of our souls, so we cannot account for those seeming caprices in them,
that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with
that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary
impression. I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the
mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the
budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with
particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew
in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in
an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the
enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can
this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Aeolian harp,
passive, takes the impression of the passing accident; or do these
workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself
partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities: a God that
made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal
or wo beyond death and the grave."
Force and fineness of understanding are often spoken of as something
different from general force and fineness of nature, as something partly
independent of them. The necessities of language probably require this;
but in truth these qualities are not distinct and independent: except in
special cases, and from special causes, they ever go together. A man of
strong understanding is generally a man of strong character; neither is
delicacy in the one kind often divided from delicacy in the other. No one,
at all events, is ignorant that in the poetry of Burns, keenness of
insight keeps pace with keenness of feeling; that his _light_ is not more
pervading than his _warmth_. He is a man of the most impassioned temper;
with passions not strong only, but noble, and of the sort in which great
virtues and great poems take their rise. It is reverence, it is Love
towards all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes to its beauty,
and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise. There is a true old
saying, that "love furthers knowledge:" but, above all, it is the living
essence of that knowledge which makes poets; the first principle of its
existence, increase, activity. Of Burns's fervid affection, his generous,
all-embracing Love, we have spoken already, as of the grand distinction of
his nature, seen equally in word and deed, in his Life and in his
Writings. It were easy to multiply examples. Not man only, but all that
environs man in the material and moral universe, is lovely in his sight:
"the hoary hawthorn," the "troop of gray plover," the "solitary curlew,"
are all dear to him--all live in this Earth along with him, and to all he
is knit as in mysterious brotherhood. How touching is it, for instance,
that, amidst the gloom of personal misery, brooding over the wintry
desolation without him and within him, he thinks of the "ourie cattle" and
"silly sheep," and their sufferings in the pitiless storm!
"I thought me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' wintry war;
Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle,
Beneath a scaur.
Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing,
That in the merry month o' spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
And close thy ee?"
The tenant of the mean hut, with its "ragged roof and chinky wall," has a
heart to pity even these! This is worth several homilies on Mercy; for it
is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy; his soul
rushes forth into all realms of being; nothing that has existence can be
indifferent to him. The very devil he cannot hate with right orthodoxy!
"But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben;
O wad ye tak a thought and men'!
Ye aiblins might,--I dinna ken,--
Still hae a stake;
I'm wae to think upo' yon den,
Even for your sake!"
He did not know, probably, that Sterne had been beforehand with him. "'He
is the father of curses and lies,' said Dr. Slop; 'and is cursed and
damned already.'--'I am sorry for it,' quoth my uncle Toby!"--"A poet
without Love, were a physical and metaphysical impossibility."
Why should we speak of _Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled_; since all know
it, from the king to the meanest of his subjects? This dithyrambic was
composed on horseback; in riding in the middle of tempests, over the
wildest Galloway moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, who, observing the
poet's looks, forebore to speak,--judiciously enough,--for a man composing
_Bruce's Address_ might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this stern
hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through the soul of Burns; but
to the external ear, it should be sung with the throat of the whirlwind.
So long as there is warm blood in the heart of a Scotchman or man, it will
move in fierce thrills under this war-ode, the best, we believe, that was
ever written by any pen.
Another wild, stormful song, that dwells in our ear and mind with a
strange tenacity, is _Macpherson's Farewell_. Perhaps there is something
in the tradition itself that co-operates. For was not this grim Celt, this
shaggy Northland Cacus, that "lived a life of sturt and strife, and died
by treacherie," was not he too one of the Nimrods and Napoleons of the
earth, in the arena of his own remote misty glens, for want of a clearer
and wider one? Nay, was there not a touch of grace given him? A fibre of
love and softness, of poetry itself, must have lived in his savage heart;
for he composed that air the night before his execution; on the wings of
that poor melody, his better soul would soar away above oblivion, pain,
and all the ignominy and despair, which, like an avalanche, was hurling
him to the abyss! Here, also, as at Thebes, and in Pelops' line, was
material Fate matched against man's Free-will; matched in bitterest though
obscure duel; and the ethereal soul sunk not, even in its blindness,
without a cry which has survived it. But who, except Burns, could have
given words to such a soul--words that we never listen to without a
strange half-barbarous, half-poetic fellow-feeling?
_Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he;
He play'd a spring, and danced it round,
Below the gallows tree._
Under a lighter and thinner disguise, the same principle of Love, which we
have recognized as the great characteristic of Burns, and of all true
poets, occasionally manifests itself in the shape of Humor. Everywhere,
indeed, in his sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through
the mind of Burns; he rises to the high, and stoops to the low, and is
brother and playmate to all Nature. We speak not of his bold and often
irresistible faculty of caricature; for this is Drollery rather than
Humor: but a much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him; and comes forth,
here and there, in evanescent and beautiful touches; as in his _Address to
the Mouse_, or the _Farmer's Mare_, or in his _Elegy on Poor Mailie_,
which last may be reckoned his happiest effort of this kind. In these
pieces, there are traits of a Humor as fine as that of Sterne; yet
altogether different, original, peculiar,--the Humor of Burns.
Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other kindred qualities of
Burns's poetry, much more might be said; but now, with these poor outlines
of a sketch, we must prepare to quit this part of our subject. To speak of
his individual writings, adequately, and with any detail, would lead us
far beyond our limits. As already hinted, we can look on but few of these
pieces as, in strict critical language, deserving the name of Poems; they
are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed sense; yet seldom essentially
melodious, aerial, poetical. _Tam O'Shanter_ itself, which enjoys so high
a favor, does not appear to us, at all decisively, to come under this
last category. It is not so much a poem, as a piece of sparkling rhetoric;
the heart and body of the story still lies hard and dead. He has not gone
back, much less carried us back, into that dark, earnest wondering age,
when the tradition was believed, and when it took its rise; he does not
attempt, by any new modelling of his supernatural ware, to strike anew
that deep mysterious chord of human nature, which once responded to such
things; and which lives in us too, and will forever live, though silent,
or vibrating with far other notes, and to far different issues. Our German
readers will understand us, when we say, that he is not the Tieck but the
Musaeus of this tale. Externally it is all green and living; yet look
closer, it is no firm growth, but only ivy on a rock. The piece does not
properly cohere; the strange chasm which yawns in our incredulous
imaginations between the Ayr public-house and the gate of Tophet, is
nowhere bridged over, nay, the idea of such a bridge is laughed at; and
thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere drunken phantasmagoria,
painted on ale-vapors, and the farce alone has any reality. We do not say
that Burns should have made much more of this tradition; we rather think
that, for strictly poetical purposes, not much _was_ to be made of it.
Neither are we blind to the deep, varied, genial power displayed in what
he has actually accomplished: but we find far more "Shakspearian"
qualities, as these of _Tam O'Shanter_ have been fondly named, in many of
his other pieces; nay, we incline to believe, that this latter might have
been written, all but quite as well, by a man who, in place of genius, had
only possessed talent.
Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly poetical of all his
"poems" is one, which does not appear in Currie's Edition; but has been
often printed before and since, under the humble title of _The Jolly
Beggars_. The subject truly is among the lowest in nature; but it only the
more shows our poet's gift in raising it into the domain of Art. To our
minds, this piece seems thoroughly compacted; melted together, refined;
and poured forth in one flood of true _liquid_ harmony. It is light, airy,
and soft of movement; yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is
a portrait: that _raucle carlin_, that _wee Apollo_, that _Son of Mars_,
are Scottish, yet ideal; the scene is at once a dream, and the very
Rag-castle of "Poosie-Nansie." Farther, it seems in a considerable degree
complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is the highest merit in a
poem. The blanket of the night is drawn asunder for a moment; in full,
ruddy, and flaming light, these rough tatterdemalions are seen in their
boisterous revel; for the strong pulse of Life vindicates its right to
gladness even here; and when the curtain closes, we prolong the action
without effort; the next day, as the last, our _Caird_ and our
_Balladmonger_ are singing and soldiering; their "brats and callets" are
hawking, begging, cheating; and some other night, in new combinations,
they will ring from Fate another hour of wassail and good cheer. It would
be strange, doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's writings; we mean
to say only, that it seems to us the most perfect of its kind, as a piece
of poetical composition, strictly so called. In the _Beggar's Opera_, in
the _Beggar's Bush_, as other critics have already remarked, there is
nothing which, in real poetic vigor, equals this _Cantata_; nothing, as we
think, which comes within many degrees of it.
But by far the most finished, complete, and truly inspired pieces of Burns
are, without dispute, to be found among his _Songs_. It is here that,
although through a small aperture, his light shines with the least
obstruction; in its highest beauty, and pure sunny clearness. The reason
may be, that Song is a brief and simple species of composition: and
requires nothing so much for its perfection as genuine poetic feeling,
genuine music of heart. The Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy;
rules which in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases are not so
much as felt. We might write a long essay on the Songs of Burns; which we
reckon by far the best that Britain has yet produced; for, indeed, since
the era of Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other hand, aught
truly worth attention has been accomplished in this department. True, we
have songs enough "by persons of quality;" we have tawdry, hollow,
wine-bred, madrigals; many a rhymed "speech" in the flowing and watery
vein of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop, rich in sonorous words, and, for
moral, dashed perhaps with some tint of a sentimental sensuality; all
which many persons cease not from endeavoring to sing: though for most
part, we fear, the music is but from the throat outward, or at best from
some region far enough short of the _Soul_; not in which, but in a certain
inane Limbo of the Fancy, or even in some vaporous debatable land on the
outside of the Nervous System, most of such madrigals and rhymed speeches
seem to have originated. With the Songs of Burns we must not name these
things. Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever
pervades _his_ poetry, his Songs are honest in another point of view: in
form as well as in spirit. They do not _affect_ to be set to music; but
they actually and in themselves are music; they have received their life,
and fashioned themselves together, in the medium of Harmony, as Venus rose
from the bosom of the sea. The story, the feeling, is not detailed, but
suggested; not _said_, or spouted, in rhetorical completeness and
coherence; but _sung_, in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in fantastic
breaks, in _warblings_ not of the voice only, but of the whole mind. We
consider this to be the essence of a song; and that no songs since the
little careless catches, and, as it were, drops of song, which Shakspeare
has here and there sprinkled over his plays, fulfil this condition in
nearly the same degree as most of Burns's do. Such grace and truth of
external movement, too, presupposes in general a corresponding force and
truth of sentiment, and inward meaning. The Songs of Burns are not more
perfect in the former quality than in the latter. With what tenderness he
sings, yet with what vehemence and entireness! There is a piercing wail in
his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy: he burns with the sternest ire,
or laughs with the loudest or slyest mirth; and yet he is sweet and soft,
"sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting
tear!" If we farther take into account the immense variety of his
subjects; how, from the loud flowing revel in _Willie brew'd a peck o'
Maut_, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for _Mary in Heaven_; from
the glad kind greeting of _Auld Langsyne_, or the comic archness of
_Duncan Gray_, to the fire-eyed fury of _Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled_,
he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's heart,--it will seem
a small praise if we rank him as the first of all our song-writers; for we
know not where to find one worthy of being second to him.
It is on his Songs, as we believe, that Burns's chief influence as an
author will ultimately be found to depend: nor, if our Fletcher's aphorism
is true, shall we account this a small influence. "Let me make the songs
of a people," said he, "and you shall make its laws." Surely, if ever any
Poet might have equalled himself with Legislators, on this ground, it was
Burns. His songs are already part of the mother tongue, not of Scotland
only but of Britain, and of the millions that in all the ends of the earth
speak a British language. In hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in
the joy and wo of existence, the name, the voice of that joy and that wo,
is the name and voice which Burns has given them. Strictly speaking,
perhaps, no British man has so deeply affected the thoughts and feelings
of so many men as this solitary and altogether private individual, with
means apparently the humblest.
In another point of view, moreover, we incline to think that Burns's
influence may have been considerable: we mean, as exerted specially on the
Literature of his country, at least on the Literature of Scotland. Among
the great changes which British, particularly Scottish literature, has
undergone since that period, one of the greatest will be found to consist
in its remarkable increase of nationality. Even the English writers, most
popular in Burns's time, were little distinguished for their literary
patriotism, in this its best sense. A certain attenuated cosmopolitanism
had, in good measure, taken place of the old insular home-feeling;
literature was, as it were, without any local environment--was not
nourished by the affections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays
and Glovers seemed to write almost as if _in vacuo_; the thing written
bears no mark of place; it is not written so much for Englishmen, as for
men; or rather, which is the inevitable result of this, for certain
Generalizations which philosophy termed men. Goldsmith is an exception;
not so Johnson; the scene of his _Rambler_ is little more English than
that of his _Rasselas_. But if such was, in some degree, the case with
England, it was, in the highest degree, the case with Scotland. In fact,
our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very singular aspect;
unexampled, so far as we know, except perhaps at Geneva, where the same
state of matters appears still to continue. For a long period after
Scotland became British, we had no literature: at the date when Addison
and Steele were writing their _Spectators_, our good Thomas Boston was
writing, with the noblest intent, but alike in defiance of grammar and
philosophy, his _Fourfold State of Man_. Then came the schisms in our
National Church, and the fiercer schisms in our Body Politic: Theologic
ink, and Jacobite blood, with gaul enough in both cases, seemed to have
blotted out the intellect of the country; however, it was only obscured,
not obliterated. Lord Kames made nearly the first attempt, and a tolerably
clumsy one, at writing English; and, ere long, Hume, Robertson, Smith, and
a whole host of followers, attracted hither the eyes of all Europe. And
yet in this brilliant resuscitation of our "fervid genius," there was
nothing truly Scottish, nothing indigenous; except, perhaps, the natural
impetuosity of intellect, which we sometimes claim, and are sometimes
upbraided with, as a characteristic of our nation. It is curious to remark
that Scotland, so full of writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed
any English; our culture was almost exclusively French. It was by studying
Racine and Voltaire, Batteux and Boileau, that Kames had trained himself
to be a critic and philosopher: it was the light of Montesquieu and Mably
that guided Robertson in his political speculations: Quesnay's lamp that
kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too rich a man to borrow; and
perhaps he reached on the French more than he was acted on by them: but
neither had he aught to do with Scotland; Edinburgh, equally with La
Fleche, was but the lodging and laboratory, in which he not so much
morally _lived_, as metaphysically _investigated_. Never, perhaps, was
there a class of writers, so clear and well-ordered, yet so totally
destitute, to all appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay, of any
human affection whatever. The French wits of the period were as
unpatriotic; but their general deficiency in moral principle, not to say
their avowed sensuality and unbelief in all virtue, strictly so called,
render this accountable enough. We hope there is a patriotism founded on
something better than prejudice; that our country may be dear to us,
without injury to our philosophy; that in loving and justly prizing all
other lands, we may prize justly, and yet love before all others, our own
stern Motherland, and the venerable structure of social and moral Life,
which Mind has through long ages been building up for us there. Surely
there is nourishment for the better part of man's heart in all this:
surely the roots, that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's
being, may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, but into roses,
in the field of his life! Our Scottish sages have no such propensities:
the field of their life shows neither briers nor roses; but only a flat,
continuous thrashing-floor for Logic, whereon all questions, from the
"Doctrine of Rent," to the "Natural History of Religion," are thrashed and
sifted with the same mechanical impartiality!
With Sir Walter Scott at the head of our literature, it cannot be denied
that much of this evil is past, or rapidly passing away: our chief
literary men, 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. 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," 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 most toilsome journeyings, this object never quits him; it
is the little happy-valley of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own
affliction, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the muse, and
rejoices to snatch one other name from the oblivion that was covering it!
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.
But to leave the mere literary character of Burns, which has already
detained us too long, we cannot but think that the Life he willed, and was
fated to lead among his fellow-men, is both more interesting and
instructive than any of his written works. 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, porticoes, firm masses of building, stand
completed; the rest more or less clearly indicated; with many a
far-stretching 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.