des Chartes in 1822, passed as a lawyer in 1824 and soon after devoted himself to the study of Oriental languages. In 1826 he attracted the attention of men of learning throughout Europe by publishing, in conjunction with his friend, Lassen, an Essay on the Pali,' or the sacred language of the Buddhists in Ceylon and the Eastern Peninsula, and in 1827 by furnishing an explanatory text to the series of lithographic plates prepared by Geringer and Chabrelle to illustrate the religion, manners, customs, etc., of the Hindu nations inhabiting the French possessions in India. This work was not completed till 1835. In 1832 he was admitted into the Academy of Inscriptions, and in the same year was appointed to the professorship of Sanskrit in the Collège de France, an office which he held till his death. His fame is chiefly due to his having, so to speak, restored to life an entire language, the Zend or old Persian language in which the Zoroastrian writings were composed. Anquetil-Duperron had obtained the text of the extant works of this sacred language of the Persians. It is the glory of Burnouf to have interpreted those works with the aid of the Sanskrit. To this part of his labors belongs his Extrait d'un commentaire et d'une traduction nouvelle du VendidadSadé (1830); 'Observations sur la grammaire de M. Bopp' (1833); Commentaire sur le Yaçna (1833-35). Burnouf also distinguished himself by his labors on Buddhism. On this subject he published the text accompanied by a translation of the 'Bhagavata Purana) (184047); Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme Indien (1st vol., 1844), etc. A fortnight before his death the Academy of Inscriptions elected him secretary for life. Consult Lenormant, Eugène Burnouf' (Paris 1852); Barthélemy-St.-Hilaire, Notice sur les travaux de M. E. B. (in the 2d ed. of the 'Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme' (1876); 'Choix de Lettres d'Eugène Burnouf' (1891).

BURNOUF, Jean Louis, French classical scholar: b. Urville, Manche, 1775; d. Paris, 1844. He was appointed assistant professor at the Collège Charlemagne in 1807 and professor of Latin there in 1816. In 1840 he became university librarian. He exercised a profound influence on classical learning in France. published a translation of Tacitus' (6 vols., 1827-33, 1881) and a 'Méthode pour étudier la langue grecque' (1814, 1893).

He

BURNS, Anthony, American fugitive slave: b. Virginia, about 1830; d. Saint Catherine's, Ontario, 27 July 1862. Escaping from slavery he worked in Boston during the winter of 1853-54; but on 24 May 1854-the day after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had inflamed the North against the slave powerwas arrested on warrant of Charles F. Suttle through his agent Brent. The next day he was taken before United States Commissioner Edward G. Loring for examination; but Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker secured an adjournment for two days. Burns, meanwhile, was confined in the courthouse under a strong guard, and on the evening of the 26th a great mass meeting in protest was held at Faneuil Hall. T. W. Higginson and others had planned to stampede the meeting into storming the courthouse and rescuing Burns, and at the ap

pointed time battered in a door and attempted the rescue themselves, relying upon assistance in their undertaking. The size of the meeting, however, prevented the signals from working well and the leaders from emerging, and after a scuffle in which a deputy was fatally stabbed and several assailants wounded, the latter retired. The next day Loring, an ardent upholder of the Fugitive Slave Law, delivered Burns to his claimant on evidence entirely illegal and worthless even under that law. Escorted by a strong military guard, Burns was taken to a government cutter, through streets draped in mourning and crowds ready to stone the soldiers. A riot at the wharf was only prevented by the action of Rev. Daniel Foster upon his saying "Let us pray!" The crowd uncovered and stood quiet while Burns was taken on board. Indictments were drawn against his would-be rescuers, but quashed for want of evidence. Burns afterward gained his liberty, studied theology at Oberlin College and was eventually settled over a Baptist colored church in Saint Catherine's, Ontario, where he died. Consult Stevens, Anthony Burns: a History' (1856); Adams, Richard Henry Dana: a Biography (1891); Higginson, 'Cheerful Yesterdays (1898).

