of the moral sentiments of the husbandmen of Scotland, that when one
of their class forgets what virtue requires, and dishonours, without
reparation, even the humblest of the maidens, he is not allowed to go
unpunished. No proceedings take place, perhaps one hard word is not
spoken; but he is regarded with loathing by the old and the devout; he
is looked on by all with cold and reproachful eyes--sorrow is foretold
as his lot, sure disaster as his fortune; and is these chance to
arrive, the only sympathy expressed is, "What better could he expect?"
Something of this sort befel Burns: he had already satisfied the kirk
in the matter of "Sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess," his daughter,
by one of his mother's maids; and now, to use his own words, he was
brought within point-blank of the heaviest metal of the kirk by a
similar folly. The fair transgressor, both for her fathers and her own
youth, had a large share of public sympathy. Jean Armour, for it is of
her I speak, was in her eighteenth year; with dark eyes, a handsome
foot, and a melodious tongue, she made her way to the poet's
heart--and, as their stations in life were equal, it seemed that they
had only to be satisfied themselves to render their union easy. But
her father, in addition to being a very devout man, was a zealot of
the Old Light; and Jean, dreading his resentment, was willing, while
she loved its unforgiven satirist, to love him in secret, in the hope
that the time would come when she might safely avow it: she admitted
the poet, therefore, to her company in lonesome places, and walks
beneath the moon, where they both forgot themselves, and were at last
obliged to own a private marriage as a protection from kirk censure.
The professors of the Old Light rejoiced, since it brought a scoffing
rhymer within reach of their hand; but her father felt a twofold
sorrow, because of the shame of a favourite daughter, and for having
committed the folly with one both loose in conduct and profane of
speech. He had cause to be angry, but his anger, through his zeal,
became tyrannous: in the exercise of what he called a father's power,
he compelled his child to renounce the poet as her husband and burn
the marriage-lines; for he regarded her marriage, without the kirk's
permission, with a man so utterly cast away, as a worse crime than her
folly. So blind is anger! She could renounce neither her husband nor
his offspring in a lawful way, and in spite of the destruction of the
marriage lines, and renouncing the name of wife, she was as much Mrs.
Burns as marriage could make her. No one concerned seemed to think so.
Burns, who loved her tenderly, went all but mad when she renounced
him: he gave up his share of Mossgiel to his brother, and roamed,
moody and idle, about the land, with no better aim in life than a
situation in one of our western sugar-isles, and a vague hope of
distinction as a poet.
How the distinction which he desired as a poet was to be obtained,
was, to a poor bard in a provincial place, a sore puzzle: there were
no enterprising booksellers in the western land, and it was not to be
expected that the printers of either Kilmarnock or Paisley had money
to expend on a speculation in rhyme: it is much to the honour of his
native county that the publication which he wished for was at last
made easy. The best of his poems, in his own handwriting, had found
their way into the hands of the Ballantynes, Hamiltons, Parkers, and
Mackenzies, and were much admired. Mrs. Stewart, of Stair and Afton, a
lady of distinction and taste, had made, accidentally, the
acquaintance both of Burns and some of his songs, and was ready to
befriend him; and so favourable was the impression on all hands, that
a subscription, sufficient to defray the outlay of paper and print,
was soon filled up--one hundred copies being subscribed for by the
Parkers alone. He soon arranged materials for a volume, and put them
into the hands of a printer in Kilmarnock, the Wee Johnnie of one of
his biting epigrams. Johnnie was startled at the unceremonious freedom
of most of the pieces, and asked the poet to compose one of modest
language and moral aim, to stand at the beginning, and excuse some of
those free ones which followed: Burns, whose "Twa Dogs" was then
incomplete, finished the poem at a sitting, and put it in the van,
much to his printer's satisfaction. If the "Jolly Beggars" was omitted
for any other cause than its freedom of sentiment and language, or
"Death and Doctor Hornbook" from any other feeling than that of being
too personal, the causes of their exclusion have remained a secret. It
is less easy to account for the emission of many songs of high merit
which he had among his papers: perhaps he thought those which he
selected were sufficient to test the taste of the public. Before he
printed the whole, he, with the consent of his brother, altered his
name from Burness to Burns, a change which, I am told, he in after
years regretted.
