The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEssay on BurnsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Essay on BurnsAuthor: Thomas CarlyleEditor: George Rapall NoyesRelease date: November 1, 2022 [eBook #69284]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896Credits: Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAY ON BURNS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Essay on BurnsAuthor: Thomas CarlyleEditor: George Rapall NoyesRelease date: November 1, 2022 [eBook #69284]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896Credits: Al Haines
Title: Essay on Burns
Author: Thomas CarlyleEditor: George Rapall Noyes
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Editor: George Rapall Noyes
Release date: November 1, 2022 [eBook #69284]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAY ON BURNS ***
The Riverside Literature Series
BY
THOMAS CARLYLE
EDITEDWITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTESBY GEORGE R. NOYES
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANYBoston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth StreetChicago: 158 Adams Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1896,By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
Carlyle'sEssay on Burnswas first printed in theEdinburgh Reviewfor December, 1828. Though in form a review of theLife of Robert Burns, by John Gibson Lockhart, it is really, like many of the articles in theEdinburgh Review, an entirely independent work. The present art of book reviewing is a creation of our own times. The English magazines of the eighteenth century were mere publishers' organs, and are inferior to even second-rate periodicals of our own day. The book notices in them are comparable to those that we see in our poorer daily newspapers. The reviewers were usually mere literary hacks, and were content to give a summary of the contents of a book, and then pass judgment on it as a whole, meting out praise or blame in set, formal terms. The foundation of theEdinburgh Review, in 1802, by Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Brougham, and others, marks the beginning of a new era in English periodical literature. The new magazine had for contributors men of marked learning and originality, leaders in the thought of their time, who were not satisfied, in reviewing a book, with recording the impression that any sane man would gather from a casual reading, but took the title of the book as the text for a thoroughly original treatment of its subject. Succeeding periodicals, as theQuarterlyandBlackwood's, however much they differed from theEdinburghin politics and general tendencies, were all affected by its methods. So it happens that many book reviews in the English magazines, by men like Carlyle, Macaulay, and Matthew Arnold, have become permanent additions to literature, sometimes surpassing in interest the works that occasioned them.
In the present case, however, the book reviewed continues to be a standard authority. Its author, John Gibson Lockhart, was born in 1794, at Cambusnethan, about twelve miles southeast of Glasgow. WhenBlackwood's Magazinewas founded, in 1817, Lockhart became one of its chief contributors. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott. In the years following his marriage he published several novels, an edition ofDon Quixote, and his translations ofAncient Spanish Ballads. This last work has never been superseded, and is often reprinted. In 1826 he became editor of theQuarterly Review, and retained the position until the year before his death, in 1854. HisLife of Robert Burnsappeared in 1828, and aLife of Napoleon Bonapartein the next year. His greatest work, theLife of Scott, appeared in 1836-38, and by general consent has taken in English biographical literature a place second only to that of Boswell'sLife of Johnson.
Carlyle was introduced to Lockhart when on a visit to London, in 1832. In his Note Book at that time he calls Lockhart "a precise, brief, active person of considerable faculty," and confesses that he "rather liked the man."[1] A month later, in a letter to his brother, he calls him "not without force, but barren and unfruitful."[2] Seven years after this, when Carlyle was settled in London, he formed the project of writing an article on the working-classes for theQuarterly; with this in mind he called upon Lockhart, and, he says, "found him a person of sense, good breeding, even kindness."[3] Ever after this, though the two men were never intimate friends, they had warm affection and esteem for each other. Lockhart feared to accept Carlyle's article because of its radical opinions, and it was published separately, under the title ofChartism. One more link betweenthe men is Carlyle's review—one of his least satisfactory essays—of theLife of Scott, published in 1838, in theLondon and Westminster Review. And Carlyle's own judgment of Lockhart widens our knowledge of the character of both men.
