Front matter (continued 8)

His son and successor in the baronetcy, Sir Philip Burne-Jones (b. 1861), also became well known as an artist. The only daughter, Margaret, married Mr J.W. Mackail.

Burne-Jones's influence has been exercised far less in painting than in the wide field of decorative design. Here it has been enormous. His first designs for stained glass, 1857-1861, were made for Messrs Powell, but after 1861 he worked exclusively for Morris & Co. Windows executed from his cartoons are to be found all over England; others exist in churches abroad. For the American Church in Rome he designed a number of mosaics. Reliefs in metal, tiles, gesso-work, decorations for pianos and organs, and cartoons for tapestry represent his manifold activity. In all works, however, which were only designed and not carried out by him, a decided loss of delicacy is to be noted. The colouring of the tapestries (of which the "Adoration of the Magi" at Exeter College is the best-known) is more brilliant than successful. The range and fertility of Burne-Jones as a decorative inventor can be perhaps most conveniently studied in the sketch-book, 1885-1895, which he bequeathed to the British Museum. The artist's influence on book-illustration must also be recorded. In early years he made a few drawings on wood for Dalziel's Bible and for Good Words; but his later work for the Kelmscott Press, founded by Morris in 1891, is that by which he is best remembered. Besides several illustrations to other Kelmscott books, he made eighty-seven designs for the Chaucer of 1897.

Burne-Jones's aim in art is best given in some of his own words, written to a friend: "I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be—in a light better than any light that ever shone—in a land no one can define or remember, only desire—and the forms divinely beautiful—and then I wake up, with the waking of Brynhild." No artist was ever more true to his aim. Ideals resolutely pursued are apt to provoke the resentment of the world, and Burne-Jones encountered, endured and conquered an extraordinary amount of, angry criticism. In so far as this was directed against the lack of realism in his pictures, it was beside the point. The earth, the sky, the rocks, the trees, the men and women of Burne-Jones are not those of this world; but they are themselves a world, consistent with itself, and having therefore its own reality. Charged with the beauty and with the strangeness of dreams, it has nothing of a dream's incoherence. Yet it is a dreamer always whose nature penetrates these works, a nature out of sympathy with struggle and strenuous action. Burne-Jones's men and women are dreamers too. It was this which, more than anything else, estranged him from the age into which he was born. But he had an inbred "revolt from fact" which would have estranged him from the actualities of any age. That criticism seems to be more justified which has found in him a lack of such victorious energy and mastery over his materials as would have enabled him to carry out his conceptions in their original intensity. Representing the same kind of tendency as distinguished his French contemporary, Puvis de Chavannes, he was far less in the main current of art, and his position suffers accordingly. Often compared with Botticelli, he had nothing of the fire and vehemence of the Florentine. Yet, if aloof from strenuous action, Burne-Jones was singularly strenuous in production. His industry was inexhaustible, and needed to be, if it was to keep pace with the constant pressure of his ideas. Invention, a very rare excellence, was his pre-eminent gift. Whatever faults his paintings may have, they have always the fundamental virtue of design; they are always pictures. His fame might rest on his purely decorative work. But his designs were informed with a mind of romantic temper, apt in the discovery of beautiful subjects, and impassioned with a delight in pure and variegated colour. These splendid gifts were directed in a critical and fortunate moment by the genius of Rossetti. Hence a career which shows little waste or misdirection of power, and, granted the aim proposed, a rare level of real success.

Authorities.—In 1904 was published Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, by his widow, two volumes of extreme interest and charm. The Work of Burne-Jones, a collection of ninety-one photogravures, appeared in 1900.

See also Catalogue to Burlington Club Exhibition of Drawings by Burne-Jones, with Introduction by Cosmo Monkhouse (1899); Sir E. Burne-Jones: a Record and a Review, by Malcolm Belt (1898); Sir E. Burne-Jones, his Life and Work, by Julia Cartwright (Mrs Ady) (1894); The Life of William Morris, by J.W. Mackail (1899).

(L. B.)

BURNELL, ARTHUR COKE (1840-1882), English Sanskrit scholar, was born at St Briavels, Gloucestershire, in 1840. His father was an official of the East India Company, and in 1860 he himself went out to Madras as a member of the Indian civil service. Here he utilized every available opportunity to acquire or copy Sanskrit manuscripts. In 1870 he presented his collection of 350 MSS. to the India library. In 1874 he published a Handbook of South Indian Palaeography, characterized by Max Müller as "indispensable to every student of Indian literature," and in 1880 issued for the Madras government his greatest work, the Classified Index to the Sanskrit MSS. in the Palace at Tanjore. He was also the author of a large number of translations from, and commentaries on, various other Sanskrit manuscripts, being particularly successful in grouping and elucidating the essential principles of Hindu law. In addition to his exhaustive acquaintance with Sanskrit, and the southern India vernaculars, he had some knowledge of Tibetan, Arabic, Kawi, Javanese and Coptic. Burnell originated with Sir Henry Yule the well-known dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases, Hobson-Jobson. His constitution, never strong, broke down prematurely through the combined influence of overwork and the Madras climate, and he died at West Stratton, Hampshire, on the 12th of October 1882. A further collection of Sanskrit manuscripts was purchased from his heirs by the India library after his death.

BURNELL, ROBERT (d. 1292), English bishop and chancellor, was born at Acton Burnell in Shropshire, and began his public life probably as a clerk in the royal chancery. He was soon in the service of Edward, the eldest son of King Henry III., and was constantly in attendance on the prince, whose complete confidence he appears to have enjoyed. Having received some ecclesiastical preferments, he acted as one of the regents of the kingdom from the death of Henry III. in November 1272 until August 1274, when the new king, Edward I., returned from Palestine and made him his chancellor. In 1275 Burnell was elected bishop of Bath and Wells, and three years later Edward repeated the attempt which he had made in 1270 to secure the archbishopric of Canterbury for his favourite. The bishop's second failure to obtain this dignity was due, doubtless, to his irregular and unclerical manner of life, a fact which also accounts, in part at least, for the hostility which existed between his victorious rival, Archbishop Peckham, and himself. As the chief adviser of Edward I. during the earlier part of his reign, and moreover as a trained and able lawyer, the bishop took a prominent part in the legislative acts of the "English Justinian," whose activity in this direction coincides practically with Burnell's tenure of the office of chancellor. The bishop also influenced the king's policy with regard to France, Scotland and Wales; was frequently employed on business of the highest moment; and was the royal mouthpiece on several important occasions. In 1283 a council, or, as it is sometimes called, a parliament, met in his house at Acton Burnell, and he was responsible for the settlement of the court of chancery in London. In spite of his numerous engagements, Burnell found time to aggrandize his bishopric, to provide liberally for his nephews and other kinsmen, and to pursue his cherished but futile aim of founding a great family. Licentious and avaricious, he amassed great wealth; and when he died on the 25th of October 1292 he left numerous estates in Shropshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Kent, Surrey and elsewhere. He was, however, genial and kind-hearted, a great lawyer and a faithful minister.

See R.W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (London, 1854-1860); and E. Foss, The Judges of England, vol. iii. (London, 1848-1864).

BURNES, SIR ALEXANDER (1805-1841), British traveller and explorer, was born at Montrose, Scotland, in 1805. While serving in India, in the army of the East India Company, which he had joined in his seventeenth year, he made himself acquainted with Hindustani and Persian, and thus obtained an appointment as interpreter at Surat in 1822. Transferred to Cutch in 1826 as assistant to the political agent, he turned his attention more particularly to the history and geography of north-western India and the adjacent countries, at that time very imperfectly known. His proposal in 1829 to undertake a journey of exploration through the valley of the Indus was not carried out owing to political apprehensions; but in 1831 he was sent to Lahore with a present of horses from King William IV. to Maharaja Ranjit Singh and took advantage of the opportunity for extensive investigations. In the following years his travels were extended through Afghanistan across the Hindu Kush to Bokhara and Persia. The narrative which he published on his visit to England in 1834 added immensely to contemporary knowledge of the countries traversed, and was one of the most popular books of the time. The first edition brought the author the sum of £800, and his services were recognized not only by the Royal Geographical Society of London, but also by that of Paris. Soon after his return to India in 1835 he was appointed to the court of Sind to secure a treaty for the navigation of the Indus; and in 1836 he undertook a political mission to Dost Mahommed at Kabul. He advised Lord Auckland to support Dost Mahommed on the throne of Kabul, but the viceroy preferred to follow the opinion of Sir William Macnaghten and reinstated Shah Shuja, thus leading up to the disasters of the first Afghan War. On the restoration of Shah Shuja in 1839, he became regular political agent at Kabul, and remained there till his assassination in 1841 (on the 2nd of November), during the heat of an insurrection. The calmness with which he continued at his post, long after the imminence of his danger was apparent, gives an heroic colouring to the close of an honourable and devoted life. It came to light in 1861 that some of Burnes' despatches from Kabul in 1839 had been altered, so as to convey opinions opposite to his, but Lord Palmerston refused after such a lapse of time to grant the inquiry demanded in the House of Commons. A narrative of his later labours was published in 1842 under the title of Cabool.

See Sir J.W. Kaye, Lives of Indian Officers (1889).

