by Robert Burns
However, great as Murdoch was as a kindler and a teacher, the education of Robert Burns was mainly due to his remarkable father. Alexander Smith, in his memoir of Burns, which Douglas claimed to be ‘the finest biography of its extent ever written,’ speaking of William Burns, says: ‘In his whole mental build and training he was superior to the people by whom he was surrounded. He had forefathers he could look back to; he had family traditions which he kept sacred. Hard-headed, industrious, religious, somewhat austere, he ruled his house with a despotism which affection and respect on the part of the ruled made light and easy. To the blood of the Burnses a love of knowledge was native, as valour in the old times was native to the blood of the Douglases.’
John Murdoch wrote of William Burns: ‘Although I cannot do justice to the character of this worthy man, yet you will perceive from what I have written what kind of person had the principal part in the education of the poet. He spoke the English language with more propriety, both with respect to diction and pronunciation, than any man I ever knew with no greater advantages; this had a very good effect on the boys, who talk and reason like men much sooner than their neighbours.’
These two quotations help us to understand William Burns as a great teacher of his sons, and his daughters, too, although he did not deem it quite so important to educate his daughters as his sons. It is perfectly clear that the paternal despotism spoken of by Mr Smith, which indeed was supposed to be necessary one hundred and fifty years ago, was not the reason why his boys so early talked and reasoned like men. William Burns was the elderly friend of his sons, not a despot, when he trained them to love reading, and much better to speak freely their individual opinions about what they read. This naturally led his sons to speak like men early and fearlessly. Despotism on the part of the father would have had directly the opposite effect.
Gilbert Burns sums up his father’s estimate of early education and good training when he says: ‘My father laboured hard, and lived with the most rigid economy, that he might be able to keep his children at home, thereby having an opportunity of watching the progress of our young minds and forming in them early habits of piety and virtue; and from this motive alone did he engage in farming, the source of all his difficulties and distresses.’
Robert, after his father’s death, wrote to his cousin, and said his father was ‘the best of friends, and the ablest of instructors.’
In the sketch of his life sent to Dr Moore, of London, he wrote: ‘My father, after many years of wanderings and sojournings, picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my pretensions to wisdom.’
An important element in the education of Burns was his love of Nature. His mind was specially susceptible to development by Nature in any of its forms of beauty or of majesty. A friend who was his guide through the grounds of Athole House, when he was making his tour through the Highlands, in a letter to Mr Alex. Cunningham, wrote: ‘I had often, like others, experienced the pleasures which arise from the sublime or elegant landscape, but I never saw those feelings so intense as in Burns.’
Burns was born and spent his early life and young manhood in a district whose beauty has few equals anywhere. Its rivers — Ayr, Doon, Afton, Lugar, Fail, and Cessnock; all, except Afton, within easy walking distance of his homes in Ayrshire — with their beautifully wooded banks, were, in a very definite way, transforming agencies in the growth of his mind, and therefore most important elements in his highest education. The ‘winding Nith,’ which flowed within a few yards of the home he built on Ellisland farm, around the promontory on which stand the ruins of Lincluden Abbey, and on through Dumfries, continued during the last few years of his life the educational work of the rivers of his native Ayrshire.
The mind of Burns was brought into unity with spiritual ideals through the influence of Nature more productively than by any other agency. He walked in the gloaming, according to his own statement, by the riverside or in woodland paths when he was composing his poems. While residing in Dumfries he had a favourite walk up the Nith to Lincluden Abbey, amid whose ruins he sat in the gloaming, and on moonlight nights often till midnight, recording the visions that came to him in that sacred environment of wooded river and linn (waterfall).
There was much similarity between the most vital educational development of Burns and of Mrs Browning. In Aurora Leigh, the record of her own growth, she describes her true education, although not her actual life’s history. Aurora loses her mother in her fifth year, and lives with her father for nine great years near Florence; she says:
So nine full years our days were hid with God
Among His mountains. I was just thirteen,
Still growing like a plant from unseen roots
In tongue-tied springs; and suddenly awoke
To full life, and life’s needs and agonies,
With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside
A stone-dead father. Life struck sharp on death
Makes awful lightning.
Her years till thirteen are spent mainly in her father’s fine library reading what she most loved of the treasuries of the world. Her own statement of her father’s educational guidance is:
My father taught me what he had learnt the best
Before he died, and left me — grief and love;
And seeing we had books among the hills,
Strong words of counselling souls, confederate
With vocal pines and waters, out of books
He taught me all the ignorance of men,
And how God laughs in heaven when any man
Says, ‘Here I’m learned; this I understand;
In that I’m never caught at fault or doubt.’
Like Burns she reads good books with joyous interest; like Burns she has a father deeply interested in her education who teaches her vital things; and like Burns she loves to learn from the ‘vocal pines and waters,’ and finds her richest revelations for her mind ‘with God among His mountains.’
The hills of Ayrshire, the rivers, and the river-glens, whose sides are covered with beautiful trees, were to Burns kindlers of high ideals, and revealers of God.
CHAPTER III. The Characteristics of Burns.
He was a truly independent democrat. The love of liberty was the basic element of his character. His fundamental philosophy he expressed in the unanswered and unanswerable questions:
Why should ae man better fare,
And a’ men brothers?
Epistle to Dr Blacklock.
If I’m designed yon lordling’s slave,
By Nature’s law designed,
Why was an independent wish
E’er planted in my mind?
Man was Made to Mourn.
To the Right Hon. John Francis Erskine he wrote: ‘The partiality of my countrymen has brought me forward as a man of genius, and has given me a character to support. In the Poet I have avowed manly and independent sentiments, which I trust will be found in the Man.’
Referring to the fact that his father’s family rented land from the ‘famous, noble Keiths,’ and had the honour of sharing their fate — their estates were forfeited because they took part in the rebellion of 1715 — he says: ‘Those who dare welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy, for what they believe sincerely to be the cause of their God and their King, are — as Mark Antony in Shakespeare says of Brutus and Cassius— “Honourable men.”’
Though his father was not born in 1715, he undoubtedly got from his family the principles of independence and the love of liberty which he afterwards taught to his sons, and which Robert propagated with so much zeal.
In a letter to Mrs Dunlop he wrote: ‘Light be the turf upon his breast who taught, “Reverence thyself.”’
To Lord Glencairn, after expressing his gratitude, he said: ‘My gratitude is not selfish design — that I disdain; it is not dodging after the heel of greatness — that is an offering you disdain. It is a feeling of the same kind with my devotion.’
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nbsp; In many of his letters he expresses the same sentiments. In his Epistle to his young friend, Andrew Aiken, he advises him, among other things,
To gather gear by every wile
That’s justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
In a letter to Mr William Dunbar, dealing with his consciousness of his responsibility for his children, he wrote, 1790: ‘I know the value of independence; and since I cannot give my sons an independent fortune, I shall give them an independent line of life.’
Writing to Mrs Dunlop about his son — her god-son — Burns said: ‘I am myself delighted with the manly swell of his little chest, and a certain miniature dignity in the carriage of the head, and the glance of his fine black eye, which promise the undaunted gallantry of an independent mind.’
In ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That’ he says:
Ye see yon birkie, ca’d ‘a lord,’
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that. blockhead
For a’ that, and a’ that,
His ribband, star, and a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind
He looks and laughs at a’ that.
In the same great poem he crystallises a fundamental truth in the immortal couplet:
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that. gold
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote in 1787: ‘I trust I have too much pride for servility, and too little prudence for selfishness.’
To Mrs M’Lehose he wrote in 1788: ‘The dignifying and dignified consciousness of an honest man, and the well-grounded trust in approving heaven, are two most substantial foundations of happiness.’
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote in 1788: ‘Two of my adored household gods are independence of spirit and integrity of soul.’
To Mrs Graham he wrote in 1791: ‘May my failings ever be those of a generous heart and an independent mind.’
To John Francis Erskine he wrote in 1793: ‘My independent British mind oppression might bend, but could not subdue.’
In the ‘Vision’ the message he says he received from Coila, the genius of Kyle, the part of Ayrshire in which he was born, was:
Preserve the dignity of Man, with soul erect.
Burns has been criticised for meddling with what his critics called politics. The highest messages Christ gave to the world were the value of the individual soul, and brotherhood based on the unity of developed individual souls. His highest messages were understood by Burns more clearly than by any one else during his time, and Burns was too great a man to be untrue to his greatest visions. His poems are still among the best interpretations of Christ’s ideals of democracy and brotherhood.
The supreme aim of Burns was to secure for all men and women freedom from the unnatural restrictions of class or custom, so that each individual might have equal opportunity for the development of his highest element of power, his individuality, or self-hood — really the image of God in each. God gave him the vision of the ideal: ‘Why should ae man better fare, and a’ men brothers?’ and he tried to reveal the great vision to the world to kindle the hearts of men.
Burns was a devoted son, and a loving, considerate, respectful, and generous brother. After his father died, Robert wrote to his cousin: ‘On the 13th current I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we have had long warning of the impending stroke, still the feelings of nature claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments and paternal lessons of the best of friends and the ablest of instructors without feeling what, perhaps, the calmer dictates of reason would partly condemn.
‘I hope my father’s friends in your country will not let their connection in this place die with him. For my part, I shall ever with pleasure — with pride — acknowledge my connection with those who were allied by the ties of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I shall ever honour and revere.’
On the stone above his father’s grave in Alloway Kirkyard are engraved the words Burns wrote as his father’s epitaph:
O ye, whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious reverence and attend!
Here lies the loving husband’s dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen’rous friend;
The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
The dauntless heart that feared no human pride;
The friend of man — to vice alone a foe;
For ev’n his failings leaned to virtue’s side.
John Murdoch warmly approved of this epitaph of his former pupil and friend Robert. He wrote: ‘I have often wished, for the good of mankind, that it were as customary to honour and perpetuate the memory of those who excel in moral rectitude, as it is to extol what are called heroic actions.’
When Burns found that the Edinburgh edition of his poems had brought him about five hundred pounds, he loaned Gilbert one hundred and fifty pounds to assist him to get out of debt, in order that his mother and sisters might be placed in a position of security and greater happiness. In a letter to Robert Graham of Fintry, explaining the circumstances that led him to accept the position of an exciseman, he first explains that Ellisland farm, which he rented, was in the last stage of worn-out poverty when he got possession of it, and that it would take some time before it would pay the rent. Then he says: ‘I might have had cash to supply the deficiencies of these hungry years; but I have a younger brother and three sisters on a farm in Ayrshire, and it took all my surplus over what I thought necessary for my farming capital to save not only the comfort, but the very existence, of that fireside circle from impending destruction.’
He helped with sympathy, advice, and material support a younger brother who lived in England. His true attitude towards his own wife and family is shown in his ‘Epistle to Dr Blacklock’:
To make a happy fireside clime
For weans and wife,
Is the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.
The greatest dread of his later years was that he might not be able to provide for his family in case of his death.
Burns was an upright, honest man. To the mother of the Earl of Glencairn he wrote: ‘I would much rather have it said that my profession borrowed credit from me, than that I borrowed credit from my profession.’
To James Hamilton, of Glasgow, he wrote: ‘Among some distressful emergencies that I have experienced in life, I have ever laid it down as my foundation of comfort — that he who has lived the life of an honest man has by no means lived in vain.’
To Sir John Whitefoord he wrote in 1787: ‘Reverence to God and integrity to my fellow-creatures I hope I shall ever preserve.’
In a letter to John M’Murdo in 1793 he wrote: ‘To no man, whatever his station in life, have I ever paid a compliment at the expense of truth.’
In ‘Lines written in Friar’s Carse’ he wrote:
Keep the name of Man in mind,
And dishonour not your kind.
To Robert Ainslie he wrote: ‘It is much to be a great character as a lawyer, but beyond comparison more to be a great character as a man.’
To Andrew Aiken, in his ‘Epistle to a Young Friend,’ he wrote:
Where you feel your honour grip,
Let that aye be your border.
In ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That’ he expresses his faith in righteousness as a fundamental element in character, where he says:
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
Burns had a sympathetic heart that overflowed with kindness for his fellow-men, and even for animals, domestic and wild. In a letter to the Rev. G. H. Baird in 1791 he said: ‘I am fain to do any good that occurs in my very limited power to a fellow-creature, just for the selfish purpose of clearing a little th
e vista of retrospection.’
It was the big heart of Burns that directed the writing of the first part of that sentence, and his modesty that led to the expression of the second part. The joy of remembering a good deed was never his chief reason for doing it. In a ‘Tragic Fragment’ he wrote:
With sincere though unavailing sighs
I view the helpless children of distress.
A number of stories have been preserved to prove that while Burns was strict and stern in dealing with smugglers, and others who made a practice of breaking the law by illegally selling strong drink without licence, he was tenderly kind and protective to poor women who had little stores of refreshments to sell to their friends on fair and market days.
Professor Gillespie related that he overheard Burns say to a poor woman of Thornhill one fair-day as she stood at her door: ‘Kate, are you mad? Don’t you know that the Supervisor and I will be in upon you in the course of forty minutes? Good-bye t’ye at present.’
His friendly hint saved a poor widow from a heavy fine of several pounds, while the annual loss to the revenue would be only a few shillings.
He was ordered to look into the case of another old woman, suspected of selling home-brewed ale without licence. When she knew his errand she said: ‘Mercy on us! are ye an exciseman? God help me, man! Ye’ll surely no inform on a puir auld body like me, as I hae nae other means o’ leevin’ than sellin’ my drap o’ home-brewed to decent folk that come to Holywood Kirk.’
Burns patted her on the shoulder and said: ‘Janet, Janet, sin awa’, and I’ll protect ye.’
In ‘A Winter Night’ Burns reveals a deep and genuine sympathy with the outlying cattle, the poor sheep hiding from the storm, the wee helpless birds, and even for the fox and the wolf; and mourns because the pitiless tempest beats on them.
Carlyle says of ‘A Winter Night’ that ‘it is worth seven homilies on mercy, for it is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns indeed lives in sympathy; his soul rushes into all the realms of being; nothing that has existence can be indifferent to him.’