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 inspirations 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 25th of January was the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warmed 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 watch-word, 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 social order, has changed the face of the world.
In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding and fortunes 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.[210] 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, Shakspeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler,
and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living
countryman of Burns.[211]
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
gray hodden 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 thoughts.[212] What a love of
Nature, and, shall I say it? of middle-class Nature. Not like Goethe, in
the stars, or like Byron, in 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 jo’s” 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 the 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 opposite, may know something about
it. Every name in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. The memory of
Burns,—every man’s, every boy’s and girl’s head carries snatches of his
songs, and they 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.[213]