No More Learning

But, the reserve of poetic power in Blake
is most clearly revealed in The Everlasting Gospel. Metrically,
it is based upon the same octosyllabic scheme as Christabel, though
it is handled so as to produce quite different effects. In spirit, it
comes nearest to The Marriage, developing, with wonderful fertility
of illustration, the theme of Jesus as the archrebel. Yet, its value
as a statement of Blake's position is subordinate to its poetic
excellences, its virile diction and its sturdy, yet supple, metre,
following, with consummate ease, the rapid transitions from spirited
declamation to satire or paradox.
Blake's prose has the directness and simplicity that distinguish
his poetry. Except for the Descriptive Catalogue, for the engraved
pieces, such as the introductions to the books' of Jerusalem, and
for the letters, it lies scattered in the Rossetti MS and in margin-
alia to Reynolds's Discourses and other works. Yet, in spite of its
casual character, it is a quite efficient instrument, whether for
lofty declaration of faith, as in the addresses To the Deists or To
the Christians or for critical appreciation, as in the famous note
on The Canterbury Tales admired by Lamb. It also served as a
vigorous, if sometimes acrimonious, medium for expressing Blake's
objections to those whose opinions or artistic practice ran counter
to his own. But, it is almost always perfectly sound, though
without conscious seeking after style. His letters have the same
virtues, but their chief interest would seem to lie in the insight
which they give into his character and the light they throw upon
the symbolism of the prophetic books.


## p. 201 (#223) ############################################

IX]
Blake and the Romantic Revival 201
Blake's peculiar method of reproducing his writings, and the
comparative seclusion in which he lived, prevented his works
from exercising any influence on their age, though Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Southey and Lamb knew and admired portions of them,
Yet, few responded so directly and in so many ways to the quick-
ening impulse of the romantic revival. It is true that his early
years coincided with an awakened interest in our older literature,
which was already exercising a limited influence on contemporary
work; and, moreover, as has been seen, his juvenile reading was in
this field. But the root of the matter seems to have lain deeper.
The whole temper of his genius was essentially opposed to the
classical tradition, with its close regard to intellectual appeal and
its distrust of enthusiasm. In the Laocoon sentences and in the
engraved notes On Homer's Poetry and On Virgil, he identifies it
with the devastating errors of materialism and morality, and, in
the Public Address, he is vehement in denouncing Dryden's pre-
sumption in 'improving' Milton, and Pope’s ‘niggling' formalism :
as he puts it, the practitioners of this school ‘knew enough of
artifice, but little of art. Such a judgment, though not wholly
just to classicism at its best, was the fighting creed of the romantics,
and Blake maintained it more uncompromisingly than most. His
mystical faith freed him from the barren materialism of his age,
and opened to him in vision the world lying beyond the range of
the physical senses. Hence, the greater warmth of his ethical
creed; and his preoccupation with the supernatural, which he never
consciously shaped to literary ends, is yet the source of the peculiar
imaginative quality of his work. It also looks forward to the use
of the supernatural in such works as The Ancient Mariner and
Christabel. Though he probably intended it otherwise, the effective
and complete revelation of the new spirit within him is made, not
in his definitely dogmatic writing, but in his verse, which he seems
to have rated below his other work; he scarcely ever speaks of it
as he does of his art or his mystical writings. Yet, his lyric poetry,
at its best, displays the characteristics of the new spirit some years
before it appeared elsewhere. His first volume of poems contained
songs such as had not been sung for more than a century; the
nearest parallel in time is Burns. While Wordsworth was still
a schoolboy, Blake had found, and was using with consummate art,
a diction almost perfect in its simplicity, aptness and beauty. His
earlier attitude to nature, as has already been noticed, has none of
the complacency that distinguishes his age : to him, it was the
revelation of a universal spirit of love and delight, the Divine
>


## p. 202 (#224) ############################################

202
[ch. ix
Blake
Image, less austere than Wordsworth’s ‘overseeing power. ' It has
also been seen that he had the romantic sympathy with quaint or
terrible imaginings, such as appeared later in Keats and Shelley.
His passion for freedom was, also, akin to that which moved
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey in their earlier years, though,
in its later form, it came nearer to Shelley's revolt against conven-
tion. There is, indeed, an unusual degree of fellowship between
these two : the imagery and symbolism, as well as the underlying
spirit, of The Revolt of Islam, Alastor and Prometheus Un-
bound find their nearest parallel in Blake's prophetic books. Both
had visions of a world regenerated by a gospel of universal
brotherhood, transcending law; though, perhaps, the firmer spirit
of Blake brought his faith in imagination nearer to life than
Shelley's philosophic dream of intellectual beauty. For the final
note of Blake's career is not one of tragedy: his own works and
the record of others show that he had subdued the world to his
own spirit; he died singing.


## p. 203 (#225) ############################################

CHAPTER X
BURNS
LESSER SCOTTISH VERSE
In the annals of English literature, Burns is a kind of anomaly
He defies classification. He stands apart in isolated individuality.
If he is something of a prodigy, his accidental singularity helps to
convey this impression. The preceding English poetry of the
eighteenth century did not give any prognostication of the pos-
sibility of anyone resembling him. His most characteristic verse
is outside its scope, and is quite dissimilar from it in tone, temper
and tendency. He was infuenced by this English verse only in a
superficial and extraneous manner. However much he may have
tried, he found it impossible to become a poet after the prevailing
English fashion of his time. Not from the brilliant generations of
English bards can he claim poetic descent. So far as concerned
general literary repute, his chief poetic ancestors were, if not
lowly, obscure and forgotten. Whatever their intrinsic merits, ,
they were almost unknown until curiosity about them was awakened
by his arrival.
The old school of Scottish verse did not, however, deserve its
fate. As may be gathered from previous chapters, it was by no
means an undistinguished one. It included one poet, Dunbar, of
an outstanding genius closely akin to that of Burns, and, if not
possessed of so full an inspiration or so wide and deep a sympathy,
vying with him in imaginative vividness, in satiric mirth, in wild
and rollicking humour and in mastery of expression, while more
than his equal as a polished metrist. Other names famous
in their generation were Henryson, Douglas, Kennedy, Scott,
Montgomerie and David Lyndsay. In addition to these were un-
known authors of various pieces of high merit, and, besides them,
what Burns himself terms the glorious old Bards,' of the Ancient
Fragments' and of various old songs of tradition: bards, whose
'very names are,' as he says, 'buried amongst the wreck of things
6
6


## p. 204 (#226) ############################################

204
[CH.
Burns
that were. ' This school of Scottish poetry perished, or all but
perished, in its prime. Its line of succession was cut short by the
reformation, which had been followed by an almost complete
literary blank of a century and a half. During this interval,
the spoken dialect of Scotland had been undergoing processes of
change, and the language of the old verse, by the time of Burns,
had become partly a dead language. The forms and methods of
its metre had also become largely antiquated, and were not akin
to modern English usage. Moreover, the bulk of the old poetry
that had escaped destruction was still wrapped in oblivion. It lay
perdu in manuscripts, though more than a glimpse of what was
best of it was obtainable from the selections that had appeared in
Ramsay's Evergreen and other publications. But, while it could
thus be known to Burns in only a fragmentary fashion, he was
largely indebted to it directly or indirectly. Like many Scots
of past generations, he was familiar with much of the verse of
‘Davie Lyndsay’; as perused by him in the modernised version of
Blind Harry's poem by Hamilton of Gilbertfield, 'the story of
Wallace,' he tells us, had 'poured a Scottish prejudice’ into his
veins; he had dipped, if little more, into Gawin Douglas; in
addition to The Evergreen, he knew Watson's Choice Collection
(1706—11); and, before the publication of the Kilmarnock volume,
he may have read Lord Hailes's Ancient Scottish Poems (1771) and
Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1769 and 1776). At
the same time, he did not know the old ‘makaris' as they are now
known; of the individualities of some of the principal of them
he had no very definite idea; and even the poetic greatness of
Dunbar had not dawned upon him. Again, though he had an
acquaintance with the older poets, similar to that possessed by
Ramsay, Fergusson and others, from the very fact that they had
preceded him, he did not come so immediately under the influence
of the older writers. Later writers had already formed a kind of new
poetic school, and it was more immediately on them that he sought
to model himself: their achievements, rather than those of the older
writers, were what he sought to emulate or surpass. His special
aim, as stated in the preface to the Kilmarnock volume, was toʻsing
the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic
compeers around him, in his and their native language. ' As a
lyric poet, his commission was rather more comprehensive; and,
here, he could benefit but little by the example either of
Ramsay-great as had been his vogue as a song writer-or even
Fergusson. Other contemporaries had done as good lyric work as
.


