John Burns

“ When a pillar of society bore himself ‘to all the Actors, high and low, in the drama of Life, simply as they merited in playing their parts’, and excelled in telling a story—in other words, when the pillar was Dugald Stewart—Burns enjoyed his company as much as John Rankine’s or Willie Nicol’s. Nor was wit or waggishness necessarily demanded. Grave wisdom Burns could relish as well as gay, though not in every mood ”

“ She sank before long to the status of a hard-working, child-bearing domestic fixture, losing her good looks—at first sight of her in 1790 John Syme concluded that Burns’s lyrics in her praise were poetic licence—but keeping her equable temper and her devotion to her husband. Of all the women who had loved Burns more or less, and whom he, more or less, had loved, she alone had to live with him. ”

“ These tasks, with all their accompanying observations of plants and animals, of weather and seasons, were stronger influences on Burns than John Murdoch was. No poet has revealed a closer or more accurate knowledge of nature; no poet, it may be added, had less of romantic enthusiasm for pure scenery. Burns knew nature as the peasant and the savage knows it, as something on which his health and prosperity and his very life depend. ”

“ An emotional man deprived of any authority except emotion on which he could rely, Burns’s religious views are of a piece with his politics and his patriotism. To get at the underlying emotions is to explain what appear to be glaring contradictions in thought. John Ramsay of Ochtertyre found Burns’s politics ‘abundantly motley’, for the poet managed to combine strong sympathy for the exiled House of Stuart with liberal if not republican views on contemporary affairs. ”

“ Burns was not possessed of more than the ordinary amount of curiosity concerning other people's affairs, but he was accustomed to observe human nature and note its signs, and it struck him now rather suddenly that both John Leaver and Charlotte Ruston had seemed rather more than necessarily non-committal concerning an acquaintance which both admitted. ”

“ Burns sent him the charming ‘O wat ye wha that lo’es me’ with the certainty that it would please him as much as the broadest ribaldry. The male who in male company does not occasionally [Pg 111] relish crude humour is a scarce creature in any age or nation; was perhaps unusually scarce in eighteenth-century Scotland. The songs which went to Cleghorn went also to Graham of Fintry and Provost Maxwell, to Collector Mitchell and John M’Murdo and John Syme—in other words, to some of the best and most loyal characters in Burns’s circle. ”

“ And the judgment which Findlater thus expressed at the beginning of the poet’s Excise career he reaffirmed after his death. Others testified to their regard in deeds as well as words. Though Burns continued to display his life-long preference for the company of extravagant and outré sorts of people the best men in the Excise were the ones who esteemed him most. John Lewars, for example, brother of the Jessie of the songs, was a man of some education, and above the level of the common riding-officer. His father had been Collector at Dumfries, and thus a man of standing in the community. ”

“ Three things may be noted as to the influence of Burns on men’s feeling for Nature.
First, he was a more entirely open-air poet than any first-rate singer who had yet lived, and as such he dealt with Nature in a more free, close, intimate way than any English poet since the old ballad-singers. He did more to bring the hearts of men close to the outer world, and the outer world to the heart, than any former poet. His keen eye looked directly, with no intervening medium, on the face alike of Nature and of man, and embraced all creation in one large sympathy. ”

“ Burns reached Edinburgh on the 28th of November, 1786. The one man of note there with whom he had any acquaintance was Professor Dugald Stewart, whom, as already mentioned, he had met in Ayrshire. But it was not to him or to any one of his reputation that he first turned; but he sought refuge with John Richmond, an old Mauchline acquaintance, who was humbly lodged in Baxter's Close, Lawnmarket. During the whole of his first winter in Edinburgh, Burns lived in the lodging of this poor lad, and shared with him his single room and bed, for which they paid three shillings a week. ”

“ It was not that John Leaver had not looked up with a smile, as Burns approached, nor was it that he now showed physical distress of any significant sort. A certain hard expression of the deep-set eye told the story to one who could read signs.
"There's a caller for you at the house, Miss Mathewson," said Burns.
As she went away he dropped down upon the grass near Leaver. "It's at least five degrees cooler under this tree," said he, "than in any outdoor spot I've found yet."
"Work must have been trying to-day." ”

“ In spite of overwhelming difficulties and many weaknesses, and much rash impulsiveness, he struggled hard to ‘act a manly part’ through life. There is less to be forgiven to him than to most of those whose genius has led to morbid developments of character.
Burns's works were: 1. ‘Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,’ Kilmarnock, printed by John Wilson, 1786. 2. ‘Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,’ Edinburgh, printed for the author, and sold by William Creech, 1787. This includes the first collection, with additions. 3. ‘Poems,’ &c., ‘third edition,’ was published in London in 1787. ”

“ BURNS, JOHN (1858–⁠) , English politician, was born at Vauxhall, London, in October 1858, the second son of Alexander Burns, an engineer, of Ayrshire extraction. He attended a national school in Battersea until he was ten years old, when he was sent to work in Price’s candle factory. He worked for a short time as a page-boy, then in some engine works, and at fourteen was apprenticed for seven years to a Millbank engineer. ”

“ Probably in thus wasting his time, Burns may have been influenced more than he himself was aware, by a secret hope that something might yet be done for him—that all the smiles lavished on him by the great and powerful could not possibly mean nothing, and that he should be left to drudge on in poverty and obscurity as before. ”

“ Burns: You put off settlement with the Lord as long as you can, Michael Johnson—you’ll be wise.
Michael: They say that Mr. Armour will not be put off, though.
[Burns is suddenly silenced by this, and with his parting score Michael goes, two or three of the others following him. One or two of the party are now asleep, [Pg 22] two or three others talking together, Tam sitting by himself. The landlord is smoking, and Nell cleaning pots.]
Tam: He was always bitter to poverty. Thank you, Robin, for speaking.
Nell: What’s that about Mr. Armour?
Burns: They’ve beaten me, Nell. I’ve got to go. ”

“ With such men a person in Burns's then state of mind would readily sympathize, and they received him with open arms. Nothing could have been more unfortunate than that in this crisis of his career he should have fallen into intimacy with those hard-headed but coarse-minded men. They were the first persons of any pretensions to scholarly education with whom he had mingled freely. He amused them with the sallies of his wit and sarcasm, and astonished them by his keen insight and vigorous powers of reasoning. ”

“ From earliest manhood till the close, flesh and spirit were waging within him interminable war, and who shall say which had the victory? Among his countrymen there are many who are so captivated with his brilliant gifts and his genial temperament, that they will not listen to any hint at the deep defects which marred them. Some would even go so far as to claim honour for him, not only as Scotland's greatest poet, but as one of the best men she has produced. Those who thus try to canonize Burns are no true friends to his memory. ”

“ That which fitted him to do this was the peculiar intensity of his nature, the fervid heart, the trembling sensibility, the headlong passion, all thrilling through an intellect (p. 204) strong and keen beyond that of other men. How mysterious to reflect that the same qualities on their emotional side made him the great songster of the world, and on their practical side drove him to ruin! The first word which Burns composed was a song in praise of his partner on the harvest-rig; the last utterance he breathed in verse was also a song—a faint remembrance of some former affection. ”

“ But the truth is, even if Burns ever had it in him to succeed as a farmer, that time was past when he came to Ellisland. Independence at the plough-tail, of which he often boasted, was no longer possible for him. He could no more work as he had done of yore. The habits contracted in Edinburgh had penetrated too deeply. Even if he had not been withdrawn from his farm by Excise duties, he could neither work continuously himself, nor make his servants work. "Faith," said a neighbouring farmer, "how could he miss but (p. 133) fail? He brought with him a bevy of servants from Ayrshire. ”