BURNS, John, English labor organizer and statesman: b. London, October 1858. He was of humble birth and became a factory employee at the age of 10. He was an omnivorous reader and imbibed his socialistic views from a French fellow laborer. By working a year as engineer on the Niger River, he earned enough for a six months' tour of Europe. He constantly addressed audiences of workingmen, and was a persistent labor agitator. He was one of the leaders in the West End riot in London, February 1886, and was imprisoned the same year for maintaining the right of public meeting in Trafalgar square. He, in conjunction with Ben Tillett, organized the successful dock strike in London in 1889. He has been thrice elected to the London county council and has sat in the House of Commons as Labor member for Battersea since 1892. From 1905-14 he was president of the Local Government Board, and in the latter year he became president of the Board of Trade. On the outbreak of the Great European War in August 1914, on account of the war policy of the Asquith cabinet, he resigned his place in the government.

BURNS, Robert, Scottish poet: b. near Ayr, Scotland, 25 Jan. 1759; d. Dumfries, 21 July 1796. His father, William Burnes or Burness, a native of Kincardineshire, had been a gardener, but at the time of the poet's birth was a nurseryman on a small piece of land on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire. He was a man of strong intelligence and deep piety, but unsuccessful in his struggle with poverty. His mother was Agnes Brown, a woman of ability, and, though of meagre book education, well versed in folk-song and legend. Robert, the eldest of seven children, went to school for three years, 1765-68, under John Murdoch in the neighboring village of Alloway. Later he was in attendance for a few months each at Dalrymple parish school in 1772, at Ayr Academy in 1773 and at Kirkoswald about 1776; but the

more important part of his education he received from his father and his own reading. In 1766 William Burness had borrowed money to rent the farm of Mount Oliphant; and the future poet by the time he was 16 was doing a man's work, overstraining his immature physique in performing his share in the vain effort of the family to keep its head above water. The scene of the struggle was moved in 1777 to Lochlea, about 10 miles distant, where in 1784 his father died. During the Lochlea period, Burns, ambitious to improve his position, went to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. Nothing came of this move; but while resident there he formed that acquaintance with a dissipated sailor to which he himself ascribed the beginning of his licentious adventures. On his father's death, Robert and his brother Gilbert rented the farm of Mossgiel, but this experiment was no more successful than those previously made. While here he contracted an intimacy with Jean Armour, which brought upon him the censure of the Kirk-session. Finally the poet, disheartened by successive bad harvests and irritated by the attempts of his father-in-law to cancel his irregular marriage with Jean and to hand him over to the law, determined to emigrate. For 10 years he had been composing verses, some of which had brought him considerable local fame, and these he collected and published in order to raise money for the voyage; but the unexpected success of this volume (Kilmarnock 1786) roused his literary ambition, gave him fresh courage and led him to change his plans. Instead of sailing for the West Indies, he went to Edinburgh in November 1786, and during that winter was the literary lion of the season. Here he met such celebrities as Dugald Stewart, the philosopher; Blair, the rhetorician; Henry Mackenzie, the author of "The Man of Feeling'; Lord Glencairn; the Duchess of Gordon, and Creech, the publisher. The last named undertook an enlarged edition of his poems (Edinburgh 1787); and while waiting for the profits of this volume, Burns made several tours through the country, traces of which are to be found in a number of occasional poems. Creech finally paid him enough to enable him to give substantial help to his brother in Mossgiel, and to rent and stock the farm in Ellisland in Dumfriesshire.

Hither

in 1788 he brought Jean Armour, to whom he was now regularly married, his success and fame having reconciled her parents to the match; and for three years he tried farming. But failure still dogged him, and in 1791 he moved to Dumfries, where he lived on a position in the excise service which he had obtained while still at Ellisland through the influence of some of the powerful acquaintances he had made in Edinburgh. He had, however, lost heart; and after a few years of drudgery, varied with the drinking bouts to which he was constantly tempted both by habit and by the invitation of foolish admirers, he died at Dumfries in his 38th year.

