WORKS

The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon me throughout this

paper only to touch upon those points in the life of Burns where

correction or amplification seemed desirable, leaves me little

opportunity to speak of the works which have made his name so famous.

Yet, even here, a few observations seem necessary.

At the time when the poet made his appearance and great first success,

his work was remarkable in two ways. For, first, in an age when poetry

had become abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to deal with

shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actual

circumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might

be. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularly

stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical

timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible,

and used language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit

to give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whom

we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once

that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance,

and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of

life. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in

sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of

incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively cannot

recollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as though a writer

should describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be still

uncertain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and stubborn

advance of foot. There could be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work is

at the opposite pole from such indefinite and stammering performances;

and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead a

man further and further from writing the "Address to a Louse." Yet

Burns, like most great artists, proceeded from a school and continued a

tradition; only the school and tradition were Scottish, and not English.

While the English language was becoming daily more pedantic and

inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was

another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry,

tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect

alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which

kept it fresh and supple; and, although not shaped for heroic flights,

it was a direct and vivid medium for all that had to do with social

life. Hence, whenever Scottish poets left their laborious imitations of

bad English verses, and fell back on their own dialect, their style

would kindle, and they would write of their convivial and somewhat gross

existences with pith and point. In Ramsay, and far more in the poor lad

Fergusson, there was mettle, humour, literary courage, and a power of

saying what they wished to say definitely and brightly, which in the

latter case should have justified great anticipations. Had Burns died at

the same age as Fergusson, he would have left us literally nothing worth

remark. To Ramsay and to Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very

uncommon degree, not only following their tradition and using their

measures, but directly and avowedly imitating their pieces. The same

tendency to borrow a hint, to work on some one else's foundation, is

notable in Burns from first to last, in the period of song-writing as

well as in that of the early poems; and strikes one oddly in a man of

such deep originality, who left so strong a print on all he touched, and

whose work is so greatly distinguished by that character of

"inevitability" which Wordsworth denied to Goethe.

When we remember Burns's obligations to his predecessors, we must never

forget his immense advances on them. They had already "discovered"

nature; but Burns discovered poetry--a higher and more intense way of

thinking of the things that go to make up nature, a higher and more

ideal key of words in which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergusson

excelled at making a popular--or shall we say vulgar?--sort of society

verses, comical and prosaic, written, you would say, in taverns while a

supper-party waited for its laureate's word; but on the appearance of

Burns, this coarse and laughing literature was touched to finer issues,

and learned gravity of thought and natural pathos.

What he had gained from his predecessors was a direct, speaking style,

and to walk on his own feet instead of on academical stilts. There was

never a man of letters with more absolute command of his means; and we

may say of him, without excess, that his style was his slave. Hence that

energy of epithet, so concise and telling, that a foreigner is tempted

to explain it by some special richness or aptitude in the dialect he

wrote. Hence that Homeric justice and completeness of description which

gives us the very physiognomy of nature, in body and detail, as nature

is. Hence, too, the unbroken literary quality of his best pieces, which

keeps him from any slip into the weariful trade of word-painting, and

presents everything, as everything should be presented by the art of

words, in a clear, continuous medium of thought. Principal Shairp, for

instance, gives us a paraphrase of one tough verse of the original; and

for those who know the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has the very

quality they are accustomed to look for and admire in Greek. The

contemporaries of Burns were surprised that he should visit so many

celebrated mountains and waterfalls, and not seize the opportunity to

make a poem. Indeed, it is not for those who have a true command of the

art of words, but for peddling, professional amateurs, that these

pointed occasions are most useful and inspiring. As those who speak

French imperfectly are glad to dwell on any topic they may have talked

upon or heard others talk upon before, because they know appropriate

words for it in French, so the dabbler in verse rejoices to behold a

waterfall, because he has learned the sentiment and knows appropriate

words for it in poetry. But the dialect of Burns was fitted to deal with

any subject; and whether it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, a

sheep struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly soldiers in the

field, the gait and cogitations of a drunken man, or only a village

cock-crow in the morning, he could find language to give it freshness,

body, and relief. He was always ready to borrow the hint of a design, as

though he had a difficulty in commencing--a difficulty, let us say, in

choosing a subject out of a world which seemed all equally living and

significant to him; but once he had the subject chosen, he could cope

with nature single-handed, and make every stroke a triumph. Again, his

absolute mastery in his art enabled him to express each and all of his

different humours, and to pass smoothly and congruously from one to

another. Many men invent a dialect for only one side of their

nature--perhaps their pathos or their humour, or the delicacy of their

senses--and, for lack of a medium, leave all the others unexpressed.

