Thomas Carlyle's Essay on Robert Burns Author:Thomas Carlyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES. To The Student. — The question has been seriously mooted as to whether classic books, edited for the use of students, are too much or too little annota... more »ted. To this question, so conditional in character, no satisfactory answer has been given; nor, from the very nature of the question, can there be. Perhaps the nearest approach to an answer may be made by allowing each student to be his own an- notator — on somewhat the same principle as "every man his own lawyer." Then, if he thinks a book over-annotated, he may reject the work of other "hands," even when "eminent," and construct his own notes; if under.-annotated, he may enlarge the structure reared by another. Now, in a certain sense, and seriously speaking, that is exactly what every critical reader of Carlyle's Essay on Burns may, and ought to be, — his own annotator. For in the Essay are few recondite references to be explained, few obscure allusions to be illumined. The main purpose of the student should be to seize upon the spirit of the Essay, and, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, not let go till a blessing shall have been bestowed. It is for the student himself to read the poems which the author of the Essay analyses, — his own consciousness agreeing or differing; for the student, to mark with approving pencil the passages in the Essay ttiat most strongly appeal to him; for the student, to catch the swing and rugged rhythm of Carlyle's English, and note the sturdy vigor of his thought: beyond all, for the student to apprehend the nobleness of sentiment expressed, —remembering also that" the proper office of literature is to take note of sentiment, and the higher the sentiment the higher the literature." By that right standard judged, how lofty is the place of the Essay on Burns! But that sentiment, mark, must...« less