The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century
The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man's injustice to the
dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather more handsomely commemorated than
Burns. Immediately below, in the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert
Fergusson, Burns's master in his art, who died insane while yet a
stripling; and if Dugald Stewart has been somewhat too boisterously
acclaimed, the Edinburgh poet, on the other hand, is most unrighteously
forgotten. The votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all ranks in
Scotland, and more remarkable for number than discretion, eagerly
suppress all mention of the lad who handed to him the poetic impulse,
and, up to the time when he grew famous, continued to influence him in
his manner and the choice of subjects. Burns himself not only
acknowledged his debt in a fragment of autobiography, but erected a tomb
over the grave in Canongate churchyard. This was worthy of an artist,
but it was done in vain; and although I think I have read nearly all the
biographies of Burns, I cannot remember one in which the modesty of
nature was not violated, or where Fergusson was not sacrificed to the
credit of his follower's originality. There is a kind of gaping
admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have
a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author
without disparaging all others. They are indeed mistaken if they think
to please the great originals; and whoever puts Fergusson right with
fame cannot do better than dedicate his labours to the memory of Burns,
who will be the best delighted of the dead.
Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps the best; since
you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle, and Arthur's
Seat, which you cannot see from Arthur's Seat. It is the place to stroll
on one of those days of sunshine and east wind which are so common in
our more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the sea, with a
little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar to the
quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy organizations and
greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with it a
faint, floating haze, a cunning decolouriser, although not thick enough
to obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to
windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of
Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes the
aspect of a bank of thin sea fog.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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