"A hard, proud, but thoroughly honest, singularly intelligent, and also affectionate man, whom in the distance I esteemed more than perhaps he ever knew. Seldom did I speak to him; but hardly ever without learning and gaining something."[4]
Thomas Carlyle was born December 4, 1795, at Annandale, in Dumfriesshire, in southeast Scotland. His life offers many resemblances, though perhaps more contrasts, to that of Burns. Like Burns, he came from the strong, rough stock of the Scotch peasantry. Of his father, James Carlyle, a man like Burns's father in his strength of character and deeply religious temperament, but unlike him in his complete ignorance of all books except the Bible, Carlyle has himself left us a grand portrait in theReminiscences. When ten years old, Carlyle was sent to the Annan grammar school. Of his life there we may judge from the veiled account inSartor Resartus:—
"My Teachers were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind.... The Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by the appliance of birch-rods."[5]
James Carlyle recognized his son's ability, and resolvedthat he should be an educated man. Yet Carlyle can hardly be said to have been "sent" to the University, for hewalkedthe distance of seventy miles over rough country to Edinburgh. There he worked industriously in the library, and laid the foundations for his wonderful knowledge of books. He tells us later:—
"What I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me."[6]
Carlyle had been intended for the ministry, but money was lacking, and he took up school teaching as a temporary occupation. In 1818, having saved ninety pounds, he returned to Edinburgh for study. Meanwhile, the ministry had become closed to him, for reading and thought had undermined his belief in the creed of the Scotch Kirk. But Carlyle's reaction from his ancestral beliefs was occasioned by different circumstances from that of Burns. Carlyle, by deep study and meditation, was stirred from the dogmas of the Scotch Kirk, but adhered strictly to its stern, severe code of morals. Burns, who had a lighter, more facile nature, became disgusted with the hypocrisy of those high in church authority, and was attracted by the more winning characters of the leaders of the progressive party. His passions had already weakened his morals; and though he still professed the highest respect for religion in the abstract, he was led on from distrust of orthodox Calvinism to what often seems general skepticism and indifference on religious matters.
After an experiment in legal study, Carlyle finally settled on his trade as a "writer of books." From 1818 to 1822 he lived in Edinburgh, and did hack literary work, largely articles for theEdinburgh Encyclopedia. In 1822 hebecame tutor in a private family, with whom he travelled, not returning to Edinburgh until 1825. During these years of indecision as to what should be his life pursuit he had been occupied with German literature, and had published his translation ofWilhelm Meisterand hisLife of Schiller. For these works he received grateful acknowledgment from Goethe, and by them established a reputation as a writer. In 1827 he met Jeffrey, and made a contract with him to write for theEdinburgh Review.
Meanwhile, in 1826, Carlyle had married Jane Baillie Welsh. Two years later, through the failure of some literary plans, he decided to remove, for the sake of economy, to his wife's farm of Craigenputtock, in southwest Dumfriesshire, in the wild moorland country, fifteen miles from any town. There he resolved, in spite of poverty, to publish no work that did not satisfy his ideal. Carlyle's impressions of his hermit life vary with his changing moods,—now he praises his home as a rural paradise; again he writes in his diary, "Finished a paper on Burns September 16, 1828, at this Devil's Den, Craigenputtock."[7]
This last phrase shows us that theEssay on Burnswas one of the first products of Carlyle's self-imposed exile. Of all his essays, this is on the topic nearest to the author's life. Carlyle was drawn to his subject by every bond of race, language, and association. His birthplace, Annandale, is only ten miles from Dumfries, Burns's last home. He had talked with many who had known Burns in life, among them Gilbert Burns, the poet's brother. Though an estimate of the merits of the essay will be more appropriate later, some circumstances connected with its publication must here be noted, for the light which they throw on Carlyle's character. The account of them is quoted, with some small changes, from Froude.
Jeffrey "found the article long and diffuse, though hedid not deny that 'it contained much beauty and felicity of diction.' He insisted that it must be cut down," and received permission from Carlyle to make some alterations.[8] "When the proof-sheets came, Carlyle found 'the first part cut all into shreds,—the body of a quadruped with the head of a bird, a man shortened by cutting out the thighs and fixing the knee-caps on the hips.'[9] He refused to let it appear 'in such a horrid shape.' He replaced the most important passages, and returned the sheets with an intimation that the paper might be cancelled, but should not be mutilated. Few editors would have been so forbearing as Jeffrey when so audaciously defied. He complained, but he acquiesced. He admitted that the article would do the Review credit, though it would be called tedious and sprawling by people of weight whose mouths he could have stopped. He had wished to be of use to Carlyle by keeping out of sight in the Review his mannerism and affectation; but if Carlyle persisted he might have his way.
"Carlyle was touched; such kindness was more than he had looked for. The proud self-assertion was followed by humility and almost penitence, and the gentle tone in which he wrote conquered Jeffrey in turn. Jeffrey said that he admired and approved of Carlyle's letter to him in all respects. 'The candour and sweet blood' which was shown in it deserved the highest praise. 'Your virtues are your own,' said Jeffrey, 'and you shall have anything you like.'"[10]
During Carlyle's residence at Craigenputtock, which lasted, with slight interruption, for six years, were produced most of the miscellaneous essays, and his first great original work,Sartor Resartus. This is the formative period of his literary life, from which he came forth, to quoteMr. Stephen, "a master of his craft." In 1834 he moved to London, where he resided until his death, in 1881. To this later period belong his greatest works, on which his fame depends:Heroes and Hero-Worship,The French Revolution,Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, andThe History of Frederick the Great. But the earlier works have the same tonic quality as the later, and are free from many of their defects. As a teacher, especially if we take an American point of view, Carlyle grows less trustworthy with advancing years. His cynicism becomes more bitter, his hero-worship leads him to sympathize with autocracy, while his contempt for the stupidity of the masses leads him to distrust all popular government. In Lowell's words, quoting Carlyle's contemptuous phrase, "he saw 'only the burning of a dirty chimney' in the war which a great people was waging under his very eyes for the idea of nationality and orderly magistrature."
In theEssay on Burns, then, we have a work of Carlyle's early prime. We might infer this from the style alone, which shows a transition from his early clearness and simplicity to the "piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing" characteristic of his later works, and always associated with his name.
In theEssay on Burnsit is not the author's intention to give a connected sketch of Burns's life,[11] or to pass a cool, critical judgment on his poetry as a whole. Carlyle has himself, on page 6 of this essay, given us his idea of the true purpose of biography. The following words from his second essay on Richter make his meaning still clearer:—
"If the acted life of apius Vatesis so high a matter, the written life, which, if properly written, would be a translation and interpretation thereof, must also have great value. It has been said that no Poet is equal to his Poem, which saying is partially true; but in a deeper sense, itmay also be asserted, and with still greater truth, that no Poem is equal to its Poet. Now, it is Biography which first gives us both Poet and Poem; by the significance of the one, elucidating and completing that of the other. That ideal outline of himself, which a man unconsciously shadows forth in his writings, and which, rightly deciphered, will be truer than any other representation of him, it is the task of the Biographer to fill up into an actual coherent figure, and bring home to our experience, or at least clear, undoubting admiration, thereby to instruct and edify us in many ways. Conducted on such principles, the Biography of great men, especially of great poets, that is, of men in the highest degree noble minded and wise, might become one of the most dignified and valuable species of composition. As matters stand, indeed, there are few Biographies that accomplish anything of this kind; the most are mere Indexes of a Biography, which each reader is to write out for himself, as he peruses them; not the living body, but the dry bones of a body, which should have been alive. To expect any such Promethean virtue in a common Life-writer were unreasonable enough. How shall that unhappy Biographic brotherhood, instead of writing like Index-makers and Government-clerks, suddenly become enkindled with some sparks of intellect, or even of genial fire; and not only collecting dates and facts, but making use of them, look beyond the surface and economical form of a man's life, into its substance and spirit?"
In pursuit of this great aim, Carlyle has to adapt his method to his subject. In writing of Richter, a man unknown to the British public of his time, he has to give us himself the "dry bones" of fact, before he can give the "living body." But in the case of Burns, as he can assume that his readers are familiar with Burns's chief poems, and know the main events of his life, he brushes aside all detail, and treats at once the inner meaning and value of the poet's life and work. To appreciate Carlyle's essay, we mustfulfil his expectation of us, and know Burns at first hand before we start to read about him.
We must now ask how far Carlyle corresponds to his own ideal biographer. No one can read this essay without admitting that we have in it a powerful and sympathetic conception of Burns. To decide whether this conception is just and impartial we must take into account the writer's general temperament and leading ideas.
Carlyle is a hero-worshipper in all his work, as a quotation fromSartor Resartuswill best explain:—
"Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus there is a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodoxHero-worship. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all Politics for the remotest time may stand secure.
"Hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a skeptic, mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet. All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish."[12]
As Carlyle is fallible, like other men, the practical effect of his doctrine is that he exalts those whom he likes, and throws contempt on those whom he dislikes. Since he is attracted by Burns's noble qualities, above all by his sincerity, he forms a grand ideal conception of him. Indeed,in hisHeroes and Hero-Worship, written twelve years later, he boldly pronounces Burns "the most gifted British soul we had in all that century of his." The lecture upon "the hero as man of letters" should be studied carefully by all who wish to understand Carlyle's attitude towards the great writers of the world, and towards Burns as one of them. It would, however, be of small use to read, as a sort of postscript to this essay, the half-dozen pages which Carlyle there devotes especially to Burns. He there repeats many of the thoughts of this essay,—when a writer has once clearly and fully spoken his mind of a man he cannot well treat of him again without repetition. The value of the lecture on "the hero as man of letters" is, that it gives us in brief form general ideas, of which theEssay on Burnsis a particular application.
In consequence of his conception of Burns as a hero, Carlyle casts aside, as of slight importance in the general estimate, evidence that opposes his own view, or even entirely refuses to believe it. Thus he dwells on Burns's finest poems, and pays little heed to his affected English verse and stilted prose. Yet they, too, are of Burns's writing, and demand full consideration, if we are to understand the whole man. Again, he will not credit an anecdote for which there is fairly good evidence, because it shows in Burns a foolish vanity that seems to him impossible. So, at the best, our essay gives only a partial view of Burns. Those who wish to learn more of the seamy side of the poet's character will do well to read an essay by as loyal a son of Scotland, and as kindly and sympathetic a writer, as Carlyle himself,—Robert Louis Stevenson.[13]
Much more might be said in dispraise of Carlyle's work, and yet its essential greatness would remain unaffected. After the lapse of nearly seventy years, this essay is still by far our best portrait of Burns. All succeeding critics have had to take Carlyle into account. They may differwidely from his conclusions, but they cannot fail to recognize his transcendent merits. Though the judgments of Carlyle on Burns have, in the main, stood well the test of time, yet in this, as in all his writings, his excellence lies less in his own opinions than in his power to make others think for themselves. Carlyle has little of the finish, proportion, discrimination, that we find in Matthew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve. But for the ordinary reader he is far more useful than many a writer who comes nearer the absolute truth. He touches our hearts and arouses our sympathies. Most readers of a critic ask, not: "After reading this essay can I distinguish more accurately between the good and bad art in my author, and judge better of their comparative importance?" but: "Does this critic make me more able to understand the best that is in my poet, so that I share more deeply in his highest life and thought?" Let us then, with due reverence, approach the thoughts of one of the greatest thinkers of Scotland upon the greatest of her poets.
[1] Froude:Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of his Life, ii. 188.
[2]Ibid., ii. 212.
[3] Quoted in Froude:Thomas Carlyle, a History of his Life in London, i. 140, from a letter of Carlyle's to his brother.
[4] See note by Carlyle inLetters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. Froude, i. 107.
[5]Sartor Resartus, II. iii.
[6]Address delivered to the Students of Edinburgh University—April 2, 1866.
[7] Froude:Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of his Life, ii. 26.
[8]Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1826-1836, p. 123.
[9] Quoted from a letter from Carlyle to his brother, October 10, 1828. There is here a reminiscence of the opening lines of Horace'sArs Poetica.
[10] Froude:Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of his Life, ii. 31-35.
[11] For this reason, a brief sketch of the poet's life is given the reader after this Introduction. See pp. xiv.-xvii.
[12]Sartor Resartus, III. vii.
[13] InFamiliar Studies of Men and Books.
Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay-built cottage, at Alloway in Ayrshire, in southwest Scotland. Except for the personal character of his father, his lot was that of any poor peasant lad. But the elder Burns had a natural love of learning, attended carefully to his sons' education himself, and, further, gave them as good schooling as it lay in his power to do. The teacher of Robert Burns and his younger brother Gilbert was John Murdoch, a young man of uncommon merit, who interested himself in the boys, and lent them various books. Robert grew thoroughly familiar with his small library, learned French fairly well, and began Latin. He was particularly fascinated by a book of English songs, and carried it with him into the fields. He early became noted as the best converser and the best letter writer in the parish. When Burns was still a child his father had removed to another farm, at Mount Oliphant; later, when Burns was eighteen, to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. The family affairs were never long prosperous; and the distress endured at Mount Oliphant from a tyrannicalfactor, or landlord's agent, is commemorated inThe Twa Dogs, just as the happy home life is reproduced inThe Cotter's Saturday Night. Through all his youth Burns was a laborer for his father; and his first song,Handsome Nell, written when he was only fifteen, is in honor of a chance partner in the harvest field.
In 1782, when he was twenty-three years old, Burns engaged in business at the town of Irvine, but was reduced to poverty by the burning of his shop, and returned to Lochlea. The short residence at the thriving seaport affected for theworse his habits of life and thought. Until then Burns had led an ordinarily correct life; but at Irvine he learned to drink, and to think lightly of infidelity to women.The Poet's Welcome to his Illegitimate Childbears sad witness to this alteration in his character.
In 1784, soon after Burns's return home, his father died, leaving his affairs in utter ruin. Three months before his death Robert and Gilbert had taken the farm of Mossgiel, in the neighboring parish of Mauchline, and thither the whole family now removed. The years 1785 and 1786 are Burns's great period of poetical production; within them fall most of the pieces, exclusive ofTam O'Shanterand of his songs, by which he is now best known. At this time the theological controversy between the two parties in the Scotch Kirk occupied the attention of every one. Burns was attracted by the personal character of the leaders of theNew Light, or progressive, party; and aided them in their warfare upon theOld Lightdivines by many stinging satires, notablyThe Holy Fair,The Twa Herds, andHoly Willie's Prayer. Readers to-day have come to have a new interest in theOld Lights, orAuld Lichts, as the Scotch term is, through J. M. Barrie's tales and sketches.
In 1785 Burns met and fell in love with Jean Armour, and the next year twin children were born to them. Burns, in order to save the girl from disgrace, had given her a written acknowledgment of marriage; but her father, who had a poor opinion of the poet's general character, had forced her to destroy this. Burns, finding himself without money or position in society, resolved to emigrate to Jamaica, and published a thin volume of his poems in order to raise money for the passage. The success of the book was great and immediate, and altered the whole course of Burns's life. Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, entertained him at his house; Henry MacKenzie, the novelist, gave him a flattering review; and, finally, an enthusiastic letter from Dr. Blacklock, one of the most celebrated Edinburgh critics,made him decide to give up his plan of flight from his native country, and to try his fortune at the Scotch capital. The volume of poems was also the means of his acquaintance with the excellent Mrs. Dunlop, with whom he corresponded until the end of his life.
In November, 1786, Burns went to Edinburgh, and was the "lion" of the following winter. A new edition of his poems received three thousand subscribers, and brought him in about £500. Of this he lent £180 to his brother Gilbert, to help in the management of Mossgiel,—the loan was finally repaid some thirty years later to the poet's family. During the following year he made two trips through Scotland, partly to collect songs, and began to contribute to Johnson'sScot's Musical Museumand Thomson'sCollection of Scottish Airs. The poet applied for, and obtained, a commission in the Excise, the only worldly advantage, except the profits of his poems, that he derived from his triumphal Edinburgh season. Reserving his commission as a last resort, Burns rented a farm at Ellisland, near Dumfries, where he settled, in the summer of 1788. He had renewed his intimacy with Jean Armour, and, when she became once more exposed to the anger of her father, made her all the reparation in his power, by marriage. The farm was not a success, and Burns tried to carry on the Excise business along with it. When this division of labor also proved unsatisfactory, he abandoned Ellisland, and, in November, 1792, moved to Dumfries.
At Dumfries Burns was advanced to all Excise division, with a salary of seventy pounds, and retained the position until his death. His hopes of further promotion were cut off by his ill-timed expressions of sympathy with the American Revolution, and with the republican party in France. He attended well to the duties of his office, but occasional drunkenness and other misconduct brought on him the ill favor of the "Dumfries aristocracy." The boon companions with whom he mingled, and the curious tourists attracted byhis fame, were in no small measure the cause of his poor success. On January 2, 1793, he writes to Mrs. Dunlop:—
"Occasionally hard drinking is the devil to me. Against this I have again and again bent my resolution, and have greatly succeeded. Taverns I have totally abandoned: it is the private parties in the family way, among the hard-drinking gentlemen of this country, that do me the mischief."
The poet's excesses did not keep him from being an affectionate father, and attending carefully to his children's education. He died on July 21, 1796.
Burns's life since leaving Edinburgh had, on the whole, been one of decline. With the exception of his songs, which he never ceased to contribute to Thomson'sCollection of Scottish Airs, and ofTam O'Shanter, written at Ellisland, he had produced no important poem since that time. But this sketch of Burns's life must not attempt an estimate of his character as poet or man. Its only object is to furnish for ready reference a few of the facts necessary for understanding Carlyle's work.
Every author should be studied, as far as possible, from his own writings. Carlyle's voluminous correspondence furnishes rich materials for the history of his life and thought. The best editions of his letters are those edited by Professor Charles Eliot Norton:Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle(1814-1826),Letters of Thomas Carlyle(1826-1836),Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson. These may be supplemented by Froude's edition of theLetters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Next to these first-hand documents, Froude'sThomas Carlyle, in spite of its inaccuracy and its prejudiced point of view, will remain the great storehouse of information for students of the subject. There are good short lives of Carlyle by John Nichol (English Men of LettersSeries) and Richard Garnett (Great WritersSeries). The former deals more fully in criticism on his literary work. There are excellent critical appreciations of Carlyle by James Russell Lowell, Augustine Birrell (inObiter Dicta), and Matthew Arnold (inEssay on Emerson).
The best way to study Burns is to learn the outline of the external events of his life from any short sketch, and then to read his poems and letters in chronological order. Besides the life by Lockhart, there are good accounts of him by Principal Shairp (English Men of LettersSeries) and John Stuart Blackie (Great WritersSeries). Carlyle mentions by name Currie and Walker among the biographers of Burns previous to Lockhart. Dr. James Currie (1756-1805), a famous Scotch physician, published in 1800 an edition of Burns's works, with an account of his life, in aid of the poet's family. TheLife of Burns, written by Josiah Walker, later Professor of Humanity in Glasgow University, to accompany an edition of Burns's works published in 1811, has no permanent value.
Unlike the other two men, Lockhart does not appeal to us as much by his personal character as by his writings. TheLife and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, by Andrew Lang, is the best book with regard to him.
In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncommon thing that a man of genius must, like Butler,[2] "ask for bread and receive a stone;" for, in spite of our grand maxim of supply and demand, it is by no means the highest excellence that men are most forward to recognize. The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggravation of the injustice, that there is generally a posthumous retribution. Robert Burns, in the course of Nature, might yet have been living; but his short life was spent in toil and penury; and he died, in the prime of his manhood, miserable and neglected: and yet already a brave mausoleum shines over his dust,[3] and morethan one splendid monument has been reared in other places to his fame; the street where he languished in poverty is called by his name;[4] the highest personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his commentators and admirers; and here is thesixthnarrative of his life that has been given to the world![5]
Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologize for this new attempt on such a subject: but his readers, we believe, will readily acquit him; or, at worst, will censure only the performance of his task, not the choice of it. The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either trite or exhausted; and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet; and this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay perhaps painfully feel toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. Suppose that some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbor of John a Combe's,[6] had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his game, and written us a Lifeof Shakespeare! What dissertations should we not have had,—not on "Hamlet" and "The Tempest," but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, and the libel and vagrant laws; and how the Poacher became a Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities! In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the companions of his pilgrimage, the Honorable Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt,[7] and the Dumfries Aristocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers,[8] and the New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with, shall have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed fromhisjuxtaposition, it will be difficult to measure him by any true standard, or to estimate what he really was and did, in the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for literary historians; and repeated attempts will give us repeated approximations.
His former Biographers have done something, no doubt, but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie and Mr. Walker, the principal of these writers, have both, we think, mistaken one essentially important thing: Their own and the world's true relation to their author, and the style in which itbecame such men to think and to speak of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly; more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to himself; yet he everywhere introduces him with a certain patronizing, apologetic air: as if the polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of science, a scholar and gentleman, should do such honor to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith; and regret that the first and kindest of all our poet's biographers should not have seen farther, or believed more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends more deeply in the same kind: and both err alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed attributes, virtues and vices, instead of a delineation of the resulting character as a living unity. This, however, is not painting a portrait; but gauging the length and breadth of the several features, and jotting down their dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, it is not so much as that: for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the mindcouldbe so measured and gauged.
Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced him to be: and in delineating him, he has avoided the method of separate generalities, and rather sought for characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a word, for aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he looked and lived among his fellows. The book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, we think, into the true character of Burns than any prior biography: though, beingwritten on the very popular and condensed scheme of an article for "Constable's Miscellany,"[9] it has less depth than we could have wished and expected from a writer of such power; and contains rather more, and more multifarious quotations than belong of right to an original production. Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own writing is generally so good, so clear, direct and nervous, that we seldom wish to see it making place for another man's. However, the spirit of the work is throughout candid, tolerant and anxiously conciliating; compliments and praises are liberally distributed, on all hands, to great and small; and, as Mr. Morris Birkbeck[10] observes of the society in the backwoods of America, "the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight of for a moment." But there are better things than these in the volume; and we can safely testify, not only that it is easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may even be without difficulty read again.[11]
Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the problem of Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents,—though of these we are still every day receiving some fresh accession,—as to the limited and imperfect application of them to the great end of Biography. Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did co-existing circumstances modify him from without; how did he modify these from within? With what endeavors and what efficacy rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them? In one word, what and how produced was the effect of society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society? He who should answer these questions, in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in Biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and manyliveswill be written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, ought to be written, and read and forgotten, which are not in this sensebiographies. But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these few individuals; and such a study, at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but scanty and feeble; but we offer them with good-will, and trustthey may meet with acceptance from those they are intended for.[12]
Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy; and was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect; till his early and most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the "nine days" have long since elapsed; and the very continuance of this clamor proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his own intrinsic merits, and may now be well-nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he did little. He did much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert moor, where no eye but his had guessed its existence; and we may almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without help, without instruction, without model; or with models only of the meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal andmagazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest time; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain forever shut against him! His means are the commonest and rudest; the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his steam-engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with a pickaxe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad with his arms.
It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay of penury and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay[13] for his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments: through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his lynx eye discerns the true relations of the world and human life; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the expansive movement of his own irrepressible soul, hestruggles forward into the general view; and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his labor, a gift which Time has now pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome drudging childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask, If it be strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his genius attained no mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun shone as through a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful vapors, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure splendor, enlightening the world: but some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colors, into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears!
