It has been said that ‘the love of Burnswas the love of the flesh.’ It is worth while to examine the love-songs of Burns to learn what elements of thought and feeling dominated his mind and heart. He wrote two hundred and fifty love-songs, and only three or four contain indelicate references; even these were not considered improper in his time.
What were the themes of his love-songs? What were the symbols that he used to typify love? There is no beauty or delight in Nature on earth or sky that he did not use as a symbol of true love. He saw God through Nature as few men ever saw Him, and he therefore naturally used the beauty and sweetness and glory of Nature to help to reveal the beauty and sweetness and glory of love, the element of the Divine that thrilled him with the deepest joy and the highest reverence.
In his first poem, written when he was fifteen, describing his fourteen-year-old sweetheart, he says:
A bonnie lass, I will confess,Is pleasant to the e’e;But without some better qualities,She’s no a lass for me.······But it’s innocence and modestyThat polishes the dart.’Tis this in Nelly pleases me,’Tis this enchants my soul;For absolutely in my breastShe reigns without control.
Of Peggy Thomson, his second love, he wrote:
Not vernal showers to budding flowers,Not autumn to the farmer,So dear can be as thou to me,My fair, my lovely charmer.
Of Alison Begbie he wrote in ‘The Lass o’ Cessnock Banks’:
But it’s not her air, her form, her face,Tho’ matching beauty’s fabled queen;’Tis the mind that shines in ev’ry grace,And chiefly in her rogueish een.
In ‘Young Peggy Blooms’ he describes her:
Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,Her blush is like the morning,The rosy dawn, the springing grassWith early gems adorning.Her eyes outshine the radiant beamsThat gild the passing shower,And glitter o’er the crystal streams,And cheer each fresh’ning flower.
In ‘Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary?’ he says:
O sweet grows the lime and the orange,And the apple o’ the pine;But a’ the charms o’ the IndiesCan never equal thine.
The following are emblems of beauty in the ‘Lass o’ Ballochmyle’:
On every blade the pearls hang.Her look was like the morning’s eye,Her air like Nature’s vernal smile.Fair is the morn in flowery May,And sweet is night in autumn mild.
Describing ‘My Nannie O’ he says:
Her face is fair, her heart is true;As spotless as she’s bonnie, O;The opening gowan, wat wi’ dew,daisyNae purer is than Nannie O.
In ‘The Birks [birches] of Aberfeldy’ he speaks to his lover of ‘Summer blinking on flowery braes’ and ‘Playing o’er the crystal streamlets;’ and the ‘Blythe singing o’ the little birdies’ and ‘The braes o’erhung wi’ fragrant woods’ and ‘The hoary cliffs crowned wi’ flowers;’ and ‘The streamlet pouring over a waterfall.’ Love and Nature were united in his heart.
In ‘Blythe was She’ he describes the lady by saying she was like beautiful things:
Her looks were like a flower in May.Her smile was like a simmer morn;Her bonnie face it was as meekAs any lamb upon a lea;
and the ‘ev’ning sun.’
Her step was
As light’s a bird upon a thorn.
He wrote ‘O’ a’ the Airts the Wind can Blaw’ about Jean Armour after they were married, while he was building their home on Ellisland. He says in this exquisite song:
By day and night my fancy’s flightIs ever wi’ my Jean.I see her in the dewy flowers,I see her sweet and fair;I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,I hear her charm the air:There’s not a bonnie flower that springsBy fountain, shaw, or green;woodlandThere’s not a bonnie bird that sings,But minds me o’ my Jean.
To Jean he wrote again:
It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face,Nor shape that I admire;Although thy beauty and thy graceMight weel awake desire.Something in ilka part o’ theeTo praise, to love, I find;But dear as is thy form to me,Still dearer is thy mind.
In ‘Delia—an Ode,’ he uses the ‘fair face of orient day,’ and ‘the tints of the opening rose’ to suggest her beauty, and ‘the lark’s wild warbled lay’ and the ‘sweet sound of the tinkling rill’ to suggest the sweetness of her voice.
In ‘I Gaed a Waefu’ Gate Yestreen’ he says:
She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled;She charmed mysoul, I wist na how.
It was the soul of Burns that responded to love. Neither Alison Begbie nor Mary Campbell excelled in beauty, and no one acquainted with their high character could have had the temerity to suggest that love for them was ‘the love of the flesh.’ His beautiful poems to Jean Armour place his love for her on a high plane. He was a man of strong passion, but passion was not the source of his love.
In ‘Aye sae Bonnie, Blythe and Gay’ he says:
She’s aye sae neat, sae trim, sae light, the graces round her hover,Ae look deprived me o’ my heart, and I became her lover
‘Ilka bird sang o’ its love’ he makes Miss Kennedy say in ‘The Banks o’ Doon.’ As the birds ever sang love to Burns, he naturally makes them sing love to all hearts.
In ‘The Bonnie Wee Thing’ he gives high qualifications for love kindling:
Wit, and grace, and love, and beautyIn ae constellation shine;To adore thee is my duty,Goddess o’ this soul o’ mine.
In ‘The Charms of Lovely Davies’ he says:
Each eye it cheers when she appears,Like Phœbus in the morning,When past the shower, and ev’ry flowerThe garden is adorning.
The last three poems from which quotations have been made were written about two ladies whose lovers had been untrue to them: the first about Miss Kennedy, a member of one of the leading Ayrshire families; the other two about Miss Davies, a relative of the Glenriddell family.
In a letter to Miss Davies he said:
‘Woman is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedency among them, but let them all be sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind.’
Burns was not in love with either Miss Kennedy or Miss Davies, but he explains the writing of the songs to Miss Davies, in a letter enclosing ‘Bonnie Wee Thing,’ by saying, ‘When I meet a person of my own heart I positively can no more desist from rhyming on impulse than an Æolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming air.’
One of his most beautiful poems is ‘The Posie,’ which he planned to pull for his ‘Ain dear May.’
The primrose I will pu’, the firstling o’ the year,And I will pu’ the pink, the emblem o’ my dear,For she’s the pink o’ womankind, and blooms without a peer.I’ll pu’ the budding rose, when Phœbus peeps in view,For it’s like a baumy kiss o’ her sweet, bonnie mou’;The hyacinth’s for constancy, wi’ its unchanging blue.The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair,And in her lovely bosom I’ll place the lily there;The daisy’s for simplicity and unaffected air.The woodbine I will pu’, when the e’ening star is near,And the diamond draps o’ dew shall be her een sae clear;The violet’s for modesty, which weel she fa’s to wear.I’ll tie the posie round wi’ the silken band o’ luve,And I’ll place it in her breast, and I’ll swear by a’ aboveThat to my latest draught o’ life the band shall ne’er remove,And this will be a posie to my ain dear May.
In ‘Lovely Polly Stewart’ he says:
O lovely Polly Stewart,O charming Polly Stewart,There’s ne’er a flower that blooms in MayThat’s half so fair as thou art.The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa’s,And art can ne’er renew it;But worth and truth, eternal youthWill gie to Polly Stewart.
In ‘Thou Fair Eliza’ he says:
Not the bee upon the blossom,In the pride o’ sinny noon;Not the little sporting fairy,All beneath the simmer moon;Not the minstrel, in the momentFancy lightens in his e’e,Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,That thy presence gies to me.
In ‘My Bonie Bell’ he writes:
The smiling spring comes in rejoicing,The surly winter grimly flies;Now crystal clear are the falling waters,And bonie blue are the sunny skies.Fresh o’er the mountains breaks forth the morning,The evening gilds the ocean’s swell;All creatures joy in the sun’s returning,And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell.
‘Sweet Afton’ was suggested by the following: ‘I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not, nor awaken my love—my dove, my undefiled! The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.’
In descriptive power and in fond and reverent love no poem of Burns, or any other writer, surpasses Sweet Afton. Authorities have been divided in regard to the person who was the Mary of Sweet Afton. Currie and Lockhart declined to accept the statement of Gilbert Burns that it was Highland Mary. Chambers and Douglas, the most illuminating and reliable of the early biographers of Burns, agree with Gilbert. Oneof Mrs Dunlop’s daughters stated that she heard Burns himself say that Mary Campbell was the woman whose name he used to represent the lover for whom he asked such reverent consideration. He had no lover at any period of his life on the Afton. He had but one lover named Mary, and she stirred him to a degree of reverence that toned the music of his love to the end of his life. Mary Campbell was alive to Burns in a truly realistic sense when he wrote the sacred poem ‘Sweet Afton.’
In ‘O were my Love yon Lilac Fair’ he assumes that his love might be
A lilac fair,Wi’ purpling blossoms in the spring,And I a bird to shelter there,When wearied on my little wing.
In the second verse he says:
O gin my love were yon red roseifThat grows upon the castle wa’;And I mysel’ a drop o’ dew,Into her bonie breast to fa’!
Could imagination kindle more pure ideals to reveal love than these? In ‘Bonie Jean—A Ballad’ he gives two delightful pictures of love:
As in the bosom of the streamThe moonbeam dwells at dewy e’en;So trembling, pure, was tender loveWithin the breast of Bonie Jean.······The sun was sinking in the west,The birds sang sweet in ilka grove;everyHis cheek to hers he fondly laid,And whispered thus his tale of love.
In ‘Phillis the Fair’ he writes:
While larks, with little wing, fann’d the pure air,Tasting the breathing spring, forth did I fare;Gay the sun’s golden eyePeep’d o’er the mountains high;Such thy morn! did I cry, Phillis the fair.In each bird’s careless song glad did I share;While yon wild-flow’rs among, chance led me there!Sweet to the op’ning day,Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;Such thy bloom! did I say, Phillis the fair.
In ‘By Allan Stream’ he describes the glories of Nature, but gives them second place to the joys of love:
The haunt o’ spring’s the primrose-brae,The summer joys the flocks to follow;How cheery thro’ her short’ning dayIs autumn in her weeds o’ yellow;But can they melt the glowing heart,Or chain the soul in speechless pleasure?Or thro’ each nerve the rapture dart,Like meeting her, our bosom’s treasure?
In ‘Phillis, the Queen o’ the Fair’ he uses many beautiful things to illustrate her charms:
The daisy amused my fond fancy,So artless, so simple, so wild:Thou emblem, said I, o’ my Phillis—For she is Simplicity’s child.The rosebud’s the blush o’ my charmer,Her sweet, balmy lip when ’tis prest:How fair and how pure is the lily!But fairer and purer her breast.Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour,They ne’er wi’ my Phillis can vie:Her breath is the breath of the woodbine,Its dew-drop o’ diamond her eye.Her voice is the song o’ the morning,That wakes thro’ the green-spreading grove,When Phœbus peeps over the mountainsOn music, and pleasure, and love.But beauty, how frail and how fleeting!The bloom of a fine summer’s day;While worth, in the mind o’ my Phillis,Will flourish without a decay.
In ‘My Love is like a Red, Red Rose’ he uses exquisite symbolism:
My luve is like a red, red roseThat’s newly sprung in June;My luve is like a melodieThat’s sweetly play’d in tune.As fair art thou, my bonie lass,So deep in luve am I;And I will luve thee still, my dear,Till a’ the seas gang dry.
In the pastoral song, ‘Behold, my Love, how Green the Groves,’ he says in the last verse:
These wild-wood flowers I’ve pu’d to deckThat spotless breast o’ thine;The courtier’s gems may witness love,But never love like mine.
In the dialogue song ‘Philly and Willy,’
He says,As songsters of the early springAre ilka day more sweet to hear,eachSo ilka day to me mair dearAnd charming is my Philly.She replies,As on the brier the budding roseStill richer breathes and fairer blows,So in my tender bosom growsThe love I bear my Willy.
In ‘O Bonnie was yon Rosy Brier’ he says:
O bonnie was yon rosy brierThat blooms so far frae haunt o’ man;And bonnie she, and ah, how dear!It shaded frae the e’ening sun.Yon rosebuds in the morning dew,How pure amang the leaves sae green;But purer was the lover’s vowThey witnessed in their shade yestreen.All in its rude and prickly bower,That crimson rose, how sweet and fair.But love is far a sweeter flower,Amid life’s thorny path o’ care.
In ‘A Health to Ane I Loe Dear’—one of his most perfect love-songs—he says:
Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,And soft as their parting tear.······’Tis sweeter for thee despairingThan aught in the world beside.
In ‘My Peggy’s Charms,’ describing MissMargaret Chalmers, Burns confines himself mainly to her mental and spiritual charms. This was clearly a distinctive characteristic of nearly the whole of his love-songs. No other man ever wrote so many pure songs without suggestion of the flesh as did Robert Burns.
My Peggy’s face, my Peggy’s form,The frost of hermit age might warm;My Peggy’s worth, my Peggy’s mind,Might charm the first of human kind.I love my Peggy’s angel air,Her face so truly, heavenly fair.Her native grace, so void of art;But I adore my Peggy’s heart.The tender thrill, the pitying tear,The generous purpose, nobly dear;The gentle look that rage disarms—These are all immortal charms.
In his ‘Epistle to Davie—A Brother Poet’ Burns, after detailing the many hardships and sorrows of the poor, forgets the hardships, and recalls his blessings:
There’s a’ the pleasures o’ the heart,The lover and the frien’;Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part,And I my darling Jean.It warms me, it charms me,To mention but her name;It heats me, it beets me,kindlesAnd sets me a’ on flame.O all ye powers who rule above!O Thou whose very self art love!Thou know’st my words sincere!The life-blood streaming through my heart,Or my more dear immortal partIs not more fondly dear!When heart-corroding care and griefDeprive my soul of rest,Her dear idea brings reliefAnd solace to my breast.Thou Being, All-Seeing,O hear my fervent prayer;Still take her, and make herThy most peculiar care.
Three years after the death of Highland Mary, Burns remained out in the stackyard on Ellisland farm and composed ‘To Mary in Heaven.’ Nothing could more strikingly prove the sincerity, the permanence, the purity, and the sacredness of the white-souled love of Burns than this poem:
Thou ling’ring star, with less’ning ray,That lov’st to greet the early morn,Again thou usher’st in the dayMy Mary from my soul was torn.O Mary! dear departed shade!Where is thy place of blissful rest?See’st thou thy lover lowly laid?Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast?That sacred hour can I forget?Can I forget that hallow’d groveWhere, by the winding Ayr, we metTo live one day of parting love?Eternity can not effaceThose records dear of transports past;Thy image at our last embrace;Ah! little thought we ’twas our last!Ayr, gurgling, kiss’d his pebbled shore,O’erhung with wild-woods, thickening green;The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoarTwined amorous round the raptured scene:The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,The birds sang love on every spray;Till too, too soon, the glowing west,Proclaimed the speed of wingèd day.Still o’er these scenes my mem’ry wakes,And fondly broods with miser-care;Time but th’ impression stronger makes,As streams their channels deeper wear.My Mary, dear departed shade!Where is thy place of blissful rest?See’st thou thy lover lowly laid?Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast?
The general themes of this sacred poem, written three years after Mary Campbell’s death, are the preponderating themes of his love-songs. No love-songs ever written have so little of even embracing and kissing as the love-songs of Burns, except the sonnets of Mrs Browning.
It is worthy of note that Mary Campbell was not a beauty—her attractions were kindness, honesty, and unselfishness; yet, though happily married himself, he loved her, three years after her death, as profoundly as when they parted on the Fail, more than three years before he wrote the poem.
The fine training by their father developed the minds of both Robert and Gilbert Burns as original, independent thinkers, chiefly in regard to religious, ethical, and social problems. Professor Dugald Stewart, of Edinburgh University, expressed the opinion that ‘the mind of Burns was so strong and clear that he might have taken high rank as a thinker in any department of human thought; probably attaining as high rank in any other department as he achieved as a poet.’ The quotations given from his writings in the preceding pages prove that he was a philosopher of unusual power in regard to Religion, Democracy, and Brotherhood.
Lockhart said, speaking of the ranking of Burns as a thinker, compared with the best trained minds in Edinburgh: ‘Even the stateliest of these philosophers had enough to do to maintain the attitude of equality when brought into contact with Burns’s gigantic understanding.’
Many of his poems are ornamented and increased in value by flashes of philosophic thought. His ‘Epistle to a Young Friend’ is a series of philosophical statements for human guidance.
Ye’ll find mankind an unco squad,strangeAnd muckle they may grieve ye,muchI’ll no say men are villains a’;The real hardened wicked,Wha hae nae check but human law,Are to a few restricket;restrictedBut, och! mankind are unco weak,veryAn’ little to be trusted;If self the wavering balance shakeIt’s rarely right adjusted.
He takes a kindly view, that men as a whole are not so bad as pessimists would have us believe; that there are comparatively few that have no respect for the Divine Law, and are kept in check only by the fear of human law; but mourns because most men yet think more of self than of their neighbours, to whom they may be of service, and sees that, where our relations with our fellow-men are not satisfactorily balanced, the destroyer of harmony is universally selfishness in one form or another.
The fear o’ Hell’s a hangman’s whipTo haud the wretch in order.
Even yet this is advanced philosophy, that fear, being a negative motive, cannot kindle human power or lead men to higher growth. So far as it can influence the human soul, its effect must be to depress it. Not only the fear of hell, but fear of anything, is an agency of evil. Some day a better word than fear will be used to express the proper attitude of human souls towards God.
But where you feel your honour gripLet that aye be your border.
What you think of yourself matters more to you than what others think of you. Let honour and conscience be your guide, and go not beyond the limits they prescribe. Stop at the slightest warning honour gives,
And resolutely keep its laws,Uncaring consequences.
In regard to religious matters, he gave his young friend sage advice:
The great Creator to revereMust sure become the creature;But still the preaching cant forbear,And ev’n the rigid feature.
The soul’s attitude to the Creator is a determining factor in deciding its happiness and growth. Reverence should not mean solemnity and awe. Reverence based on dread blights the soul and dwarfs it. True reverence reaches its highest when its source is joy; then it becomes productive of character—constructively transforming character. The formalism of ‘preaching cant’ robs religion of its natural attractiveness, especially to younger people; the ‘rigid feature’ turns those who would enjoy religion from association with those who claim to be Christians, and yet, especially when they speak about religion, look like melancholy and miserable criminals whose final appeal for pardon has been refused. Burns’s philosophy would lift the shadows of frightfulness from religion and let its joyousness be revealed.
An Atheist’s laugh’s a poor exchangeFor Deity offended.A correspondence fixed wi’ heavenIs sure a noble anchor.
To Burns, the relationship of the soul to God was of first importance. He cared little for man’s formalisms, but personal connection with a loving Father he regarded asthe supreme source of happiness. Only a reverent and philosophic mind would think of prayer as ‘a correspondence with heaven.’
Burns holds a high rank as a profound philosopher of human life, of human growth, and of human consciousness of the Divine, as the vital centre of human power.
Burns was a philosopher in his recognition that productive work is essential to human happiness and progress.
In ‘The Twa Dogs’ he makes Cæsar say:
But human bodies are sic fools,For a’ their colleges and schools,That when nae real ills perplex them,They mak enow themselves to vex them;An’ ay the less they hae to sturt them,troubleIn like proportion less will hurt them.······But gentleman, and ladies warst,Wi’ ev’n-down want o’ wark are curst.
Burns had real sympathy for the idle rich. He saw that idleness leads to many evils, and that probably the worst evils, those that produce most unhappiness, are those that result from neglecting to use, or misusing, powers that, if wisely used, would produce comfort and happiness for ourselves as well as for others.He believed that every man and woman would be happier if engaged in some productive occupation, and that those who do not use their hands to produce for themselves and their fellows are ‘curst wi’ want o’ wark.’
This belief is based on an old and very profound philosophy, that is not even yet understood as widely and as fully as it should be: the philosophy first expounded by Plato, and afterwards by Goethe and Ruskin, that ‘all evil springs from unused, or misused, good.’ Whatever element is highest in our lives will degrade us most if misused. The best in the lives of the idle sours and causes deterioration instead of development of character, and breeds discontent and unhappiness, so that days are ‘insipid, dull and tasteless,’ and nights are ‘unquiet, lang and restless.’
Burns showed that he understood this revealing philosophy in ‘The Vision.’ In this great poem he assumes that Coila, the genius of Kyle, his native district in Ayrshire, appeared to him in a vision, and revealed a clear understanding of the epoch events of his past life and their influence on his development, and gave him advice to guide him for the future. In one verse he says:
I saw thy pulse’s maddening playWild send thee pleasure’s devious way,Misled by fancy’s meteor-ray,By passion driven;But yet the light that led astrayWas light from heaven.
He was attacked and criticised severely for the statement contained in the last two lines. The statement is but philosophic truth that his critics did not understand. Fancy and passion are elements of power given from heaven. Properly used they become important elements in human happiness and development. Improperly used they produce unhappiness and degradation.
Burns understood clearly the philosophic basis of modern education, the importance of developing the individuality, or selfhood, or special power of each child. The poem he wrote to his friend Robert Graham of Fintry, beginning:
When Nature her great masterpiece designedAnd framed her last, best work, the human mind,Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,She formed of various parts the various man,
is a philosophical description of how Nature produced various types of men, giving to each mind special powers and aptitudes.The thought of the poem is the basis of all modern educational thought: the value of the individuality of each child, and the importance of developing it.
He expresses very beautifully the philosophy of the ephemeral nature of certain forms of pleasure in eight lines of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’:
But pleasures are like poppies spread,You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;Or as the snowfall in the river,A moment white, then melts forever;Or like the borealis race,That flit e’er you can point their place;Or like the rainbow’s lovely form,Evanishing amid the storm.
Burns understood the philosophy of the simple life in the development of character and happiness.
In ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night,’ after dilating on the glories of simple, reverent religion, as compared with ‘Religion’s Pride,’
In all the pomp of method and of art,When men display to congregations wideDevotion’s every grace except the heart,
he prays for the young people of Scotland—
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toilBe blest with health, and peace, and sweet content;And O! may Heaven their simple lives preventFrom luxury’s contagion, weak and vile!Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,A virtuous populace may rise the while,And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.
He understood the value of simplicity in life as well as in religion, and expressed it in admirable form.
‘The Address to the Unco Guid’ has a kindly philosophic sympathy running like a stream of light through it; the profound sympathy of the Master who searched for the one stray lamb, and who suggested that he who was without sin should cast the first stone. The last verse especially contains a sublime human philosophy, that if studied till understood, and then practised, would work a greatly needed change in the attitude of the rest of humanity towards the so-called wayward. It is one of the strange anomalies of life that, generally, professing Christian women have in the past been the last to come with Christian sympathy of an affectionate, and sisterly, and respectful quality to take an erring sister in their arms to try to prove that she still possessed their esteem, and to rekindle faith in her heart.
His poem to Mrs Dunlop on ‘New Year’s Day, 1790;‘ ’A Man’s a Man for a’ That;’ ‘A Winter Night;’ ‘Sketch in Verse;’ and‘Verses written in Friar’s Carse Hermitage,’ all show him to have been a philosophic student of human nature.
A few quotations from letters to his friends will show his philosophical attitude to general matters, as the quotations from his letters showed the clearness and trueness of his philosophy regarding religion, democracy, and brotherhood.
Burns saw man’s duty to his fellows and to himself in this life.
In a letter to Robert Ainslie, Edinburgh, 1788, he wrote: ‘I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegrative depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I wish that which piety believes, and virtue deserves, may be all matter of fact. But in all things belonging to, and terminating in, the present scene of existence, man has serious business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner ofinsignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, or at least enjoy himself in the comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle of poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and remorse—these are alternatives of the last moment.’
Since the time of Burns men and women, both in the churches and out of them, have learned to set more store on the importance of living truly on the earth, and have ceased to a large extent to think only of a life to come after death. Men and women are now trying in increasing numbers to make it more heavenly here.
Burns taught a sound philosophy of contentment as a basis for happiness.
He wrote to Mr Ainslie in 1789: ‘You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and disagreeable circumstances in my business [that of a gauger], but I am tired with and disgusted at the language of complaint at the evils of life. Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious, foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills, as if they were the peculiar property of his ownparticular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin, many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is almost without exception a constant source of disappointment and misery. So far from being dissatisfied with my present lot, I earnestly pray the Great Disposer of events that it may never be worse, and I think I can lay my hand on my heart and say “I shall be content.”’
Good, sound philosophy of contentment! Not the contentment that does not try to improve life’s conditions, but the wise contentment that recognises the best in present conditions, instead of foolishly resenting what it cannot change.
Burns taught the philosophy of good citizenship.
In 1789 he wrote to Mr Ainslie: ‘If the relations we stand in to King, country, kindred, and friends be anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity, and justice be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female whose tender, faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents who are to bethe men and women, the worshippers of his God, the subjects of his King, and the support, nay the very vital existence, of his country in the ensuing age, is the type of truest manhood.’
This quotation from a letter written to a warm, personal friend from whom he was not seeking any favours gives an insight into a rational mind loyal to God, loyal to his king, loyal to his country, and lovingly loyal to his wife and family.
In a letter to the Right Rev. Dr Geddes, a Roman Catholic Bishop resident in Edinburgh, a very kind friend to Burns, he wrote, 1789: ‘I am conscious that wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my welfare. It gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last [at Ellisland], stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination to attend to those great and important questions: What I am? Where I am? For what I am destined? Thus with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my reverend and much honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not forgotten; I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to the Muses. I am determined to study Man and Nature, and in that view, incessantlyto try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to produce something worth preserving.’
Bishop Gillis, a Roman Catholic Bishop who lived more than sixty years after the death of Burns, said, in reference to the letter from which this quotation was made: ‘If any man, after perusing this letter, will still say that the mind of Burns was beyond the reach of religious influence, or, in other words, that he was a scoffer at revelation, that man need not be reasoned with, as his own mind must be hopelessly beyond the reach of argument.’
In a letter to his friend Cunningham he wrote, 1789: ‘What strange beings we are! Since we have a portion of conscious existence equally capable of enjoying pleasure, happiness, and rapture, or of suffering pain, wretchedness, and misery, it is surely worthy of inquiry whether there be not such a thing as a science of life; whether method, economy, and fertility of expedients be not applicable to enjoyment, and whether there be not a want of dexterity in pleasure which renders our little scantling of happiness still less; and a profuseness and intoxication in bliss which leads to satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence.
‘There is not a doubt but that health,talents, character, decent competency, respectable friends, are real, substantial blessings; and yet do we not daily see those who enjoy many, or all, of these good things, andnotwithstandingcontrive to be as unhappy as others to whose lot few of them have fallen? I believe one great source of this mistake or misconduct is owing to a certain stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life—not as we ascend other eminences, for the laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive in other stations, &c.’
His philosophy clearly recognised the evils of unduly centring our minds and hearts on pleasure, and thus not only robbing ourselves of development, and humanity of the advantage of the many things we might do in our overtime devoted to pleasure, but destroying our interest in the things that were intended to give us happiness.
He also recognised fully the evils of selfish ambition which aims at attaining higher positions than others; which climbs, not to get into purer air to see more widely our true relationships to our fellow-men, but for the degrading satisfaction of being able to lookdown with a hardening pride that separates humanity into groups instead of uniting all men in brotherhood. A man whose heart and mind are engrossed by base material aims cannot grow truly, and he loses the advantages that should have come to him from the elements of blessing he possesses by misusing them for selfish ends.
In another letter he wrote: ‘All my fears and cares are of this world; if there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it. I hate a man that wishes to be a Deist; but, I fear, every fair, unprejudiced inquirer must in some degree be a sceptic. It is not that there are any very staggering arguments against the immortality of man, but, like electricity, phlogiston, &c., the subject is so involved in darkness that we want data to go upon.’
His philosophy left him no fears for what comes after death. He had deep faith in the justice of God. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that God perfectly understands the being He has made.’ Believing this, and believing also that God is just, he feared not the future. Burns, as he said to Mrs Dunlop, was ‘in his idle moments sometimes a little sceptical.’ But they were only moments. He knew there were problems he could not solve, and so, as he wroteto Dr Candlish, ‘he was glad to grasp revealed religion.’ A thoughtful man requires more faith in revealed religion than a man who does not really think, but only thinks he is thinking, when other people’s thoughts are running through his head. Burns needed strong faith, and he had it even about religious matters he could not explain. ‘The necessities of my own heart,’ as he wrote to Mrs Dunlop, ‘gave the lie to my cold philosophisings.’ His ‘Ode to Mrs Dunlop on New Year’s Day, 1790,’ said:
The voice of Nature loudly cries,And many a message from the skies,That something in us never dies.
He accepted by faith the ‘messages from the skies,’ and in his soul harmonised the messages with the ‘Voice of Nature,’ even though his philosophic mind searched for proof of problems he could not solve.
In a letter to Peter Hill, 1790, he wrote: ‘Mankind are by nature benevolent creatures, except in a few scoundrelly instances. I do not think that avarice for the good things we chance to have is born with us; but we are placed here among so much nakedness and hunger and poverty and want, that we are under a damning necessity of studyingselfishness in order that we mayEXIST. Still there are in every age a few souls that all the wants and woes of life cannot debase into selfishness, or even give the necessary alloy of caution and prudence. If ever I am in danger of vanity, it is when I contemplate myself on this side of my disposition and character. God knows I am no saint; I have a whole host of follies and sins to answer for, but if I could (and I believe I do, as far as I can), I would ‘wipe away all tears from all eyes.’
Burns was not self-righteous. He moralises in this quotation not as one of the ‘unco guid,’ but as a man on what he thought was one of life’s most perplexing problems, poverty. He saw the problem more keenly than most men see it yet. It was not the poverty of Burns himself that, as Carlyle believed, made him write and work for freedom and justice for the labouring-classes. It is quite true, however, that one of his reasons for pleading for democracy was the poverty among the peasantry of his time. He saw the injustice of conditions, and admitted in his poem to Davie, a brother poet, that
It’s hardly in a body’s powerTo keep at times from being sour,To see how things are shared.
Burns recommended the philosophy of right, not expediency in public as well as private matters.
He wrote a letter to Mrs Dunlop in 1790, in which he said: ‘I believe, in my conscience, such ideas as, “my country; her independence; her honour; the illustrious names that mark the history of my native land,” &c.—I believe these, among yourmen of the world; men who, in fact, guide, for the most part, and govern our world, are looked on as so many modifications of wrong-headedness. They knew the use of bawling out such terms to rouse or lead the Rabble; but for their own private use, with almost all theable statesmenthat ever existed, or now exist, when they talk of right and wrong, they only mean proper and improper; and their measure of conduct is not what they ought, butwhat they dare. For the truth of this, I shall not ransack the history of nations, but appeal to one of the ablest judges of men, and himself one of the ablest men that ever lived—the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. In fact a man that could thoroughly control his vices, whenever they interfered with his interest, and who could completely put on the appearance of every virtue as often as it suited his purposes, is, on the Stanhopian plan,the perfect man, aman to lead nations. But are great abilities, complete without a flaw, and polished without a blemish, the standard of human excellence? This is certainly not the staunch opinion ofmen of the world; but I call on honour, virtue, and worth to give the Stygian doctrine a loud negative! However, this must be allowed, that, if you abstract from man the idea of an existence beyond the grave, then the true measure of human conduct isproper and improper; virtue and vice, as dispositions of the heart, are, in that case, of scarcely the same import and value to the world at large as harmony and discord in the modifications of sound; and a delicate sense of honour, like a nice ear for music, though it may sometimes give the possessor an ecstasy unknown to the coarser organs of the herd, yet, considering the harsh gratings and inharmonic jars in this ill-tuned state of being, it is odds but the individual would be as happy, and certainly would be as much respected by the true judges of society, as it would then stand, without either a good ear or a good heart....
‘Mackenzie has been called “the Addison of the Scots,” and, in my opinion, Addison would not be hurt at the comparison. If he has not Addison’s exquisite humour, he as certainly outdoes him in the tender andthe pathetic. HisMan of Feeling—but I am not counsel-learned in the laws of criticism—I estimate as the first performance of the kind I ever saw. From what book, moral or even pious, will the susceptible young mind receive impressions more congenial to humanity and kindness, generosity and benevolence—in short, more of all that ennobles the soul to herself, or endears her to others, than from the simple, affecting tale of poor Harley?
‘Still, with all my admiration of Mackenzie’s writings, I do not know if they are the fittest reading for a young man who is about to set out, as the phrase is, to make his way into life. Do you not think, Madam, that among the few favoured of heaven in the structure of their minds (for such there certainly are) there may be a purity, a tenderness, a dignity, and elegance of soul, which are of no use, nay, in some degree absolutely disqualifying, for the truly important business of making a man’s way into life?’
Burns understood the underlying philosophy of sensitiveness.
In a letter to Miss Craik, 1790, he wrote: ‘There is not among the martyrologies ever penned so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets. In the comparative view ofwretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of wanton butterflies—in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight nearly as miserable as a poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy pleasures the Muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils. Bewitching poesy is like bewitching woman: she has in all ages been accused of misleading mankind from the counsels of wisdom and the paths of prudence, involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty, brandingthem with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of ruin; yet, where is the man but must own that all our happiness on earth is not worth the name—that even the holy hermit’s solitary prospect of paradisaical bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun rising over a frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures that we owe to the lovely Queen of the heart of Man!’
He based the last two lines in his ‘Poem on Sensibility’ on this philosophy:
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure,Thrill the deepest notes of woe.
His ‘Parting Song to Clarinda’ reveals in the four lines, said by Sir Walter Scott ‘to contain the essence of a thousand love-tales,’ how deepest love may bring darkest sorrow:
Had we never loved sae kindly,Had we never loved sae blindly,Never met—or never parted,We had ne’er been broken-hearted.
In a letter to Crawford Tait, Esq., Edinburgh, 1790, requesting a sympathetic interest on behalf of a young man from Ayrshire, he says: ‘I shall give you my friend’s character in two words: as to his head, he has talentsenough, and more than enough, for common life; as to his heart, when Nature had kneaded the kindly clay that composes it, she said, “I can no more.”
‘You, my good Sir, were born under kinder stars; but your fraternal sympathy, I well know, can enter into the feelings of the young man who goes into life with the laudable ambition todosomething, and tobesomething among his fellow-creatures; but whom the consciousness of friendless obscurity presses to the earth, and wounds to the soul!
‘Even the fairest of his virtues are against him. That independent spirit, and that ingenuous modesty—qualities inseparable from a noble mind—are, with the million, circumstances not a little disqualifying. What pleasure is in the power of the fortunate and the happy, by their notice and patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the heart of such depressed youth! I am not so angry with mankind for their deaf economy of the purse—the goods of this world cannot be divided without being lessened—but why be a niggard of that which bestows bliss on a fellow-creature, yet takes nothing from our own means of enjoyment? We wrap ourselves up in the cloak of our better-fortune and turn away our eyes, lest the wants and woesof our brother-mortals should disturb the selfish apathy of our souls.’
Burns was a deep character student, and he was able to adjust the balance fairly when weighing the characteristics that count for success in public life, in business, and in private life. He always recommended honesty, and always admired that independent spirit and that ingenuous modesty inseparable from a noble mind. Much as he admired them, however, he clearly understood that these admirable qualities might prevent the perfect development of a soul if they made a man morbidly sensitive, or interfered in any way with his faith in himself.
Speaking of ‘independence and sensibility,’ the same qualities he discussed in the letter quoted (to Mr Crawford Tait), he says in a letter to Peter Hill, Edinburgh, 1791, addressing poverty: ‘By thee the man of sentiment, whose heart flows with independence, and melts with sensibility, inly pines under the neglect or writhes in bitterness of soul under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth.’
Burns taught the just philosophy of gratitude to God.
In a letter to Dr Moore, of London, he wrote, 1791: ‘Whatsoever is not detrimentalto society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the Giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with thankful delight.’
We cannot yet estimate the philosophic vision of Burns. It will grow clearer as century follows century. Carlyle said of him: ‘We see that in this man was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force, and passionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him, and a consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drop of the summer clouds.’
So much for his heart; what says Carlyle about his mind?
‘Burns never studied philosophy.... Nevertheless, sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his works; we discern the brawny movements of a gigantic though untutored strength; and can understand how, in conversation, his quick, sure insight into men and things may, as aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his time and country.
‘But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well as strong. The more delicate relations of things could not well have escaped his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The logic of the senateand the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient; nay, perhaps the highest truth is that which will most certainly elude it, for this logic works by words, and “the highest,” it has been said, “cannot be expressed in words.” We are not without tokens of an openness for this higher truth also, a keen though uncultivated sense for it having existed in Burns. Mr Stewart, it will be remembered, wondered that Burns had formed some distinct conception of the doctrine of Association. We rather think that far subtler things than the doctrine of Association had from of old been familiar to him.’
Carlyle’s last statement is correct. He admits the great essential truth that Burns was a subtle philosopher. What a pity that such a man as Carlyle should have thought it necessary to say that Burns ‘never studied philosophy.’ The statement is incorrect, but, if it had been correct, why make it? and why call his mental strength ‘untutored,’ and his ‘keen sense of the highest philosophy’ ‘uncultivated’?
Did any other philosopher of the time of Burns in the universities reveal a more profound philosophy of human life, and make so many applications of it, as Robert Burns revealed in the quotations in this chapter, andin the chapters on Democracy, Brotherhood, and Love?
Burns was a philosopher, an independent thinker, whose thought is more highly appreciated now than it was in the time of Carlyle.
In a letter to Mrs Graham, 1791, he wrote: ‘I was born a poor dog; and however I may occasionally pick a better bone than I used to do, I know I must live and die poor. But I will indulge the flattering faith that my poetry will considerably outlive my poverty; and without any fustian affectation of spirit, I can promise and affirm that it must be no ordinary craving of the latter that shall ever make me do anything injurious to the honest fame of the former. Whatever may be my failings—for failings are a part of human nature—may they ever be those of a generous heart and an independent mind.’
Speaking of the moral character of Burns, Carlyle is wise and just. He says: ‘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 the Plebiscite of common civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually unjustin 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.... What Burns did under his circumstances, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his character.’
Burns was naturally a student gifted with a great mind. His splendid mind was trained to act logically by his remarkable father, and quickened and illuminated by his great teacher John Murdoch. He was a great philosopher, not merely because he read Locke’s ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ when a boy, but because during his short life he read with joyous interest many books of a philosophical character, and what is of infinitely greater importance, he interpreted all he read with an independent mind, and related all truth as he understood it to human life. He could discuss even the principles of Spinoza, and ‘venture into the daring path Spinoza trod.’ Yet, as he told Dr Candlish, of Edinburgh, he merely ‘ventured in’ to test Spinoza’s philosophy, which he soon found to be inadequate to the true development of the human soul, andtherefore he ‘was glad to grasp revealed religion.’ Not merely as a great poetic genius, but as a profound philosophic teacher of religion, democracy, and brotherhood—the most essentially vital elements related to the highest development of the souls of men and women—will the real Robert Burns become known as he is more justly and more deeply studied.