by Robert Burns
Thus Julius, burning with Ambition’s fire,
At length, thro’ Roman blood, to empire rose —
But henceforth may that wretch accurs’d expire,
20 Whose glory on his country’s ruin grows.
May fortune always their endeavours bless,
Who struggle to defend their country’s cause,
May victory crown their labours with success,
Who fight for Freedom, and for Patriot Laws.
25 But those who dare a People’s rights invade,
Who millions, for dominion would enslave;
May all their toils with infamy be paid,
Not tears – but curses visit them to the grave.
In deep oblivion may their acts be hid,
30 That none their despot victories may lead;
As Greece her sons, to sound his name forbid,
Who, to be known, perform’d a villain’s deed.1
A. Briton
This is attributed to Burns in Hogg’s The Lost Poems (1997). The crucial pen-name ‘A. Briton’ was first used by Burns in his anti-Hanoverian letter in The Edinburgh Evening Courant of November 1788 (Letter 283). We know from his personal correspondence that he was the author of this seditious letter. We are now confronted in this section with two recently discovered poems and a political essay which use this pseudonymn. Checking of the Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature showed no other usage of ‘A. Briton’ other than the Burns Courant letter during this period and mentions an obscure booklet of 1819 on bank coins, signed A. Briton. We then embarked on a sustained textual scansion of period newspapers and journals in order to discover this pen-name any-where other than in Lines on Ambition, The Cob-Web and the political essay from Burns’s main London radical outlet, The Morning Chronicle. No other usage was found. As we shall see, regarding the new essay, Burns was particularly keen to emphasise to The Morning Chronicle that he was, indeed ‘a Briton’. Further, in the late eighteenth century, this pseudonym does not precede Burns’s usage and also disappears after his death.
Textually, the new poem is strikingly similar to lines written by Burns during mid-1793 in John Syme’s copy of The British Album, a volume of the Della Cruscan poets led by Robert Merry:
PERISH their names, however great or brave,
Who in the DESPOT’s cursed errands bleed!
But who for FREEDOM fill a hero’s grave,
Fame with a Seraph-pen, record the glorious deed!
These lines not only read as though they were embryonic of Lines on Ambition but could easily be inserted in the final part of the poem. Although the first part of the poem is rather cumbersome, Burns did compose very similar lines during mid-1793.
That the subject of ‘Ambition’ might be a topic for the poet’s pen is evident if a letter to Thomson, written in June 1793, is considered:
Have you ever, my dear Sir, felt your bosom ready to burst with indignation, on reading of, or seeing, how these mighty villains who divide kingdom against kingdom, desolate provinces & lay Nations waste out of the wantonness of Ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? (Letter 566).
Moreover, the notion that Burns might curse the leaders of Britain for involving the country in a war against France (ll. 19–20, ll. 25–8), is clearly seen in a letter to Peter Hill in 1793: ‘O! may the wrath & curse of all mankind, haunt and harass these turbulentunprincipled misc [reants] who have involved a people in this ruinous business!!!’ (Letter 553).
There isno evidence to suggest this poem was copied from an English newspaper or was the work of an English poet. It does not appear in English radical newspapers. It was almost certainly sent to The Edinburgh Gazetteer by Burns, who had previously employed the pen-name.
Indeed, the poet’s primary educational text, under his influential tutor Murdoch, that is Arthus Masson’s A Collection of Prose and Verse from the Best English Authors, carries a powerful essay ‘The Twelve Caesars’ which dwells on the corrupt abuse of power by the ambitious, beginning with the reign of Julius Caesar.
1 The last two lines refer to Erestrates, who, to perpetuate his name, set fire to the temple of Diana, to Esphus. As well as this specific footnote, there is also an apparently unspecified footnote in the newspaper: ‘See Plutarch’s Life of Caesar.’
Remember the Poor
First printed in The Glasgow Advertiser, 27th January 1794.
Frae Greenland’s snawie mountain high, snowy
(Whare sleaks o’ ice tumult’ous lye, lie
An’ dismal scenes appear)
Bauld Boreas, wi’ his surly train, bold North Wind
5 Rides howling thro’ the mirk domain, dark
An’ leads and guides the weir: – war of elements
Nae mair the gowany field leuks gay, no more, looks
Nor flow’r-bespangled green,
To tempt our waunrin’ feet to stray, wandering
10 Or charm our rovin’ een; eyes
Mair dowie they grow ay, more woeful
An’ wither in the blast,
I’m vext now, perplext now,
To think their beauty’s past.
15 Happy are they, wha, without dread, who
Can hear the storm blaw owre their head, blow over
Nor danger needs to fear: –
Blest are ye, highly favour’d Great,
Wha coshly rest on beds o’ state, comfortably
20 Crown’d wi’ ilk dainty chear; – each
Enrag’d ay whan I do compare when
Your blythsome lives wi’ mine,
(For mine’s a life opprest wi’ care,
An’ drudgery an’ pine.)
25 I snarl an’ quarrell
Wi’ Fortune, that blind wh – re, whore
That leuks down, an’ does frown looks
On me, and hauds me poor: holds, keeps
Reflect sae wretched’s they maun be so, must
30 That’s doom’d tae pinchin’ poverty to
And stern Misfortune’s blows;
An’ O! thy pittance do thou grant –
‘Twill banish their ilk’ care an’ want, every
An’ rid them o’ their woes:
35 Wi’ sauls quite liberal an’ free souls
Your charity extend;
Now is the time, – an’ credit me
Ye’ll no’ miss’t in the end.
Mak’ haste then, nor waste then
40 Your siller on ought ill; money
Ease their need wi’ a’ speed
Lest hunger does them kill.
Hail ye wha ha’e wi’ open heart who have
Come forth o’ late, an’ ta’en their part – taken
45 A noble gen’rous deed!
Is there, whate blude rins in his viens, what blood runs
A wretch, wha’s cash, an’ yet refrains who’s
Tae join ye wi’ a speed –
(Uwordy’s he to see the light not worthy
50 O’ day, that e’er wad scan, would
An’, for the sake o’ riches, slight
His fellow-creature, Man) –
May his gear thro’ ilk year possessions, each
Ay mair an’ mair decrease, always, more
55 Wha’ll no join wi’ his coin who’ll not
To help fowks in distress. folks
Lang may ye live, Sirs, to defend long
An’ stand the poor man’s constant friend
In ilka time o’ need; every
60 Syne, whan Death at your doors does ca’, then, when, call
An’ lays ye lifeless, ane an’ a’, one and all
Amang the silent dead, among
Fame on her trump your praise will soun’, sound
An’ mark ye in her pages,
65 That your deeds may be handed down
Unto the latest ages; –
An’ may ’t be your decree –
‘Throughout an’ endless day,
‘T’ inherit by merit
70 ‘The ever-sproutin’ bay
’.
Jan 1794, JOB.
This poem was first ascribed to Burns in Hogg’s Robert Burns: The Lost Poems (1997). It appears in The Glasgow Advertiser of 27th January, 1794. It was composed after a public plea for charity to feed the hungry in and around areas of Glasgow during the harsh winter of 1793–4. To launch the initial call for public charity Burns’s poem The Cottar’s Saturday Night was reprinted in Dr James Anderson’s magazine The Bee, where the charity appeal originated in December 1793. Burns knew Anderson and added (Letter 426) a few friends’ names to Anderson’s subscriber list. By the time Remember the Poor was printed, over a month after the appeal went public, The Bee had been forcibly closed down in Edinburgh for its part in serialising the ferocious political critique on government by James Thomson Callender, The Political Progress of Britain. Hence perhaps, the poem’s appearance in The Glasgow Advertiser.
There are several reasons to suggest this work is by Burns. He would have known The Cottar’s Saturday Night was part of the charity appeal and his egalitarian sentiments were such that he would have surely wished to contribute. On several occasions Burns remarks that the only ‘coin’ a poet can pay with is rhyme (Letter 571). As we see in the Introduction, The Book of Job is compulsively present in Burns’s poetry and letters (Letters 248, 362, 446). This identification of his own and his father’s suffering with that of Job would make this an obvious choice of pen-name.
