No More Learning

But, this particular inten-
tion is soon absorbed in the general onslaught upon the legalist
positions, though the earlier purpose is recalled from time to time,
particularly in the remarkably virile satire of Memorable Fancies,
written in mockery of the Swedish mystic's Memorable Relations.
It is strange that, having thus proved his power as a writer of
clean-limbed muscular prose, he should have returned almost
immediately to the fourteener, and developed therein what is too
often the windy rhetoric of the prophetic' books. He seems to
have aimed at creating a body of quasi-epic poetry, dealing with
the origin, progress and ultimate purpose of mortality. To this
end, he invented his mythology, wherein the passions and aspira-
tions of man, and the influences that made for or against vision,
appear in human form, but magnified to daemonic proportions. It
is clear that he was largely influenced by Milton, whom he regarded
as the great heresiarch, and whose theological opinions he felt
himself called upon to confute. This is explicit in The Marriage
and in the book called Milton, as well as in recorded passages
of Blake's conversation, while much of his imagery, and occasionally,
his rhythm and diction, are reminiscent of the older poet. But
there are also evidences of Biblical, Ossianic and Swedenborgian
1 The present account of the doctrines of Blake's 'prophetic' books must, neces-
sarily, from considerations of space, be brief and, in a measure, dogmatic. It may,
however, be stated that the interpretation here given is based upon a long and detailed
study of these works, undertaken by the present writer in conjunction with Duncan J.
Sloss.


## p. 189 (#211) ############################################

ix] The French Revolution and America 189
influences in works written between the years 1793 and 1800, the
period of his residence in Lambeth.
A brief examination of the Lambeth books will show how the
freight of ideas gradually broke down the frail semblance of form
with which they started. The first, the recently rediscovered
French Revolution (1791), is in almost regular fourteeners, and
its style, though distorted and over-emphatic, is comparatively in-
telligible. Only the first of seven books appears to have been
printed; it opens the series of what may be called visionary
histories, and embodies Blake's interpretation of events in Paris
and Versailles between 5 May and 16 July 1789, though it does
not describe the actual attack upon the Bastille (14 July). Its
literary interest is slight: what is, perhaps, the most striking
passage describes the various towers and the prisoners in the
famous fortress, when premonitions of its impending fate are in the
air. Otherwise, the work is only of value for its indications of ideas
developed later. For Blake, the stand made by the tiers état
marks the first step towards universal emancipation from the
thraldom of authority. Yet, his portrayal of Louis XVI has none
of his later violence towards kings, for the French monarch is seen
as one overborne by circumstances and the influence of his nobles.
But, Blake's lifelong feud against priestcraft utters itself in an
attack upon clericalism in the person of the archbishop of Paris.
The French Revolution was printed by Johnson, and it may
have been about this time that Blake became one of the circle-of
which Paine, Godwin, Holcroft and Mary Wollstonecraft were also
members—that used to meet at the publisher's table. It is, there-
fore, natural to conclude that this society, to a considerable extent,
was responsible for the extreme revolutionary spirit of the Lam-
beth books, and it is likely that those which deal with the rebellion
in France and America may have owed something, in the way of
suggestion or information, to Paine. The French Revolution was
followed by A Song of Liberty and America (1793). The former,
being, substantially, a précis of the latter, is only remarkable
because of its form, being cast into short numbered paragraphs
like the verses in the Bible. But America, one of the most
beautifully engraved of these books, marks a considerable advance
in the use of symbolism. Here, the conflict between England and
her colonies is interpreted as presaging the imminent annihilation
1 This work, from the fact that it is sometimes bound up with The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell, has generally been ascribed to the year 1790. But its symbolism
would seem to put it later than The French Revolution (1791).


