II
SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS
To write with authority about another man we must have fellow-feelingand some common ground of experience with our subject. We may praise orblame according as we find him related to us by the best or worst inourselves; but it is only in virtue of some relationship that we can behis judges, even to condemn. Feelings which we share and understandenter for us into the tissue of the man's character; those to which weare strangers in our own experience we are inclined to regard as blots,exceptions, inconsistencies, and excursions of the diabolic; we conceivethem with repugnance, explain them with difficulty, and raise our handsto heaven in wonder when we find them in conjunction with talents thatwe respect or virtues that we admire. David, king of Israel, would passa sounder judgment on a man than either Nathaniel or David Hume. Now,Principal Shairp's recent volume, although I believe no one will read itwithout respect and interest, has this one capital defect--that there isimperfect sympathy between the author and the subject, between thecritic and the personality under criticism. Hence an inorganic, if notan incoherent, presentation of both the poems and the man. Of "HolyWillie's Prayer," Principal Shairp remarks that "those who have lovedmost what was best in Burns's poetry must have regretted that it wasever written." To the "Jolly Beggars," so far as my memory serves me, herefers but once; and then only to remark on the "strange, not to saypainful," circumstance that the same hand which wrote the "Cottar'sSaturday Night" should have stooped to write the "Jolly Beggars." The"Saturday Night" may or may not be an admirable poem; but itssignificance is trebled, and the power and range of the poet firstappears, when it is set beside the "Jolly Beggars." To take a man's workpiecemeal, except with the design of elegant extracts, is the way toavoid, and not to perform, the critic's duty. The same defect isdisplayed in the treatment of Burns as a man, which is broken,apologetical, and confused. The man here presented to us is not thatBurns, _teres atque rotundus_--a burly figure in literature, as, fromour present vantage of time, we have begun to see him. This, on theother hand, is Burns as he may have appeared to a contemporaryclergyman, whom we shall conceive to have been a kind and indulgent butorderly and orthodox person, anxious to be pleased, but too often hurtand disappointed by the behaviour of his red-hot _protege_, and solacinghimself with the explanation that the poet was "the most inconsistent ofmen." If you are so sensibly pained by the misconduct of your subject,and so paternally delighted with his virtues, you will always be anexcellent gentleman, but a somewhat questionable biographer. Indeed, wecan only be sorry and surprised that Principal Shairp should have chosena theme so uncongenial. When we find a man writing on Burns, who likesneither "Holy Willie," nor the "Beggars," nor the "Ordination," nothingis adequate to the situation but the old cry of Geronte: "Que diableallait-il faire dans cette galere?" And every merit we find in the book,which is sober and candid in a degree unusual with biographies of Burns,only leads us to regret more heartily that good work should be sogreatly thrown away.
It is far from my intention to tell over again a story that has been sooften told; but there are certainly some points in the character ofBurns that will bear to be brought out, and some chapters in his lifethat demand a brief rehearsal. The unity of the man's nature, for allits richness, has fallen somewhat out of sight in the pressure of newinformation and the apologetical ceremony of biographers. Mr. Carlylemade an inimitable bust of the poet's head of gold; may I not beforgiven if my business should have more to do with the feet, which wereof clay?
YOUTH
Any view of Burns would be misleading which passed over in silence theinfluences of his home and his father. That father, William Burnes,after having been for many years a gardener, took a farm, married, and,like an emigrant in a new country, built himself a house with his ownhands. Poverty of the most distressing sort, with sometimes the nearprospect of a gaol, embittered the remainder of his life. Chill,backward, and austere with strangers, grave and imperious in his family,he was yet a man of very unusual parts and of an affectionate nature. Onhis way through life he had remarked much upon other men, with moreresult in theory than practice; and he had reflected upon many subjectsas he delved the garden. His great delight was in solid conversation; hewould leave his work to talk with the schoolmaster Murdoch; and Robert,when he came home late at night, not only turned aside rebuke but kepthis father two hours beside the fire by the charm of his merry andvigorous talk. Nothing is more characteristic of the class in general,and William Burnes in particular, than the pains he took to get properschooling for his boys, and, when that was no longer possible, the senseand resolution with which he set himself to supply the deficiency by hisown influence. For many years he was their chief companion; he spokewith them seriously on all subjects as if they had been grown men; atnight, when work was over, he taught them arithmetic; he borrowed booksfor them on history, science, and theology; and he felt it his duty tosupplement this last--the trait is laughably Scottish--by a dialogue ofhis own composition, where his own private shade of orthodoxy wasexactly represented. He would go to his daughter as she stayed afieldherding cattle, to teach her the names of grasses and wild flowers, orto sit by her side when it thundered. Distance to strangers, deep familytenderness, love of knowledge, a narrow, precise, and formal reading oftheology--everything we learn of him hangs well together, and builds upa popular Scottish type. If I mention the name of Andrew Fairservice, itis only as I might couple for an instant Dugald Dalgetty with oldMarshal Loudon, to help out the reader's comprehension by a popular butunworthy instance of a class. Such was the influence of this good andwise man that his household became a school to itself, and neighbourswho came into the farm at meal-time would find the whole family, father,brothers, and sisters, helping themselves with one hand, and holding abook in the other. We are surprised at the prose style of Robert; thatof Gilbert need surprise us no less; even William writes a remarkableletter for a young man of such slender opportunities. One anecdote marksthe taste of the family. Murdoch brought "Titus Andronicus," and, withsuch dominie elocution as we may suppose, began to read it aloud beforethis rustic audience; but when he had reached the passage where Tamorainsults Lavinia, with one voice and "in an agony of distress" theyrefused to hear it to an end. In such a father, and with such a home,Robert had already the making of an excellent education; and whatMurdoch added, although it may not have been much in amount, was incharacter the very essence of a literary training. Schools and colleges,for one great man whom they complete, perhaps unmake a dozen; the strongspirit can do well upon more scanty fare.
Robert steps before us, almost from the first, in his completecharacter--a proud, headstrong, impetuous lad, greedy of pleasure,greedy of notice; in his own phrase "panting after distinction," and inhis brother's "cherishing a particular jealousy of people who werericher or of more consequence than himself"; with all this, he wasemphatically of the artist nature. Already he made a conspicuous figurein Tarbolton church, with the only tied hair in the parish, "and hisplaid, which was of a particular colour, wrapped in a particular mannerround his shoulders." Ten years later, when a married man, the father ofa family, a farmer, and an officer of Excise, we shall find him outfishing in masquerade, with fox-skin cap, belted great-coat, and greatHighland broadsword. He liked dressing up, in fact, for its own sake.This is the spirit which leads to the extravagant array of Latin Quarterstudents, and the proverbial velveteen of the English landscape-painter;and, though the pleasure derived is in itself merely personal, it showsa man who is, to say the least of it, not pained by general attentionand remark. His father wrote the family name _Burnes_; Robert earlyadopted the orthography _Burness_ from his cousin in the Mearns; and inhis twenty-eighth year changed it once more to _Burns_. It is plain thatthe last transformation was not made without some qualm; for inaddressing his cousin he adheres, in at least one more letter, tospelling number two. And this, again, shows a man preoccupied about themanner of his appearance even down to the name, and little willing tofollow custom. Again, he was proud, and
justly proud, of his powers inconversation. To no other man's have we the same conclusive testimonyfrom different sources and from every rank of life. It is almost acommonplace that the best of his works was what he said in talk.Robertson the historian "scarcely ever met any man whose conversationdisplayed greater vigour"; the Duchess of Gordon declared that he"carried her off her feet"; and, when he came late to an inn, theservants would get out of bed to hear him talk. But, in these early daysat least, he was determined to shine by any means. He made himselffeared in the village for his tongue. He would crush weaker men to theirfaces, or even perhaps--for the statement of Sillar is not absolute--saycutting things of his acquaintances behind their back. At the churchdoor, between sermons, he would parade his religious views amid hisses.These details stamp the man. He had no genteel timidities in the conductof his life. He loved to force his personality upon the world. He wouldplease himself, and shine. Had he lived in the Paris of 1830, and joinedhis lot with the Romantics, we can conceive him writing _Jehan_ for_Jean_, swaggering in Gautier's red waistcoat, and horrifying Bourgeoisin a public cafe with paradox and gasconnade.
A leading trait throughout his whole career was his desire to be inlove. _Ne fait pas ce tour qui veut._ His affections were often enoughtouched, but perhaps never engaged. He was all his life on a voyage ofdiscovery, but it does not appear conclusively that he ever touched thehappy isle. A man brings to love a deal of ready-made sentiment, andeven from childhood obscurely prognosticates the symptoms of this vitalmalady. Burns was formed for love; he had passion, tenderness, and asingular bent in the direction; he could foresee, with the intuition ofan artist, what love ought to be; and he could not conceive a worthylife without it. But he had ill-fortune, and was besides so greedy afterevery shadow of the true divinity, and so much the slave of a strongtemperament, that perhaps his nerve was relaxed and his heart had lostthe power of self-devotion before an opportunity occurred. Thecircumstances of his youth doubtless counted for something in theresult. For the lads of Ayrshire, as soon as the day's work was over andthe beasts were stabled, would take the road, it might be in a wintertempest, and travel perhaps miles by moss and moorland to spend an houror two in courtship. Rule 10 of the Bachelors' Club at Tarboltonprovides that "every man proper for a member of this Society must be aprofessed lover of _one or more_ of the female sex." The rich, as Burnshimself points out, may have a choice of pleasurable occupations, butthese lads had nothing but their "cannie hour at e'en." It was upon loveand flirtation that this rustic society was built; gallantry was theessence of life among the Ayrshire hills as well as in the Court ofVersailles; and the days were distinguished from each other bylove-letters, meetings, tiffs, reconciliations, and expansions to thechosen confidant, as in a comedy of Marivaux. Here was a field for a manof Burns's indiscriminate personal ambition, where he might pursue hisvoyage of discovery in quest of true love, and enjoy temporary triumphsby the way. He was "constantly the victim of some fair enslaver"--atleast, when it was not the other way about; and there were oftenunderplots and secondary fair enslavers in the background. Many--or maywe not say most?--of these affairs were entirely artificial. One, hetells us, he began out of "a vanity of showing his parts in courtship,"for he piqued himself on his ability at a love-letter. But, however theybegan, these flames of his were fanned into a passion ere the end; andhe stands unsurpassed in his power of self-deception, and positivelywithout a competitor in the art, to use his own words, of "batteringhimself into a warm affection,"--a debilitating and futile exercise.Once he had worked himself into the vein, "the agitations of his mindand body" were an astonishment to all who knew him. Such a course asthis, however pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to his nature.He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer ofwhat the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware ofhis seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet ugliervent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his firstbastard. We can well believe what we hear of his facility in striking upan acquaintance with women: he would have conquering manners; he wouldbear down upon his rustic game with the grace that comes of absoluteassurance--the Richelieu of Lochlea or Mossgiel. In yet another mannerdid these quaint ways of courtship help him into fame. If he were greatas principal, he was unrivalled as confidant. He could enter into apassion; he could counsel wary moves, being, in his own phrase, so olda hawk; nay, he could turn a letter for some unlucky swain, or evenstring a few lines of verse that should clinch the business and fetchthe hesitating fair one to the ground. Nor, perhaps, was it only his"curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity" that recommended him for asecond in such affairs; it must have been a distinction to have theassistance and advice of "Rab the Ranter"; and one who was in no wayformidable by himself might grow dangerous and attractive through thefame of his associate.
I think we can conceive him, in these early years, in that roughmoorland country, poor among the poor with his seven pounds a year,looked upon with doubt by respectable elders, but for all that the besttalker, the best letter-writer, the most famous lover and confidant, thelaureate poet, and the only man who wore his hair tied in the parish. Hesays he had then as high a notion of himself as ever after; and I canwell believe it. Among the youth he walked _facile princeps_, anapparent god; and even if, from time to time, the Reverend Mr. Auldshould swoop upon him with the thunders of the Church, and, in companywith seven others, Rab the Ranter must figure some fine Sunday on thestool of repentance, would there not be a sort of glory, an infernalapotheosis in so conspicuous a shame? Was not Richelieu in disgrace moreidolised than ever by the dames of Paris? and when was the highwaymanmost acclaimed but on his way to Tyburn? Or, to take a simile fromnearer home, and still more exactly to the point, what could evencorporal punishment avail, administered by a cold, abstract, unearthlyschoolmaster, against the influence and fame of the school's hero?
And now we come to the culminating point of Burns's early period. Hebegan to be received into the unknown upper world. His fame soon spreadfrom among his fellow-rebels on the benches, and began to reach theushers and monitors of this great Ayrshire academy. This arose in partfrom his lax views about religion; for at this time that old war of thecreeds and confessors, which is always grumbling from end to end of ourpoor Scotland, brisked up in these parts into a hot and virulentskirmish; and Burns found himself identified with the oppositionparty,--a clique of roaring lawyers and half-heretical divines, with witenough to appreciate the value of the poet's help, and not sufficienttaste to moderate his grossness and personality. We may judge of theirsurprise when "Holy Willie" was put into their hand; like the amorouslads of Tarbolton, they recognised in him the best of seconds. Hissatires began to go the round in manuscript; Mr. Aiken, one of thelawyers, "read him into fame"; he himself was soon welcome in manyhouses of a better sort, where his admirable talk, and his manners,which he had direct from his Maker, except for a brush he gave them at acountry dancing school, completed what his poems had begun. We have asight of him at his first visit to Adamhill, in his ploughman's shoes,coasting around the carpet as though that were sacred ground. But hesoon grew used to carpets and their owners; and he was still thesuperior of all whom he encountered, and ruled the roost inconversation. Such was the impression made, that a young clergyman,himself a man of ability, trembled and became confused when he sawRobert enter the church in which he was to preach. It is not surprisingthat the poet determined to publish: he had now stood the test of somepublicity, and under this hopeful impulse he composed in six wintermonths the bulk of his more important poems. Here was a young man who,from a very humble place, was mounting rapidly; from the cynosure of aparish, he had become the talk of a county; once the bard of ruralcourtships, he was now about to appear as a bound and printed poet inthe world's bookshops.
