First printed in the Edinburgh Review in 1828 as a review of Lockhart’s life of Robert Burns, Carlyle’s essay becomes an independent meditation on the ploughman poet: his songs, his genius, his poverty and his failures, and what his short life meant for Scotland. This edition adds a sketch of Burns’s life and notes.
A classic of Victorian criticism, as much about Carlyle’s ideas of greatness as about Burns. Download the free EPUB.