## p. 190 (#212) ############################################

190
[ch.
Blake
of authority and the reestablishment of the Blakean ideal of
a condition of complete licence. On the side of law stands Urizen,
the aged source of all restrictive codes ; his ministers are the king,
councillors and priests of England. On the opposite side stands
Orc, the fiery daemon of living passion and desire, the archrebel,
* Antichrist, hater of Dignities, Lover of wild rebellion and trans-
gressor of God's Law,' and, therefore, the liberator of man from
the power of law : he inspires the colonial leaders, Washington
and the rest. But Blake handles history much more freely here
than in The French Revolution, for the fact that he wrote after
the successful issue of the revolt made it possible for him to claim
it as a vindication of his own anarchic theory. Ever after, in his
symbolism, the western quarter, either America or the sunken
continent of Atlantis, stands for the visionary ideal of perfect
liberty, from which fallen man, in Europe and Asia, is cut off by
the floods of moral fallacies, the 'Atlantic deep. ' This concept
appears in Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), which, in
its vigorous enthusiasm and comparative buoyancy, most nearly
resembles America. Like that work, too, it is easily intelligible,
but deals with the physical and moral, rather than with the
political, tyranny of legal codes. The myth tells how the virgin
Oothoon, 'the soft soul of America,' the spirit of delight, plucks
the flower of instant and complete gratification of desire ; further,
she is ravished by a violent daemon, Bromion. On both these
accounts, she is condemned and mourned over by the spirit of
prudential morality, and the major part of the book is a vehement
vindication of physical appetite. The whole argument, of course,
is very unreal; yet the force of Blake's conviction gives his state-
ment of the case a certain vitality, and keeps it unfalteringly above
the low places of thought.
Up to this point, Blake's writings preserve the spontaneity and
confident strength that mark The Marriage : his faith in the
immediate efficacy of passion to free itself by revolt gives energy
and freshness to the measure and language. But, from this time,
his outlook becomes increasingly overcast. He comes to see that
the will to freedom is not all-powerful, but must endure, for a
time, the limitations of temporal experience. Salvation is still to
come through passionate revolt, and, in an indefinite way, this is
associated with the French revolution; but, Blake now emphasises
the strength of the moral heresy, and the impetuous enthusiasm of
America and Visions is, to a considerable degree, checked. The
simplest indications of this change occur in Songs of Experience


## p. 191 (#213) ############################################

]
IX
Songs of Experience 191
(1794) and those poems in the Rossetti MS belonging to the same
period. The contrast between these and Songs of Innocence is not
merely formal, but is the direct expression of the change already
referred to. In the early collection, there are no shadows: to Blake's
unaccustomed eyes, the first glimpse of the world of vision was
pure light. But, in the intervening years, experience had brought
a fuller sense of the power of evil, and of the difficulty and loneli-
ness of his lot who would set himself against the current of this
world. So he writes of himself
The Angel that presided o'er my birth
Said, 'Little creature, formed of Joy and Mirth
Go, love without the help of anything on Earth. '
The title-page for the combined Songs of Innocence and of
Experience describes them as ‘Shewing the Contrary States of
the Human Soul' while, in the motto, he writes, in a spirit of dis-
enchantment,
The Good are attracted by Men's perceptions
And think not for themselves;
Till Experience teaches them to catch
And to cage the Fairies and Elves,
the catching of the fairies and elves, apparently, signifying the
deliberate searching after the hidden mystical meaning of things,
in place of a docile acceptance of other men's faith.
Signs of the change lie on every hand. If the introduction in
Songs of Experience be compared with its earlier counterpart, the
piper is seen to have become the more portentous bard, the laugh-
ing child upon a cloud gives place to the lapsed Soul weeping in
the evening dew. And there is, also, apparent, at times, the vague
consciousness of 'some blind hand' crushing the life of man, as
man crushes the fly. This, however, is not quite constant, though
,
something of the same mystery lies behind the question in The
Tiger,
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
More commonly, Blake lays stress upon the fallacy of law, and
this, chiefly, in its relation to love. Thus, in The Clod and the
Pebble, his own ethic of the love that 'seeketh not itself to please,'
is set against the concept of love governed by moral duty, and,
therefore, cold and interested. Similarly, in Holy Thursday,
there is white passion beneath the simplicity and restraint of his
picture of the little victims of a niggard charity ; perhaps, nothing
gives so complete an impression of the change in Blake as the
6