## p. 205 (#227) ############################################

x]
Indebtedness to Ramsay and Fergusson 205
>
>
they; but, here, the best, and, also, the chief, exemplars of Burns
were 'the glorious old Bards,' of 'the Ancient Fragments. The
greatness of his lyric career was, however, only faintly foreshadowed
in the Kilmarnock volume (1786) or in the Edinburgh edition of
the following year. The former contained only three songs, the
best of which, Corn Rige, was suggested by one of Ramsay's;
and, in the latter, only seven additional songs were included, the
best being Green grow the Rashes o', related to an old improper
song, and The Gloomy Night, which is less a song than a personal
lament. The others are not in the same rank with these, and one,
No Churchman am I, in the strain of the bottle songs of the
collections, is hardly better than its models.
It is vain to enquire whether, without the example of Ramsay,
Fergusson and their contemporaries, Burns would have succeeded
so well as he has in his special aim; but he could hardly have
succeeded so soon, nor could he have done so in quite the same
fashion. In his preface to the Kilmarnock volume, he says that
he had 'these two justly admired Scotch poets' often in his eye
in the following pieces though rather with a view to kindle at
their flame than for servile imitation. A critical study of Burns
and these two predecessors will fully corroborate both statements.
Another statement is in quite a different category. While scouting
servile imitation, he yet disowns pretensions 'to the genius of a
Ramsay or the glorious dawnings of the poor unfortunate
Fergusson. On the part of one so greatly gifted, this was a
strange declaration enough, whether it expressed his real con-
victions—as he took care to protest it did-or not. But Burns
was always excessively generous in his appreciation of other poets,
and his own case was, also, a very exceptional one. Both his social
experiences and his knowledge of literature were, at this period
of his life, rather circumscribed; and though, as he says, looking
‘upon himself as possest of some poetic abilities,' he might hesitate
to suppose that he had much scope for the display of genius in
singing the sentiments and manners' of himself and his rustic
compeers. ' But, however that may be, his glowing tribute to
"
these two predecessors must be taken as evidence of the immense
stimulus he had received from them, and the important part they
had had in aiding and shaping his poetic ambitions.
The pieces included in the Kilmarnock volume were written
when Burns had, though a considerable, still a comparatively
limited, acquaintance with English poetry or prose. Exceptionally
intelligent and well-informed as was his peasant father, he could


## p. 206 (#228) ############################################

206
[CH.
Burns
6
not provide his sons with very many books, and these were mainly
of a grave and strictly instructive character. One of Burns's
school books, Masson's Collection of Prose and Verse, contained,
however, Gray's Elegy, and excerpts from Shakespeare, Addison,
Dryden, Thomson and Shenstone. Before 1786, he had, also, in
addition to Ramsay, Fergusson and other Scottish versifiers, made
acquaintance with several plays of Shakespeare, a portion of
Milton, Ossian and the works of Pope, Thomson, Shenstone and
Goldsmith. Among prose works, his 'bosom favourites' were
Tristram Shandy and The Man of Feeling; and the influence of
both occasionally manifests itself in his verse. The Lark, a
collection of Scottish and English songs, 'was,' he says, his 'vade
mecum,' and he was also a voluminous reader of those Excellent
New Songs that are hawked about the country in baskets, or
exposed in stalls in the streets. '
The influence of his study of The Lark and of the 'New Songs
was shown in various tentative efforts which he did not publish
in the Kilmarnock volume—and some of which he did not publish
at all—as Handsome Nell, O Tibbie I hae seen the Day, The Ruined
Farmer, The Lass of Cessnock Banks, Here's to the Health and
My Father was a Farmer. The roistering songs in The Jolly
Beggars are also modelled on the songs of the Collections, or of
Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, including even the bard's song,
though there is an older model for it; and neither in language nor
in poetic form are they so purely Scottish as the graphic vernacular
recitativos. Such experiments, again, as A Tragic Fragment
and Remorse—neither of which he published—are inspired by
the eighteenth century English poets. In the Kilmarnock volume,
these poets, supplemented by the metrical Davidic Psalms, are
responsible for such pieces as The Lament, Despondency, Man
was made to Mourn, A Prayer in the Prospect of Death and To
Ruin, all purely English. Then, The Cotter's Saturday Night, in
the Spenserian stanza—which Burns got from Beattie, not from
Spenser, but which is of purely English descent and had not been
used by any Scottish vernacular poet—is a kind of hybrid. Though
partly suggested by Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle, and professedly
descriptive of a lowly Scottish interior and of the sentiments and
manners' of the Scottish peasants in their more hallowed relations,
it is not, like Fergusson's poem, written in their native language,
but, substantially, in modern English, with, here and there, a
sparse sprinkling of Scottish, or Scoto-English, terms. Much of its
tone, many of its sentiments and portions of its phraseology are


## p. 207 (#229) ############################################

x]
The Cotter's Saturday Night
207
reminiscent of those of the English poets whom he knew-Milton,
Gray, Pope, Thomson and Goldsmith. It is a kind of medley of ideas
and phrases partly borrowed from them, mingled with reflections
of his own and descriptions partly in their manner but derived
from his own experience, and may almost be termed a splendidly
specious adaptation rather than a quite original composition. On
the whole, the artistic genius and the afflatus of the poet prevail,
but in a somewhat shackled, mannered and restrained form, as
becomes manifest enough when we compare it with the spontaneous
brilliancy of the best of his more vernacular verses in old
traditional staves.
In other important pieces in the Scots staves, such as The
Vision and The Epistle to Davie, where the sentiment is mainly
of a grave and lofty character, and especially when he abandons
his 'native language' for pure English, we have occasional
echoes from English poets, though he is sometimes charged with
having borrowed from poets he had never read, and with having
appropriated from certain English poets sentiments and reflections
which were really current coin to be found anywhere. In oc-
casional stanzas of other poems, we also meet with traces of his
English reading, but, in the case of the thoroughly vernacular
poems, they are so rare and so slight as to be negligible. These
poems are Scottish to the core; and it is here that we have the
best, the truest and fullest, revelation of his mind and heart. The
sentiments, thoughts and moods they express are of a very varied,
not always consistent, and sometimes not quite reputable, character;
but they are entirely his own, and, such as they are, they are set
forth with peculiar freedom and honesty and with rare felicity and
vigour, while, in the presentation of manners, scenes and occur-
rences, he manifests a vivid picturesqueness not surpassed, and
seldom excelled, by other writers of verse.
At a later period of his life, Burns—it may be partly at the
suggestion of Dr Moore, that he should abandon the Scottish
stanza and dialect and adopt the measure and dialect of modern
English poets'—began to consider the possibility of escaping from
his vernacular bonds, and made somewhat elaborate experiments
in English after the manner of eighteenth century poets. But,
though the mentors of Burns might be excused for giving him this
advice, it could not be carried out. It was too late for him to
transform himself into a purely English poet; and, in the end, this
was perceived by him. In Scots verse, as he wrote to George
Thomson, he always found himself at home, but it was quite


## p. 208 (#230) ############################################

208
[CH.
Burns
otherwise when he sought to model himself on English prede-
cessors or contemporaries. He had a quite different poetic mission
from theirs; his training, his mode of life, his social circumstances
especially fitted one of his temperament and genius to excel as
a rustic Scottish bard, and, in this capacity, he compassed achieve-
ments, which, apart from their intrinsic merit, possess a special
value due to their uniqueness. When, on the other hand, he essays
purely English verse, English in method and form as well as
language, his strong individuality fails to disclose itself; his artistic
sensibilities cease to serve him ; his genius remains unkindled; he
is merely imitative and badly imitative. From Esopus to Maria
and the Epistles to Graham of Fintry are very indifferent Pope.
Lines on the Fall of Fyers and Written with a Pencil at
Taymouth are only inferior Thomson. Such pieces as Birthday
Ode for 31st December 1787, Ode Sacred to the Memory of
Mrs Oswald, Ode to the Departed Regency Bill, Inscribed to the
Hon. C. J. Fox and Ode to General Washington's Birthday are all,
more or less, strained and bombastic. The ability they display is not
so remarkable as its misapplication, and they are, mainly, striking
illustrations of the ineffectiveness of a too monotonous and un-
measured indulgence in highflown imagery and bitter vituperation.
With certain qualifications and with outstanding exceptions, these
remarks apply to his epigrams and epitaphs, but less to those in the
vernacular, some of which, even when not quite goodnatured, are
exceedingly amusing, as, for example: In Lamington Kirk, On
Captain Grose, On Tam the Chapman, On Holy Willie, on a Wag
in Mauchline, On John Dove, Innkeeper and On Grizzel Grimme.
The Bard's Epitaph is unique as a pathetic anticipation of the sad
results of the poet's own temperamental infirmities; and, though in
a quite opposite vein, the elegies On the Death of Robert Ruisseaux
and On Willie Nicol'8 Mare are evidently written con amore; but
those On the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair and On the Death
of Lord President Dundas, and even that on the Late Miss Burnet
of Monboddo are, as he candidly confesses of one of them, 'quite
mediocre. ' They are too elaborately artificial to stir the feelings
with mourning and regret; indeed, their inveterately ornate ex-
pression of grief seems almost as purely formal and official as that
represented in the trappings of funeral mutes. There is more true
pathos in the admirable, though mostly humorous, vernacular Ode
to The Departed Year, 1788; but his elegiac masterpieces are all
in the traditional stave in rime couée.
The main benefit, as a poet, gained by Burns from what was,
6


