gushes forth toward every creature, animate and inanimate, with one exception, namely, the hypocrite, ever alike “spiacente a Dio e ai nemici sui;” and therefore intolerable to Robert Burns’s honesty, whether he be fighting for or against the cause of right.  Again we say, there are evidences of a versatile and manifold faculty in this man, which, with a stronger will and a larger education, might have placed him as an equal by the side of those great names which we mentioned together with his at the commencement of this article.

But one thing Burns wanted; and of that one thing his age helped to deprive him—­the education which comes by reverence.  Looking round in such a time, with his keen power of insight, his keen sense of humour, what was there to worship?  Lord Jeffrey, or whosoever was the author of the review in the “Edinburgh,” says disparagingly, that Burns had as much education as Shakespeare.  So he very probably had, if education mean book-learning.  Nay, more, of the practical education of the fireside, the sober, industrious, God-fearing education, and “drawing out” of the manhood, by act and example, Burns may have had more under his good father than Shakespeare under his; though the family life of the small English burgher in Elizabeth’s time would have generally presented, as we suspect, the very same aspect of staid manfulness and godliness which a Scotch farmer’s did fifty years ago.  But let that be as it may, Burns was not born into an Elizabethan age.  He did not see around him Raleighs and Sidneys, Cecils and Hookers, Drakes and Frobishers, Spensers and Jonsons, Southamptons and Willoughbys, with an Elizabeth, guiding and moulding the great whole, a crowned Titaness, terrible, and strong, and wise—­a woman who, whether right or wrong, bowed the proudest, if not to love, yet still to obey.

That was the secret of Shakespeare’s power.  Heroic himself, he was born into an age of heroes.  You see it in his works.  Not a play but gives patent evidence that to him all forms of human magnanimity were common and wayside flowers—­among the humours of men which he and Ben Jonson used to wander forth together to observe.  And thus he could give living action and speech to the ancient noblenesses of Rome and the Middle Age; for he had walked and conversed with them, unchanged in everything but in the dress.  Had he known Greek literature he could have recalled to imperishable life such men as Cimon and Aristides, such deeds as Marathon and Salamis.  For had we not had our own Salamis acted within a few years of his birth; and were not the heroes of it still walking among men?  It was surely this continual presence of “men of worship,” this atmosphere of admiration and respect and trust, in which Shakespeare must have lived, which tamed down the wild self-will of the deer-stealing fugitive from Stratford, into the calm large-eyed philosopher, tolerant and loving, and full of faith in a species made in the likeness of God.  Not so with Burns.