[Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson at the festival of the Boston Burns Club,
at the Parker House, Boston, Mass., January 25, 1859, commemorating
the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Scottish bard. Around
the tables were gathered a company numbering nearly three hundred,
including Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, George S. Hillard, Nathaniel P.
Willis, and others of the literary guild. Among the decorations of the
banqueting-hall was displayed a bust of Burns crowned with a wreath of
roses and bays. Mr. Emerson spoke to the principal toast of the
evening, "The Memory of Burns," and his graceful flights of oratory
were received with cheers, and calls for "More! More!" which the
presiding officer, General John S. Tyler, quieted with the remark:
"Mr. Emerson begs to be excused, not because the well of gushing
waters is exhausted, but because, in the kindness of his heart, he
thinks he ought to leave room for gentlemen who are to succeed him."
Willis, writing later of the festival, said of this speech, "Why, in
that large and convivially excited audience, there was not, while he
spoke, a wandering eye--not a pulse or a breath that was not held
absolutely captive. Wherein lies the wonderful spell?"]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I do not know by what untoward
accident it has chanced--and I forbear to inquire--that, in this
accomplished circle, it should fall to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to
receive your commands, and at the latest hour, too, to respond to the
sentiment just offered, and which, indeed, makes the occasion. But I am
told there is no appeal, and I must trust to the inspiration of the
theme to make a fitness which does not otherwise exist.
Yet, sir, I heartily feel the singular claims of the occasion. At the
first announcement, from I know not whence, that the twenty-fifth of
January was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a
sudden consent warned the great English race, in all its kingdoms,
colonies and states, all over the world, to keep the festival. We are
here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to do
in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or might not have had
more stateliness, and better singers than we--though that is yet to be
known--but they could not have better reason.
I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts
together--but rather after their watchword, each for himself--by the
fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, represents in the
mind of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the
armed and privileged minorities--that uprising which worked politically
in the American and French Revolutions, and which, not in governments so
much as in education and in social order, has changed the face of the
world. In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding and fortune were
low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and resting, as it
should, on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him.
They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as
easily. His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggressive,
irresistible. Not Latimer, nor Luther, struck more telling blows
against false theology than did this brave singer. The "Confession of
Augsburg," the "Declaration of Independence," the French "Rights of
Man," and the "Marseillaise," are not more weighty documents in the
history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of
its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so
substantially a reformer, that I find his grand, plain sense in close
chain with the greatest masters--Rabelais, Shakespeare in comedy,
Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it
only in a living countryman of Burns. He is an exceptional genius. The
people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was
indifferent--they thought who saw him--whether he wrote verse or not; he
could have done anything else as well.
Yet how true a poet is he! And the poet, too, of poor men, of
hodden-gray, and the Guernsey-coat, and the blouse. He has given voice
to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farmhouse and
cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; ale, the poor man's
wine; hardship, the fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife, of
brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding
amends for want and obscurity in books and thought. What a love of
nature! and--shall I say it?--of middle-class nature. Not great, like
Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron, on the ocean, or Moore, in the
luxurious East, but in the homely landscape which the poor see around
them--bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice, and sleet, and rain,
and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, field-mice, thistles, and heather,
which he daily knew. How many "Bonny Doons," and "John Anderson my
Joes," and "Auld Lang Synes," all around the earth, have his verses been
applied to! And his love songs still woo and melt the youths and maids;
the farm work, the country holiday, the fishing cobble, are still his
debtors to-day.
And, as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, working
humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural
district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he
has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only
example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single
man. But more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the
bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the ears of
the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of
all offence through his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that the
devil should have all the best tunes; he would bring them into the
churches; and Burns knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths
and drovers, the speech of the market and street, and clothe it with
melody.
But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns--I am afraid heaven
and earth have taken too good care of it to leave us anything to say.
The west winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and
hearken for the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves,
perching always on the eaves of the Stone Chapel [King's Chapel]
opposite, may know something about it. Every home in broad Scotland
keeps his fame bright. The memory of Burns--every man's, and boy's, and
girl's head carries snatches of his songs, and can say them by heart,
and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from
mouth to mouth. The wind whispers them, the birds whistle them, the
corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them; nay, the music-boxes
at Geneva are framed and toothed to play them; the hand-organs of the
Savoyards in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring them
in the spires. They are the property and the solace of mankind.
[Cheers.]
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