“ In the interval between the resolution to publish and the appearance of the poems, during his distraction about Jean Armour's conduct, followed by the episode of Highland Mary, Burns gave vent to his own dark feelings in some of the saddest strains that ever fell from him—the lines on The Mountain Daisy, The Lament, the Odes to Despondency and to Ruin. And yet so various were his moods, so versatile his powers, that it was during that same interval that he composed, in a very different vein, The Twa Dogs, and probably also his satire of The Holy Fair. ”

“ A few days after his birth, a storm blew down the gable of the cottage, and the poet and his mother were carried in the dark morning to the shelter of a neighbour's roof, under which they remained till their own home was repaired. In after-years he would often say, "No wonder that one ushered into the world amid such a tempest should be the victim of stormy passions." "It is hard to be born in Scotland," says the brilliant Parisian. Burns had many hardships to endure, but he never reckoned this to be one of them. ”

“ Burns, John, politician and Socialist, born at Vauxhall, of humble parentage; bred to be an engineer; imbibed socialistic ideas from a fellow-workman, a Frenchman, a refugee of the Commune from Paris; became a platform orator in the interest of Socialism, and popular among the working class; got into trouble in consequence; was four times elected member of the London County Council for Battersea; and has been twice over chosen to represent that constituency in Parliament ”

“ Burns was the warm, personal friend of the [Pg 58] best people in every district in or near which he lived. He must have been a good man who could count among his friends such men and women as the following: Lord Glencairn, Mrs Dunlop, the Earl of Eglintoun, Dr Moore, Dr M’Kenzie, Gavin Hamilton, Hon. Henry Erskine, the Duchess of Gordon, Right Rev. Bishop Geddes, Robert Graham of Fintry, Robert Riddell, Robert Aiken, the Earl of Buchan, Prof. Dugald Stewart, Dr Candlish, Sir John Whitefoord, John Murdoch, Dr Blacklock, Dr Hugh Blair, Alex. ”

“ But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley, An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy! Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e. On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!
Epitaph On John Dove, Innkeeper Here lies Johnie Pigeon; What was his religion? Whae'er desires to ken, To some other warl' Maun follow the carl, For here Johnie Pigeon had nane! ”

“ Burns, thinking you’ll make me quiet by agreeing with me like that. I’ve started, and I’ll finish. It’s been growing in me. We work here for a scant of wages—that’s all fair enough—you can’t afford more. But we want to have a pride in the place, same as you [Pg 90] ought to, and don’t. And you can laugh at my truth as you call it, but you feel it all the same. I’ve watched you, and I’ve seen the conscience in your face. You stand down in the fields there like a man moonstruck, when you ought to be keeping your eyes on us. Couldn’t you write your poems on Sabbath afternoons? ”

“ Burns is not the only person who has suffered from this sort of officiousness.
Besides this, the tours were not made in the way which most conduces to poetic composition. He did not allow himself the quiet and the leisure from interruption which are needed. It was not with such companions as Ainslie or Nicol by his side that the poet's eye discovered new beauty in the sight of a solitary reaper in a Highland glen, and his ear caught magical suggestiveness in the words, "What! you are stepping westward," heard by the evening lake. ”

“ This is one and a chief charm of Burns' love-songs, which are certainly of all love-songs except those wild snatches left to us by her who flung herself from the Leucadian rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the "most moving delicate and full of life." Burns makes you feel the reality and the depth, the truth of his passion: it is not her eyelashes, or her nose, or her dimple, or even
"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip,"
that are "winging the fervour of his love;" ”

“ And this early over-strain showed itself soon in the stoop of his shoulders, in nervous disorder about the heart, and in frequent fits of despondency. Yet perhaps too much has sometimes been made of these bodily hardships, as though Burns's boyhood had been one long misery. But the youth which grew up in so kindly an atmosphere of wisdom and home affection, under the eye of such a father and mother, cannot be called unblest.
Under the pressure of toil and the entire want of society, Burns might have grown up the rude and clownish and unpopular lad that he has been pictured in his early teens. ”