## p. 192 (#214) ############################################

192
Blake
[ch.
6
comparison of the earlier and later poems under this title. More-
over, he always opposed any interference with the natural
development of the individual genius. "There is no
use in
education,' he told Crabb Robinson, 'I hold it wrong. It is the
great Sin. ' This text he develops in The Schoolboy and in the two
versions, manuscript and engraved, of Infant Sorrow. Something
of the kind appears in A Little Boy Lost, though there is also a
return to the baiting of the Philistine with paradox, as in The
Marriage. For, here, as before, churches and priests represent
the extreme forms of obscurantism and repression, and the exalta-
tion of the letter of a rigid law above the spirit of love that
transcends mere obligation. But, by far the greater bulk of the
engraved and manuscript verse of this period repeats the theme of
Visions, the infallibility of the human instinct towards gratifica-
tion of appetite, and the iniquity of all that interferes with it.
Hence, modesty, continence and asceticism become glosing terms,
hiding the deformity and corruption that arise from the covert
satisfaction of desire; they are the fair-seeming fruit of the
poison-tree, the tree of moral virtue.
Such is a summary of the main ideas embodied in these Songs.
There are, indeed, moments when this passion of disputation tells
heavily against the verse, prosodically perfect though it is; only
the unfaltering sincerity and directness of Blake's spirit bears him
safely through. Indeed, he never surpassed the best work of this
period. Notably in The Tiger, his imagination shakes off the
encumbrances of doctrine, and beats out new rhythm and new
imagery for a more exalted vision of life. The poem proceeds en-
tirely by suggestion; its succession of broken exclamations, scarcely
coherent in their rising intensity, gives a vivid impression of a vast
creative spirit labouring at elemental furnace and anvil to mould
a mortal form adequate to the passion and fierce beauty of the
wrath of God, the wild furies' of the human spirit: it is as though
the whole mighty process had been revealed to him in vivid gleams
out of great darkness. Of a lower flight, but still unequalled
before Keats, are poengs in the 'romantic'mood of human sorrow,
in harmony with the more desolate aspects of nature. Such are
the Introduction and Earth's Answer, the lovely first stanza of
The Sunflower or the manuscript quatrain, almost perfect in its
music, beginning ‘I laid me down upon a bank. Yet, Blake could
ruin the effect of such lines by adding an atrocious verse in crude
three-foot anapaests on the iniquity of moral law. He gives his
own version of this obsession in another manuscript poem :
6
6


## p. 193 (#215) ############################################

IX]
The Lambeth Books
193
Thou hast a lap full of seed
And this is a fine country.
Why dost thou not cast thy seed,
And live in it merrily?
Shall I cast it on the sand
And turn it into fruitful land ?
For on no other ground
Can I sow my seed,
Without tearing up
Some stinking weed.
Yet, some seed of song fell into the sandy wastes of Blake's
ethical disputations, and sprang up and blossomed in spite of the
tearing up of noxious moral heresies in their neighbourhood.
Such are the delicate minor melody of The Wild Flower's Song,
the lines I told my love, To My Myrtle-a notable instance, by
the way, of Blake's rigorous use of the file in his lyrics and Cradle
Song. He still has his old delight in natural beauty, though his
perverse antipathies often stood in the way of its expression ; and
his utterance is almost always singularly clear, concise and un-
forced.
But, in the remaining Lambeth writings, Blake is no longer
controlled by the exigencies of lyrical form, and the first freshness
of his revolutionary enthusiasm is past; hence, his energy turns to
exposition or affirmation, not so much of his own faith as of the
errors of the opposite party. To this end, he invented the mystical
mythology which is chiefly contained in The Book of Urizen (1794),
with its complements The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los
(1795). These trace the fallacies of the moral law to their pre-
(
mundane source. Europe (1794) and The Song of Los (1795)
though they have the same mythological basis, come rather nearer
in tone to America. The Urizen series, too, is written in a shorter
and very irregular measure, generally containing three or four
stresses. The other two works combine the fourteener and the
shorter line.
Blake's antagonism to Milton's theodicy led him to reinterpret
the story of the fall, affirming that it was not Satan, but the God
of this world, the author of the moral codes, or, in Blake's mytho-
logy, Urizen, who fell. Hence, The Book of Urizen contains
obvious inversions of Miltonic episodes. But, here, as elsewhere
in Blake, the root-idea is that existence is made up of two great
bodies of contraries ; on the one side, the eternals, the expression
of the ideal ethic, on the other, Urizen. This latter daemon plots
to impose his will upon the eternals, but fails, and is cast out into
13
a
B. L. XI.
CH. IX.


