"A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dumfries one fine summer evening about this time to attend a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognize him. The horseman dismounted, and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the street said: 'Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now;' and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's pathetic ballad:—
'His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow,His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new;But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing,And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-bing.
'O, were we young as we ance hae been,We sud hae been gallopping down on yon green,And linking it ower the lily-white lea!And werena my heart light, I wad die.'
It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain subjects escape in this fashion. He, immediately after reciting these verses, assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner; and taking his young friend home with him, entertained him very agreeably till the hour of the ball arrived."[101]
Alas! when we think that Burns now sleeps "where bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart,"[102] and that most of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already lie at his side, where the breastwork of gentility is quite thrown down,—who would not sigh over the thin delusions and foolish toys that divide heart from heart, and make man unmerciful to his brother!
It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. His spirit was jarred in its melody; not the soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what harmony was in him, what music even in his discords! How the wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the wisest; and all men felt and knew that here also was one of the Gifted! "If heentered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled!" Some brief pure moments of poetic life were yet appointed him, in the composition of his Songs. We can understand how he grasped at this employment; and how, too, he spurned all other reward for it but what the labor itself brought him. For the soul of Burns, though scathed and marred, was yet living in its full moral strength, though sharply conscious of its errors and abasement; and here, in his destitution and degradation, was one act of seeming nobleness and self-devotedness left even for him to perform. He felt, too, that with all the "thoughtless follies" that had "laid him low,"[103] the world was unjust and cruel to him; and he silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not as a hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of his country: so he cast from him the poor sixpence a-day, and served zealously as a volunteer. Let us not grudge him this last luxury of his existence; let him not have appealed to us in vain! The money was not necessary to him; he struggled through without it: long since, these guineas would have been gone, and now the high-mindedness of refusing them will plead for him in all hearts forever.
We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for matters had now taken such a shape with him as could not long continue. If improvement was not to be looked for, Nature could only for a limited time maintain this dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. We are not medically informedwhether any continuance of years was, at this period, probable for Burns; whether his death is to be looked on as in some sense an accidental event, or only as the natural consequence of the long series of events that had preceded. The latter seems to be the likelier opinion; and yet it is by no means a certain one. At all events, as we have said,somechange could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, it seems to us, were open for Burns: clear poetical activity; madness; or death. The first, with longer life, was still possible, though not probable; for physical causes were beginning to be concerned in it: and yet Burns had an iron resolution; could he but have seen and felt, that not only his highest glory, but his first duty, and the true medicine for all his woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for his mind was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third gate was opened for him: and he passed, not softly yet speedily, into that still country, where the hail-storms and fire-showers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden wayfarer at length lays down his load!
Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he sank unaided by any real help, uncheered by any wise sympathy, generous minds have sometimes figured to themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, that much might have been done for him; that by counsel, true affection and friendly ministrations, he might have been saved to himself and the world. We question whether there is not more tenderness of heart than soundness of judgment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent individual could have lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, which seldom profits any one,he did not need; in his understanding, he knew the right from the wrong, as well perhaps as any man ever did; but the persuasion, which would have availed him, lies not so much in the head as in the heart, where no argument or expostulation could have assisted much to implant it. As to money again, we do not believe that this was his essential want; or well see how any private man could, even presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him an independent fortune, with much prospect of decisive advantage. It is a mortifying truth, that two men, in any rank of society, could hardly be found virtuous enough to give money, and to take it as a necessary gift, without injury to the moral entireness of one or both. But so stands the fact: Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists: except in the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality no longer expected, or recognized as a virtue among men. A close observer of manners has pronounced "Patronage," that is, pecuniary or other economic furtherance, to be "twice cursed;" cursing him that gives, and him that takes![104] And thus, in regard to outward matters also, it has become the rule, as in regard to inward it always was and must be the rule, that no one shall look for effectual help to another; but that each shall rest contented with what help he can afford himself. Such, we say, is the principle of modern Honor; naturally enough growing out of that sentiment of Pride, which we inculcate and encourage as the basis of our whole social morality. Many a poet has been poorer than Burns; but no one was ever prouder: we may question whether, without great precautions, even a pensionfrom Royalty would not have galled and encumbered, more than actually assisted him.
Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks among us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect of him. We have already stated our doubts whether direct pecuniary help, had it been offered, would have been accepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall readily admit, however, that much was to be done for Burns; that many a poisoned arrow might have been warded from his bosom; many an entanglement in his path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful; and light and heat, shed on him from high places, would have made his humble atmosphere more genial; and the softest heart then breathing might have lived and died with some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for Burns it is granting much, that, with all his pride, he would have thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any one who had cordially befriended him: patronage, unless once cursed, needed not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor promotion he desired in his calling might have been granted: it was his own scheme, therefore likelier than any other to be of service. All this it might have been a luxury, nay it was a duty, for our nobility to have done. No part of all this, however, did any of them do; or apparently attempt, or wish to do: so much is granted against them. But what then is the amount of their blame? Simply that they were men of the world, and walked by the principles of such men; that they treated Burns, as other nobles and other commoners had done other poets; as the English did Shakespeare; as King Charles and his Cavaliers didButler,[105] as King Philip and his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men gather grapes of thorns;[106] or shall we cut down our thorns for yielding only afenceand haws? How, indeed, could the "nobility and gentry of his native land" hold out any help to this "Scottish Bard, proud of his name and country"?[107] Were the nobility and gentry so much as able rightly to help themselves? Had they not their game to preserve; their borough interests to strengthen; dinners, therefore, of various kinds to eat and give? Were their means more than adequate to all this business, or less than adequate? Less than adequate, in general; few of them in reality were richer than Burns; many of them were poorer; for sometimes they had to wring their supplies, as with thumbscrews, from the hard hand; and, in their need of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy; which Burns was never reduced to do. Let us pity and forgive them. The game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, thelittleBabylons they severally builded by the glory of their might,[108] are all melted or melting back into the primeval Chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavors are fated to do: and here was an action, extending, in virtue of its worldly influence, we may say, through all time; in virtue of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself; this action was offered them to do, and light was not giventhem to do it. Let us pity and forgive them. But better than pity, let us go anddo otherwise. Human suffering did not end with the life of Burns; neither was the solemn mandate, "Love one another, bear one another's burdens,"[109] given to the rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our pity; but celestial natures, groaning under the fardels of a weary life, we shall still find; and that wretchedness which Fate has renderedvoicelessandtunelessis not the least wretched, but the most.[110]
Still we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more rather than with less kindness than it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small favor to its Teachers: hunger and nakedness, perils and revilings, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice have, in most times and countries, been the market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer and Socrates, and the Christian Apostles, belong to old days; but the world's Martyrology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and Galileo languish in priestly dungeons; Tasso pines in the cell of a madhouse; Camoens dies begging on the streets of Lisbon.[111] So neglected, so "persecuted they theProphets,"[112] not in Judea only, but in all places where men have been. We reckon that every poet of Burns's order is, or should be, a prophet and teacher to his age; that he has no right to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound to do it great kindness; that Burns, in particular, experienced fully the usual proportion of the world's goodness; and that the blame of his failure, as we have said, lies not chiefly with the world.
Where, then, does it lie? We are forced to answer: With himself; it is his inward, not his outward, misfortunes that bring him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it otherwise; seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement, some want less of good fortune than of good guidance. Nature fashions no creature without implanting in it the strength needful for its action and duration; least of all does she so neglect her masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. Neither can we believe that it is in the power ofanyexternal circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man; nay, if proper wisdom be given him, even so much as to affect its essential health and beauty. The sternest sum-total of all worldly misfortunes is Death; nothing morecanlie in the cup of human woe: yet many men, in all ages, have triumphed over Death, and led it captive;[113] converting its physical victory into a moral victory for themselves, into a seal and immortal consecration for all that their past life had achieved. What has been done, may be done again: nay it is but the degree and not the kind of such heroism that differs in different seasons; for withoutsome portion of this spirit, not of boisterous daring, but of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial in all its forms, no good man, in any scene or time, has ever attained to be good.[114]
We have already stated the error of Burns; and mourned over it, rather than blamed it. It was the want of unity in his purposes, of consistency in his aims; the hapless attempt to mingle in friendly union the common spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry, which is of a far different and altogether irreconcilable nature. Burns was nothing wholly, and Burns could be nothing, no man formed as he was can be anything, by halves. The heart, not of a mere hot-blooded, popular Verse-monger, or poeticalRestaurateur,[115] but of a true Poet and Singer, worthy of the old religious heroic times, had been given him: and he fell in an age, not of heroism and religion, but of scepticism, selfishness, and triviality, when true Nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow, dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of Pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, susceptible nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to cast aside, or rightly subordinate; the better spirit that was within him ever sternly demanded its rights, its supremacy: he spent his life in endeavoring to reconcile these two; and lost it, as he must lose it, without reconciling them.