We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it is exposition rather than admiration that our readers require of us here; and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold business; we are not so sure of this;[14] but, at all events, our concern with Burns is not exclusively that of critics. True and genial as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was often advised to write a tragedy;[15] time and means were not lent him forthis; but through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether the world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene; whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock, "amid the melancholy main," presented to the reflecting mind such a "spectacle of pity and fear" as did this intrinsically nobler, gentler and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with base entanglements, which coiled closer and closer round him till only death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a class of men with whom, for most part, the world could well dispense; nor can the hard intellect, the unsympathizing loftiness and high but selfish enthusiasm of such persons inspire us in general with any affection; at best it may excite amazement; and their fall, like that of a pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. But a true Poet, a man in whose heart resides some effluence of Wisdom, some tone of the "Eternal Melodies," is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on a generation: we see in him a freer, purer development of whatever is noblest in ourselves; his life is a rich lesson to us; and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us.[16]
Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on us in Robert Burns; but with queenlike indifference she cast it from her hand, like a thing of nomoment; and it was defaced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we recognized it. To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given. Destiny,—for so in our ignorance we must speak,—his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for him; and that spirit, which might have soared could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may almost say, without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul; so full of inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things! How his heart flows out in sympathy over universal Nature; and in her bleakest provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning! The "Daisy" falls not unheeded under his ploughshare; nor the ruined nest of that "wee, cowering, timorous beastie," cast forth, after all its provident pains, to "thole the sleety dribble and cranreuch cauld."[17] The "hoar visage" of Winter delights him; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for "it raises his thoughts toHim that walketh on the wings of the wind."[18] A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music! But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling; whattrustful, boundless love; what generous exaggeration of the object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him: Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, and Courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his heart: and thus over the lowest provinces of man's existence he pours the glory of his own soul; and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest. He has a just self-consciousness, which too often degenerates into pride; yet it is a noble pride, for defence, not for offence; no cold suspicious feeling, but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears himself, we might say, like a King in exile: he is cast among the low, and feels himself equal to the highest; yet he claims no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the supercilious he can subdue; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the "insolence of condescension" cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; nay throws himself into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him. It is moving to see how, in his darkest despondency, this proud being still seeksrelief from friendship; unbosoms himself, often to the unworthy; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows only the name of friendship. And yet he was "quick to learn;" a man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His understanding saw through the hollowness even of accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in his heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among us; "a soul like an Æolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate melody."[19] And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and vintners, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and gauging ale-barrels! In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred years may pass on before another such is given us to waste.
All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that wanted all things for completeness: culture, leisure, true effort, nay even length of life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere occasional effusions; poured forth with little premeditation; expressing, by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humor of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted him to grapple withany subject with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have: for after fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still continue to be read; nay are read more and more eagerly, more and more extensively; and this not only by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the most hard, unlettered and truly natural class, who read little, and especially no poetry, except because they find pleasure in it. The grounds of so singular and wide a popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the palace to the hut, and over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that excellence?
To answer this question will not lead us far. The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or prose; but, at the same time, it is plain and easily recognized: hisSincerity, his indisputable air of Truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wire-drawn refinings, either in thought or feeling: the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is the scenes that he has lived and laboredamidst, that he describes: those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it with such melody and modulation as he can; "in homely rustic jingle;" but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule,Si vis me flere,[20] is applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every poet, to every writer, we might say: Be true, if you would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition of his own heart; and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In culture, in extent of view, we may stand above the speaker, or below him; but in either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, will find some response within us; for in spite of all casual varieties in outward rank or inward, as face answers to face, so does the heart of man to man.[21]
This may appear a very simple principle, and onewhich Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery is easy enough: but the practical appliance is not easy; is indeed the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive with, and which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from the false; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. With either, or as more commonly happens, with both of these deficiencies combine a love of distinction, a wish to be original, which is seldom wanting, and we have Affectation, the bane of literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. How often does the one and the other front us, in poetry, as in life! Great poets themselves are not always free of this vice; nay it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after excellence will sometimes solace itself with a mere shadow of success; he who has much to unfold, will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for instance, was no common man: yet if we examine his poetry with this view, we shall find it far enough from faultless. Generally speaking, we should say that it is not true. He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not these characters, does not the character of their author, which more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature?Surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt and moody desperation, with so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds there is a taint of this sort, something which we should call theatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces. Perhaps "Don Juan," especially the latter parts of it, is the only thing approaching to asincerework, he ever wrote; the only work where he showed himself, in any measure, as he was; and seemed so intent on his subject as, for moments, to forget himself. Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, heartily detested it: nay he had declared formal war against it in words. So difficult is it even for the strongest to make this primary attainment, which might seem the simplest of all:to read its own consciousness without mistakes, without errors involuntary or wilful! We recollect no poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides with us to the last, with such a total want of affectation. He is an honest man, and an honest writer. In his successes and his failures, in his greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, and glitters with no lustre but his own. We reckon this to be a great virtue; to be, in fact, the root of most other virtues, literary as well as moral.
