E. A. P.
BY JAMES F. OTIS.
BY JAMES F. OTIS.
1This paper was written at the request of a literary society of which the author was a member, and the facts are gathered principally from Currie. Some extracts from the poet's own letters, and from an eloquent review of Lockhart's Burns, which appeared a few years since in the Edinburgh Review, are interwoven, and the whole made up as an essay to be "read not printed."
If we take the different definitions of the term "Poetry," that have been given this beautiful and magical art by the various writers upon its nature and properties, aseachsupported by reason and fact, we shall hardly arrive at any degree of certainty as to itsrealmeaning. It has been called "the art of imitation," or mimickry. Aristotle and Plato characterize it as "the expression of thoughts by fictions;" and there are innumerable other definitions, none of which are more satisfactory to the student than is that of the celebrated "Blair." He says, "it is the language of Passion,—or enlivened Imagination, formed, most commonly, into regular numbers. The primary object of a poet is toplease, and tomove;and therefore it is to imagination and the passions that he speaks. He may, and he ought to have it in his view toinstructandreform;but it isindirectly, and bypleasing, andmoving, that he accomplishes this end. His mind is supposed to be animated by some interesting object which fires his imagination or engages his passions: and which, of course, communicates to his style a peculiar elevation, suited to his ideas, very different from that mode of expression which is natural to the mind in its calm, ordinary state." And this definition will allow of being yet more particularly and minutely understood: it is susceptible of being analyzed still farther, and described as "a language, in which fiction and imagination may, with propriety, be indulged beyond the strict limits of truth and reality."
Who is there that has not felt the power of Poetry? For it is not essential that it be embodied in regular and finely wrought periods, and conveyed to the ear in alternate rhyme, and made to harmonize in nicely-toned successions of sounds. Who is there that has not felt its power? It originated with the very nature of man; and is confined to no nation, age, or situation. This is proved by the well-attested fact, that Poetry ever diminishes in strength of thought, boldness of conception, and power of embodying striking images, in proportion as it becomes polished and cultivated. The uncivilized tenant of our forests is,by nature, a Poet! Whether he would lead his brethren to the field of warfare, or conclude with the white man a treaty of peace and future amity, still his style evinces the same grand characteristic,—the spirit of true Poetry. The barbarous Celt, the benighted Icelander, and the earliest and most unenlightened nations of the world, as described on the page of history, are proofs of the principle we have been considering; and it was not, indeed, until society became settled and civilized, that poetical composition ceased to embraceeveryimpulse of which the human soul is susceptible. It was not tillthen, that, in the language of a distinguished writer, "Poetry became a separate art, calculated, chiefly, toplease;and confined, generally, to such subjects as related to the imagination and the passions." Then was it that there arose, naturally, divisions in the classes or schools of Poetry,—as Lyric, Elegiac, Pastoral, Didactic, Descriptive, and Dramatic. A consideration ofeachof these classes might furnish us withmaterielfor an interesting examination of their individual peculiarities: but time will not permit so wide a range.
ROBERTBURNSwas born on the 25th of January, 1759, in the town of Ayr, in Scotland. His pretensions by birth, were a descent from poor and humble, but honest and intelligent parents; and a title to inherit all their intelligence and virtue, as well as all their poverty. Upon the nature of these pretensions, Burns, in a letter to a friend, dated many years after, takes occasion to say: "I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character, which the pye-coatcd guardiansof escutcheons call a gentleman. When at Edinborough last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office; and looking through that granary of honors, I there found almost every name in the kingdom: but forme,—
'My ancient but ignoble bloodHas crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood.'"
'My ancient but ignoble bloodHas crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood.'"
