with queen-like indifference she cast it from her hand, like a thing of no
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 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." 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_." 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 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 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
Aeolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them,
changed itself into articulate melody." 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.
* * * * *
All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we
hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him;
brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete;
that wanted all things for completeness; culture, leisure, true effort,
nay, even length of life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere
occasional effusions, poured forth with little premeditation, expressing,
by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humor of the hour.
Never in one instance was it permitted him to grapple with any subject
with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the
concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such
imperfect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair.
Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as
they are, which forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them
by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have; for, after fifty years
of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still continue to be
read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more and more extensively; and
this not only by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory
causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the most hard,
unlettered, and truly natural class, who read little, and especially no
poetry, except because they find pleasure in it. The grounds of so
singular and wide a popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from
the palace to the hut, and over all regions where the English tongue is
spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it
seems to imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that
excellence?
To answer this question will not lead us far. The excellence of Burns is,
indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or prose; but, at the same
time, it is plain and easily recognized: his _Sincerity_, his indisputable
air of Truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic
sentimentalities; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling:
the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the
opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to
his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and
experience; it is the scenes he has lived and labored amidst, that he
describes: those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled
beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; and
he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or
interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it,
too, with such melody and modulation as he can; "in homely rustic jingle;"
but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding
readers and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be
first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule, _Si vis me flere_, is
applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every poet, to every
writer, we might say: Be true, if you would be believed. Let a man but
speak forth with genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual
condition, of his own heart; and other men, so strangely are we all knit
together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In
culture, in extent of view, we may stand above the speaker, or below him;
but in either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, will find
some response within us; for in spite of all casual varieties in outward
rank, or inward, as face answers to face, so does the heart of man to man.
This may appear a very simple principle, and one which Burns had little
merit in discovering. True, the discovery is easy enough: but the
practical appliance is not easy; is indeed the fundamental difficulty
which all poets have to strive with, and which scarcely one in the hundred
ever fairly surmounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from the
false; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to hate the
other in spite of all temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. With
either, or, as more commonly happens, with both, of these deficiencies,
combine a love of distinction, a wish to be original, which is seldom
wanting, and we have Affectation, the bane of literature, as Cant, its
elder brother, is of morals. How often does the one and the other front
us, in poetry, as in life! Great poets themselves are not always free of
this vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of greatness
that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after excellence will
sometimes solace itself with a mere shadow of success, and he who has much
to unfold, will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for instance, was
no common man: yet if we examine his poetry with this view, we shall find
it far enough from faultless. Generally speaking, we should say that it is
not true. He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often
with vulgar strong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon
ending in dislike or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would
ask, real men, we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not
these characters, does not the character of their author, which more or
less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the
occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to
look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this
volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with so much
scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humors, is more like
the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three
hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last
threescore and ten years. To our minds, there is a taint of this sort,
something which we should call theatrical, false and affected, in every
one of these otherwise powerful pieces. Perhaps _Don Juan_, especially the
latter parts of it, is the only thing approaching to a _sincere_ work, he
ever wrote; the only work where he showed himself, in any measure, as he
was; and seemed so intent on his subject, as, for moments, to forget
himself. Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, heartily detested it: nay,
he had declared formal war against it in words. So difficult is it even
for the strongest to make this primary attainment, which might seem the
simplest of all: _to read its own consciousness without mistakes_, without
errors involuntary or wilful! We recollect no poet of Burns's
susceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides with us to
the last, with such a total want of affectation. He is an honest man, and
an honest writer. In his successes and his failures, in his greatness and
his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, and glitters with no
lustre but his own. We reckon this to be a great virtue; to be, in fact,
the root of most other virtues, literary as well as moral.
It is necessary, however, to mention, that it is to the poetry of Burns
that we now allude; to those writings which he had time to meditate, and
where no special reason existed to warp his critical feeling, or obstruct
his endeavor to fulfil it. Certain of his Letters, and other fractions of
prose composition, by no means deserve this praise. Here, doubtless, there
is not the same natural truth of style; but on the contrary, something not
only stiff, but strained and twisted; a certain high-flown, inflated
tone; the stilting emphasis of which contrasts ill with the firmness and
rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. Thus no man, it would
appear, is altogether unaffected. Does not Shakspeare himself sometimes
premeditate the sheerest bombast! But even with regard to these Letters of
Burns, it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first was his
comparative deficiency in language. Burns, though for most part he writes
with singular force, and even gracefulness, is not master of English
prose, as he is of Scottish verse; not master of it, we mean, in
proportion to the depth and vehemence of his matter. These Letters strike
us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit
for expressing. But a second and weightier excuse is to be found in the
peculiarity of Burns's social rank. His correspondents are often men whose
relation to him he has never accurately ascertained; whom therefore he is
either forearming himself against, or else unconsciously flattering, by
adopting the style he thinks will please them. At all events, we should
remember that these faults, even in his Letters, are not the rule, but the
exception. Whenever he writes, as one would ever wish to do, to trusted
friends and on real interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous,
expressive, sometimes even beautiful. His Letters to Mrs. Dunlop are
uniformly excellent.
But we return to his poetry. In addition to its sincerity, it has another
peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or perhaps a means, of the
foregoing. It displays itself in his choice of subjects, or rather in his
indifference as to subjects, and the power he has of making all subjects
interesting. The ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is for ever
seeking, in external circumstances, the help which can be found only in
himself. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or
comeliness; home is not poetical but prosaic; it is in some past, distant,
conventional world, that poetry resides for him; were he there and not
here, were he thus and not so, it would be well with him. Hence our
innumerable host of rose-colored novels and iron-mailed epics, with their
locality not on the Earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence our
Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in
turbans, and copper-colored Chiefs in wampum, and so many other truculent
figures from the heroic times or the heroic climates, who on all hands
swarm in our poetry. Peace be with them! But yet, as a great moralist
proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain preach to
the poets, "a sermon on the duty of staying at home." Let them be sure
that heroic ages and heroic climates can do little for them. That form of
life has attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than our
own, than simply because it is different; and even this attraction must be
of the most transient sort. For will not our own age, one day, be an
ancient one; and have as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted with
the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintness?
Does Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed out of his
native Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because he wrote
of what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is the same
after thirty centuries? Let our poets look to this; is their feeling
really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than that of other men, they
have nothing to fear, even from the humblest object; is it not so?--they
have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral favor, even from the highest.
The poet, we cannot but think, can never have far to seek for a subject;
the elements of his art are in him, and around him on every hand; for him
the Ideal world is not remote from the Actual, but under it and within it;
nay, he is a poet, precisely because he can discern it there. Wherever
there is a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his
place; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite longings and
small acquirings; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavors; its
unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through Eternity:
and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of,
in any age or climate, since man first began to live. Is there not the
fifth act of a Tragedy, in every death-bed, though it were a peasant's and
a bed of heath? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that there can be
Comedy no longer? Or are men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no
longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce? Man's life and nature
is, as it was, and as it will ever be. But the poet must have an eye to
read these things, and a heart to understand them; or they come and pass
away before him in vain. He is a _vates_, a seer; a gift of vision has
been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which another can not
equally decipher? then he is no poet, and Delphi itself will not make him
one.
In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a great poet, better
manifests his capability, better proves the truth of his genius, than if
he had, by his own strength, kept the whole Minerva Press going, to the
end of his literary course. He shows himself at least a poet of Nature's
own making; and Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making
poets. We often hear of this and the other external condition being
requisite for the existence of a poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of
training; he must have studied certain things, studied for instance "the
elder dramatists," and so learned a poetic language; as if poetry lay in
the tongue, not in the heart. At other times we are told, he must be bred
in a certain rank, and must be on a confidential footing with the higher
classes; because, above all other things, he must see the world. As to
seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause him little difficulty, if
he have but an eye to see it with. Without eyes, indeed, the task might be
hard. But happily every poet is born _in_ the world, and sees it, with or
against his will, every day and every hour he lives. The mysterious
workmanship of man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness
of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded
saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. Nay, do
not the elements of all human virtues, and all human vices--the passions
at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written, in stronger or fainter
lines, in the consciousness of every individual bosom, that has practised
honest self-examination? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel
and Tarbolton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came to light in
Crockford's, or the Tuileries itself.
But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor aspirant to
poetry; for it is hinted that he should have _been born_ two centuries
ago; inasmuch as poetry, soon after that date, vanished from the earth,
and became no longer attainable by men! Such cobweb speculations have, now
and then, overhung the field of literature; but they obstruct not the
growth of any plant there: the Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously, and
merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every genius
an impossibility till he appear? Why do we call him new and original, if
_we_ saw where his marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from
it? It is not the material but the workman that is wanting. It is not the
dark _place_ that hinders, but the dim _eye_. A Scottish peasant's life
was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till Burns became a poet in it,
and a poet of it; found it a _man's_ life, and therefore significant to
men. A thousand battle-fields remain unsung; but the _Wounded Hare_ has
not perished without its memorial; a balm of mercy yet breathes on us from
its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. Our _Halloween_ had passed and
repassed, in rude awe and laughter, since the era of the Druids; but no
Theocritus, till Burns, discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl:
neither was the _Holy Fair_ any _Council of Trent_, or Roman _Jubilee_;
but nevertheless, _Superstition_ and _Hypocrisy_, and _Fun_ having been
propitious to him, in this man's hand it became a poem, instinct with
satire, and genuine comic life. Let but the true poet be given us, we
repeat it, place him where and how you will, and true poetry will not be
wanting.
Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as we have now
attempted to describe it, a certain rugged sterling worth pervades
whatever Burns has written: a virtue, as of green fields and mountain
breezes, dwells in his poetry; it is redolent of natural life, and hardy,
natural men. There is a decisive strength in him; and yet a sweet native
gracefulness: he is tender, and he is vehement, yet without constraint or
too visible effort; he melts the heart, or inflames it, with a power which
seems habitual and familiar to him. We see in him the gentleness, the
trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and
passionate ardor of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire; as
lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a resonance in
his bosom for every note of human feeling: the high and the low, the sad,
the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns to his
"lightly-moved and all-conceiving spirit." And observe with what a prompt
and eager force he grasps his subject, be it what it may! How he fixes, as
it were, the full image of the matter in his eye; full and clear in every
lineament; and catches the real type and essence of it, amid a thousand
accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of which misleads him! Is
it of reason--some truth to be discovered? No sophistry, no vain
surface-logic detains him; quick, resolute, unerring, he pierces through
into the marrow of the question, and speaks his verdict with an emphasis
that can not be forgotten. Is it of description--some visual object to be
represented? No poet of any age or nation is more graphic than Burns: the
characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance; three
lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. And, in that rough dialect,
in that rude, often awkward, metre, so clear, and definite a likeness! It
seems a draughtsman working with a burnt stick; and yet the burin of a
Retzsch is not more expressive or exact.
This clearness of sight we may call the foundation of all talent; for in
fact, unless we _see_ our object, how shall we know how to place or prize
it; in our understanding, our imagination, our affections? Yet it is not
in itself perhaps a very high excellence; but capable of being united
indifferently with the strongest, or with ordinary powers. Homer surpasses
all men in this quality: but strangely enough, at no great distance below
him are Richardson and Defoe. It belongs, in truth, to what is called a
lively mind: and gives no sure indication of the higher endowments that
may exist along with it. In all the three cases we have mentioned, it is
combined with great garrulity; their descriptions are detailed, ample, and
lovingly exact; Homer's fire bursts through, from time to time, as if by
accident; but Defoe and Richardson have no fire. Burns, again, is not more
distinguished by the clearness than by the impetuous force of his
conceptions. Of the strength, the piercing emphasis with which he thought,
his emphasis of expression may give an humble but the readiest proof. Who
ever uttered sharper sayings than his; words more memorable, now by their
burning vehemence, now by their cool vigor and laconic pith? A single
phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole scene. Our Scottish forefathers in
the battle-field struggled forward, he says, "_red-wat shod_;" giving, in
this one word, a full vision of horror and carnage, perhaps too
frightfully accurate for Art!
In fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is this vigor of
his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute force is ever visible in
his judgments, as in his feelings and volitions. Professor Stewart says of
him, with some surprise: "All the faculties of Burns's mind were, as far
as I could judge, equally vigorous; and his predilection for poetry was
rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned temper, than of
a genius exclusively adapted to that species of composition. From his
conversation I should have pronounced him to be fitted to excel in
whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities." But this,
if we mistake not, is at all times the very essence of a truly poetical
endowment. Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole
consists in extreme sensibility, and a certain vague pervading tunefulness
of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the
rest or disjoined from them; but rather the result of their general
harmony and completion. The feelings, the gifts, that exist in the Poet,
are those that exist, with more or less development, in every human soul:
the imagination, which shudders at the Hell of Dante, is the same faculty,
weaker in degree, which called that picture into being. How does the poet
speak to all men, with power, but by being still more a man than they?
Shakspeare, it has been well observed, in the planning and completing of
his tragedies, has shown an Understanding, were it nothing more, which
might have governed states, or indited a _Novum Organum_. What Burns's
force of understanding may have been, we have less means of judgment: for
it dwelt among the humblest objects, never saw philosophy, and never rose,
except for short intervals, into the region of great ideas. Nevertheless,
sufficient indication remains for us in his works: we discern the brawny
movement of a gigantic though untutored strength, and can understand how,
in conversation, his quick, sure insight into men and things may, as much
as aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his time and
country.
But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well as
strong. The more delicate relation of things could not well have escaped
his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The logic of the
senate and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient; nay,
perhaps the highest Truth is that which will the most certainly elude it.
For this logic works by words, and "the highest," it has been said,
"cannot be expressed in words." We are not without tokens of an openness
for this higher truth also, of a keen though uncultivated sense for it,
having existed in Burns. Mr. Stewart, it will be remembered, "wonders," in
the passage above quoted, that Burns had formed some distinct conception
of the "doctrine of association." We rather think that far subtiler things
than the doctrine of association had from of old been familiar to him.
Here for instance: