LAST YEARS.
During those Dumfries years little is to be done by the biographer but
to trace the several incidents in Burns's quarrel with the world, his
growing exasperation, and the evil effects of it on his conduct and
his fortunes. It is a painful record, but since it must be given, it
shall be with as much brevity as is consistent with truth.
In July, 1793, Burns made an excursion into Galloway, accompanied by a
Mr. Syme, who belonging, like himself, to the Excise, admired the
poet, and agreed with his politics. Syme has preserved a record of
this journey, and the main impression left by the perusal of it is the
strange access of ill-temper which had come over Burns, who kept
venting his spleen in epigrams on all whom he disliked, high and low.
They visited Kenmure, where lived Mr. Gordon, the representative of
the old Lords Kenmure. They passed thence over the muirs to Gatehouse,
in a wild storm, during which Burns was silent and crooning to himself
what, Syme says, was the first thought of _Scots wha hae_. They were
engaged to go to St. Mary's Isle, the seat of the Earl of Selkirk, but
Burns was in such a savage mood against all lords, that he was with
difficulty persuaded to go thither, though Lord Selkirk was no Tory,
but a Whig, like himself, and the father of his old friend, Lord (p. 156)
Daer, by this time deceased, who had first convinced him that a lord
might possibly be an honest and kind-hearted man. When they were once
under the hospitable roof of St. Mary's Isle, the kindness with which
they were received appeased the poet's bitterness. The Earl was
benign, the young ladies were beautiful, and two of them sang Scottish
songs charmingly. Urbani, an Italian musician who had edited Scotch
music, was there, and sang many Scottish melodies, accompanying them
with instrumental music. Burns recited some of his songs amid the deep
silence that is most expressive of admiration. The evening passed very
pleasantly, and the lion of the morning had, ere the evening was over,
melted to a lamb.
_Scots wha hae_ has been mentioned. Mr. Syme tells us that it was
composed partly while Burns was riding in a storm between Gatehouse
and Kenmure, and partly on the second morning after this when they
were journeying from St. Mary's Isle to Dumfries. And Mr. Syme adds
that next day the poet presented him with one copy of the poem for
himself, and a second for Mr. Dalzell. Mr. Carlyle says, "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."
Burns, however, in a letter to Mr. Thomson dated September, 1793,
gives an account of the composition of his war-ode, which is difficult
to reconcile with Mr. Syme's statement. "There is a tradition (p. 157)
which I have met with in many places in Scotland," he writes, "that
the old air, _Hey, tuttie taitie_ was Robert Bruce's march at the
battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my yesternight's evening walk,
warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and
independence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the
air, that one might suppose to be the gallant royal Scot's address to
his heroic followers on that eventful morning." He adds, that "the
accidental recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom,
associated with the glowing ideas of some struggles of the same
nature, _not quite so ancient_, roused my rhyming mania." So _Bruce's
Address_ owes its inspiration as much to Burns's sympathy with the
French Republicans as to his Scottish patriotism. As to the intrinsic
merit of the ode itself, Mr. Carlyle says, "So long as there is warm
blood in the heart of Scotchmen or man, it will move in fierce thrills
under this war-ode, the best, we believe, that was ever written by any
pen." To this verdict every son of Scottish soil is, I suppose, bound
to say, Amen. It ought not, however, to be concealed that there has
been a very different estimate formed of it by judges sufficiently
competent. I remember to have read somewhere of a conversation between
Wordsworth and Mrs. Hemans, in which they both agreed that the famous
ode was not much more than a commonplace piece of school-boy
rhodomontade about liberty. Probably it does owe not a little of its
power to the music to which it is sung, and to the associations which
have gathered round it. The enthusiasm for French Revolution
sentiments, which may have been in Burns's mind when composing it, has
had nothing to do with the delight with which thousands since have
sung and listened to it. The Poet, however, when he first (p. 158)
conceived it was no doubt raging inwardly, like a lion, not only
caged, but muzzled with the gag of his servitude to Government. But
for this, what diatribes in favour of the Revolution might we not have
had, and what pain must it have been to Burns to suppress these under
the coercion of external authority. Partly to this feeling, as well as
to other causes, may be ascribed such outbursts as the following,
written to a female correspondent, immediately after his return from
the Galloway tour:
"There is not among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so
rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets. In the comparative view
of wretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but
how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a
stronger imagination, and a more delicate sensibility, which between
them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are
the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some
idle vagary, ... in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which
shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him
with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that lucre
can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing on
him a spurning sense of his own dignity--and you have created a wight
nearly as miserable as a poet." This passage will recall to many the
catalogue of sore evils to which poets are by their temperament
exposed, which Wordsworth in his Leech-gatherer enumerates.
The fear that kills,
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
In writing that poem Wordsworth had Burns among others prominently (p. 159)
in his eye. What a commentary is the life of the more impulsive poet
on the lines of his younger and more self-controlling brother! During
those years of political unrest and of growing mental disquiet, his
chief solace was, as I have said, to compose songs for Thomson's
Collection, into which he poured a continual supply. Indeed it is
wonderful how often he was able to escape from his own vexations into
that serener atmosphere, and there to suit melodies and moods most
alien to his own with fitting words.