## p. 194 (#216) ############################################

194
[CH.
Blake
6
chaos, wherein is ultimately developed the world of time and space.
This process of evolution is not directed to any discernible end,
except that it gives extension and duration to the unreal forms
begotten of Urizen's perverted moral and intellectual sense, which
become apparent as the phenomena of a physical universe, wherein
man forgets 'the wisdom and joy of eternity' and shrinks, spiritually
and bodily, to mortal stature. But, since Urizen is the negation
of all creative activity, Blake is constrained to introduce a forma-
tive agent in Los, the eternal prophet—though, as yet, there seems
little to justify this title. Labouring at his furnaces and anvils,
he gives permanence to the successive modifications of the Urizenic
substance of which this new world is made, binding them in the
chains of time. From him, also, derive two important develop-
ments, the ‘separation of the first female, the manifestation of
Los's pity for the sterile universe, and the birth of Orc. But,
apparently because The Book of Urizen is incomplete, nothing
comes of these episodes, and the work concludes with the enslave-
ment of all mortality beneath Urizen’s net of religion. In this
myth, Blake's main purpose is to demonstrate, by reference to
their origins, the falsity of the ethical spirit and the unreality of
the material universe. In The Book of Ahania, he further identifies
Urizen, as the author of the Mosaic code, with Jehovah. He also
emphasises, in new symbols, the antagonism of morality, first to
'masculine' or positive energy, and, secondly, to physical desire,
imaged in the female Ahania. In the remaining member of this
trilogy, The Book of Los, the strangeness of the symbolism makes
interpretation too much a matter of conjecture to warrant any
conclusion as to its place in the development of Blake's ideas.
In Europe and The Song of Los, Blake turns from universal
history to consider the present portents of immediate emancipation
through the French revolution. This change is reflected in the
greater prominence given to Los and Enitharmon, who, as regents
of this world, act as the ministers of Urizen to transmit to men his
systems of religion and philosophy, from that of ‘Brama' to the
Newtonian ‘Philosophy of the Five Senses. ' But the most im-
portant point is that Blake here utters his plainest criticism of
Christianity. According to his own statement in Africa, the first
section of The Song of Los, the asceticism of Jesus's gospel would
have depopulated the earth, had not Mohammedanism, with its
‘loose Bible,' that is, apparently, its laxer moral code, been set to
counteract it. And, in Europe, the Christian era is the period of
the 'Female dream,' the false ideal that makes passivity a virtue


## p. 195 (#217) ############################################

IX]
Vala
195
and the gratification of innate desire a sin. Thus, Enitharmon is
the typical female, at once the source and the symbol of repressive
morality.
The next work, the manuscript originally called Vala, belongs
to two distinct periods of Blake's development. The earlier portion,
dated 1797, extends and elaborates the symbolism of The Book of
Urizen, with certain modifications, of which the most important is
that man is conceived, ideally, as a harmony of four spiritual
powers, Urizen, Luvah, Urthona-apparent in time as Los—and
Tharmas. It may be that these, later known as the Zoas, have a
psychological significance, as the symbols of reason, emotion,
energy and instinct or desire; but the indications are too vague
and contradictory to admit of assured interpretation. Further
difficulties arise with the four females joined with the male qua-
ternion. But, this elaborate symbolism, like most of Blake's
attempts in this kind, soon falls through, and may safely be
ignored. As before, the real basis is a dualism of liberty and
law. The first ‘Nights' of Vala repeat, under a bewildering variety
of imagery, the now familiar criticism of the ethical spirit as a dis-
ruptive force, destructive of the ideal unity in man, and the cause
of the difficulty and darkness of mortality, through the illusions of
materialism and morality. The remaining sections develop the
antithesis of authority and anarchy in Urizen and Orc, and,
though the former triumphs at first, its manifold tyrannies are
ultimately consumed beneath the cleansing fires of Orc's rebel
spirit of passion, so that, after the final ‘harvest and vintage of the
Nations,' man reascends to his primal unity in a state of perfect
liberty.
The arid symbolism and uncouth style of the later Lambeth
books mark a zeal that has overridden inspiration, till the creative
spirit flags beneath the continual stimulus of whip and spur, and,
almost founders in barren wastes of mere storm and splutter; and
though, by sheer strength, Blake occasionally compels his stubborn
matter into striking forms, the general effect is repellent in the
extreme. Then came his visit to Felpham, at the invitation of
William Hayley, and the three years (1800—1803) passed there
influenced him most deeply, as his letters and later 'prophecies'
clearly show. Perhaps the shock of transition from the cramped
London life to the comparative freedom of his new surroundings
awakened him to consciousness of the extent of his divergence
from the sounder and more human faith of his early manhood.
But, whatever the cause, his old attitude changed, coming nearer
13_2


## p. 196 (#218) ############################################

196
[CH.
Blake
>
to that of Songs of Innocence, as he himself writes to captain
Butts :
And now let me finish with assuring you that, though I have been very
unhappy, I am so no longer. I am again emerged into the light of day;
I still and shall to eternity embrace Christianity, and adore Him who is the
express image of God 1.
In this spirit he took up Vala and, renaming it The Four Zoas,
attempted to bring it into harmony with his new vision by grafting
additions, and rewriting the whole or considerable parts of various
'Nights. But the basis of Vala, like that of the other Lambeth
books, is purely necessitarian: the eternals stand apart from mun-
dane life, having neither sympathy with it, nor foreknowledge of
its end. Mortal existence is totally evil, and is not in any way
connected with man’s regeneration, which is conceived as coming
through mere rebellion, and consisting in a return to anarchy. It
was to this crude stock that Blake sought to join an unusually
vivid faith in a divine providence, apparent, to visionary sight,
either as God or Jesus, in whom the eternals were united in a
divine family watching over the life of man, to lead it to ultimate
salvation through the mediation of such spiritual agencies as the
daughters of Beulah, or Los and Enitharmon. These latter, as
time and space, embody Blake's new valuation of mortal life. The
former criticism of the phenomenon of absolute physical reality, as
being a delusion due to reason and sense-perception, is still main-
tained; but Blake now finds an ulterior significance in mundane
forms, as the symbols of spiritual ideas revealed to the inspired
man by divine mercy. This higher revelation is mediate through
Los and Enitharmon, who give it expression fitted to the enfeebled
powers of man. They are also associated with a corresponding
change in the estimate of the mortal body. As Blake states the
matter, spirits at the fall become ‘spectres,' 'insane, brutish, de-
formed,' 'ravening devouring lust’; but Los and Enitharmon create
for them ‘forms' or 'counterparts,' 'inspir'd, divinely human,' and
apparently indicating an endowment of visionary inspiration.
Thus equipped, man passes through this world, subject to the
temptations of metaphysical and moral error in the forms of
Satan, or the feminine powers, Rahab, Tirzah, or Vala.
But, in his mortal pilgrimage, he is, also, sustained by spiritual
influxes transmitted by 'angels of providence, such as the
daughters of Beulah, through natural objects, trees, flowers, birds
and insects. The supreme revelation, however, comes through the
1 Letter to captain Butts, 22 November 1802.


