 'My good father, George Heyne," says he, was a native of the principality of Glogau, in Silesia, from the little village of Gravenschutz. His youth had fallen in those times when the Evangelist party of that province were still exposed to the oppressions and persecutions of the Romish Church. His kindred, enjoying the blessing of contentment in an humble but independent station, felt, like others, the influence of this proselytizing bigotry, and lost their domestic peace by means of it. Some went over to the Romish faith. My father left his native village, and endeavoured, by the labour of his hands, to procure a livelihood in Saxony. What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul!' was the thought which the scenes of his youth had stamped the most deeply on his mind; but no lucky chance favoured his enterprises or endeavours to better his condition, ever so little. On the contrary, a series of perverse incidents kept him continually below the limits even of a moderate sufficiency. His old age was thus left a prey to poverty, and to her companions, timidity and depression of mind. Manufactures, at that time, were visibly declining in Saxony; and the misery among the working classes, in districts concerned in the linen trade, was unusually severe. Scarcely could the labour of the hands suffice to support the labourer himself, still less his family. The saddest aspect which the decay of civic society can exhibit has always appeared to me to be this, when honourable, honour-loving, conscientious diligence cannot, by the utmost efforts of toil, obtain the necessaries of life, or when the working man cannot even find work; but must stand with folded arms, lamenting his forced idieness, through which himself and his family are verging to starvation, or it may be, actually suffering the pains of hunger. "It was in the extremest penury that I was born and brought up. The earliest companion of my childhood was Want; and my first impressions came from the tears of my mother, who had not bread for her children. How often have I seen her on Saturday-nights wringing her hands and weeping, when she had come back with what the hard toil, nay, often the sleepless nights, of her husband had the first sparks of indignation in my young heart. The show of pomp and plenty among these purse-proud people, who fed themselves on the extorted crumbs of so many hundreds, far from dazzling me into respect or fear, filled me with rage against them. The first time I heard of tyrannicide at school, there rose vividly before me the project to become a Brutus on all those oppressors of the poor, who had so often cast my father and mother into straits: and here, for the first time, was an instance of a truth, which I have since had frequent occasion to observe, that if the unhappy man armed with feeling of his wrongs, and a certain strength of soul, does not risk the utmost and become an open criminal, it is merely the beneficent result of those circumstances in which Providence has placed him, thereby fettering his activity, and guarding him from such destructive attempts. That the oppressing part of mankind should be secured against the oppressed was, in the plan of inscrutable wisdom, a most important element of the present system of things. 'My good parents did what they could, and sent me to a child's school in the suburbs; I obtained the praise of learning very fast and being very fond of it. My schoolmaster had two sons, lately returned from Leipzig, a couple of depraved fellows, who took all pains to lead me astray; and, as I resisted, kept me for a long time, by threats and mistreatment of all sorts, extremely miserable. So early as my tenth year, to raise the money for my school wages, I had given lessons to a neighbour's child, a little girl, in reading and writing. As the common school-course could take me no farther, the point now was to get a private hour and proceed into Latin. But for that purpose a guter groschen weekly was required: this my parents had not to give. Many a day I carried this grief about with me: however, I had a godfather, who was in easy circumstances, a baker, and my mother's half-brother. One Saturday I was sent to this man to fetch a loaf. With wet eyes I entered his house, and chanced to find my godfather himself there. Being questioned why I was crying, I tried to answer, but a whole stream of tears broke loose, and scarcely could I make the cause of my sorrow intelligible. My magnanimous godfather offered to pay the weekly The groschen out of his own pocket; and only this | all this before I had read any authors, or could condition was imposed on me, that I should possibly possess any store of words. come to him every Sunday, and repeat what man was withal passionate and rigorous; in part of the Gospel I had learned by heart. every point repulsive; with a moderate income This latter arrangement had one good effect he was accused of avarice; he had the stifffor me, it exercised my memory, and Iness and self-will of an old bachelor, and at learned to recite without bashfulness. "Drunk with joy, I started off with my loaf; tossing it up time after time into the air, and barefoot as I was, I capered aloft after it. But hereupon my loaf fell into a puddle. This misfortune again brought me a little to reason; my mother heartily rejoiced at the good news; my father was less content. Thus passed a couple of years; and my schoolmaster intimated what I myself had long known, that I could now learn no more from him. the same time the vanity of aiming to be a In this plain but somewhat leaden style does Heyne proceed, detailing the crosses and losses of his school-years. We cannot pretend that the narrative delights us much; nay, that it is not rather bald and barren for such a narra"This then was the time when I must leave tive: but its fidelity may be relied on; and it school, and betake me to the handicraft of paints the clear, broad, strong, and somewhat my father. Were not the artisan under op-heavy nature of the writer, perhaps better pressions of so many kinds, robbed of the than description could do. It is curious, for fruits of his hard toil, and of so many advan-instance, to see with how little of a purely hutages to which the useful citizen has a natural mane interest he looks back to his childhood: claim; I should still say,-Had I but continued in the station of my parents, what thousandfold vexations would at this hour have been unknown to me! My father could not but be anxious to have a grown-up son for an assistant in his labour, and looked upon my repugnance to it with great dislike. I again longed to get into the grammar-school of the town; | but for this all means were wanting. Where was a gulden of quarterly fees, where were books and a blue cloak to be come at; how wistfully my look often hung on the walls of the school when I learned it! how Heyne the man has almost grown into a sort of teaching-machine, and sees in Heyne the boy little else than the incipient Gerundgrinder, and tells us little else but how this wheel after the other was developed in him, and he came at last to grind in complete perfection. We could have wished to get some view into the interior of that poor Chemnitz hovel, with its unresting loom and cheerless hearth, its squalor and devotion, its affection and repining; and the fire of natural genius struggling into flame amid such incumbrances, in an atmosphere so damp and close! But of all this we catch few farther glimpses; and "A clergyman of the suburbs was my second godfather; his name was Sebastian Sey-hear only of Fabricius and Owen and Pasor, del; my schoolmaster, who likewise belonged and school-examinations, and rectors that had to his congregation, had told him of me; I been taught by Ernesti. Neither, in another was sent for, and after a short examination, he respect, not of omission but of commission, promised me that I should go to the town- cau this piece of writing altogether content school; he himself would bear the charges. us. We must object a little to the spirit of it Who can express my happiness, as I then felt as too narrow, too intolerant. Sebastian Seyit! I was despatched to the first teacher, ex- del must have been a very meager man; but amined, and placed with approbation in the is it right, that Heyne, of all others, should second class. Weakly from the first, pressed speak of him with asperity? Without quesdown with sorrow and want, without any tion the unfortunate Seydel meant nobly, had cheerful enjoyment of childhood or youth, I not thrift stood in his way. Did he not pay was still of very small stature; my class-fel-down his gulden every quarter regularly, and lows judged by externals, and had a very slight opinion of me. Scarcely by various proofs of diligence, and by the praises I received, could I get so far that they tolerated my being put beside them. give the boy a blue cloak, though a coarse one? Nay, he bestowed old books on him, and instruction, according to his gift, in the mystery of verse-making. And was not all this something? And if thrift and charity had a continual battle to fight, was not this better than a flat surrender on the part of the all quietly forgotten: why should Sebastian be remembered to his disadvantage for being only a little better than they? "And certainly my diligence was not a little hampered! Of his promise, the clergyman, indeed, kept so much, that he paid my quar-latter? The other pastors of Chemnitz are terly fees, provided me with a coarse cloak, and gave me some useless volumes that were lying on his shelves; but to furnish me with school-books he could not resolve. I thus found myself under the necessity of borrowing a class-fellow's books, and daily copying a part of them before the lesson. On the other hand, the honest man would have some hand himself in my instruction, and gave me from time to time some hours in Latin. In his youth he had learned to make Latin verses: scarcely was Erasmus de Civilitate Morum got over, when I too must take to verse-making; Heyne continued to be much infested with tasks from Sebastian, and sorely held down by want, and discouragement of every sort. The school-course, moreover, he says, was bad, nothing but the old routine; vocables, trans lations, exercises; all without spirit or purpose. Nevertheless, he continued to make what we must call wonderful proficiency these branches; especially as he had still to write every task before he could learn it. For |