The Riverside Literature Series
ESSAY ON BURNS
BY
THOMAS CARLYLE
EDITED
_WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_
BY GEORGE R. NOYES
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
Chicago: 158 Adams Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1896,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
{iii}
INTRODUCTION.
Carlyle's _Essay on Burns_ was first printed in the _Edinburgh
Review_ for December, 1828. Though in form a review of the _Life of
Robert Burns_, by John Gibson Lockhart, it is really, like many of
the articles in the _Edinburgh Review_, an entirely independent work.
The present art of book reviewing is a creation of our own times.
The English magazines of the eighteenth century were mere publishers'
organs, and are inferior to even second-rate periodicals of our own
day. The book notices in them are comparable to those that we see in
our poorer daily newspapers. The reviewers were usually mere
literary hacks, and were content to give a summary of the contents of
a book, and then pass judgment on it as a whole, meting out praise or
blame in set, formal terms. The foundation of the _Edinburgh
Review_, in 1802, by Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Brougham, and others,
marks the beginning of a new era in English periodical literature.
The new magazine had for contributors men of marked learning and
originality, leaders in the thought of their time, who were not
satisfied, in reviewing a book, with recording the impression that
any sane man would gather from a casual reading, but took the title
of the book as the text for a thoroughly original treatment of its
subject. Succeeding periodicals, as the _Quarterly_ and
_Blackwood's_, however much they differed from the _Edinburgh_ in
politics and general tendencies, were all affected by its methods.
So it happens that many book reviews in the English magazines, by men
like Carlyle, Macaulay, and Matthew Arnold, have become permanent
additions to literature, sometimes surpassing in interest the works
that occasioned them.
{iv}
In the present case, however, the book reviewed continues to be a
standard authority. Its author, John Gibson Lockhart, was born in
1794, at Cambusnethan, about twelve miles southeast of Glasgow. When
_Blackwood's Magazine_ was founded, in 1817, Lockhart became one of
its chief contributors. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of
Sir Walter Scott. In the years following his marriage he published
several novels, an edition of _Don Quixote_, and his translations of
_Ancient Spanish Ballads_. This last work has never been superseded,
and is often reprinted. In 1826 he became editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, and retained the position until the year before his death,
in 1854. His _Life of Robert Burns_ appeared in 1828, and a _Life of
Napoleon Bonaparte_ in the next year. His greatest work, the _Life
of Scott_, appeared in 1836-38, and by general consent has taken in
English biographical literature a place second only to that of
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_.
Carlyle was introduced to Lockhart when on a visit to London, in
1832. In his Note Book at that time he calls Lockhart "a precise,
brief, active person of considerable faculty," and confesses that he
"rather liked the man."[1] A month later, in a letter to his
brother, he calls him "not without force, but barren and
unfruitful."[2] Seven years after this, when Carlyle was settled in
London, he formed the project of writing an article on the
working-classes for the _Quarterly_; with this in mind he called upon
Lockhart, and, he says, "found him a person of sense, good breeding,
even kindness."[3] Ever after this, though the two men were never
intimate friends, they had warm affection and esteem for each other.
Lockhart feared to accept Carlyle's article because of its radical
opinions, and it was published separately, under the title of
_Chartism_. One more link between {v} the men is Carlyle's
review--one of his least satisfactory essays--of the _Life of Scott_,
published in 1838, in the _London and Westminster Review_. And
Carlyle's own judgment of Lockhart widens our knowledge of the
character of both men.
"A hard, proud, but thoroughly honest, singularly intelligent, and
also affectionate man, whom in the distance I esteemed more than
perhaps he ever knew. Seldom did I speak to him; but hardly ever
without learning and gaining something."[4]
Thomas Carlyle was born December 4, 1795, at Annandale, in
Dumfriesshire, in southeast Scotland. His life offers many
resemblances, though perhaps more contrasts, to that of Burns. Like
Burns, he came from the strong, rough stock of the Scotch peasantry.
Of his father, James Carlyle, a man like Burns's father in his
strength of character and deeply religious temperament, but unlike
him in his complete ignorance of all books except the Bible, Carlyle
has himself left us a grand portrait in the _Reminiscences_. When
ten years old, Carlyle was sent to the Annan grammar school. Of his
life there we may judge from the veiled account in _Sartor
Resartus_:--
"My Teachers were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man's
nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly
account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they
themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it
fostering the growth of mind.... The Professors knew syntax enough;
and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory,
and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by the
appliance of birch-rods."[5]
James Carlyle recognized his son's ability, and resolved {vi} that he
should be an educated man. Yet Carlyle can hardly be said to have
been "sent" to the University, for he _walked_ the distance of
seventy miles over rough country to Edinburgh. There he worked
industriously in the library, and laid the foundations for his
wonderful knowledge of books. He tells us later:--
"What I have found the University did for me, was that it taught me
to read in various languages and various sciences, so that I could go
into the books that treated of these things, and try anything I
wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me."[6]
Carlyle had been intended for the ministry, but money was lacking,
and he took up school teaching as a temporary occupation. In 1818,
having saved ninety pounds, he returned to Edinburgh for study.
Meanwhile, the ministry had become closed to him, for reading and
thought had undermined his belief in the creed of the Scotch Kirk.
But Carlyle's reaction from his ancestral beliefs was occasioned by
different circumstances from that of Burns. Carlyle, by deep study
and meditation, was stirred from the dogmas of the Scotch Kirk, but
adhered strictly to its stern, severe code of morals. Burns, who had
a lighter, more facile nature, became disgusted with the hypocrisy of
those high in church authority, and was attracted by the more winning
characters of the leaders of the progressive party. His passions had
already weakened his morals; and though he still professed the
highest respect for religion in the abstract, he was led on from
distrust of orthodox Calvinism to what often seems general skepticism
and indifference on religious matters.
After an experiment in legal study, Carlyle finally settled on his
trade as a "writer of books." From 1818 to 1822 he lived in
Edinburgh, and did hack literary work, largely articles for the
_Edinburgh Encyclopedia_. In 1822 he {vii} became tutor in a private
family, with whom he travelled, not returning to Edinburgh until
1825. During these years of indecision as to what should be his life
pursuit he had been occupied with German literature, and had
published his translation of _Wilhelm Meister_ and his _Life of
Schiller_. For these works he received grateful acknowledgment from
Goethe, and by them established a reputation as a writer. In 1827 he
met Jeffrey, and made a contract with him to write for the _Edinburgh
Review_.
Meanwhile, in 1826, Carlyle had married Jane Baillie Welsh. Two
years later, through the failure of some literary plans, he decided
to remove, for the sake of economy, to his wife's farm of
Craigenputtock, in southwest Dumfriesshire, in the wild moorland
country, fifteen miles from any town. There he resolved, in spite of
poverty, to publish no work that did not satisfy his ideal.
Carlyle's impressions of his hermit life vary with his changing
moods,--now he praises his home as a rural paradise; again he writes
in his diary, "Finished a paper on Burns September 16, 1828, at this
Devil's Den, Craigenputtock."[7]
This last phrase shows us that the _Essay on Burns_ was one of the
first products of Carlyle's self-imposed exile. Of all his essays,
this is on the topic nearest to the author's life. Carlyle was drawn
to his subject by every bond of race, language, and association. His
birthplace, Annandale, is only ten miles from Dumfries, Burns's last
home. He had talked with many who had known Burns in life, among
them Gilbert Burns, the poet's brother. Though an estimate of the
merits of the essay will be more appropriate later, some
circumstances connected with its publication must here be noted, for
the light which they throw on Carlyle's character. The account of
them is quoted, with some small changes, from Froude.
Jeffrey "found the article long and diffuse, though he {viii} did not
deny that 'it contained much beauty and felicity of diction.' He
insisted that it must be cut down," and received permission from
Carlyle to make some alterations.[8] "When the proof-sheets came,
Carlyle found 'the first part cut all into shreds,--the body of a
quadruped with the head of a bird, a man shortened by cutting out the
thighs and fixing the knee-caps on the hips.'[9] He refused to let
it appear 'in such a horrid shape.' He replaced the most important
passages, and returned the sheets with an intimation that the paper
might be cancelled, but should not be mutilated. Few editors would
have been so forbearing as Jeffrey when so audaciously defied. He
complained, but he acquiesced. He admitted that the article would do
the Review credit, though it would be called tedious and sprawling by
people of weight whose mouths he could have stopped. He had wished
to be of use to Carlyle by keeping out of sight in the Review his
mannerism and affectation; but if Carlyle persisted he might have his
way.
"Carlyle was touched; such kindness was more than he had looked for.
The proud self-assertion was followed by humility and almost
penitence, and the gentle tone in which he wrote conquered Jeffrey in
turn. Jeffrey said that he admired and approved of Carlyle's letter
to him in all respects. 'The candour and sweet blood' which was
shown in it deserved the highest praise. 'Your virtues are your
own,' said Jeffrey, 'and you shall have anything you like.'"[10]
During Carlyle's residence at Craigenputtock, which lasted, with
slight interruption, for six years, were produced most of the
miscellaneous essays, and his first great original work, _Sartor
Resartus_. This is the formative period of his literary life, from
which he came forth, to quote {ix} Mr. Stephen, "a master of his
craft." In 1834 he moved to London, where he resided until his
death, in 1881. To this later period belong his greatest works, on
which his fame depends: _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, _The French
Revolution_, _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, and _The History of
Frederick the Great_. But the earlier works have the same tonic
quality as the later, and are free from many of their defects. As a
teacher, especially if we take an American point of view, Carlyle
grows less trustworthy with advancing years. His cynicism becomes
more bitter, his hero-worship leads him to sympathize with autocracy,
while his contempt for the stupidity of the masses leads him to
distrust all popular government. In Lowell's words, quoting
Carlyle's contemptuous phrase, "he saw 'only the burning of a dirty
chimney' in the war which a great people was waging under his very
eyes for the idea of nationality and orderly magistrature."
In the _Essay on Burns_, then, we have a work of Carlyle's early
prime. We might infer this from the style alone, which shows a
transition from his early clearness and simplicity to the "piebald,
entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing" characteristic of his
later works, and always associated with his name.
In the _Essay on Burns_ it is not the author's intention to give a
connected sketch of Burns's life,[11] or to pass a cool, critical
judgment on his poetry as a whole. Carlyle has himself, on page 6 of
this essay, given us his idea of the true purpose of biography. The
following words from his second essay on Richter make his meaning
still clearer:--
"If the acted life of a _pius Vates_ is so high a matter, the written
life, which, if properly written, would be a translation and
interpretation thereof, must also have great value. It has been said
that no Poet is equal to his Poem, which saying is partially true;
but in a deeper sense, it {x} may also be asserted, and with still
greater truth, that no Poem is equal to its Poet. Now, it is
Biography which first gives us both Poet and Poem; by the
significance of the one, elucidating and completing that of the
other. That ideal outline of himself, which a man unconsciously
shadows forth in his writings, and which, rightly deciphered, will be
truer than any other representation of him, it is the task of the
Biographer to fill up into an actual coherent figure, and bring home
to our experience, or at least clear, undoubting admiration, thereby
to instruct and edify us in many ways. Conducted on such principles,
the Biography of great men, especially of great poets, that is, of
men in the highest degree noble minded and wise, might become one of
the most dignified and valuable species of composition. As matters
stand, indeed, there are few Biographies that accomplish anything of
this kind; the most are mere Indexes of a Biography, which each
reader is to write out for himself, as he peruses them; not the
living body, but the dry bones of a body, which should have been
alive. To expect any such Promethean virtue in a common Life-writer
were unreasonable enough. How shall that unhappy Biographic
brotherhood, instead of writing like Index-makers and
Government-clerks, suddenly become enkindled with some sparks of
intellect, or even of genial fire; and not only collecting dates and
facts, but making use of them, look beyond the surface and economical
form of a man's life, into its substance and spirit?"
In pursuit of this great aim, Carlyle has to adapt his method to his
subject. In writing of Richter, a man unknown to the British public
of his time, he has to give us himself the "dry bones" of fact,
before he can give the "living body." But in the case of Burns, as
he can assume that his readers are familiar with Burns's chief poems,
and know the main events of his life, he brushes aside all detail,
and treats at once the inner meaning and value of the poet's life and
work. To appreciate Carlyle's essay, we must {xi} fulfil his
expectation of us, and know Burns at first hand before we start to
read about him.
We must now ask how far Carlyle corresponds to his own ideal
biographer. No one can read this essay without admitting that we
have in it a powerful and sympathetic conception of Burns. To decide
whether this conception is just and impartial we must take into
account the writer's general temperament and leading ideas.
Carlyle is a hero-worshipper in all his work, as a quotation from
_Sartor Resartus_ will best explain:--
"Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it,
that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no
faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent;
least of all, when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his
fellow-man. Thus there is a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in
his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a
more or less orthodox _Hero-worship_. In which fact, that
Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally
among Mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living-rock,
whereon all Politics for the remotest time may stand secure.
"Hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man,
though but a skeptic, mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because
even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his
chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the
loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet. All
Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though their Divinity,
moreover, was of feature too apish."[12]
As Carlyle is fallible, like other men, the practical effect of his
doctrine is that he exalts those whom he likes, and throws contempt
on those whom he dislikes. Since he is attracted by Burns's noble
qualities, above all by his sincerity, he forms a grand ideal
conception of him. Indeed, {xii} in his _Heroes and Hero-Worship_,
written twelve years later, he boldly pronounces Burns "the most
gifted British soul we had in all that century of his." The lecture
upon "the hero as man of letters" should be studied carefully by all
who wish to understand Carlyle's attitude towards the great writers
of the world, and towards Burns as one of them. It would, however,
be of small use to read, as a sort of postscript to this essay, the
half-dozen pages which Carlyle there devotes especially to Burns. He
there repeats many of the thoughts of this essay,--when a writer has
once clearly and fully spoken his mind of a man he cannot well treat
of him again without repetition. The value of the lecture on "the
hero as man of letters" is, that it gives us in brief form general
ideas, of which the _Essay on Burns_ is a particular application.
In consequence of his conception of Burns as a hero, Carlyle casts
aside, as of slight importance in the general estimate, evidence that
opposes his own view, or even entirely refuses to believe it. Thus
he dwells on Burns's finest poems, and pays little heed to his
affected English verse and stilted prose. Yet they, too, are of
Burns's writing, and demand full consideration, if we are to
understand the whole man. Again, he will not credit an anecdote for
which there is fairly good evidence, because it shows in Burns a
foolish vanity that seems to him impossible. So, at the best, our
essay gives only a partial view of Burns. Those who wish to learn
more of the seamy side of the poet's character will do well to read
an essay by as loyal a son of Scotland, and as kindly and sympathetic
a writer, as Carlyle himself,--Robert Louis Stevenson.[13]
Much more might be said in dispraise of Carlyle's work, and yet its
essential greatness would remain unaffected. After the lapse of
nearly seventy years, this essay is still by far our best portrait of
Burns. All succeeding critics have had to take Carlyle into account.
They may differ {xiii} widely from his conclusions, but they cannot
fail to recognize his transcendent merits. Though the judgments of
Carlyle on Burns have, in the main, stood well the test of time, yet
in this, as in all his writings, his excellence lies less in his own
opinions than in his power to make others think for themselves.
Carlyle has little of the finish, proportion, discrimination, that we
find in Matthew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve. But for the ordinary reader
he is far more useful than many a writer who comes nearer the
absolute truth. He touches our hearts and arouses our sympathies.
Most readers of a critic ask, not: "After reading this essay can I
distinguish more accurately between the good and bad art in my
author, and judge better of their comparative importance?" but: "Does
this critic make me more able to understand the best that is in my
poet, so that I share more deeply in his highest life and thought?"
Let us then, with due reverence, approach the thoughts of one of the
greatest thinkers of Scotland upon the greatest of her poets.
[1] Froude: _Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of
his Life_, ii. 188.
[2] _Ibid._, ii. 212.
[3] Quoted in Froude: _Thomas Carlyle, a History of his Life in
London_, i. 140, from a letter of Carlyle's to his brother.
[4] See note by Carlyle in _Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle_, ed. Froude, i. 107.
[5] _Sartor Resartus_, II. iii.
[6] _Address delivered to the Students of Edinburgh
University_--April 2, 1866.
[7] Froude: _Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of
his Life_, ii. 26.
[8] _Letters of Thomas Carlyle_, 1826-1836, p. 123.
[9] Quoted from a letter from Carlyle to his brother, October 10,
1828. There is here a reminiscence of the opening lines of Horace's
_Ars Poetica_.
[10] Froude: _Thomas Carlyle, a History of the First Forty Years of
his Life_, ii. 31-35.
[11] For this reason, a brief sketch of the poet's life is given the
reader after this Introduction. See pp. xiv.-xvii.
[12] _Sartor Resartus_, III. vii.
[13] In _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_.
{xiv}
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS.
Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay-built cottage,
at Alloway in Ayrshire, in southwest Scotland. Except for the
personal character of his father, his lot was that of any poor
peasant lad. But the elder Burns had a natural love of learning,
attended carefully to his sons' education himself, and, further, gave
them as good schooling as it lay in his power to do. The teacher of
Robert Burns and his younger brother Gilbert was John Murdoch, a
young man of uncommon merit, who interested himself in the boys, and
lent them various books. Robert grew thoroughly familiar with his
small library, learned French fairly well, and began Latin. He was
particularly fascinated by a book of English songs, and carried it
with him into the fields. He early became noted as the best
converser and the best letter writer in the parish. When Burns was
still a child his father had removed to another farm, at Mount
Oliphant; later, when Burns was eighteen, to Lochlea, in the parish
of Tarbolton. The family affairs were never long prosperous; and the
distress endured at Mount Oliphant from a tyrannical _factor_, or
landlord's agent, is commemorated in _The Twa Dogs_, just as the
happy home life is reproduced in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_.
Through all his youth Burns was a laborer for his father; and his
first song, _Handsome Nell_, written when he was only fifteen, is in
honor of a chance partner in the harvest field.
In 1782, when he was twenty-three years old, Burns engaged in
business at the town of Irvine, but was reduced to poverty by the
burning of his shop, and returned to Lochlea. The short residence at
the thriving seaport affected for the {xv} worse his habits of life
and thought. Until then Burns had led an ordinarily correct life;
but at Irvine he learned to drink, and to think lightly of infidelity
to women. _The Poet's Welcome to his Illegitimate Child_ bears sad
witness to this alteration in his character.
In 1784, soon after Burns's return home, his father died, leaving his
affairs in utter ruin. Three months before his death Robert and
Gilbert had taken the farm of Mossgiel, in the neighboring parish of
Mauchline, and thither the whole family now removed. The years 1785
and 1786 are Burns's great period of poetical production; within them
fall most of the pieces, exclusive of _Tam O'Shanter_ and of his
songs, by which he is now best known. At this time the theological
controversy between the two parties in the Scotch Kirk occupied the
attention of every one. Burns was attracted by the personal
character of the leaders of the _New Light_, or progressive, party;
and aided them in their warfare upon the _Old Light_ divines by many
stinging satires, notably _The Holy Fair_, _The Twa Herds_, and _Holy
Willie's Prayer_. Readers to-day have come to have a new interest in
the _Old Lights_, or _Auld Lichts_, as the Scotch term is, through J.
M. Barrie's tales and sketches.
In 1785 Burns met and fell in love with Jean Armour, and the next
year twin children were born to them. Burns, in order to save the
girl from disgrace, had given her a written acknowledgment of
marriage; but her father, who had a poor opinion of the poet's
general character, had forced her to destroy this. Burns, finding
himself without money or position in society, resolved to emigrate to
Jamaica, and published a thin volume of his poems in order to raise
money for the passage. The success of the book was great and
immediate, and altered the whole course of Burns's life. Dugald
Stewart, the philosopher, entertained him at his house; Henry
MacKenzie, the novelist, gave him a flattering review; and, finally,
an enthusiastic letter from Dr. Blacklock, one of the most celebrated
Edinburgh critics, {xvi} made him decide to give up his plan of
flight from his native country, and to try his fortune at the Scotch
capital. The volume of poems was also the means of his acquaintance
with the excellent Mrs. Dunlop, with whom he corresponded until the
end of his life.
In November, 1786, Burns went to Edinburgh, and was the "lion" of the
following winter. A new edition of his poems received three thousand
subscribers, and brought him in about £500. Of this he lent £180 to
his brother Gilbert, to help in the management of Mossgiel,--the loan
was finally repaid some thirty years later to the poet's family.
During the following year he made two trips through Scotland, partly
to collect songs, and began to contribute to Johnson's _Scot's
Musical Museum_ and Thomson's _Collection of Scottish Airs_. The
poet applied for, and obtained, a commission in the Excise, the only
worldly advantage, except the profits of his poems, that he derived
from his triumphal Edinburgh season. Reserving his commission as a
last resort, Burns rented a farm at Ellisland, near Dumfries, where
he settled, in the summer of 1788. He had renewed his intimacy with
Jean Armour, and, when she became once more exposed to the anger of
her father, made her all the reparation in his power, by marriage.
The farm was not a success, and Burns tried to carry on the Excise
business along with it. When this division of labor also proved
unsatisfactory, he abandoned Ellisland, and, in November, 1792, moved
to Dumfries.