## p. 197 (#219) ############################################

]
IX
Milton and Jerusalem 197
incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus, wherein the whole mystical
faith is manifested to corporeal understanding, becoming subject
to the conditions of mortality in order ultimately to reveal their
falsity and annihilate them. But, though all this has a meta-
physical reference, Blake lays most stress upon its ethical
significance. In the Lambeth books, he attacks conventional
morality on the ground of its inhibition of physical desire ; but
now, though this criticism is not entirely retracted, the emphasis
shifts to the false concept of love as a religious obligation towards
an extrinsic deity, whose law is essentially penal, 'rewarding with
hate the loving soul' by insistence upon repentance and vicarious
sacrifice. Such is the religion of Satan, symbolised by the false
females, Rahab and Tirzah, or by Babylon, the harlot of Revelation.
This is clearly a development of the concept of Enitharmon noticed
in Europe. Against this, Blake sets the gospel of brotherhood
and unconditional forgiveness, revealed to man in the incarnation
of Jesus. Here, there is a reversion to the ethic of Songs of
Innocence.
It was, apparently, the impossibility of fusing the old and
new elements in The Four Zoas that led to its abandonment.
Judged as literature, it suffers by reason of its formlessness and
incoherence; yet, though it is often little better than mere clamour
and outrageous imagery, there are scattered passages of much
cogency and imaginative power. But it is chiefly of interest as a
document in the history of Blake's development. In 1804, he
began to engrave Milton and Jerusalem. The former work de-
cribes the nature of his new inspiration, and also, as it would seem,
the manner of its transmission. It tells how Milton redescended
from his place in eternity-for, as Blake told Crabb Robinson, the
author of Paradise Lost, in his old age, turned back to the God
he had abandoned in childhood-in order to annihilate the error
to which he had given currency in his great epic. To achieve this
end, he entered into Blake at Felpham. Thus inspired, Blake
becomes the prophet of the new ethic and proclaims the necessity
to subdue the unregenerate self, the spectre which is in every man.
And, in a variety of mythical episodes, he assails the fallacy of
retributive morality, the natural religion of Satan, god of this
world, and preaches the gospel of Jesus, the law of continual self-
sacrifice and mutual forgiveness. But the main points of his later
creed are comprehended in his theory of imagination, the most com-
plete and intelligible statement of which is contained in the prose
note in the Rossetti MS on the design for A Vision of the Last


## p. 198 (#220) ############################################

198
Blake
[CH.
6
Judgment. The following quotation shows how Blake returned to
and elaborated his earlier doctrines of the Divine Image and the
Poetic Genius.
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom
into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i. e. mortal] body.
This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of
generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the
eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass
of nature. All things are comprehended in the divine body of the Saviour,
the true vine of eternity, the Human Imagination, who appeared to me
coming to judgment . . . and throwing off the temporal that the eternal
might be established.
For Blake saw all things under the human form : 'all are men
in eternity. ' And, to Crabb Robinson, he said 'we are all co-
existent with God; members of the Divine body, and partakers of
the Divine nature'; or, again, concerning the divinity of Christ,
'He is the only God. . . And so am I and so are you. ' From this
follows the insistence on vision, the immediate perception of the
'infinite and eternal' in everything ; literally, 'To see a World in
a grain of Sand. ' In such a theory of knowledge, reason and sense-
perception cannot have place; they, with the phenomenon of a
corporeal universe, are part of the error of natural religion, the
fallacies of moral valuation and of penal codes completing it. Even
Wordsworth's attitude to nature is condemned as atheism. Thus
'all life consists of these two, throwing off error . . . and receiving
truth. ' In the former case, the conflict is against the unregenerate
influences within and without; man must 'cleanse the face
of his spirit' by selfexamination, casting off the accretions of
merely mundane experience, till the identity of the individual with
the universal is established in what Blake calls the Last Judgment.
The positive aspect of visionary activity in mortality is a constant
seeking after the revealed truths of imagination, which are com-
prehended in Jesus.
'I know of no other Christianity' he writes'than the liberty both of body
and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination . . . The Apostles knew
of no other Gospel. What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the
Divine Spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain ?
What are the Treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves ?
Are they any other than Mental [i. e. Imaginative] Studies and Performances ?
What are the Gifts of the Gospel ? are they not all Mental Gifts ?
'
What Blake states thus impressively in his prose, is stated under a
bewildering variety of apparently unconnected symbolic episodes,
in Jerusalem. Man, or Albion, is the battle-ground wherein the
forces of imagination contend against the forces of natural religion:
6
• • •


