[1]"Which," says Samuel Johnson, "the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety" (Lives of English Poets, vol. i. p. 303).[2]Burnet held that at the deluge the earth was crushed like an egg, the internal waters rushing out, and the fragments of shell becoming the mountains.
[1]"Which," says Samuel Johnson, "the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety" (Lives of English Poets, vol. i. p. 303).
[2]Burnet held that at the deluge the earth was crushed like an egg, the internal waters rushing out, and the fragments of shell becoming the mountains.
BURNET,known botanically asPoterium, a member of the rose family. The plants are perennial herbs with pinnate leaves and small flowers arranged in dense long-stalked heads. Great burnet (Poterium officinale) is found in damp meadows; salad burnet (P. Sanguisorba) is a smaller plant with much smaller flower-heads growing in dry pastures.
BURNETT, FRANCES ELIZA HODGSON(1849- ), Anglo-American novelist, whose maiden name was Hodgson, was born in Manchester, England, on the 24th of November 1849; she went to America with her parents, who settled in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1865. Miss Hodgson soon began to write stories for magazines. In 1873 she married Dr L.M. Burnett of Washington, whom she afterwards (1898) divorced. Her reputation as a novelist was made by her remarkable tale of Lancashire life,That Lass o' Lowrie's(1877), and a number of other volumes followed, of which the best wereThrough one Administration(1883) andA Lady of Quality(1896). In 1886 she attained a new popularity by her charming story ofLittle Lord Fauntleroy, and this led to other stories of child-life.Little Lord Fauntleroywas dramatized (seeCopyrightfor the legal questions involved) and had a great success on the stage; and other dramas by her were also produced. In 1900 she married a second time, her husband being Mr Stephen Townesend, a surgeon, who (as Will Dennis) had taken to the stage and had collaborated with her in some of her plays.
BURNEY, CHARLES(1726-1814), English musical historian, was born at Shrewsbury on the 12th of April 1726. He received his earlier education at the free school of that city, and was afterwards sent to the public school at Chester. His first music master was Edmund Baker, organist of Chester cathedral, and a pupil of Dr John Blow. Returning to Shrewsbury when about fifteen years old, he continued his musical studies for three years under his half-brother, James Burney, organist of St Mary's church, and was then sent to London as a pupil of the celebrated Dr Arne, with whom he remained three years. Burney wrote some music for Thomson'sAlfred, which was produced at Drury Lane theatre on the 30th of March 1745. In 1749 he was appointed organist of St Dionis-Backchurch, Fenchurch Street, with a salary of £30 a year; and he was also engaged to take the harpsichord in the "New Concerts" then recently established at the King's Arms, Cornhill. In that year he married Miss Esther Sleepe, who died in 1761; in 1769 he married Mrs Stephen Allen of Lynn. Being threatened with a pulmonary affection he went in 1751 to Lynn in Norfolk, where he was elected organist, with an annual salary of £100, and there he resided for the next nine years. During that time he began to entertain the idea of writing a general history of music. HisOde for St Cecilia's Daywas performed at Ranelagh Gardens in 1759; and in 1760 he returned to London in good health and with a young family; the eldest child, a girl of eight years of age, surprised the public by her attainments as a harpsichord player. The concertos for the harpsichord which Burney published soon after his return to London were regarded with much admiration. In 1766 he produced, at Drury Lane, a free English version and adaptation of J.J. Rousseau's operettaLe Devin du village, under the title ofThe Cunning Man. The university of Oxford conferred upon him, on the 23rd of June 1769, the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Music, on which occasion he presided at the performance of his exercise for these degrees. This consisted of an anthem, with an overture, solos, recitatives and choruses, accompanied by instruments, besides a vocal anthem in eight parts, which was not performed. In 1769 he publishedAn Essay towards a History of Comets.
Amidst his various professional avocations, Burney never lost sight of his favorite object—hisHistory of Music—and therefore resolved to travel abroad for the purpose of collecting materials that could not be found in Great Britain. Accordingly, he left London in June 1770, furnished with numerous letters of introduction, and proceeded to Paris, and thence to Geneva, Turin, Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. The results of his observations he published inThe Present State of Music in France and Italy(1771). Dr Johnsonthought so well of this work that, alluding to his ownJourney to the Western Islands of Scotland, he said, "I had that clever dog Burney's Musical Tour in my eye." In July 1772 Burney again visited the continent, to collect further materials, and, after his return to London, published his tour under the title ofThe Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and United Provinces(1773). In 1773 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1776 appeared the first volume (in 4to) of his long-projectedHistory of Music. In 1782 Burney published his second volume; and in 1789 the third and fourth. Though severely criticized by Forkel in Germany and by the Spanish ex-Jesuit, Requeno, who, in his Italian workSaggisul Ristabilimento dell' Arte Armonica de' Greci e Romani Cantori(Parma, 1798), attacks Burney's account of the ancient Greek music, and calls himlo scompigliato Burney, theHistory of Musicwas generally recognized as possessing great merit. The least satisfactory volume is the fourth, the treatment of Handel and Bach being quite inadequate. Burney's first tour was translated into German by Ebeling, and printed at Hamburg in 1772; and his second tour, translated into German by Bode, was published at Hamburg in 1773. A Dutch translation of his second tour, with notes by J.W. Lustig, organist at Groningen, was published there in 1786. The Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients, in the first volume of Burney'sHistory, was translated into German by J.J. Eschenburg, and printed at Leipzig, 1781. Burney derived much aid from the first two volumes of Padre Martini's very learnedStoria della Musica(Bologna, 1757-1770). One cannot but admire his persevering industry, and his sacrifices of time, money and personal comfort, in collecting and preparing materials for hisHistory, and few will be disposed to condemn severely errors and oversights in a work of such extent and difficulty.
