But he was neglected, we are told. Neglected! No strong man in good health _can_ be neglected, if he is true to himself. For the benefit of the young, I wish we had a correct account of the number of persons who fail of success, in a thousand that resolutely strive to do well. I do not think it exceeds one per cent. By whom was Burns neglected? Certainly not by the people of Scotland: for they paid him the highest compliment that can be paid to an author: they bought his book! Oh, but he ought to have been pensioned. Pensioned! Can not we think of poets without thinking of pensions? _Are_ they such poor creatures, that they can not earn an honest living? Let us hear no more of such degrading and insolent nonsense. But he was a drunkard, it is said. I do not mean to exculpate him when I say that he was probably no worse, in that respect, than his neighbors; for he _was_ worse if he was not better than they, the balance being against him; and his Almighty Father would not fail to say to him, "What didst thou with the lent talent?" But drunkenness, in his time, was the vice of his country--it is so still; and if the traditions of Dumfries are to be depended on, there are allurements which Burns was much less able to resist than those of the bottle; and the supposition of his frequent indulgence in the crimes to which those allurements lead, is incompatible with that of his habitual drunkenness. OF DELAYS.--Fortune is like the market where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall; and again, it is sometimes like the Sibyl's offer, who at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price.... There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. Dangers are no more light if they once seem light: and more dangers have deceived men than forced them. Nay, it were better to meet some dangers half-way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleep. On the other side, to be deceived with too long shadows--as some have been, when the moon was low and shone on their enemies, and so to shoot off before the time--or to teach dangers to come on, by an over-early buckling toward them, is another extreme. The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion must ever be well weighed; and, generally, it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands; first to watch, and then to speed.--_Lord Bacon._ [From the London Examiner.] THE PARIS ELECTION.