A few more intimate strokes are necessary to complete the sketch. Thisstrong young ploughman, who feared no competitor with the flail,suffered like a fine lady from sleeplessness and vapours; he would fallinto the black
est melancholies, and be filled with remorse for the pastand terror for the future. He was still not perhaps devoted to religion,but haunted by it; and at a touch of sickness prostrated himself beforeGod in what I can only call unmanly penitence. As he had aspirationsbeyond his place in the world, so he had tastes, thoughts, andweaknesses to match. He loved to walk under a wood to the sound of awinter tempest; he had a singular tenderness for animals; he carried abook with him in his pocket when he went abroad, and wore out in thisservice two copies of the "Man of Feeling." With young people in thefield at work he was very long-suffering; and when his brother Gilbertspoke sharply to them--"O man, ye are no' for young folk," he would say,and give the defaulter a helping hand and a smile. In the hearts of themen whom he met, he read as in a book; and, what is yet more rare, hisknowledge of himself equalled his knowledge of others. There are notruer things said of Burns than what is to be found in his own letters.Country Don Juan as he was, he had none of that blind vanity whichvalues itself on what it is not; he knew his own strength and weaknessto a hair: he took himself boldly for what he was, and, except inmoments of hypochondria, declared himself content.
THE LOVE-STORIES
On the night of Mauchline races, 1785, the young men and women of theplace joined in a penny ball, according to their custom. In the same setdanced Jean Armour, the master-mason's daughter, and our dark-eyed DonJuan. His dog (not the immortal Luath, but a successor unknown to fame,_caret quia vote sacro_), apparently sensible of some neglect, followedhis master to and fro, to the confusion of the dancers. Some mirthfulcomments followed; and Jean heard the poet say to his partner--or, as Ishould imagine, laughingly launch the remark to the company atlarge--that "he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him aswell as his dog." Some time after, as the girl was bleaching clothes onMauchline green, Robert chanced to go by, still accompanied by his dog;and the dog, "scouring in long excursion," scampered with four blackpaws across the linen. This brought the two into conversation; whenJean, with a somewhat hoydenish advance, inquired if "he had yet got anyof the lasses to like him as well as his dog?" It is one of themisfortunes of the professional Don Juan that his honour forbids him torefuse battle; he is in life like the Roman soldier upon duty, or likethe sworn physician who must attend on all diseases. Burns accepted theprovocation; hungry hope reawakened in his heart; here was agirl--pretty, simple at least, if not honestly stupid, and plainly notaverse to his attentions: it seemed to him once more as if love mighthere be waiting him. Had he but known the truth! for this facile andempty-headed girl had nothing more in view than a flirtation; and herheart, from the first and on to the end of her story, was engaged byanother man. Burns once more commenced the celebrated process of"battering himself into a warm affection"; and the proofs of his successare to be found in many verses of the period. Nor did he succeed withhimself only; Jean, with her heart still elsewhere, succumbed to hisfascination, and early in the next year the natural consequence becamemanifest. It was a heavy stroke for this unfortunate couple. They hadtrifled with life, and were now rudely reminded of life's seriousissues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her hopes; the best she had now toexpect was marriage with a man who was a stranger to her dearestthoughts; she might now be glad if she could get what she would neverhave chosen. As for Burns, at the stroke of the calamity he recognisedthat his voyage of discovery had led him into a wrong hemisphere--thathe was not, and never had been, really in love with Jean. Hear him inthe pressure of the hour. "Against two things," he writes, "I am asfixed as fate--staying at home, and owning her conjugally. The first,by heaven, I will not do!--the last, by hell, I will never do!" And thenhe adds, perhaps already in a more relenting temper: "If you see Jean,tell her I will meet her, so God hold me in my hour of need." They metaccordingly; and Burns, touched with her misery, came down from theseheights of independence, and gave her a written acknowledgment ofmarriage. It is the punishment of Don Juanism to create continuallyfalse positions--relations of life which are wrong in themselves, andwhich it is equally wrong to break or to perpetuate. This was such acase. Worldly Wiseman would have laughed and gone his way; let us beglad that Burns was better counselled by his heart. When we discoverthat we can no longer be true, the next best is to be kind. I daresay hecame away from that interview not very content, but with a gloriousconscience; and as he went homeward, he would sing his favourite, "Howare Thy servants blest, O Lord!" Jean, on the other hand, armed with her"lines," confided her position to the master-mason, her father, and hiswife. Burns and his brother were then in a fair way to ruin themselvesin their farm; the poet was an execrable match for any well-to-docountry lass; and perhaps old Armour had an inkling of a previousattachment on his daughter's part. At least, he was not so much incensedby her slip from virtue as by the marriage which had been designed tocover it. Of this he would not hear a word. Jean, who had besought theacknowledgment only to appease her parents, and not at all from anyviolent inclination to the poet, readily gave up the paper fordestruction; and all parties imagined, although wrongly, that themarriage was thus dissolved. To a proud man like Burns here was acrushing blow. The concession which had been wrung from his pity was nowpublicly thrown back in his teeth. The Armour family preferred disgraceto his connection. Since the promise, besides, he had doubtless beenbusy "battering himself" back again into his affection for the girl;and the blow would not only take him in his vanity, but wound him at theheart.