His father was a native of the north of Scotland, but he was driven by various misfortunes to Edinborough, and thence still farther south to Ayrshire, where he was first employed as a gardener in one of the families in that vicinity, and afterwards, being desirous of settling in life, took a lease of a little farm of seven acres, on which he reared a clay cottage with his own hands, and soon after married a wife. The first fruit of this union was our poet, whose birth took place two years thereafter. Robert, during his early days, was by no means a favorite with any body. He was remarkable, however, for a retentive memory, and a thoughtful turn of mind. His ear was dull, and his voice harsh and dissonant, and he evinced no musical talent or poetical genius until his fifteenth or sixteenth year. It is pretended by his biographers, (of whom there have been several, and who all agree in this opinion,) that the seeds of Poetry were very early implanted in his mind, and that the recitations and fireside chaunts of an old crone, who was familiar in his father's family, served to cherish their growth, and strengthen their hold upon his memory. This "auld gudewife" is said to have had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning fairies, witches, warlocks, apparitions, giants, dragons, and other agents of romantic fiction. Speaking of these tales and songs, he says, in his later years, "so strong an effect had they upon my imagination, that even to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I am fain to keep a sharp look out in suspicious places; and, though nobody can feel more sceptical than I have ever done in such matters, yet it often requires an effort of Philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."
When Robert was in his seventh year, his father quitted the birth-place of the poet, and took a lease of a small farm on the estate of Mr. Fergusson, called Mount Oliphant. He had been, for a year or two previous to this event, a pupil of Dr. Murdoch, who is represented as being a very worthy and acute man, and who took much pains with the education of the future poet. In fact, hisfatherhad previously taught him arithmetic, and whatever of lore could be gathered from the "big ha' bible," as they sat by their solitary candle; and he had been sent, alternately with his brother, a week at a time during a summer's quarter, to a writing master at the parish school at Dalrymple. But Dr. Murdoch, his faithful friend in youth and age, instructed him in English Grammar, and aided him in the acquisition of a little French. After a fortnight's instruction in the latter language, he was able to translate it into English prose, but, farther than this, his new attainment was never of much advantage to him. Indeed, his attempts to speak the language were ridiculously futile at times. On one occasion, when he called in Edinborough at the house of an accomplished friend, a lady who had been educated in France, he found her conversing with a French lady, to whom he was introduced. The French woman understood English; but Burns must need try his powers. His first sentence was intended to compliment the lady on her apparent eloquence in conversation; but by mistaking some idiom, he made the lady understand that she was too fond of hearing herself speak. The French woman, highly incensed, replied, that there were more instances of vain poets than of talkative women; and Burns was obliged to use his own language in appeasing her. He attempted the Latin, but his success did not encourage him to persevere. And, in fine, with the addition of a quarter's attendance to Geometry and Surveying, at the age of nineteen, and a few lessons at a country dancing school, I have now mentioned all his opportunities of acquiring a scholastic education. He says of himself, in allusion to his boyish days, "though it cost the schoolmaster manythrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs and particles."
As soon as young Burns had strength to work, he was employed as a laborer upon his father's farm. At twelve he was a good ploughman; a year later he assisted at the threshing-floor; and was his father's main dependance at fifteen, there being no hired laborers, male or female, in the family at the time. In one of his letters, (and it is by extracting copiously from them, that I propose chiefly to narrate his history,) he remarks upon this subject—"I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labor: the only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune, were the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little, chicaning bargain-making. Thefirstis so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; thelastIalwayshated—there was contamination in the very entrance!" And it was this kind of life,—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave, that brought him to his sixteenth year, at about which period he first perpetrated the sin of rhyming. Of this you shall have an account in the author's own language.
"You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labors of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,—she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, rigid prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell. You medical people—(he was addressing the celebrated Dr. Moore) you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I plucked the cruel nettle-stings and thistles from her little white hand. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favorite reel, to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin: but my girl sung a song, which was said to have been composed by a country laird's son upon a neighboring maiden with whom he was in love! and I saw; no reason why I might not rhyme as well ashe;for, excepting that he could shear sheep and cast peats, (his father living in the moorlands,) he had no morescholarcraft than myself."
Thus, with Burns, began Love and Poetry. This, his first effort, is valuable, more from the promise itgave of his future excellence as a poet, than for any intrinsic merit which it possessed as a performance of so gifted a genius. I have been the more particular in describing the circumstances attending the composition of these, his earliest verses, for the proof they afford of the truth of the general remark, that of all the poetical compositions of Burns, his love-songs, and amatory poetry are far the best. His feelings predominated over his fancy, and whenever the latter is introduced we are forced to deem it an intrusion for the strong contrast it presents with the native and characteristic simplicity of his more natural and heartfelt effusions.
Referring to the predilections which I have said gave a character to so large a portion of his poetical writings, he says,—"My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other: and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favor, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse." And in another letter he says farther, "Another circumstance in my life which made some alterations in my mind and manners, was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. Scenes of riot and roaring dissipation were, till now, new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. For all that, I went on with a high hand in my geometry till the sun enteredVirgo, (a month, which is always a carnival in my bosom,) when a charming fair one, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my duties. I, however, struggled on with mysinesandco-sinesfor a few days more, but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel,
It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining weeks I staid I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her. And the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless."
This brings us to a period, which the poet calls an important era in his life—his twenty-third year; and he explains this in the following näive and characteristic style. "Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in the neighboring town of Irvine to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair; as we were welcoming in the new year with a carousal, our shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left like a true poet, not worth a sixpence." About this time the clouds of misfortune thickened around his father's head, who, indeed, was already far gone in a consumption; and to crown the distresses incident to his situation, a girl, to whom he was engaged to be married, jilted him with peculiar circumstances of mortification.
During his residence at Irvine, our poet was miserably poor and dispirited. His food consisted chiefly of oat meal, and this was sent to him from his father's family; and so small was, of necessity, his allowance, that he was obliged to borrow often of a neighbor, until he should again be supplied. He was very melancholy with the idea, that the dreams of future eminence and distinction which his imagination had presented to his mind, wereonlydreams; and to dissipate this melancholy his resource was society with its enjoyments. The incidents to which I have alluded took place some years before the publication of his poems. About this time William Burns removed from Mount Oliphant to Lochlea, and later still, to the parish of Tarbolton, where, as we are informed by a letter from Dr. Murdoch, written in 1799, that "Robert wrote most of his poems." It was in Tarbolton that Burns established a debating club, which consisted of the poet, his brother Gilbert, and five or six other young peasants of the neighborhood—the laws and regulations for which were furnished by the former. Among these members was David Sillar, to whom the two beautiful poems, entitled "Epistles to Davie, a brother poet," were addressed. Some of the rules and regulations of this club are so peculiar, and bespeak so forcibly the character of their author, that I cannot resist the temptation to transcribe some of them. The eighth is in the following words:
"Every member shall attend at the meetings, without he can give a proper excuse for not attending. And it is desired, that every one who cannot attend will send his excuse with some other member: and he who shall be absent three meetings without sending such excuse, shall be summoned to the club night, when if he fail to appear, or send an excuse, he shall be excluded."
And the tenth and last rule is worthy of particular notice, and a part of it of incorporation into the code even of more extensive and more pretending societies: it is as follows:
"Every man proper for a member of this club, must have a frank, honest, open heart—above any thing low or mean, and must be a professed lover of the female sex. No haughty, self-conceited person, who looks upon himself as superior to the rest of the club—and especially no mean spirited, worldly mortal, whose only will is to heap up money, shall, upon any pretence whatever, be admitted. In short, the proper person for this society, is a cheerful, honest-hearted lad—who, if he has a friend that is true, a mistress that is kind, and as much wealth as genteely to make both ends meet, is just as happy as this world can make him."
But I must, however reluctantly, omit many interesting particulars in the earlier, and more private life of our poet, and hasten to his visit to Edinborough in the winter of 1786. The celebrated Dugald Stewart, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Edinborough, in a letter to Dr. Currie, alludes to several of Burns's early poems, and avers, that it was uponhisshowing a volume of them to Henry McKenzie, (the celebrated author of "The Man of Feeling,") that this gentleman introduced the rustic bard to the notice of the public, in the xcvii No. of The Lounger, which justly famous periodical paper was then in the course of publication, and had long been a favorite work with the young poet.
Depressed by poverty, and chagrined with the contrasts which fate seemed malignantly bent upon opposing to his ambitious aspirations, his only object, at last, had been to accumulate the petty sum of nine guineas, (which he did by the publication of a few of his poems,) and to take passage in the steerage of a ship bound to the West Indies, determined to become a negro driver, or any thing else, so that he could escape the fangs of that merciless pack, the bailiffs; for, said he,
"Hungry ruin had me in the wind."
"Hungry ruin had me in the wind."
He had taken leave of his friends—had despatchedhissingle chestto the vessel—had written his Farewell Song, which he sang to the beautiful air of "Roslin Castle," and which closes with,
when a letter from Dr. Blacklock, elicited by a perusal of the volume to which I have just now alluded, opened for him new prospects to his poetic ambition, by inviting him to Edinborough. Thither, then, he went—and his reception by all classes, ages and ranks, was as flattering as, in his most sanguine aspirations, he could have desired. Dr. Robertson, the celebrated historian, Dr. Blair, Dr. Gregory, Professor Stewart, Mr. McKenzie, and many more men of letters were particularly interested in his reception, and in the cultivation of his genius. He became, from his first entrance into Edinborough, the object of universal attention, and it seemed as if there was no possibility of rewarding his merits too highly. Mr. Lockhart, the latest and most eloquent of the numerous biographers of Burns, has a note, containing an extract from a letter of Sir Walter Scott, and furnished by the latter for his work, which is too interesting to be passed over. It relates to a personal interview of Sir Walter with our poet, during his first visit to Edinborough.
"As for Burns," writes he, "I may truly say, 'Virgilium vidi tantum.' I was a lad of fifteen in 1786–7, when he came first to Edinborough, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him: but I had very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most frequented." ... "As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Fergusson's, where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened. The only thing I remember, which was remarkable in Burns's manner, was the effect produced upon him by a print, with the ideas suggested to his mind upon reading the story whereof, (written under it) he was moved even to tears. He asked whose the lines were? and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half forgotten poem of Langhorne's. I passed this information to Burns by a friend, and I was rewarded with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect, with very great pleasure." ... "His person," continues Sir Walter, "was strong and robust: his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments: theeye, alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed, (I say literallyglowed,) when he spoke with feeling or interest." ... "I never saw another such eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption."
After making a few more observations with relation to the poet's conversation and manner, the writer I have been quoting concludes his reminiscence as follows:
"This is all I can tell you about Burns. I never saw him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me, as I could not expect he should. I have only to add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer, dressed in hisbest, to dine with the laird. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I do not know that I can add any thing to these recollections of forty years since."
These are extracts, that, one day or other, will be looked upon as curiosities in literature, and will be inestimably precious: at present, I fear me, an apology should follow their introduction, at such length: but I shall only say in the language of another, in excuse for dwelling so long on this incident in the life of Burns, that it forms "the most remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern literature."
But if this, his first winter in Edinborough, produced a favorable effect upon the future fame of Robert Burns, as a poet, it was also the source of vast unhappiness to him, during his after life. Not only was he admitted to the company of men of letters and virtue, but he was pressed into the society of those, whose social habits, and love of the pleasures of life were their chief attractions. When among his superiors in rank and intelligence, his carriage was decorous and diffident: but among others, his boon companions, he, in his turn, was lord of the ascendant: and thus commenced a career, which, had its outset been a more prudent one, would probably not have closed until a later period, nor without a much greater measure of glory and honor to him, who was thus unfortunately misguided.
During the residence of Burns at Edinborough, he published a new and enlarged edition of his poems, and was thus enabled to visit other parts of his native country, and some parts of England beside. Having done this, he returned, and during most of the following winter, we find him again in the gay and literary metropolis, much less an object of novelty, and, of course, of general attention and interest, than before. Unable to find employment or occupation of a literary nature, he quitted Edinborough in the spring of 1788, and took the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries: besides advancing 200l.for the liberation of his brother Gilbert from some difficulties into which certain agricultural misfortunes had involved him. He was, soon after, united to his "bonnie Jean," the theme of so much of his delightful verse, and employed himself in stocking and cultivating his farm, and rebuilding the dwelling house upon it. There is an anecdote of him in the history furnished by Dr. Currie, the truth of which Mr. Lockhart seems disposed to question: his doubts originate from a consideration of the absurd costume in which the older biographer has seen fit to invest the poet in his narration. As this is the only exception taken to it, and as it is certainly illustrative of Burns's character and manners in other respects, and as it is related, too, upon so good authority, I shall venture to introduce it in this, its proper place, in point of time.
"In the summer of 1791, two English gentlemen, who had before met Burns at Edinborough, paid a visit to him in Ellisland. On calling at his house, they were informed that he had walked out on the banks of the river; and, dismounting from their horses, they proceeded in search of him. On a rock that projected into the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap, made of a fox's skin, on his head, a loose great coat fixed round him by a belt, from whichdepended an enormous Highland broadsword. It was Burns. He received them with great cordiality, and asked them to share his humble dinner; an invitation which they accepted. On the table they found boiled beef with vegetables and barley-broth, after the manner of Scotland, of which they partook heartily. After dinner, the bard told them ingenuously that he had no wine to offer them—nothing better than Highland whiskey, a bottle of which Mrs. Burns set on the board. He produced, at the same time, his punch-bowl, made of Inverary marble; and mixing the spirit with water and sugar, filled their glasses, and invited them to drink. The travellers were in haste, and besides, the flavor of the whiskey to theirsouthronpalates was scarcely tolerable: but the generous poet offered them his best, and his ardent hospitality they found it impossible to resist. Burns was in his happiest mood, and the charms of his conversation were altogether fascinating. He ranged over a great variety of topics, illuminating whatever he touched. He related the tales of his infancy and his youth; he recited some of the gayest, and some of the tenderest of his poems: in the wildest of his strains of mirth he threw in some touches of melancholy, and spread around him the electric emotions of his powerful mind. The Highland whiskey improved in its flavor; the bowl was more than once emptied, and as often replenished: the guests of our poet forgat the flight of time and the dictates of prudence; at the hour of midnight they lost their way in returning to Dumfries, and could scarcely distinguish it, when assisted by the morning's dawn."
On his farm at Ellisland, Burns continued some few years; but the novelty of his situation soon wore off, and then returned the irregularities, to which, from his warm imagination, and his love of society, and his independent turn of mind, he was so strongly predisposed. Fearing that his farm alone would be insufficient to procure for him that independence, which he had hoped one day or other to attain, he applied for and obtained the office of exciseman, or as it was vulgarly calledguager, for the district in which he lived. About the year 1792, he was solicited to contribute to a collection of Scottish songs, to be published by Mr. Thompson, of Edinborough. Abandoning his farm, which, from neglect and mismanagement was by no means productive, and receiving from the Board of Excise an appointment to a new district, with a salary of 70l.per annum, he removed to a small house in Dumfries, and commenced the fulfilment of his literary engagement with Mr. Thompson. His principal songs were written during this time, and day after day was adding heighth and durability to the towering and imperishable monument, which will hand down his name and fame to many generations.
But now commences his rapid and melancholy decay, the fast withering consumption of his mental and physical faculties. His had been a short but brilliant course in literature—a short and melancholy one indeed, in other respects. Defeated in his hopes, mortified in the discovery that of the two classes of friends who offered him their society and their example in the outset of his career, he had chosen the least improving and efficient as his guides and counsellors—he fast declined into that common receptacle of dust which covers alike the remains of the gifted and the simple, the prudent and the weak. He was worn with toil and poverty, and disappointed hope.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Imprudent in the declaration of his political sentiments, Burns lost the path to preferment in the line of his political duties; easily enticed beyond the sway of his sober and virtuous resolutions, he became broken in health, and destitute of resources; too proud to beg and too proud to complain, his temper became irritable and gloomy, and at length a fever, attended with delirium and debility, terminated his life in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Leaving a widow, who is still living in the house where he died,2and four sons, of whom three are also at present living. Thus died Robert Burns, "poor, but not in debt, and bequeathing to posterity a name, the fame of which will not soon be eclipsed."
2Since deceased.
Burns, though he sometimes forgot his homage to the purer and brighter and more enduring orbs of heaven, in chasing the ignis fatuus lights of earth, must ever interest us as a poet and a man. A great many considerations may be properly urged in answer to the too common, and far from just charges upon his moral character. I am of opinion, that his own declaration, made not many months previous to his death, is capable of full and complete support and proof, by a reference to all the circumstances of his life. When accused of disloyalty to his government, he says, in a letter to a distinguished friend—
"In your hands, sir, permit me to lodge my strong disavowal, and defiance of such slanderous falsehoods. Be assured—and tell the world, that Burns was a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman from necessity; but—Iwillsay it! the sterling of hishonesty, povertycouldnot debase, and his independent British spirit, oppression might bend, but could not subdue!"
I have advanced the opinion that the crisis of Burns's fate was his visit, hisfirstvisit to Edinborough. From that event may be dated the complete establishment of his character during his after life; and with those who received him there, and undertook the task of doing what they, in their wisdom, thought expedient for the cultivation of his genius, and for his advancement or settlement in life, must, I think, rest the credit or the blame of much—of almostallhis future excellence or failure. Burns went into the midst of that gay and literary circle, ready and liable to receive the most striking impressions, as the guides of his opinions and the regulators of his actions. It was another world! It had all the freshness of a new existence in the eyes, and to the mind of the rustic Ayrshire bard. Strong-minded and high-hearted as he was, he could not but look up to his new friends and patrons, as exemplars for his own imitation: and although he was notvisiblyperplexed with the flashings of these new and unaccustomed lights, yet he was,at heart, led astray by them. They were like the fabled corpse-fires, which danced merrily before the wildered eyes of the traveller, luring him onward to his doom—a grave!He had left the "bonnie banks of Ayr,"a young plant, shooting luxuriantly up into a tall and rugged, but healthful tree; and it was upon thenewsoil, into which it had been transplanted, that this beautiful exotic received an inclination which was destined to be a final one. And yet I would not throw upon the fame of such men as Stewart, and Blair, and Robertson, and McKenzie, the imputation of design, or even of imprudence, in thus being accessory to the melancholy ruin, which followed the victim's acceptance of their kind, and really benevolent patronage. It is only to be lamented that upon his arrival at Edinburgh, he was not introducedat once, and alone, into that circle, which might reasonably have been designated as the only one, in which such a genius andcharacter as Burns's could be duly appreciated and cultivated. But the secret is, he was regarded by them,notas a being for theirsympathy, but a thing for the indulgence of theircuriosity. In the language of another, "By the great he was treated in the customary fashion; entertained at their tables and dismissed: certain modica of pudding and praise are, from time to time, gladly exchanged for the fascination of his presence; which exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each party goes his several way."
Instead of treating with him, as a man, whose genius entitled him to a stand upon their own proud and distinguished level, all uncultivated and unpolished as that genius was—they universally spoketohim, andofhim, as an object of patronage—as something that was to become valuable to the world, only throughtheirinstrumentality. This feeling, this mode of treatment, are not to be objected to, in themselves considered: their existence was natural, and, rightly conducted, might have been made productive of much good, and lasting happiness to him, who was their subject. But Burns was not the man to rest quietly under the most oppressive burthen that a proud man can ever feel—Patronage. And thus his relative situation to his literary friends could not but be viewed by a mind so sensitive as his own, in its true character. And we find (as soon as the novelty of a "ploughman-poet" had worn off—as every fashionable noveltywillwear off in time,) that our poet began to remember that "a life of pleasure and praise would not support his family," and having experienced a portion of these reverses, which they, who depend on popular favor and flattery, must ever find inseparable therefrom—we see him stocking his little farm, and soon after adding the emoluments of the office of exciseman for the district of Ayr, to his scanty income. And here he might have been
but for his kind yet misjudging friends, "the patrons," as they were called, "of his genius." Unfortunately for his future peace, each new arrival at his little home of Ellisland, of those who had known him at Edinborough, furnished proof that his old habits of conviviality were only interrupted, but by no means broken: And it was only by the frequency of these opportunities of good cheer in the society of the gay companions of his city life, that he became inattentive to his agricultural concerns, and that he finally lost the composure and happiness, which were the attendants of his new situation, and with these was lost his inclination to temperate and assiduous exertion.
I would not be understood as denying, in this argument, a previous, perhaps anaturaltendency in the character of Burns, to undue and intemperate excitement: but the impression upon my own mind is strong, that this bias might have been checked and regulated, and turned to good account by the noble and learned patrons of his genius. Tried by the statutes of strict morality, a man like Burns has many things to plead in his own defence, which those of less mind and dimmer intellect cannot justly claim as their own: and it is in the unwillingness to make this distinction, that the world are, too often, unfair judges in cases of character. A distinguished writer thus elegantly remarks, upon a similar subject.
"The world is habitually unjust in its judgments: It is not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are soeasilymeasured, but theratioof these to thewholediameter, which constitutes therealaberration. With the world, this orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system: or it may be a city hippodrome, nay, the circle of a mill-course, its diameter a score of feet or paces—but the inches ofdeflection,only, are measured; and it is assumed that the diameter of the mill-course, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when compared with them. Here, then, lies the root of the blind, cruel condemnation of such men as Robert Burns, which one never listens to with approval. Granted—the ship comes into harbor with her shrouds and tackle damaged, and is the pilot therefore blame-worthy, because he has not beenall-wise andall-powerful? For us to knowhowblame-worthy he is, tell us how long and how arduous his voyage has been."
But, after all, it is chiefly with Burns as apoetthat we have to do—it is inthislight thatposteritywill regard him, and it is into the hands of this tribunal that he must, finally, be resigned. I would that time had allowed me to refer more particularly to the works of this delightful bard, than I have been enabled to do on the present occasion. They began with his earliest, and were continued until his latest years. Scattered along his devious, and oftengloomypath, they seem like beautiful wild flowers, which he threw there to cheer and animate the passer-by, with their undying bloom and sweet fragrance. "In the changes of language his songs may, no doubt, suffer change—but the associated strain of sentiment and of music will perhaps survive, while the clear stream sweeps down the Vale of Yarrow, or the yellow broom waves on the Cowdenknowes."
I have had occasion, in the course of this essay, to remark, that thesongsof Burns are, by far, the most finished productions of his muse: and his admirers may safely rest his fame upon them alone, even if his longer and more elaborate poems should fail to secure him the immortality he deserves. The celebrated Fletcher somewhere says, "Give me the making of a people'ssongs, and let who will make their laws!" And Burns has, in the composition ofhissongs, placed himself on an equality with the legislators of theworld!for where, in the cottage or the palace, are they unsung? Whose blood has not thrilled, and whose lip has not been compressed, as the noble air of "Scots! wha hae wi' Wallace bled!" has swelled upon his ear? Who cannot join in the touching and beautiful chorus of his "Auld lang syne?" Who has not laughed over his "Willie brewed a peck o' maut," nor felt the rising tear of sympathetic sadness whilst listening to his "Farewell to Ayr!" and his celebrated "Mary in Heaven?" In all these, and many more, which are familiar asvery proverbsin our mouths, the poet has shown such a versatility, and yet such an entireness of talent—such tenderness and delicacy in his sorrow—yet withal, so pure and delightful a rapture in his mirth; he weeps with so true and feeling a heart, and laughs with such loud, and at the same time such unaffected mirth, that he finds sympathy wherever his harp is strung. The subjects he chose, and the free, natural style in which he treated them, have won him this praise—and it shall endure, the constant and lasting tribute of generation after generation.
But it has been beautifully said, (and who will not agree in the sentiment?) that "in the hearts of men of right feelings, there exists no consciousness of need to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration, he liesenshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than one of marble: neither will his works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves, this little Vauclusa Fountain will also arrest the eye: For this also is of nature's own and most cunning workmanship, and bursts from the depths of the earth with a full, gushing current, into the light of day. And often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines."