with pleasure: he was a vigilant officer; he was also a merciful and
considerate one: though loving a joke, and not at all averse to a
dram, he walked among suspicious brewers, captious ale-wives, and
frowning shop-keepers as uprightly as courteously: he smoothed the
ruggedest natures into acquiescence by his gayety and humour, and yet
never gave cause for a malicious remark, by allowing his vigilance to
slumber. He was brave, too, and in the capture of an armed smuggler,
in which he led the attack, showed that he neither feared water nor
fire: he loved, also, to counsel the more forward of the smugglers to
abandon their dangerous calling; his sympathy for the helpless poor
induced him to give them now and then notice of his approach; he has
been known to interpret the severe laws of the excise into tenderness
and mercy in behalf of the widow and the fatherless. In all this he
did but his duty to his country and his kind: and his conduct was so
regarded by a very competent and candid judge. "Let me look at the
books of Burns," said Maxwell, of Terraughty, at the meeting of the
district magistrates, "for they show that an upright officer may be a
merciful one." With a salary of some seventy pounds a year, the chance
of a few guineas annually from the future editions of his poems, and
the hope of rising at some distant day to the more lucrative situation
of supervisor, Burns continued to live in Dumfries; first in the
Bank-vennel, and next in a small house in a humble street, since
called by his name.
In his earlier years the poet seems to have scattered songs as thick
as a summer eve scatters its dews; nor did he scatter them less
carelessly: he appears, indeed, to have thought much less of them than
of his poems: the sweet song of Mary Morison, and others not at all
inferior, lay unregarded among his papers till accident called them
out to shine and be admired. Many of these brief but happy
compositions, sometimes with his name, and oftener without, he threw
in dozens at a time into Johnson, where they were noticed only by the
captious Ritson: but now a work of higher pretence claimed a share in
his skill: in September, 1792, he was requested by George Thomson to
render, for his national collection, the poetry worthy of the muses of
the north, and to take compassion on many choice airs, which had
waited for a poet like the author of the Cotter's Saturday Night, to
wed them to immortal verse. To engage in such an undertaking, Burns
required small persuasion, and while Thomson asked for strains
delicate and polished, the poet characteristically stipulated that his
contributions were to be without remuneration, and the language
seasoned with a sprinkling of the Scottish dialect. As his heart was
much in the matter, he began to pour out verse with a readiness and
talent unknown in the history of song: his engagement with Thomson,
and his esteem for Johnson, gave birth to a series of songs as
brilliant as varied, and as naturally easy as they were gracefully
original. In looking over those very dissimilar collections it is not
difficult to discover that the songs which he wrote for the more
stately work, while they are more polished and elegant than those
which he contributed to the less pretending one, are at the same time
less happy in their humour and less simple in their pathos. "What
pleases _me_ as simple and naive," says Burns to Thomson, "disgusts
_you_ as ludicrous and low. For this reason 'Fye, gie me my coggie,
sirs,' 'Fye, let us a' to the bridal,' with several others of that
cast, are to me highly pleasing, while 'Saw ye my Father' delights me
with its descriptive simple pathos:" we read in these words the
reasons of the difference between the lyrics of the two collections.
The land where the poet lived furnished ready materials for song:
hills with fine woods, vales with clear waters, and dames as lovely as
any recorded in verse, were to be had in his walks and his visits;
while, for the purposes of mirth or of humour, characters, in whose
faces originality was legibly written, were as numerous in Nithsdale
as he had found them in the west. He had been reproached, while in
Kyle, with seeing charms in very ordinary looks, and hanging the
garlands of the muse on unlovely altars; he was liable to no such
censure in Nithsdale; he poured out the incense of poetry only on the
fair and captivating: his Jeans, his Lucys, his Phillises, and his
Jessies were ladies of such mental or personal charms as the
Reynolds's and the Lawrences of the time would have rejoiced to lay
out their choicest colours on. But he did not limit himself to the
charms of those whom he could step out to the walks and admire: his
lyrics give evidence of the wandering of his thoughts to the distant
or the dead--he loves to remember Charlotte Hamilton and Mary
Campbell, and think of the sighs and vows on the Devon and the Doon,
while his harpstrings were still quivering to the names of the Millers
and the M'Murdos--to the charms of the lasses with golden or with
flaxen locks, in the valley where he dwelt. Of Jean M'Murdo and her
sister Phillis he loved to sing; and their beauty merited his strains:
to one who died in her bloom, Lucy Johnston, he addressed a song of
great sweetness; to Jessie Lewars, two or three songs of gratitude and
praise: nor did he forget other beauties, for the accomplished Mrs.
Riddel is remembered, and the absence of fair Clarinda is lamented in
strains both impassioned and pathetic.
But the main inspirer of the latter songs of Burns was a young woman
of humble birth: of a form equal to the most exquisite proportions of
sculpture, with bloom on her cheeks, and merriment in her large bright
eyes, enough to drive an amatory poet crazy. Her name was Jean
Lorimer; she was not more than seventeen when the poet made her
acquaintance, and though she had got a sort of brevet-right from an
officer of the army, to use his southron name of Whelpdale, she loved
best to be addressed by her maiden designation, while the poet chose
to veil her in the numerous lyrics, to which she gave life, under the
names of "Chloris," "The lass of Craigie-burnwood," and "The lassie
wi' the lintwhite locks." Though of a temper not much inclined to
conceal anything, Burns complied so tastefully with the growing demand
of the age for the exterior decencies of life, that when the scrupling
dames of Caledonia sung a new song in her praise, they were as
unconscious whence its beauties came, as is the lover of art, that the
shape and gracefulness of the marble nymph which he admires, are
derived from a creature who sells the use of her charms indifferently
to sculpture or to love. Fine poetry, like other arts called fine,
springs from "strange places," as the flower in the fable said, when
it bloomed on the dunghill; nor is Burns more to be blamed than was
Raphael, who painted Madonnas, and Magdalens with dishevelled hair and
lifted eyes, from a loose lady, whom the pope, "Holy at Rome--here
Antichrist," charitably prescribed to the artist, while he laboured in
the cause of the church. Of the poetic use which he made of Jean
Lorimer's charms, Burns gives this account to Thomson. "The lady of
whom the song of Craigie-burnwood was made is one of the finest women
in Scotland, and in fact is to me in a manner what Sterne's Eliza was
to him--a mistress, or friend, or what you will, in the guileless
simplicity of platonic love. I assure you that to my lovely friend you
are indebted for many of my best songs. Do you think that the sober
gin-horse routine of my existence could inspire a man with life and
love and joy--could fire him with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos,
equal to the genius of your book? No! no! Whenever I want to be more
than ordinary in song--to be in some degree equal to your diviner
airs--do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation?
Quite the contrary. I have a glorious recipe; the very one that for
his own use was invented by the divinity of healing and poesy, when
erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I put myself in a regimen of
admiring a fine woman; and in proportion to the adorability of her
charms, in proportion are you delighted with my verses. The lightning
of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile,
the divinity of Helicon."
Most of the songs which he composed under the influences to which I
have alluded are of the first order: "Bonnie Lesley," "Highland Mary,"
"Auld Rob Morris," "Duncan Gray," "Wandering Willie," "Meg o' the
Mill," "The poor and honest sodger," "Bonnie Jean," "Phillis the
fair," "John Anderson my Jo," "Had I a cave on some wild distant
shore," "Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad," "Bruce's Address to
his men at Bannockburn," "Auld Lang Syne," "Thine am I, my faithful
fair," "Wilt thou be my dearie," "O Chloris, mark how green the
groves," "Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair," "Their groves of
sweet myrtle," "Last May a braw wooer came down the long glen," "O
Mally's meek, Mally's sweet," "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher," "Here's
a health to ane I loe dear," and the "Fairest maid on Devon banks."
Many of the latter lyrics of Burns were more or less altered, to put
them into better harmony with the airs, and I am not the only one who
has wondered that a bard so impetuous and intractable in most matters,
should have become so soft and pliable, as to make changes which too
often sacrificed the poetry for the sake of a fuller and more swelling
sound. It is true that the emphatic notes of the music must find their
echo in the emphatic words of the verse, and that words soft and
liquid are fitter for ladies' lips, than words hissing and rough; but
it is also true that in changing a harsher word for one more
harmonious the sense often suffers, and that happiness of expression,
and that dance of words which lyric verse requires, lose much of their
life and vigour. The poet's favourite walk in composing his songs was
on a beautiful green sward on the northern side of the Nith, opposite
Lincluden: and his favourite posture for composition at home was
balancing himself on the hind legs of his arm-chair.
While indulging in these lyrical nights, politics penetrated into
Nithsdale, and disturbed the tranquillity of that secluded region.
First, there came a contest far the representation of the Dumfries
district of boroughs, between Patrick Miller, younger, of Dalswinton,
and Sir James Johnstone, of Westerhall, and some two years afterwards,
a struggle for the representation of the county of Kirkcudbright,
between the interest of the Stewarts, of Galloway, and Patrick Heron,
of Kerroughtree. In the first of these the poet mingled discretion
with his mirth, and raised a hearty laugh, in which both parties
joined; for this sobriety of temper, good reasons may be assigned:
Miller, the elder, of Dalswinton, had desired to oblige him in the
affair of Ellisland, and his firm and considerate friend, M'Murdo, of
Drumlanrig, was chamberlain to his Grace of Queensbury, on whoso
interest Miller stood. On the other hand, his old Jacobitical
affections made him the secret well-wisher to Westerhall, for up to
this time, at least till acid disappointment and the democratic
doctrine of the natural equality of man influenced him, Burns, or as a
western rhymer of his day and district worded the reproach--Rob was a
Tory. His situation, it will therefore be observed, disposed him to
moderation, and accounts for the milkiness of his Epistle to Fintray,
in which he marshals the chiefs of the contending factions, and
foretells the fierceness of the strife, without pretending to foresee
the event. Neither is he more explicit, though infinitely more
humorous, in his ballad of "The Five Carlins," in which he
impersonates the five boroughs--Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Lochmaben,
Sanquhar, and Annan, and draws their characters as shrewd and
calculating dames, met in much wrath and drink to choose a
representative.
But the two or three years which elapsed between the election for the
boroughs, and that for the county adjoining, wrought a serious change
in the temper as well as the opinions of the poet. His Jacobitism, as
has been said was of a poetic kind, and put on but in obedience to old
feelings, and made no part of the man: he was in his heart as
democratic as the kirk of Scotland, which educated him--he
acknowledged no other superiority but the mental: "he was disposed,
too," said Professor Walker, "from constitutional temper, from
education and the accidents of life, to a jealousy of power, and a
keen hostility against every system which enabled birth and opulence
to anticipate those rewards which he conceived to belong to genius and
virtue." When we add to this, a resentment of the injurious treatment
of the dispensers of public patronage, who had neglected his claims,
and showered pensions and places on men unworthy of being named with
him, we have assigned causes for the change of side and the tone of
asperity and bitterness infused into "The Heron Ballads." Formerly
honey was mixed with his gall: a little praise sweetened his censure:
in these election lampoons he is fierce and even venomous:--no man has
a head but what is empty, nor a heart that is not black: men descended
without reproach from lines of heroes are stigmatized as cowards, and
the honest and conscientious are reproached as miserly, mean, and
dishonourable. Such is the spirit of party. "I have privately," thus
writes the poet to Heron, "printed a good many copies of the ballads,
and have sent them among friends about the country. You have already,
as your auxiliary, the sober detestation of mankind on the heads of
your opponents; find I swear by the lyre of Thalia, to muster on your
side all the votaries of honest laughter and fair, candid ridicule."
The ridicule was uncandid, and the laughter dishonest. The poet was
unfortunate in his political attachments: Miller gained the boroughs
which Burns wished he might lose, and Heron lost the county which he
foretold he would gain. It must also be recorded against the good
taste of the poet, that he loved to recite "The Heron Ballads," and
reckon them among his happiest compositions.
From attacking others, the poet was--in the interval between penning
these election lampoons--called on to defend himself: for this he
seems to have been quite unprepared, though in those yeasty times he
might have expected it. "I have been surprised, confounded, and
distracted," he thus writes to Graham, of Fintray, "by Mr. Mitchell,
the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your
board to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person
disaffected to government. Sir, you are a husband and a father: you
know what you would feel, to see the much-loved wife of your bosom,
and your helpless prattling little ones, turned adrift into the world,
degraded and disgraced, from a situation in which they had been
respectable and respected. I would not tell a deliberate falsehood,
no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be than those I have
mentioned, hung over my head, and I say that the allegation, whatever
villain has made it, is a lie! To the British constitution, on
Revolution principles, next after my God, I am devotedly attached. To
your patronage as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim;
and your esteem as an honest man I know is my due. To these, sir,
permit me to appeal: by these I adjure you to save me from that misery
which threatens to overwhelm me, and which with my latest breath I
will say I have not deserved." In this letter, another, intended for
the eye of the Commissioners of the Board of Excise, was enclosed, in
which he disclaimed entertaining the idea of a British republic--a
wild dream of the day--but stood by the principles of the constitution
of 1688, with the wish to see such corruptions as had crept in,
amended. This last remark, it appears, by a letter from the poet to
Captain Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar, gave great offence, for
Corbet, one of the superiors, was desired to inform him, "that his
business was to act, and not to think; and that whatever might be men
or measures, it was his duty to be silent and obedient." The
intercession of Fintray, and the explanations of Burns, were so far
effectual, that his political offense was forgiven, "only I
understand," said he, "that all hopes of my getting officially forward
are blasted." The records of the Excise Office exhibit no trace of
this memorable matter, and two noblemen, who were then in the
government, have assured me that this harsh proceeding received no
countenance at head-quarters, and must have originated with some
ungenerous or malicious person, on whom the poet had spilt a little of
the nitric acid of his wrath.
That Burns was numbered among the republicans of Dumfries I well
remember: but then those who held different sentiments from the men in
power, were all, in that loyal town, stigmatized as democrats: that he
either desired to see the constitution changed, or his country invaded
by the liberal French, who proposed to set us free with the bayonet,
and then admit us to the "fraternal embrace," no one ever believed. It
is true that he spoke of premiers and peers with contempt; that he
hesitated to take off his hat in the theatre, to the air of "God save
the king;" that he refused to drink the health of Pitt, saying he
preferred that of Washington--a far greater man; that he wrote bitter
words against that combination of princes, who desired to put down
freedom in France; that he said the titled spurred and the wealthy
switched England and Scotland like two hack-horses; and that all the
high places of the land, instead of being filled by genius and talent,
were occupied, as were the high-places of Israel, with idols of wood
or of stone. But all this and more had been done and said before by
thousands in this land, whose love of their country was never
questioned. That it was bad taste to refuse to remove his hat when
other heads were bared, and little better to refuse to pledge in
company the name of Pitt, because he preferred Washington, cannot
admit of a doubt; but that he deserved to be written down traitor, for
mere matters of whim or caprice, or to be turned out of the unenvied
situation of "gauging auld wives' barrels," because he thought there
were some stains on the white robe of the constitution, seems a sort
of tyranny new in the history of oppression. His love of country is
recorded in too many undying lines to admit of a doubt now: nor is it
that chivalrous love alone which men call romantic; it is a love which
may be laid up in every man's heart and practised in every man's life;
the words are homely, but the words of Burns are always expressive:--
"The kettle of the kirk and state
Perhaps a clout may fail in't,
But deil a foreign tinkler loon
Shall ever ca' a nail in't.
Be Britons still to Britons true,
Amang ourselves united;
For never but by British hands
Shall British wrongs be righted."
But while verses, deserving as these do to become the national motto,
and sentiments loyal and generous, were overlooked and forgotten, all
his rash words about freedom, and his sarcastic sallies about thrones
and kings, were treasured up to his injury, by the mean and the
malicious. His steps were watched and his words weighed; when he
talked with a friend in the street, he was supposed to utter sedition;
and when ladies retired from the table, and the wine circulated with
closed doors, he was suspected of treason rather than of toasting,
which he often did with much humour, the charms of woman; even when he
gave as a sentiment, "May our success be equal to the justice of our
cause," he was liable to be challenged by some gunpowder captain, who
thought that we deserved success in war, whether right or wrong. It is
true that he hated with a most cordial hatred all who presumed on
their own consequence, whether arising from wealth, titles, or
commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted
puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools,"
who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his
satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young
men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and
scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to a poet
whose notions of female virtue were so loose and his songs so free.
These sentiments prevailed so far that a gentleman on a visit from
London, told me he was dissuaded from inviting Burns to a dinner,
given by way of welcome back to his native place, because he was the
associate of democrats and loose people; and when a modest dame of
Dumfries expressed, through a friend, a wish to have but the honour of
speaking to one of whose genius she was an admirer, the poet declined
the interview, with a half-serious smile, saying, "Alas! she is
handsome, and you know the character publicly assigned to me." She
escaped the danger of being numbered, it is likely, with the Annas and
the Chlorises of his freer strains.
The neglect of his country, the tyranny of the Excise, and the
downfall of his hopes and fortunes, were now to bring forth their
fruits--the poet's health began to decline. His drooping looks, his
neglect of his person, his solitary saunterings, his escape from the
stings of reflection into socialities, and his distempered joy in the
company of beauty, all spoke, as plainly as with a tongue, of a
sinking heart and a declining body. Yet though he was sensible of
sinking health, hope did not at once desert him: he continued to pour
out such tender strains, and to show such flashes of wit and humour at
the call of Thomson, as are recorded of no other lyrist: neither did
he, when in company after his own mind, hang the head, and speak
mournfully, but talked and smiled and still charmed all listeners by
his witty vivacities.
On the 20th of June, 1795, he writes thus of his fortunes and
condition to his friend Clarke, "Still, still the victim of
affliction; were you to see the emaciated figure who now holds the pen
to you, you would not know your old friend. Whether I shall ever get
about again is only known to HIM, the Great Unknown, whoso creature I
am. Alas, Clarke, I begin to fear the worst! As to my individual self
I am tranquil, and would despise myself if I were not: but Burns's
poor widow and half-a-dozen of his dear little ones, helpless orphans!
_Here_ I am as weak as a woman's tear. Enough of this! 'tis half my
disease. I duly received your last, enclosing the note: it came
extremely in time, and I am much obliged to your punctuality. Again I
must request you to do me the same kindness. Be so very good as by
return of post to enclose me _another_ note: I trust you can do so
without inconvenience, and it will seriously oblige me. If I must go,
I leave a few friends behind me, whom I shall regret while
consciousness remains. I know I shall live in their remembrance. O,
dear, dear Clarke! that I shall ever see you again is I am afraid
highly improbable." This remarkable letter proves both the declining
health, and the poverty of the poet: his digestion was so bad that he
could taste neither flesh nor fish: porridge and milk he could alone
swallow, and that but in small quantities. When it is recollected that
he had no more than thirty shillings a week to keep house, and live
like a gentleman, no one need wonder that his wife had to be obliged
to a generous neighbour for some of the chief necessaries for her
coming confinement, and that the poet had to beg, in extreme need, two
guinea notes from a distant friend.