Here in one of his letters to Thomson is the way he describes himself
in the act of composition. "My way is--I consider the poetic sentiment
correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then choose my
theme; begin one stanza; when that is composed, which is generally the
most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and
then, look out for objects in nature around me that are in unison and
harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom;
humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. When
I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of
my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at
intervals on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth
my own critical strictures as my pen goes on." To this may be added
what Allan Cunningham tells us. "While he lived in Dumfries he had
three favourite walks; on the Dock-green by the river-side; among the
ruins of Lincluden College; and towards the Martingdon-ford, on the
north side of the Nith. This latter place was secluded, commanded a
view of the distant hills, and the romantic towers of Lincluden, and
afforded soft greensward banks to rest upon, within sight and (p. 160)
sound of the stream. As soon as he was heard to hum to himself, his
wife saw that he had something in his mind, and was prepared to see
him snatch up his hat, and set silently off for his musing-ground.
When by himself, and in the open air, his ideas arranged themselves in
their natural order--words came at will, and he seldom returned
without having finished a song.... When the verses were finished, he
passed them through the ordeal of Mrs. Burns's voice, listened
attentively when she sang; asked her if any of the words were
difficult; and when one happened to be too rough, he readily found a
smoother; but he never, save at the resolute entreaty of a scientific
musician, sacrificed sense to sound. The autumn was his favourite
season, and the twilight his favourite hour of study."
Regret has often been expressed that Burns spent so much time and
thought on writing his songs, and, in this way, diverted his energies
from higher aims. Sir Walter has said, "Notwithstanding the spirit of
many of his lyrics, and the exquisite sweetness and simplicity of
others, we cannot but deeply regret that so much of his time and
talents was frittered away in compiling and composing for musical
collections. There is sufficient evidence that even the genius of
Burns could not support him in the monotonous task of writing
love-verses, on heaving bosoms and sparkling eyes, and twisting them
into such rhythmical forms as might suit the capricious evolutions of
Scotch reels and strathspeys." Even if Burns, instead of continual
song-writing during the last eight years of his life, had concentrated
his strength on "his grand plan of a dramatic composition" on the
subject of Bruce's adventures, it may be doubted whether he would have
done so much to enrich his country's literature as he has done by the
songs he composed. But considering how desultory his habits (p. 161)
became, if Johnson and Thomson had not, as it were, set him a congenial
task, he might not have produced anything at all during those years.
There is, however, another aspect in which the continual composition
of love-ditties must be regretted. The few genuine love-songs,
straight from the heart, which he composed, such as _Of a' the Airts_,
_To Mary in Heaven_, _Ye Banks and Braes_, can hardly be too highly
prized. But there are many others, which arose from a lower and
fictitious source of inspiration. He himself tells Thomson that when
he wished to compose a love-song, his recipe was to put himself on a
"regimen of admiring a beautiful woman." This was a dangerous regimen,
and when it came to be often repeated, as it was, it cannot have
tended to his peace of heart, or to the purity of his life.
The first half of the year 1794 was a more than usually unhappy time
with Burns. It was almost entirely songless. Instead of poetry, we
hear of political dissatisfaction, excessive drinking-bouts, quarrels,
and self-reproach. This was the time when our country was at war with
the French Republic--a war which Burns bitterly disliked, but his
employment under Government forced him to set "a seal on his lips as
to those unlucky politics." A regiment of soldiers was quartered in
the town of Dumfries, and to Burns's eye the sight of their red coats
was so offensive, that he would not go down the plain-stones lest he
should meet "the epauletted puppies," who thronged the street. One of
these epauletted puppies, whom he so disliked, found occasion to pull
Burns up rather smartly. The poet, when in his cups, had in the
hearing of a certain captain proposed as a toast, "May our (p. 162)
success in the present war be equal to the justice of our cause." The
soldier called him to account--a duel seemed imminent, and Burns had
next day to write an apologetic letter, in order to avoid the risk of
ruin. About the same time he was involved, through intemperance, in
another and more painful quarrel. It has been already noticed that at
Woodley Park he was a continual guest. With Mrs. Riddel, who was both
beautiful and witty, he carried on a kind of poetic flirtation. Mr.
Walter Riddel, the host, was wont to press his guests to deeper
potations than were usual even in those hard-drinking days. One
evening, when the guests had sat till they were inflamed with wine,
they entered the drawing-room, and Burns in some way grossly insulted
the fair hostess. Next day he wrote a letter of the most abject and
extravagant penitence. This, however, Mr. and Mrs. Riddel did not
think fit to accept. Stung by this rebuff, Burns recoiled at once to
the opposite extreme of feeling, and penned a grossly scurrilous
monody on "a lady famed for her caprice." This he followed up by other
lampoons, full of "coarse rancour against a lady, who had showed him
many kindnesses." The Laird of Friars Carse and his lady naturally
sided with their relatives, and grew cold to their old friend of
Ellisland. While this coldness lasted, Mr. Riddel, of Friars Carse,
died in the spring-time, and the poet, remembering his friend's worth
and former kindness, wrote a sonnet over him--not one of his best or
most natural performances, yet showing the return of his better heart.
During the same spring we hear of Burns going to the house of one of
the neighbouring gentry, and dining there, not with the rest of the
party, but, by his own choice, it would seem, with the housekeeper in
her room, and joining the gentlemen in the dining-room, after the (p. 163)
ladies had retired. He was now, it seems, more disliked by ladies than
by men,--a change since those Edinburgh days, when the highest dames
of the land had spoken so rapturously of the charm of his
conversation.
Amid the gloom of this unhappy time (1791), Burns turned to his old
Edinburgh friend, Alexander Cunningham, and poured forth this
passionate and well-known complaint:--"Canst thou minister to a mind
diseased? Canst thou speak peace and rest to a soul tossed on a sea of
troubles, without one friendly star to guide her course, and dreading
that the next surge may overwhelm her? Of late, a number of domestic
vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed
times,--losses which, though trifling, were what I could ill
bear,--have so irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be
envied by a reprobate spirit listening to the sentence that dooms it
to perdition.--Are you deep in the language of consolation? I have
exhausted in reflection every topic of comfort. A heart at ease would
have been charmed with my sentiments and reasonings; but as to myself,
I was like Judas Iscariot preaching the Gospel.... Still there are two
great pillars that bear us up amid the wreck of misfortune and misery.
