"It's hardly in a body's pow'r
To keep at times frae being sour,
To see how things are shar'd--
How best o' chiels are whiles in want,
While coofs on countless thousands rant,
And kenna how to wair't."--_Epistle to Davie._
I visited my friend, a few days after my arrival in Irvine, at the
farm-house of Mossgiel, to which, on the death of his father, he had
removed, with his brother Gilbert and his mother. I could not help
observing that his manners were considerably changed: my welcome seemed
less kind and hearty than I could have anticipated from the warm-hearted
peasant of five years ago, and there was a stern and almost supercilious
elevation in his bearing, which at first pained and offended me. I had
met with him as he was returning from the fields after the labours of
the day; the dusk of twilight had fallen; and, though I had calculated
on passing the evening with him at the farm-house of Mossgiel, so
displeased was I, that, after our first greeting, I had more than half
changed my mind. The recollection of his former kindness to me, however,
suspended the feeling, and I resolved on throwing myself on his
hospitality for the night, however cold the welcome.
"I have come all the way from Irvine to see you, Mr. Burns," I said.
"For the last five years, I have thought more of my mother and you than
of any other two persons in the country. May I not calculate, as of old,
on my supper and a bed?"
There was an instantaneous change in his expression.
"Pardon me, my friend," he said, grasping my hand; "I have, unwittingly,
been doing you wrong; one may surely be the master of an Indiaman and
in possession of a heart too honest to be spoiled by prosperity!"
The remark served to explain the haughty coldness of his manner which
had so displeased me, and which was but the unwillingly assumed armour
of a defensive pride.
"There, brother," he said, throwing down some plough irons which he
carried, "send _wee Davoc_ with these to the smithy, and bid him tell
Rankin I won't be there to-night. The moon is rising, Mr. Lindsay--shall
we not have a stroll together through the coppice?"
"That of all things," I replied; and, parting from Gilbert, we struck
into the wood.
The evening, considering the lateness of the season, for winter had set
in, was mild and pleasant. The moon at full was rising over the Cumnock
hills, and casting its faint light on the trees that rose around us, in
their winding-sheets of brown and yellow, like so many spectres, or
that, in the more exposed glares and openings of the wood, stretched
their long naked arms to the sky. A light breeze went rustling through
the withered grass; and I could see the faint twinkling of the falling
leaves, as they came showering down on every side of us.
"We meet in the midst of death and desolation," said my companion--"we
parted when all around us was fresh and beautiful. My father was with me
then, and--and Mary Campbell--and now"----
"Mary! your Mary!" I exclaimed--"the young--the beautiful--alas! is she
also gone?"
"She has left me," he said--"left me. Mary is in her grave!"
I felt my heart swell, as the image of that loveliest of creatures came
rising to my view in all her beauty, as I had seen her by the river
side; and I knew not what to reply.
"Yes," continued my friend, "she's in her grave;--we parted for a few
days, to re-unite, as we hoped, for ever; and, ere these few days had
passed, she was in her grave. But I was unworthy of her--unworthy even
then; and now---- But she is in her grave!"
I grasped his hand. "It is difficult," I said, "to _bid_ the heart
submit to these dispensations, and, oh, how utterly impossible to bring
it to _listen_! But life--_your_ life, my friend--must not be passed in
useless sorrow. I am convinced, and often have I thought of it since our
last meeting, that yours is no vulgar destiny--though I know not to what
it tends."
"Downwards!" he exclaimed--"it tends downwards;--I see, I feel it;--the
anchor of my affection is gone, and I drift shoreward on the rocks."
"'Twere ruin," I exclaimed, "to think so!"
"Not half an hour ere my father died," he continued, "he expressed a
wish to rise and sit once more in his chair; and we indulged him. But,
alas! the same feeling of uneasiness which had prompted the wish,
remained with him still, and he sought to return again to his bed. 'It
is not by quitting the bed or the chair,' he said, 'that I need seek for
ease: it is by quitting the body.' I am oppressed, Mr. Lindsay, by a
somewhat similar feeling of uneasiness, and, at times, would fain cast
the blame on the circumstances in which I am placed. But I may be as
far mistaken as my poor father. I would fain live at peace with all
mankind--nay, more, I would fain love and do good to them all; but the
villain and the oppressor come to set their feet on my very neck, and
crush me into the mire--and must I not resist? And when, in some
luckless hour, I yield to my passions--to those fearful passions that
must one day overwhelm me--when I yield, and my whole mind is darkened
by remorse, and I groan under the discipline of conscience, then comes
the odious, abominable hypocrite--the devourer of widows' houses and
the substance of the orphan--and demands that my repentance be as
public as his own hollow, detestable prayers. And can I do other than
resist and expose him? My heart tells me it was formed to bestow--why
else does every misery that I cannot relieve render me wretched? It
tells me, too, it was formed not to receive--why else does the proffered
assistance of even a friend fill my whole soul with indignation? But ill
do my circumstances agree with my feelings. I feel as if I were totally
misplaced in some frolic of nature, and wander onwards in gloom and
unhappiness, seeking for my proper sphere. But, alas! these efforts of
uneasy misery are but the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the
walls of his cave."