In the summer of the year 1786, the little volume, big with the hopes
and fortunes of the bard made its appearance: it was entitled simply,
"Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect; by Robert Burns;" and
accompanied by a modest preface, saying, that he submitted his book to
his country with fear and with trembling, since it contained little of
the art of poesie, and at the best was but a voice given, rude, he
feared, and uncouth, to the loves, the hopes, and the fears of his own
bosom. Had a summer sun risen on a winter morning, it could not have
surprised the Lowlands of Scotland more than this Kilmarnock volume
surprised and delighted the people, one and all. The milkmaid sang his
songs, the ploughman repeated his poems; the old quoted both, and
ever the devout rejoiced that idle verse had at last mixed a tone of
morality with its mirth. The volume penetrated even into Nithsdale.
"Keep it out of the way of your children," said a Cameronian divine,
when he lent it to my father, "lest ye find them, as I found mine,
reading it on the Sabbath." No wonder that such a volume made its way
to the hearts of a peasantry whose taste in poetry had been the marvel
of many writers: the poems were mostly on topics with which they were
familiar: the language was that of the fireside, raised above the
vulgarities of common life, by a purifying spirit of expression and
the exalting fervour of inspiration: and there was such a brilliant
and graceful mixture of the elegant and the homely, the lofty and the
low, the familiar and the elevated--such a rapid succession of scenes
which moved to tenderness or tears; or to subdued mirth or open
laughter--unlooked for allusions to scripture, or touches of sarcasm
and scandal--of superstitions to scare, and of humour to
delight--while through the whole was diffused, as the scent of flowers
through summer air, a moral meaning--a sentimental beauty, which
sweetened and sanctified all. The poet's expectations from this little
venture were humble: he hoped as much money from it as would pay for
his passage to the West Indies, where he proposed to enter into the
service of some of the Scottish settlers, and help to manage the
double mystery of sugar-making and slavery.
The hearty applause which I have recorded came chiefly from the
husbandman, the shepherd, and the mechanic: the approbation of the
magnates of the west, though not less-warm, was longer in coming. Mrs.
Stewart of Stair, indeed, commended the poems and cheered their
author: Dugald Stewart received his visits with pleasure, and wondered
at his vigour of conversation as much as at his muse: the door of the
house of Hamilton was open to him, where the table was ever spread,
and the hand ever ready to help: while the purses of the Ballantynes
and the Parkers were always as open to him as were the doors of their
houses. Those persons must be regarded as the real patrons of the
poet: the high names of the district are not to be found among those
who helped him with purse and patronage in 1786, that year of deep
distress and high distinction. The Montgomerys came with their praise
when his fame was up; the Kennedys and the Boswells were silent: and
though the Cunninghams gave effectual aid, it was when the muse was
crying with a loud voice before him, "Come all and see the man whom I
delight to honour." It would be unjust as well as ungenerous not to
mention the name of Mrs. Dunlop among the poet's best and early
patrons: the distance at which she lived from Mossgiel had kept his
name from her till his poems appeared: but his works induced her to
desire his acquaintance, and she became his warmest and surest friend.