The one is composed of a certain noble, stubborn something in man,
known by the names of Courage, Fortitude, Magnanimity. The other is
made up of those feelings and sentiments which, however the sceptic
may deny them, or the enthusiast may disfigure them, are yet, I am
convinced, original and component parts of the human soul, those
senses of the mind--if I may be allowed the expression--which connect
us with, and link us to those awful obscure realities--an all-powerful
and equally beneficent God, and a world to come, beyond death and the
grave. The first gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope (p. 164)
beams on the field: the last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds
which time can never cure."
This remarkable, or, as Lockhart calls it, noble letter was written on
February 25, 1794. It was probably a few months later, perhaps in May
of the same year, while Burns was still under this depression, that
there occurred an affecting incident, which has been preserved by
Lockhart. Mr. David McCulloch, of Ardwell, told Lockhart, "that he was
seldom more grieved, than when, riding into Dumfries one fine summer's
evening, to attend a country ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the
shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite
part was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn
together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom seemed
willing to recognize the poet. The horseman dismounted, and joined
Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, 'Nay,
nay, my young friend, that's all over now,' and quoted, after a pause,
some verses of Lady Grizzell 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 caste himsell dowie upon the corn-bing.
O, were we young, as we ance hae been,
We suld hae been galloping down on yon green,
And linking it owre 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 citing these
verses assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner; and
taking his young friend home with him, entertained him very (p. 165)
agreeably until the hour of the ball arrived, with a bowl of his usual
potation, and Bonnie Jean's singing of some verses which he had
recently composed."
In June we find him expressing to Mrs. Dunlop the earliest hint that
he felt his health declining. "I am afraid," he says, "that I am about
to suffer for the follies of my youth. My medical friends threaten me
with flying gout; but I trust they are mistaken." And again, a few
months later, we find him, when writing to the same friend, recurring
to the same apprehensions. Vexation and disappointment within, and
excesses, if not continual, yet too frequent, from without, had for
long been undermining his naturally strong but nervously sensitive
frame, and those symptoms were now making themselves felt, which were
soon to lay him in an early grave. As the autumn drew on, his singing
powers revived, and till the close of the year he kept pouring into
Thomson a stream of songs, some of the highest stamp, and hardly one
without a touch such as only the genuine singer can give.
The letters, too, to Thomson, with which he accompanies his gifts, are
full of suggestive thoughts on song, hints most precious to all who
care for such matters. For the forgotten singers of his native land he
is full of sympathy. "By the way," he writes to Thomson, "are you not
vexed to think that those men of genius, for such they certainly were,
who composed our fine Scottish lyrics, should be unknown?"
Many of the songs of that autumn were, as usual, love-ditties; but
when the poet could forget the lint-white locks of Chloris, of which
kind of stuff there is more than enough, he would write as good songs
on other and manlier subjects. Two of these, written, the one in (p. 166)
November, 1794, the other in January, 1795, belong to the latter
order, and are worthy of careful regard, not only for their excellence
as songs, but also as illustrations of the poet's mood of mind at the
time when he composed them.
The first is this,---
Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair,
Whene'er I forgather wi' sorrow and care,
I gie them a skelp as they're creepin' alang,
Wi' a cog o' gude swats, and an auld Scottish sang.
I whyles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought;
But man is a soger, and life is a faught;
My mirth and gude humour are coin in my pouch,
And my Freedom's my lairdship nae monarch dare touch.
A towmond o' trouble, should that be my fa',
A night o' gude fellowship sowthers it a';
When at the blythe end o' our journey at last,
Wha the deil ever thinks o' the road he has past?
Blind Chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way;
Be't to me, be't frae me, e'en let the jade gae:
Come Ease, or come Travail, come Pleasure or Pain,
My warst word is--Welcome, and welcome again.
This song gives Burns's idea of himself, and of his struggle with the
world, when he could look on both from the placid, rather than the
despondent side. He regarded it as a true picture of himself; for,
when a good miniature of him had been done, he wrote to Thomson that
he wished a vignette from it to be prefixed to this song, that, in his
own words, "the portrait of my face, and the picture of my mind may go
down the stream of time together." Burns had more moods of mind than
most men, and this was, we may hope, no unfrequent one with him. But
if we would reach the truth, we probably ought to strike a balance (p. 167)
between the spirit of this song and the dark moods depicted in some of
those letters already quoted.
The other song of the same time is the well-known _A Man's a Man for
a' that_. This powerful song speaks out in his best style a sentiment
that through all his life had been dear to the heart of Burns. It has
been quoted, they say, by Béranger in France, and by Goethe in
Germany, and is the word which springs up in the mind of all
foreigners when they think of Burns. It was inspired, no doubt, by his
keen sense of social oppression, quickened to white heat by influences
that had lately come from France, and by what he had suffered for his
sympathy with that cause. It has since become the watchword of all who
fancy that they have secured less, and others more, of this world's
goods, than their respective merit deserves. Stronger words he never
wrote.
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
That is a word for all time. Yet perhaps it might have been wished
that so noble a song had not been marred by any touch of social
bitterness. A lord, no doubt, may be a "birkie" and a "coof," but may
not a ploughman be so too? This great song Burns wrote on the first
day of 1795.
Towards the end of 1794, and in the opening of 1795, the panic which
had filled the land in 1792, from the doings of the French
republicans, and their sympathizers in this country, began to abate;
and the blast of Government displeasure, which for a time had beaten
heavily on Burns, seemed to have blown over. He writes to Mrs. Dunlop
on the 29th of December, 1794. "My political sins seem to be (p. 168)
forgiven me," and as a proof of it he mentions that during the illness
of his superior officer, he had been appointed to act as supervisor--a
duty which he discharged for about two months. In the same letter he
sends to that good lady his usual kindly greeting for the coming year,
and concludes thus:--"What a transient business is life! Very lately I
was a boy; but t' other day I was a young man; and I already begin to
feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast o'er
my frame. With all the follies of youth, and, I fear, a few vices of
manhood, still I congratulate myself on having had, in early days,
religion strongly impressed on my mind." Burns always keeps his most
serious thoughts for this good lady. Herself religious, she no doubt
tried to keep the truths of religion before the poet's mind. And he
naturally was drawn out to reply in a tone more unreserved than when
he wrote to most others.
In February of the ensuing year, 1795, his duties as supervisor led
him to what he describes as the "unfortunate, wicked little village"
of Ecclefechan in Annandale. The night after he arrived, there fell
the heaviest snowstorm known in Scotland within living memory. When
people awoke next morning they found the snow up to the windows of the
second story of their houses. In the hollow of Campsie hills it lay to
the depth of from eighty to a hundred feet, and it had not disappeared
from the streets of Edinburgh on the king's birthday, the 4th of June.
Storm-stayed at Ecclefechan, Burns indulged in deep potations and in
song-writing. Probably he imputed to the place that with which his own
conscience reproached himself. Currie, who was a native of Ecclefechan,
much offended, says, "The poet must have been tipsy indeed to abuse
sweet Ecclefechan at this rate." It was also the birthplace of the (p. 169)
poet's friend Nicol, and of a greater than he. On the 4th of December
in the very year on which Burns visited it, Mr. Thomas Carlyle was
born in that village. Shortly after his visit, the poet beat his
brains to find a rhyme for Ecclefechan, and to twist it into a song.
In March of the same year we find him again joining in local politics,
and writing electioneering ballads for Heron of Heron, the Whig
candidate for the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, against the nominee of
the Earl of Galloway, against whom and his family Burns seems to have
harboured some peculiar enmity.
Mr. Heron won the election, and Burns wrote to him about his own
prospects:--"The moment I am appointed supervisor, in the common
routine I may be nominated on the collectors' list; and this is always
a business of purely political patronage. A collectorship varies much,
from better than 200_l._ to near 1000_l._ a year. A life of literary
leisure, with a decent competency, is the summit of my wishes."
The hope here expressed was not destined to be fulfilled. It required
some years for its realization, and the years allotted to Burns were
now nearly numbered. The prospect which he here dwells on may,
however, have helped to lighten his mental gloom during the last year
of his life. For one year of activity there certainly was, between the
time when the cloud of political displeasure against him disappeared
towards the end of 1794, and the time when his health finally gave way
in the autumn of 1795, during which, to judge by his letters, he
indulged much less in outbursts of social discontent. One proof of
this is seen in the following fact. In the spring of 1795, a volunteer
corps was raised in Dumfries, to defend the country, while the (p. 170)
regular army was engaged abroad, in war with France. Many of the
Dumfries Whigs, and among them Burns's friends, Syme and Dr. Maxwell,
enrolled themselves in the corps, in order to prove their loyalty and
patriotism, on which some suspicions had previously been cast. Burns
too offered himself, and was received into the corps. Allan Cunningham
remembered the appearance of the regiment, "their odd but not
ungraceful dress; white kerseymere breeches and waistcoat; short blue
coat, faced with red; and round hat, surmounted by a bearskin, like
the helmets of the Horse Guards." He remembered the poet too, as he
showed among them, "his very swarthy face, his ploughman stoop, his
large dark eyes, and his awkwardness in handling his arms." But if he
could not handle his musket deftly, he could do what none else in that
or any other corps could, he could sing a patriotic stave which
thrilled the hearts not only of his comrades, but every Briton from
Land's-end to Johnny Groat's.
This is one of the verses:--
The kettle o' the kirk and state
Perhaps a clout may fail in't;
But deil a foreign tinkler loan
Shall ever ca' a nail in't.
Our fathers' blade the kettle bought,
And wha wad dare to spoil it;
By heavens! the sacrilegious dog
Shall fuel be to boil it!
By heavens; the sacrilegious dog
Shall fuel be to boil it!
This song flew throughout the land, hit the taste of the country-people
everywhere, and is said to have done much to change the feelings of
those who were disaffected. Much blame has been cast upon the Tory (p. 171)
Ministry, then in power, for not having offered a pension to Burns. It
was not, it is said, that they did not know of him, or that they
disregarded his existence. For Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord
Sidmouth, we have seen, deeply felt his genius, acknowledged it in
verse, and is said to have urged his claims upon the Government. Mr.
Pitt, soon after the poet's death, is reported to have said of Burns's
poetry, at the table of Lord Liverpool, "I can think of no verse since
Shakespeare's, that has so much the appearance of coming sweetly from
nature." It is on Mr. Dundas, however, at that time one of the
Ministry, and the autocrat of all Scottish affairs, that the heaviest
weight of blame has fallen. But perhaps this is not altogether
deserved. There is the greatest difference between a literary man, who
holds his political opinions in private, but refrains from mingling in
party politics, and one who zealously espouses one side, and employs
his literary power in promoting it. He threw himself into every
electioneering business with his whole heart, wrote, while he might
have been better employed, electioneering ballads of little merit, in
which he lauded Whig men and theories, and lampooned, often
scurrilously, the supporters of Dundas. No doubt it would have been
magnanimous in the men then in power to have overlooked all these
things, and, condoning the politics, to have rewarded the poetry of
Burns. And it were to be wished that such magnanimity were more common
among public men. But we do not see it practised even at the present
day, any more than it was in the time of Burns.
During the first half of 1795 the poet had gone on with his accustomed
duties, and, during the intervals of business, kept sending to Thomson
the songs he from time to time composed.
His professional prospects seemed at this time to be brightening, (p. 172)
for about the middle of May, 1795, his staunch friend, Mr. Graham of
Fintray, would seem to have revived an earlier project of having him
transferred to a post in Leith, with easy duty and an income of nearly
200_l._ a year. This project could not at the time be carried out; but
that it should have been thought of proves that political offences of
the past were beginning to be forgotten. During this same year there
were symptoms that the respectable persons who had for some time
frowned on him, were willing to relent. A combination of causes, his
politics, the Riddel quarrel, and his own many imprudences, had kept
him under a cloud. And this disfavour of the well-to-do had not
increased his self-respect or made him more careful about the company
he kept. Disgust with the world had made him reckless and defiant. But
with the opening of 1795, the Riddels were reconciled to him, and
received him once more into their good graces, and others, their
friends, probably followed their example.
But the time was drawing near, when the smiles or the frowns of the
Dumfries magnates would be alike indifferent to him. There has been
more than enough of discussion among the biographers of Burns, as to
how far he really deteriorated in himself during those Dumfries years,
as to the extent and the causes of the social discredit into which he
fell, and as to the charge that he took to low company. His early
biographers, Currie, Walker, Heron drew the picture somewhat darkly;
Lockhart and Cunningham have endeavoured to lighten the depth of the
shadows. Chambers has laboured to give the facts impartially, has
faithfully placed the lights and the shadows side by side, and has
summed up the whole subject in an appendix on _The Reputation (p. 173)
of Burns in his Later Years_, to which I would refer any who desire to
see this painful subject minutely handled. Whatever extenuations or
excuses may be alleged, all must allow that his course in Dumfries was
on the whole a downward one, and must concur, however reluctantly, in
the conclusion at which Lockhart, while decrying the severe judgments
of Currie, Heron, and others, is forced by truth to come, that "the
untimely death of Burns was, it is too probable, hastened by his own
intemperances and imprudences." To inquire minutely, what was the
extent of those intemperances, and what the nature of those
imprudences, is a subject which can little profit any one, and on
which one has no heart to enter. If the general statement of fact be
true, the minute details are better left to the kindly oblivion,
which, but for too prying curiosity, would by this time have overtaken
them.
Dissipated his life for some years certainly had been--deeply
disreputable many asserted it to be. Others, however, there were who
took a more lenient view of him. Findlater, his superior in the
Excise, used to assert, that no officer under him was more regular in
his public duties. Mr. Gray, then teacher of Dumfries school, has left
it on record, that no parent he knew watched more carefully over his
children's education--that he had often found the poet in his home
explaining to his eldest boy passages of the English poets from
Shakespeare to Gray, and that the benefit of the father's instructions
was apparent in the excellence of the son's daily school performances.
This brighter side of the picture, however, is not irreconcilable with
that darker one. For Burns's whole character was a compound of the
most discordant and contradictory elements. Dr. Chambers has well
shown that he who at one hour was the _douce_ sober Mr. Burns, in (p. 174)
the next was changed to the maddest of Bacchanals: now he was glowing
with the most generous sentiments, now sinking to the very opposite
extreme.
One of the last visits paid to him by any friend from a distance would
seem to have been by Professor Walker, although the date of it is
somewhat uncertain. Eight years had passed since the Professor had
parted with Burns at Blair Castle, after the poet's happy visit there.
In the account which the Professor has left of his two days' interview
with Burns at Dumfries, there are traces of disappointment with the
change which the intervening years had wrought. It has been alleged
that prolonged residence in England had made the Professor fastidious,
and more easily shocked with rusticity and coarseness. However this
may be, he found Burns, as he thought, not improved, but more
dictatorial, more free in his potations, more coarse and gross in his
talk, than when he had formerly known him.
For some time past there had not been wanting symptoms to show that
the poet's strength was already past its prime. In June, 1794, he had,
as we have seen, told Mrs. Dunlop that he had been in poor health, and
was afraid he was beginning to suffer for the follies of his youth.
His physicians threatened him, he said, with flying gout, but he
trusted they were mistaken. In the spring of 1795, he said to one who
called on him, that he was beginning to feel as if he were soon to be
an old man. Still he went about all his usual employments. But during
the latter part of that year his health seems to have suddenly
declined. For some considerable time he was confined to a sick-bed.
Dr. Currie, who was likely to be well informed, states that this
illness lasted from October, 1795, till the following January. No (p. 175)
details of his malady are given, and little more is known of his
condition at this time, except what he himself has given in a letter
to Mrs. Dunlop, and in a rhymed epistle to one of his brother
Excisemen.
At the close of the year he must have felt that, owing to his
prolonged sickness, his funds were getting low. Else he would not have
penned to his friend, Collector Mitchell, the following request:--
Friend of the Poet, tried and leal,
Wha, wanting thee, might beg or steal;
Alake, alake, the meikle deil
Wi' a' his witches
Are at it, skelpin'! jig and reel,
In my poor pouches.
I modestly fu fain wad hint it,
That one pound one, I sairly want it;
If wi' the hizzie down ye sent it,
It would be kind;
And while my heart wi' life-blood dunted,
I'd bear't in mind.