Biographies of Burns have frequently been crowded with attempts to disentangle or to explain away the facts of his numerous amours. There is much controversy over the identity of the semi-mythical Mary Campbell, the "Highland Mary of the songs; much curiosity over the precise degree of Platonism in his feeling

for Mrs. McLehose, the "Clarinda" of his letters, and the inspirer of a number of lyrics; much difference of opinion as to whether and how long he was in love with his wife. Into these details we do not enter. It is clear enough that Burns was a man of exceptionally powerful passions, that the extreme and depressing hardships of his youth, and, indeed, of the greater part of his life, along with his natural tendencies to conviviality, drove him to excesses of self-indulgence; and that while he strove often and painfully after better things, his striving was many times without avail. "The sport," he calls himself, "the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility and bedlam passions.» These phrases are true enough, though they do not imply the further explanation of his pitiful career that is found in the habits of his class and time, and the untoward nature of his environment.

Something of his education has already been indicated. His schooling left him with a good grammatical knowledge of English and a reading knowledge of French. His father's care and his own eagerness gave him no slight knowledge of literature; and among other authors we know that he read, of older literature, the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, Johnson, Bunyan, Dryden, Locke, Molière, Wycherley; of his own century, Addison, Steele and Pope; Ramsay, Fergusson, Thomson and Beattie; Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and Mackenzie; Shenstone, Gray, and Goldsmith; Hume, Robertson and Adam Smith, and a number of philosophical and theological works. This list is by no means complete, but it is sufficient to correct the impression that Burns's was an "untutored Muse."

The literary influences apparent in the work of Burns are of two main classes: English and Scottish. So far as he fell under the former of these he was an inferior poet of the school of Pope, an ardent admirer and imitator of such a minor master as Shenstone. In this field his critical judgment was never more than commonplace, and his imitations never first-rate. Almost all of his greatest work was done in his native dialect; and here he is the heir, as well as the last great representative, of an ancient national tradition. Previous to the 17th century there existed a Scottish literature of considerable variety and distinction, produced in part under the patronage of the court. But the Reformation and the union of the crowns of England and Scotland resulted in the disuse of the vernacular for dignified and courtly writing, and it rapidly lost social prestige, until as a literary medium it survived only in the songs of the peasantry and in an occasional piece of satire. The 18th century, however, saw a revival of interest in purely Scottish letters, and the publication of such compilations as Watson's Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems (1706-09-11), and Allan Ramsay's 'Evergreen' (1724) and Tea-Table Miscellany (1724-27) was the result of an impulse that showed itself also in renewed attempts to compose in dialect. Among the most important leaders in this movement were William Hamilton of Gilbertfield (who modernized the 15th century poem on Wallace), Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson; and each of these had a share in inspiring Burns to work in that field

in which he achieved his greatest triumphs. Their influence was both general and particular, They showed him by their own success what could be done in the native idiom; and they gave him models of which he was not slow to avail himself. Many of Burns's best known poems are all but imitations of productions, usually inferior, by Ramsay and Fergusson, and to them and their poetical ancestors he was indebted not only for suggestions as to theme and method of treatment, but also for his most characteristic_ verse-forms. This readiness on the part of Burns to accept from his predecessors all that they had to give, and to seek to maintain loyally a national tradition rather than to strive after mere novelty, has much to do with his success in carrying that tradition to its highest pitch, and in becoming, in a sense almost unique, the poet of his people.