## p. 209 (#231) ############################################

6
x] Influence of English Poets
209
evidently, a close and repeated perusal of certain English poets,
was an indirect one. It stimulated his thought, it quickened his
sensibilities, it widened his mental outlook, it refined his tastes,
it increased his facility in the apt use even of his own ‘native
language. In this last respect, he seems to have been specially
indebted to Pope. His style is admirable, pellucidly clear and
brilliantly concise, and, in his best pieces, the same “finishing
polish' manifests itself. He greatly underrated his own accom-
plishments, even in 1786, when he modestly declared that he was
unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing Poet
by rule’; and Carlyle displays a strange obliviousness or misappli-
cation of facts in affirming that he had merely 'the rhymes of a
Fergusson or a Ramsay as his standard of beauty. ' To accept this
view, while rather slighting at least Fergusson, would ignore the
relations of both to the older classics, would fail to take into account
what Burns knew of the classics and of the Scottish lyrists of past
generations and would disregard the minute study of certain English
poets with which he started, and which, later, was not only
augmented by a fairly comprehensive course of English reading,
but supplemented by a perusal of the chief French poets. He
had undergone some intellectual discipline, even if it were a little
unsystematic and haphazard. Strikingly exceptional as was his
poetic career, it was not inexplicably miraculous. It is quite the
reverse of truth to state that he had no furtherance but such
knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut'; and, so far as he was
concerned, to talk of 'the fogs and darkness of that obscure region,'
only tends to darken counsel by words without knowledge. His
alleviations and his physical and mental calibre being such as to
prevent him succumbing too early to the evils of his lot, he even
found himself in a position which specially fitted him to become
the great poet of rustic life and the representative Scottish poet
that he was.
The character of his environment in itself gave Burns, as a
vernacular Scottish poet, a certain advantage over both Ramsay
and Fergusson. Though, in the eighteenth century, the vernacular
was in fuller, and more general, use in conversation, even by the
educated classes in Scotland, than it is now, both these poets made
literary use of it with a certain air of condescension, and as the
specially appropriate medium of lowly themes. Burns employed it
more variously, and often with a more serious and higher intent, than
they. He was also in closer and more perpetual contact with humble
life than was either of them; the vernacular, as he says, was his
14
6
3 L, XL.
CH. X.


## p. 210 (#232) ############################################

210
[CH.
Burns
6
'native language,' the usual medium of the thought and expres-
sion of himself and his 'compeers’; and, in his verse, he seems
to revel in the appropriation of its direct and graphic phraseology.
While, also, as a poet of rustic life, more favourably placed than
any of his later Scottish predecessors, he had a special superiority
over those poets, Scottish or English, who, as he says, 'with all
the advantages of learned art, and perhaps amid the elegances and
idlenesses of upper life, looked down on a rural theme. In the
case of a rural theme, he is entirely in his element. Here, he
exhibits neither affectation, nor condescension, nor ignorant
idealisation, nor cursory and superficial observation; everywhere,
there is complete comprehension and living reality. He was him-
self largely his own rural theme, and he is unstintedly generous
in his selfrevelations. Apart, also, from his lyrical successes, he
attains to the highest triumphs of his art in depicting the manners
and circumstances of himself and his fellow peasants; in exhibiting
their idiosyncrasies, good and bad, and those of other personalities,
generally, but not always, quite obscure and, sometimes, disreputable,
with whom he held intercourse, or who, otherwise, came within the
range of his observation; in handling passing incidents and events
mainly of local interest; and in dealing with rustic beliefs, super-
stitions, customs, scenes and occasions. He did not need to set
himself to search for themes. He was encompassed by them;
they almost forced themselves on his attention; and he wrote as
the spirit moved him. His topics and his training being such as
they were, his rare endowments are manifested in the manner of
his treatment. It betokens an exceptionally penetrating insight,
a peculiarly deep sympathy, yet great capacity for scorn, an
abounding and comprehensive humour, a strong vitalising vision
and a specially delicate artistic sense; and, thus, his opportunities
being so close and abundant, he has revealed to us the antique
rural life within the limits of his experience and observation with
copious minuteness, and with superb vividness and fidelity. But,
of course, he has, therefore—though some would fain think other-
wise—his peculiar limitations. His treatment of his themes was
so admirable as to secure for them almost a worldwide interest; but,
ordinarily, his themes do not afford scope for the higher possibilities
of poetry. He could not display his exceptional powers to such
advantage as he might have done, had he been allowed a wider
stage and higher opportunities; nor, in fact, were they trained
and developed as they might have been, had he been sufficiently
favoured of fortune.
>


## p. 211 (#233) ############################################

x]
Elegies and Epistles in rime couée
2II
For his vernacular verse, Burns had recourse mainly to the
staves already popularised by Ramsay, Fergusson and other poets
of the revival. As with them, the most common medium of his
verse was the favourite six-line stave in rime couée, used by
Sempill in Habbie Simson. Following their and Sempill's
example, he usually adopted it for his vernacular elegies, of
which we may here mention those on Poor Mailie, Tam Samson
and Captain Matthew Henderson. The first, an early production,
is more in the vein of Habbie than the other two, and its opening
stanza is almost a parody of that of Sempill's poem. In it and
Tam Samson, he also adopts throughout the Sempill refrain
ending in 'dead'; but, in the more serious elegy Captain Matthew
Henderson he has recourse to it in but one verse, and that
accidentally. The Samson elegy, like those of Ramsay, is in a
humorous, rather than in a pathetic, vein-a fact accounted for by
the sequel—but the humour is strikingly superior to that of Ramsay
in delicacy, in humaneness, in copious splendour, while the poem
is, also, specially noteworthy for the compactness and polish of its
phrasing. A marked feature of Tam Samson, but, more especially,
of the Henderson elegy, is the exquisite felicity of the allusions to
nature. This last, the best of the three, is pitched in a different
key from the others; pathos prevails over humour, and the closing
stanzas reach a strain of lofty and moving eloquence.
Following the example of Ramsay and Hamilton of Gilbertfield,
Burns also employed the six-line stave for most of his vernacular
epistles. In their tone and allusions, they are also partly modelled
upon those of his two predecessors, and, occasionally, they parody
lines and even verses, which he had by heart; but they never do this
without greatly bettering the originals. Most of them are almost
extempore effusions, but, on that very account, they possess a
charming naturalness of their own. Special mention may be
made of those to John Lapraik, James Smith and Willie Simpson.
Here, we have the poet, as it were, in undress, captivating us by
the frankness of his sentiments and selfrevelations, by homely
allusions to current cares and occupations, by plain and pithy
comments on men and things and by light colloquial outbreaks
of wit and humour, varied, occasionally, by enchanting, though,
apparently, quite unstudied, descriptions of the aspects of nature.
One or two of his epistles, as those To John Rankine, and
Reply to a Trimming Epistle received from a Taylor, are in a
coarser vein; but, even so, they are equally representative of
himself and of the peasant Scotland of his time. They are
14-2


## p. 212 (#234) ############################################

2 1 2
[CH.
Burns
6
occupied with a theme concerning which the jocosity of the peasant
was inveterate. They are not to be judged by our modern
notions of decorum; and Burns, it may be added, is never so
merely squalid as is Ramsay. In the epistolary form and in the
same stave is A Poet's Welcome to his Love-Begotten Daughter,
in which generous human feeling is blended with sarcastic defiance
of the conventions. The attitude of the peasant towards such
casualties had been previously set forth in various chapbooks of
the period, both in prose and verse.
In the same stave as the epistles are Scotch Drink and The
Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer, which mirror the strong
social sentiments of the Scottish rustic, and the close association
in farming communities—an association still surviving-of strong
drink with good fellowship.
This stave is, further, employed by Burns with superb effect in
the satiric narrative of Death and Doctor Hornbook, containing
the eerie midnight interview of the 'canty' bard with the awful
'Something,' whose name, it said, was death, and its grimly jocose
discourse on the medical skill of 'the bauld apothecary,' a village
schoolmaster, who sought to eke out his small salary by the sale of
drugs; but, on the whole, the masterpieces in the stave are The
Address to the Deil, Holy Willie's Prayer and The Auld Farmer's
New Year Salutation to his Mare Maggie. They differ greatly in
their tone and the character of their theme, but each, after its own
fashion, is inimitable. The first two have an ecclesiastical or theo-
logical motif. Of these, The Address to the Deil is a boldly
humorous sketch of the doings of the evil personality, who figured
prominently in the ‘Auld Licht' pulpit oratory of the poet's time
and of the preceding centuries, and became transformed into the
'Auld Hornie,’ ‘Nickie Ben' and 'Clootie' of peasant conversation
and superstition. It is preceded by a motto of two lines from
Milton's Paradise Lost, 'O Prince, etc. , which piquantly contrast
in tone and tenor with the opening verse of the poem itself, the first
two lines—a kind of parody of a couplet in Pope's Dunciad—being
O thon! whatever title suit thee,
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick or Clootie.
The tone of comic humour is maintained throughout, and, in
the last stanza, as in the second, comicality and pathos are
delicately blended in suggesting scepticism of the diabolic per-
sonality's existence:
I am wae to think upo' yon den
Evn for your sake.


## p. 213 (#235) ############################################

x]
Holy Willie's Prayer
213
6
Apart from its weird comedy, the poem is remarkable for the
graphic and condensed vividness of its descriptions, as, to quote
only a few lines and phrases:
Whyles on the strong-winged tempest flyin,
Tirlin' the kirks
Or where auld ruined castles grey
Nod to the moon
Aft yont the dyke she heard you bummin
Wi’ eerie drone
Awa ye squattered, like a drake,
On whistling wings
Holy Willie's Prayer, again, is wholly satirical in tone, a mere
metrical chain of brilliantly relentless mockery. This mockery is
made to serve both a general and a special purpose. While, by a
skilful series of burlesque parodies, it exposes, with deadly effect,
the hypocritical selfrighteousness of an ignorantly opinionated
ruling elder in Mauchline, who had a prominent part in an
unsuccessful prosecution of the poet's friend and landlord, Gavin
Hamilton, it, also, lampoons the narrow puritanic Calvinism
of the 'Auld Licht' party in the kirk, towards whom Burns,
being what he was, was bound to cherish an almost un.
measured antipathy. The antipathy, only indirectly and in
glimpses revealed in The Address to the Deil, is, in The Twa
Herds, in portions of The Holy Fair, in The Ordination and in
The Kirk's Alarm, manifested in the form of uproarious derision.
Though, in his later years, something of a social democrat, and,
even from early manhood, cherishing a certain jealousy of
those above him in station, and easily offended by airs of con-
descension towards him, his antipathy to the ‘Auld Licht' clergy,
the favourites of the people, made him a strong opponent of the
anti-patronage movement, which he contemptuously scouted as an
attempt to get the brutes themselves the power to choose their
herds. ' The proposal is, incidentally, ridiculed with great gusto in
The Twa Herds in the six-line stave-but more at length and more
directly in The Ordination, while the jingling Kirk's Alarm deals
very unceremoniously with the characters and qualifications of
the principal clerical prosecutors in a heresy case; but these
three pieces, though admirably fitted to arouse the derision of
the multitude, are a little too boisterous and violent. For us, at
least, they would have been more effective had they been less
lacking in restraint; and their method cannot compare with the
mock seriousness, the polished innuendo, the withering irony, the
placid scorn of Holy Willie's Prayer.


## p. 214 (#236) ############################################

214
[CH.
Burns
a
But, vastly and variously entertaining as are his ecclesiastical
diatribes, these controversial topics have now lost much of their
savour even for Scotsmen; and it is a relief to turn from such bitter
and mocking satires, and the old ecclesiastical disputes they embalm,
to the scene of rustic concord, content and happiness conjured up
in The Auld Farmer's Salutation. Here, the poet's rustic heart-
strings are touched, and his tenderer and more genial feelings
have full, uninterrupted play. He is at peace with the world
and himself, and his appeal is primarily to our benevolent sym-
pathies. In language more thoroughly and curiously vernacular
than that of most of his verse and with an air of artless and frank
simplicity, just as if the words had come from the lips of the
hearty old farmer, it supplies a realistic biographic sketch of the
lifelong partnership between him and his favourite mare Maggie
their mingled toils and pleasures and their joint achievements from
the time when, in the bringing home of his 'bonnie Bride,' the mare
outran all the other steeds of the company, until he and she had
'come to crazy years together'; and all is so delicately true to nature
as to entitle the poem to rank as a kind of unique masterpiece.
The Auld Farmer's Salutation is partly, but only imperfectly,
paralleled in Poor Mailie, The Death and Dying Words of
Poor Mailie and in portions of The Twa Dogs; but, in these,
it is more the animals themselves than their owner and his
relations with them that are portrayed; his connection with
them is only indirectly hinted. Again, To a Mouse, delicately
fine as are its descriptive stanzas, and strikingly as it appeals to
the sense of the hard case of a large part of the animal creation
in their relations to one another and to man, hardly expresses
the sentiments of the average ploughman or farmer and, it may
be, not altogether those of Burns. Here, and in To a Mountain
Daisy, he partly assumes the 'sensibility' pose; and English
influence is also specially visible in the character of the reflection
in the concluding stanzas. In striking contrast with both is
the broad rustic humour of To a Louse.
While all three-
in the same six-line stave—are but sparsely sprinkled with the
pure vernacular, it is in the last employed here and there with
graphic drollery. But, in this stave more particularly, Burns could
write occasional stanzas in pure English to splendid purpose,
as witness the nobly serious poem The Vision, though, in the
opening stanzas depicting the poet's rustic situation and sur-
roundings, he, with admirable discretion, has recourse mainly to
the vernacular.
6


## p. 215 (#237) ############################################

x]
The Christis Kirk Stave
215
Next to the six-line stave in rime couée, the favourite stave of
Ramsay, Fergusson and other poets of the revival was what may
be termed the Christis Kirk stave, which, though probably the
invention of the author of that poem and of Peblis to the Play, is,
also, the metre of what—from a reference of Sir David Lyndsay~
must be regarded as a very old poem, Sym and his Brudir, and is
used by Alexander Scott in his Justing and Debait. It is formed
by the addition of a bobwheel to the old ballad octave in rollicking
metre as represented in, for example, The Hunting of the Cheviots,
and Henryson's Robene and Makyne. Burns, like Ramsay and
Fergusson, contracted the bobwheel into a refrain of one line;
but, unlike Ramsay, he did not vary the ending of the refrain.
He uses the stave for five pieces: The Holy Fair, Halloween,
The Ordination, A Dream and The Mauchline Wedding and for
a recitativo in The Jolly Beggars. In Halloween and in The
Jolly Beggars recitativo, the final word of the refrain is ‘night';
in the others, it is day. In A Dream, The Ordination and the
recitativo, he, like Ramsay, adheres to the ancient two-rime form
of the octave; but, in The Holy Fair, Halloween and The
Mauchline Wedding, he follows Fergusson in breaking up the
octave and making use of four and, occasionally, three, rimes.
A Dream is really a series of advices, mostly couched in semi-
satirical or jocular terms, but, notwithstanding some clever
epigrams, it must, on the whole, be reckoned of that order of
merit to which most of his political, or semipolitical pieces
belong. The Ordination has been already referred to. Like it,
the other three-as in the case of Christis Kirk and other old
poems, as well as those of the revival-are humorously descriptive
narratives. The Mauchline Wedding is unfinished; The Holy
Fair and Halloween, as presentations of scenes and episodes
in humble life, rank, almost, with The Jolly Beggars and Tam
o' Shanter, though they lack the full inspiration and irresistible
verve of both.
The Holy Fair, in its general form, is modelled on Fergusson's
Leith Races and his Hallow Fair. Like them, it is the narrative
of a day's diversion and, like them, it concludes with a hint that
the result of the day's pleasuring may, in some cases, be not
altogether edifying or pleasant. In intent, it differs somewhat
from them. Unlike them, it has a definite satirical purpose, and
there runs throughout a prevailing strain of ridicule, though not
so much of his fellow peasants—whose idiosyncrasies and doings
are portrayed with a certain humorous toleration as of the