In 1774 he had writtenA Plan for a Music School. In 1779 he wrote for the Royal Society an account of the infant Crotch, whose remarkable musical talent excited so much attention at that time. In 1784 he published, with an Italian title-page, the music annually performed in the pope's chapel at Rome during Passion Week. In 1785 he published, for the benefit of the Musical Fund, an account of the first commemoration of Handel in Westminster Abbey in the preceding year, with an excellent life of Handel. In 1796 he publishedMemoirs and Letters of Metastasio. Towards the close of his life Burney was paid £1000 for contributing to Rees'sCyclopaediaall the musical articles not belonging to the department of natural philosophy and mathematics. In 1783, through the treasury influence of his friend Edmund Burke, he was appointed organist to the chapel of Chelsea Hospital, and he moved his residence from St Martin's Street, Leicester Square, to live in the hospital for the remainder of his life. He was made a member of the Institute of France, and nominated a correspondent in the class of the fine arts, in the year 1810. From 1806 until his death he enjoyed a pension of £300 granted by Fox. He died at Chelsea College on the 12th of April 1814, and was interred in the burying-ground of the college. A tablet was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
Burney's portrait was painted by Reynolds, and his bust was cut by Nollekens in 1805. He had a wide circle of acquaintance among the distinguished artists and literary men of his day. At one time he thought of writing a life of his friend Dr Samuel Johnson, but he retired before the crowd of biographers who rushed into that field. His character in private as well as in public life appears to have been very amiable and exemplary. Dr Burney's eldest son, James, was a distinguished officer in the royal navy, who died a rear-admiral in 1821; his second son was the Rev. Charles Burney, D.D. (1757-1817), a well-known classical scholar, whose splendid collection of rare books, and MSS. was ultimately bought by the nation for the British Museum; and his second daughter was Frances (Madame D'Arblay,q.v.).
TheDiary and Lettersof Madame D'Arblay contain many minute and interesting particulars of her father's public and private life, and of his friends and contemporaries. A life of Burney by Madame D'Arblay appeared in 1832.
Besides the operatic music above mentioned, Burney's known compositions consist of:—(1)Six Sonatas for the harpsichord; (2)Two Sonatas for the harp or piano, with accompaniments for violin and violoncello; (3)Sonatas for two violins and a bass: two sets; (4)Six Lessons for the harpsichord; (5)Six Duets for two German flutes; (6)Three Concertos for the harpsichord; (7)Six concert pieces with an introduction and fugue for the organ; (8)Six Concertos for the violin, &c., in eight parts; (9)Two Sonatas for pianoforte, violin and violoncello; (10)A Cantata, &c.; (11)Anthems, &c.; (12)XII. Canzonetti a due voci in Canone, poesia dell' Abate Metastasio.
BURNHAM BEECHES,a wooded tract of 375 acres in Buckinghamshire, England, acquired in 1879 by the Corporation of the city of London, and preserved for public use. This tract, the remnant of an ancient forest, the more beautiful because of the undulating character of the land, lies west of the road between Slough and Beaconsfield, and 2 m. north of Burnham Beeches station on the Great Western railway. The poet Thomas Gray, who stayed frequently at Stoke Poges in the vicinity, is enthusiastic concerning the beauty of the Beeches ina letter to Horace Walpole in 1737. Near the township of Burnham are slight Early English remains of an abbey founded in 1265. Burnham is an urban district with a population (1901) of 3245.
BURNHAM-ON-CROUCH,an urban district in the southeastern parliamentary division of Essex, England, 43 m. E. by N. from London on a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2919. The church of St Mary is principally late Perpendicular, a good example; it has Decorated portions and a Norman font. There are extensive oyster beds in the Crouch estuary. Burnham lies 6 m. from the North Sea; below it the Crouch is joined on the south side by the Roch, which branches into numerous creeks, and, together with the main estuary, forms Foulness, Wallasea, Potton and other low, flat islands, embanked and protected from incursions of the sea. Burnham is in some repute as a watering-place, and is a favourite yachting station. There is considerable trade in corn and coal, and boat-building is carried on.
BURNING TO DEATH.As a legal punishment for various crimes burning alive was formerly very wide-spread. It was common among the Romans, being given in the XII. Tables as the special penalty for arson. Under the Gothic codes adulterers were so punished, and throughout the middle ages it was the civil penalty for certain heinous crimes,e.g.poisoning, heresy, witchcraft, arson, bestiality and sodomy, and so continued in some cases, nominally at least, till the beginning of the 19th century. In England, under the common law, women condemned for high treason or petty treason (murder of husband, murder of master or mistress, certain offences against the coin, &c.) were burned, this being considered more "decent" than hanging and exposure on a gibbet. In practice the convict was strangled before being burnt. The last woman burnt in England suffered in 1789, the punishment being abolished in 1790.
Burning was not included among the penalties for heresy under the Roman imperial codes; but the burning of heretics by orthodox mobs had long been sanctioned by custom before the edicts of the emperor Frederick II. (1222, 1223) made it the civil-law punishment for heresy. His example was followed in France by Louis IX. in the Establishments of 1270. In England, where the civil law was never recognized, the common law took no cognizance of ecclesiastical offences, and the church courts had no power to condemn to death. There were, indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries isolated instances of the burning of heretics. William of Newburgh describes the burning of certain foreign sectaries in 1169, and early in the 13th century a deacon was burnt by order of the council of Oxford (Foxe ii. 374; cf. Bracton,de Corona, ii. 300), but by what legal sanction is not obvious. The right of the crown to issue writsde haeretico comburendo, claimed for it by later jurists, was based on that issued by Henry IV. in 1400 for the burning of William Sawtre; but Sir James Stephen (Hist. Crim. Law) points out that this was issued "with the assent of the lords temporal," which seems to prove that the crown had no right under the common law to issue such writs. The burning of heretics was actually made legal in England by the statutede haeretico comburendo(1400), passed ten days after the issue of the above writ. This was repealed in 1533, but the Six Articles Act of 1539 revived burning as a penaltyfor denying transubstantiation. Under Queen Mary the acts of Henry IV. and Henry V. were revived; they were finally abolished in 1558 on the accession of Elizabeth. Edward VI., Elizabeth and James I., however, burned heretics (illegally as it would appear) under their supposed right of issuing writs for this purpose. The last heretics burnt in England were two Arians, Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, and Edward Wightman at Lichfield, both in 1610. As for witches, countless numbers were burned in most European countries, though not in England, where they were hanged. In Scotland in Charles II.'s day the law still was that witches were to be "worried at the stake and then burnt"; and a witch was burnt at Dornoch so late as 1708.
BURNLEY,a market town and municipal, county and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, at the junction of the rivers Brun and Calder, 213 m. N.N.W. of London and 29 m. N. of Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Pop. (1891) 87,016; (1901) 97,043. The church of St Peter dates from the 14th century, but is largely modernized; among a series of memorials of the Towneley family is one to Charles Towneley (d. 1805), who collected the series of antique marbles, terra-cottas, bronzes, coins and gems which are named after him and preserved in the British Museum. In 1902 Towneley Hall and Park were acquired by the corporation, the mansion being adapted to use as a museum and art gallery, and in 1903 a summer exhibition was held here. There are a large number of modern churches and chapels, a handsome town-hall, market hall, museum and art gallery, school of science, municipal technical school, various benevolent institutions, and pleasant public parks and recreation grounds. The principal industries are cotton-weaving, worsted-making, iron-founding, coal-mining, quarrying, brick-burning and the making of sanitary wares. It has been suggested that Burnley may coincide with Brunanburh, the battlefield on which the Saxons conquered the Dano-Celtic force in 937. During the cotton famine consequent upon the American war of 1861-65 it suffered severely, and the operatives were employed on relief works embracing an extensive system of improvements. The parliamentary borough (1867), which returns one member, falls within the Clitheroe division of the county. The county borough was created in 1888. The town was incorporated in 1861. The corporation consists of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 36 councillors. By act of parliament in 1890 Burnley was created a suffragan bishopric of the diocese of Manchester. Area of the municipal borough, 4005 acres.
BURNOUF, EUGÈNE(1801-1852), French orientalist, was born in Paris on the 8th of April 1801. His father, Prof. Jean Louis Burnouf (1775-1844), was a classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of an excellent translation of Tacitus (6 vols., 1827-1833). Eugene Burnouf published in 1826 anEssai sur le Pâli ..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in the following yearObservations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'essai sur le Pâli. The next great work he undertook was the deciphering of the Zend manuscripts brought to France by Anquetil du Perron. By his labours a knowledge of the Zend language was first brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused theVendidad Sade, part of one of the books bearing the name of Zoroaster, to be lithographed with the utmost care from the Zend MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and published it in folio parts, 1829-1843. From 1833 to 1835 he published hisCommentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses; he also published the Sanskrit text and French translation of theBhâgavata Purâna ou histoire poétique de Krichnain three folio volumes (1840-1847). His last works wereIntroduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien(1844), and a translation ofLe lotus de la bonne loi(1852). Burnouf died on the 28th of May 1852. He had been for twenty years a member of the Académie des Inscriptions and professor of Sanskrit in the Collège de France.
See a notice of Burnouf's works by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, prefixed to the second edition (1876) of theIntrod. à l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien; also Naudet, "Notice historique sur M.M. Burnouf, père et fils," inMem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, xx. A list of his valuable contributions to theJournal asiatique, and of his MS. writings, is given in the appendix to theChoix de lettres d'Eugène Burnouf(1891).
BURNOUS(from the Arab.burnus), a long cloak of coarse woollen stuff with a hood, usually white in colour, worn by the Arabs and Berbers throughout North Africa.
BURNS, SIR GEORGE,Bart. (1795-1890), English shipowner, was born in Glasgow on the 10th of December 1795, the son of the Rev. John Burns. In partnership with a brother, James, he began as a Glasgow general merchant about 1818, and in 1824 in conjunction with a Liverpool partner, Hugh Matthie, started a line of small sailing ships which ran between Glasgow and Liverpool. As business increased the vessels were also sailed to Belfast, and steamers afterwards replaced the sailing ships. In 1830 a partnership was entered into with the McIvers of Liverpool, in which George Burns devoted himself specially to the management of the ships. In 1838 with Samuel Cunard, Robert Napier and other capitalists, the partners (McIver and Burns) started the "Cunard" Atlantic line of steamships. They secured the British government's contract for the carrying of the mails to North America. The sailings were begun with four steamers of about 1000 tons each, which made the passage in 15 days at some 8½ knots per hour. George Burns retired from the Glasgow management of the line in 1860. He was made a baronet in 1889, but died on the 2nd of June 1890 at Castle Wemyss, where he had spent the latter years of his life.
John Burns (1829-1901), his eldest son, who succeeded him in the baronetcy, and became head of the Cunard Company, was created a peer, under the title of Baron Inverclyde, in 1897; he was the first to suggest to the government the use of merchant vessels for war purposes. George Arbuthnot Burns (1861-1905) succeeded his father in the peerage, as 2nd baron Inverclyde, and became chairman of the Cunard Company in 1902. He conducted the negotiations which resulted in the refusal of the Cunard Company to enter the shipping combination, the International Mercantile Marine Company, formed by Messrs J.P. Morgan & Co., and took a leading part in the application of turbine engines to ocean liners.
BURNS, JOHN(1858- ), English politician, was born at Vauxhall, London, in October 1858, the second son of Alexander Burns, an engineer, of Ayrshire extraction. He attended a national school in Battersea until he was ten years old, when he was sent to work in Price's candle factory. He worked for a short time as a page-boy, then in some engine works, and at fourteen was apprenticed for seven years to a Millbank engineer. He continued his education at the night-schools, and read extensively, especially the works of Robert Owen, J.S. Mill, Paine and Cobbett. He ascribed his conversion to the principles of socialism to his sense of the insufficiency of the arguments advanced against it by J.S. Mill, but he had learnt socialistic doctrine from a French fellow-workman, Victor Delahaye, who had witnessed the Commune. After working at his trade in various parts of England, and on board ship, he went for a year to the West African coast at the mouth of the Niger as a foreman engineer. His earnings from this undertaking were expended on a six months' tour in France, Germany and Austria for the study of political and economic conditions. He had early begun the practice of outdoor speaking, and his exceptional physical strength and strong voice were invaluable qualifications for a popular agitator. In 1878 he was arrested and locked up for the night for addressing an open-air demonstration on Clapham Common. Two years later he married Charlotte Gale, the daughter of a Battersea shipwright. He was again arrested in 1886 for his share in the West End riots when the windows of the Carlton and other London clubs were broken, but cleared himself at the Old Bailey of the charge of inciting the mob to violence. In November of the next year, however, he was again arrested for resisting the police in their attempt to break up the meeting in Trafalgar Square, and was condemned to six weeks' imprisonment. A speech delivered by him at the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1884 had attracted considerable attention, and in that year he became a member of the Social Democratic Federation, which put him forwardunsuccessfully in the next year as parliamentary candidate for West Nottingham. His connexion with the Social Democratic Federation was short-lived; but he was an active member of the executive of the Amalgamated Engineers' trade union, and was connected with the trades union congresses until 1895, when, through his influence, a resolution excluding all except wage labourers was passed. He was still working at his trade in Hoe's printing machine works when he became a Progressive member of the first London County Council, being supported by an allowance of £2 a week subscribed by his constituents, the Battersea working men. He introduced in 1892 a motion that all contracts for the County Council should be paid at trade union rates and carried out under trade union conditions, and devoted his efforts in general to a war against monopolies, except those of the state or the municipality. In the same year (1889) in which he became a member of the County Council, he acted with Mr Ben Tillett as the chief leader and organizer of the London dock strike. He entered the House of Commons as member for Battersea in 1892, and was re-elected in 1895, 1900 and 1906. In parliament he became well known as an independent Radical, and he was included in the Liberal cabinet by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in December 1905 as president of the Local Government Board. During the next two years, though much out of favour with his former socialist allies, he earned golden opinions for his administrative policy, and for his refusal to adopt the visionary proposals put forward by the more extreme members of the Labour party for dealing with the "unemployed" question; and in 1908 he retained his office in Mr Asquith's cabinet.
BURNS, ROBERT(1759-1796), Scottish poet, was born on the 25th of January 1759 in a cottage about 2 m. from Ayr. He was the eldest son of a small farmer, William Burness, of Kincardineshire stock, who wrought hard, practised integrity, wished to bring up his children in the fear of God, but had to fight all his days against the winds and tides of adversity. "The poet," said Thomas Carlyle, "was fortunate in his father—a man of thoughtful intense character, as the best of our peasants are, valuing knowledge, possessing some and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless: a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank in society, and worth descending far in society to seek. ... Had he been ever so little richer, the whole might have issued otherwise. But poverty sunk the whole family even below the reach of our cheap school system, and Burns remained a hard-worked plough-boy."