I again began to experience, as on a former occasion, the o'ermastering
power of a mind larger beyond comparison than my own; but I felt it my
duty to resist the influence. "Yes, you are misplaced, my friend," I
said--"perhaps more decidedly so than any other man I ever knew; but is
not this characteristic, in some measure, of the whole species? We are
all misplaced; and it seems a part of the scheme of deity, that we
should work ourselves up to our proper sphere. In what other respect
does man so differ from the inferior animals as in those aspirations
which lead him through all the progressions of improvement, from the
lowest to the highest level of his nature?"
"That may be philosophy, my friend," he replied, "but a heart ill at
ease finds little of comfort in it. You knew my father: need I say he
was one of the excellent of the earth--a man who held directly from
God Almighty the patent of his honours? I saw that father sink
broken-hearted into the grave, the victim of legalized oppression--yes,
saw him overborne in the long contest which his high spirit and his
indomitable love of the right had incited him to maintain--overborne by
a mean, despicable scoundrel, one of the creeping things of the earth.
Heaven knows I did my utmost to assist in the struggle. In my fifteenth
year, Mr. Lindsay, when a thin, loose-jointed boy, I did the work of a
man, and strained my unknit and overtoiled sinews as if life and death
depended on the issue, till oft, in the middle of the night, I have had
to fling myself from my bed to avoid instant suffocation--an effect of
exertion so prolonged and so premature. Nor has the man exerted himself
less heartily than the boy--in the roughest, severest labours of the
field, I have never yet met a competitor. But my labours have been all
in vain--I have seen the evil bewailed by Solomon--the righteous man
falling down before the wicked." I could answer only with a sigh. "You
are in the right," he continued, after a pause, and in a more subdued
tone: "man is certainly misplaced--the present scene of things is below
the dignity of both his moral and intellectual nature. Look round
you--(we had reached the summit of a grassy eminence which rose over
the wood, and commanded a pretty extensive view of the surrounding
country)--see yonder scattered cottages, that, in the faint light, rise
dim and black amid the stubble fields--my heart warms as I look on them,
for I know how much of honest worth, and sound, generous feeling
shelters under these roof-trees. But why so much of moral excellence
united to a mere machinery for ministering to the ease and luxury of a
few of, perhaps, the least worthy of our species--creatures so spoiled
by prosperity that the claim of a common nature has no force to move
them, and who seem as miserably misplaced as the myriads whom they
oppress?"
"If I'm designed yon lordling's slave--
By nature's law designed--
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?
If not, why am I subject to
His cruelty and scorn?
Or why has man the will and power
To make his fellow mourn?"
"I would hardly know what to say in return, my friend," I rejoined, "did
not you, yourself, furnish me with the reply. You are groping on in
darkness, and it may be unhappiness, for your proper sphere; but it
is in obedience to a great though occult law of our nature--a law,
general as it affects the species, in its course of onward
progression--particular, and infinitely more irresistible, as it
operates on every truly superior intellect. There are men born to wield
the destinies of nations--nay, more, to stamp the impression of their
thoughts and feelings on the mind of the whole civilized world. And by
what means do we often find them roused to accomplish their appointed
work? At times hounded on by sorrow and suffering, and thus in the
design of providence, that there may be less of sorrow and suffering in
the world ever after--at times roused by cruel and maddening oppression,
that the oppressor may perish in his guilt, and a whole country enjoy
the blessings of freedom. If Wallace had not suffered from tyranny,
Scotland would not have been free."
"But how apply the remark?" said my companion.
"Robert Burns," I replied, again grasping his hand, "yours, I am
convinced, is no vulgar destiny. Your griefs, your sufferings, your
errors even, the oppressions you have seen and felt, the thoughts which
have arisen in your mind, the feelings and sentiments of which it has
been the subject, are, I am convinced, of infinitely more importance in
their relation to your country than to yourself. You are, wisely and
benevolently, placed far below your level, that thousands and ten
thousands of your countrymen may be the better enabled to attain to
theirs. Assert the dignity of manhood and of genius, and there will be
less of wrong and oppression in the world ever after."
I spent the remainder of the evening in the farm-house of Mossgiel, and
took the coach next morning for Liverpool.