THE EDINBURGH EDITION
Edinburgh towards the close of last century was a very different place
from Edinburgh of the present day. It was then to a certain extent the
hub of Scottish society; the centre of learning and literature; the
winter rendezvous of not a few of the nobility and gentry of Scotland.
For in those days it had its society and its season; county families had
not altogether abandoned the custom of keeping their houses in town. All
roads did not then lead to London as they do now, when Edinburgh is a
capital in little more than name, and its prestige has become a
tradition. A century ago Edinburgh had all the glamour and fascination
of the capital of a no mean country; to-day it is but the historical
capital invested with the glamour and fascination of a departed glory.
The very names of those whom Burns met on his first visit to Edinburgh
are part of the history of the nation. In the University there were at
that time, representative of the learning of the age, Dugald Stewart,
Dr. Blair, and Dr. Robertson. David Hume was but recently dead, and the
lustre of his name remained. His great friend, Adam Smith, author of
_The Wealth of Nations_, was still living; while Henry Mackenzie, _The
Man of Feeling_, the most popular writer of his day, was editing _The
Lounger_; and Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, was also a name of
authority in the world of letters. Nor was the Bar, whose magnates have
ever figured in the front rank of Edinburgh society, eclipsed by the
literary luminaries of the University. Lord Monboddo has left a name,
which his countrymen are not likely to forget. He was an accomplished,
though eccentric character, whose classical bent was in the direction of
Epicurean parties. His great desire was to revive the traditions of the
elegant suppers of classical times. Not only were music and painting
employed to this end, but the tables were wreathed with flowers, the
odour of incense pervaded the room; the wines were of the choicest,
served from decanters of Grecian design. But, perhaps, the chief
attraction to Burns in the midst of all this super-refinement was the
presence of 'the heavenly Miss Burnet,' daughter of Lord Monboddo.
'There has not been anything nearly like her,' he wrote to his friend
Chalmers, 'in all the combinations of beauty and grace and goodness the
great Creator has formed since Milton's Eve in the first day of her
existence.' The Hon. Henry Erskine was another well-known name, not only
in legal circles, but as well in fashionable society. His genial and
sunny nature made him so great a favourite in his profession, that
having been elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1786, he was
unanimously re-elected every year till 1796, when he was victorious over
Dundas of Arniston, who had been brought forward in opposition to him.
The leader of fashion was the celebrated Duchess of Gordon, who was
never absent from a public place, and 'the later the hour so much the
better.' Her amusements--her life, we might say--were dancing, cards,
and company. With such a leader, the season to the very select and
elegant society of Edinburgh was certain to be a time of brilliance and
gaiety; while its very exclusiveness, and the fact that it affected or
reflected the literary life of the University and the Bar, would make it
all the more ready to lionise a man like Burns when the opportunity
came.
The members of the middle class caught their tone from the upper ranks,
and took their nightly sederunts and morning headaches as privileges
they dared aristocratic exclusiveness to deny them. Douce citizens,
merchants, respectable tradesmen, well-to-do lawyers, forgathered when
the labours of the day were done to spend a few hours in some snug
back-parlour, where mine host granted them the privileges and privacy of
a club. Such social beings as these, met to discuss punch, law, and
literature, were no less likely than their aristocratic neighbours to
receive Burns with open arms, and once he was in their midst to prolong
their sittings in his honour. Nor was Burns, if he found them honest and
hearty fellows, the man to say them nay. He was eminently a social and
sociable being, and in company such as theirs he could unbend himself as
he might not do in the houses of punctilious society. The etiquette of
that howff of the Crochallan Fencibles in the Anchor Close or of Johnnie
Dowie's tavern in Libberton's Wynd was not the etiquette of
drawing-rooms; and the poet was free to enliven the hours with a
rattling fire of witty remarks on men and things as he had been wont to
do on the bog at Lochlea, with only a few noteless peasants for
audience.