BURNET, GILBERT (1643-1715), English bishop and historian, was born in Edinburgh on the 18th of September 1643, of an ancient and distinguished Scottish house. He was the youngest son of Robert Burnet (1592-1661), who at the Restoration became a lord of session with the title of Lord Crimond. Robert Burnet had refused to sign the Scottish Covenant, although the document was drawn up by his brother-in-law, Archibald Johnstone, Lord Warristoun. He therefore found it necessary to retire from his profession, and twice went into exile. He disapproved of the rising of the Scots, but was none the less a severe critic of the government of Charles I. and of the action of the Scottish bishops. This moderate attitude he impressed on his son Gilbert, whose early education he directed. The boy entered Marischal College at the age of nine, and five years later graduated M.A. He then spent a year in the study of feudal and civil law before he resolved to devote himself to theology. He became a probationer for the Scottish ministry in 1661 just before episcopal government was re-established in Scotland. His decision to accept episcopal orders led to difficulties with his family, especially with his mother, who held rigid Presbyterian views. From this time dates his friendship with Robert Leighton (1611-1684), who greatly influenced his religious opinions. Leighton had, during a stay in the Spanish Netherlands, assimilated something of the ascetic and pietistic spirit of Jansenism, and was devoted to the interests of peace in the church. Burnet wisely refused to accept a benefice in the disturbed state of church affairs, but he wrote an audacious letter to Archbishop Sharp asking him to take measures to restore peace. Sharp sent for Burnet, and dismissed his advice without apparent resentment. He had already made valuable acquaintances in Edinburgh, and he now visited London, Oxford and Cambridge, and, after a short visit to Edinburgh in 1663, when he sought to secure a reprieve for his uncle Warristoun, he proceeded to travel in France and Holland. At Cambridge he was strongly influenced by the philosophical views of Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who proposed an unusual degree of toleration within the boundaries of the church and the limitations imposed by its liturgy and episcopal government; and his intercourse in Holland with foreign divines of different Protestant sects further encouraged his tendency to latitudinarianism.

When he returned to England in 1664 he established intimate relations with Sir Robert Moray and with John Maitland, earl and afterwards first duke of Lauderdale, both of whom at that time advocated a tolerant policy towards the Scottish covenanters. Burnet became a member of the Royal Society, of which Moray was the first president. On his father's death he had been offered a living by a relative, Sir Alexander Burnet, and in 1663 the living of Saltoun, East Lothian, had been kept open for him by one of his father's friends. He was not formally inducted at Saltoun until June 1665, although he had served there since October 1664. For the next five years he devoted himself to his parish, where he won the respect of all parties. In 1666 he alienated the Scottish bishops by a bold memorial (printed in vol. ii. of the Miscellanies of the Scottish Historical Society), in which he pointed out that they were departing from the custom of the primitive church by their excessive pretensions, and yet his attitude was far too moderate to please the Presbyterians. In 1669 he resigned his parish to become professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow, and in the same year he published an exposition of his ecclesiastical views in his Modest and Free Conference between a Conformist and a Nonconformist (by "a lover of peace"). He was Leighton's right hand in the efforts at a compromise between the episcopal and the presbyterian principle. Meanwhile he had begun to differ from Lauderdale, whose policy after the failure of the scheme of "Accommodation" moved in the direction of absolutism and repression, and during Lauderdale's visit to Scotland in 1672 the divergence rapidly developed into opposition. He warily refused the offer of a Scottish bishopric, and published in 1673 his four "conferences," entitled Vindication of the Authority, Constitution and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland, in which he insisted on the duty of passive obedience. It was partly through the influence of Anne (d. 1716), duchess of Hamilton in her own right, that he had been appointed at Glasgow, and he made common cause with the Hamiltons against Lauderdale. The duchess had made over to him the papers of her father and uncle, from which he compiled the Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of James and William, dukes of Hamilton and Castleherald. In which an Account is given of the Rise and Progress of the Civil Wars of Scotland ... together with many letters ... written by King Charles I. (London, 1677; Univ. Press, Oxford, 1852), a book which was published as the second volume of a History of the Church of Scotland, Spottiswoode's History forming the first. This work established his reputation as an historian. Meanwhile he had clandestinely married in 1671 a cousin of Lauderdale, Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of John Kennedy, 6th earl of Cassilis, a lady who had already taken an active part in affairs in Scotland, and was eighteen years older than Burnet. The marriage was kept secret for three years, and Burnet renounced all claim to his wife's fortune.

Lauderdale's ascendancy in Scotland and the failure of the attempts at compromise in Scottish church affairs eventually led Burnet to settle in England. He was favourably received by Charles II. in 1673, when he went up to London to arrange for the publication of the Hamilton Memoirs, and he was treated with confidence by the duke of York. On his return to Scotland Lauderdale refused to receive him, and denounced him to Charles II. as one of the chief centres of Scottish discontent. Burnet found it wiser to retire to England on the plea of fulfilling his duties as royal chaplain. Once in London he resigned his professorship (September 1674) at Glasgow; but, although James remained his friend, Charles struck him off the roll of court chaplains in 1674, and it was in opposition to court influence that he was made chaplain to the Rolls Chapel by the master, Sir Harbottle Grimston, and appointed lecturer at St Clement's. He was summoned in April 1675 before a committee of the House of Commons to give evidence against Lauderdale, and disclosed, without reluctance according to his enemies, confidences which had passed between him and the minister. He himself confesses in his autobiography that "it was a great error in me to appear in this matter," and his conduct cost him the patronage of the duke of York. In ecclesiastical matters he threw in his lot with Thomas Tillotson and John Tenison, and at the time of the Revolution had written some eighteen polemics against encroachments of the Roman Catholic Church. At the suggestion of Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, he began his History of the Reformation in England, based on original documents. In the necessary research he received some pecuniary help from Robert Boyle, but he was hindered in the preparation of the first part (1679) through being refused access to the Cotton library, possibly by the influence of Lauderdale. For this volume he received the thanks of parliament, and the second and third volumes appeared in 1681 and 1715. In this work he undertook to refute the statements of Nicholas Sanders, whose De Origine et progressu schismatis Anglicani libri tres (Cologne, 1585) was still, in the French translation of Maucroix, the commonly accepted account of the English reformation. Burnet's contradictions of Sanders must not, however, be accepted without independent investigation. At the time of the Popish Plot in 1678 he displayed some moderation, refusing to believe the charges made against the duke of York, though he chose this time to publish some anti-Roman pamphlets. He tried, at some risk to himself, to save the life of one of the victims, William Staly, and visited William Howard, Viscount Stafford, in the Tower. To the Exclusion Bill he opposed a suggestion of compromise, and it is said that Charles offered him the bishopric of Chichester, "if he would come entirely into his interests." Burnet's reconciliation with the court was short-lived. In January 1680 he addressed to the king a long letter on the subject of his sins; he was known to have received the dangerous confidence of Wilmot, earl of Rochester, in his last illness; and he was even suspected, unjustly, in 1683, of having composed the paper drawn up on the eve of death by William Russell, Lord Russell, whom he attended to the scaffold. On the 5th of November 1684 he preached, at the express wish of his patron Grimston, and against his own desire, the usual anti-Catholic sermon. He was consequently deprived of his appointments by order of the court, and on the accession of James II. retired to Paris. He had already begun the writing of his memoirs, which were to develop into the History of His Own Time.

Burnet now travelled in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, finally settling in Holland at the Hague, where he won from the princess of Orange a confidence which proved enduring. He rendered a signal service to William by inducing the princess to offer to leave the whole political power in her husband's hands in the event of their succession to the English crown. A prosecution against him for high treason was now set on foot both in England and in Scotland, and he took the precaution of naturalizing himself as a Dutch subject. Lady Margaret Burnet was dying when he left England, and n Holland he married a Dutch heiress of Scottish descent, Mary Scott. He returned to England with William and Mary, and drew up the English text of their declaration. His earlier views on the doctrine of non-resistance had been sensibly modified by what he saw in France after the revocation of the edict of Nantes and by the course of affairs at home, and in 1688 he published an Inquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supreme Authority in defence of the revolution. He was consecrated to the see of Salisbury on the 31st of March 1689 by a commission of bishops to whom Archbishop Sancroft had delegated his authority, declining personally to perform the office. In his pastoral letter to his clergy urging them to take the oath of allegiance, Burnet grounded the claim of William and Mary on the right of conquest, a view which gave such offence that the pamphlet was burnt by the common hangman three years later. As bishop he proved an excellent administrator, and gave the closest attention to his pastoral duties. He discouraged plurality of livings, and consequent non-residence, established a school of divinity as Salisbury, and spent much time himself in preparing candidates for confirmation, and in the examination of those who wished to enter the priesthood. Four discourses delivered to the clergy of his diocese were printed in 1694. During Queen Mary's lifetime ecclesiastical patronage passed through her hands, but after her death William III. appointed an ecclesiastical commission on which Burnet was a prominent member, for the disposal of vacant benefices. In 1696 and 1697 he presented memorials to the king suggesting that the first-fruits and tenths raised by the clergy should be devoted to the augmentation of the poorer livings, and though his suggestions were not immediately accepted, they were carried into effect under Queen Anne by the provision known as Queen Anne's Bounty. His second wife died of smallpox in 1698, and in 1700 Burnet married again, his third wife being Elizabeth (1661-1709), widow of Robert Berkeley and daughter of Sir Richard Blake, a rich and charitable woman, known by her Method of Devotion, posthumously published in 1710. In 1699 he was appointed tutor to the royal duke of Gloucester, son of the Princess Anne, an appointment which he accepted somewhat against his will. His influence at court had declined after the death of Queen Mary; William resented his often officious advice, placed little confidence in his discretion, and soon after his accession is even said to have described him as ein rechter Tartuffe. Burnet made a weighty speech against the bill (1702-1703) directed against the practice of occasional conformity, and was a consistent exponent of Broad Church principles. He devoted five years' labour to his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (1699; ed. J.R. Page, 1837), which was severely criticized by the High Church clergy. But his hopes for a comprehensive scheme which might include nonconformists in the English Church were necessarily destroyed on the accession of Queen Anne. He died on the 17th of March 1715, and was buried in the parish of St James's, Clerkenwell.

Burnet directed in his will that his most important work, the History of His Own Time, should appear six years after his death. It was published (2 vols., 1724-1734) by his sons, Gilbert and Thomas, and then not without omissions. It was attacked in 1724 by John Cockburn in A Specimen of some free and impartial Remarks. Burnet's book naturally aroused much opposition, and there were persistent rumours that the MS. had been unduly tampered with. He has been freely charged with gross misrepresentation, an accusation to which he laid himself open, for instance, in the account of the birth of James, the Old Pretender. His later intimacy with the Marlboroughs made him very lenient where the duke was concerned. The greatest value of his work naturally lies in his account of transactions of which he had personal knowledge, notably in his relation of the church history of Scotland, of the Popish Plot, of the proceedings at the Hague previous to the expedition of William and Mary, and of the personal relations between the joint sovereigns.

Of his children by his second wife, William (d. 1729) became a colonial governor in America; Gilbert (d. 1726) became prebendary of Salisbury in 1715, and chaplain to George I. in 1718; and Sir Thomas (1694-1753), his literary executor and biographer, became in 1741 judge in the court of common pleas.

Bibliography.—The chief authorities for Bishop Burnet's life are the autobiography "Rough Draft of my own Life" (ed. H.C. Foxcroft, Oxford, 1902, in the Supplement to Burnet's History), the Life by Sir Thomas Burnet in the History of His Own Time (Oxford, 1823, vol. vi.), and the History itself. A rather severe but detailed and useful criticism is given in L. v. Ranke's History of England (Eng. ed., Oxford, 1875), vol. vi. pp. 45-101. Burnet's letters to his friend, George Savile, marquess of Halifax, were published by the Royal Historical Society (Camden Miscellany, vol. xi.). The History of His Own Time (2 vols. fol., 1724-1734) ran through many editions before it was reprinted at the Clarendon Press (6 vols., 1823, and supplementary volume, 1833) with the suppressed passages of the first volume and notes by the earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, with the remarks of Swift. This edition, under the direction of M.J. Routh, was enlarged in a second Oxford edition of 1833. A new edition, based on this, but making use of the Bodleian MS., which differs very considerably from the printed version, was edited by Osmund Airy (Oxford, 1897, &c.). In 1902 (Clarendon Press, Oxford) Miss H.C. Foxcroft edited A Supplement to Burnet's History of His Own Time, to which is prefixed an account of the relation between the different versions of the History—the Bodleian MS., the fragmentary Harleian MS. in the British Museum and Sir Thomas Burnet's edition; the book contains the remaining fragments of Burnet's original memoirs, his autobiography, his letters to Admiral Herbert and his private meditations. The chief differences between Burnet's original draft as represented by the Bodleian MS. and the printed history consist in a more lenient view generally of individuals, a modification of the censure levelled at the Anglican clergy, changes obviously dictated by a general variation in his point of view, and a more cautious account of personal matters such as his early relations with Lauderdale. He also cut out much minor detail, and information relating to himself and to members of his family. His History of the Reformation of the Church of England was edited (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 7 vols., 1865) by N. Pocock.

Besides the works mentioned above may be noticed: Some Passages of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Rochester (Lond., 1680; facsimile reprint, with introduction by Lord Ronald Gower, 1875); The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt., sometime Lord Chief-Justice of his Majesties Court of Kings Bench (Lond., 1682), which is included in C. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography (vol. vi., 1818); The History of the Rights of Princes in disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church Lands (Lond., 1682, 8vo); The Life of William Bedell, D.D., Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland (1685), containing the correspondence between Bedell and James Waddesdon of the Holy Inquisition on the subject of the Roman obedience; Reflections on Mr Varillas's "History of the Revolutions that have happened in Europe in matters of Religion," and more particularly on his Ninth Book, that relates to England (Amst., 1686), appended to the account of his travels entitled Some Letters, which was originally published at Rotterdam (1686); A Discourse of the Pastoral Care (1692, 14th ed., 1821); An Essay on the Memory of the late Queen (1695); A Collection of various Tracts and Discourses written in the Years 1677 to 1704 (3 vols., 1704); and A Collection of Speeches, Prefaces, Letters, with a Description of Geneva and Holland (1713). Of his shorter religious and polemical works a catalogue is given in vol. vi. of the Clarendon Press edition of his History, and in Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual. The following translations deserve to be mentioned:—Utopia, written in Latin by Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England: translated into English (1685); A Relation of the Death of the Primitive Persecutors, written originally in Latin, by L.C.F. Lactantius: Englished by Gilbert Burnet, D.D., to which he hath made a large preface concerning Persecution (Amst., 1687).

See also A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (1907), by T.E.S. Clarke and H.C. Foxcroft, with an introduction by C.H. Firth, which contains a chronological list of Burnet's published works. Of Burnet's personal character there are well-known descriptions in chapter vii. of Macaulay's History of England, and in W.E.H. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 80 seq.

BURNET, THOMAS (1635-1715), English divine, was born at Croft in Yorkshire about the year 1635. He was educated at Northallerton, and at Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 1657 he was made fellow of Christ's, and in 1667 senior proctor of the university. By the interest of James, duke of Ormonde, he was chosen master of the Charterhouse in 1685, and took the degree of D.D. As master he made a noble stand against the illegal attempts to admit Andrew Popham as a pensioner of the house, strenuously opposing an order of the 26th of December 1686, addressed by James II. to the governors dispensing with the statutes for the occasion.

Burnet published his famous Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth,^[1] at London in 1681. This work, containing a fanciful theory of the earth's structure,^[2] attracted much attention, and he was afterwards encouraged to issue an English translation, which was printed in folio, 1684-1689. Addison commended the author in a Latin ode, but his theory was attacked by John Keill, William Whiston and Erasmus Warren, to all of whom he returned answers. His reputation obtained for him an introduction at court by Archbishop Tillotson, whom he succeeded as clerk of the closet to King William. But he suddenly marred his prospects by the publication, in 1692, of a work entitled Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina antiqua de Rerum Originibus, in which he treated the Mosaic account of the fall of man as an allegory. This excited a great clamour against him; and the king was obliged to remove him from his office at court. Of this book an English translation was published in 1729. Burnet published several other minor works before his death, which took place at the Charterhouse on the 27th September 1715. Two posthumous works appeared several years after his death—De Fide et Officiis Christianorum (1723), and De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus (1723); in which he maintained the doctrine of a middle state, the millennium, and the limited duration of future punishment. A Life of Dr Burnet, by Heathcote, appeared in 1759.

BURNET, known botanically as Poterium, a member of the rose family. The plants are perennial herbs with pinnate leaves and small flowers arranged in dense long-stalked heads. Great burnet (Poterium officinale) is found in damp meadows; salad burnet (P. Sanguisorba) is a smaller plant with much smaller flower-heads growing in dry pastures.

BURNETT, FRANCES ELIZA HODGSON (1849- ), Anglo-American novelist, whose maiden name was Hodgson, was born in Manchester, England, on the 24th of November 1849; she went to America with her parents, who settled in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1865. Miss Hodgson soon began to write stories for magazines. In 1873 she married Dr L.M. Burnett of Washington, whom she afterwards (1898) divorced. Her reputation as a novelist was made by her remarkable tale of Lancashire life, That Lass o' Lowrie's (1877), and a number of other volumes followed, of which the best were Through one Administration (1883) and A Lady of Quality (1896). In 1886 she attained a new popularity by her charming story of Little Lord Fauntleroy, and this led to other stories of child-life. Little Lord Fauntleroy was dramatized (see Copyright for the legal questions involved) and had a great success on the stage; and other dramas by her were also produced. In 1900 she married a second time, her husband being Mr Stephen Townesend, a surgeon, who (as Will Dennis) had taken to the stage and had collaborated with her in some of her plays.

BURNEY, CHARLES (1726-1814), English musical historian, was born at Shrewsbury on the 12th of April 1726. He received his earlier education at the free school of that city, and was afterwards sent to the public school at Chester. His first music master was Edmund Baker, organist of Chester cathedral, and a pupil of Dr John Blow. Returning to Shrewsbury when about fifteen years old, he continued his musical studies for three years under his half-brother, James Burney, organist of St Mary's church, and was then sent to London as a pupil of the celebrated Dr Arne, with whom he remained three years. Burney wrote some music for Thomson's Alfred, which was produced at Drury Lane theatre on the 30th of March 1745. In 1749 he was appointed organist of St Dionis-Backchurch, Fenchurch Street, with a salary of £30 a year; and he was also engaged to take the harpsichord in the "New Concerts" then recently established at the King's Arms, Cornhill. In that year he married Miss Esther Sleepe, who died in 1761; in 1769 he married Mrs Stephen Allen of Lynn. Being threatened with a pulmonary affection he went in 1751 to Lynn in Norfolk, where he was elected organist, with an annual salary of £100, and there he resided for the next nine years. During that time he began to entertain the idea of writing a general history of music. His Ode for St Cecilia's Day was performed at Ranelagh Gardens in 1759; and in 1760 he returned to London in good health and with a young family; the eldest child, a girl of eight years of age, surprised the public by her attainments as a harpsichord player. The concertos for the harpsichord which Burney published soon after his return to London were regarded with much admiration. In 1766 he produced, at Drury Lane, a free English version and adaptation of J.J. Rousseau's operetta Le Devin du village, under the title of The Cunning Man. The university of Oxford conferred upon him, on the 23rd of June 1769, the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Music, on which occasion he presided at the performance of his exercise for these degrees. This consisted of an anthem, with an overture, solos, recitatives and choruses, accompanied by instruments, besides a vocal anthem in eight parts, which was not performed. In 1769 he published An Essay towards a History of Comets.

Amidst his various professional avocations, Burney never lost sight of his favorite object—his History of Music—and therefore resolved to travel abroad for the purpose of collecting materials that could not be found in Great Britain. Accordingly, he left London in June 1770, furnished with numerous letters of introduction, and proceeded to Paris, and thence to Geneva, Turin, Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. The results of his observations he published in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771). Dr Johnson thought so well of this work that, alluding to his own Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, he said, "I had that clever dog Burney's Musical Tour in my eye." In July 1772 Burney again visited the continent, to collect further materials, and, after his return to London, published his tour under the title of The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces (1773). In 1773 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1776 appeared the first volume (in 4to) of his long-projected History of Music. In 1782 Burney published his second volume; and in 1789 the third and fourth. Though severely criticized by Forkel in Germany and by the Spanish ex-Jesuit, Requeno, who, in his Italian work Saggi sul Ristabilimento dell' Arte Armonica de' Greci e Romani Cantori (Parma, 1798), attacks Burney's account of the ancient Greek music, and calls him lo scompigliato Burney, the History of Music was generally recognized as possessing great merit. The least satisfactory volume is the fourth, the treatment of Handel and Bach being quite inadequate. Burney's first tour was translated into German by Ebeling, and printed at Hamburg in 1772; and his second tour, translated into German by Bode, was published at Hamburg in 1773. A Dutch translation of his second tour, with notes by J.W. Lustig, organist at Groningen, was published there in 1786. The Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients, in the first volume of Burney's History, was translated into German by J.J. Eschenburg, and printed at Leipzig, 1781. Burney derived much aid from the first two volumes of Padre Martini's very learned Storia della Musica (Bologna, 1757-1770). One cannot but admire his persevering industry, and his sacrifices of time, money and personal comfort, in collecting and preparing materials for his History, and few will be disposed to condemn severely errors and oversights in a work of such extent and difficulty.

In 1774 he had written A Plan for a Music School. In 1779 he wrote for the Royal Society an account of the infant Crotch, whose remarkable musical talent excited so much attention at that time. In 1784 he published, with an Italian title-page, the music annually performed in the pope's chapel at Rome during Passion Week. In 1785 he published, for the benefit of the Musical Fund, an account of the first commemoration of Handel in Westminster Abbey in the preceding year, with an excellent life of Handel. In 1796 he published Memoirs and Letters of Metastasio. Towards the close of his life Burney was paid £1000 for contributing to Rees's Cyclopaedia all the musical articles not belonging to the department of natural philosophy and mathematics. In 1783, through the treasury influence of his friend Edmund Burke, he was appointed organist to the chapel of Chelsea Hospital, and he moved his residence from St Martin's Street, Leicester Square, to live in the hospital for the remainder of his life. He was made a member of the Institute of France, and nominated a correspondent in the class of the fine arts, in the year 1810. From 1806 until his death he enjoyed a pension of £300 granted by Fox. He died at Chelsea College on the 12th of April 1814, and was interred in the burying-ground of the college. A tablet was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Burney's portrait was painted by Reynolds, and his bust was cut by Nollekens in 1805. He had a wide circle of acquaintance among the distinguished artists and literary men of his day. At one time he thought of writing a life of his friend Dr Samuel Johnson, but he retired before the crowd of biographers who rushed into that field. His character in private as well as in public life appears to have been very amiable and exemplary. Dr Burney's eldest son, James, was a distinguished officer in the royal navy, who died a rear-admiral in 1821; his second son was the Rev. Charles Burney, D.D. (1757-1817), a well-known classical scholar, whose splendid collection of rare books, and MSS. was ultimately bought by the nation for the British Museum; and his second daughter was Frances (Madame D'Arblay, q.v.).

The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay contain many minute and interesting particulars of her father's public and private life, and of his friends and contemporaries. A life of Burney by Madame D'Arblay appeared in 1832.

Besides the operatic music above mentioned, Burney's known compositions consist of:—(1) Six Sonatas for the harpsichord; (2) Two Sonatas for the harp or piano, with accompaniments for violin and violoncello; (3) Sonatas for two violins and a bass: two sets; (4) Six Lessons for the harpsichord; (5) Six Duets for two German flutes; (6) Three Concertos for the harpsichord; (7) Six concert pieces with an introduction and fugue for the organ; (8) Six Concertos for the violin, &c., in eight parts; (9) Two Sonatas for pianoforte, violin and violoncello; (10) A Cantata, &c.; (11) Anthems, &c.; (12) XII. Canzonetti a due voci in Canone, poesia dell' Abate Metastasio.

BURNHAM BEECHES, a wooded tract of 375 acres in Buckinghamshire, England, acquired in 1879 by the Corporation of the city of London, and preserved for public use. This tract, the remnant of an ancient forest, the more beautiful because of the undulating character of the land, lies west of the road between Slough and Beaconsfield, and 2 m. north of Burnham Beeches station on the Great Western railway. The poet Thomas Gray, who stayed frequently at Stoke Poges in the vicinity, is enthusiastic concerning the beauty of the Beeches ina letter to Horace Walpole in 1737. Near the township of Burnham are slight Early English remains of an abbey founded in 1265. Burnham is an urban district with a population (1901) of 3245.

BURNHAM-ON-CROUCH, an urban district in the southeastern parliamentary division of Essex, England, 43 m. E. by N. from London on a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2919. The church of St Mary is principally late Perpendicular, a good example; it has Decorated portions and a Norman font. There are extensive oyster beds in the Crouch estuary. Burnham lies 6 m. from the North Sea; below it the Crouch is joined on the south side by the Roch, which branches into numerous creeks, and, together with the main estuary, forms Foulness, Wallasea, Potton and other low, flat islands, embanked and protected from incursions of the sea. Burnham is in some repute as a watering-place, and is a favourite yachting station. There is considerable trade in corn and coal, and boat-building is carried on.

BURNING TO DEATH. As a legal punishment for various crimes burning alive was formerly very wide-spread. It was common among the Romans, being given in the XII. Tables as the special penalty for arson. Under the Gothic codes adulterers were so punished, and throughout the middle ages it was the civil penalty for certain heinous crimes, e.g. poisoning, heresy, witchcraft, arson, bestiality and sodomy, and so continued in some cases, nominally at least, till the beginning of the 19th century. In England, under the common law, women condemned for high treason or petty treason (murder of husband, murder of master or mistress, certain offences against the coin, &c.) were burned, this being considered more "decent" than hanging and exposure on a gibbet. In practice the convict was strangled before being burnt. The last woman burnt in England suffered in 1789, the punishment being abolished in 1790.

Burning was not included among the penalties for heresy under the Roman imperial codes; but the burning of heretics by orthodox mobs had long been sanctioned by custom before the edicts of the emperor Frederick II. (1222, 1223) made it the civil-law punishment for heresy. His example was followed in France by Louis IX. in the Establishments of 1270. In England, where the civil law was never recognized, the common law took no cognizance of ecclesiastical offences, and the church courts had no power to condemn to death. There were, indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries isolated instances of the burning of heretics. William of Newburgh describes the burning of certain foreign sectaries in 1169, and early in the 13th century a deacon was burnt by order of the council of Oxford (Foxe ii. 374; cf. Bracton, de Corona, ii. 300), but by what legal sanction is not obvious. The right of the crown to issue writs de haeretico comburendo, claimed for it by later jurists, was based on that issued by Henry IV. in 1400 for the burning of William Sawtre; but Sir James Stephen (Hist. Crim. Law) points out that this was issued "with the assent of the lords temporal," which seems to prove that the crown had no right under the common law to issue such writs. The burning of heretics was actually made legal in England by the statute de haeretico comburendo (1400), passed ten days after the issue of the above writ. This was repealed in 1533, but the Six Articles Act of 1539 revived burning as a penalty for denying transubstantiation. Under Queen Mary the acts of Henry IV. and Henry V. were revived; they were finally abolished in 1558 on the accession of Elizabeth. Edward VI., Elizabeth and James I., however, burned heretics (illegally as it would appear) under their supposed right of issuing writs for this purpose. The last heretics burnt in England were two Arians, Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, and Edward Wightman at Lichfield, both in 1610. As for witches, countless numbers were burned in most European countries, though not in England, where they were hanged. In Scotland in Charles II.'s day the law still was that witches were to be "worried at the stake and then burnt"; and a witch was burnt at Dornoch so late as 1708.