Burns was born poor; and born also to continue poor, for he would not endeavor to be otherwise: this it had been well could he have once for all admitted, and considered as finally settled. He was poor, truly; but hundreds even of his own class and order of minds have been poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it: nay his own Father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful destiny than his was; and he did not yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all moral intents prevailing, against it. True, Burns had little means, had even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation; but so much the more precious was what little he had. In all these external respects his case was hard; but very far from the hardest. Poverty, incessant drudgery and much worse evils, it has often been the lot of Poets and wise men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke was banished as a traitor; and wrote his "Essay on the Human Understanding" sheltering himself in a Dutch garret. Was Milton rich or at his ease when he composed "Paradise Lost"? Not only low, but fallen from a height; not only poor, but impoverished; in darkness and with dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, and found fit audience, though few.[116] Did not Cervantes finish his work, a maimed soldier and in prison? Nay, was not the "Araucana,"[117] which Spain acknowledges as its Epic, written without even the aid of paper; onscraps of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any moment from that wild warfare?
And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted? Two things; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable for such men. They had a true, religious principle of morals; and a single, not a double aim in their activity. They were not self-seekers and self-worshippers; but seekers and worshippers of something far better than Self. Not personal enjoyment was their object; but a high, heroic idea of Religion, of Patriotism, of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the other form, ever hovered before them; in which cause they neither shrank from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful; but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so to spend and be spent. Thus the "golden-calf of Self-love," however curiously carved, was not their Deity; but the Invisible Goodness, which alone is man's reasonable service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were subordinated and made subservient; and therefore they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks; but its edge must be sharp and single: if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces and will rend nothing.
Part of this superiority these men owed to their age; in which heroism and devotedness were still practised, or at least not yet disbelieved in; but much of it likewise they owed to themselves. WithBurns, again, it was different. His morality, in most of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is the only thing he longs and strives for. A noble instinct sometimes raises him above this; but an instinct only, and acting only for moments. He has no Religion; in the shallow age, where his days were cast, Religion was not discriminated from the New and Old Lightformsof Religion; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trembling adoration, but there is no temple in his understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a great Perhaps."
He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart; could he but have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion: is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also was denied him. His poetry is a stray vagrant gleam, which will not be extinguished within him, yet rises not to be the true light of his path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or to seem, "independent;" but itwasnecessary for him to be at one with his own heart; to place what was highest in his nature highest also in his life; "to seek within himself for that consistency and sequence, which external events would forever refuse him." He was born a poet; poetry was the celestial element of his being, and should have been the soul of his whole endeavors. Lifted into that serene ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he would have neededno other elevation: poverty, neglect, and all evil, save the desecration of himself and his Art, were a small matter to him; the pride and the passions of the world lay far beneath his feet; and he looked down alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp of man, with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympathy, with pity. Nay, we question whether for his culture as a Poet poverty and much suffering for a season were not absolutely advantageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, have testified to that effect. "I would not for much," says Jean Paul, "that I had been born richer." And yet Paul's birth was poor enough; for, in another place, he adds: "The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I had often only the latter."[118] But the gold that is refined in the hottest furnace comes out the purest; or, as he has himself expressed it, "the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage."
A man like Burns might have divided his hours between poetry and virtuous industry; industry which all true feeling sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp of thrones: but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's banquets was an ill-starred and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such banquets? What had he to do there, mingling his musicwith the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices; brightening the thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from heaven? Was it his aim to enjoy life! To-morrow he must go drudge as an Exciseman! We wonder not that Burns became moody, indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules of society; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and runamuckagainst them all. How could a man, so falsely placed, by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment or peaceable diligence for an hour? What he did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his character.
Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness; but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly "respectability." We hope we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer: the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal; and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the housetop to reach the stars! Like Burns, he is only a proud man; might, like him, have "purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to study the character of Satan;" for Satan is also Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, andthe model apparently of his conduct.[119] As in Burns's case too, the celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; both poet and man of the world he must not be; vulgar Ambition will not live kindly with poetic Adoration; hecannotserve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy; nay he is the most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products of a world; but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now—we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, which ere long will fill itself with snow!
Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth; they had a message to deliver, which left them no rest till it was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest lay smouldering within them; for they knew not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation, and they had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the camp of the Unconverted; yet not as high messengers of rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers, and in pleasant fellowship will they live there: they are first adulated, then persecuted; they accomplish little for others; they find no peace for themselves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we view the fate of these noblesouls, so richly gifted, yet ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history,—twicetold us in our own time! Surely to men of like genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of deep impressive significance. Surely it would become such a man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. For the words of Milton are true in all times, and were never truer than in this: "He who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a heroic poem."[120] If he cannot first so make his life, then let him hasten from this arena; for neither its lofty glories, nor its fearful perils, are fit for him. Let him dwindle into a modish balladmonger; let him worship and besing the idols of the time, and the time will not fail to reward him. If, indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity! Byron and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the fire of their own hearts consumed them; and better it was for them that they could not. For it is not in the favor of the great or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in the inexpugnable citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns's strength must lie. Let the great stand aloof from him, or know how to reverence him. Beautiful is the union of wealth with favorand furtherance for literature; like the costliest flower-jar enclosing the loveliest amaranth. Yet let not the relation be mistaken. A true poet is not one whom they can hire by money or flattery to be a minister of their pleasures; their writer of occasional verses, their purveyor of table-wit; he cannot be their menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both parties, let no such union be attempted! Will a Courser of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all lands; will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for earthly appetites from door to door?
But we must stop short in these considerations, which would lead us to boundless lengths. We had something to say on the public moral character of Burns; but this also we must forbear. We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average; nay from doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thousand. Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where thePlebiscitaof common civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the substance: It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes; and not positively but negatively, less on what is done right, than on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but theratioof these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system; or it may be acity hippodrome; nay the circle of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of deflection only are measured: and it is assumed that the diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when compared with them! Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rousseaus, which one never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful: but to knowhowblameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.[121]
With our readers in general, with men of right feeling anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves; this little Valclusa[122] Fountain will also arrest our eye: for this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines.
[1] The text followed is that of Carlyle's latest authorized form. Important variations from the form as printed in theEdinburgh Revieware pointed out.
[2] Samuel Butler (1612-1680).Hudibraswas one of Carlyle's favorite books.
[3] "In 1813 a public meeting was held in Dumfries; a subscription was opened, and, contributions flowing in rapidly from all quarters, a costly mausoleum was at length erected on the most elevated site which the churchyard presented. Thither the remains of the poet were solemnly transferred on the 5th of June, 1815."—Lockhart, chap. ix.
Carlyle usedbraveironically in the sense ofbeautiful,splendid. Lockhart says mildly: "The structure is perhaps more gaudy than might have been wished."
[4] The name of theMill Vennelin Dumfries, where Burns lived from May, 1793, until his death, was changed toBurns Street.
[5] The fiveLivesof Burns referred to by Carlyle are probably those mentioned by Lockhart, by Walker, Currie, Heron, Irving, and Peterkin. In reality the number was still larger.
[6] To understand these references, read any good sketch of Shakespeare's life.
[7] "The Caledonian Hunt, an association of the principal of the nobility and gentry of Scotland, extended their patronage to our bard. He repaid the notice by a dedication of the enlarged and improved [the first Edinburgh] edition of his poems."—Currie'sLife of Burns.
[8] In Scotlandwriteris used loosely of law agents, solicitors, attorneys, and the like, and sometimes even of their principal clerks. Burns alludes to theAyr writersinThe Brigs of Ayr.
[9]The Edinburgh Reviewowed much of its success to Archibald Constable, its first printer. Constable rose to be one of the chief publishers of his time, and is especially famous for his connection with Scott, but became bankrupt in 1826.Constable's Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications in Literature, Science, and the Artshas a pathetic interest as being the poor fulfilment of a scheme that he had formed, before his failure, of a series of cheap volumes that should sell, he told Scott, "not by thousands or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands—aye, by millions."
[10] Author ofNotes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois. (London, 1818.)
[11] Carlyle's judgment on Lockhart's work seems to have improved with reflection. In a letter to his brother, June 10, 1828, he writes: "Lockhart had written a kind ofLife of Burns, and men in general were making another uproar about Burns; it is this Book (a trivial enough one) which I am topretendreviewing."
[12] The apologetic expressions in the early part of this essay may, as Mr. H. W. Boynton well suggests in his excellent edition, be relics of Jeffrey's editing.
[13] Carlyle is always extreme in his judgments, and here is unjustly contemptuous of men whom, as the quotation from Scott below (p. 60) will show, Burns always regarded as his models, and whom he often directly and openly imitated. Ramsay has been admired by men as different as Pope and Leigh Hunt; and Stevenson, whose estimate of these men in his essay onSome Aspects of Robert Burnsit would be well to read, places the "poor lad Fergusson" even higher than Ramsay.
[14] Here Carlyle touches on the source of his own power,—the maxim that the pleasure of criticism deprives us of that of vivid appreciation does not apply to him.
[15] TheTragic Fragmentprinted in Burns's works was written when he was only nineteen. And in 1790 Burns told friends that he was preparing to write a play on a subject drawn from Scottish history.
[16] Though Carlyle never changed his opinion of a true poet, his later writings show a very different estimate of the value of conquerors to the world. After his removal to London, he writes but little on literature, and is usually full of scorn for the profession of letters. He tends to idealize mere strength of will and brute force of character, if accompanied by sincerity. He praises the power of silent action; and his favorite heroes are men of deeds, like Cromwell and Frederick.
[17] SeeTo a Mountain DaisyandTo a Mouse. Cranreuch=hoar frost.
[18] This passage is suggested by a prose entry in Burns'sCommon-Place Book(April, 1784), which serves as introduction to the poemWinter. The words in italics are from Psalm 104.
[19] The figure is a favorite one with Burns; see, for example, the passage quoted below, page 30. The present quotation may be from Richter (compare p. 81), in whom, according to Mr. Boynton, the figure is also frequent.
[20] "Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflentHumani voltus; si vis me flere, dolendum estPrimum ipsi tibi."—Ars Poetica, 101-103.
"As men's faces laugh with those that laugh, so they weep with those that weep; if thou wouldst have me weep, thou must first feel grief thyself."
[21] Sincerity is the test by which Carlyle judges all men; praise of it is one of the keynotes of his writings. Unfortunately he often confounds it with mere brute force of character and fixity of purpose.
[22] "How perpetually he [Burns] was alive to the dread of being looked down on as a man, even by those who most zealously applauded the works of his genius, might perhaps be traced through the whole sequence of his letters. When writing to men of high station, at least, he preserves, in every instance, the attitude of self-defence."—Lockhart, chap. v.
[23] Scott, Byron, Moore, Southey, and Cooper are the most obvious objects of this attack; but they had a host of imitators. Carlyle, because of his intense moral earnestness, had no sympathy with literature written only to give amusement, regardless of truth to life. As usual, his view, though stimulating, is one-sided. Many of the most justly famous books, notably theArabian Nights, are great by the pure charm of incident and invention.
[24] "A printing-house in London, which was noted in the eighteenth century for the publication of trashy sentimental novels."—Century Dictionary of Names.
[25] A famous gaming club-house in London.
[26] The reference is to Macaulay, essay on Milton.
[27] The two poems,HalloweenandThe Holy Fair, must be read to understand the references. Any encyclopædia will explain the Council of Trent and the Roman Jubilee.
[28] Carlyle had little interest in the fine arts for their own sake; perhaps he was attracted to Retzsch by his illustrations of Schiller and Goethe.
[29] The passage beginning here, and extending through the quotation on page 27, is not found in theEdinburgh Review.
[30]Bock'd, vomited.
[31]FabulosusHydaspes! [Note by Carlyle] seeHorace: Odes, I. 22.
[32] Thaws that melt the snow in spots.
[33] Rolls.
[34] Spate, torrent.
[35] Muddy splashes.
[36] FromThe Brigs of Ayr. It is the fall of the new brig that is prophesied: a strange slip on Carlyle's part.
[37] SeeIliad, xviii. and xxii. Pope's translation may be bought for a few cents; and is still in many ways the best.
[38] A name for a blacksmith, shortened toBurnewin, inScotch Drink.
[39] These lines are incorrectly quoted from an Irish song altered by Burns,Open the Door to Me, oh!They should read:
"The wan Moon is setting behind the white wave,And Time is setting with me, oh:False friends, false love, farewell! for mairI'll ne'er trouble them nor thee, oh."
[40]To William Simpson.Wat, wet.
[41] Dugald Stewart, professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, in a letter published in theLife of Burns, by Dr. James Currie.
[42] In this sentence, as printed in theEdinburgh Review, we have certainly a trace of Jeffrey's editing (cf. above, p. 7). There, by the change ofweak-eyed maudlinintoextreme, and ofrandomintopervading, the sneer is converted into a compliment. Elsewhere Carlyle says of Keats: "The kind of man he was gets ever more horrible to me. Force of hunger for pleasure of every kind, and want of all other force.... Such a structure of soul, it would once have been very evident, was a chosen 'Vessel of Hell.'" (Nichol:Life of Carlyle, chap. v.) Such is the absurd result to which Carlyle is led by his view of the necessity of a moral aim in all literature.
[43] Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, January 1, 1789. The passage is also quoted in Lockhart, chap. viii.
[44] Struggle.
[45]A Winter Night.
[46]Ibid.
[47]Address to the Deil.
[48] The quotation is fromTristram Shandy, vol. iii. chap. xi. In theEdinburgh Reviewit is preceded by the sentence: "He did not know, probably, that Sterne had been beforehand with him." As a matter of fact, Burns was well acquainted with Sterne; and it is perhaps for that reason that Carlyle omitted the line when this essay was reprinted, even though he thereby made a very abrupt transition.
[49] The two following paragraphs, including the quotation from Burns, were not in the essay as printed in theEdinburgh Preview.
[50] "Facit indignatio versum."—Juvenal, I. 79.
[51] Dr. Johnson said of his friend Dr. Bathurst: "Dear Bathurst was a man to my very heart's content; he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig. He was a very good hater."—Piozzi'sAnecdotes of Dr. Johnson. Carlyle himself, in his scornful epigrams at men and institutions that seemed to him false and insincere, is a near approach to a "good hater."
[52] Cf.Paradise Lost, I. 63.
[53]Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald.
[54] The authority for this account is a letter from Mr. Syme, printed in Currie'sLife. Burns himself sentScots wha hae wi' Wallace bledto Thomson September 1, 1793, in company with a letter, in which he says that the song was composed on an evening walk the day before.
[55] See Virgil,Æneid, viii. 185-279.
[56] The reference is to Milton'sIl Penseroso. The struggle of fate and man's free will is the central idea of the typical Greek tragedies.
[57]Tristram Shandywas one of Carlyle's favorite books: Sterne probably appealed to him by his humor and kindliness. Cf. p. 33, above.
[58] Both Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) and Johann Karl August Musäus (1735-1787) worked with materials drawn from popular legend. But Musäus, in his most famous work,Volksmärchen der Deutschen(German Folk-Tales), could not keep from introducing his own satirical tone. Thus the book lacks the simplicity of genuine folk-lore. Remember that Carlyle had already published translations from both these men.
[59] Fearless crone.
[60] The scene ofThe Jolly Beggarswas an actual tavern in Mauchline, kept by a Mrs. Gibson, called "Poosie-Nansie."
[61] David Teniers, the Younger (1610-1690).
[62] By John Gay (1685-1732).
[63] By John Fletcher (1579-1625).
[64] In particular, Lockhart, chap. ix.
[65] Jeronymo Osorio (1506-1580), called "the Cicero of Portugal:" "Men began to hunt more after words than matter; more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius the Portugal bishop, to be in price."—Bacon:Of the Advancement of Learning, I. iv. 2.
[66] Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun (1655-1716), in hisAccount of a Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind, says: "I knew a very wise man" who "believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."