To say the truth, Burns endeavoured in every honourable way to obtain
the notice of those who had influence in the land: he copied out the
best of his unpublished poems in a fair hand, and inserting them in
his printed volume, presented it to those who seemed slow to buy: he
rewarded the notice of this one with a song--the attentions of that
one with a sally of encomiastic verse: he left psalms of his own
composing in the manse when he feasted with a divine: he enclosed
"Holy Willie's Prayer," with an injunction to be grave, to one who
loved mirth: he sent the "Holy Fair" to one whom he invited to drink a
gill out of a mutchkin stoup, at Mauchline market; and on accidentally
meeting with Lord Daer, he immediately commemorated the event in a
sally of verse, of a strain more free and yet as flattering as ever
flowed from the lips of a court bard. While musing over the names of
those on whom fortune had smiled, yet who had neglected to smile on
him, he remembered that he had met Miss Alexander, a young beauty of
the west, in the walks of Ballochmyle; and he recorded the impression
which this fair vision made on him in a song of unequalled elegance
and melody. He had met her in the woods in July, on the 18th of
November he sent her the song, and reminded her of the circumstance
from which it arose, in a letter which it is evident he had laboured
to render polished and complimentary. The young lady took no notice of
either the song or the poet, though willing, it is said, to hear of
both now:--this seems to have been the last attempt he made on the
taste or the sympathies of the gentry of his native district: for on
the very day following we find him busy in making arrangements for his
departure to Jamaica.
For this step Burns had more than sufficient reasons: the profits of
his volume amounted to little more than enough to waft him across the
Atlantic: Wee Johnnie, though the edition was all sold, refused to
risk another on speculation: his friends, both Ballantynes and
Parkers, volunteered to relieve the printer's anxieties, but the poet
declined their bounty, and gloomily indented himself in a ship about
to sail from Greenock, and called on his muse to take farewell of
Caledonia, in the last song he ever expected to measure in his native
land. That fine lyric, beginning "The gloomy night is gathering fast,"
was the offspring of these moments of regret and sorrow. His feelings
were not expressed in song alone: he remembered his mother and his
natural daughter, and made an assignment of all that pertained to him
at Mossgiel--and that was but little--and of all the advantage which a
cruel, unjust, and insulting law allowed in the proceeds of his poems,
for their support and behoof. This document was publicly read in the
presence of the poet, at the market-cross of Ayr, by his friend
William Chalmers, a notary public. Even this step was to Burns one of
danger: some ill-advised person had uncoupled the merciless pack of
the law at his heels, and he was obliged to shelter himself as he best
could, in woods, it is said, by day and in barns by night, till the
final hour of his departure came. That hour arrived, and his chest was
on the way to the ship, when a letter was put into his hand which
seemed to light him to brighter prospects.
Among the friends whom his merits had procured him was Dr. Laurie, a
district clergyman, who had taste enough to admire the deep
sensibilities as well as the humour of the poet, and the generosity to
make known both his works and his worth to the warm-hearted and
amiable Blacklock, who boldly proclaimed him a poet of the first rank,
and lamented that he was not in Edinburgh to publish another edition
of his poems. Burns was ever a man of impulse: he recalled his chest
from Greenock; he relinquished the situation he had accepted on the
estate of one Douglas; took a secret leave of his mother, and, without
an introduction to any one, and unknown personally to all, save to
Dugald Stewart, away he walked, through Glenap, to Edinburgh, full of
new hope and confiding in his genius. When he arrived, he scarcely
knew what to do: he hesitated to call on the professor; he refrained
from making himself known, as it has been supposed he did, to the
enthusiastic Blacklock; but, sitting down in an obscure lodging, he
sought out an obscure printer, recommended by a humble comrade from
Kyle, and began to negotiate for a new edition of the Poems of the
Ayrshire Ploughman. This was not the way to go about it: his barge had
well nigh been shipwrecked in the launch; and he might have lived to
regret the letter which hindered his voyage to Jamaica, had he not met
by chance in the street a gentleman of the west, of the name of
Dalzell, who introduced him to the Earl of Glencairn, a nobleman whose
classic education did not hurt his taste for Scottish poetry, and who
was not too proud to lend his helping hand to a rustic stranger of
such merit as Burns. Cunningham carried him to Creech, then the Murray
of Edinburgh, a shrewd man of business, who opened the poet's eyes to
his true interests: the first proposals, then all but issued, were put
in the fire, and new ones printed and diffused over the island. The
subscription was headed by half the noblemen of the north: the
Caledonian Hunt, through the interest of Glencairn, took six hundred
copies: duchesses and countesses swelled the list, and such a crowding
to write down names had not been witnessed since the signing of the
solemn league and covenant.
While the subscription-papers were filling and the new volume printing
on a paper and in a type worthy of such high patronage, Burns remained
in Edinburgh, where, for the winter season, he was a lion, and one of an
unwonted kind. Philosophers, historians, and scholars had shaken the
elegant coteries of the city with their wit, or enlightened them with
their learning, but they were all men who had been polished by polite
letters or by intercourse with high life, and there was a sameness in
their very dress as well as address, of which peers and peeresses had
become weary. They therefore welcomed this rustic candidate for the
honour of giving wings to their hours of lassitude and weariness, with a
welcome more than common; and when his approach was announced, the
polished circle looked for the advent of a lout from the plough, in
whose uncouth manners and embarrassed address they might find matter
both for mirth and wonder. But they met with a barbarian who was not at
all barbarous: as the poet met in Lord Daer feelings and sentiments as
natural as those of a ploughman, so they met in a ploughman manners
worthy of a lord: his air was easy and unperplexed: his address was
perfectly well-bred, and elegant in its simplicity: he felt neither
eclipsed by the titled nor struck dumb before the learned and the
eloquent, but took his station with the ease and grace of one born to
it. In the society of men alone he spoke out: he spared neither his wit,
his humour, nor his sarcasm--he seemed to say to all--"I am a man, and
you are no more; and why should I not act and speak like one?"--it was
remarked, however, that he had not learnt, or did not desire, to conceal
his emotions--that he commended with more rapture than was courteous,
and contradicted with more bluntness than was accounted polite. It was
thus with him in the company of men: when woman approached, his look
altered, his eye beamed milder; all that was stern in his nature
underwent a change, and he received them with deference, but with a
consciousness that he could win their attention as he had won that of
others, who differed, indeed, from them only in the texture of their
kirtles. This natural power of rendering himself acceptable to women had
been observed and envied by Sillar, one of the dearest of his early
comrades; and it stood him in good stead now, when he was the object to
whom the Duchess of Gordon, the loveliest as well as the wittiest of
women--directed her discourse. Burns, she afterwards said, won the
attention of the Edinburgh ladies by a deferential way of address--by an
ease and natural grace of manners, as new as it was unexpected--that he
told them the stories of some of his tenderest songs or liveliest poems
in a style quite magical--enriching his little narratives, which had one
and all the merit of being short, with personal incidents of humour or
of pathos.
In a party, when Dr. Blair and Professor Walker were present, Burns
related the circumstances under which he had composed his melancholy
song, "The gloomy night is gathering fast," in a way even more
touching than the verses: and in the company of the ruling beauties of
the time, he hesitated not to lift the veil from some of the tenderer
parts of his own history, and give them glimpses of the romance of
rustic life. A lady of birth--one of his must willing listeners--used,
I am told, to say, that she should never forget the tale which he
related of his affection for Mary Campbell, his Highland Mary, as he
loved to call her. She was fair, he said, and affectionate, and as
guileless as she was beautiful; and beautiful he thought her in a very
high degree. The first time he saw her was during one of his musing
walks in the woods of Montgomery Castle; and the first time he spoke
to her was during the merriment of a harvest-kirn. There were others
there who admired her, but he addressed her, and had the luck to win
her regard from them all. He soon found that she was the lass whom he
had long sought, but never before found--that her good looks were
surpassed by her good sense; and her good sense was equalled by her
discretion and modesty. He met her frequently: she saw by his looks
that he was sincere; she put full trust in his love, and used to
wander with him among the green knowes and stream-banks till the sun
went down and the moon rose, talking, dreaming of love and the golden
days which awaited them. He was poor, and she had only her half-year's
fee, for she was in the condition of a servant; but thoughts of gear
never darkened their dream: they resolved to wed, and exchanged vows
of constancy and love. They plighted their vows on the Sabbath to
render them more sacred--they made them by a burn, where they had
courted, that open nature might be a witness--they made them over an
open Bible, to show that they thought of God in this mutual act--and
when they had done they both took water in their hands, and scattered
it in the air, to intimate that as the stream was pure so were their
intentions. They parted when they did this, but they parted never to
meet more: she died in a burning fever, during a visit to her
relations to prepare for her marriage; and all that he had of her was
a lock of her long bright hair, and her Bible, which she exchanged for
his.
