endeavor to be otherwise: this it had been well could he have once
for all admitted, and considered as finally settled. He was poor,
truly; but hundreds even of his own class and order of minds have
been poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it: nay his own
Father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful destiny than his was;
and he did not yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all
moral intents prevailing, against it. True, Burns had little means,
had even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation;
but so much the more precious was what little he had. In all these
external respects his case was hard; but very far from the hardest.
Poverty, incessant drudgery and much worse evils, it has often been
the lot of Poets and wise men to strive with, and their glory to
conquer. Locke was banished as a traitor; and wrote his "Essay on
the Human Understanding" sheltering himself in a Dutch garret. Was
Milton rich or at his ease when he composed "Paradise Lost"? Not
only low, but fallen from a height; not only poor, but impoverished;
in darkness and with dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal
song, and found fit audience, though few.[116] Did not Cervantes
finish his work, a maimed soldier and in prison? Nay, was not the
"Araucana,"[117] which Spain acknowledges as its Epic, written
without even the aid of paper; on {79} scraps of leather, as the
stout fighter and voyager snatched any moment from that wild warfare?
And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted? Two things; both
which, it seems to us, are indispensable for such men. They had a
true, religious principle of morals; and a single, not a double aim
in their activity. They were not self-seekers and self-worshippers;
but seekers and worshippers of something far better than Self. Not
personal enjoyment was their object; but a high, heroic idea of
Religion, of Patriotism, of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the other
form, ever hovered before them; in which cause they neither shrank
from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness it as something
wonderful; but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so
to spend and be spent. Thus the "golden-calf of Self-love," however
curiously carved, was not their Deity; but the Invisible Goodness,
which alone is man's reasonable service. This feeling was as a
celestial fountain, whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty
all the provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a
word, they willed one thing, to which all other things were
subordinated and made subservient; and therefore they accomplished
it. The wedge will rend rocks; but its edge must be sharp and
single: if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces and will rend
nothing.
Part of this superiority these men owed to their age; in which
heroism and devotedness were still practised, or at least not yet
disbelieved in; but much of it likewise they owed to themselves.
With {80} Burns, again, it was different. His morality, in most of
its practical points, is that of a mere worldly man; enjoyment, in a
finer or coarser shape, is the only thing he longs and strives for.
A noble instinct sometimes raises him above this; but an instinct
only, and acting only for moments. He has no Religion; in the
shallow age, where his days were cast, Religion was not discriminated
from the New and Old Light _forms_ of Religion; and was, with these,
becoming obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive
with a trembling adoration, but there is no temple in his
understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. His
religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a
great Perhaps."
He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart; could he but have loved it
purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it had been well. For
Poetry, as Burns could have followed it, is but another form of
Wisdom, of Religion: is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also
was denied him. His poetry is a stray vagrant gleam, which will not
be extinguished within him, yet rises not to be the true light of his
path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. It was not
necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or to seem, "independent;" but
it _was_ necessary for him to be at one with his own heart; to place
what was highest in his nature highest also in his life; "to seek
within himself for that consistency and sequence, which external
events would forever refuse him." He was born a poet; poetry was the
celestial element of his being, and should have been the soul of his
whole endeavors. Lifted into that serene ether, whither he had wings
given him to mount, he would have needed {81} no other elevation:
poverty, neglect, and all evil, save the desecration of himself and
his Art, were a small matter to him; the pride and the passions of
the world lay far beneath his feet; and he looked down alike on noble
and slave, on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp of man,
with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with sympathy, with
pity. Nay, we question whether for his culture as a Poet poverty and
much suffering for a season were not absolutely advantageous. Great
men, in looking back over their lives, have testified to that effect.
"I would not for much," says Jean Paul, "that I had been born
richer." And yet Paul's birth was poor enough; for, in another
place, he adds: "The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I
had often only the latter."[118] But the gold that is refined in the
hottest furnace comes out the purest; or, as he has himself expressed
it, "the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it has been trained in
a darkened cage."
A man like Burns might have divided his hours between poetry and
virtuous industry; industry which all true feeling sanctions, nay
prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp
of thrones: but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's
banquets was an ill-starred and inauspicious attempt. How could he
be at ease at such banquets? What had he to do there, mingling his
music {82} with the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices;
brightening the thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from
heaven? Was it his aim to enjoy life! To-morrow he must go drudge
as an Exciseman! We wonder not that Burns became moody, indignant,
and at times an offender against certain rules of society; but rather
that he did not grow utterly frantic, and run _amuck_ against them
all. How could a man, so falsely placed, by his own or others'
fault, ever know contentment or peaceable diligence for an hour?
What he did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore to do,
alike fill us with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of
his character.
Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness; but not in
others; only in himself; least of all in simple increase of wealth
and worldly "respectability." We hope we have now heard enough about
the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay,
have we not seen another instance of it in these very days? Byron, a
man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is
born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer:
the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by
inheritance; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another
province, by his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he
happy, is he good, is he true? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and
strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal; and soon feels that all
this is but mounting to the housetop to reach the stars! Like Burns,
he is only a proud man; might, like him, have "purchased a
pocket-copy of Milton to study the character of Satan;" for Satan is
also Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and {83} the
model apparently of his conduct.[119] As in Burns's case too, the
celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; both poet
and man of the world he must not be; vulgar Ambition will not live
kindly with poetic Adoration; he _cannot_ serve God and Mammon.
Byron, like Burns, is not happy; nay he is the most wretched of all
men. His life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a
strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products of a
world; but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now--we look sadly
into the ashes of a crater, which ere long will fill itself with snow!
Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their generation,
to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth; they had a message to
deliver, which left them no rest till it was accomplished; in dim
throes of pain, this divine behest lay smouldering within them; for
they knew not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious
anticipation, and they had to die without articulately uttering it.
They are in the camp of the Unconverted; yet not as high messengers
of rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft flattering singers,
and in pleasant fellowship will they live there: they are first
adulated, then persecuted; they accomplish little for others; they
find no peace for themselves, but only death and the peace of the
grave. We confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we
view the fate of these noble {84} souls, so richly gifted, yet ruined
to so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems to us there is a
stern moral taught in this piece of history,--_twice_ told us in our
own time! Surely to men of like genius, if there be any such, it
carries with it a lesson of deep impressive significance. Surely it
would become such a man, furnished for the highest of all
enterprises, that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what
it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. For the
words of Milton are true in all times, and were never truer than in
this: "He who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a
heroic poem."[120] If he cannot first so make his life, then let him
hasten from this arena; for neither its lofty glories, nor its
fearful perils, are fit for him. Let him dwindle into a modish
balladmonger; let him worship and besing the idols of the time, and
the time will not fail to reward him. If, indeed, he can endure to
live in that capacity! Byron and Burns could not live as
idol-priests, but the fire of their own hearts consumed them; and
better it was for them that they could not. For it is not in the
favor of the great or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in
the inexpugnable citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns's
strength must lie. Let the great stand aloof from him, or know how
to reverence him. Beautiful is the union of wealth with favor {85}
and furtherance for literature; like the costliest flower-jar
enclosing the loveliest amaranth. Yet let not the relation be
mistaken. A true poet is not one whom they can hire by money or
flattery to be a minister of their pleasures; their writer of
occasional verses, their purveyor of table-wit; he cannot be their
menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both
parties, let no such union be attempted! Will a Courser of the Sun
work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse? His hoofs are of fire,
and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all lands;
will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for earthly appetites
from door to door?
But we must stop short in these considerations, which would lead us
to boundless lengths. We had something to say on the public moral
character of Burns; but this also we must forbear. We are far from
regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the
average; nay from doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten
thousand. Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where the
_Plebiscita_ of common civic reputations are pronounced, he has
seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder.
But the world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men;
unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the
substance: It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes; and not
positively but negatively, less on what is done right, than on what
is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection from the
mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the _ratio_ of
these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This
orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar
system; or it may be a {86} city hippodrome; nay the circle of a
ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of
deflection only are measured: and it is assumed that the diameter of
the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when
compared with them! Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel
condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rousseaus, which one never listens
to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor with shrouds
and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been
all-wise and all-powerful: but to know _how_ blameworthy, tell us
first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to
Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.[121]
With our readers in general, with men of right feeling anywhere, we
are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration he lies
enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one
of marble; neither will his Works, even as they are, pass away from
the memory of men. While the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like
mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of
traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves; this little
Valclusa[122] Fountain will also arrest our eye: for this also is of
Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of
the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and
often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and
muse among its rocks and pines.
[1] The text followed is that of Carlyle's latest authorized form.
Important variations from the form as printed in the _Edinburgh
Review_ are pointed out.
[2] Samuel Butler (1612-1680). _Hudibras_ was one of Carlyle's
favorite books.
[3] "In 1813 a public meeting was held in Dumfries; a subscription
was opened, and, contributions flowing in rapidly from all quarters,
a costly mausoleum was at length erected on the most elevated site
which the churchyard presented. Thither the remains of the poet were
solemnly transferred on the 5th of June, 1815."--Lockhart, chap. ix.
Carlyle used _brave_ ironically in the sense of _beautiful_,
_splendid_. Lockhart says mildly: "The structure is perhaps more
gaudy than might have been wished."
[4] The name of the _Mill Vennel_ in Dumfries, where Burns lived from
May, 1793, until his death, was changed to _Burns Street_.
[5] The five _Lives_ of Burns referred to by Carlyle are probably
those mentioned by Lockhart, by Walker, Currie, Heron, Irving, and
Peterkin. In reality the number was still larger.
[6] To understand these references, read any good sketch of
Shakespeare's life.
[7] "_The Caledonian Hunt_, an association of the principal of the
nobility and gentry of Scotland, extended their patronage to our
bard. He repaid the notice by a dedication of the enlarged and
improved [_the first Edinburgh_] edition of his poems."--Currie's
_Life of Burns_.
[8] In Scotland _writer_ is used loosely of law agents, solicitors,
attorneys, and the like, and sometimes even of their principal
clerks. Burns alludes to the _Ayr writers_ in _The Brigs of Ayr_.
[9] _The Edinburgh Review_ owed much of its success to Archibald
Constable, its first printer. Constable rose to be one of the chief
publishers of his time, and is especially famous for his connection
with Scott, but became bankrupt in 1826. _Constable's Miscellany of
Original and Selected Publications in Literature, Science, and the
Arts_ has a pathetic interest as being the poor fulfilment of a
scheme that he had formed, before his failure, of a series of cheap
volumes that should sell, he told Scott, "not by thousands or tens of
thousands, but by hundreds of thousands--aye, by millions."
[10] Author of _Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of
Virginia to the Territory of Illinois_. (London, 1818.)
[11] Carlyle's judgment on Lockhart's work seems to have improved
with reflection. In a letter to his brother, June 10, 1828, he
writes: "Lockhart had written a kind of _Life of Burns_, and men in
general were making another uproar about Burns; it is this Book (a
trivial enough one) which I am to _pretend_ reviewing."
[12] The apologetic expressions in the early part of this essay may,
as Mr. H. W. Boynton well suggests in his excellent edition, be
relics of Jeffrey's editing.
[13] Carlyle is always extreme in his judgments, and here is unjustly
contemptuous of men whom, as the quotation from Scott below (p. 60)
will show, Burns always regarded as his models, and whom he often
directly and openly imitated. Ramsay has been admired by men as
different as Pope and Leigh Hunt; and Stevenson, whose estimate of
these men in his essay on _Some Aspects of Robert Burns_ it would be
well to read, places the "poor lad Fergusson" even higher than Ramsay.
[14] Here Carlyle touches on the source of his own power,--the maxim
that the pleasure of criticism deprives us of that of vivid
appreciation does not apply to him.
[15] The _Tragic Fragment_ printed in Burns's works was written when
he was only nineteen. And in 1790 Burns told friends that he was
preparing to write a play on a subject drawn from Scottish history.
[16] Though Carlyle never changed his opinion of a true poet, his
later writings show a very different estimate of the value of
conquerors to the world. After his removal to London, he writes but
little on literature, and is usually full of scorn for the profession
of letters. He tends to idealize mere strength of will and brute
force of character, if accompanied by sincerity. He praises the
power of silent action; and his favorite heroes are men of deeds,
like Cromwell and Frederick.
[17] See _To a Mountain Daisy_ and _To a Mouse_. Cranreuch=hoar
frost.
[18] This passage is suggested by a prose entry in Burns's
_Common-Place Book_ (April, 1784), which serves as introduction to
the poem _Winter_. The words in italics are from Psalm 104.
[19] The figure is a favorite one with Burns; see, for example, the
passage quoted below, page 30. The present quotation may be from
Richter (compare p. 81), in whom, according to Mr. Boynton, the
figure is also frequent.
[20] "Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent
Humani voltus; si vis me flere, dolendum est
Primum ipsi tibi."
--_Ars Poetica_, 101-103.
"As men's faces laugh with those that laugh, so they weep with those
that weep; if thou wouldst have me weep, thou must first feel grief
thyself."
[21] Sincerity is the test by which Carlyle judges all men; praise of
it is one of the keynotes of his writings. Unfortunately he often
confounds it with mere brute force of character and fixity of purpose.
[22] "How perpetually he [Burns] was alive to the dread of being
looked down on as a man, even by those who most zealously applauded
the works of his genius, might perhaps be traced through the whole
sequence of his letters. When writing to men of high station, at
least, he preserves, in every instance, the attitude of
self-defence."--Lockhart, chap. v.
[23] Scott, Byron, Moore, Southey, and Cooper are the most obvious
objects of this attack; but they had a host of imitators. Carlyle,
because of his intense moral earnestness, had no sympathy with
literature written only to give amusement, regardless of truth to
life. As usual, his view, though stimulating, is one-sided. Many of
the most justly famous books, notably the _Arabian Nights_, are great
by the pure charm of incident and invention.
[24] "A printing-house in London, which was noted in the eighteenth
century for the publication of trashy sentimental novels."--_Century
Dictionary of Names_.
[25] A famous gaming club-house in London.
[26] The reference is to Macaulay, essay on Milton.
[27] The two poems, _Halloween_ and _The Holy Fair_, must be read to
understand the references. Any encyclopædia will explain the Council
of Trent and the Roman Jubilee.
[28] Carlyle had little interest in the fine arts for their own sake;
perhaps he was attracted to Retzsch by his illustrations of Schiller
and Goethe.
[29] The passage beginning here, and extending through the quotation
on page 27, is not found in the _Edinburgh Review_.
[30] _Bock'd_, vomited.
[31] _Fabulosus_ Hydaspes! [Note by Carlyle] see _Horace_: Odes, I.
22.
[32] Thaws that melt the snow in spots.
[33] Rolls.
[34] Spate, torrent.
[35] Muddy splashes.
[36] From _The Brigs of Ayr_. It is the fall of the new brig that is
prophesied: a strange slip on Carlyle's part.
[37] See _Iliad_, xviii. and xxii. Pope's translation may be bought
for a few cents; and is still in many ways the best.
[38] A name for a blacksmith, shortened to _Burnewin_, in _Scotch
Drink_.
[39] These lines are incorrectly quoted from an Irish song altered by
Burns, _Open the Door to Me, oh!_ They should read:
"The wan Moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, oh:
False friends, false love, farewell! for mair
I'll ne'er trouble them nor thee, oh."
[40] _To William Simpson_. _Wat_, wet.
[41] Dugald Stewart, professor of moral philosophy in the University
of Edinburgh, in a letter published in the _Life of Burns_, by Dr.
James Currie.
[42] In this sentence, as printed in the _Edinburgh Review_, we have
certainly a trace of Jeffrey's editing (cf. above, p. 7). There, by
the change of _weak-eyed maudlin_ into _extreme_, and of _random_
into _pervading_, the sneer is converted into a compliment.
Elsewhere Carlyle says of Keats: "The kind of man he was gets ever
more horrible to me. Force of hunger for pleasure of every kind, and
want of all other force.... Such a structure of soul, it would once
have been very evident, was a chosen 'Vessel of Hell.'" (Nichol:
_Life of Carlyle_, chap. v.) Such is the absurd result to which
Carlyle is led by his view of the necessity of a moral aim in all
literature.
[43] Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, January 1, 1789. The passage is also
quoted in Lockhart, chap. viii.
[44] Struggle.
[45] _A Winter Night_.
[46] _Ibid_.
[47] _Address to the Deil_.
[48] The quotation is from _Tristram Shandy_, vol. iii. chap. xi. In
the _Edinburgh Review_ it is preceded by the sentence: "He did not
know, probably, that Sterne had been beforehand with him." As a
matter of fact, Burns was well acquainted with Sterne; and it is
perhaps for that reason that Carlyle omitted the line when this essay
was reprinted, even though he thereby made a very abrupt transition.
[49] The two following paragraphs, including the quotation from
Burns, were not in the essay as printed in the _Edinburgh Preview_.
[50] "Facit indignatio versum."--_Juvenal_, I. 79.
[51] Dr. Johnson said of his friend Dr. Bathurst: "Dear Bathurst was
a man to my very heart's content; he hated a fool, and he hated a
rogue, and he hated a Whig. He was a very good hater."--Piozzi's
_Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson_. Carlyle himself, in his scornful
epigrams at men and institutions that seemed to him false and
insincere, is a near approach to a "good hater."
[52] Cf. _Paradise Lost_, I. 63.
[53] _Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald_.
[54] The authority for this account is a letter from Mr. Syme,
printed in Currie's _Life_. Burns himself sent _Scots wha hae wi'
Wallace bled_ to Thomson September 1, 1793, in company with a letter,
in which he says that the song was composed on an evening walk the
day before.
[55] See Virgil, _Æneid_, viii. 185-279.
[56] The reference is to Milton's _Il Penseroso_. The struggle of
fate and man's free will is the central idea of the typical Greek
tragedies.
[57] _Tristram Shandy_ was one of Carlyle's favorite books: Sterne
probably appealed to him by his humor and kindliness. Cf. p. 33,
above.
[58] Both Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) and Johann Karl August Musäus
(1735-1787) worked with materials drawn from popular legend. But
Musäus, in his most famous work, _Volksmärchen der Deutschen_
(_German Folk-Tales_), could not keep from introducing his own
satirical tone. Thus the book lacks the simplicity of genuine
folk-lore. Remember that Carlyle had already published translations
from both these men.
[59] Fearless crone.
[60] The scene of _The Jolly Beggars_ was an actual tavern in
Mauchline, kept by a Mrs. Gibson, called "Poosie-Nansie."
[61] David Teniers, the Younger (1610-1690).
[62] By John Gay (1685-1732).
[63] By John Fletcher (1579-1625).
[64] In particular, Lockhart, chap. ix.
[65] Jeronymo Osorio (1506-1580), called "the Cicero of Portugal:"
"Men began to hunt more after words than matter; more after the
choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the
sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and
illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the
weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of
invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery
vein of Osorius the Portugal bishop, to be in price."--Bacon: _Of the
Advancement of Learning_, I. iv. 2.
[66] Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun (1655-1716), in his _Account of a
Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the
Common Good of Mankind_, says: "I knew a very wise man" who "believed
if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who
should make the laws of a nation."