BURNLEY, a market town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, at the junction of the rivers Brun and Calder, 213 m. N.N.W. of London and 29 m. N. of Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Pop. (1891) 87,016; (1901) 97,043. The church of St Peter dates from the 14th century, but is largely modernized; among a series of memorials of the Towneley family is one to Charles Towneley (d. 1805), who collected the series of antique marbles, terra-cottas, bronzes, coins and gems which are named after him and preserved in the British Museum. In 1902 Towneley Hall and Park were acquired by the corporation, the mansion being adapted to use as a museum and art gallery, and in 1903 a summer exhibition was held here. There are a large number of modern churches and chapels, a handsome town-hall, market hall, museum and art gallery, school of science, municipal technical school, various benevolent institutions, and pleasant public parks and recreation grounds. The principal industries are cotton-weaving, worsted-making, iron-founding, coal-mining, quarrying, brick-burning and the making of sanitary wares. It has been suggested that Burnley may coincide with Brunanburh, the battlefield on which the Saxons conquered the Dano-Celtic force in 937. During the cotton famine consequent upon the American war of 1861-65 it suffered severely, and the operatives were employed on relief works embracing an extensive system of improvements. The parliamentary borough (1867), which returns one member, falls within the Clitheroe division of the county. The county borough was created in 1888. The town was incorporated in 1861. The corporation consists of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 36 councillors. By act of parliament in 1890 Burnley was created a suffragan bishopric of the diocese of Manchester. Area of the municipal borough, 4005 acres.

BURNOUF, EUGÈNE (1801-1852), French orientalist, was born in Paris on the 8th of April 1801. His father, Prof. Jean Louis Burnouf (1775-1844), was a classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of an excellent translation of Tacitus (6 vols., 1827-1833). Eugene Burnouf published in 1826 an Essai sur le Pâli ..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in the following year Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'essai sur le Pâli. The next great work he undertook was the deciphering of the Zend manuscripts brought to France by Anquetil du Perron. By his labours a knowledge of the Zend language was first brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused the Vendidad Sade, part of one of the books bearing the name of Zoroaster, to be lithographed with the utmost care from the Zend MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and published it in folio parts, 1829-1843. From 1833 to 1835 he published his Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses; he also published the Sanskrit text and French translation of the Bhâgavata Purâna ou histoire poétique de Krichna in three folio volumes (1840-1847). His last works were Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien (1844), and a translation of Le lotus de la bonne loi (1852). Burnouf died on the 28th of May 1852. He had been for twenty years a member of the Académie des Inscriptions and professor of Sanskrit in the Collège de France.

See a notice of Burnouf's works by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, prefixed to the second edition (1876) of the Introd. à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien; also Naudet, "Notice historique sur M.M. Burnouf, père et fils," in Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, xx. A list of his valuable contributions to the Journal asiatique, and of his MS. writings, is given in the appendix to the Choix de lettres d'Eugène Burnouf (1891).

BURNOUS (from the Arab. burnus), a long cloak of coarse woollen stuff with a hood, usually white in colour, worn by the Arabs and Berbers throughout North Africa.

BURNS, SIR GEORGE, Bart. (1795-1890), English shipowner, was born in Glasgow on the 10th of December 1795, the son of the Rev. John Burns. In partnership with a brother, James, he began as a Glasgow general merchant about 1818, and in 1824 in conjunction with a Liverpool partner, Hugh Matthie, started a line of small sailing ships which ran between Glasgow and Liverpool. As business increased the vessels were also sailed to Belfast, and steamers afterwards replaced the sailing ships. In 1830 a partnership was entered into with the McIvers of Liverpool, in which George Burns devoted himself specially to the management of the ships. In 1838 with Samuel Cunard, Robert Napier and other capitalists, the partners (McIver and Burns) started the "Cunard" Atlantic line of steamships. They secured the British government's contract for the carrying of the mails to North America. The sailings were begun with four steamers of about 1000 tons each, which made the passage in 15 days at some 8½ knots per hour. George Burns retired from the Glasgow management of the line in 1860. He was made a baronet in 1889, but died on the 2nd of June 1890 at Castle Wemyss, where he had spent the latter years of his life.

John Burns (1829-1901), his eldest son, who succeeded him in the baronetcy, and became head of the Cunard Company, was created a peer, under the title of Baron Inverclyde, in 1897; he was the first to suggest to the government the use of merchant vessels for war purposes. George Arbuthnot Burns (1861-1905) succeeded his father in the peerage, as 2nd baron Inverclyde, and became chairman of the Cunard Company in 1902. He conducted the negotiations which resulted in the refusal of the Cunard Company to enter the shipping combination, the International Mercantile Marine Company, formed by Messrs J.P. Morgan & Co., and took a leading part in the application of turbine engines to ocean liners.

BURNS, JOHN (1858- ), English politician, was born at Vauxhall, London, in October 1858, the second son of Alexander Burns, an engineer, of Ayrshire extraction. He attended a national school in Battersea until he was ten years old, when he was sent to work in Price's candle factory. He worked for a short time as a page-boy, then in some engine works, and at fourteen was apprenticed for seven years to a Millbank engineer. He continued his education at the night-schools, and read extensively, especially the works of Robert Owen, J.S. Mill, Paine and Cobbett. He ascribed his conversion to the principles of socialism to his sense of the insufficiency of the arguments advanced against it by J.S. Mill, but he had learnt socialistic doctrine from a French fellow-workman, Victor Delahaye, who had witnessed the Commune. After working at his trade in various parts of England, and on board ship, he went for a year to the West African coast at the mouth of the Niger as a foreman engineer. His earnings from this undertaking were expended on a six months' tour in France, Germany and Austria for the study of political and economic conditions. He had early begun the practice of outdoor speaking, and his exceptional physical strength and strong voice were invaluable qualifications for a popular agitator. In 1878 he was arrested and locked up for the night for addressing an open-air demonstration on Clapham Common. Two years later he married Charlotte Gale, the daughter of a Battersea shipwright. He was again arrested in 1886 for his share in the West End riots when the windows of the Carlton and other London clubs were broken, but cleared himself at the Old Bailey of the charge of inciting the mob to violence. In November of the next year, however, he was again arrested for resisting the police in their attempt to break up the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and was condemned to six weeks' imprisonment. A speech delivered by him at the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1884 had attracted considerable attention, and in that year he became a member of the Social Democratic Federation, which put him forward unsuccessfully in the next year as parliamentary candidate for West Nottingham. His connexion with the Social Democratic Federation was short-lived; but he was an active member of the executive of the Amalgamated Engineers' trade union, and was connected with the trades union congresses until 1895, when, through his influence, a resolution excluding all except wage labourers was passed. He was still working at his trade in Hoe's printing machine works when he became a Progressive member of the first London County Council, being supported by an allowance of £2 a week subscribed by his constituents, the Battersea working men. He introduced in 1892 a motion that all contracts for the County Council should be paid at trade union rates and carried out under trade union conditions, and devoted his efforts in general to a war against monopolies, except those of the state or the municipality. In the same year (1889) in which he became a member of the County Council, he acted with Mr Ben Tillett as the chief leader and organizer of the London dock strike. He entered the House of Commons as member for Battersea in 1892, and was re-elected in 1895, 1900 and 1906. In parliament he became well known as an independent Radical, and he was included in the Liberal cabinet by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in December 1905 as president of the Local Government Board. During the next two years, though much out of favour with his former socialist allies, he earned golden opinions for his administrative policy, and for his refusal to adopt the visionary proposals put forward by the more extreme members of the Labour party for dealing with the "unemployed" question; and in 1908 he retained his office in Mr Asquith's cabinet.

BURNS, ROBERT (1759-1796), Scottish poet, was born on the 25th of January 1759 in a cottage about 2 m. from Ayr. He was the eldest son of a small farmer, William Burness, of Kincardineshire stock, who wrought hard, practised integrity, wished to bring up his children in the fear of God, but had to fight all his days against the winds and tides of adversity. "The poet," said Thomas Carlyle, "was fortunate in his father—a man of thoughtful intense character, as the best of our peasants are, valuing knowledge, possessing some and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless: a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank in society, and worth descending far in society to seek. ... Had he been ever so little richer, the whole might have issued otherwise. But poverty sunk the whole family even below the reach of our cheap school system, and Burns remained a hard-worked plough-boy."

Through a series of migrations from one unfortunate farm to another; from Alloway (where he was taught to read) to Mt. Oliphant, and then (1777) to Lochlea in Tarbolton (where he learnt the rudiments of geometry), the poet remained in the same condition of straitened circumstances. At the age of thirteen he thrashed the corn with his own hands, at fifteen he was the principal labourer. The family kept no servant, and for several years butchers' meat was a thing unknown in the house. "This kind of life," he writes, "the cheerless gloom of a hermit and the unceasing toil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year." His naturally robust frame was overtasked, and his nervous constitution received a fatal strain. His shoulders were bowed, he became liable to headaches, palpitations and fits of depressing melancholy. From these hard tasks and his fiery temperament, craving in vain for sympathy in a frigid air, grew the strong temptations on which Burns was largely wrecked,—the thirst for stimulants and the revolt against restraint which soon made headway and passed all bars. In the earlier portions of his career a buoyant humour bore him up; and amid thick-coming shapes of ill he bated no jot of heart or hope. He was cheered by vague stirrings of ambition, which he pathetically compares to the "blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave." Sent to school at Kirkoswald, he became, for his scant leisure, a great reader—eating at meal-times with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other,—and carrying a few small volumes in his pocket to study in spare moments in the fields. "The collection of songs" he tells us, "was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, sublime or fustian." He lingered over the ballads in his cold room by night; by day, whilst whistling at the plough, he invented new forms and was inspired by fresh ideas, "gathering round him the memories and the traditions of his country till they became a mantle and a crown." It was among the furrows of his father's fields that he was inspired with the perpetually quoted wish—

An equally striking illustration of the same feeling is to be found in his summer Sunday's ramble to the Leglen wood,—the fabled haunt of Wallace,—which the poet confesses to have visited "with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did the shrine of Loretto." In another reference to the same period he refers to the intense susceptibility to the homeliest aspects of Nature which throughout characterized his genius. "Scarcely any object gave me more—I do not know if I should call it pleasure—but something which exalts and enraptures me—than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation in a cloudy winter day and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. I listened to the birds, and frequently turned out of my path lest I should disturb their little songs or frighten them to another station." Auroral visions were gilding his horizon as he walked in glory, if not in joy, "behind his plough upon the mountain sides."; but the swarm of his many-coloured fancies was again made grey by the atra cura of unsuccessful toils.

