denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly passing away: our
chief literary men, {46} whatever other faults they may have, no
longer live among us like a French Colony, or some knot of Propaganda
Missionaries; but like natural-born subjects of the soil, partaking
and sympathizing in all our attachments, humors, and habits. Our
literature no longer grows in water but in mould, and with the true
racy virtues of the soil and climate. How much of this change may be
due to Burns, or to any other individual, it might be difficult to
estimate.[72] Direct literary imitation of Burns was not to be
looked for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of domestic
subjects, could not but operate from afar; and certainly in no heart
did the love of country ever burn with a warmer glow than in that of
Burns: "a tide of Scottish prejudice,"[73] as he modestly calls this
deep and generous feeling, "had been poured along his veins; and he
felt that it would boil there till the flood-gates shut in eternal
rest." It seemed to him, as if _he_ could do so little for his
country, and yet would so gladly have done all. One small province
stood open for him,--that of Scottish Song; and how eagerly he
entered on it, how devotedly he labored there! In his toilsome
journeyings, this object never quits him; it is the little
happy-valley of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own
affliction, {47} he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the
muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the oblivion that
was covering it![74] These were early feelings, and they abode with
him to the end:--
... A wish (I mind its power),
A wish, that to my latest hour
Will strongly heave my breast,--
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake,
Some useful plan or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least.
The rough bur Thistle spreading wide
Amang the bearded bear,
I turn'd my weeding-clips aside,
And spared the symbol dear.[75]
But to leave the mere literary character of Burns, which has already
detained us too long. Far more interesting than any of his written
works, as it appears to us, are his acted ones: the Life he willed
and was fated to lead among his fellow-men. These Poems are but like
little rhymed fragments scattered here and there in the grand
unrhymed Romance of his earthly existence; and it is only when
intercalated in this at their proper places, that they attain their
full measure of significance. And this too, alas! was but a
fragment! The plan of a mighty edifice had been sketched; some
columns, porticos, firm masses of building, stand completed; the rest
more or less clearly indicated; with many a far-stretching {48}
tendency, which only studious and friendly eyes can now trace towards
the purposed termination. For the work is broken off in the middle,
almost in the beginning; and rises among us, beautiful and sad, at
once unfinished and a ruin! If charitable judgment was necessary in
estimating his Poems, and justice required that the aim and the
manifest power to fulfil it must often be accepted for the
fulfilment; much more is this the case in regard to his Life, the sum
and result of all his endeavors, where his difficulties came upon him
not in detail only, but in mass; and so much has been left
unaccomplished, nay was mistaken, and altogether marred.
Properly speaking, there is but one era in the life of Burns, and
that the earliest. We have not youth and manhood, but only youth:
for, to the end, we discern no decisive change in the complexion of
his character; in his thirty-seventh year, he is still, as it were,
in youth. With all that resoluteness of judgment, that penetrating
insight, and singular maturity of intellectual power, exhibited in
his writings, he never attains to any clearness regarding himself: to
the last, he never ascertains his peculiar aim, even with such
distinctness as is common among ordinary men; and therefore never can
pursue it with that singleness of will which insures success and some
contentment to such men.[76] To the last, he wavers between two
purposes: glorying in his talent, like a true poet, he yet cannot
consent to make this his chief and sole glory, and to follow it as
the one thing needful, through poverty or riches, through good or
evil {49} report.[77] Another far meaner ambition still cleaves to
him; he must dream and struggle about a certain "Rock of
Independence;" which, natural and even admirable as it might be, was
still but a warring with the world, on the comparatively
insignificant ground of his being more completely or less completely
supplied with money than others; of his standing at a higher or at a
lower altitude in general estimation than others. For the world
still appears to him, as to the young, in borrowed colors; he expects
from it what it cannot give to any man; seeks for contentment, not
within himself, in action and wise effort, but from without, in the
kindness of circumstances, in love, friendship, honor, pecuniary
ease. He would be happy, not actively and in himself, but passively
and from some ideal cornucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by his own
labor, but showered on him by the beneficence of Destiny. Thus, like
a young man, he cannot gird himself up for any worthy well-calculated
goal, but swerves to and fro, between passionate hope and remorseful
disappointment: rushing onwards {50} with a deep tempestuous force,
he surmounts or breaks asunder many a barrier; travels, nay advances
far, but advancing only under uncertain guidance, is ever and anon
turned from his path; and to the last cannot reach the only true
happiness of a man, that of clear decided Activity in the sphere for
which, by nature and circumstances, he has been fitted and appointed.
We do not say these things in dispraise of Burns; nay, perhaps, they
but interest us the more in his favor. This blessing is not given
soonest to the best; but rather, it is often the greatest minds that
are latest in obtaining it; for where most is to be developed, most
time may be required to develop it. A complex condition had been
assigned him from without; as complex a condition from within: no
"pre-established harmony" existed between the clay soil of Mossgiel
and the empyrean soul of Robert Burns; it was not wonderful that the
adjustment between them should have been long postponed, and his arm
long cumbered, and his sight confused, in so vast and discordant an
economy as he had been appointed steward over. Byron was, at his
death, but a year younger than Burns; and through life, as it might
have appeared, far more simply situated: yet in him too we can trace
no such adjustment, no such moral manhood; but at best, and only a
little before his end, the beginning of what seemed such.
By much the most striking incident in Burns's Life is his journey to
Edinburgh; but perhaps a still more important one is his residence at
Irvine so early as in his twenty-third year. Hitherto his life had
been poor and toilworn; but otherwise not ungenial, and, with all its
distresses, by no means unhappy. In his {51} parentage, deducting
outward circumstances, he had every reason to reckon himself
fortunate. His father was a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest
character, as the best of our peasants are; valuing knowledge,
possessing some, and, what is far better and rarer, openminded for
more: a man with a keen insight and devout heart; reverent towards
God, friendly therefore, at once, and fearless towards all that God
has made: in one word, though but a hard-handed peasant, a complete
and fully unfolded _Man_. Such a father is seldom found in any rank
in society; and was worth descending far in society to seek.[78]
Unfortunately he was very poor; had he been even a little richer,
almost never so little, the whole might have issued far otherwise.
Mighty events turn on a straw; the crossing of a brook decides the
conquest of the world. Had this William Burns's small seven acres of
nursery-ground anywise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent to
school; had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some
university; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular
well-trained intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of
British Literature,--for it lay in him to have done this![79] But
the nursery did not prosper; poverty sank his whole family below the
help of even our cheap school-system: Burns remained a hard-worked
ploughboy, and British literature took its own course. Nevertheless,
even in this rugged scene there is much to nourish him. If he
drudges, it is {52} with his brother, and for his father and mother,
whom he loves, and would fain shield from want. Wisdom is not
banished from their poor hearth, nor the balm of natural feeling: the
solemn words, "Let us worship God," are heard there from a
"priest-like father;"[80] if threatenings of unjust men throw mother
and children into tears, these are tears not of grief only, but of
holiest affection; every heart in that humble group feels itself the
closer knit to every other; in their hard warfare they are there
together, a "little band of brethren." Neither are such tears, and
the deep beauty that dwells in them, their only portion. Light
visits the hearts as it does the eyes of all living: there is a
force, too, in this youth, that enables him to trample on misfortune;
nay to bind it under his feet to make him sport. For a bold, warm,
buoyant humor of character has been given him; and so the
thick-coming shapes of evil are welcomed with a gay, friendly irony,
and in their closest pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope.
Vague yearnings of ambition fail not, as he grows up; dreamy fancies
hang like cloud-cities around him; the curtain of Existence is slowly
rising, in many-colored splendor and gloom: and the auroral light of
first love is gilding his horizon, and the music of song is on his
path; and so he walks
... "in glory and in joy,
Behind his plough, upon the mountain side."[81]
We ourselves know, from the best evidence, that up to this date Burns
was happy; nay that he was {53} the gayest, brightest, most
fantastic, fascinating being to be found in the world; more so even
than he ever afterwards appeared.[82] But now, at this early age, he
quits the paternal roof; goes forth into looser, louder, more
exciting society; and becomes initiated in those dissipations, those
vices, which a certain class of philosophers have asserted to be a
natural preparative for entering on active life: a kind of mud-bath,
in which the youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we
suppose, cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid
on him. We shall not dispute much with this class of philosophers;
we hope they are mistaken: for Sin and Remorse so easily beset us at
all stages of life, and are always such indifferent company, that it
seems hard we should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to
meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term in their leprous
armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it
cannot be the training one receives in this Devil's service, but only
our determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly
Action. We become men, not after we have been dissipated, and
disappointed in the chase of false pleasure; but after we have
ascertained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in through
this life; how mad it is to hope for contentment to our infinite soul
from the _gifts_ of this extremely finite world; {54} that a man must
be sufficient for himself; and that for suffering and enduring there
is no remedy but striving and doing. Manhood begins when we have in
any way made truce with necessity; begins even when we have
surrendered to necessity, as the most part only do; but begins
joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to
Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in
Necessity we are free. Surely such lessons as this last, which, in
one shape or other, is the grand lesson for every mortal man, are
better learned from the lips of a devout mother, in the looks and
actions of a devout father, while the heart is yet soft and pliant,
than in collision with the sharp adamant of Fate, attracting us to
shipwreck us, when the heart is grown hard, and may be broken before
it will become contrite. Had Burns continued to learn this, as he
was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he would have
learned it fully, which he never did; and been saved many a lasting
aberration, many a bitter hour and year of remorseful sorrow.
It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in Burns's
history, that at this time too he became involved in the religious
quarrels of his district; that he was enlisted and feasted, as the
fighting man of the New-Light Priesthood, in their highly
unprofitable warfare. At the tables of these freeminded clergy he
learned much more than was needful for him. Such liberal ridicule of
fanaticism awakened in his mind scruples about Religion itself; and a
whole world of Doubts, which it required quite another set of
conjurers than these men to exorcise. We do not say that such an
intellect as his could have escaped similar doubts at some period of
his history; or even {55} that he could, at a later period, have come
through them altogether victorious and unharmed: but it seems
peculiarly unfortunate that this time, above all others, should have
been fixed for the encounter. For now, with principles assailed by
evil example from without, by "passions raging like demons"[83a] from
within, he had little need of sceptical misgivings to whisper treason
in the heat of the battle, or to cut off his retreat if he were
already defeated. He loses his feeling of innocence; his mind is at
variance with itself; the old divinity no longer presides there; but
wild Desires and wild Repentance alternately oppress him. Ere long,
too, he has committed himself before the world; his character for
sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted worldlings can
even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes of men; and his only refuge
consists in trying to disbelieve his guiltiness, and is but a refuge
of lies. The blackest desperation now gathers over him, broken only
by red lightnings of remorse. The whole fabric of his life is
blasted asunder; for now not only his character, but his personal
liberty is to be lost; men and Fortune are leagued for his hurt;
"hungry Ruin has him in the wind." He sees no escape but the saddest
of all: exile from his loved country, to a country in every sense
inhospitable and abhorrent to him. While the "gloomy night is
gathering fast,"[83b] in mental storm and solitude, as well as in
physical, he sings his wild farewell to Scotland:--
Farewell, my friends; farewell, my foes!
My peace with these, my love with those:
{56}
The bursting tears my heart declare;
Adieu, my native banks of Ayr![84]
Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods; but still a false
transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is invited to Edinburgh;
hastens thither with anticipating heart; is welcomed as in a triumph,
and with universal blandishment and acclamation; whatever is wisest,
whatever is greatest or loveliest there, gathers round him, to gaze
on his face, to show him honor, sympathy, affection. Burns's
appearance among the sages and nobles of Edinburgh must be regarded
as one of the most singular phenomena in modern Literature; almost
like the appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sovereigns of
modern Politics. For it is nowise as "a mockery king,"[85] set there
by favor, transiently and for a purpose, that he will let himself be
treated, still less is he a mad Rienzi, whose sudden elevation turns
his too weak head: but he stands there on his own basis; cool,
unastonished, holding his equal rank from Nature herself; putting
forth no claim which there is not strength in him, as well as about
him to vindicate. Mr. Lockhart has some forcible observations on
this point:--
"It needs no effort of imagination," says he, "to conceive what the
sensations of an isolated set of {57} scholars (almost all either
clergymen or professors) must have been in the presence of this
big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with his great flashing
eyes, who, having forced his way among them from the plough-tail at a
single stride, manifested in the whole strain of his bearing and
conversation a most thorough conviction, that in the society of the
most eminent men of his nation he was exactly where he was entitled
to be; hardly deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an
occasional symptom of being flattered by their notice; by turns
calmly measured himself against the most cultivated understandings of
his time in discussion; overpowered the _bon-mots_ of the most
celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, impregnated
with all the burning life of genius; astounded bosoms habitually
enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social reserve, by compelling
them to tremble,--nay to tremble visibly,--beneath the fearless touch
of natural pathos; and all this without indicating the smallest
willingness to be ranked among those professional ministers of
excitement, who are content to be paid in money and smiles for doing
what the spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their
own persons, even if they had the power of doing it; and last, and
probably worst of all, who was known to be in the habit of enlivening
societies which they would have scorned to approach, still more
frequently than their own, with eloquence no less magnificent; with
wit, in all likelihood still more daring; often enough, as the
superiors whom he fronted without alarm might have guessed from the
beginning, and had ere long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at
themselves."[86]
{58}
The farther we remove from this scene, the more singular will it seem
to us: details of the exterior aspect of it are already full of
interest. Most readers recollect Mr. Walker's personal interviews
with Burns as among the best passages of his Narrative: a time will
come when this reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott's, slight though it
is, will also be precious:--
"As for Burns," writes Sir Walter, "I may truly say, _Virgilium vidi
tantum_.[87] I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-87, when he came first
to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested
in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him: but I had
very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less
with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most
frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my
father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to
dinner; but had no opportunity to keep his word; otherwise I might
have seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one
day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's,[88] where there were
several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the
celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we youngsters sat silent,
looked and listened. The only thing I remember which was remarkable
in Burns's manner, was the effect produced upon him by a print of
Bunbury's,[89] representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog
sitting in misery on one side,--on the other, his widow, {59} with a
child in her arms. These lines were written beneath:--
'Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,
The child of misery baptised in tears.'
"Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the ideas
which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked
whose the lines were; and it chanced that nobody but myself
remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's
called by the unpromising title of 'The Justice of Peace.'[90] I
whispered my information to a friend present; he mentioned it to
Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere
civility, I then received and still recollect with very great
pleasure.
"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish;
a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of
its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents.
His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's[91] picture: but to me
it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in
perspective. I think his {60} countenance was more massive than it
looks in any of the portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I
not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old
Scotch school, _i.e._, none of your modern agriculturists who keep
laborers for their drudgery, but the _douce gudeman_ who held his own
plough. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all
his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical
character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which
glowed (I say literally _glowed_) when he spoke with feeling or
interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I
have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation
expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption.
Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he
expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least
intrusive forwardness: and when he differed in opinion, he did not
hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty. I
do not remember any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be
quoted; nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, where he
did not recognize me, as I could not expect he should. He was much
caressed in Edinburgh: but (considering what literary emoluments have
been since his day) the efforts made for his relief were extremely
trifling.
"I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns's
acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited; and also that,
having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he
talked of them with too much humility as his models: there was
doubtless national predilection in his estimate,
{61}
"This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to add, that
his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer dressed
in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak _in malam
partem_, when I say, I never saw a man in company with his superiors
in station or information more perfectly free from either the reality
or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe
it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always
with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their
attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon
remark this.--I do not know anything I can add to these recollections
of forty years since."[92]
The conduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of favor; the calm,
unaffected, manly manner in which he not only bore it, but estimated
its value, has justly been regarded as the best proof that could be
given of his real vigor and integrity of mind. A little natural
vanity, some touches of hypocritical modesty, some glimmerings of
affectation, at least some fear of being thought affected, we could
have pardoned in almost any man; but no such indication is to be
traced here. In his unexampled situation the young peasant is not a
moment perplexed; so many strange lights do not confuse him, do not
lead him astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive that this
winter did him great and lasting injury. A somewhat clearer
knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their characters, it did
afford him; but a sharper feeling of Fortune's unequal arrangements
in their social destiny it also left with him. He had seen the gay
and gorgeous arena, in which the powerful are born {62} to play their
parts; nay had himself stood in the midst of it; and he felt more
bitterly than ever, that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part
or lot in that splendid game. From this time a jealous indignant
fear of social degradation takes possession of him; and perverts, so
far as aught could pervert, his private contentment, and his feelings
towards his richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent
enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could he but have
rightly willed this; it was clear also that he willed something far
different, and therefore could not make one. Unhappy it was that he
had not power to choose the one, and reject the other; but must halt
forever between two opinions, two objects; making hampered
advancement towards either. But so is it with many men: we "long for
the merchandise, yet would fain keep the price;" and so stand
chaffering with Fate in vexatious altercation, till the night come,
and our fair is over!