Burns entered Edinburgh on November 28, 1786. He had spent the night
after leaving Mossgiel at the farm of Covington Mains, where the
kind-hearted host, Mr. Prentice, had all the farmers of the parish
gathered to meet him. This is of interest as showing the popularity
Burns's poems had already won; while the eagerness of those farmers to
see and know the man after they had read his poems proves most
strikingly how straight the poet had gone to the hearts of his readers.
They had recognised the voice of a human being, and heard it gladly.
This gathering was convincing testimony, if such were needed, of the
truthfulness and sincerity of his writings. No doubt Burns, with his
great force of understanding, appreciated the welcome of those
brother-farmers, and valued it above the adulation he afterwards
received in Edinburgh. The Kilmarnock Edition was but a few months old,
yet here was a gathering of hard-working men, who had read his poems, we
may be sure, from cover to cover, and now they were eager to thank him
who had sung the joys and sorrows of their workaday lives. Of course
there was a great banquet, and night wore into morning before the
company dispersed. They had seen the poet face to face, and the man was
greater than his poems.
Next morning he resumed his journey, breakfasting at Carnwath, and
reaching Edinburgh in the evening. He had come, as he tells us, without
a letter of introduction in his pocket, and he took up his abode with
John Richmond in Baxter's Close, off the Lawnmarket. He had known
Richmond when he was a clerk with Gavin Hamilton, and had kept up a
correspondence with him ever since he had left Mauchline. The lodging
was a humble enough one, the rent being only three shillings a week;
but here Burns lodged all the time he was in Edinburgh, and it was
hither he returned from visiting the houses of the rich and great, to
share a bed with his friend and companion of many a merry meeting at
Mauchline.
It would be vain to attempt to describe Burns's feelings during those
first few days in Edinburgh. He had never before been in a larger town
than Kilmarnock or Ayr; and now he walked the streets of Scotland's
capital, to him full of history and instinct with the associations of
centuries. This was really the heart of Scotland, the home of heroes who
fought and fell for their country, 'the abode of kings of other years.'
His sentimental attachment to Jacobitism became more pronounced as he
looked on Holyrood. For Burns, a representative of the strength and
weakness of his countrymen, was no less representative of Scotland's
sons in his chivalrous pity for the fate of Queen Mary and his romantic
loyalty to the gallant Prince Charlie. His poetical espousal of the
cause of the luckless Stuarts was purely a matter of sentiment, a kind
of pious pity that had little to do with reason; and in this he was
typical of his countrymen even of the present day, who are loyal to the
house of Stuart in song, and in life are loyal subjects of their Queen.
We are told, and we can well believe that for the first few days of his
stay he wandered about, looking down from Arthur's Seat, gazing at the
Castle, or contemplating the windows of the booksellers' shops. We know
that he made a special pilgrimage to the grave of Fergusson, and that in
a letter, dated February 6, 1787, he applied to the honourable bailies
of Canongate, Edinburgh, for permission 'to lay a simple stone over his
revered ashes'; which petition was duly considered and graciously
granted. The stone was afterwards erected, with the simple inscription,
'Here lies Robert Fergusson, Poet. Born September 5th, 1751; died 16th
October, 1774.
No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
"No storied urn nor animated bust";
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way
To pour her sorrow o'er her poet's dust.'
On the reverse side is recorded the fact that the stone was erected by
Robert Burns, and that the ground was to remain for ever sacred to the
memory of Robert Fergusson.
It is related, too, that he visited Ramsay's house, and that he bared
his head when he entered. Burns over and over again, both in prose and
verse, turned to these two names with a kind of fetich worship, that it
is difficult to understand. He must have known that, as a poet, he was
immeasurably superior to both. It may have been that their writings
first opened his eyes to the possibilities of the Scots tongue in
lyrical and descriptive poetry; and there was something also which
appealed to him in the wretched life of Fergusson.
'O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,
By far my elder brother in the Muses.'
His elder brother indeed by some six years! But there is more of
reverence than sound judgment in his estimate of either Ramsay or
Fergusson.