## p. 199 (#221) ############################################

6
IX] Final Phase of Blake's Doctrine 199
Jesus against Satan: Los against his spectre : Vala or Babylon
against Jerusalem, till error is consumed and Albion reascends
into the bosom of the Saviour. Yet, in spite of formlessness and
incoherence in statement, the underlying body of doctrine is re-
markably consistent. In the later Lambeth books, Blake seems to
have written under a jaded inspiration. Here, however, the very
intensity of his conviction and the fecundity of his imagination,
militated against lucidity and order. Moreover, he deliberately
adopted the symbolic medium as translating his visions with less
of the distracting associations of ordinary experience than must
have beset normal speech. And, if his visions were unintelligible,
the fault lay in the reader, who had neglected to cultivate his
imaginative faculty; in Blake's sweeping condemnation, they were
'fools' and 'weak men,' not worth his care. Aesthetically, Jeru-
salem suffers much from this perversity, though the poet in Blake
at times masters the stubborn mass of his symbolism, turning it
for a brief space to forms of beauty or power. And there always
remains the high nobility of the gospel which he proclaimed, and
according to which he lived.
The theme and dramatic form of The Ghost of Abel (1822)
were suggested by Byron's Cain, wherein, as Blake believed, the
scriptural account of the punishment of Cain is misinterpreted in
conformity with the heresy of the churches, which declare Jehovah
to have been the author of the curse. Blake, however, attributes
it to Satan, 'God of this World,' the 'Elohim of the Heathen': for
the gospel of Jehovah is ‘Peace, Brotherhood and Love. ' Then, in
the Laocoon aphorisms, he turns, for the last time, to his doctrine
of imagination, and gives it final form by identifying Christianity
and art. Jesus and his apostles were artists, and who would be
Christians must practise some form of art, for, as Crabb Robinson
reports him, inspiration is art, and the visionary faculty, equally
with every other, is innate in all, though most neglect to culti-
vate it.
Such, in brief, seems to have been the course of Blake's de-
velopment. It still remains to notice the more formal verse and
the prose of this latest period. The first, which, during Blake's
lifetime, remained in the Rossetti and Pickering MSS, is, though
slight in bulk, of remarkable quality. It includes such lovely
lyrics as Morning, The Land of Dreams, or the penultimate stanza
of The Grey Monk. But the most singular are the abstruse
symbolic poems The Smile, The Golden Net and The Crystal
Cabinet, which seem to embody the visionary's consciousness
6
6


## p. 200 (#222) ############################################

200
[CH.
Blake
6
of the unholy beauty and seductiveness of the natural world.
Unfamiliar as is their language, they make a real, though illusive,
appeal, which may ultimately lie in the romantic cast and spon-
taneity of the imagery, as well as in their perfection of lyrical
form. The other symbolic poems, such as The Mental Traveller
and My Spectre around me, lacking this directness and unity of
expression, fall short of a like effectiveness. But all these poems
stand aloof from purely human feeling. Except The Birds, a most
un-Blakean idyllic duologue, they rarely touch the common lyric
chords. They are primarily spiritual documents. Mary, William
Bond and Auguries of Innocence illustrate this. The lastmen-
tioned poem, though it has passages of real force and beauty,
depends, for its adequate understanding, upon the doctrine under-
lying it, the identity of all forms of being in the divine humanity :
all are Men in Eternity. The recognition of this principle gives
cogency and deep truth to what must otherwise appear exaggerated
emphasis of statement. 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.