Burns had written his first verses of note, "Behind yon hills where Stinchar (afterwards Lugar) flows," when in 1781 he went to Irvine to learn the trade of a flax-dresser. "It was," he says, "an unlucky affair. As we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, the shop took fire and burned to ashes; and I was left, like a true poet, without a sixpence." His own heart, too, had unfortunately taken fire. He was poring over mathematics till, in his own phraseology,—still affected in its prose by the classical pedantries caught from Pope by Ramsay,—"the sun entered Virgo, when a charming fillette, who lived next door, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the scene of my studies." We need not detail the story, nor the incessant repetitions of it, which marked and sometimes marred his career. The poet was jilted, went through the usual despairs, and resorted to the not unusual sources of consolation. He had found that he was "no enemy to social life," and his mates had discovered that he was the best of boon companions in the lyric feasts, where his eloquence shed a lustre over wild ways of life, and where he was beginning to be distinguished as a champion of the New Lights and a satirist of the Calvinism whose waters he found like those of Marah.

In Robert's 25th year his father died, full of sorrows and apprehensions for the gifted son who wrote for his tomb in Alloway kirkyard, the fine epitaph ending with the characteristic line—

For some time longer the poet, with his brother Gilbert, lingered at Lochlea, reading agricultural books, miscalculating crops, attending markets, and in a mood of reformation resolving, "in spite of the world, the flesh and the devil, to be a wise man." Affairs, however, went no better with the family; and in 1784 they migrated to Mossgiel, where he lived and wrought, during four years, for a return scarce equal to the wage of the commonest labourer in our day. Meanwhile he had become intimate with his future wife, Jean Armour; but the father, a master mason, discountenanced the match, and the girl being disposed to "sigh as a lover," as a daughter to obey, Burns, in 1786, gave up his suit, resolved to seek refuge in exile, and having accepted a situation as book-keeper to a slave estate in Jamaica, had taken his passage in a ship for the West Indies. His old associations seemed to be breaking up, men and fortune scowled, and "hungry ruin had him in the wind," when he wrote the lines ending—

and addressed to the most famous of the loves, in which he was as prolific as Catullus or Tibullus, the proposal—

He was withheld from his project and, happily or unhappily, the current of his life was turned by the success of his first volume, which was published at Kilmarnock in June 1786. It contained some of his most justly celebrated poems, the results of his scanty leisure at Lochlea and Mossgiel; among others "The Twa Dogs,"—a graphic idealization of Aesop,—"The Author's Prayer," the "Address to the Deil," "The Vision" and "The Dream," "Halloween," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the lines "To a Mouse" and "To a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie," and some of his most popular songs. This epitome of a genius so marvellous and so varied took his audience by storm. "The country murmured of him from sea to sea." "With his poems," says Robert Heron, "old and young, grave and gay, learned and ignorant, were alike transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway, and I can well remember how even plough-boys and maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the wages they earned the most hardly, and which they wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they might but procure the works of Burns." This first edition only brought the author £20 direct return, but it introduced him to the literati of Edinburgh, whither he was invited, and where he was welcomed, feasted, admired and patronized. He appeared as a portent among the scholars of the northern capital and its university, and manifested, according to Mr Lockhart, "in the whole strain of his bearing, his belief that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was where he was entitled to be, hardly deigning to flatter them by exhibiting a symptom of being flattered."

Sir Walter Scott bears a similar testimony to the dignified simplicity and almost exaggerated independence of the poet, during this annus mirabilis of his success. "As for Burns, Virgilium vidi tantum, I was a lad of fifteen when he came to Edinburgh, but had sense enough to be interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him. I saw him one day with several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened.... I remember ... his shedding tears over a print representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on the other his widow with a child in her arms. His person was robust, his manners rustic, not clownish. ... His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetic character and temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the least intrusive forwardness. I thought his acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited; and having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson he talked of them with too much humility as his models. He was much caressed in Edinburgh, but the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling." Laudatur et alget. Burns went from those meetings, where he had been posing professors (no hard task), and turning the heads of duchesses, to share a bed in the garret of a writer's apprentice,—they paid together 3s. a week for the room. It was in the house of Mr Carfrae, Baxter's Close, Lawnmarket, "first scale stair on the left hand in going down, first door in the stair." During Burns's life it was reserved for William Pitt to recognize his place as a great poet; the more cautious critics of the North were satisfied to endorse him as a rustic prodigy, and brought upon themselves a share of his satire. Some of the friendships contracted during this period—as for Lord Glencairn and Mrs Dunlop—are among the most pleasing and permanent in literature; for genuine kindness was never wasted on one who, whatever his faults, has never been accused of ingratitude. But in the bard's city life there was an unnatural element. He stooped to beg for neither smiles nor favour, but the gnarled country oak is cut up into cabinets in artificial prose and verse. In the letters to Mr Graham, the prologue to Mr Wood, and the epistles to Clarinda, he is dancing minuets with hob-nailed shoes. When, in 1787, the second edition of the Poems came out, the proceeds of their sale realized for the author £400. On the strength of this sum he gave himself two long rambles, full of poetic material—one through the border towns into England as far as Newcastle, returning by Dumfries to Mauchline, and another a grand tour through the East Highlands, as far as Inverness, returning by Edinburgh, and so home to Ayrshire.

In 1788 Burns took a new farm at Ellisland on the Nith, settled there, married, lost his little money, and wrote, among other pieces, "Auld Lang Syne" and "Tam o' Shanter." In 1789 he obtained, through the good office of Mr Graham of Fintry, an appointment as excise-officer of the district, worth £50 per annum. In 1791 he removed to a similar post at Dumfries worth £70. In the course of the following year he was asked to contribute to George Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs with Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Violin: the poetry by Robert Burns. To this work he contributed about one hundred songs, the best of which are now ringing in the ear of every Scotsman from New Zealand to San Francisco. For these, original and adapted, he received a shawl for his wife, a picture by David Allan representing the "Cottar's Saturday Night," and £5! The poet wrote an indignant letter and never afterwards composed for money. Unfortunately the "Rock of Independence" to which he had proudly retired was but a castle of air, over which the meteors of French political enthusiasm cast a lurid gleam. In the last years of his life, exiled from polite society on account of his revolutionary opinions, he became sourer in temper and plunged more deeply into the dissipations of the lower ranks, among whom he found his only companionship and sole, though shallow, sympathy.

Burns began to feel himself prematurely old. Walking with a friend who proposed to him to join a county ball, he shook his head, saying "that's all over now," and adding a verse of Lady Grizel Baillie's ballad—

His hand shook; his pulse and appetite failed; his spirits sunk into a uniform gloom. In April 1796 he wrote—"I fear it will be some time before I tune my lyre again. By Babel's streams I have sat and wept. I have only known existence by the pressure of sickness and counted time by the repercussions of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope. I look on the vernal day and say with poor Fergusson—

On the 4th of July he was seen to be dying. On the 12th he wrote to his cousin for the loan of £10 to save him from passing his last days in jail. On the 21st he was no more. On the 25th, when his last son came into the world, he was buried with local honours, the volunteers of the company to which he belonged firing three volleys over his grave.

It has been said that "Lowland Scotland as a distinct nationality came in with two warriors and went out with two bards. It came in with William Wallace and Robert Bruce and went out with Robert Burns and Walter Scott. The first two made the history, the last two told the story and sung the song." But what in the minstrel's lay was mainly a requiem was in the people's poet also a prophecy. The position of Burns in the progress of British literature may be shortly defined; he was a link between two eras, like Chaucer, the last of the old and the first of the new—the inheritor of the traditions and the music of the past, in some respects the herald of the future.

The volumes of our lyrist owe part of their popularity to the fact of their being an epitome of melodies, moods and memories that had belonged for centuries to the national life, the best inspirations of which have passed into them. But in gathering from his ancestors Burns has exalted their work by asserting a new dignity for their simplest themes. He is the heir of Barbour, distilling the spirit of the old poet's epic into a battle chant, and of Dunbar, reproducing the various humours of a half-sceptical, half-religious philosophy of life. He is the pupil of Ramsay, but he leaves his master, to make a social protest and to lead a literary revolt. The Gentle Shepherd, still largely a court pastoral, in which "a man's a man" if born a gentleman, may be contrasted with "The Jolly Beggars"—the one is like a minuet of the ladies of Versailles on the sward of the Swiss village near the Trianon, the other like the march of the maenads with Theroigne de Mericourt. Ramsay adds to the rough tunes and words of the ballads the refinement of the wits who in the "Easy" and "Johnstone" clubs talked over their cups of Prior and Pope, Addison and Gay. Burns inspires them with a fervour that thrills the most wooden of his race. We may clench the contrast by a representative example. This is from Ramsay's version of perhaps the best-known of Scottish songs,—

Compare the verses in Burns—

Burns as a poet of the inanimate world doubtless derived hints from Thomson of The Seasons, but in his power of tuning its manifestation to the moods of the mind he is more properly ranked as a forerunner of Wordsworth. He never follows the fashions of his century, except in his failures—in his efforts at set panegyric or fine letter-writing. His highest work knows nothing of "Damon" or "Musidora." He leaves the atmosphere of drawing-rooms for the ingle or the ale-house or the mountain breeze.

The affectations of his style are insignificant and rare. His prevailing characteristic is an absolute sincerity. A love for the lower forms of social life was his besetting sin; Nature was his healing power. Burns compares himself to an Aeolian harp, strung to every wind of heaven. His genius flows over all living and lifeless things with a sympathy that finds nothing mean or insignificant. An uprooted daisy becomes in his pages an enduring emblem of the fate of artless maid and simple bard. He disturbs a mouse's nest and finds in the "tim'rous beastie" a fellow-mortal doomed like himself to "thole the winter's sleety dribble," and draws his oft-repeated moral. He walks abroad and, in a verse that glints with the light of its own rising sun before the fierce sarcasm of "The Holy Fair," describes the melodies of a "simmer Sunday morn." He loiters by Afton Water and "murmurs by the running brook a music sweeter than its own." He stands by a roofless tower, where "the howlet mourns in her dewy bower," and "sets the wild echoes flying," and adds to a perfect picture of the scene his famous vision of "Libertie." In a single stanza he concentrates the sentiment of many Night Thoughts—

For other examples of the same graphic power we may refer to the course of his stream—

or to "The Birks of Aberfeldy" or the "spate" in the dialogue of "The Brigs of Ayr." The poet is as much at home in the presence of this flood as by his "trottin' burn's meander." Familiar with all the seasons he represents the phases of a northern winter with a frequency characteristic of his clime and of his fortunes; her tempests became anthems in his verse, and the sounding woods "raise his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of the wind"; full of pity for the shelterless poor, the "ourie cattle," the "silly sheep," and the "helpless birds," he yet reflects that the bitter blast is not "so unkind as man's ingratitude." This constant tendency to ascend above the fair or wild features of outward things, or to penetrate beneath them, to make them symbols, to endow them with a voice to speak for humanity, distinguishes Burns as a descriptive poet from the rest of his countrymen. As a painter he is rivalled by Dunbar and James I., more rarely by Thomson and Ramsay. The "lilt" of Tannahill's finest verse is even more charming. But these writers rest in their art; their main care is for their own genius. The same is true in a minor degree of some of his great English successors. Keats has a palette of richer colours, but he seldom condescends to "human nature's daily food." Shelley floats in a thin air to stars and mountain tops, and vanishes from our gaze like his skylark. Byron, in the midst of his revolutionary fervour, never forgets that he himself belongs to the "caste of Vere de Vere." Wordsworth's placid affection and magnanimity stretch beyond mankind, and, as in "Hart-leap-well" and the "Cuckoo," extend to bird and beast; he moralizes grandly on the vicissitudes of common life, but he does not enter into, because by right of superior virtue he places himself above them. "From the Lyrical Ballads," it has been said, "it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry or are given in marriage." We revere the monitor who, consciously good and great, gives us the dry light of truth, but we love the bard, nostrae deliciae, who is all fire—fire from heaven and Ayrshire earth mingling in the outburst of passion and of power, which is his poetry and the inheritance of his race. He had certainly neither culture nor philosophy enough to have written the "Ode on the Recollections of Childhood," but to appreciate that ode requires an education. The sympathies of Burns, as broad as Wordsworth's, are more intense; in turning his pages we feel ourselves more decidedly in the presence of one who joys with those who rejoice and mourns with those who mourn. He is never shallow, ever plain, and the expression of his feeling is so terse that it is always memorable. Of the people he speaks more directly for the people than any of our more considerable poets. Chaucer has a perfect hold of the homeliest phases of life, but he wants the lyric element, and the charm of his language has largely faded from untutored ears. Shakespeare, indeed, has at once a loftier vision and a wider grasp; for he sings of "Thebes and Pelops line," of Agincourt and Philippi, as of Falstaff, and Snug the joiner, and the "meanest flower that blows." But not even Shakespeare has put more thought into poetry which the most prosaic must appreciate than Burns has done. The latter moves in a narrower sphere and wants the strictly dramatic faculty, but its place is partly supplied by the vividness of his narrative. His realization of incident and character is manifested in the sketches in which the manners and prevailing fancies of his countrymen are immortalized in connexion with local scenery. Among those almost every variety of disposition finds its favourite. The quiet households of the kingdom have received a sort of apotheosis in the "Cottar's Saturday Night." It has been objected that the subject does not afford scope for the more daring forms of the author's genius; but had he written no other poem, this heartful rendering of a good week's close in a God-fearing home, sincerely devout, and yet relieved from all suspicion of sermonizing by its humorous touches, would have secured a permanent place in literature. It transcends Thomson and Beattie at their best, and will smell sweet like the actions of the just for generations to come.

Lovers of rustic festivity may hold that the poet's greatest performance is his narrative of "Halloween," which for easy vigour, fulness of rollicking life, blended truth and fancy, is unsurpassed in its kind. Campbell, Wilson, Hazlitt, Montgomery, Burns himself, and the majority of his critics, have recorded their preference for "Tam o' Shanter," where the weird superstitious element that has played so great a part in the imaginative work of this part of our island is brought more prominently forward. Few passages of description are finer than that of the roaring Doon and Alloway Kirk glimmering through the groaning trees; but the unique excellence of the piece consists in its variety, and a perfectly original combination of the terrible and the ludicrous. Like Goethe's Walpurgis Nacht, brought into closer contact with real life, it stretches from the drunken humours of Christopher Sly to a world of fantasies almost as brilliant as those of the Midsummer Night's Dream, half solemnized by the severer atmosphere of a sterner clime. The contrast between the lines "Kings may be blest," &c., and those which follow, beginning "But pleasures are like poppies spread," is typical of the perpetual antithesis of the author's thought and life, in which, at the back of every revelry, he sees the shadow of a warning hand, and reads on the wall the writing, Omnia mutantur. With equal or greater confidence other judges have pronounced Burns's masterpiece to be "The Jolly Beggars." Certainly no other single production so illustrates his power of exalting what is insignificant, glorifying what is mean, and elevating the lowest details by the force of his genius. "The form of the piece," says Carlyle, "is a mere cantata, the theme the half-drunken snatches of a joyous band of vagabonds, while the grey leaves are floating on the gusts of the wind in the autumn of the year. But the whole is compacted, refined and poured forth in one flood of liquid harmony. It is light, airy and soft of movement, yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait, and the whole a group in clear photography. The blanket of the night is drawn aside; in full ruddy gleaming light these rough tatterdemalions are seen at their boisterous revel wringing from Fate another hour of wassail and good cheer." Over the whole is flung a half-humorous, half-savage satire—aimed, like a two-edged sword, at the laws and the law-breakers, in the acme of which the graceless crew are raised above the level of ordinary gipsies, footpads and rogues, and are made to sit "on the hills like gods together, careless of mankind," and to launch their Titan thunders of rebellion against the world.

A similar mixture of drollery and defiance appears in the justly celebrated "Address to the Deil," which, mainly whimsical, is relieved by touches oan in the conception of such a being straying in lonely places and loitering among trees, or in the familiarity with which the poet lectures so awful a personage,"—we may add, than in the inimitable outbreak at the close—

Carlyle, in reference to this passage, cannot resist the suggestion of a parallel from Sterne. "He is the father of curses and lies, said Dr Slop, and is cursed and damned already. I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby."

Burns fared ill at the hands of those who were not sorry for it, and who repeated with glib complacency every terrible belief of the system in which they had been trained. The most scathing of his Satires, under which head fall many of his minor and frequent passages in his major pieces, are directed against the false pride of birth, and what he conceived to be the false pretences of religion. The apologue of "Death and Dr Hornbook," "The Ordination," the song "No churchman am I for to rail and to write," the "Address to the Unco Guid," "Holy Willie," and above all "The Holy Fair," with its savage caricature of an ignorant ranter of the time called Moodie, and others of like stamp, not unnaturally provoked offence. As regards the poet's attitude towards some phases of Calvinism prevalent during his life, it has to be remarked that from the days of Dunbar there has been a degree of antagonism between Scottish verse and the more rigid forms of Scottish theology.

It must be admitted that in protesting against hypocrisy he has occasionally been led beyond the limits prescribed by good taste. He is at times abusive of those who differ from him. This, with other offences against decorum, which here and there disfigure his pages, can only be condoned by an appeal to the general tone of his writing, which is reverential. Burns had a firm faith in a Supreme Being, not as a vague mysterious Power; but as the Arbiter of human life. Amid the vicissitudes of his career he responds to the cottar's summons, "Let us worship God."

is the moral of all his verse, which treats seriously of religious matters. His prayers in rhyme give him a high place among secular Psalmists.

Like Chaucer, Burns was a great moralist, though a rough one. In the moments of his most intense revolt against conventional prejudice and sanctimonious affectation, he is faithful to the great laws which underlie change, loyal in his veneration for the cardinal virtues—Truth, Justice and Charity,—and consistent in the warnings, to which his experience gives an unhappy force, against transgressions of Temperance. In the "Epistle to a Young Friend," the shrewdest advice is blended with exhortations appealing to the highest motive, that which transcends the calculation of consequences, and bids us walk in the straight path from the feeling of personal honour, and "for the glorious privilege of being independent." Burns, like Dante, "loved well because he hated, hated wickedness that hinders loving," and this feeling, as in the lines—"Dweller in yon dungeon dark," sometimes breaks bounds; but his calmer moods are better represented by the well-known passages in the "Epistle to Davie," in which he preaches acquiescence in our lot, and a cheerful acceptance of our duties in the sphere where we are placed. This philosophie douce, never better sung by Horace, is the prevailing refrain of our author's Songs. On these there are few words to add to the acclaim of a century. They have passed into the air we breathe; they are so real that they seem things rather than words, or, nearer still, living beings. They have taken all hearts, because they are the breath of his own; not polished cadences, but utterances as direct as laughter or tears. Since Sappho loved and sang, there has been no such national lyrist as Burns. Fine ballads, mostly anonymous, existed in Scotland previous to his time; and shortly before a few authors had produced a few songs equal to some of his best. Such are Alexander Ross's "Wooed and Married," Lowe's "Mary's Dream," "Auld Robin Gray," "The Land o' the Leal" and the two versions of "The Flowers o' the Forest." From these and many of the older pieces in Ramsay's collection, Burns admits to have derived copious suggestions and impulses. He fed on the past literature of his country as Chaucer on the old fields of English thought, and—

But he gave more than he received; he brought forth an hundredfold; he summed up the stray material of the past, and added so much of his own that one of the most conspicuous features of his lyrical genius is its variety in new paths. Between the first of war songs, composed in a storm on a moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven," he has made every chord in our northern life to vibrate. The distance from "Duncan Gray" to "Auld Lang Syne" is nearly as great as that from Falstaff to Ariel. There is the vehemence of battle, the wail of woe, the march of veterans "red-wat-shod," the smiles of meeting, the tears of parting friends, the gurgle of brown burns, the roar of the wind through pines, the rustle of barley rigs, the thunder on the hill—all Scotland is in his verse. Let who will make her laws, Burns has made the songs, which her emigrants recall "by the long wash of Australasian seas," in which maidens are wooed, by which mothers lull their infants, which return "through open casements unto dying ears"—they are the links, the watchwords, the masonic symbols of the Scots race.

(J. N.)

The greater part of Burns's verse was posthumously published, and, as he himself took no care to collect the scattered pieces of occasional verse, different editors have from time to time printed, as his, verses that must be regarded as spurious. Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Robert Burns (Kilmarnock, 1786), was followed by an enlarged edition printed in Edinburgh in the next year. Other editions of this book were printed—in London (1787), an enlarged edition at Edinburgh (2 vols., 1793) and a reprint of this in 1794. Of a 1790 edition mentioned by Robert Chambers no traces can be found. Poems by Burns appeared originally in The Caledonian Mercury, The Edinburgh Evening Courant, The Edinburgh Herald, The Edinburgh Advertiser; the London papers, Stuart's Star and Evening Advertiser (subsequently known as The Morning Star), The Morning Chronicle; and in the Edinburgh Magazine and The Scots Magazine. Many poems, most of which had first appeared elsewhere, were printed in a series of penny chap-books, Poetry Original and Select (Brash and Reid, Glasgow), and some appeared separately as broadsides. A series of tracts issued by Stewart and Meikle (Glasgow, 1796-1799) includes some Burns's numbers, The Jolly Beggars, Holy Willie's Prayer and other poems making their first appearance in this way. The seven numbers of this publication were reissued in January 1800 as The Poetical Miscellany. This was followed by Thomas Stewart's Poems ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow, 1801). Burns's songs appeared chiefly in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (6 vols., 1787-1803), which he appears after the first volume to have virtually edited, though the two last volumes were published only after his death; and in George Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs (6 vols., 1793-1841). Only five of the songs done for Thomson appeared during the poet's lifetime, and Thomson's text cannot be regarded with confidence. The Hastie MSS. in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 22,307) include 162 songs, many of them in Burns's handwriting; and the Dalhousie MS., at Brechin Castle, contains Burns's correspondence with Thomson. For a full account of the songs see James C. Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns now first printed with the Melodies for which they were written (2 vols., 1903).

The items in Mr W. Craibe Angus's Printed Works of Robert Burns (1899) number nine hundred and thirty. Only the more important collected editions can be here noticed. Dr Currie was the anonymous editor of the Works of Robert Burns; with an Account of his Life, and a Criticism on his Writings ... (Liverpool, 1800). This was undertaken for the benefit of Burns's family at the desire of his friends, Alexander Cunningham and John Syme. A second and amended edition appeared in 1801, and was followed by others, but Currie's text is neither accurate nor complete. Additional matter appeared in Reliques of Robert Burns ... by R.H. Cromek (London, 1808). In The Works of Robert Burns, With his Life by Allan Cunningham (8 vols., London, 1834) there are many additions and much biographical material. The Works of Robert Burns, edited by James Hogg and William Motherwell (5 vols., 1834-1836, Glasgow and Edinburgh), contains a life of the poet by Hogg, and some useful notes by Motherwell attempting to trace the sources of Burns's songs. The Correspondence between Burns and Clarinda was edited by W.C. M^cLehose (Edinburgh, 1843). An improved text of the poems was provided in the second "Aldine Edition" of the Poetical Works (3 vols., 1839), for which Sir H. Nicolas, the editor, made use of many original MSS. In the Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers (Edinburgh, 4 vols., 1851-1852; library edition, 1856-1857; new edition, revised by William Wallace, 1896), the poet's works are given in chronological order, interwoven with letters and biography. The text was bowdlerized by Chambers, but the book contained much new and valuable information. Other well-known editions are those of George Gilfillan (2 vols., 1864); of Alexander Smith (Golden Treasury Series, London, 2 vols., 1865); of P. Hately Waddell (Glasgow, 1867); one published by Messrs Blackie & Son, with Dr Currie's memoir and an essay by Prof. Wilson (1843-1844); of W. Scott Douglas (the Kilmarnock edition, 1876, and the "library" edition, 1877-1879), and of Andrew Lang, assisted by W.A. Craigie (London, 1896). The complete correspondence between Burns and Mrs Dunlop was printed in 1898.

A critical edition of the Poetry of Robert Burns, which may be regarded as definitive, and is provided with full notes and variant readings, was prepared by W.E. Henley and T.F. Henderson (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1896-1897; reprinted, 1901), and is generally known as the "Centenary Burns." In vol. iii. the extent of Burns's indebtedness to Scottish folk-song and his methods of adaptation are minutely discussed; vol. iv. contains an essay on "Robert Burns. Life, Genius, Achievement," by W.E. Henley.

The chief original authority for Burns's life is his own letters. The principal "lives" are to be found in the editions just mentioned. His biography has also been written by J. Gibson Lockhart (Life of Burns, Edinburgh, 1828); for the "English Men of Letters" series in 1879 by Prof. J. Campbell Shairp; and by Sir Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. viii., 1886). Among the more important essays on Burns are those by Thomas Carlyle (Edinburgh Review, December 1828); by John Nichol, the writer of the above article (W. Scott Douglas's edition of Burns); by R.L. Stevenson (Familiar Studies of Men and Books); by Auguste Angellier (Robert Burns. La vie et les œuvres, 2 vols., Paris, 1893); by Lord Rosebery (Robert Burns: Two Addresses in Edinburgh, 1896); by J. Logie Robertson (in In Scottish Fields, Edin., 1890, and Furth in Field, Edin., 1894); and T.F. Henderson (Robert Burns, 1904). There is a selected bibliography in chronological order in W.A. Craigie's Primer of Burns (1896).

BURNS AND SCALDS. A burn is the effect of dry heat applied to some part of the human body, a scald being the result of moist heat. Clinically there is no distinction between the two, and their classification and treatment are identical. In Dupuytren's classification, now most generally accepted, burns are divided into six classes according to the severest part of the lesion. Burns of the first degree are characterized by severe pain, redness of the skin, a certain amount of swelling that soon passes, and later exfoliation of the skin. Burns of the second degree show vesicles (small blisters) scattered over the inflamed area, and containing a clear, yellowish fluid. Beneath the vesicle the highly sensitive papillae of the skin are exposed. Burns of this degree leave no scar, but often produce a permanent discoloration. In burns of the third degree, there is a partial destruction of the true skin, leaving sloughs of a yellowish or black colour. The pain is at first intense, but passes off on about the second day to return again at the end of a week, when the sloughs separate, exposing the sensitive nerve filaments of the underlying skin. This results in a slightly depressed cicatrix, which happily, however, shows but slight tendency to contraction. Burns of the fourth degree, which follow the prolonged application of any form of intense heat, involve the total destruction of the true skin. The pain is much less severe than in the preceding class, since the nerve endings have been totally destroyed. The results, however, are far more serious, and the healing process takes place only very slowly on account of the destruction of the skin glands. As a result, deep puckered scars are formed, which show great tendency to contract, and where these are situated on face, neck or joints the resulting deformity and loss of function may be extremely serious. In burns of the fifth degree the underlying muscles are more or less destroyed, and in those of the sixth the bones are also charred. Examples of the last two classes are mainly provided by epileptics who fall into a fire during a fit.