* * * * *
_POSTSCRIPT._
Ye've heard this while how I've been licket
And by fell death was nearly nicket:
Grim loun! he gat me by the fecket,
And sair me sheuk;
But by gude luck I lap a wicket,
And turn'd a neuk.
But by that health, I've got a share o't,
And by that life, I'm promised mair o't,
My heal and weel I'll take a care o't
A tentier way;
Then fareweel folly, hide and hair o't,
For ance and aye.
It was, alas! too late now to bid farewell to folly, even if he (p. 176)
could have done so indeed. With the opening of the year 1796, he
somewhat revived, and the prudent resolve of his sickness disappeared
with the first prospect of returning health. Chambers thus records a
fact which the local tradition of Dumfries confirms:--"Early in the
month of January, when his health was in the course of improvement,
Burns tarried to a late hour at a jovial party in the Globe tavern.
Before returning home, he unluckily remained for some time in the open
air, and, overpowered by the effects of the liquor he had drunk, fell
asleep.... A fatal chill penetrated his bones; he reached home with
the seeds of a rheumatic fever already in possession of his weakened
frame. In this little accident, and not in the pressure of poverty or
disrepute, or wounded feelings or a broken heart, truly lay the
determining cause of the sadly shortened days of our national poet."
How long this new access of extreme illness confined him seems
uncertain. Currie says for about a week; Chambers surmises a longer
time. Mr. Scott Douglas says, that from the close of January till the
month of April, he seems to have moved about with some hope of
permanent improvement. But if he had such a hope, it was destined not
to be fulfilled. Writing on the 31st of January, 1796, to Mrs. Dunlop,
the trusted friend of so many confidences, this is the account he
gives of himself:--
"I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed
me of my only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance, too,
and so rapidly as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to
her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I became
myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the (p. 177)
die spun doubtful; until, after many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems
to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room,
and once indeed have been before my own door in the street." In these
words Burns would seem to have put his two attacks together, as though
they were but one prolonged illness.
It was about this time that, happening to meet a neighbour in the
street, the poet talked with her seriously of his health, and said
among other things this: "I find that a man may live like a fool, but
he will scarcely die like one." As from time to time he appeared on
the street during the early months of 1796, others of his old
acquaintance were struck by the sight of a tall man of slovenly
appearance and sickly aspect, whom a second look showed to be Burns,
and that he was dying. Yet in that February there were still some
flutters of song, one of which was, _Hey for the Lass wi' a Tocher_,
written in answer to Thomson's beseeching inquiry if he was never to
hear from him again. Another was a rhymed epistle, in which he answers
the inquiries of the colonel of his Volunteer Corps after his health.
From about the middle of April, Burns seldom left his room, and for a
great part of each day was confined to bed. May came--a beautiful
May--and it was hoped that its genial influences might revive him. But
while young Jeffrey was writing, "It is the finest weather in the
world--the whole country is covered with green and blossoms; and the
sun shines perpetually through a light east wind," Burns was shivering
at every breath of the breeze. At this crisis his faithful wife was
laid aside, unable to attend him. But a young neighbour, Jessie Lewars,
sister of a brother exciseman, came to their house, assisted in (p. 178)
all household work, and ministered to the dying poet. She was at this
time only a girl, but she lived to be a wife and mother, and to see an
honoured old age. Whenever we think of the last days of the poet, it
is well to remember one who did so much to smooth his dying pillow.
Burns himself was deeply grateful, and his gratitude as usual found
vent in song. But the old manner still clung to him. Even then he
could not express his gratitude to his young benefactress without
assuming the tone of a fancied lover. Two songs in this strain he
addressed to Jessie Lewars. Of the second of these it is told, that
one morning the poet said to her that if she would play to him any
favourite tune, for which she desired to have new words, he would do
his best to meet her wish. She sat down at the piano, and played over
several times the air of an old song beginning thus:--
The robin cam to the wren's nest,
And keekit in, and keekit in.
As soon as Burns had taken in the melody, he set to, and in a few
minutes composed these beautiful words, the second of the songs which
he addressed to Jessie:--
Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee.
Or did misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a.'
Or were I in the wildest waste, (p. 179)
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desert were a paradise,
If thou wert there, if thou wert there:
Or were I monarch o' the globe,
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.
Mendelssohn is said to have so much admired this song, that he
composed for it what Chambers pronounces an air of exquisite pathos.
June came, but brought no improvement, rather rapid decline of health.
On the 4th of July (1796) he wrote to Johnson, "Many a merry meeting
this publication (the _Museum_) has given us, and possibly it may give
us more, though, alas, I fear it. This protracting, slow consuming
illness, will, I doubt much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before
he has reached his middle career, and will turn over the poet to far
more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit or the
pathos of sentiment." On the day on which he wrote these words, he
left Dumfries for a lonely place called Brow on the Solway shore, to
try the effects of sea-bathing. He went alone, for his wife was unable
to accompany him. While he was at Brow, his former friend, Mrs. Walter
Riddel, to whom, after their estrangement, he had been reconciled,
happened to be staying for the benefit of her health in the
neighbourhood. She asked Burns to dine with her, and sent her carriage
to bring him to her house. This is part of the account she gives of
that interview:--
"I was struck with his appearance on entering the room. The stamp of
death was imprinted on his features. He seemed already touching the
brink of eternity. His first salutation was. 'Well, madam, have (p. 180)
you any commands for the other world?' I replied that it seemed a
doubtful case, which of us should be there soonest, and that I hoped
he would yet live to write my epitaph. He looked in my face with an
air of great kindness, and expressed his concern at seeing me look so
ill, with his accustomed sensibility.... We had a long and serious
conversation about his present situation, and the approaching
termination of all his earthly prospects. He spoke of his death
without any of the ostentation of philosophy, but with firmness as
well as feeling, as an event likely to happen very soon, and which
gave him concern chiefly from leaving his four children so young and
unprotected, and his wife hourly expecting a fifth. He mentioned, with
seeming pride and satisfaction, the promising genius of his eldest
son, and the flattering marks of approbation he had received from his
teachers, and dwelt particularly on his hopes of that boy's future
conduct and merit. His anxiety for his family seemed to hang heavy on
him, and the more perhaps from the reflection that he had not done
them all the justice he was so well qualified to do. Passing from this
subject, he showed great concern about the care of his literary fame,
and particularly the publication of his posthumous works. He said he
was well aware that his death would create some noise, and that every
scrap of his writing would be revived against him to the injury of his
future reputation; that his letters and verses written with unguarded
and improper freedom, and which he earnestly wished to have buried in
oblivion, would be handed about by idle vanity or malevolence, when no
dread of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent the censures
of shrill-tongued malice, or the insidious sarcasms of envy, from
pouring forth all their venom to blast his fame.
"He lamented that he had written many epigrams on persons against (p. 181)
whom he entertained no enmity, and whose characters he would be sorry
to wound; and many indifferent poetical pieces, which he feared would
now, with all their imperfections on their head, be thrust upon the
world. On this account he deeply regretted having deferred to put his
papers in a state of arrangement, as he was now incapable of the
exertion.... The conversation," she adds, "was kept up with great
evenness and animation on his side. I had seldom seen his mind greater
or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree of
vivacity in his sallies, and they would probably have had a greater
share, had not the concern and dejection I could not disguise damped
the spirit of pleasantry he seemed not unwilling to indulge.
"We parted about sunset on the evening of that day (the 5th July,
1796), the next day I saw him again, and we parted to meet no more!"
It is not wonderful that Burns should have felt some anxiety about the
literary legacy he was leaving to mankind. Not about his best poems;
these, he must have known, would take care of themselves. Yet even
among the poems which he had published with his name, were some,
"which dying" he well might "wish to blot." There lay among his papers
letters too, and other "fallings from him," which he no doubt would
have desired to suppress, but of which, if they have not all been made
public, enough have appeared to justify his fears of that idle vanity,
if not malevolence, which after his death, would rake up every scrap
he had written, uncaring how it might injure his good name, or affect
future generations of his admirers. No poet perhaps has suffered more
from the indiscriminate and unscrupulous curiosity of editors, (p. 182)
catering too greedily for the public, than Burns has done.
Besides anxieties of this kind, he, during those last days, had to
bear another burden of care that pressed even more closely home. To
pain of body, absence from his wife and children, and haunting anxiety
on their account, was added the pressure of some small debts and the
fear of want. By the rules of the Excise, his full salary would not be
allowed him during his illness; and though the Board agreed to
continue Burns in his full pay, he never knew this in time to be
comforted by it. With his small income diminished, how could he meet
the increased expenditure caused by sickness? We have seen how at the
beginning of the year he had written to his friend Mitchell to ask the
loan of a guinea. One or two letters, asking for the payment of some
old debts due to him by a former companion, still remain. During his
stay at Brow, on the 12th of July, he wrote to Thomson the following
memorable letter:--
"After all my boasted independence, curst necessity compels me to
implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to
whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has
commenced a process, and will infallibly put me into jail. Do, for
God's sake, send that sum, and that by return of post. Forgive me this
earnestness, but the horrors of a jail have made me half distracted. I
do not ask all this gratuitously; for, upon returning health, I hereby
promise and engage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of the
neatest song-genius you have seen. I tried my hand on Rothemurchie
this morning. The measure is so difficult that it is impossible to
infuse much genius into the lines. They are on the other side.
Forgive, forgive me!"
And on the other side was written Burns's last song beginning, (p. 183)
"Fairest maid, on Devon banks." Was it native feeling, or inveterate
habit, that made him that morning revert to the happier days he had
seen on the banks of Devon, and sing a last song to one of the two
beauties he had there admired? Chambers thinks it was to Charlotte
Hamilton, the latest editor refers it to Peggy Chalmers.
Thomson at once sent the sum asked for. He has been much, but not
justly, blamed for not having sent a much larger sum, and indeed for
not having repaid the poet for his songs long before. Against such
charges it is enough to reply that when Thomson had formerly
volunteered some money to Burns in return for his songs, the indignant
poet told him that if he ever again thought of such a thing, their
intercourse must thenceforth cease. And for the smallness of the sum
sent, it should be remembered that Thomson was himself a poor man, and
had not at this time made anything by his Collection of Songs, and
never did make much beyond repayment of his large outlay.
On the same day on which Burns wrote thus to Thomson, he wrote another
letter in much the same terms to his cousin, Mr. James Burnes, of
Montrose, asking him to assist him with ten pounds, which was at once
sent by his relative, who, though not a rich, was a generous-hearted
man.
There was still a third letter written on that 12th of July (1796)
from Brow. Of Mrs. Dunlop, who had for some months ceased her
correspondence with him, the poet takes this affecting farewell:--"I
have written you so often, without receiving any answer, that I would
not trouble you again but for the circumstances in which I am. (p. 184)
An illness which has long hung about me, in all probability will
speedily send me beyond that 'bourn whence no traveller returns.' Your
friendship, with which for many years you honoured me, was a
friendship dearest to my soul. Your conversation, and especially your
correspondence, were at once highly entertaining and instructive. With
what pleasure did I use to break up the seal! The remembrance yet adds
one pulse more to my poor palpitating heart. Farewell!"