Here, however, let us say, it is to the poetry of Burns that we now allude; to those writings which he had time to meditate, and where no special reason existed to warp his critical feeling, or obstruct hisendeavor to fulfil it. Certain of his Letters, and other fractions of prose composition, by no means deserve this praise. Here, doubtless, there is not the same natural truth of style; but on the contrary, something not only stiff, but strained and twisted; a certain high-flown inflated tone; the stilting emphasis of which contrasts ill with the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. Thus no man, it would appear, is altogether unaffected. Does not Shakespeare himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest bombast! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first was his comparative deficiency in language. Burns, though for most part he writes with singular force and even gracefulness, is not master of English prose, as he is of Scotch verse; not master of it, we mean, in proportion to the depth and vehemence of his matter. These Letters strike us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressing. But a second and weightier excuse is to be found in the peculiarity of Burns's social rank. His correspondents are often men whose relation to him he has never accurately ascertained; whom therefore he is either forearming himself against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the style he thinks will please them.[22] At all events, we should remember that these faults, even in his Letters, are not the rule, but the exception. Whenever he writes, as one would ever wishto do, to trusted friends and on real interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes even beautiful. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent.
But we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sincerity, it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or perhaps a means, of the fore-going: this displays itself in his choice of subjects; or rather in his indifference as to subjects, and the power he has of making all subjects interesting. The ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is forever seeking in external circumstances the help which can be found only in himself. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or comeliness: home is not poetical but prosaic; it is in some past, distant, conventional heroic world, that poetry resides; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, it would be well with him. Hence our innumerable host of rose-colored Novels and iron-mailed Epics, with their locality not on the Earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence our Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in turbans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wampum, and so many other truculent figures from the heroic times or the heroic climates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace be with them! But yet, as a great moralist proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain preach to the poets, "a sermon on the duty of staying at home." Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates can do little for them. That form of life has attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than our own, than simply because it is different; and even this attraction must be of the most transientsort. For will not our own age, one day, be an ancient one; and have as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintness? Does Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed beyond his native Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because he wrote what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is the same after thirty centuries? Let our poets look to this: is their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than that of other men,—they have nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject; is it not so,—they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral favor, even from the highest.[23]
The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a subject: the elements of his art are in him, and around him on every hand; for him the Ideal world is not remote from the Actual, but under it and within it: nay he is a poet, precisely because he can discern it there. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his place; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavors; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through Eternity; and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since man first beganto live. Is there not the fifth act of a Tragedy in every deathbed, though it were a peasant's, and a bed of heath? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that there can be Comedy no longer? Or are men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce? Man's life and nature is, as it was, and as it will ever be. But the poet must have an eye to read these things, and a heart to understand them; or they come and pass away before him in vain. He is avates, a seer; a gift of vision has been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which another cannot equally decipher? then he is no poet, and Delphi itself will not make him one.
In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves the truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength kept the whole Minerva Press[24] going, to the end of his literary course. He shows himself at least a poet of Nature's own making; and Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets. We often hear of this and the other external condition being requisite for the existence of a poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training; he must have studied certain things, studied, for instance, "the elder dramatists," and so learned a poetic language; as if poetry lay in the tongue, not in the heart. At other times we are told he must be bred in a certain rank, and must be on a confidential footing with the higher classes; because, above all things, he must see the world. As to seeing the world, weapprehend this will cause him little difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. Without eyesight, indeed, the task might be hard. The blind or the purblind man "travels from Dan to Beersheba, and finds it all barren." But happily every poet is born in the world; and sees it, with or against his will, every day and every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. Nay, do not the elements of all human virtues and all human vices; the passions at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written, in stronger or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every individual bosom, that has practised honest self-examination? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel and Tarbolton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came to light in Crockford's,[25] or the Tuileries itself.
But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor aspirant to poetry; for it is hinted that he should havebeen borntwo centuries ago; inasmuch as poetry, about that date, vanished from the earth, and became no longer attainable by men![26] Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, overhung the field of literature; but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there: the Shakespeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every genius an impossibility till he appear? Why do we call him new and original, if we saw where his marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it? It isnot the material but the workman that is wanting. It is not the dark place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it; found it a man's life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand battlefields remain unsung; but the "Wounded Hare" has not perished without its memorial; a balm of mercy yet breathes on us from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. Our "Halloween" had passed and repassed, in rude awe and laughter, since the era of the Druids; but no Theocritus, till Burns, discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl: neither was the "Holy Fair" any Council of Trent or Roman Jubilee; but nevertheless, Superstition and Hypocrisy and Fun having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it became a poem, instinct with satire and genuine comic life.[27] Let but the true poet be given us, we repeat it, place him where and how you will, and true poetry will not be wanting.