You meet such an one, and find him in conversation full of thought,

feeling, and experience, which he has lacked the art to employ in his

writings. But Burns was not thus hampered in the practice of the

literary art; he could throw the whole weight of his nature into his

work, and impregnate it from end to end. If Doctor Johnson, that stilted

and accomplished stylist, had lacked the sacred Boswell, what should we

have known of him? and how should we have delighted in his acquaintance

as we do? Those who spoke with Burns tell us how much we have lost who

did not. But I think they exaggerate their privilege: I think we have

the whole Burns in our possession set forth in his consummate verses.

It was by his style, and not by his matter, that he affected Wordsworth

and the world. There is, indeed, only one merit worth considering in a

man of letters--that he should write well; and only one damning

fault--that he should write ill. We are little the better for the

reflections of the sailor's parrot in the story. And so, if Burns helped

to change the course of literary history, it was by his frank, direct,

and masterly utterance, and not by his homely choice of subjects. That

was imposed upon him, not chosen upon a principle. He wrote from his own

experience, because it was his nature so to do, and the tradition of the

school from which he proceeded was fortunately not opposed to homely

subjects. But to these homely subjects he communicated the rich

commentary of his nature; they were all steeped in Burns; and they

interest us not in themselves, but because they have been passed through

the spirit of so genuine and vigorous a man. Such is the stamp of living

literature; and there was never any more alive than that of Burns.

What a gust of sympathy there is in him sometimes flowing out in byways

hitherto unused, upon mice, and flowers, and the devil himself;

sometimes speaking plainly between human hearts; sometimes ringing out

in exultation like a peal of bells! When we compare the "Farmer's

Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie," with the clever and inhumane

production of half a century earlier, "The Auld Man's Mare's dead," we

see in a nut-shell the spirit of the change introduced by Burns. And as

to its manner, who that has read it can forget how the collie, Luath, in

the "Twa Dogs," describes and enters into the merry-making in the

cottage?

"The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill

Are handed round wi' richt guid will;

The canty auld folks crackin' crouse,

The young anes rantin' through the house--

My heart has been sae fain to see them,

That I for joy hae barkit wi' them."

It was this ardent power of sympathy that was fatal to so many women,

and, through Jean Armour, to himself at last. His humour comes from him

in a stream so deep and easy that I will venture to call him the best of

humorous poets. He turns about in the midst to utter a noble sentiment

or a trenchant remark on human life, and the style changes and rises to

the occasion. I think it is Principal Shairp who says, happily, that

Burns would have been no Scotsman if he had not loved to moralise;

neither, may we add, would he have been his father's son; but (what is

worthy of note) his moralisings are to a large extent the moral of his

own career. He was among the least impersonal of artists. Except in the

"Jolly Beggars," he shows no gleam of dramatic instinct. Mr. Carlyle has

complained that "Tam o' Shanter" is, from the absence of this quality,

only a picturesque and external piece of work; and I may add that in the

"Twa Dogs" it is precisely in the infringement of dramatic propriety

that a great deal of the humour of the speeches depends for its

existence and effect. Indeed, Burns was so full of his identity that it

breaks forth on every page; and there is scarce an appropriate remark

either in praise or blame of his own conduct but he has put it himself

into verse. Alas for the tenor of these remarks! They are, indeed, his

own pitiful apology for such a marred existence and talents so misused

and stunted; and they seem to prove for ever how small a part is played

by reason in the conduct of man's affairs. Here was one, at least, who

with unfailing judgment predicted his own fate; yet his knowledge could

not avail him, and with open eyes he must fulfil his tragic destiny. Ten

years before the end he had written his epitaph; and neither subsequent

events, nor the critical eyes of posterity, have shown us a word in it

to alter. And, lastly, has he not put in for himself the last

unanswerable plea?--

"Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman;

Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,

To step aside is human:

One point must still be greatly dark--"

One? Alas! I fear every man and woman of us is "greatly dark" to all

their neighbours, from the day of birth until death removes them, in

their greatest virtues as well as in their saddest faults; and we, who

have been trying to read the character of Burns, may take home the

lesson and be gentle in our thoughts.