Burns, however, had come to Edinburgh with a fixed purpose in view, and
it would not do to waste his time mooning about the streets. On December
7 we find him writing to Gavin Hamilton, half seriously, half jokingly:
'I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis or John
Bunyan, and you may expect henceforth to see my birthday inserted among
the wonderful events in the Poor Robins' and Aberdeen Almanacs along
with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge. My Lord
Glencairn and the Dean of Faculty, Mr. H. Erskine, have taken me under
their wing, and by all probability I shall soon be the tenth worthy and
the eighth wise man of the world. Through my lord's influence it is
inserted in the records of the Caledonian Hunt that they universally one
and all subscribe for the second edition.'
This letter shows that Burns had already been taken up, as the phrase
goes, by the elite of Edinburgh; and it shows also and quite as clearly
in the tone of quiet banter, that he was little likely to lose his head
by the notice taken of him. To the Earl of Glencairn, mentioned in it,
he had been introduced probably by Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, whom he
knew both as a brother-mason and a brother-poet. The Earl had already
seen the Kilmarnock Edition of the poems, and now he not only introduced
Burns to William Creech, the leading publisher in Edinburgh, but he got
the members of the Caledonian Hunt to become subscribers for a second
edition of the poems. To Erskine he had been introduced at a meeting of
the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge of Freemasons; and assuredly there was no
man living more likely to exert himself in the interests of a genius
like Burns.
Two days after this letter to Gavin Hamilton there appeared in _The
Lounger_ Mackenzie's appreciative notice of the Kilmarnock Edition. This
notice has become historical, and at the time of its appearance it must
have been peculiarly gratifying to Burns. He had remarked before, in
reference to the letter from Dr. Blacklock, that the doctor belonged to
a class of critics for whose applause he had not even dared to hope. Now
his work was criticised most favourably by the one who was regarded as
the highest authority on literature in Scotland. If a writer was praised
in _The Lounger_, his fame was assured. He went into the world with the
hall-mark of Henry Mackenzie; and what more was needed? The oracle had
spoken, and his decision was final. His pronouncement would be echoed
and re-echoed from end to end of the country. And this great critic
claimed no special indulgence for Burns on the plea of his mean birth or
poor education. He saw in this heaven-taught ploughman a genius of no
ordinary rank, a man who possessed the spirit as well as the fancy of a
great poet. He was a poet, and it mattered not whether he had been born
a peasant or a peer. 'His poetry, considered abstractedly and without
the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to
command our feelings and obtain our applause.... The power of genius is
not less admirable in tracing the manners, than in painting the passions
or in drawing the scenery of nature. That intuitive glance with which a
writer like Shakspeare discerns the character of men, with which he
catches the many changing hues of life, forms a sort of problem in the
science of mind, of which it is easier to see the truth than assign the
cause.'
But Mackenzie did more than praise. He pointed out the fact that the
author had had a terrible struggle with poverty all the days of his
life, and made an appeal to his country 'to stretch out her hand and
retain the native poet whose wood-notes wild possessed so much
excellence.' There seems little doubt that the concluding words of this
notice led Burns for the first time to hope and believe that, through
some influential patron, he might be placed in a position to face the
future without a fear, and to cultivate poetry at his leisure. There is
no mistaking the meaning of Mackenzie's words, and he had evidently used
them with the conviction that something would be done for Burns.
Unfortunately, he was mistaken; the poet, at first misled, was slowly
disillusioned and somewhat embittered. 'To repair the wrongs of
suffering or neglected merit; to call forth genius from the obscurity
where it had pined indignant, and place it where it may profit or
delight the world--these are exertions which give to wealth an enviable
superiority, to greatness and to patronage a laudable pride.'
To Burns, at the time, such a criticism as this must have been all the
more pleasing, inasmuch as it was the verdict of a man whose best-known
work had been one of the poet's favourite books. We can easily imagine
that, under the patronage of Lord Glencairn and Henry Erskine, and after
Mackenzie's generous recognition of his genius, the doors of the best
houses in Edinburgh would be open to him. His letter to John Ballantine,
Ayr, written a few days after this criticism appeared, shows in what
circles the poet was then moving. 'I have been introduced to a good many
of the _noblesse_, but my avowed patrons and patronesses are, the
Duchess of Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn with my Lord and Lady
Betty, the Dean of Faculty, Sir John Whitefoord. I have likewise warm
friends among the _literati_; Professors Stewart, Blair, and Mr.
Mackenzie, _The Man of Feeling_.... I am nearly agreed with Creech to
print my book, and I suppose I will begin on Monday.... Dugald Stewart
and some of my learned friends put me in a periodical called _The
Lounger_, a copy of which I here enclose you. I was, Sir, when I was
first honoured with your notice, too obscure; now I tremble lest I
should be ruined by being dragged too suddenly into the glare of learned
and polite observation.'
Burns was now indeed the lion of Edinburgh. It must have been a great
change for a man to have come straight from the stilts of the plough to
be dined and toasted by such men as Lord Glencairn, Lord Monboddo, and
the Hon. Henry Erskine; to be feted and flattered by the Duchess of
Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn, and Lady Betty Cunningham; to count
amongst his friends Mr. Mackenzie and Professors Stewart and Blair. It
would have been little wonder if his head had been turned by the
patronage of the nobility, the deference and attention of the literary
and learned coteries of Edinburgh. But Burns was too sensible to be
carried away by the adulation of a season. A man of his keenness of
penetration and clearness of insight would appreciate the praise of the
world at its proper value. He bore himself with becoming dignity, taking
his place in refined society as one who had a right there, without
showing himself either conceitedly aggressive or meanly servile. He took
his part in conversation, but no more than his part, and expressed
himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished
the _literati_ even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had
expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather
commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical
English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative
discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the
readiness, clearness, and fluency of a man of letters. His pure English
diction astonished them, but his acuteness of reasoning, his intuitive
knowledge of men and the world, was altogether beyond their
comprehension. All they had got by years of laborious study this man
appeared to have as a natural gift. In repartee, even, he could more
than hold his own with them, and in the presence of ladies could turn a
compliment with the best. 'It needs no effort of imagination,' says
Lockhart, 'to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of
scholars (almost all either clergymen or professors) must have been in
the presence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, who,
having forced his way among them from the plough-tail at a single
stride, manifested in the whole strain of his bearing and conversation a
most thorough conviction that in the society of the most eminent men of
his nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be.' It was a new
world to Burns, yet he walked about as if he were of old familiar with
its ways; he conducted himself in society like one to the manner born.
All who have left written evidence of Burns's visit to Edinburgh are
agreed that he conducted himself with manliness and dignity, and all
have left record of the powerful impression his conversation made on
them. His poems were wonderful; himself was greater than his poems, a
giant in intellect. A ploughman who actually dared to have formed a
distinct conception of the doctrine of _association_ was a miracle
before which schools and scholars were dumb. 'Nothing, perhaps,' Dugald
Stewart wrote, 'was more remarkable among his various attainments than
the fluency, precision, and originality of his language when he spoke in
company; more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn of
expression, and avoided more successfully than most Scotchmen the
peculiarities of Scottish phraseology.'
And Professor Stewart goes further than this when he speaks of the
soundness and sanity of Burns's nature. 'The attentions he received
during his stay in town from all ranks and descriptions of persons, were
such as would have turned any head but his own. He retained the same
simplicity of manner and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when
I first saw him in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional
self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. His
dress was perfectly suited to his station, plain and unpretentious, with
a sufficient attention to neatness.' Principal Robertson has left it on
record, that he had scarcely ever met with any man whose conversation
displayed greater vigour than that of Burns. Walter Scott, a youth of
some sixteen years at the time, met Burns at the house of Dr. Adam
Ferguson, and was particularly struck with his poetic eye, 'which
literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest,' and with his
forcible conversation. 'Among the men who were the most learned of their
time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but
without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in
opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, and at the same time
with modesty.... I never saw a man in company more perfectly free from
either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment.' To these may be
added the testimony of Dr. Walker, who gives, perhaps, the most complete
and convincing picture of the man at this time. He insists on the same
outstanding characteristics in Burns, his innate dignity, his unaffected
demeanour in company, and brilliancy in conversation. In no part of his
manner, we read, was there the slightest degree of affectation, and no
one could have guessed from his behaviour or conversation, that he had
been for some months the favourite of all the fashionable circles of a
metropolis. 'In conversation he was powerful. His conceptions and
expression were of corresponding vigour, and on all subjects were as
remote as possible from commonplace.'
But whilst ladies of rank and fashion were deluging this Ayrshire
ploughman with invitations, and vying one with another in their
patronage and worship, the mind of the poet was no less busy registering
impressions of every new experience. If the learned men of Edinburgh set
themselves to study the character of a genius who upset all their
cherished theories of birth and education, and to chronicle his sayings
and doings, Burns at the same time was studying them, gauging their
powers intuitively, telling their limitations at a glance. For he must
measure every man he met, and himself with him. His standard was always
the same; every brain was weighed against his own; but with Burns this
was never more than a comparison of capacities. He took his stand, not
by what work he had done, but by what he felt he was capable of doing.
And that is not, and cannot be, the way of the world. In all his letters
at this time we see him studying himself in the circles of fashion and
learning. He could look on Robert Burns, as he were another person,
brought from the plough and set down in a world of wealth and
refinement, of learning and wit and beauty. He saw the dangers that
beset him, and the temptations to which he was exposed; he recognised
that something more than his poetic abilities was needed to explain his
sudden popularity. He was the vogue, the favourite of a season; but
public favour was capricious, and next year the doors of the great might
be closed against him; while patrician dames who had schemed for his
smiles might glance at him with indifferent eyes as at a dismissed
servant once high in favour. His letter to Mrs. Dunlop, dated January
15, may be taken as a just, deliberate, and clear expression of his
views of himself and society at this time. The letter is so quietly
dignified that we may quote at some length. 'You are afraid I shall grow
intoxicated with my prosperity as a poet. Alas! madam, I know myself and
the world too well. I do not mean any airs of affected modesty; I am
willing to believe that my abilities deserve some notice, but in a most
enlightened, informed age and nation, where poetry is and has been the
study of men of the first natural genius, aided with all the powers of
polite learning, polite books, and polite company--to be dragged forth
to the full glare of learned and polite observation, with all my
imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude and unpolished ideas on my
head--I assure you, madam, I do not dissemble when I tell you I tremble
for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation,
without any of those advantages that are reckoned necessary for that
character, at least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of
public notice which has borne me to a height where I am absolutely,
feelingly certain my abilities are inadequate to support me; and too
surely do I see that time when the same tide will leave me and recede,
perhaps as far below the mark of truth. I do not say this in the
ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. I have studied
myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the world
may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own opinion in
silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention this
to you once for all to disburden my mind, and I do not wish to hear or
say more about it. But--
"When proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes,"
you will bear me witness that when my bubble of fame was at the highest,
I stood unintoxicated with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking
forward with rueful resolve to the hastening time when the blow of
calamity should dash it to the ground with all the eagerness of vengeful
triumph.'
In a letter to Dr. Moore he harps on the same string, for he sees
clearly enough that though his abilities as a poet are worthy of
recognition, it is the novelty of his position and the strangeness of
the life he has pictured in his poems that have brought him into polite
notice. The field of his poetry, rather than the poetry itself, is the
wonder in the eyes of stately society. To the Rev. Mr. Lawrie of Loudon
he writes in a similar strain, and speaks even more emphatically. From
all his letters, indeed, at this time we gather that he saw that
novelty had much to do with his present eclat; that the tide of
popularity would recede, and leave him at his leisure to descend to his
former situation; and, above all, that he was prepared for this, come
when it would.
All this time he had been busy correcting the proofs of his poems; and
now that he was already assured the edition would be a success, he began
to think seriously of the future and of settling down again as farmer.
The appellation of Scottish Bard, he confessed to Mrs. Dunlop, was his
highest pride; to continue to deserve it, his most exalted ambition. He
had no dearer aim than to be able to make 'leisurely pilgrimages through
Caledonia, to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the
romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse by the stately towers or
venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes.' But that was a
Utopian dream; he had dallied long enough with life, and now it was time
he should be in earnest. 'I have a fond, an aged mother to care for; and
some other bosom ties perhaps equally tender.'
Perhaps, had Burns received before he left Edinburgh the L500 which
Creech ultimately paid him for the Edinburgh Edition, he might have gone
straight to a farm in the south country, and taken up what he considered
the serious business of life. He himself, about this time, estimated
that he would clear nearly L300 by authorship, and with that sum he
intended to return to farming. Mr. Miller of Dalswinton had expressed a
wish to have Burns as tenant of one of his farms, and the poet had been
already approached on the subject. We also gather from almost every
letter written just before the publication of his poems, that he
contemplated an immediate return 'to his shades.' However, when the
Edinburgh Edition came out, April 21, 1787, the poet found that it would
be a considerable time before the whole profits accruing from
publication could be paid over to him. Indeed, there was certainly an
unnecessary delay on Creech's part in making a settlement. The first
instalment of profits was not sufficient for leasing and stocking a
farm; and during the months that elapsed before the whole profits were
in his hands, Burns made several tours through the Borders and Highlands
of Scotland. This was certainly one of his dearest aims; but these tours
were undertaken somewhat under compulsion, and we doubt not he would
much more gladly have gone straight back to farm-life, and kept these
leisurely pilgrimages to a more convenient season. One is not in a mood
for dreaming on battlefields, or wandering in a reverie by romantic
rivers, when the future is unsettled and life is for the time being
without an aim. There is something of mystery and melancholy hanging
about these peregrinations, and the cause, it seems to us, is not far to
seek. These months are months of waiting and wearying; he is unsettled,
oftentimes moody and despondent; his bursts of gaiety appear forced, and
his muse is well-nigh barren. In the circumstances, no doubt it was the
best thing he could do, to gratify his long-cherished desire of seeing
these places in his native country, whose names were enshrined in song
or story. But how much more pleasant--and more profitable both to the
poet himself and the country he loved--had these journeys been made
under more favourable conditions!
The past also as much as the future weighed on the poet's mind. His
days had been so fully occupied in Edinburgh that he had little leisure
to think on some dark and dramatic episodes of Mauchline and Kilmarnock;
but now in his wanderings he has time not only to think but to brood;
and we may be sure the face of Bonnie Jean haunted him in dreams, and
that his heart heard again and again the plaintive voices of little
children. In several of his letters now we detect a tone of bitterness,
in which we suspect there is more of remorse than of resentment with the
world. He certainly was disappointed that Creech could not pay him in
full, but he must have been gratified with the reception his poems had
got. The list of subscribers ran to thirty-eight pages, and was
representative of every class in Scotland. In the words of Cunningham:
'All that coterie influence and individual exertion--all that the
noblest and humblest could do, was done to aid in giving it a kind
reception. Creech, too, had announced it through the booksellers of the
land, and it was soon diffused over the country, over the colonies, and
wherever the language was spoken. The literary men of the South seemed
even to fly to a height beyond those of the North. Some hesitated not to
call him the Northern Shakspeare.'
This surely was a great achievement for one who, a few months
previously, had been skulking from covert to covert to escape the
terrors of a jail. He had hardly dared to hope for the commendation of
the Edinburgh critics, yet he had been received by the best society of
the capital; his genius had been recognised by the highest literary
authorities of Scotland; and now the second edition of his poems was
published under auspices that gave it the character of a national book.
If the poems this volume contained established fully and finally the
reputation of the poet, the subscription list was a no less substantial
proof of a generous and enthusiastic appreciation of his genius on the
part of his countrymen. And that Burns must have recognised. A man of
his sound common sense could not have expected more.