The first kind of poetry which Burns thoroughly mastered was satire; and the most important of his successful efforts in this form, The Twa Herds, or the Holy Tulzie,' 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' The Address to the Unco Guid, The Holy Fair,' and the Address to the Deil,' were all written within less than a year (1785-86). Whatever Burns's feelings may have been about what he suffered in his own person from the discipline of the Kirk, it is clear that the impulse that gave these poems their fire and their influence was something much larger than mere personal grudge. Against the narrow dogma and tyrannical conduct of the so-called "Auld Licht" party in the Scottish Church, there had sprung up the "New Lichts," demanding some relaxation of Calvinistic bonds and preaching charity and tolerance. Though not a member of this or any ecclesiastical faction, Burns sympathized strongly with their protest; and the shafts of his satire were directed against both the doctrines of the orthodox party and their local leaders. For some time after the Reformation the Scottish people seem to have submitted willingly to the rigorous domination of the Presbyterian ministers; but, after the struggle against Rome and the persecutions of the Covenanting times had alike become matters of history, there began to appear a more critical attitude toward their spiritual leaders. The revolt against authority that spread throughout Europe in the latter part of the 18th century manifested itself in Scotland in a growing disposition to demand greater individual liberty in matters of conduct and belief. It was this disposition that Burns voiced in his satires, the local conditions determining the precise direction of his attack. The substantial justice of his cause, the sharpness of his wit, the vigor of his invective, and the imaginative fervor of his verse, all combined to bring the matter home to his countrymen; and he is here to be reckoned a great liberating force.

Several of the satires were published in the Kilmarnock volume, and along with them a variety of other kinds of poetry. In the words of his preface, "he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him." Some of these are descriptive of sides of humble Scottish life with which he himself was in the closest contact. "The Twa Dogs' gives a democratic peasant's views of the lives of lairds and farmers; and the sketch of the factor in this poem has been

taken as a reminiscence of what his father had to endure from the arrogance of such an agent. 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' describes with affectionate reverence the order of his father's house; Puir Mailie,' 'The Auld Mare Maggie, To a Mouse,' and others, reveal the kindliness of the poet's heart in his relation to animals; Hallowe'en' gives a vivid picture of rustic mirth and manners, and preserves a mass of folk-lore. Of the additional poems that appeared in the Edinburgh editions the most notable was 'Tam o' Shanter,' Burns's best sustained piece of narrative, poem that indicates that, had he worked his vein farther, he might have ranked with Chaucer as a teller of tales in verse.

A large quantity of Burns's poetry remained in manuscript at the time of his death. Of this, much the most remarkable is The Jolly Beggars,' in the opinion of many his most brilliant production. This cantata carries to its highest point the far-descended literature of the rogue and the beggar, and its superb spirit and abandon show how heartily the poet could sympathize with the very dregs of society. It is to be noted that, alone among pieces that reach his highest level, it is chiefly in English. Burns wrote besides a large number of epistles, epigrams, epitaphs and other personal and occasional verse, the quality and interest of which vary much, but throughout which one constantly finds phrases and stanzas of superb quality. He came to write verse with great ease; but the result of the training he gave himself in artistic discrimination was to check mere fluency, and to lead him to discard much that was of inferior value in his improvisations. Thus the proportion of his work possessed of real poetic distinction is very high.

But the national importance of Burns, though increased by his influence upon the liberalizing movements of his time, and by his vital descriptions and characterizations of the peasant life of the Scotland of his time, is based chiefly on his songs. The period of Presbyterian despotism already referred to had forced the lyric muse of Scotland into low company, and as a result Burns found Scottish song stin pure and

fine in melody, but hopelesly degraded in point of both poetry and decency. From youth he had been interested in collecting the sordid fragments he heard sung in cottage and tavern, or found printed in broadsides and chapbooks; and the resuscitation of this all-but-lost national heritage came to be regarded by him in the light of a vocation. Two points are especially to be noted about his song-making: first, that almost all sprang from real emotional experiences; second, that almost all were composed to a previously existing melody. He had begun the composing of love-songs while still almost a boy, and he continued it to the end. During his visit to Edinburgh in 1786-87, he formed a connection with the editor of Johnson's Musical Museum, and for this publication he undertook to supply material. Few of the traditional songs were such as could appear in a reputable volume, and Burns's task was to make them over into presentable form. Sometimes he retained a stanza or two, sometimes only a line or refrain, sometimes merely the name of the melody: the rest was his own. His method was to familiarize himself with the traditional air, to catch a suggestion from some stanza or