[67] Richard Glover (1712-1785) was once famous for his epicLeonidas. There is an account of him, with specimens of his work, in Ward'sEnglish Poets. Nothing can better illustrate Carlyle's lack of a judicial habit of mind than his coupling Glover's name with Gray's. Read once more theElegy written in a Country Churchyard, and form your own idea of the correctness of Carlyle's opinion.
[68] Apparently Carlyle's memory was treacherous, like that of ordinary mortals: man and work are both given incorrectly here.Human Nature in its Fourfold State, by Thomas Boston (1677-1732), is still a classic of the Calvinistic theology.
[69] The names are all readily found in any cyclopædia; except possibly that of Charles Batteux (1713-1780), who, as might be inferred from the text, was a French literary critic of the same school as Boileau.
[70] At one time Hume's residence in France, where he composed hisTreatise on Human Nature.
[71] Chapter xi. of Book I. of Adam Smith'sWealth of Nationshas the titleOf the Rent of Land.The Natural History of Religionis by Hume.
[72] In spite of the example of Burns, the publisher ofWaverleyhesitated for some time to accept the manuscript, on account of the Scotch dialect interwoven in it. Now, on the contrary, a local dialect seems a commendation to a work of fiction.
[73] Burns, in his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore (August 2, 1787), says, in reference toThe History of Sir William Wallace, one of his first books: "The story of Wallace poured a Scotch prejudice in my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." The reader will by this time have noticed Carlyle's carelessness about small points.
[74] This may refer to Burns's poetical epistles to David Sillar and John Lapraik, obscure poets of his own time; or, more probably, to his erecting a memorial, at his own expense, over the neglected grave of Fergusson.
[75]Answer to Verses addressed to the Poet by the Guidwife of Wauchope House.
[76] Burns himself says of his early days, in his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore: "The great misfortune of my life was never to have an aim."
[77] Perhaps Carlyle is misled in his estimate of Burns by his own high conception of the vocation of the man of letters. The profession of literature is hardly older than our own century; Dr. Johnson is really the first example of it. For a man, unsupported by a patron, to make poetry his means of subsistence, was almost unknown in the eighteenth century. Burns was too proud to depend on a patron, and his refusal to accept money for his contributions to Johnson'sMuseumand Thomson'sScottish Airswas only in accord with the ideas of his time; besides, he feared that such a proceeding would injure his spontaneity. To receive pay for a volume of poems, originally written without reference to publication, was quite a different matter.
Carlyle, in his lecture onThe Hero as Man of Letters, inHeroes and Hero-Worship, develops his own point of view more fully.
[78] Burns himself says of his father: "I have met with few who understood Men, their manners and their ways, equal to him."
[79] These words seem like a prophecy of Carlyle's own career, which was just beginning when this essay was written.
[80] SeeThe Cotter's Saturday Night.
[81] Wordsworth:Resolution and Independence(1807 edition). Our editions read: "Following his plough, along the mountain side." The reference in the poem is to Burns.
[82] Apparently the "best evidence" is conflicting. Burns, in his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore, says of himself as a boy: "I was, perhaps, the most ungainly, awkward being in the parish." And Murdock, Burns's schoolmaster, in a letter printed in Currie'sLifeand reproduced in Lockhart's, says: "Robert's ear was remarkably dull, and his voice untamable.... Robert's countenance was generally grave and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind."
[83a] The phrases are drawn from Burns's letter to Dr. Moore.
[83b] The phrases are drawn from Burns's letter to Dr. Moore.
[84]Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr. The last line should read:—
Farewell, the bonie banks of Ayr.
[85] Shakespeare, Richard II. iv. 1. Carlyle was a man of enormous reading, and no one can hope to recognizeallhis allusions. But the two books to which he, like most of the great writers of modern England, refers most frequently, are within the reach of every one: they are the Bible and Shakespeare.
[86] Lockhart, chap. v.
[87] Ovid,Tristia, IV. x. 51.
[88] Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), professor of philosophy at Edinburgh University. He was succeeded by Dugald Stewart.
[89] Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811) was an amateur artist and caricaturist of some note.
[90] The poem may be found in Chalmers'sBritish Poets, vol. xvi., under the titleThe Country Justice. There the second line reads: "Perhaps that parent mourn'd her soldier slain." John Langhorne (1735-1779) and his brother William made the translation of Plutarch'sLiveswhich, in spite of its dreary style, is still the one in general use.
[91] Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) painted in 1787 a bust portrait of Burns, which is the likeness most commonly reproduced.
[92] Quoted in Lockhart, chap. v.
[93] Lockhart gives in a foot-note (at end of chap. iv.) the following quotation from a letter of Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, August 17, 1773:—
"This morning I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor scholar in Latin, Greek, and French. He was originally a poor scholar himself. I looked on him with reverence."
[94] Cf. John v. 1-9.
[95] Words of Burns quoted in Lockhart, chap. vii.
[96] "If Burns had much of a farmer's skill, he had little of a farmer's prudence and economy. I once inquired of James Corrie, a sagacious old farmer, whose ground marched with Elliesland, the cause of the poet's failure. 'Faith,' said he, 'how could he miss but fail, when his servants ate the bread as fast as it was baked? I don't mean figuratively, I mean literally. Consider a little. At that time close economy was necessary to have enabled a man to clear twenty pounds a year by Elliesland. Now Burns's own handywork was out of the question; he neither ploughed, nor sowed, nor reaped, at least like a hard-working farmer; and then he had a bevy of servants from Ayrshire. The lasses did nothing but bake bread, and the lads sat by the fireside, and ate it warm, with ale. Waste of time and consumption of food would soon reach to twenty pounds a year.'"—(Letter to Lockhart from Allan Cunningham, quoted in Lockhart'sLife, chap, vii.)
[97] In reality Burns occasionally borrowed money; but at his death he left only a few small debts.
[98] There is one little sketch by certain "English gentlemen" of this class, which, though adopted in Currie's narrative, and since then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible disposition to regard as imaginary: "On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of fox-skin on his head, a loose greatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns." Now, we rather think, it wasnotBurns. For, to say nothing of the foxskin cap, the loose and quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are we to make of this "enormous Highland broad-sword" depending from him? More especially, as there is no word of parish constables on the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to his own midriff or that of the public! Burns, of all men, had the least need, and the least tendency, to seek for distinction, either in his own eyes or those of others, by such poor mummeries.—[Carlyle's note.]
Carlyle thinks this petty vanity inconsistent with Burns's wise self-control at Edinburgh. But we cannot reason thus in the case of a man with so variable a temperament, and the anecdote is fairly well authenticated.
[99] Mæcenas was the great literary patron of the Augustan age of Rome. Virgil addressed to him hisGeorgics, and Horace honors his name repeatedly.
[100] Lockhart (chap. viii.) devotes much time to confuting them.
[101] Lockhart, chap. viii.
[102]Ubi sœva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit. Swift's Epitaph. [Carlyle's note.]
[103]A Bard's Epitaph.
[104] The parody is fromThe Merchant of Venice, iv. 1.
[105] Cf. page 1, above.
[106] Cf. Matthew vii. 16.
[107] An echo from Burns's dedication to the first Edinburgh edition of his poems. Cf. page 3, above.
[108] Cf. Daniel iv. 30.
[109] The first half of this precept occurs eight times in the New Testament; the second only in Galatians vi. 2.
[110] This cry of indignation at the absorption of men in the cares of this world, and their indifference to higher things, occurs repeatedly in Carlyle.
[111] Every reader should have a clear idea, not necessarily of the details in the lives of these men, but of the general significance of each in the history of the world.
[112] Matthew v. 12; and compare Luke vi. 23.
[113] There is an allusion to Ephesians iv. 8.
[114] This moral is worked out with wonderful power inSartor Resartus.
[115] The word means simplyrestorer; but Carlyle uses it to denote a man who uses his literary talent merely to give amusement, not to inculcate truth. Here again is a veiled sneer at Byron and Scott.
[116] SeeParadise Lost, vii. 24-31.
[117] TheAraucanais the best of a score of epics written in the reign of Philip II. of Spain in imitation of the Italian poets Ariosto and Tasso. Its author, Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga (1533-1595), writes of the Spanish campaigns against the Indians of Arauco, in which he himself took part. The early part of the poem was written in the field, in the manner that Carlyle describes. TheAraucanais now little read; and its author is no way comparable to the great epic poets of Italy and England.