At Dumfries Burns was advanced to all Excise division, with a salary
of seventy pounds, and retained the position until his death. His
hopes of further promotion were cut off by his ill-timed expressions
of sympathy with the American Revolution, and with the republican
party in France. He attended well to the duties of his office, but
occasional drunkenness and other misconduct brought on him the ill
favor of the "Dumfries aristocracy." The boon companions with whom
he mingled, and the curious tourists attracted by {xvii} his fame,
were in no small measure the cause of his poor success. On January
2, 1793, he writes to Mrs. Dunlop:--
"Occasionally hard drinking is the devil to me. Against this I have
again and again bent my resolution, and have greatly succeeded.
Taverns I have totally abandoned: it is the private parties in the
family way, among the hard-drinking gentlemen of this country, that
do me the mischief."
The poet's excesses did not keep him from being an affectionate
father, and attending carefully to his children's education. He died
on July 21, 1796.
Burns's life since leaving Edinburgh had, on the whole, been one of
decline. With the exception of his songs, which he never ceased to
contribute to Thomson's _Collection of Scottish Airs_, and of _Tam
O'Shanter_, written at Ellisland, he had produced no important poem
since that time. But this sketch of Burns's life must not attempt an
estimate of his character as poet or man. Its only object is to
furnish for ready reference a few of the facts necessary for
understanding Carlyle's work.
{xviii}
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Every author should be studied, as far as possible, from his own
writings. Carlyle's voluminous correspondence furnishes rich
materials for the history of his life and thought. The best editions
of his letters are those edited by Professor Charles Eliot Norton:
_Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle_ (1814-1826), _Letters of Thomas
Carlyle_ (1826-1836), _Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph
Waldo Emerson_. These may be supplemented by Froude's edition of the
_Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle_. Next to these
first-hand documents, Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_, in spite of its
inaccuracy and its prejudiced point of view, will remain the great
storehouse of information for students of the subject. There are
good short lives of Carlyle by John Nichol (_English Men of Letters_
Series) and Richard Garnett (_Great Writers_ Series). The former
deals more fully in criticism on his literary work. There are
excellent critical appreciations of Carlyle by James Russell Lowell,
Augustine Birrell (in _Obiter Dicta_), and Matthew Arnold (in _Essay
on Emerson_).
The best way to study Burns is to learn the outline of the external
events of his life from any short sketch, and then to read his poems
and letters in chronological order. Besides the life by Lockhart,
there are good accounts of him by Principal Shairp (_English Men of
Letters_ Series) and John Stuart Blackie (_Great Writers_ Series).
Carlyle mentions by name Currie and Walker among the biographers of
Burns previous to Lockhart. Dr. James Currie (1756-1805), a famous
Scotch physician, published in 1800 an edition of Burns's works, with
an account of his life, in aid of the poet's family. The _Life of
Burns_, written by Josiah Walker, later Professor of Humanity in
Glasgow University, to accompany an edition of Burns's works
published in 1811, has no permanent value.
Unlike the other two men, Lockhart does not appeal to us as much by
his personal character as by his writings. The _Life and Letters of
John Gibson Lockhart_, by Andrew Lang, is the best book with regard
to him.
{1}
ESSAY ON BURNS.[1]
In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncommon thing that a
man of genius must, like Butler,[2] "ask for bread and receive a
stone;" for, in spite of our grand maxim of supply and demand, it is
by no means the highest excellence that men are most forward to
recognize. The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his
reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like the
apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary. We do
not know whether it is not an aggravation of the injustice, that
there is generally a posthumous retribution. Robert Burns, in the
course of Nature, might yet have been living; but his short life was
spent in toil and penury; and he died, in the prime of his manhood,
miserable and neglected: and yet already a brave mausoleum shines
over his dust,[3] and more {2} than one splendid monument has been
reared in other places to his fame; the street where he languished in
poverty is called by his name;[4] the highest personages in our
literature have been proud to appear as his commentators and
admirers; and here is the _sixth_ narrative of his life that has been
given to the world![5]
Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologize for this new attempt on
such a subject: but his readers, we believe, will readily acquit him;
or, at worst, will censure only the performance of his task, not the
choice of it. The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot
easily become either trite or exhausted; and will probably gain
rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is
removed by Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet;
and this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be
the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye
few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for
men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay perhaps
painfully feel toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of
existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. Suppose that
some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbor of John a
Combe's,[6] had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his
game, and written us a Life {3} of Shakespeare! What dissertations
should we not have had,--not on "Hamlet" and "The Tempest," but on
the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, and the libel and vagrant laws;
and how the Poacher became a Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John
had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities! In like
manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the companions
of his pilgrimage, the Honorable Excise Commissioners, and the
Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt,[7] and the Dumfries Aristocracy,
and all the Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers,[8] and
the New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with, shall have
become invisible in the darkness of the Past, or visible only by
light borrowed from _his_ juxtaposition, it will be difficult to
measure him by any true standard, or to estimate what he really was
and did, in the eighteenth century, for his country and the world.