He relieved himself in verse; but for such a smarting affront manuscriptpoetry was insufficient to console him. He must find a more powerfulremedy in good flesh and blood, and after this discomfiture, set forthagain at once upon his voyage of discovery in quest of love. It isperhaps one of the most touching things in human nature, as it is acommonplace of psychology, that when a man has just lost hope orconfidence in one love, he is then most eager to find and lean uponanother. The universe could not be yet exhausted; there must be hope andlove waiting for him somewhere; and so, with his head down, this poor,insulted poet ran once more upon his fate. There was an innocent andgentle Highland nursery-maid at service in a neighbouring family; and hehad soon battered himself and her into a warm affection and a secretengagement. Jean's marriage lines had not been destroyed till March 13,1786; yet all was settled between Burns and Mary Campbell by Sunday, May14, when they met for the last time, and said farewell with rusticsolemnities upon the banks of Ayr. They each wet their hands in astream, and, standing one on either bank, held a Bible between them asthey vowed eternal faith. Then they exchanged Bibles, on one of whichBurns, for greater security, had inscribed texts as to the bindingnature of an oath; and surely, if ceremony can do aught to fix thewandering affections, here were two people united for life. Mary came ofa superstitious family, so that she perhaps insisted on these rites; butthey must have been eminently to the taste of Burns at this period; fornothing would seem superfluous, and no oath great enough, to stay histottering constancy.
Events of consequence now happened thickly in the poet's life. His bookwas announced; the Armours sought to summon him at law for the alimentof the child; he lay here and there in hiding to correct the sheets; hewas under an engagement for Jamaica, where Mary was to join him as hiswife; now he had "orders within three weeks at latest to repair aboardthe _Nancy_, Captain Smith"; now his chest was already on the road toGreenock; and now, in the wild autumn weather on the moorland, hemeasures verses of farewell:--
"The bursting tears my heart declare; Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr!"
But the great Master Dramatist had secretly another intention for thepiece; by the most violent and complicated solution, in which death andbirth and sudden fame all play a part as interposing deities, theact-drop fell upon a scene of transformation. Jean was brought to bed oftwins, and, by an amicable arrangement, the Burnses took the boy tobring up by hand, while the girl remained with her mother. The successof the book was immediate and emphatic; it put L20 at once into theauthor's purse; and he was encouraged upon all hands to go to Edinburghand push his success in a seco
nd and larger edition. Third and last inthese series of interpositions, a letter came one day to Mossgiel Farmfor Robert. He went to the window to read it; a sudden change came overhis face, and he left the room without a word. Years afterwards, whenthe story began to leak out, his family understood that he had thenlearned the death of Highland Mary. Except in a few poems and a few dryindications purposely misleading as to date, Burns himself made noreference to this passage of his life; it was an adventure of which, forI think sufficient reasons, he desired to bury the details. Of one thingwe may be glad: in after years he visited the poor girl's mother, andleft her with the impression that he was "a real warm-hearted chield."
Perhaps a month after he received this intelligence, he set out forEdinburgh on a pony he had borrowed from a friend. The town that winterwas "agog with the ploughman poet." Robertson, Dugald Stewart, Blair,"Duchess Gordon and all the gay world," were of his acquaintance. Sucha revolution is not to be found in literary history. He was now, it mustbe remembered, twenty-seven years of age; he had fought since his earlyboyhood an obstinate battle against poor soil, bad seed, and inclementseasons, wading deep in Ayrshire mosses, guiding the plough in thefurrow, wielding "the thresher's weary flingin'-tree"; and hiseducation, his diet, and his pleasures, had been those of a Scotscountryman. Now he stepped forth suddenly among the polite and learned.We can see him as he then was, in his boots and buckskins, his blue coatand waistcoat striped with buff and blue, like a farmer in his Sundaybest; the heavy ploughman's figure firmly planted on its burly legs; hisface full of sense and shrewdness, and with a somewhat melancholy air ofthought, and his large dark eye "literally glowing" as he spoke. "Inever saw such another eye in a human head," says Walter Scott, "thoughI have seen the most distinguished men of my time." With men, whetherthey were lords or omnipotent critics, his manner was plain, dignified,and free from bashfulness or affectation. If he made a slip, he had thesocial courage to pass on and refrain from explanation. He was notembarrassed in this society, because he read and judged the men; hecould spy snobbery in a titled lord; and, as for the critics, hedismissed their system in an epigram. "These gentlemen," said he,"remind me of some spinsters in my country who spin their thread so finethat it is neither fit for weft nor woof." Ladies, on the other hand,surprised him; he was scarce commander of himself in their society; hewas disqualified by his acquired nature as a Don Juan; and he, who hadbeen so much at his ease with country lasses, treated the town dames toan extreme of deference. One lady, who met him at a ball, gave Chambersa speaking sketch of his demeanour. "His manners were notprepossessing--scarcely, she thinks, manly or natural. It seemed as ifhe affected a rusticity or _landertness_, so that when he said the musicwas 'bonnie, bonnie,' it was like the expression of a child." Thesewould be company manners; and doubtless on a slight degree of intimacythe affectation would grow less. And his talk to women had always "aturn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged the attentionparticularly."
The Edinburgh magnates (to conclude this episode at once) behaved wellto Burns from first to last. Were heaven-born genius to revisit us insimilar guise, I am not venturing too far when I say that he need expectneither so warm a welcome nor such solid help. Although Burns was only apeasant, and one of no very elegant reputation as to morals, he was madewelcome to their homes. They gave him a great deal of good advice,helped him to some five hundred pounds of ready money, and got him, assoon as he asked it, a place in the Excise. Burns, on his part, bore theelevation with perfect dignity; and with perfect dignity returned, whenthe time had come, into a country privacy of life. His powerful sensenever deserted him, and from the first he recognised that his Edinburghpopularity was but an ovation and the affair of a day. He wrote a fewletters in a high-flown, bombastic vein of gratitude; but in practice hesuffered no man to intrude upon his self-respect. On the other hand, henever turned his back, even for a moment, on his old associates; and hewas always ready to sacrifice an acquaintance to a friend, although theacquaintance were a duke. He would be a bold man who should promisesimilar conduct in equally exacting circumstances. It was, in short, anadmirable appearance on the stage of life--socially successful,intimately self-respecting, and like a gentleman from first to last.
In the present study, this must only be taken by the way, while wereturn to Burns's love affairs. Even on the road to Edinburgh he hadseized upon the opportunity of a flirtation, and had carried the"battering" so far that when next he moved from town, it was to stealtwo days with this anonymous fair one. The exact importance to Burns ofthis affair may be gathered from the song in which he commemorated itsoccurrence. "I love the dear lassie," he sings, "because she loves me";or, in the tongue of prose: "Finding an opportunity, I did not hesitateto profit by it; and even now, if it returned, I should not hesitate toprofit by it again." A love thus founded has no interest for mortal man.Meantime, early in the winter, and only once, we find him regrettingJean in his correspondence. "Because"--such is his reason--"because hedoes not think he will ever meet so delicious an armful again"; andthen, after a brief excursion into verse, he goes straight on todescribe a new episode in the voyage of discovery with the daughter of aLothian farmer for a heroine. I must ask the reader to follow all thesereferences to his future wife; they are essential to the comprehensionof Burns's character and fate. In June we find him back at Mauchline, afamous man. There, the Armour family greeted him with a "mean, servilecompliance," which increased his former disgust. Jean was not lesscompliant; a second time the poor girl submitted to the fascination ofthe man whom she did not love, and whom she had so cruelly insultedlittle more than a year ago; and, though Burns took advantage of herweakness, it was in the ugliest and most cynical spirit, and with aheart absolutely indifferent. Judge of this by a letter written sometwenty days after his return--a letter to my mind among the mostdegrading in the whole collection--a letter which seems to have beeninspired by a boastful, libertine bagman. "I am afraid," it goes, "Ihave almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed, of my formerhappiness--the eternal propensity I always had to fall in love. My heartno more glows with feverish rapture; I have no paradisiacal eveninginterviews." Even the process of "battering" has failed him, youperceive. Still he had some one in his eye--a lady, if you please, witha fine figure and elegant manners, and who had "seen the politestquarters in Europe." "I frequently visited her," he writes, "and afterpassing regularly the intermediate degrees between the distant formalbow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I ventured, in my carelessway, to talk of friendship in rather ambiguous terms; and after herreturn to ----, I wrote her in the same terms. Miss, construing myremarks farther than even I intended, flew off in a tangent of femaledignity and reserve, like a mounting lark in an April morning; and wroteme an answer which measured out very completely what an immense way Ihad to travel before I could reach the climate of her favours. But I aman old hawk at the sport, and wrote her such a cool, deliberate, prudentreply, as brought my bird from her aerial towerings, pop, down to myfoot, like Corporal Trim's hat." I avow a carnal longing, after thistranscription, to buffet the Old Hawk about the ears. There is littlequestion that to this lady he must have repeated his addresses, and thathe was by her (Miss Chalmers) eventually, though not at all unkindly,rejected. One more detail to characterise the period. Six months afterthe date of this letter, Burns, back to Edinburgh, is served with a writ_in meditatione fugae_, on behalf of some Edinburgh fair one, probably ofhumble rank, who declared an intention of adding to his family.
About the beginning of December (1787) a new period opens in the storyof the poet's random affections. He met at a tea party one Mrs. AgnesM'Lehose, a married woman of about his own age, who, with her twochildren, had been deserted by an unworthy husband. She had wit, coulduse her pen, and had read "Werther" with attention. Sociable, and evensomewhat frisky, there was a good, sound, human kernel in the woman; awarmth of love, strong dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable,but not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of what biographersrefer to daintily as "her
somewhat voluptuous style of beauty," judgingfrom the silhouette in Mr. Scott Douglas's invaluable edition, thereader will be fastidious if he does not approve. Take her for all inall, I believe she was the best woman Burns encountered. The pair took afancy for each other on the spot; Mrs. M'Lehose, in her turn, invitedhim to tea; but the poet, in his character of the Old Hawk, preferred a_tete-a-tete_, excused himself at the last moment, and offered a visitinstead. An accident confined him to his room for nearly a month, andthis led to the famous Clarinda and Sylvander correspondence. It wasbegun in simple sport; they are already at their fifth or sixthexchange, when Clarinda writes: "It is really curious so much _fun_passing between two persons who saw each other only _once_"; but it ishardly safe for a man and woman in the flower of their years to writealmost daily, and sometimes in terms too ambiguous, sometimes in termstoo plain, and generally in terms too warm, for mere acquaintance. Theexercise partakes a little of the nature of battering, and danger may beapprehended when next they meet. It is difficult to give any account ofthis remarkable correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhapsnot yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination isbaffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravurapassages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famoussentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistresswith the changing phases of the year; it was enthusiastically admired bythe swain, but on the modern mind produces mild amazement and alarm."Oh, Clarinda", writes Burns, "shall we not meet in a state--some yetunknown state--of being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall ministerto the highest wish of Benevolence, and where the chill north wind ofPrudence shall never blow over the flowery field of Enjoyment?" Thedesign may be that of an Old Hawk, but the style is more suggestive of aBird of Paradise. It is sometimes hard to fancy they are not gravelymaking fun of each other as they write. Religion, poetry, love, andcharming sensibility, are the current topics. "I am delighted, charmingClarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion," writes Burns; andthe pair entertained a fiction that this was their "favourite subject.""This is Sunday," writes the lady, "and not a word on our favouritesubject. O fy! 'divine Clarinda!'" I suspect, although quiteunconsciously on the part of the lady, who was bent on his redemption,they but used the favourite subject as a stalking-horse. In themeantime, the sportive acquaintance was ripening steadily into a genuinepassion. Visits took place, and then became frequent. Clarinda's friendswere hurt and suspicious; her clergyman interfered; she herself hadsmart attacks of conscience; but her heart had gone from her control; itwas altogether his, and she "counted all things but loss--heavenexcepted--that she might win and keep him." Burns himself wastransported while in her neighbourhood, but his transports somewhatrapidly declined during an absence. I am tempted to imagine that,womanlike, he took on the colour of his mistress's feeling; that hecould not but heat himself at the fire of her unaffected passion; butthat, like one who should leave the hearth upon a winter's night, histemperature soon fell when he was out of sight, and in a word, though hecould share the symptoms, that he had never shared the disease. At thesame time, amid the fustian of the letters there are forcible and trueexpressions, and the love-verses that he wrote upon Clarinda are amongthe most moving in the language.
We are approaching the solution. In mid-winter, Jean, once more in thefamily way, was turned out of doors by her family; and Burns had herreceived and cared for in the house of a friend. For he remained to thelast imperfect in his character of Don Juan, and lacked the sinistercourage to desert his victim. About the middle of February (1788), hehad to tear himself from his Clarinda and make a journey into thesouth-west on business. Clarinda gave him two shirts for his little son.They were daily to meet in prayer at an appointed hour. Burns, too latefor the post at Glasgow, sent her a letter by parcel that she might nothave to wait. Clarinda on her part writes, this time with a beautifulsimplicity: "I think the streets look deserted-like since Monday; andthere's a certain insipidity in good kind folks I once enjoyed not alittle. Miss Wardrobe supped here on Monday. She once named you, whichkept me from falling asleep. I drank your health in a glass of ale--asthe lasses do at Hallowe'en--'in to mysel'.'" Arrived at Mauchline,Burns installed Jean Armour in a lodging, and prevailed on Mrs. Armourto promise her help and countenance in the approaching confinement. Thiswas kind at least; but hear his expressions: "I have taken her a room; Ihave taken her to my arms; I have given her a mahogany bed; I have givenher a guinea.... I swore her privately and solemnly never to attempt anyclaim on me as a husband, even though anybody should persuade her shehad such a claim--which she has not, neither during my life nor after mydeath. She did all this like a good girl." And then he took advantage ofthe situation. To Clarinda he wrote: "I this morning called for acertain woman. I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure her"; and heaccused her of "tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenaryfawning." This was already in March; by the thirteenth of that month hewas back in Edinburgh. On the 17th, he wrote to Clarinda: "Your hopes,your fears, your cares, my love, are mine; so don't mind them. I willtake you in my hand through the dreary wilds of this world, and scareaway the ravening bird or beast that would annoy you." Again, on the21st: "Will you open, with satisfaction and delight, a letter from a manwho loves you, who has loved you, and who will love you, to death,through death, and for ever?... How rich am I to have such a treasure asyou!... 'The Lord God knoweth,' and, perhaps, 'Israel he shall know,' mylove and your merit. Adieu, Clarinda! I am going to remember you in myprayers." By the 7th of April, seventeen days later, he had alreadydecided to make Jean Armour publicly his wife.
A more astonishing stage-trick is not to be found. And yet his conductis seen, upon a nearer examination, to be grounded both in reason and inkindness. He was now about to embark on a solid worldly career; he hadtaken a farm; the affair with Clarinda, however gratifying to his heart,was too contingent to offer any great consolation to a man like Burns,to whom marriage must have seemed the very dawn of hope andself-respect. This is to regard the question from its lowest aspect; butthere is no doubt that he entered on this new period of his life with asincere determination to do right. He had just helped his brother with aloan of a hundred and eighty pounds; should he do nothing for the poorgirl whom he had ruined? It was true he could not do as he did withoutbrutally wounding Clarinda; that was the punishment of his bygone fault;he was, as he truly says, "damned with a choice only of differentspecies of error and misconduct." To be professional Don Juan, to acceptthe provocation of any lively lass upon the village green, may thus leada man through a series of detestable words and actions, and land him atlast in an undesired and most unsuitable union for life. If he had beenstrong enough to refrain or bad enough to persevere in evil; if he hadonly not been Don Juan at all, or been Don Juan altogether, there hadbeen some possible road for him throughout this troublesome world; but aman, alas! who is equally at the call of his worse and better instincts,stands among changing events without foundation or resource.[3]
DOWNWARD COURSE
It may be questionable whether any marriage could have tamed Burns; butit is at least certain that there was no hope for him in the marriage hecontracted. He did right, but then he had done wrong before; it was, asI said, one of those relations in life which it seems equally wrong tobreak or to perpetuate. He neither loved nor respected his wife. "Godknows," he writes, "my choice was as random as blind man's buff." Heconsoles himself by the thought that he has acted kindly to her; thatshe "has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to him"; that she hasa good figure; that she has a "wood-note wild," "her voice rising withease to B natural," no less. The effect on the reader is one ofunmingled pity for both parties concerned. This was not the wife who (inhis own words) could "enter into his favourite studies or relish hisfavourite authors"; this was not even a wife, after the affair of themarriage lines, in whom a husband could joy to place his trust. Let hermanage a farm with sense, let her voice rise to B natural all day long,she would still be a peasant to her lettered lor
d, and an object of pityrather than of equal affection. She could now be faithful, she could nowbe forgiving, she could now be generous even to a pathetic and touchingdegree; but coming from one who was unloved, and who had scarce shownherself worthy of the sentiment, these were all virtues thrown away,which could neither change her husband's heart nor affect the inherentdestiny of their relation. From the outset, it was a marriage that hadno root in nature; and we find him, ere long, lyrically regrettingHighland Mary, renewing correspondence with Clarinda in the warmestlanguage, on doubtful terms with Mrs. Riddel, and on terms unfortunatelybeyond any question with Anne Park.
Alas! this was not the only ill circumstance in his future. He had beenidle for some eighteen months, superintending his new edition, hangingon to settle with the publisher, travelling in the Highlands with WillieNichol, or philandering with Mrs. M'Lehose; and in this period theradical part of the man had suffered irremediable hurt. He had lost hishabits of industry, and formed the habit of pleasure. Apologeticalbiographers assure us of the contrary; but from the first he saw andrecognised the danger for himself; his mind, he writes, is "enervated toan alarming degree," by idleness and dissipation; and again, "my mindhas been vitiated with idleness." It never fairly recovered. To businesshe could bring the required diligence and attention without difficulty;but he was thenceforward incapable, except in rare instances, of thatsuperior effort of concentration which is required for serious literarywork. He may be said, indeed, to have worked no more, and only amusedhimself with letters. The man who had written a volume of masterpiecesin six months, during the remainder of his life rarely found courage forany more sustained effort than a song. And the nature of the songs isitself characteristic of these idle later years; for they are often aspolished and elaborate as his earlier works were frank, and headlong,and colloquial; and this sort of verbal elaboration in short flights is,for a man of literary turn, simply the most agreeable of pastimes. Thechange in manner coincides exactly with the Edinburgh visit. In 1786 hehad written the "Address to a Louse," which may be taken as an extremeinstance of the first manner; and already, in 1787, we come upon therosebud pieces to Miss Cruikshank, which are extreme examples of thesecond. The change was, therefore, the direct and very naturalconsequence of his great change in life; but it is not the less typicalof his loss of moral courage that he should have given up all largerventures, nor the less melancholy that a man who first attackedliterature with a hand that seemed capable of moving mountains, shouldhave spent his later years in whittling cherry-stones.
Meanwhile, the farm did not prosper; he had to join to it the salary ofan exciseman; at last he had to give it up, and rely altogether on thelatter resource. He was an active officer; and, though he sometimestempered severity with mercy, we have local testimony, oddlyrepresenting the public feeling of the period, that, while "ineverything else he was a perfect gentleman, when he met with anythingseizable he was no better than any other gauger."
There is but one manifestation of the man in these last years whichneed delay us: and that was the sudden interest in politics which arosefrom his sympathy with the great French Revolution. His only politicalfeeling had been hitherto a sentimental Jacobitism, not more or lessrespectable than that of Scott, Aytoun, and the rest of what GeorgeBorrow has nicknamed the "Charlie over the water" Scotsmen. It was asentiment almost entirely literary and picturesque in its origin, builton ballads and the adventures of the Young Chevalier; and in Burns it isthe more excusable, because he lay out of the way of active politics inhis youth. With the great French Revolution, something living,practical, and feasible appeared to him for the first time in this realmof human action. The young ploughman who had desired so earnestly torise, now reached out his sympathies to a whole nation animated with thesame desire. Already in 1788 we find the old Jacobitism hand in handwith the new popular doctrine, when, in a letter of indignation againstthe zeal of a Whig clergyman, he writes: "I daresay the AmericanCongress in 1776 will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as theEnglish Convention was in 1688; and that their posterity will celebratethe centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely as wedo ours from the oppressive measures of the wrong-headed house ofStuart." As time wore on, his sentiments grew more pronounced and evenviolent; but there was a basis of sense and generous feeling to hishottest excess. What he asked was a fair chance for the individual inlife; an open road to success and distinction for all classes of men. Itwas in the same spirit that he had helped to found a public library inthe parish where his farm was situated, and that he sang his ferventsnatches against tyranny and tyrants. Witness, were it alone, thisverse:
"Here's freedom to him that wad read, Here's freedom to him that wad write; There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heard But them wham the truth wad indite."
Yet his enthusiasm for the cause was scarce guided by wisdom. Manystories are preserved of the bitter and unwise words he used in countrycoteries; how he proposed Washington's health as an amendment to Pitt's,gave as a toast "the last verse of the last chapter of Kings," andcelebrated Dumouriez in a doggerel impromptu full of ridicule and hate.Now his sympathies would inspire him with "Scots wha hae"; now involvehim in a drunken broil with a loyal officer, and consequent apologiesand explanations, hard to offer for a man of Burns's stomach. Nor wasthis the front of his offending. On February 27, 1792, he took part inthe capture of an armed smuggler, bought at the subsequent sale fourcarronades, and despatched them with a letter to the French Assembly.Letter and guns were stopped at Dover by the English officials; therewas trouble for Burns with his superiors; he was reminded firmly,however delicately, that, as a paid official, it was his duty to obeyand to be silent; and all the blood of this poor, proud, and falling manmust have rushed to his head at the humiliation. His letter to Mr.Erskine, subsequently Earl of Mar, testifies, in its turgid, turbulentphrases, to a perfect passion of alarmed self-respect and vanity. He hadbeen muzzled, and muzzled, when all was said, by his paltry salary as anexciseman; alas! had he not a family to keep? Already, he wrote, helooked forward to some such judgment from a hackney scribbler as this:"Burns, notwithstanding the _fanfaronnade_ of independence to be foundin his works, and after having been held forth to public view and topublic estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute ofresources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindledinto a paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his insignificantexistence in the meanest of pursuits, and among the vilest of mankind."And then on he goes, in a style of rhodomontade, but filled with livingindignation, to declare his right to a political opinion, and hiswillingness to shed his blood for the political birthright of his sons.Poor, perturbed spirit! he was indeed exercised in vain; those whoshare and those who differ from his sentiments about the Revolution,alike understand and sympathise with him in this painful strait; forpoetry and human manhood are lasting like the race, and politics, whichare but a wrongful striving after right, pass and change from year toyear and age to age. "The Twa Dogs" has already outlasted theconstitution of Sieyes and the policy of the Whigs; and Burns is betterknown among English-speaking races than either Pitt or Fox.
Meanwhile, whether as a man, a husband, or a poet, his steps leddownward. He knew, knew bitterly, that the best was out of him: herefused to make another volume, for he felt it would be adisappointment; he grew petulantly alive to criticism, unless he wassure it reached him from a friend. For his songs, he would take nothing;they were all that he could do; the proposed Scots play, the proposedseries of Scots tales in verse, all had gone to water; and in a fling ofpain and disappointment, which is surely noble with the nobility of aviking, he would rather stoop to borrow than to accept money for theselast and inadequate efforts of his muse. And this desperate abnegationrises at times near to the height of madness; as when he pretended thathe had not written, but only found and published, his immortal "AuldLang Syne." In the same spirit he became more scrupulous as an artist;he was doing so little, he would fain do that little well; and about twomonths
before his death, he asked Thomson to send back all hismanuscripts for revisal, saying that he would rather write five songs tohis taste than twice that number otherwise. The battle of his life waslost; in forlorn efforts to do well, in desperate submissions to evil,the last years flew by. His temper is dark and explosive, launchingepigrams, quarrelling with his friends, jealous of young puppy officers.He tries to be a good father; he boasts himself a libertine. Sick, sad,and jaded, he can refuse no occasion of temporary pleasure, noopportunity to shine; and he who had once refused the invitations oflords and ladies is now whistled to the inn by any curious stranger. Hisdeath (July 21, 1796), in his thirty-seventh year, was indeed a kindlydispensation. It is the fashion to say he died of drink; many a man hasdrunk more and yet lived with reputation, and reached a good age. Thatdrink and debauchery helped to destroy his constitution, and were themeans of his unconscious suicide, is doubtless true; but he had failedin life, had lost his power of work, and was already married to thepoor, unworthy, patient Jean, before he had shown his inclination toconvivial nights, or at least before that inclination had becomedangerous either to his health or his self-respect. He had trifled withlife, and must pay the penalty. He had chosen to be Don Juan, he hadgrasped at temporary pleasures, and substantial happiness and solidindustry had passed him by. He died of being Robert Burns, and there isno levity in such a statement of the case; for shall we not, one andall, deserve a similar epitaph?
WORKS
The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon me throughout thispaper only to touch upon those points in the life of Burns wherecorrection or amplification seemed desirable, leaves me littleopportunity to speak of the works which have made his name so famous.Yet, even here, a few observations seem necessary.
At the time when the poet made his appearance and great first success,his work was remarkable in two ways. For, first, in an age when poetryhad become abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to deal withshepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actualcircumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these mightbe. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularlystiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academicaltimidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible,and used language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fitto give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whomwe know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at oncethat he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance,and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts oflife. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged insliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle ofincompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively cannotrecollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as though a writershould describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be stilluncertain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and stubbornadvance of foot. There could be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work isat the opposite pole from such indefinite and stammering performances;and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead aman further and further from writing the "Address to a Louse." YetBurns, like most great artists, proceeded from a school and continued atradition; only the school and tradition were Scottish, and not English.While the English language was becoming daily more pedantic andinflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there wasanother dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry,tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialectalone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, whichkept it fresh and supple; and, although not shaped for heroic flights,it was a direct and vivid medium for all that had to do with sociallife. Hence, whenever Scottish poets left their laborious imitations ofbad English verses, and fell back on their own dialect, their stylewould kindle, and they would write of their convivial and somewhat grossexistences with pith and point. In Ramsay, and far more in the poor ladFergusson, there was mettle, humour, literary courage, and a power ofsaying what they wished to say definitely and brightly, which in thelatter case should have justified great anticipations. Had Burns died atthe same age as Fergusson, he would have left us literally nothing worthremark. To Ramsay and to Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a veryuncommon degree, not only following their tradition and using theirmeasures, but directly and avowedly imitating their pieces. The sametendency to borrow a hint, to work on some one else's foundation, isnotable in Burns from first to last, in the period of song-writing aswell as in that of the early poems; and strikes one oddly in a man ofsuch deep originality, who left so strong a print on all he touched, andwhose work is so greatly distinguished by that character of"inevitability" which Wordsworth denied to Goethe.
When we remember Burns's obligations to his predecessors, we must neverforget his immense advances on them. They had already "discovered"nature; but Burns discovered poetry--a higher and more intense way ofthinking of the things that go to make up nature, a higher and moreideal key of words in which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergussonexcelled at making a popular--or shall we say vulgar?--sort of societyverses, comical and prosaic, written, you would say, in taverns while asupper-party waited for its laureate's word; but on the appearance ofBurns, this coarse and laughing literature was touched to finer issues,and learned gravity of thought and natural pathos.
What he had gained from his predecessors was a direct, speaking style,and to walk on his own feet instead of on academical stilts. There wasnever a man of letters with more absolute command of his means; and wemay say of him, without excess, that his style was his slave. Hence thatenergy of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner is temptedto explain it by some special richness or aptitude in the dialect hewrote. Hence that Homeric justice and completeness of description whichgives us the very physiognomy of nature, in body and detail, as natureis. Hence, too, the unbroken literary quality of his best pieces, whichkeeps him from any slip into the weariful trade of word-painting, andpresents everything, as everything should be presented by the art ofwords, in a clear, continuous medium of thought. Principal Shairp, forinstance, gives us a paraphrase of one tough verse of the original; andfor those who know the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has the veryquality they are accustomed to look for and admire in Greek. Thecontemporaries of Burns were surprised that he should visit so manycelebrated mountains and waterfalls, and not seize the opportunity tomake a poem. Indeed, it is not for those who have a true command of theart of words, but for peddling, professional amateurs, that thesepointed occasions are most useful and inspiring. As those who speakFrench imperfectly are glad to dwell on any topic they may have talkedupon or heard others talk upon before, because they know appropriatewords for it in French, so the dabbler in verse rejoices to behold awaterfall, because he has learned the sentiment and knows appropriatewords for it in poetry. But the dialect of Burns was fitted to deal withany subject; and whether it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, asheep struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly soldiers in thefield, the gait and cogitations of a drunken man, or only a villagecock-crow in the morning, he could find language to give it freshness,body, and relief. He was always ready to borrow the hint of a design, asthough he had a difficulty in commencing--a difficulty, let us say, inchoosing a subject out of a world which seemed all equally living andsignificant to him; but once he had the subject chosen, he could copewith nature single-handed, and make every stroke a triumph. Again, hisabsolute mastery in his art enabled him to express each and all of hisdifferent humours, and to pass smoothly and congruously from one toanother. Many men invent a dialect for only one side of theirnature--perhaps their pathos or their humour, or the delicacy of theirsenses--and, for lack of a medium, leave all the others unexpressed.You meet such an one, and find him in conversation full of thought,feeling, and experience, which he has lacked the art to employ in hiswritings. But Burns was not thus hampered in the practice of theliterary art; he could throw the whole weight of his nature i
nto hiswork, and impregnate it from end to end. If Doctor Johnson, that stiltedand accomplished stylist, had lacked the sacred Boswell, what should wehave known of him? and how should we have delighted in his acquaintanceas we do? Those who spoke with Burns tell us how much we have lost whodid not. But I think they exaggerate their privilege: I think we havethe whole Burns in our possession set forth in his consummate verses.
It was by his style, and not by his matter, that he affected Wordsworthand the world. There is, indeed, only one merit worth considering in aman of letters--that he should write well; and only one damningfault--that he should write ill. We are little the better for thereflections of the sailor's parrot in the story. And so, if Burns helpedto change the course of literary history, it was by his frank, direct,and masterly utterance, and not by his homely choice of subjects. Thatwas imposed upon him, not chosen upon a principle. He wrote from his ownexperience, because it was his nature so to do, and the tradition of theschool from which he proceeded was fortunately not opposed to homelysubjects. But to these homely subjects he communicated the richcommentary of his nature; they were all steeped in Burns; and theyinterest us not in themselves, but because they have been passed throughthe spirit of so genuine and vigorous a man. Such is the stamp of livingliterature; and there was never any more alive than that of Burns.
What a gust of sympathy there is in him sometimes flowing out in bywayshitherto unused, upon mice, and flowers, and the devil himself;sometimes speaking plainly between human hearts; sometimes ringing outin exultation like a peal of bells! When we compare the "Farmer'sSalutation to his Auld Mare Maggie," with the clever and inhumaneproduction of half a century earlier, "The Auld Man's Mare's dead," wesee in a nut-shell the spirit of the change introduced by Burns. And asto its manner, who that has read it can forget how the collie, Luath, inthe "Twa Dogs," describes and enters into the merry-making in thecottage?
"The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill Are handed round wi' richt guid will; The canty auld folks crackin' crouse, The young anes rantin' through the house-- My heart has been sae fain to see them, That I for joy hae barkit wi' them."
It was this ardent power of sympathy that was fatal to so many women,and, through Jean Armour, to himself at last. His humour comes from himin a stream so deep and easy that I will venture to call him the best ofhumorous poets. He turns about in the midst to utter a noble sentimentor a trenchant remark on human life, and the style changes and rises tothe occasion. I think it is Principal Shairp who says, happily, thatBurns would have been no Scotsman if he had not loved to moralise;neither, may we add, would he have been his father's son; but (what isworthy of note) his moralisings are to a large extent the moral of hisown career. He was among the least impersonal of artists. Except in the"Jolly Beggars," he shows no gleam of dramatic instinct. Mr. Carlyle hascomplained that "Tam o' Shanter" is, from the absence of this quality,only a picturesque and external piece of work; and I may add that in the"Twa Dogs" it is precisely in the infringement of dramatic proprietythat a great deal of the humour of the speeches depends for itsexistence and effect. Indeed, Burns was so full of his identity that itbreaks forth on every page; and there is scarce an appropriate remarkeither in praise or blame of his own conduct but he has put it himselfinto verse. Alas for the tenor of these remarks! They are, indeed, hisown pitiful apology for such a marred existence and talents so misusedand stunted; and they seem to prove for ever how small a part is playedby reason in the conduct of man's affairs. Here was one, at least, whowith unfailing judgment predicted his own fate; yet his knowledge couldnot avail him, and with open eyes he must fulfil his tragic destiny. Tenyears before the end he had written his epitaph; and neither subsequentevents, nor the critical eyes of posterity, have shown us a word in itto alter. And, lastly, has he not put in for himself the lastunanswerable plea?--
"Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, To step aside is human: One point must still be greatly dark--"
One? Alas! I fear every man and woman of us is "greatly dark" to alltheir neighbours, from the day of birth until death removes them, intheir greatest virtues as well as in their saddest faults; and we, whohave been trying to read the character of Burns, may take home thelesson and be gentle in our thoughts.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] For the love-affairs see, in particular, Mr. Scott Douglas's edition under the different dates.
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