## p. 216 (#238) ############################################

216
[CH.
Burns
6
occasion itself, and of the oratorical flights, especially of the ‘Auld
Licht’clergy, whom Burns makes the subjects of his unsparing wit.
The first six stanzas are a kind of parody of the first five of
Fergusson's Leith Races, but, however excellent, in their way, are
Fergusson's verses, the parody by Burns, in picturesque vivacity
and in glowing realism, quite surpasses the original. It has
further been pointed out that certain stanzas resemble rather
closely, in their tenor, portions of a pamphlet published in 1759,
A Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the
Church of Scotland. Burns probably knew the pamphlet. It may
have partly helped to suggest the writing of the poem; and, having
a very retentive memory, he may have got a phrase or two from it;
but, throughout the whole poem, it is evident enough that he is
describing the details of an actual sacramental occasion' in
Mauchline, from his own direct knowledge; and, whatever small
hints he may have got from the pamphlet, his matchless sketch of
the humours of the oldworld scene of mingled piety, superstition
and rude rustic joviality owes its rare merit to his own pene-
trating observation and vivifying genius.
But, Halloween is the finer poem of the two-mainly, be-
cause mere satire is absent and mirthful humour prevails.
It conjures up a quite different rustic scene, one where
ecclesiasticism, either to good or bad purpose, does not intrude;
and all is pure fun and merriment. He had a suggestion for
the poem in Mayne's Halloween, and faint reflections of it,
as well as of lines in Montgomerie, Ramsay, Fergusson, Thomson
and Pope, are discernible in some of the stanzas, just as similar
faint reminiscences of their predecessors or contemporaries are
discernible in the work of most poets of eminence; but they do
not affect in the slightest the main texture of the poem, which,
throughout, is, characteristically, his own. In the fine opening
stanza, he adds to the descriptive effect by introducing internal
rimes :
Upon that night when fairies light,
and he has also partial recourse to this device in some other
stanzas. Near the close of the poem, he suspends, for a moment,
his mirthful narrative of the Halloween adventures and misad-
ventures to surprise and enchant us by his consummate picture of
the meanderings of a woodland stream:
Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays.
But this is a mere casual interlude. It is with the exploits and


## p. 217 (#239) ############################################

x]
The Cherrie and The
The Slae Stave
217
>
ludicrous mishaps of the 'merry, friendly country folks' that the
poem is chiefly concerned.
Another important stave of Burns is that used by Montgomerie
in The Cherrie and The Slae. In this stave, Thomas Howell also
wrote A Dreame, published in his Devises 1581? ; but The Cherrie
and The Slae was, probably, written before Howell's poem; and,
in any case, there is proof of the use of the stave in Scotland before
Howell's volume appeared, and of its earliest use by a Scottish
poet having been by Montgomerie: Ane Ballat of ye Captane of the
Castell (1571), is described as ‘maid to the tone of The Bankis of
Helicon,' of which Montgomerie was the author. The peculiarity
of the stave is the final wheel of four-properly six-lines, borrowed
from a stave of the old Latin hymns, and affixed to a ten-line
stave, common from an early period in English verse.
Though revived by Ramsay for The Vision and other poems,
there are not any examples of it in Fergusson.
With Burns,
however, The Cherrie and The Slae, which he had doubtless seen
in Watson's Choice Collection, was a special favourite, and he
refers to The Epistle to Davie as in the metre of that poem.
Besides The Epistle to Davie, he had recourse to it for to the
Guidwife of Wauchope House, and for the purely English
Despondency, To Ruin, Inscribed on a Work of Hannah More's
and The Farewell. All these, more or less, are gravely reflective
or didactic in tone, as, indeed, is also The Cherrie and The
Slae; but, in the two opening, and the final, recitativos of the
boisterous Jolly Beggars, he made use of it for humorous
descriptive purposes with a picturesque felicity not surpassed
in verse.
For the other descriptive recitativos of this unique cantata, he
employed the ballad octave of two rimes, of which there is also an
example in his Man was made to Mourn; the French octave or
ballad royal (which, though not found in Ramsay or Fergusson,
was used by Alexander Pennecuick for his semi-vernacular Truth's
Travels, but which Burns-who, later, used it for the Lament and
the Address to Edinburgh-probably got from The Evergreen),
very properly recommended by James VI for ‘heich and grave
subjects, but, on that very account, all the more effective where
gravity is burlesqued; the octo-syllabic couplet, used, also, in The
Twa Dogs and Tam o' Shanter; the six-line stave in rime couée ;
the common ballad stave of four rimes, of which there are various
1 See ante, vol. II, p. 188.


## p. 218 (#240) ############################################

218
[CH.
Burns
examples in Ramsay, and to which Burns had recourse for An
Address to the Unco Guid and Epistle to a Young Friend; and
the Christis Kirk stave. The cantata thus samples all his principal
Scots staves, though omitting the Sir Thopas stave of The Epistle
to Lord Daer and Fintry My Stay, the modified Killychrankie
form of the ballad stave, as exemplified in Guildford Good and the
heroic couplet of the partly English and partly Scots Brigs of Ayr.
Compact and short as are the recitativos of The Jolly Beggars,
Burns never employed their staves to more brilliant purpose. The
songs, again, with which they are interspersed, are, as already
stated, modelled after those to be found in the Choice Song-Books
or in Herd's Collection; and very similar songs, though ruder in
their form and coarser in their expression, may actually have been
sung by different members of the ragged fraternity, in the course
of the carousal of which Burns was a witness.
Burns was unacquainted with the bulk of old English plays,
treatises and songs, dealing with the fortunes of beggars, vagabonds
and outlaws; but he had probably read Gay’s Beggars' Opera;
he knew, of course, the clever Scottish ballads The Gaberlunzie
Man and The Jolly Beggar; and he evidently got faint hints
from The Happy Beggars—an excerpt from Charles Coffey's
ballad opera, The Beggars' Wedding—and The Merry Beggars
of Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany and the song-books. The
poem is, also, modelled on the burlesque odes and cantatas of
the period; but the wonder is that, such being the case, the
curious metrical medley should be such a captivating master-
piece. True, it has a certain advantage, even in its complete
singularity, as an assortment of old Scottish staves, interlaced with
songs characteristically Scots or Anglo-Scots in their style and
manner. All this aids the vivid picturesqueness of the presentation;
but only the fact that the subject appealed, in a very special way,
to peculiarities of the poet's temperament and genius can account
for the striking character of his artistic triumph.
Carlyle was the first to claim for The Jolly Beggars a superiority
over Tam o' Shanter. Few, perhaps, will admit so complete a
superiority as he asserts, but the value of the criticism, so far as
regards the praise of The Jolly Beggars, originally,
quarters, only faintly tolerated, is now generally admitted. Here,
we have a more varied and more intimate and vital presentation of
certain types of human nature than in Tam o' Shanter; and the
detailed record of the vagabonds' high festival affords wider scope
for picturesque effects than the comparatively conventional and
in many


## p. 219 (#241) ############################################

x] The Jolly Beggars and Tam o'Shanter 219
respectable carousal in the village alehouse. On the other hand, it
seems a strange belittlement or misjudgment of Tam o' Shanter
to describe it as less a poem than 'a piece of sparkling rhetoric,'
and a still more questionable statement that it might have been
written all but quite as well by a man who, in place of genius, had
only possessed talent. ' Most other critics are still convinced that
here, as in The Jolly Beggars, we have a superbly characteristic
example of the rare genius of Burns, as developed by his special
environment and his peculiarly mingled poetic training. Scott says:
'I verily believe Tam o' Shanter to be inimitable, both in the
serious and ludicrous parts, as well as in the happy combination
of both. ' As to the relative merits of the two poems, Tam
o' Shanter is the more studied and mature production: when
he wrote it, Burns was a more fully experienced, a better-read
and a more highly trained, artist, than when, in a fit of fine
inspiration, he dashed off The Jolly Beggars; and he himself says
of it that it ‘shewed a finishing polish,' which he 'despaired of
ever excelling. The felicity and terse compactness and vividness
of its phrasing—notwithstanding an occasional looseness, as was
customary with him, in riming-are unsurpassable; and, as for
the alehouse fellowship of Tam and Souter Johnie, and the
skelping ride of the primed farmer through the eerie region in
the wild night, genius could hardly better these; while the
thunder and lightning storm, and the witches' hornpipes and
reels at haunted Alloway, with Auld Nick himself as musician,
are certainly more strictly poetical and more thrilling than the
presentation of squalid revelry in the low Mauchline lodging-
house.
But the poems are really so dissimilar in theme and
method that a comparison of their respective merits is somewhat
difficult and, more or less, futile. In both, Burns affords us a more
splendid glimpse than elsewhere of his poetic possibilities, had
fortune favoured their full development.
But the dilemma of Burns was that the very circumstances
which favoured him in making him become the unique peasant
poet that he was, tended, also, to preclude the adequate fulfilment
of his poetic aspirations; and there were, also, certain peculiarities
in his case which made the adverse circumstances in the end
all-powerful. Thus, apart from songs, Tam o' Shanter and
Captain Matthew Henderson are the only poems of any special
importance produced by him after 1787; though various election
pieces, if not particularly excellent specimens of wit, cleverly
reproduce the manner and style of the old ballads. Except as