Through a series of migrations from one unfortunate farm to another; from Alloway (where he was taught to read) to Mt. Oliphant, and then (1777) to Lochlea in Tarbolton (where he learnt the rudiments of geometry), the poet remained in the same condition of straitened circumstances. At the age of thirteen he thrashed the corn with his own hands, at fifteen he was the principal labourer. The family kept no servant, and for several years butchers' meat was a thing unknown in the house. "This kind of life," he writes, "the cheerless gloom of a hermit and the unceasing toil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year." His naturally robust frame was overtasked, and his nervous constitution received a fatal strain. His shoulders were bowed, he became liable to headaches, palpitations and fits of depressing melancholy. From these hard tasks and his fiery temperament, craving in vain for sympathy in a frigid air, grew the strong temptations on which Burns was largely wrecked,—the thirst for stimulants and the revolt against restraint which soon made headway and passed all bars. In the earlier portions of his career a buoyant humour bore him up; and amid thick-coming shapes of ill he bated no jot of heart or hope. He was cheered by vague stirrings of ambition, which he pathetically compares to the "blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave." Sent to school at Kirkoswald, he became, for his scant leisure, a great reader—eating at meal-times with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other,—and carrying a few small volumes in his pocket to study in spare moments in the fields. "The collection of songs" he tells us, "was myvade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, sublime or fustian." He lingered over the ballads in his cold room by night; by day, whilst whistling at the plough, he invented new forms and was inspired by fresh ideas, "gathering round him the memories and the traditions of his country till they became a mantle and a crown." It was among the furrows of his father's fields that he was inspired with the perpetually quoted wish—
"That I for poor auld Scotland's sakeSome useful plan or book could make,Or sing a sang at least."
"That I for poor auld Scotland's sakeSome useful plan or book could make,Or sing a sang at least."
"That I for poor auld Scotland's sake
Some useful plan or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least."
An equally striking illustration of the same feeling is to be found in his summer Sunday's ramble to the Leglen wood,—the fabled haunt of Wallace,—which the poet confesses to have visited "with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did the shrine of Loretto." In another reference to the same period he refers to the intense susceptibility to the homeliest aspects of Nature which throughout characterized his genius. "Scarcely any object gave me more—I do not know if I should call it pleasure—but something which exalts and enraptures me—than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation in a cloudy winter day and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. I listened to the birds, and frequently turned out of my path lest I should disturb their little songs or frighten them to another station." Auroral visions were gilding his horizon as he walked in glory, if not in joy, "behind his plough upon the mountain sides."; but the swarm of his many-coloured fancies was again made grey by theatra curaof unsuccessful toils.
Burns had written his first verses of note, "Behind yon hills where Stinchar (afterwards Lugar) flows," when in 1781 he went to Irvine to learn the trade of a flax-dresser. "It was," he says, "an unlucky affair. As we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, the shop took fire and burned to ashes; and I was left, like a true poet, without a sixpence." His own heart, too, had unfortunately taken fire. He was poring over mathematics till, in his own phraseology,—still affected in its prose by the classical pedantries caught from Pope by Ramsay,—"the sun entered Virgo, when a charmingfillette, who lived next door, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the scene of my studies." We need not detail the story, nor the incessant repetitions of it, which marked and sometimes marred his career. The poet was jilted, went through the usual despairs, and resorted to the not unusual sources of consolation. He had found that he was "no enemy to social life," and his mates had discovered that he was the best of boon companions in the lyric feasts, where his eloquence shed a lustre over wild ways of life, and where he was beginning to be distinguished as a champion of the New Lights and a satirist of the Calvinism whose waters he found like those of Marah.
In Robert's 25th year his father died, full of sorrows and apprehensions for the gifted son who wrote for his tomb in Alloway kirkyard, the fine epitaph ending with the characteristic line—
"For even his failings leaned to virtue's side."
"For even his failings leaned to virtue's side."
"For even his failings leaned to virtue's side."
For some time longer the poet, with his brother Gilbert, lingered at Lochlea, reading agricultural books, miscalculating crops, attending markets, and in a mood of reformation resolving, "in spite of the world, the flesh and the devil, to be a wise man." Affairs, however, went no better with the family; and in 1784 they migrated to Mossgiel, where he lived and wrought, during four years, for a return scarce equal to the wage of the commonest labourer in our day. Meanwhile he had become intimate with his future wife, Jean Armour; but the father, a master mason, discountenanced the match, and the girl being disposed to "sigh as a lover," as a daughter to obey, Burns, in 1786, gave up his suit, resolved to seek refuge in exile, and having accepted a situation as book-keeper to a slave estate in Jamaica, had taken his passage in a ship for the West Indies. His old associations seemed to be breaking up, men and fortune scowled, and "hungry ruin had him in the wind," when he wrote the lines ending—
"Adieu, my native banks of Ayr,"
"Adieu, my native banks of Ayr,"
"Adieu, my native banks of Ayr,"
and addressed to the most famous of the loves, in which he was as prolific as Catullus or Tibullus, the proposal—
"Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary."
"Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary."
"Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary."
He was withheld from his project and, happily or unhappily, the current of his life was turned by the success of his first volume, which was published at Kilmarnock in June 1786. It contained some of his most justly celebrated poems, the results of his scanty leisure at Lochlea and Mossgiel; among others "The Twa Dogs,"—a graphic idealization of Aesop,—"The Author's Prayer," the "Address to the Deil," "The Vision" and "The Dream," "Halloween," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the lines "To a Mouse" and "To a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie," and some of his most popular songs. This epitome of a genius so marvellous and so varied took his audience by storm. "The country murmured of him from sea to sea." "With his poems," says Robert Heron, "old and young, grave and gay, learned and ignorant, were alike transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway, and I can well remember how even plough-boys and maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the wages they earned the most hardly, and which they wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they might but procure the works of Burns." This first edition only brought the author £20 direct return, but it introduced him to theliteratiof Edinburgh, whither he was invited, and where he was welcomed, feasted, admired and patronized. He appeared as a portent among the scholars of the northern capital and its university, and manifested, according to Mr Lockhart, "in the whole strain of his bearing, his belief that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was where he was entitled to be, hardly deigning to flatter them by exhibiting a symptom of being flattered."
Sir Walter Scott bears a similar testimony to the dignified simplicity and almost exaggerated independence of the poet, during thisannus mirabilisof his success. "As for Burns,Virgilium vidi tantum, I was a lad of fifteen when he came to Edinburgh, but had sense enough to be interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him. I saw him one day with several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened.... I remember ... his shedding tears over a print representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on the other his widow with a child in her arms. His person was robust, his manners rustic, not clownish. ... His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetic character and temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the least intrusive forwardness. I thought his acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited; and having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson he talked of them with too much humility as his models. He was much caressed in Edinburgh, but the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling."Laudatur et alget.Burns went from those meetings, where he had been posing professors (no hard task), and turning the heads of duchesses, to share a bed in the garret of a writer's apprentice,—they paid together 3s. a week for the room. It was in the house of Mr Carfrae, Baxter's Close, Lawnmarket, "first scale stair on the left hand in going down, first door in the stair." During Burns's life it was reserved for William Pitt to recognize his place as a great poet; the more cautious critics of the North were satisfied to endorse him as a rustic prodigy, and brought upon themselves a share of his satire. Some of the friendships contracted during this period—as for Lord Glencairn and Mrs Dunlop—are among the most pleasing and permanent in literature; for genuine kindness was never wasted on one who, whatever his faults, has never been accused of ingratitude. But in the bard's city life there was an unnatural element. He stooped to beg for neither smiles nor favour, but the gnarled country oak is cut up into cabinets in artificial prose and verse. In the letters to Mr Graham, the prologue to Mr Wood, and the epistles to Clarinda, he is dancing minuets with hob-nailed shoes. When, in 1787, the second edition of thePoemscame out, the proceeds of their sale realized for the author £400. On the strength of this sum he gave himself two long rambles, full of poetic material—one through the border towns into England as far as Newcastle, returning by Dumfries to Mauchline, and another a grand tour through the East Highlands, as far as Inverness, returning by Edinburgh, and so home to Ayrshire.
In 1788 Burns took a new farm at Ellisland on the Nith, settled there, married, lost his little money, and wrote, among other pieces, "Auld Lang Syne" and "Tam o' Shanter." In 1789 he obtained, through the good office of Mr Graham of Fintry, an appointment as excise-officer of the district, worth £50 per annum. In 1791 he removed to a similar post at Dumfries worth £70. In the course of the following year he was asked to contribute to George Thomson'sSelect Collection of Original Scottish Airs with Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Violin: the poetry by Robert Burns. To this work he contributed about one hundred songs, the best of which are now ringing in the ear of every Scotsman from New Zealand to San Francisco. For these, original and adapted, he received a shawl for his wife, a picture by David Allan representing the "Cottar's Saturday Night," and £5! The poet wrote an indignant letter and never afterwards composed for money. Unfortunately the "Rock of Independence" to which he had proudly retired was but a castle of air, over which the meteors of French political enthusiasm cast a lurid gleam. In the last years of his life, exiled from polite society on account of his revolutionary opinions, he became sourer in temper and plunged more deeply into the dissipations of the lower ranks, among whom he found his only companionship and sole, though shallow, sympathy.
Burns began to feel himself prematurely old. Walking with a friend who proposed to him to join a county ball, he shook his head, saying "that's all over now," and adding a verse of Lady Grizel Baillie's ballad—
"O were we young as we ance hae been,We sud hae been galloping down on yon green,And linking it ower the lily-white lea,But were na my heart light I wad dee."
"O were we young as we ance hae been,We sud hae been galloping down on yon green,And linking it ower the lily-white lea,But were na my heart light I wad dee."
"O were we young as we ance hae been,
We sud hae been galloping down on yon green,
And linking it ower the lily-white lea,
But were na my heart light I wad dee."
His hand shook; his pulse and appetite failed; his spirits sunk into a uniform gloom. In April 1796 he wrote—"I fear it will be some time before I tune my lyre again. By Babel's streams I have sat and wept. I have only known existence by the pressure of sickness and counted time by the repercussions of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope. I look on the vernal day and say with poor Fergusson—
"Say wherefore has an all-indulgent heavenLife to the comfortless and wretched given."
"Say wherefore has an all-indulgent heavenLife to the comfortless and wretched given."
"Say wherefore has an all-indulgent heaven
Life to the comfortless and wretched given."
On the 4th of July he was seen to be dying. On the 12th he wrote to his cousin for the loan of £10 to save him from passing his last days in jail. On the 21st he was no more. On the 25th, when his last son came into the world, he was buried with local honours, the volunteers of the company to which he belonged firing three volleys over his grave.
It has been said that "Lowland Scotland as a distinct nationality came in with two warriors and went out with two bards. It came in with William Wallace and Robert Bruce and went out with Robert Burns and Walter Scott. The first two made the history, the last two told the story and sung the song." But what in the minstrel's lay was mainly a requiem was in the people's poet also a prophecy. The position of Burns in the progress of British literature may be shortly defined; he was a link between two eras, like Chaucer, the last of the old and the first of the new—the inheritor of the traditions and the music of the past, in some respects the herald of the future.
The volumes of our lyrist owe part of their popularity to the fact of their being an epitome of melodies, moods and memories that had belonged for centuries to the national life, the bestinspirations of which have passed into them. But in gathering from his ancestors Burns has exalted their work by asserting a new dignity for their simplest themes. He is the heir of Barbour, distilling the spirit of the old poet's epic into a battle chant, and of Dunbar, reproducing the various humours of a half-sceptical, half-religious philosophy of life. He is the pupil of Ramsay, but he leaves his master, to make a social protest and to lead a literary revolt.The Gentle Shepherd, still largely a court pastoral, in which "a man's a man" if born a gentleman, may be contrasted with "The Jolly Beggars"—the one is like a minuet of the ladies of Versailles on the sward of the Swiss village near the Trianon, the other like the march of the maenads with Theroigne de Mericourt. Ramsay adds to the rough tunes and words of the ballads the refinement of the wits who in the "Easy" and "Johnstone" clubs talked over their cups of Prior and Pope, Addison and Gay. Burns inspires them with a fervour that thrills the most wooden of his race. We may clench the contrast by a representative example. This is from Ramsay's version of perhaps the best-known of Scottish songs,—
"Methinks around us on each boughA thousand Cupids play;Whilst through the groves I walk with you,Each object makes me gay.Since your return—the sun and moonWith brighter beams do shine,Streams murmur soft notes while they runAs they did lang syne."
"Methinks around us on each boughA thousand Cupids play;Whilst through the groves I walk with you,Each object makes me gay.Since your return—the sun and moonWith brighter beams do shine,Streams murmur soft notes while they runAs they did lang syne."
"Methinks around us on each bough
A thousand Cupids play;
Whilst through the groves I walk with you,
Each object makes me gay.
Since your return—the sun and moon
With brighter beams do shine,
Streams murmur soft notes while they run
As they did lang syne."
Compare the verses in Burns—
"We twa hae run about the braesAnd pu'd the gowans fine;But we've wandered mony a weary footSin auld lang syne.We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,Frae morning sun till dine:But seas between us braid hae roar'dSin auld lang syne."
"We twa hae run about the braesAnd pu'd the gowans fine;But we've wandered mony a weary footSin auld lang syne.We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,Frae morning sun till dine:But seas between us braid hae roar'dSin auld lang syne."
"We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wandered mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine:
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne."
Burns as a poet of the inanimate world doubtless derived hints from Thomson ofThe Seasons, but in his power of tuning its manifestation to the moods of the mind he is more properly ranked as a forerunner of Wordsworth. He never follows the fashions of his century, except in his failures—in his efforts at set panegyric or fine letter-writing. His highest work knows nothing of "Damon" or "Musidora." He leaves the atmosphere of drawing-rooms for the ingle or the ale-house or the mountain breeze.
The affectations of his style are insignificant and rare. His prevailing characteristic is an absolute sincerity. A love for the lower forms of social life was his besetting sin; Nature was his healing power. Burns compares himself to an Aeolian harp, strung to every wind of heaven. His genius flows over all living and lifeless things with a sympathy that finds nothing mean or insignificant. An uprooted daisy becomes in his pages an enduring emblem of the fate of artless maid and simple bard. He disturbs a mouse's nest and finds in the "tim'rous beastie" a fellow-mortal doomed like himself to "thole the winter's sleety dribble," and draws his oft-repeated moral. He walks abroad and, in a verse that glints with the light of its own rising sun before the fierce sarcasm of "The Holy Fair," describes the melodies of a "simmer Sunday morn." He loiters by Afton Water and "murmurs by the running brook a music sweeter than its own." He stands by a roofless tower, where "the howlet mourns in her dewy bower," and "sets the wild echoes flying," and adds to a perfect picture of the scene his famous vision of "Libertie." In a single stanza he concentrates the sentiment of many Night Thoughts—
"The pale moon is setting beyond the white wave,And Time is setting wi' me, O."
"The pale moon is setting beyond the white wave,And Time is setting wi' me, O."
"The pale moon is setting beyond the white wave,
And Time is setting wi' me, O."
For other examples of the same graphic power we may refer to the course of his stream—
"Whiles ow'r a linn the burnie playsAs through the glen it wimpled," &c.,
"Whiles ow'r a linn the burnie playsAs through the glen it wimpled," &c.,
"Whiles ow'r a linn the burnie plays
As through the glen it wimpled," &c.,
or to "The Birks of Aberfeldy" or the "spate" in the dialogue of "The Brigs of Ayr." The poet is as much at home in the presence of this flood as by his "trottin' burn's meander." Familiar with all the seasons he represents the phases of a northern winter with a frequency characteristic of his clime and of his fortunes; her tempests became anthems in his verse, and the sounding woods "raise his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of the wind"; full of pity for the shelterless poor, the "ourie cattle," the "silly sheep," and the "helpless birds," he yet reflects that the bitter blast is not "so unkind as man's ingratitude." This constant tendency to ascend above the fair or wild features of outward things, or to penetrate beneath them, to make them symbols, to endow them with a voice to speak for humanity, distinguishes Burns as a descriptive poet from the rest of his countrymen. As a painter he is rivalled by Dunbar and James I., more rarely by Thomson and Ramsay. The "lilt" of Tannahill's finest verse is even more charming. But these writers rest in their art; their main care is for their own genius. The same is true in a minor degree of some of his great English successors. Keats has a palette of richer colours, but he seldom condescends to "human nature's daily food." Shelley floats in a thin air to stars and mountain tops, and vanishes from our gaze like his skylark. Byron, in the midst of his revolutionary fervour, never forgets that he himself belongs to the "caste of Vere de Vere." Wordsworth's placid affection and magnanimity stretch beyond mankind, and, as in "Hart-leap-well" and the "Cuckoo," extend to bird and beast; he moralizes grandly on the vicissitudes of common life, but he does not enter into, because by right of superior virtue he places himself above them. "From the Lyrical Ballads," it has been said, "it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry or are given in marriage." We revere the monitor who, consciously good and great, gives us the dry light of truth, but we love the bard,nostrae deliciae, who is all fire—fire from heaven and Ayrshire earth mingling in the outburst of passion and of power, which is his poetry and the inheritance of his race. He had certainly neither culture nor philosophy enough to have written the "Ode on the Recollections of Childhood," but to appreciate that ode requires an education. The sympathies of Burns, as broad as Wordsworth's, are more intense; in turning his pages we feel ourselves more decidedly in the presence of one who joys with those who rejoice and mourns with those who mourn. He is never shallow, ever plain, and the expression of his feeling is so terse that it is always memorable. Of the people he speaks more directly for the people than any of our more considerable poets. Chaucer has a perfect hold of the homeliest phases of life, but he wants the lyric element, and the charm of his language has largely faded from untutored ears. Shakespeare, indeed, has at once a loftier vision and a wider grasp; for he sings of "Thebes and Pelops line," of Agincourt and Philippi, as of Falstaff, and Snug the joiner, and the "meanest flower that blows." But not even Shakespeare has put more thought into poetry which the most prosaic must appreciate than Burns has done. The latter moves in a narrower sphere and wants the strictly dramatic faculty, but its place is partly supplied by the vividness of his narrative. His realization of incident and character is manifested in the sketches in which the manners and prevailing fancies of his countrymen are immortalized in connexion with local scenery. Among those almost every variety of disposition finds its favourite. The quiet households of the kingdom have received a sort of apotheosis in the "Cottar's Saturday Night." It has been objected that the subject does not afford scope for the more daring forms of the author's genius; but had he written no other poem, this heartful rendering of a good week's close in a God-fearing home, sincerely devout, and yet relieved from all suspicion of sermonizing by its humorous touches, would have secured a permanent place in literature. It transcends Thomson and Beattie at their best, and will smell sweet like the actions of the just for generations to come.
Lovers of rustic festivity may hold that the poet's greatest performance is his narrative of "Halloween," which for easy vigour, fulness of rollicking life, blended truth and fancy, is unsurpassed in its kind. Campbell, Wilson, Hazlitt, Montgomery, Burns himself, and the majority of his critics, haverecorded their preference for "Tam o' Shanter," where the weird superstitious element that has played so great a part in the imaginative work of this part of our island is brought more prominently forward. Few passages of description are finer than that of the roaring Doon and Alloway Kirk glimmering through the groaning trees; but the unique excellence of the piece consists in its variety, and a perfectly original combination of the terrible and the ludicrous. Like Goethe'sWalpurgis Nacht, brought into closer contact with real life, it stretches from the drunken humours of Christopher Sly to a world of fantasies almost as brilliant as those of theMidsummer Night's Dream, half solemnized by the severer atmosphere of a sterner clime. The contrast between the lines "Kings may be blest," &c., and those which follow, beginning "But pleasures are like poppies spread," is typical of the perpetual antithesis of the author's thought and life, in which, at the back of every revelry, he sees the shadow of a warning hand, and reads on the wall the writing,Omnia mutantur. With equal or greater confidence other judges have pronounced Burns's masterpiece to be "The Jolly Beggars." Certainly no other single production so illustrates his power of exalting what is insignificant, glorifying what is mean, and elevating the lowest details by the force of his genius. "The form of the piece," says Carlyle, "is a mere cantata, the theme the half-drunken snatches of a joyous band of vagabonds, while the grey leaves are floating on the gusts of the wind in the autumn of the year. But the whole is compacted, refined and poured forth in one flood of liquid harmony. It is light, airy and soft of movement, yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait, and the whole a group in clear photography. The blanket of the night is drawn aside; in full ruddy gleaming light these rough tatterdemalions are seen at their boisterous revel wringing from Fate another hour of wassail and good cheer." Over the whole is flung a half-humorous, half-savage satire—aimed, like a two-edged sword, at the laws and the law-breakers, in the acme of which the graceless crew are raised above the level of ordinary gipsies, footpads and rogues, and are made to sit "on the hills like gods together, careless of mankind," and to launch their Titan thunders of rebellion against the world.