It will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for literary
historians; and repeated attempts will give us repeated
approximations.
His former Biographers have done something, no doubt, but by no means
a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie and Mr. Walker, the principal
of these writers, have both, we think, mistaken one essentially
important thing: Their own and the world's true relation to their
author, and the style in which it {4} became such men to think and to
speak of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly; more perhaps
than he avowed to his readers, or even to himself; yet he everywhere
introduces him with a certain patronizing, apologetic air: as if the
polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he,
a man of science, a scholar and gentleman, should do such honor to a
rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that his fault was
not want of love, but weakness of faith; and regret that the first
and kindest of all our poet's biographers should not have seen
farther, or believed more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends
more deeply in the same kind: and both err alike in presenting us
with a detached catalogue of his several supposed attributes, virtues
and vices, instead of a delineation of the resulting character as a
living unity. This, however, is not painting a portrait; but gauging
the length and breadth of the several features, and jotting down
their dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, it is not so much as
that: for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the mind
_could_ be so measured and gauged.
Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these errors. He
uniformly treats Burns as the high and remarkable man the public
voice has now pronounced him to be: and in delineating him, he has
avoided the method of separate generalities, and rather sought for
characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a word, for
aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he looked and lived among his
fellows. The book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more
insight, we think, into the true character of Burns than any prior
biography: though, being {5} written on the very popular and
condensed scheme of an article for "Constable's Miscellany,"[9] it
has less depth than we could have wished and expected from a writer
of such power; and contains rather more, and more multifarious
quotations than belong of right to an original production. Indeed,
Mr. Lockhart's own writing is generally so good, so clear, direct and
nervous, that we seldom wish to see it making place for another
man's. However, the spirit of the work is throughout candid,
tolerant and anxiously conciliating; compliments and praises are
liberally distributed, on all hands, to great and small; and, as Mr.
Morris Birkbeck[10] observes of the society in the backwoods of
America, "the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight of for a
moment." But there are better things than these in the volume; and
we can safely testify, not only that it is easily and pleasantly read
a first time, but may even be without difficulty read again.[11]
{6}
Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the problem of Burns's
Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do not allude so much
to deficiency of facts or documents,--though of these we are still
every day receiving some fresh accession,--as to the limited and
imperfect application of them to the great end of Biography. Our
notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if an
individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and
character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of
opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the
inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and
man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his
mind? How did co-existing circumstances modify him from without; how
did he modify these from within? With what endeavors and what
efficacy rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink
under them? In one word, what and how produced was the effect of
society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society? He
who should answer these questions, in regard to any individual,
would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in Biography.
Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and many _lives_
will be written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity,
ought to be written, and read and forgotten, which are not in this
sense _biographies_. But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these
few individuals; and such a study, at least with such a result, he
has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can
be but scanty and feeble; but we offer them with good-will, and trust
{7} they may meet with acceptance from those they are intended
for.[12]
Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy; and was, in that
character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague,
tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect; till
his early and most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for
him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be done, and much
to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true,
the "nine days" have long since elapsed; and the very continuance of
this clamor proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly,
even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has come to
rest more and more exclusively on his own intrinsic merits, and may
now be well-nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears not only
as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British
men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he did
little. He did much, if we consider where and how. If the work
performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials
to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert
moor, where no eye but his had guessed its existence; and we may
almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for
fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without
help, without instruction, without model; or with models only of the
meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a
boundless arsenal and {8} magazine, filled with all the weapons and
engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest
time; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all
past ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of
that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain
forever shut against him! His means are the commonest and rudest;
the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his
steam-engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down
with a pickaxe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad with
his arms.