## p. 220 (#242) ############################################

220
Burns
[CH.
a song-writer, the really fruitful period of his genius is confined to
the year or two, when, together with other members of the family,
he occupied Mossgiel, in the stable-loft bothy of which—where, for
lack of room in the farmhouse, he took up his quarters with the
farm-servant-he, in the evening, elaborated the verses he had
been conning over during his daily avocations. Hard and toilsome
as was his daily round of labour, and dreary and disappointing as
were his immediate prospects as a farmer, the horizon of his future
had not yet been definitely circumscribed and hope was still strong
within him. While his misfortunes as a farmer overset, as he says,
his wisdom, made him careless of worldly success and caused him
to seek consolation in social diversions not always of a quite
harmless character, they augmented, rather than diminished, his
poetic ambitions; and when, after the enthusiastic reception in
Ayrshire of the Kilmarnock volume, he left the plough to seek
his fortune in Edinburgh, it was probably with high hopes of a
possible future essentially different from his bleak and toilsome
past.
To pass immediately from his lowly toil and from the rustic
scenes and company of Mossgiel and Mauchline to the fashionable
society of the capital and the learned and cultured converse
of its lawyers, professors and doctors might well seem a rather
adventurous experiment; but, what might have proved, even to
most persons of ability in his position, a very trying ordeal, was,
to him, a highly interesting and entertaining experience; and,
as regards his main errand, he was successful quite beyond his
highest expectations. Through the introduction of Dalrymple of
Orangefield, the earl of Glencairn and the famous advocate
Henry Erskine, brother of the eccentric earl of Buchan, took him,
as he says, 'under their wing '; and, at the instance of Glencairn,
William Creech, the chief Edinburgh publisher of the time, whose
levees were frequented by all the distinguished dignitaries and
literati of the city, condescended to undertake the publication of
the proposed volume of his verse.
Meantime, the social popularity of the “illiterate ploughman
of Ayrshire,' so 'Jupiter' Carlyle terms him, was quite extra-
ordinary. In the houses of the gentry he was warmly welcomed
as a kind of rustic wonder; and he charmed everyone by his
perfect, yet modest, selfpossession, and the easy felicity of his
conversation. His 'address to females '-as recorded by Scott
from the testimony of the duchess of Gordon-while extremely
deferential, had always 'a turn to the humorous or the pathetic


## p. 221 (#243) ############################################

x]
The Edinburgh Visit
221
6
which engaged their attention particularly'; and the duchess
affirms that she never saw a man in company with his superiors
in station and information more perfectly free from either the
reality or the affectation of embarrassment. ' The fact was that,
whatever his deficiencies in certain kinds of information, and his
ignorance of the current interests of the higher Edinburgh circles,
he had a remarkable ease in estimating the character and mental
calibre of those with whom he held intercourse. He, therefore,
soon recognised that, at least in natural gifts, he was the inferior
of none with whom he mingled; and, even in the more learned
companies, he did not hesitate to express his own opinions, some-
times with greater emphasis than was customary in polite society,
but, says Hugh Walker, 'though somewhat authoritative, it was in
& way that gave little offence. ' Dugald Stewart further tells us that
Burns charmed him “still more by his private conversation than
he had ever done in company. But, in the society of the
'
middle-class burghers, in taverns where memories still lingered of
Ramsay and Fergusson, and, more especially, in the company of
the jovial and outspoken wits of the Crochallan club, he was more
entirely at his ease, and, doubtless, shone more brilliantly than in
the somewhat grave and constrained circles frequented by Dugald
Stewart
What, however, we have more especially to note, is his supreme
popularity everywhere, and the effect of his social success on the
subscriptions to his forthcoming volume. No fewer than three
thousand copies were printed—a remarkable number for a book
of rustic verse, and twice as many as were contemplated when the
book was sent to press—for one thousand five hundred subscribers,
Creech himself subscribing for five hundred copies, and purchasing
for one hundred pounds the copyright of any subsequent editions.
Burns, in the end, gained five hundred pounds by his Edinburgh
venture, as compared with twenty pounds for the six hundred
copies of the Kilmarnock volume. He was now completely relieved
from the stress of poverty which had been his sore affliction from
childhood. Petted and fêted by Edinburgh grandees, he might
almost have fancied that he had passed into another world than
that of his sordid past. With his greatly widened fame as a poet,
and with many influential friends to further his interests, he
might surely count on a future comparatively free from the old
worldly anxieties by which he had, hitherto, been greatly
hampered, and latterly almost overwhelmed, so that he had been
meditating escape from them, by becoming, as he states, “a


## p. 222 (#244) ############################################

222
Burns
[CH.
poor negro-driver,' in Jamaica. Soon, however, he discovered
that his patrons, greatly as they were charmed by his rustic
personality, and much as they admired his rustic muse, had but
lowly notions of the sphere of activity that was suitable for him.
All that, apart from subscriptions to his volume, he ever obtained
through his patrons—and he obtained even this with difficulty-
was a nomination for the excise. Only one of his new friends,
Mrs Dunlop, manifested any deep concern about his future
well-being. She advised him to become a candidate for the then
discussed chair of agriculture in Edinburgh university; and,
likewise, mentioned to him the possibility of his becoming a salt
officer, the duties of which would be both pleasanter and less
engrossing than those of the excise. But, neither of these, or other,
suggestions made by her bore fruit. Dugald Stewart affirms that,
from the conversation of Burns, he ‘should have pronounced him to
be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to
exert his abilities'; and his aptitudes, doubtless, were great and
various; but, then, his circumstances were exceptional and he had
the defects of his qualities. Had he been less entangled with his
obscure and somewhat tumultuous past, and had he practically
known more than he did of 'prudent, cautious self control,' he
might well have been able to have secured for himself a fair
amount of worldly success as an Edinburgh citizen. But, even
his flirtations with Mrs Maclehose, to say nothing of other
amatory adventures in the capital, would have rendered his set-
tlement there a rather unwise experiment; and, besides, having,
at last, as a man of some means, and, even, of great repute, found
favour in the eyes of the parents of his rustic sweetheart, Jean
Armour, and having come to the conclusion that humanity,
generosity, honest pride of character and justice to’ his ‘happiness
in after life' necessitated his acknowledging her as his wife, he
resolved to banish from his thoughts whatever brighter day dreams
he might have cherished and to venture what, after a loan to his
brother, remained of his small capital, in the lease of the farm of
Ellisland, Dumfriesshire.
While this was, perhaps, the best resolve that, in the circum-
stances, he could have taken, it was rather with chastened and
placid resignation than with perfect content that he decided to
return to the old occupation associated from his childhood with
years of hopeless drudgery. In a letter to his special friend,
William Dunbar, he refers to his Edinburgh sojourn as 'my late
hare-brained ramble into life’; and, from various expressions in