On the 14th he wrote to his wife, saying that though the sea-bathing
had eased his pains, it had not done anything to restore his health.
The following anecdote of him at this time has been preserved:--"A
night or two before Burns left Brow, he drank tea with Mrs. Craig,
widow of the minister of Ruthwell. His altered appearance excited much
silent sympathy; and the evening being beautiful, and the sun shining
brightly through the casement, Miss Craig (afterwards Mrs. Henry
Duncan) was afraid the light might be too much for him, and rose to
let down the window-blinds. Burns immediately guessed what she meant,
and regarding the young lady with a look of great benignity, said,
'Thank you, my dear, for your kind attention; but oh! let him shine;
he will not shine long for me.'"
On the 18th July he left Brow, and returned to Dumfries in a small
spring cart. When he alighted, the onlookers saw that he was hardly
able to stand, and observed that he walked with tottering steps to his
door. Those who saw him enter his house, knew by his appearance that
he would never again cross that threshold alive. When the news spread
in Dumfries that Burns had returned from Brow and was dying, the whole
town was deeply moved. Allan Cunningham, who was present, thus
describes what he saw:--"The anxiety of the people, high and low, (p. 185)
was very great. Wherever two or three were together, their talk
was of Burns, and of him alone. They spoke of his history, of his
person, and of his works; of his witty sayings, and sarcastic replies,
and of his too early fate, with much enthusiasm, and sometimes with
deep feeling. All that he had done, and all that they had hoped he
would accomplish, were talked of. Half-a-dozen of them stopped Dr.
Maxwell in the street, and said, 'How is Burns, sir?' He shook his
head, saying, 'He cannot be worse,' and passed on to be subjected to
similar inquiries farther up the way. I heard one of a group inquire,
with much simplicity, 'Who do you think will be our poet now?'"
During the three or four days between his return from Brow and the
end, his mind, when not roused by conversation, wandered in delirium.
Yet when friends drew near his bed, sallies of his old wit would for a
moment return. To a brother volunteer who came to see him he said,
with a smile, "John, don't let the awkward squad fire over me." His
wife was unable to attend him; and four helpless children wandered
from room to room gazing on their unhappy parents. All the while,
Jessie Lewars was ministering to the helpless and to the dying one,
and doing what kindness could do to relieve their suffering. On the
fourth day after his return, the 21st of July, Burns sank into his
last sleep. His children stood around his bed, and his eldest son
remembered long afterwards all the circumstances of that sad hour.
The news that Burns was dead, sounded through all Scotland like a
knell announcing a great national bereavement. Men woke up to feel the
greatness of the gift which in him had been vouchsafed to their
generation, and which had met, on the whole, with so poor a
reception. Self-reproach mingled with the universal sorrow, as (p. 186)
men asked themselves whether they might not have done more to cherish
and prolong that rarely gifted life.
Of course there was a great public funeral, in which the men of
Dumfries and the neighbourhood, high and low, appeared as mourners,
and soldiers and volunteers with colours, muffled drums, and arms
reversed, not very appropriately mingled in the procession. At the
very time when they were laying her husband in his grave, Mrs. Burns
gave birth to his posthumous son. He was called Maxwell, after the
physician who attended his father, but he died in infancy. The spot
where the poet was laid was in a comer of St. Michael's churchyard,
and the grave remained for a time unmarked by any monument. After some
years his wife placed over it a plain, unpretending stone, inscribed
with his name and age, and with the names of his two boys, who were
buried in the same place. Well had it been, if he had been allowed to
rest undisturbed in this grave where his family had laid him. But
well-meaning, though ignorant, officiousness would not suffer it to be
so. Nearly twenty years after the poet's death, a huge, cumbrous,
unsightly mausoleum was, by public subscription, erected at a little
distance from his original resting-place. This structure was adorned
with an ungraceful figure in marble, representing, "The muse of Coila
finding the poet at the plough, and throwing her inspiring mantle over
him." To this was added a long, rambling epitaph in tawdry Latin, as
though any inscription which scholars could devise could equal the
simple name of Robert Burns. When the new structure was completed, on
the 19th September, 1815, his grave was opened, and men for a moment
gazed with awe on the form of Burns, seemingly as entire as on the (p. 187)
day when first it was laid in the grave. But as soon as they began to
raise it, the whole body crumbled to dust, leaving only the head and
bones. These relics they bore to the mausoleum, which had been
prepared for their reception. But not even yet was the poet's dust to
be allowed to rest in peace. When his widow died, in March, 1834, the
mausoleum was opened, that she might be laid by her husband's side.
Some craniologists of Dumfries were then permitted, in the name of
so-called science, to desecrate his dust with their inhuman outrage.
At the dead of night, between the 31st of March and the 1st of April,
these men laid their profane fingers on the skull of Burns, "tried
their hats upon it, and found them all too little;" applied their
compasses, registered the size of the so-called organs, and "satisfied
themselves that Burns had capacity enough to compose _Tam o' Shanter_,
_The Cotter's Saturday Night_, and _To Mary in Heaven_." This done,
they laid the head once again in the hallowed ground, where, let us
hope, it will be disturbed no more. The mausoleum, unsightly though it
is, has become a place of pilgrimage whither yearly crowds of
travellers resort from the ends of the earth, to gaze on the
resting-place of Scotland's peasant poet, and thence to pass to that
other consecrated place within ruined Dryburgh, where lies the dust of
a kindred spirit by his own Tweed.