It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age
the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most
disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must
accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay of
penury and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no
furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the
rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay[13] for his standard of beauty, he
sinks not under all these impediments: through the fogs and darkness
of that obscure region, his lynx eye discerns the true relations of
the world and human life; he grows into intellectual strength, and
trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the
expansive movement of his own irrepressible soul, he {9} struggles
forward into the general view; and with haughty modesty lays down
before us, as the fruit of his labor, a gift which Time has now
pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome drudging
childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life;
and that he died in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask, If it be
strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that
his genius attained no mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun shone as
through a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it
at noon! Shrouded in such baleful vapors, the genius of Burns was
never seen in clear azure splendor, enlightening the world: but some
beams from it did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those
clouds with rainbow and orient colors, into a glory and stern
grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears!
We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it is exposition rather than
admiration that our readers require of us here; and yet to avoid some
tendency to that side is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity
him; and love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is
sometimes thought, should be a cold business; we are not so sure of
this;[14] but, at all events, our concern with Burns is not
exclusively that of critics. True and genial as his poetry must
appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that he interests
and affects us. He was often advised to write a tragedy;[15] time
and means were not lent him for {10} this; but through life he
enacted a tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether the
world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene; whether Napoleon
himself, left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock,
"amid the melancholy main," presented to the reflecting mind such a
"spectacle of pity and fear" as did this intrinsically nobler,
gentler and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a hopeless
struggle with base entanglements, which coiled closer and closer
round him till only death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a
class of men with whom, for most part, the world could well dispense;
nor can the hard intellect, the unsympathizing loftiness and high but
selfish enthusiasm of such persons inspire us in general with any
affection; at best it may excite amazement; and their fall, like that
of a pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. But a
true Poet, a man in whose heart resides some effluence of Wisdom,
some tone of the "Eternal Melodies," is the most precious gift that
can be bestowed on a generation: we see in him a freer, purer
development of whatever is noblest in ourselves; his life is a rich
lesson to us; and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who
loved and taught us.[16]
Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on us in Robert
Burns; but with queenlike indifference she cast it from her hand,
like a thing of no {11} moment; and it was defaced and torn asunder,
as an idle bauble, before we recognized it. To the ill-starred Burns
was given the power of making man's life more venerable, but that of
wisely guiding his own life was not given. Destiny,--for so in our
ignorance we must speak,--his faults, the faults of others, proved
too hard for him; and that spirit, which might have soared could it
but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties
trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may almost say,
without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul; so full of
inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things! How his
heart flows out in sympathy over universal Nature; and in her
bleakest provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning! The "Daisy"
falls not unheeded under his ploughshare; nor the ruined nest of that
"wee, cowering, timorous beastie," cast forth, after all its
provident pains, to "thole the sleety dribble and cranreuch
cauld."[17] The "hoar visage" of Winter delights him; he dwells with
a sad and oft-returning fondness in these scenes of solemn
desolation; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his
ears; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for "it raises his
thoughts to _Him that walketh on the wings of the wind_."[18] A true
Poet-soul, for it needs but to be struck, and the sound it yields
will be music! But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his
brother men. What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling; what {12}
trustful, boundless love; what generous exaggeration of the object
loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are no longer mean
and homely, but a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of
Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any
Arcadian illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke and
soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him: Poverty is
indeed his companion, but Love also, and Courage; the simple
feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell under the straw roof,
are dear and venerable to his heart: and thus over the lowest
provinces of man's existence he pours the glory of his own soul; and
they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and brightened into a
beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest. He has a just
self-consciousness, which too often degenerates into pride; yet it is
a noble pride, for defence, not for offence; no cold suspicious
feeling, but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears himself,
we might say, like a King in exile: he is cast among the low, and
feels himself equal to the highest; yet he claims no rank, that none
may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the supercilious
he can subdue; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with
him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the "insolence of
condescension" cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need,
he forgets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And
yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders not apart
from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; nay throws himself
into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him. It is
moving to see how, in his darkest despondency, this proud being still
seeks {13} relief from friendship; unbosoms himself, often to the
unworthy; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a heart that
knows only the name of friendship. And yet he was "quick to learn;"
a man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no
concealment. His understanding saw through the hollowness even of
accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in his
heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among us; "a soul like an
Æolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through
them, changed itself into articulate melody."[19] And this was he
for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with
smugglers and vintners, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and
gauging ale-barrels! In such toils was that mighty Spirit
sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred years may pass on before another
such is given us to waste.