## p. 223 (#245) ############################################

x]
Poetic Purposes
223
а
6
his other letters, it is clear that, great as was both the social and
material success of his Edinburgh venture, he had cherished
certain anticipations about it which were only in part fulfilled.
He had set out to the capital, apparently with some hope that he
might escape from his past and begin a new life. In this, he was
disappointed, and Edinburgh was, ever afterwards, very sour grapes
to him. In one letter, he remarks that, in his 'scene of domestic
comfort the bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a business of sickening
disgust'; but we seem to have a better insight into the real state
of his feelings, when, in reference to the friendships he had formed
there, he writes to Dunbar: ‘from my uncouthness when out of my
native sphere and my obscurity in that sphere, I am obliged to give
most of them up in despair of a mutual return. ' Partly, it may be,
from his own faults, but, mainly, owing to his previous circum-
stances, he felt himself a kind of alien in the sphere of life which
best accorded with his aspirations; and, though the ‘obscurity'
of his position is always referred to by him in a manly and
independent fashion, his rooted discontent manifested itself more
and more as time went on.
The heart of man and the fancy of the poet (he wrote to Mrs Dunlop]
are the two grand considerations for which I live; if miry ridges and dirty
dunghills are to express the best part of the functions of my soul immortal,
I had better have been a rook or a magpie at once,
The support of his wife and family was always his first care, but
the only thing that made his social 'obscurity' tolerable to him
was the hope that, as a farmer, he might enjoy sufficient leisure
and sufficient freedom from care to enable him, as he put it,
'to pay court to the tuneful sisters. ' To Lady Elizabeth
Cunningham he wrote: 'I had the most ardent enthusiasm for
the muses when nobody knew me but myself, and that ardour
is by no means cooled now that My Lord Glencairn's goodness has
introduced me to all the world. To bishop Geddes, brother of
the poet, he intimated his determination 'to try if the ripening
and corrections of years' could enable him 'to produce some-
thing worth preserving,' and he proposed to communicate to him
when he saw him in Edinburgh, 'some large poetic plans that
are floating,' so he writes, “in my head, or partly put in execution. '
Of these plans, he makes more definite mention in a letter to
Lady Elizabeth Cunningham. He was, he said, not in haste for
the press,' and he continues :
I am aware that though I were to give performances to the world superior
to my former works, still if they were of the same kind with those, the
6
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224
Burns
[ch.
6
comparative reception they would meet with would mortify me. For this
reason I am determined if possible to secure my great friend Novelty on
my side by the kind of my performances;
and he further went on to say that he had thoughts on the
drama':
not the stately busk of the Tragic Muse, but considering the favourite things
of the day, the two or three act Pieces of O'Keefe, Mrs Inchbald eto. -does
not your Ladyship think that an Edin. Theatre would be more amused with
the affectation, folly and whim of true Scottish growth, than manners which by
far the greatest part of the audience can only know at second hand ?
Later, with a view to some such purpose, he set himself to
collect the works of English and French dramatic authors.
Doubtless, in cherishing such intentions, as in his occasional
experiments in purely English verse, Burns was partly influenced
by the comparatively low esteem in which Scots vernacular
verse was then held by the more cultured of his countrymen.
Some have also expressed the opinion that, in contemplating
becoming a dramatist of any kind, he was mistaking his true
vocation as much as he did in aspiring to become an accomplished
English poet. Necessarily, he was lacking in stagecraft; but, then,
he had a marvellous genius for comedy, and anything he wrote
was certain to be at least delightfully amusing reading. Even
at the worst, he might have considerably eclipsed Ramsay's
Gentle Shepherd ; indeed, when we consider that The Jolly
Beggars was the random product of his early and untutored
years, it is difficult to say what he might not have accomplished
as a writer of, at least, a certain type of comedy-opera libretto.
Then, in the Tam o' Shanter of his more mature and more
fully disciplined genius, he did actually achieve a splendid success
in a species of verse quite different from any of his earlier
pieces; and, given the leisure that assists inclination, he might
well have delighted the world with a series of similar tales.
But the melancholy fact is, that, apart from songs, it remains
almost the one solitary sign that he had it in him to fulfil the
promise of his Mossgiel productions by the execution of more
mature and finished work. Notwithstanding his repeatedly
expressed resolve 'to produce something worth preserving,' he
never did seriously set himself to carry out his meditated plans ;
no trace was found among his papers of even abortive attempts
to do so. The last nine years of his life-the period when his
powers might be supposed to be at their best-were, apart
from songs, almost a poetic blank. He may have been partly
led astray by a passing ambition to excel in English verse ; but


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x]
Worldly Disappointments
225
the chief explanation seems to be that, as he well might, he
partly succumbed, doubtless, at first, reluctantly, but, in the end,
apathetically, to his circumstances. The mere return to his old
farming tasks, implying, as it did, the definite dissipation of his
more sanguine day-dreams, was, however brave a face he might
put on it, a very disheartening experience; and, when, to the
old gin-horse round of toil and care was conjoined the old
impossibility of making farming pay, his highest poetic intentions
were bound to remain unfulfilled. By obtaining an excise com-
mission for his own rural district with a salary of fifty pounds, he
was able to save himself from bankruptcy; but this supplement
to his income did little more; and, all things considered, he
concluded that his only chance of bettering himself in life was
through the excise. Having, therefore, at a break in the lease,
relinquished his farm, he removed to Dumfries at a salary of
seventy pounds, which, in September 1792, when he was appointed
port officer, was raised to ninety pounds ; but this was the extent
of his promotion, for his outspoken approbation of the French
revolutionaries, both in conversation and in occasional verse,
brought him into bad odour with his official superiors and even
endangered the retention of his office. This greatly embittered
and disheartened him ; towards his closing years, he partly lost
hope ; and his higher poetic ambitions remained in suspense until
fate conclusively decided against them by the long painful illness
which, 21 July 1796, terminated in his death.
Happily, however, he all along found some encouragement and
opportunity for the exercise of his gifts as a song writer. While
in Edinburgh, he made the acquaintance of James Johnson, an
engraver and music-seller, who was then preparing the first volume
of his Scots Musical Museum. To the first volume, he con-
tributed two songs; and, from the autumn of 1787 almost until
his death, he was largely both literary and musical editor of the
work. He wrote the prefaces probably of volume II and certainly of
volumes III and iv; volume v did not appear until shortly after
his death, but it includes some of his best songs and adaptations,
among them A Red, Red Rose, Auld Lang Syne and It was a'
for our Richtfu King ; while volume vi, though not published
until 1803-doubtless largely due to the lack of his supervising
help—was in course of preparation before his death, and contains
some twenty of his contributions. All that he did for the publi-
cation was, with him, a mere labour of love. He received no re-
muneration for it, nor would he have accepted any. In his efforts
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226
[CH.
Burns
6
on its behalf, he was influenced partly by the desire to help 'a
good, worthy, honest fellow' in a patriotic undertaking, the
lucrative character of which was very doubtful, and which,
without his guidance and help, seemed almost certain to collapse.
But to assist in it was, besides, a pure delight : he confided to the
poet Skinner that he had been absolutely crazed about the
project,' and was collecting stanzas and every information
respecting their origin, authors, etc. ' Most of this did not
involve any protracted mental effort. He could amend songs
with easy facility, and he could even partly compose others during
his labours on the farm, or in the course of his excise excursions,
which, also, supplied him with opportunities for obtaining old
songs and airs from tradition.
While Burns was still busy assisting Johnson, George Thomson
-a government clerk in Edinburgh and an amateur musician-
invited him, in September 1792, to contribute songs to his Scottish
Airs with Poetry, to which Pleyel had promised accompaniments;
and, without remitting his diligence in assisting Johnson, he could
not resist immediately informing Thomson how delighted he was
with his proposal, which, he said, 'will positively add to my enjoy-
ment in complying with it. ' But, though Thomson, also, mentioned
that he would pay him any reasonable price he might demand for
his contributions, Burns replied: 'As to remuneration, you may
think my songs either above or below price, for they shall
absolutely be the one or the other. ' In his difficult worldly
circumstances, it was a noble, though almost Quixotic, resolve ;
but, apart from the fact that he was not receiving any
remuneration from Johnson, he was determined to be influenced
by no other considerations than love of his art, and to be
perfectly free and independent in the exercise of it. He did not
object to change lines and words when he thought that, while
satisfying his own judgment, he might better meet the wishes of
Thomson ; he did not resent even Thomson's most absurd sug-
gestions; but he was adamant when convinced that any alterations
would be for the worse, though he told Thomson repeatedly, and
evidently with perfect candour, that he would not be in any degree
offended by his rejection of any songs that did not please him.
The prosecution of his art, even in this circumscribed fashion,
became, to Burns, the sheet-anchor of his life, and his main solace
during the troubles and frustrations of his later years. On the
whole, the best of his work was that which he did for Johnson.
He began it when hope was still high within him, and here he was,


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x]
Lyric Verse
227
a
besides, his own editor. Moreover, although, in his first letter to
Thomson, he had written : 'Apropos, if you are for English
verses there is an end of the matter,' he was ultimately induced,
entirely against his better judgment, to oblige Thomson by not
unfrequently breaking his resolution. Whether in the simplicity,'
so he had written, of the Ballad or the pathos of the Song, I can
only hope to please myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling
of my native tongue’; and the justness of his preference is
abundantly proved by his performances.
If lyric verse did not afford Burns adequate scope for the
exercise of his best poetic powers, it quite accorded with a certain
strain of his complex personality. He found an entirely con-
genial medium for the expression of poetic emotion and
sympathetic humour, and the exercise of his rare artistic
sensibilities, in writing new songs to old airs, in giving a new,
and an artistically improved, expression to some of the freer
songs of tradition, in inimitable amendments of other old songs-
sometimes merely by the substitution, here and there, of a new
word, or phrase, or line, or the partial reconstruction of a stanza ;
often by a combined process of omission, condensation and
addition, so that a merely halting and vulgar, if, in some respects,
clever, doggerel ditty, becomes transformed into a noble and
finished masterpiece; or, again, by utilising merely the burden
or chorus of an old song, or a mere fragment of verse preserved
in floating tradition, so as, while preserving the spirit and
essence of the sentiment, to inspire it with higher emotional
efficacy and provide it with the artistic setting necessary for its
full lyrical expression. Unlike many song writers, he, also, even
when the words were entirely his own, wrote his songs for
particular airs, and most of them for old traditional airs, some
of which he himself collected. His inspiration was thus, in part,
derived from the old national music.
Until (so he wrote to Thomson) I am a complete master of a tune in my
own singing (such as it is) I never can compose for it. My way is: I consider
the poetic sentiment corresponding to my idea of the musical expression;
then choose my theme.
Again, even of the advantage of having only the old title, when
the song has been lost, and composing the rest of the verses
to suit that line,' he says:
This has always a finer effect than composing English words, or words
with an idea foreign to the spirit of the old title. When old titles of songs
convey any idea at all, they will generally be found to be quite in the spirit of
the air.
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228
[CH.
Burns
But, apart from the burden, or the fragments, or the title,
or the air, much of his direct lyrical inspiration was derived
from, or modified by, the past. Here, it was not Ramsay or
Fergusson, or any other bards of the revival that he strove to
emulate, but 'the glorious old bards' of an earlier period. The
special character of his success, even when the theme was entirely
his own, was largely due to his comprehensive knowledge of
old minstrelsy; he was pervaded by its spirit, and, besides
fashioning his verses for its music, moulded them in the manner
of its expression. It was, also, mainly because of the large and
various inheritance of old verse, which he was free to manipulate
and reshape, that he was able to supply the world with so rich an
assortment of popular songs, and, more especially, to appeal in
them, so fully and irresistibly as he does, to Scottish senti
and emotion. The best of his lyrics—both those entirely or
mainly his own and those which he partly refashioned or almost
re-created—differ entirely in their manner and spirit from those
of the principal English poets. Much of their special virtue
derives from their antique ingenuousness and simplicity, and the
marvellous art of Burns is manifested in the manner in which,
while preserving the antique charm, he has enriched each song
with his own individual vitality. Only an exceptional poetic
artist could have so finely utilised Burns's opportunities, but his
opportunities were, themselves, exceptional. His peasant origin
and environment specially aided him in preserving the primi-
tive simplicity of the old songs ; and his achievements as lyrist
indicate, also, extraordinary gifts of sympathy, humour, senti-
ment and emotion, combined with a great mastery of expression
and a singularly delicate artistic sense; but they could never
have been so great, varied and unique as they are, except for his
partial partnership with older bards.
To give a few illustrations. The lyric by which he is best
known throughout the world is Auld Lang Syne : its universal
and immortal popularity depends on the fine fervour and
simplicity of its appeal to old memories of social fellowship;
but it is not wholly Burns's own : he got its burden and the
essence of its sentiment, however defectively it was expressed,
from an old anonymous song, itself derived from an ancient and
lost original. Again, of MacPherson's Farewell and specially
of the chorus, Carlyle remarks : ‘Who, except Burns, could have
given words to such a soul? ' This is true enough, but Carlyle
did not know that the chorus of Burns is merely a masterly


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x]
Utilisation of Old Songs
229
3
modification of that of a broadside, contemporary with
MacPherson's execution, from which, moreover, the whole outlaw
sentiment of the song-matchless though its expression of the
sentiment is—is borrowed. A much less striking but, so far as
the theme would permit, equally complete, example of the deftness
of Burns in utilising the burden and sentiment of an old song is
Up in the Morning Early. "The chorus of this,' he himself tells
us, ‘is old; the two stanzas are mine’; but, had he not got the
chorus, he would not have written the stanzas, nor could he have
written anything at all resembling them. Those three lyrics differ
widely in their sentiment and manner, but this, mainly, because
in each case, Burns borrowed the sentiment and the manner of
different old songs.
Of another, and quite dissimilar, method of utilisation we
have an example in the piquantly humorous sketch of rustic
courtship in Duncan Davison. The song was suggested by, and
borrowed something from, an old song of the same name in The
Merry Muses ; but its last stanza is, as regards the first half, a
mere assortment of lines borrowed from old ballads and songs, while
the second half was snatched almost verbally from the Herd MS.
As illustrating his art of re-creation, in which a matchless process
of revision is combined with condensation, omissions and slight
additions, it may suffice to mention How Lang and Drearie
is the Night, Charlie he's my Darling, A Red, Red Rose and
It was a' for our Richtfu King. The two last rank with the
very finest specimens of lyric verse; and many would rank them
above any of Burns's songs of which the motif was entirely his
True, most Scots probably agree with Carlyle that Scots
Wha hae is the best war ode 'ever written by any pen’; but,
here, there is a possibility of patriotic bias. There are some,
again, who think that Burns reached the height of his achievement
in 18 there for Honest Poverty, which, though a kind of parody of
an older song, or older songs, is, like Scots Wha hae, Burns to the
core, and, though not faultless as regards the temper of its philo-
sophy, offers, on the whole, a splendidly glowing forecast of the final
triumph of human worth over all artificial restrictions; but the
piece is apt to be overestimated or underestimated according to
the predilections of the reader.
Of the more purely lyrical pieces which he claims as his own,
though they are suggested by older songs, characteristic examples
are John Anderson My Jo, O Merry Hae I been, What Can
a Young Lassie, Wha is that at My Bower Door, O Leeze me
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230
Burns
[CH.
on my Spinnin Wheel and Comin Thro' the Rye. On the other
hand, while the majority of his lyrics were not expressive of
sentiments due to his actual experience, and, though some of this
sort-especially the artificial kind produced for Thomson by
putting himself in the regimen of adoring a fine woman'—are
but mediocre, they also include such varied and excellent
specimens of his art as The Rantin Dog the Daddie O't, Of a'
the Airts, The Banks o' Doon, Ye Banks and Braes and
Streams Around, Yestreen I had a pint o' Wine, Willie Brew'd
a Peck o' Maut, The Blue-eyed Lassie, Mary Morison and o
Wert thou in the Cauld blast.
As regards his purely English songs, it may suffice to quote
two of his own remarks to Thomson : ‘You must not, my dear
Sir, expect your English songs to have superlative merit, 'tis
enough if they are passable'; and : ‘These English songs gravel
me to death. I have not the command of the language that I
have of my native tongue. In fact I think my ideas are more
barren in English than in Scottish. ' Some, even of his Scottish
songs or adaptations, are not of 'superlative merit'; the character
of the theme or sentiment does not always permit of this ; but
there are few that do not, in their tone or expression, exhibit
traces of his felicitous art; and, taken altogether, his achievement
as a lyrist-partly on account of its peculiar relations to the
older bards—is, for comprehensiveness and variety, unmatched by
any other poet. For the same reason, it is, in its character,
in some respects, unique ; and, while the general level of its
excellence is very high, it often, notwithstanding a pervading
rustic homeliness, exercises the complete captivating charm which
is the highest triumph of lyric verse.
Thus, while, in other respects, the poetical aims of Burns were
largely frustrated, he was, as a lyrist, even, in some respects,
peculiarly favoured by fate. Here, he fulfilled, and even more
than fulfilled, the promise of his earlier years ; and if, as seemed
to Carlyle, all the writings he has left us are no more than a
poor mutilated fraction of what was in him,' his very peasant
circumstances—which, in some ways, greatly hampered and
narrowed his endeavours—were, also, the means of enabling him
bequeath a poetic legacy more essentially Scottish than,
probably, it could otherwise have been, and, at the same time,
of such vital worth as to secure him a high place among the
greater poets of Britain.
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x]
Lady Writers of Songs
231
LESSER SCOTTISH VERSE
The Scottish literary revival inaugurated by Ramsay was
associated with a widespread interest among educated and
fashionable ladies in the old national airs and songs, and it is
not therefore surprising that several of the most talented of
them essayed song writing. Lady Grizel Baillie, Lady Wardlaw,
Mrs Cockburn and Jane Elliot have been already mentioned'.
These and other ladies, besides songs that have been published,
wrote various others which were circulated only privately among
their friends, and the fashion continued into the nineteenth
century. Here, however, our chronicle of poetesses begins with
Joanna Baillie, who was more of a professional authoress
than most of the others. In 1790, she published a volume of
Fugitive Pieces; and, while she devoted her main efforts, occa-
sionally with marked literary success, to playwriting, it is probably
mainly by her songs that she will be remembered.