In addition, it is now known that Burns not only published prose in The Glasgow Advertiser but its subject was poverty. Here is the full text from the newspaper on 29th April–2nd May, 1791:
FRAGMENT – ON POVERTY
POVERTY! Thou half-sister of Death! Thou cousin-german of Hell! Where shall I find force of execration equal to thy demerits? – By thee, the venerable Ancient, though, in thy invidious obscurity, grown hoary in the practice of every virtue under Heaven, now laden with years and wretchedness, implores from a stony-hearted son of Mammon, whose sun of prosperity never knew a cloud, a little, little aid to support his very existence, and is by him, derided and insulted. – By thee, the man of sentiment, whose heart glows with Independence and melts with sensibility, [only – error] inly pines under the neglect, or wreathes [writhes] in bitterness of soul under the contumely, of arrogant, unfeeling Wealth. – By thee, the man of Genius, whose ill-starred ambition plants him at the tables of the Fashionable and Polite, must see, in suffering silence, his remark neglected and his person despised, while shallow greatness in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause. – Nor is it only the family of worth to have reason to complain of thee. – The children of Folly and Vice, tho’ in common with thee, the offspring of evil, smart equal [ly] under thy rod. – Owing to thee, the man of unfortunate disposition and neglected education, is condemned as a fool for his dissipation; despised and shunned as a needy wretch, when his follies, as usual, have brought him to want, and when his unprincipled necessities drive him to dishonest practices, he is abhorred as a miscrent [miscreant], and perishes by the justice of his country. – But far otherwise is the lot of the Man of family and Fortune. – His early extravagance and folly are fire and spirit; his consequent wants are the embarassments of an Honest Fellow; and when, to remedy the matter, he sets out with a legal commission to plunder distant provinces and massacre peaceful nations, he returns laden with the spoils of rapine and murder – lives wicked and respected – and dies a Villian and a Lord. – Nay, worst of all, alas! For hapless Woman – the needy creature who was shivering at the corner of the street, waiting to earn the wages of casual prostitution, is ridden down by the Chariot wheels of the CORONETED RAPE – hurrying out to the adulterous assignation – She, who, without the same necessities to plead, riots nightly in the same guilty trade!!!
Although anonymous, this flyting critique on poverty and social oppression, bar a few minor textual and typographical differences, is found in a letter by Burns to Peter Hill, Edinburgh, dated for 17th January, 1791, some three months prior to appearing in the Glasgow publication (see Letter 430). Given the poet’s habit of making fair copies of many of his letters and his tendency to repeat himself, it is pretty certain he sent this material to the Advertiser. The only known manuscript is without address and unsigned. Hence, here is now definitive proof that Burns covertly published prose in The Glasgow Advertiser during 1791.
The first stanza of the poem is its best. The winter scene is set within a powerful image of the god of the North Wind riding, ‘howling’, through icy Greenland with an elemental power so wild that they have decimated, as far away as Scotland, any flowers that might have survived. This confidently flowing image is reminiscent of Burns’s characteristic painting of a winter scene to create a mood fit for the human despair and loss in the ensuing verses. The description of ‘Bauld Boreas, wi’ his surly train’ is echoed in Burns’s ‘Cauld Boreas, wi’ his boisterous crew’ from The Fête Champêtre, which was published posthumously. The phrase ‘Bauld Boreas’ is found only in Ramsay’s (1686–1758) The Nipping Frost and Driving Sna’. The description ‘the mirk domain, / And leads and guides the weir’ (ll. 5–6) is adapted from Fergusson’s ‘… bleak domain / And guides the weir’, The Daft Days, stanza 3. Also, the phrase (l. 10) ‘Or charm our rovin’ een’ is partly adapted from Fergusson’s Leith Races, ‘To charm our rovin’ een’. Such echoes of Ramsay and Fergusson are everywhere in Burns.
A further distinct feature of Burns in poetry and prose is his constant attack on the ‘great folk’ or ‘highly favour’d Great’, as seen here. Or in Elegy on the Death of Captain Matthew Henderson, ‘Go to your sculptur’d tombs, ye Great, / In a’ the tinsel trash o’ state’. Ll. 15–20 read like a condensed version of the social and economic oppression suffered by the poor in A Winter Night, ‘Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down, / Feel not a want but what yourselves create, /Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, / Whom friends and fortune quite disown!’ This type of comment in Burns is found along with his motif of despair for the poor in general and himself in particular, his personal angst, suffering at the hands of ‘Fortune’, as seen at ll. 21–8, a passage which is autobiographical as in Burns’s: ‘snarl an’ quarrell / Wi’ Fortune, that blind wh—ore’. The anonymously published prose by Burns, given above from The Glasgow Advertiser is a perfect example of Burns ‘enrag’d’ at the effects of poverty. (Further examples of this sentiment expressed in poetry and prose are found in Lines Written on a Banknote, My Father Was A Farmer, The Creed of Poverty, comments in the FCB and Letters 244, 335, 358, 347, 510 319, 605 and 638). As he wrote to Mrs Dunlop, ‘Poverty, is to be my attendant to the grave’ (Letter 638). Ll. 15–28 are a self-portrait of a poet unable to give cash to the charity plea who is deeply indignant at the semi-feudal economic structure which is implicitly blamed as the cause of poverty.
To Messrs Muir, Palmer, Skirving and Margarot
First printed in The Edinburgh Gazetteer, 15th January, 1794.
Among innumerable false – unmov’d,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrify’d. – Milton.
Friends of the Slighted people – ye whose wrongs
From wounded FREEDOM many a tear shall draw
As once she mourn’d when mock’d by venal tongues
Her SYDNEY fell beneath the form of law.
5 O had this bosom known poetic fire
Your names, your deeds, should grace my votive songs
For Virtue taught the bard’s far-sounding lyre
To lift the PATRIOT from the servile throng.
High o’er the wrecks of time his fame shall live
10 While proud Oppression wastes her idle rage.
His name on history’s column shall revive
And wake the genius of a distant age.
It shines – the dawn of that long promised day
For eager Fancy bursts the midnight gloom
15 The patriot’s praise, the grateful nations pay
And tears the trophy from the oppressor’s tomb.
Yet
what the praise far distant times shall sing
To that calm solace Virtue now bestows.
Round the dire bark She waves her guardian wing;
20 She guides her exiles o’er the trackless snows:
With Joy’s gay flowers She decks the sultry wild
And sheds the beam of Hope where Nature never smil’d.
Whereas the most beautiful gem stones are the result of the raw geological power in the vortex of Earth’s volatile central core, the genesis of this poetic gem is the intense crucible of political antagonism that came to a head in December 1793 and January 1794 in Edinburgh. Continuing the theme of The Scotian Muse, it laments the oppression of radical activists and in particular, those convicted of sedition and sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of Botany Bay, namely Thomas Muir, the Rev. Fysche Palmer, William Skirving and Maurice Margarot. It also accords Muir the honour of being compared to the great hero-martyr of the Whig tradition Algernon Sydney (1622–83), the English statesman, who was an icon of the French as well as British radical movement at this period.
Having tried and convicted Muir and Palmer for sedition and served upon them sentences of 14 years’ and 7 years’ transportation respectively, the Scottish Friends of the People branches – those ‘Friends of the Slighted people’ (l. 1) – were galvanised and grew, despite the key Edinburgh branch, central to organisation of the Scottish radicals, being infiltrated by the cousin of James Boswell, Claude Irvine Boswell, Depute Sheriff of Fife. Another government spy, P. Moir, described the Rev. Fysche Palmer bizarrely as a bankrupt butcher from Birmingham paid by Joseph Priestley’s radical group (see RH 2/4/70/f.48, dated 8th March, 1793). The government moved to arrest William Skirving and Maurice Margarot when they were about to convene a meeting of the National Convention of the Friends of the People in Edinburgh near the end of 1793. The government feared the setting up of a Jacobin-derived government. Robert Dundas (nephew to Henry) wrote in early January 1794: