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 with the coarse roar
of altogether earthly voices, and 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
_a-muck_ 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 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 house-top 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 also is
Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model apparently
of his conduct. 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 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." 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 for him. Let him dwindle into a modish balladmonger;
let him worship and be-sing 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 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 Drayhorse? 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 reflection 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 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; and the pilot is therefore blameworthy; for 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.
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
man. While the Shakspeares 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 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!
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A review of the Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lockhart, LL. B.
Edinburgh, 1828.
[2] There is one little sketch certain "English gentlemen" of this class,
which, though adopted in Currie's Narrative, and since then repeated in
most others, we have all along felt an invincible disposition to regard as
imaginary: "On a rock that projected into the stream they saw a man
employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of
fox-skin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a belt, from
which depended an enormous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns." Now, we
rather think, it was not Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox-skin cap,
loose and quite Hibernian watch-coat with the belt, what are we to make of
this "enormous Highland broad-sword" depending from him? More especially,
as there is no word of parish constables on the outlook to see whether, as
Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to his own midriff, or that of the
public! Burns, of all men, had the least tendency to seek for distinction,
either in his own eyes, or those of others, by such poor mummeries.
[3] _Ubi saeva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit._--Swift's Epitaph.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
The following misprints have been corrected:
"aquaintances" corrected to "acquaintances" (page 34)
"acqaintance" corrected to "acquaintance" (page 66)
"Aristrocracy" corrected to "Aristocracy" (page 67)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation have been retained from the original.