Even with the tales which he related of rustic love and adventure his
own story mingled; and ladies of rank heard, for the first time, that
in all that was romantic in the passion of love, and in all that was
chivalrous in sentiment, men of distinction, both by education and
birth, were at least equalled by the peasantry of the land. They
listened with interest, and inclined their feathers beside the bard,
to hear how love went on in the west, and in no case it ran quite
smooth. Sometimes young hearts were kept asunder by the sordid
feelings of parents, who could not be persuaded to bestow their
daughter, perhaps an only one, on a wooer who could not count penny
for penny, and number cow for cow: sometimes a mother desired her
daughter to look higher than to one of her station: for her beauty and
her education entitled her to match among the lairds, rather than the
tenants; and sometimes, the devotional tastes of both father and
mother, approving of personal looks and connexions, were averse to
see a daughter bestow her hand on one, whose language in religion was
indiscreet, and whose morals were suspected. Yet, neither the
vigilance of fathers, nor the suspicious care of aunts and mothers,
could succeed in keeping those asunder whose hearts were together; but
in these meetings circumspection and invention were necessary: all
fears were to be lulled by the seeming carelessness of the lass,--all
perils were to be met and braved by the spirit of the lad. His home,
perhaps, was at a distance, and he had wild woods to come through, and
deep streams to pass, before he could see the signal-light, now shown
and now withdrawn, at her window; he had to approach with a quick eye
and a wary foot, lest a father or a brother should see, and deter him:
he had sometimes to wish for a cloud upon the moon, whose light,
welcome to him on his way in the distance, was likely to betray him
when near; and he not unfrequently reckoned a wild night of wind and
rain as a blessing, since it helped to conceal his coming, and proved
to his mistress that he was ready to brave all for her sake. Of rivals
met and baffled; of half-willing and half-unconsenting maidens,
persuaded and won; of the light-hearted and the careless becoming
affectionate and tender; and the coy, the proud, and the satiric being
gained by "persuasive words, and more persuasive sighs," as dames had
been gained of old, he had tales enow. The ladies listened, and smiled
at the tender narratives of the poet.
Of his appearance among the sons as well as the daughters of men, we
have the account of Dugald Stewart. "Burns," says the philosopher,
"came to Edinburgh early in the winter: the attentions which he
received from all ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as
would have turned any head but his own. He retained the same
simplicity of manners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly
when I first saw him in the country: his dress was suited to his
station; plain and unpretending, with sufficient attention to
neatness: he always wore boots, and, when on more than usual ceremony,
buckskin breeches. His manners were manly, simple, and independent;
strongly expressive of conscious genius and worth, but without any
indication of forwardness, arrogance, or vanity. He took his share in
conversation, but not more than belonged to him, and listened with
apparent deference on subjects where his want of education deprived
him of the means of information. If there had been a little more of
gentleness and accommodation in his temper, he would have been still
more interesting; but he had been accustomed to give law in the circle
of his ordinary acquaintance, and his dread of anything approaching to
meanness or servility, rendered his manner somewhat decided and hard.
Nothing perhaps was more remarkable among his various attainments,
than the fluency and precision and originality of language, when he
spoke in company; more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn
of expression, and avoided more successfully than most Scotsmen, the
peculiarities of Scottish phraseology. From his conversation I should
have pronounced him to have been fitted to excel in whatever walk of
ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities. He was passionately
fond of the beauties of nature, and I recollect he once told me, when
I was admiring a distant prospect in one of our morning walks, that
the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind,
which none could understand who had not witnessed, like himself, the
happiness and worth which cottages contained."