Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

of nursery-ground anywise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent to school-had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some university-come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular, well-trained intellectual workman, and changed the whole course 90 of British literature; for it lay in him to have done this! But the nursery did not prosper: poverty sank his whole family below the help of even our cheap school system. Burns remained a hard-worked plowboy, and British literature took its own course. Never-95 theless, even in this rugged scene, there is much to nourish him. If he drudges, it is with his brother, and for his father and mother, whom he loves and would fain shield from want. Wisdom is not banished from their poor hearth, nor the balm of natural feeling: the solemn 100 words, Let us worship God, are heard there from a “priestlike father:" if threatenings of unjust men throw mother and children into tears, these are tears not of grief only, but of holiest affection: every heart in that humble group feels itself the closer knit to every other: in their 105 hard warfare they are there together, a "little band of brethren." Neither are such tears, and the deep beauty that dwells in them, their only portion. Light visits the

ANALYSIS.-87-91. Give the mode of each of the verbs.

89. Dispose of the word wonder.

91, 92. for it lay in him to have done this. Criticise.

92, 93. poverty sank his whole family. Criticise.

93. Parse even.

94. Parse plowboy.

101. Let us worship God. Give the grammatical construction.

102, 103. Point out the figure.

103, 104. these are tears.... affections.

Analyze the sentence.

105. feels itself the closer knit. Give the grammatical construction

of each of these words.

106, 107. Dispose of the words "little band of brethrm."

108, 109. Name the figure in these lines.

heart as it does the eyes of all living: there is a force, too, in this youth, that enables him to trample on mis- 110 fortune-nay, to bind it under his feet to make him sport. For a bold, warm, buoyant humor of character has been given him; and so the thick-coming shapes of evil are welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, and in their closest pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope. 115 Vague yearnings of ambition fail not as he grows up; dreamy fancies hang like cloud-cities around him; the curtain of existence is slowly rising in many-colored splendor and gloom: and the auroral light of first love is gilding his horizon, and the music of song is on his 120 path; and so he walks

"In glory and in joy,

Behind his plow, upon the mountain-side."

We know, from the best evidence, that up to this date Burns was happy-nay, that he was the gayest, bright- 125 est, most fantastic, fascinating being to be found in the world-more so even than he ever afterward appeared. But now, at this early age, he quits the paternal roof, goes forth into looser, louder, more exciting society, and becomes initiated in those dissipations, those vices, 130 which a certain class of philosophers have asserted to

[blocks in formation]

116, 117. Point out the figure. Give the grammatical construction of cloud-cities.

119-121. the auroral light.... his path. Explain the figures. 124. Explain the use and construction of up to.

126. Should not the word most be placed before fascinating! 127. Dispose of more so even.

be a natural preparative for entering on active life--a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it were. necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of manhood can be laid on him. 135 We shall not dispute much with this class of philosophers: we hope they are mistaken, for sin and remorse. so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to meet, but 140 to yield to them, and even serve for a term in their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at al. events, it cannot be the training one receives in this service, but only our determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly action. We become men not after we 145 have been dissipated, and disappointed in the chase of false pleasure, but after we have ascertained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in through this life; how mad it is to hope for contentment to our infinite soul from the gifts of this extremely finite world that a 150 man must be sufficient for himself, and that "for suffering and enduring there is no remedy but striving and doing." Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with necessity-begins, at all events, when

ANALYSIS.-132, 133. a kind of mud-bath. To what does this refer? 133. Dispose of as it were.

135. Point out the figure in this line. 139. that it seems hard we should, etc. 141, 142. Give the syntax of even. 142. We hope it is not so. Analyze.

142, 143. at all events.

145. We become men.

Supply the ellipsis.
What figure in these lines?

Give the grammatical construction.
Give the case of men.

148. hem us in. Dispose of these words.

149. What words are explanatory of it? Name the modifiers of to

hope. What are the modifiers of contentment?

151-155. “for suffering ... . doing.” Analyze.

153. Name the subject and the modifiers of begins.

we have surrendered to necessity, as the most part only 155 do, but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in necessity we are free. Surely such lessons as this last, which in one shape or other is the grand lesson for every mortal man, 160 are better learned from the lips of a devout mother, in the looks and actions of a devout father, while the heart is yet soft and pliant, than in collision with the sharp adamant of fate, attracting us to shipwreck us, when the heart is grown hard, and may be broken before it will 165 become contrite! Had Burns continued to learn this, as he was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he would have learned it fully, which he never did, and been saved many a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour and year of remorseful sorrow.

ANALYSIS.-163, 164. Name the figure in these lines,

166. Had Burns continued, etc. What is the mode of the verb? 168. Name the antecedent of which.

169. been saved. Name the mode and the tense.

170

27. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE,

1818-1894.

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, one of England's greatest historians, and the son of Dr. Froude, archdeacon of Totness, was born in Devonshire in 1818. He was edu cated at Westminster and at Oriel College, Oxford. After having won the Chancellor's Prize in 1842 for an English essay, he became a Fellow of Exeter College.

Froude first appeared as an author in 1847, when he published Shadows from the Clouds, a work of considerable merit, but now almost forgotten. His next attempt was The Nemesis of Faith, which he meant as a protest against the reverence of the Church for what he calls Hebrew mythology. This work having offended the universities, he was deprived of his fellowshin, and also of a position to which he had been appointed in Tasmania.

Froude's great work, and the one on which his fame. is based, is his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth, twelve volumes, which appeared from 1856 to 1869. The style of the work is admirable, and it is the most complete record extant of the period of which it treats; but it is also partisan, and many of the incidents are over-colored. While his thought is judicious and forcibly expressed, he sometimes bends the historical fact to establish an argument or enforce an opinion, rather than states the entire truth and permits each reader to draw his own conclusions.

The most important of Mr. Froude's other writings

« ÎnapoiContinuă »