his mother, munificent from a man whose income had lately been seven
pounds a year, was worthy of him, and not more than worthy. Generous also,
and worthy of him, was his treatment of the woman whose life's welfare now
depended on his pleasure. A friendly observer might have hoped serene days
for him: his mind is on the true road to peace with itself: what clearness
he still wants will be given as he proceeds; for the best teacher of
duties, that still lie dim to us, is the Practice of those we see, and
have at hand. Had the "patrons of genius," who could give him nothing, but
taken nothing from him, at least nothing more!--the wounds of his heart
would have healed, vulgar ambition would have died away. Toil and
Frugality would have been welcome, since Virtue dwelt with them, and
poetry would have shone through them as of old; and in her clear ethereal
light, which was his own by birth-right, he might have looked down on his
earthly destiny, and all its obstructions, not with patience only, but
with love.
But the patrons of genius would not have it so. Picturesque tourists,[2]
all manner of fashionable danglers after literature, and, far worse, all
manner of convivial Mecaenases, hovered round him in his retreat; and his
good as well as his weak qualities secured them influence over him. He
was flattered by their notice; and his warm social nature made it
impossible for him to shake them off, and hold on his way apart from them.
These men, as we believe, were proximately the means of his ruin. Not that
they meant him any ill; they only meant themselves a little good; if he
suffered harm, let _him_ look to it! But they wasted his precious time and
his precious talent; they disturbed his composure, broke down his
returning habits of temperance and assiduous contented exertion. Their
pampering was baneful to him; their cruelty, which soon followed, was
equally baneful. The old grudge against Fortune's inequality awoke with
new bitterness in their neighborhood, and Burns had no retreat but to the
"Rock of Independence," which is but an air-castle, after all, that looks
well at a distance, but will screen no one from real wind and wet.
Flushed with irregular excitement, exasperated alternately by contempt of
others, and contempt of himself, Burns was no longer regaining his peace
of mind, but fast losing it forever. There was a hollowness at the heart
of his life, for his conscience did not now approve what he was doing.
Amid the vapors of unwise enjoyment, of bootless remorse, and angry
discontent with Fate, his true loadstar, a life of Poetry, with Poverty,
nay, with Famine if it must be so, was too often altogether hidden from
his eyes. And yet he sailed a sea, where, without some such guide, there
was no right steering. Meteors of French Politics rise before him, but
these were not _his_ stars. An accident this, which hastened, but did not
originate, his worst distresses. In the mad contentions of that time, he
comes in collision with certain official Superiors; is wounded by them;
cruelly lacerated, we should say, could a dead mechanical implement, in
any case, be called cruel: and shrinks, in indignant pain, into deeper
self-seclusion, into gloomier moodiness than ever. His life has now lost
its unity: it is a life of fragments; led with little aim, beyond the
melancholy one of securing its own continuance--in fits of wild false joy,
when such offered, and of black despondency when they passed away. His
character before the world begins to suffer: calumny is busy with him; for
a miserable man makes more enemies than friends. Some faults he has fallen
into, and a thousand misfortunes; but deep criminality is what he stands
accused of, and they that are _not_ without sin, cast the first stone at
him! For is he not a well-wisher of the French Revolution, a Jacobin, and
therefore in that one act guilty of all? These accusations, political and
moral, it has since appeared, were false enough; but the world hesitated
little to credit them. Nay, his convivial Mecaenases themselves were not
the last to do it. There is reason to believe that, in his later years,
the Dumfries Aristocracy had partly withdrawn themselves from Burns, as
from a tainted person, no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That
painful class, stationed, in all provincial cities, behind the outmost
breastwork of Gentility, there to stand siege and do battle against the
intrusion of Grocerdom, and Grazierdom, had actually seen dishonor in the
society of Burns, and branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly
say, _cut_ him! We find one passage in this work of Mr. Lockhart's, which
will not out of our thoughts:
"A gentleman of that country, whose name I have already more than once had
occasion to refer to, has often told me that he was seldom more grieved,
than when, riding into Dumfries one fine summer evening about this time to
attend a country ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of
the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with
successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the
festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognize
him. The horseman dismounted, and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to
cross the street, said: 'Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now;'
and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's pathetic
ballad:
'His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow,
His auld ane looked better than mony ane's new;
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing,
And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-bing.
'O were we young, as we ance hae been,
We sud hae been galloping down on yon green,
And linking it ower the lily-white lea!
_And werena my heart light I wad die._'
It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain subjects
escape in this fashion. He, immediately after reciting these verses,
assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner; and, taking his
young friend home with him, entertained him very agreeably till the hour
of the ball arrived."
Alas! when we think that Burns now sleeps "where bitter indignation can no
longer lacerate his heart,"[3] and that most of these fair dames and
frizzled gentlemen already lie at his side, where the breastwork of
gentility is quite thrown down,--who would not sigh over the thin
delusions and foolish toys that divide heart from heart, and make man
unmerciful to his brother!
It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would ever reach
maturity, or accomplish ought worthy of itself. His spirit was jarred in
its melody; not the soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of
Fate, was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what harmony was in him,
what music even in his discords! How the wild tones had a charm for the
simplest and the wisest; and all men felt and knew that here also was one
of the Gifted! "If he entered an inn at midnight, after all the inmates
were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar to the
garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests
were assembled!" Some brief, pure moments of poetic life were yet
appointed him, in the composition of his Songs. We can understand how he
grasped at this employment; and how, too, he spurned at all other reward
for it but what the labor itself brought him. For the soul of Burns,
though scathed and marred, was yet living in its full moral strength,
though sharply conscious of its errors and abasement: and here, in his
destitution and degradation, was one act of seeming nobleness and
self-devotedness left even for him to perform. He felt, too, that with all
the "thoughtless follies" that had "laid him low," the world was unjust
and cruel to him; and he silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not
as a hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of his
country; so he cast from him the poor sixpence a-day, and served zealously
as a volunteer. Let us not grudge him this last luxury of his existence;
let him not have appealed to us in vain! The money was not necessary to
him; he struggled through without it; long since, these guineas would have
been gone, and now the high-mindedness of refusing them will plead for
him in all hearts for ever.
We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for matters had now
taken such a shape with him as could not long continue. If improvement was
not to be looked for, Nature could only for a limited time maintain this
dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. We are not
medically informed whether any continuance of years was, at this period,
probable for Burns; whether his death is to be looked on as in some sense
an accidental event, or only as the natural consequence of the long series
of events that had preceded. The latter seems to be the likelier opinion;
and yet it is by no means a certain one. At all events, as we have said,
_some_ change could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, it
seems to us, were open for Burns: clear poetical activity, madness, or
death. The first, with longer life, was still possible, though not
probable; for physical causes were beginning to be concerned in it: and
yet Burns had an iron resolution; could he but have seen and felt, that
not only his highest glory, but his first duty, and the true medicine for
all his woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for his mind
was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third gate was
opened for him: and he passed, not softly, yet speedily, into that still
country, where the hail-storms and fire-showers do not reach, and the
heaviest-laden wayfarer at length lays down his load!
Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he sank unaided by any real
help, uncheered by any wise sympathy, generous minds have sometimes
figured to themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, that much might have
been done for him; that by counsel, true affection, and friendly
ministrations, he might have been saved to himself and the world. We
question whether there is not more tenderness of heart than soundness of
judgment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us whether the richest,
wisest, most benevolent individual, could have lent Burns any effectual
help. Counsel, which seldom profits any one, he did not need; in his
understanding, he knew the right from the wrong, as well perhaps as any
man ever did; but the persuasion, which would have availed him, lies not
so much in the head, as in the heart, where no argument or expostulation
could have assisted much to implant it. As to money again, we do not
really believe that this was his essential want; or well see how any
private man could, even presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him
an independent fortune, with much prospect of decisive advantage. It is a
mortifying truth, that two men in any rank of society could hardly be
found virtuous enough to give money, and to take it, as a necessary gift,
without injury to the moral entireness of one or both. But so stands the
fact: friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists;
except in the cases of kindred or other legal affinity; it is in reality
no longer expected, or recognized as a virtue among men. A close observer
of manners has pronounced "Patronage," that is, pecuniary or other
economic furtherance, to be "twice cursed;" cursing him that gives, and
him that takes! And thus, in regard to outward matters also, it has become
the rule, as in regard to inward it always was and must be the rule, that
no one shall look for effectual help to another; but that each shall rest
contented with what help he can afford himself. Such, we say, is the
principle of modern Honor; naturally enough growing out of that sentiment
of Pride, which we inculcate and encourage as the basis of our whole
social morality. Many a poet has been poorer than Burns; but no one was
ever prouder: and we may question, whether, without great precautions,
even a pension from Royalty would not have galled and encumbered, more
than actually assisted him.
Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another class of
Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks among us of having ruined
Burns by their selfish neglect of him. We have already stated our doubts
whether direct pecuniary help, had it been offered, would have been
accepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall readily admit,
however, that much was to be done for Burns; that many a poisoned arrow
might have been warded from his bosom; many an entanglement in his path
cut asunder by the hand of the powerful; and light and heat shed on him
from high places, would have made his humble atmosphere more genial; and
the softest heart then breathing might have lived and died with some fewer
pangs. Nay, we shall grant further, and for Burns it is granting much,
that with all his pride, he would have thanked, even with exaggerated
gratitude, any one who had cordially befriended him: patronage, unless
once cursed, needed not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor
promotion he desired in his calling might have been granted: it was his
own scheme, therefore likelier than any other to be of service. All this
it might have been a luxury, nay, it was a duty, for our nobility to have
done. No part of all this, however, did any of them do; or apparently
attempt, or wish to do; so much is granted against them. But what then is
the amount of their blame? Simply that they were men of the world, and
walked by the principles of such men; that they treated Burns, as other
nobles and other commoners had done other poets; as the English did
Shakspeare; as King Charles and his cavaliers did Butler, as King Philip
and his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men gather grapes of thorns? or shall
we cut down our thorns for yielding only a _fence_, and haws? How, indeed,
could the "nobility and gentry of his native land" hold out any help to
this "Scottish Bard, proud of his name and country?" Were the nobility and
gentry so much as able rightly to help themselves? Had they not their game
to preserve; their borough interests to strengthen; dinners, therefore, of
various kinds to eat and give? Were their means more than adequate to all
this business, or less than adequate? Less than adequate in general: few
of them in reality were richer than Burns; many of them were poorer; for
sometimes they had to wring their supplies, as with thumbscrews, from the
hard hand; and, in their need of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy;
which Burns was never reduced to do. Let us pity and forgive them. The
game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, the borough
interests they strengthened, the _little_ Babylons they severally builded
by the glory of their might, are all melted, or melting back into the
primeval Chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavors are fated to do: and
here was an action extending, in virtue of its worldly influence, we may
say, through all time; in virtue of its moral nature, beyond all time,
being immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself; this action was offered
them to do, and light was not given them to do it. Let us pity and forgive
them. But, better than pity, let us go and _do otherwise_. Human
suffering did not end with the life of Burns; neither was the solemn
mandate, "Love one another, bear one another's burdens," given to the rich
only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns to relieve, to assuage
by our aid or our pity: but celestial natures, groaning under the fardels
of a weary life, we shall still find; and that wretchedness which Fate has
rendered _voiceless_ and _tuneless_, is not the least wretched, but the
most.
Still we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies chiefly with
the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more, rather than
with less kindness, than it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we
fear, shown but small favor to its Teachers; hunger and nakedness, perils
and reviling, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice, have, in most
times and countries, been the market-place it has offered for Wisdom, the
welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and
purify it. Homer and Socrates, and the Christian Apostles belong to old
days; but the world's Martyrology was not completed with these. Roger
Bacon and Galileo languish in priestly dungeons, Tasso pines in the cell
of a madhouse, Camoens dies begging on the streets of Lisbon. So
neglected, so "persecuted they the Prophets," not in Judea only, but in
all places where men have been. We reckon that every poet of Burns's order
is, or should be, a prophet and teacher to his age; that he has no right
therefore to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound to do it
great kindness; that Burns, in particular, experienced fully the usual
proportion of the world's goodness; and that the blame of his failure, as
we have said, lies not chiefly with the world.
Where then does it lie? We are forced to answer: With himself; it is his
inward, not his outward misfortunes, that bring him to the dust. Seldom,
indeed, is it otherwise; seldom is a life morally wrecked, but the grand
cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement, some want less of good
fortune than of good guidance. Nature fashions no creature without
implanting in it the strength needful for its action and duration; least
of all does she so neglect her masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul.
Neither can we believe that it is in the power of _any_ external
circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man; nay, if proper wisdom be
given him, even so much as to affect its essential health and beauty. The
sternest sum-total of all worldly misfortunes is Death; nothing more _can_
lie in the cup of human wo: yet many men, in all ages, have triumphed over
Death, and led it captive; converting its physical victory into a moral
victory for themselves, into a seal and immortal consecration for all that
their past life had achieved. What has been done, may be done again; nay,
it is but the degree and not the kind of such heroism that differs in
different seasons; for without some portion of this spirit, not of
boisterous daring, but of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial, in all its
forms, no good man, in any scene or time, has ever attained to be good.
We have already stated the error of Burns; and mourned over it, rather
than blamed it. It was the want of unity in his purposes, of consistency
in his aims; the hapless attempt to mingle in friendly union the common
spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry, which is of a far different
and altogether irreconcilable nature. Burns was nothing wholly, and Burns
could be nothing; no man formed as he was can be any thing, by halves.
The heart, not of a mere hot-blooded, popular verse-monger, or poetical
_Restaurateur_, but of a true Poet and Singer, worthy of the old religious
heroic times, had been given him: and he fell in an age, not of heroism
and religion, but of skepticism, selfishness, and triviality, when true
Nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow,
dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of Pride. The
influences of that age, his open, kind, susceptible nature, to say nothing
of his highly untoward situation, made it more than usually difficult for
him to repel or resist; the better spirit that was within him ever sternly
demanded its rights, its supremacy; he spent his life in endeavoring to
reconcile these two; and lost it, as he must have lost it, without
reconciling them here.
Burns was born poor; and born also to continue poor, for he would not
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. Did not Cervantes finish his work, a
maimed soldier, and in prison? Nay, was not the _Araucana_, which Spain
acknowledges as its Epic, written without even the aid of paper; 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 shrunk 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 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 a 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 for ever 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 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." 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."