The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon me throughout this paper
only to touch upon those points in the life of Burns where correction or
amplification seemed desirable, leaves me little opportunity to speak of
the works which have made his name so famous. Yet, even here, a few
observations seem necessary.
At the time when the poet made his appearance and great first success,
his work was remarkable in two ways. For, first, in an age when poetry
had become abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to deal with
shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actual
circumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might
be. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularly
stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical
timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible,
and used language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit to
give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whom we
know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once that he
owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance, and watch
that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of life. He
has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in sliding or
walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of incompetence. You see
my memory fails me, and I positively cannot recollect whether his hero
was sliding or walking; as though a writer should describe a skirmish,
and the reader, at the end, be still uncertain whether it were a charge
of cavalry or a slow and stubborn advance of foot. There could be no
such ambiguity in Burns; his work is at the opposite pole from such
indefinite and stammering performances; and a whole lifetime passed in
the study of Shenstone would only lead a man further and further from
writing the _Address to a Louse_. Yet Burns, like most great artists,
proceeded from a school and continued a tradition; only the school and
tradition were Scotch, and not English. While the English language was
becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and English letters more
colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country,
and a different school of poetry tracing its descent, through King James
I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then
written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple; and, although not
shaped for heroic flights, it was a direct and vivid medium for all that
had to do with social life. Hence, whenever Scotch poets left their
laborious imitations of bad English verses, and fell back on their own
dialect, their style would kindle, and they would write of their
convivial and somewhat gross existences with pith and point. In Ramsay,
and far more in the poor lad Fergusson, there was mettle, humour,
literary courage, and a power of saying what they wished to say
definitely and brightly, which in the latter case should have justified
great anticipations. Had Burns died at the same age as Fergusson, he
would have left us literally nothing worth remark. To Ramsay and to
Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very uncommon degree, not only
following their tradition and using their measures, but directly and
avowedly imitating their pieces. The same tendency to borrow a hint, to
work on some one else’s foundation, is notable in Burns from first to
last, in the period of song-writing as well as in that of the early
poems; and strikes one oddly in a man of such deep originality, who left
so strong a print on all he touched, and whose work is so greatly
distinguished by that character of “inevitability” which Wordsworth
denied to Goethe.
When we remember Burns’s obligations to his predecessors, we must never
forget his immense advances on them. They had already “discovered”
nature; but Burns discovered poetry—a higher and more intense way of
thinking of the things that go to make up nature, a higher and more ideal
key of words in which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergusson excelled at
making a popular—or shall we say vulgar?—sort of society verses, comical
and prosaic, written, you would say, in taverns while a supper party
waited for its laureate’s word; but on the appearance of Burns, this
coarse and laughing literature was touched to finer issues, and learned
gravity of thought and natural pathos.
What he had gained from his predecessors was a direct, speaking style,
and to walk on his own feet instead of on academical stilts. There was
never a man of letters with more absolute command of his means; and we
may say of him, without excess, that his style was his slave. Hence that
energy of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner is tempted to
explain it by some special richness or aptitude in the dialect he wrote.
Hence that Homeric justice and completeness of description which gives us
the very physiognomy of nature, in body and detail, as nature is. Hence,
too, the unbroken literary quality of his best pieces, which keeps him
from any slip into the weariful trade of word-painting, and presents
everything, as everything should be presented by the art of words, in a
clear, continuous medium of thought. Principal Shairp, for instance,
gives us a paraphrase of one tough verse of the original; and for those
who know the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has the very quality
they are accustomed to look for and admire in Greek. The contemporaries
of Burns were surprised that he should visit so many celebrated mountains
and waterfalls, and not seize the opportunity to make a poem. Indeed, it
is not for those who have a true command of the art of words, but for
peddling, professional amateurs, that these pointed occasions are most
useful and inspiring. As those who speak French imperfectly are glad to
dwell on any topic they may have talked upon or heard others talk upon
before, because they know appropriate words for it in French, so the
dabbler in verse rejoices to behold a waterfall, because he has learned
the sentiment and knows appropriate words for it in poetry. But the
dialect of Burns was fitted to deal with any subject; and whether it was
a stormy night, a shepherd’s collie, a sheep struggling in the snow, the
conduct of cowardly soldiers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a
drunken man, or only a village cockcrow in the morning, he could find
language to give it freshness, body, and relief. He was always ready to
borrow the hint of a design, as though he had a difficulty in
commencing—a difficulty, let us say, in choosing a subject out of a world
which seemed all equally living and significant to him; but once he had
the subject chosen, he could cope with nature single-handed, and make
every stroke a triumph. Again, his absolute mastery in his art enabled
him to express each and all of his different humours, and to pass
smoothly and congruously from one to another. Many men invent a dialect
for only one side of their nature—perhaps their pathos or their humour,
or the delicacy of their senses—and, for lack of a medium, leave all the
others unexpressed. You meet such an one, and find him in conversation
full of thought, feeling, and experience, which he has lacked the art to
employ in his writings. But Burns was not thus hampered in the practice
of the literary art; he could throw the whole weight of his nature into
his work, and impregnate it from end to end. If Doctor Johnson, that
stilted and accomplished stylist, had lacked the sacred Boswell, what
should we have known of him? and how should we have delighted in his
acquaintance as we do? Those who spoke with Burns tell us how much we
have lost who did not. But I think they exaggerate their privilege: I
think we have the whole Burns in our possession set forth in his
consummate verses.
It was by his style, and not by his matter, that he affected Wordsworth
and the world. There is, indeed, only one merit worth considering in a
man of letters—that he should write well; and only one damning fault—that
he should write ill. We are little the better for the reflections of the
sailor’s parrot in the story. And so, if Burns helped to change the
course of literary history, it was by his frank, direct, and masterly
utterance, and not by his homely choice of subjects. That was imposed
upon him, not chosen upon a principle. He wrote from his own experience,
because it was his nature so to do, and the tradition of the school from
which he proceeded was fortunately not opposed to homely subjects. But
to these homely subjects he communicated the rich commentary of his
nature; they were all steeped in Burns; and they interest us not in
themselves, but because they have been passed through the spirit of so
genuine and vigorous a man. Such is the stamp of living literature; and
there was never any more alive than that of Burns.
What a gust of sympathy there is in him sometimes flowing out in byways
hitherto unused, upon mice, and flowers, and the devil himself; sometimes
speaking plainly between human hearts; sometimes ringing out in
exultation like a peal of bells! When we compare the _Farmer’s
Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie_, with the clever and inhumane
production of half a century earlier, _The Auld Man’s Mare’s dead_, we
see in a nutshell the spirit of the change introduced by Burns. And as
to its manner, who that has read it can forget how the collie, Luath, in
the _Twa Dogs_, describes and enters into the merry-making in the
cottage?
“The luntin’ pipe an’ sneeshin’ mill,
Are handed round wi’ richt guid will;
The canty auld folks crackin’ crouse,
The young anes rantin’ through the house—
My heart has been sae fain to see them
That I for joy hae barkit wi’ them.”
It was this ardent power of sympathy that was fatal to so many women,
and, through Jean Armour, to himself at last. His humour comes from him
in a stream so deep and easy that I will venture to call him the best of
humorous poets. He turns about in the midst to utter a noble sentiment
or a trenchant remark on human life, and the style changes and rises to
the occasion. I think it is Principal Shairp who says, happily, that
Burns would have been no Scotchman if he had not loved to moralise;
neither, may we add, would he have been his father’s son; but (what is
worthy of note) his moralisings are to a large extent the moral of his
own career. He was among the least impersonal of artists. Except in the
_Jolly Beggars_, he shows no gleam of dramatic instinct. Mr. Carlyle has
complained that _Tam o’ Shanter_ is, from the absence of this quality,
only a picturesque and external piece of work; and I may add that in the
_Twa Dogs_ it is precisely in the infringement of dramatic propriety that
a great deal of the humour of the speeches depends for its existence and
effect. Indeed, Burns was so full of his identity that it breaks forth
on every page; and there is scarce an appropriate remark either in praise
or blame of his own conduct, but he has put it himself into verse. Alas!
for the tenor of these remarks! They are, indeed, his own pitiful
apology for such a marred existence and talents so misused and stunted;
and they seem to prove for ever how small a part is played by reason in
the conduct of man’s affairs. Here was one, at least, who with unfailing
judgment predicted his own fate; yet his knowledge could not avail him,
and with open eyes he must fulfil his tragic destiny. Ten years before
the end he had written his epitaph; and neither subsequent events, nor
the critical eyes of posterity, have shown us a word in it to alter.
And, lastly, has he not put in for himself the last unanswerable plea?—
“Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark—”
One? Alas! I fear every man and woman of us is “greatly dark” to all
their neighbours, from the day of birth until death removes them, in
their greatest virtues as well as in their saddest faults; and we, who
have been trying to read the character of Burns, may take home the lesson
and be gentle in our thoughts.