Robert Burns

“ What matters it whether a critic argues Burns into a first or second or third rate poet? His countrymen, and more than his countrymen, his brothers all the world over, who read in his writings the joys and sorrows, the temptations and trials, the sins and shortcomings of a great-hearted man, have accepted him as a prophet, and set him in the front rank of immortals. They admire many poets; they love Robert Burns. They have been told their love is unreasoning and unreasonable. It may be so. Love goes by instinct more than by reason ”

“ And the curtain at length rose. “The person,” continues the essayist, “to whom I allude”—and he alludes to him as a genius of no ordinary class—“is Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman.” The effect on my nerves seemed electrical; I clapped my hands, and sprung from my seat: “Was I not certain of it! Did I not foresee it!” I exclaimed. “My noble-minded friend, Robert Burns!” I ran hastily over the warm-hearted and generous critique, so unlike the cold, timid, equivocal notices with which the professional critic has greeted, on their first appearance, so many works destined to immortality. ”

“ Of that same breed of men, of tall and compact mould and hardy sinew, was Robert Burns; nor is it possible to imagine any thing more animated than the appearance of those stalwart sons of the soil, as they lingered for a moment before the platform, and looked with wistful eyes at the sons of the Poet, if haply they might trace in their lineaments some resemblance to the features of him whom, from their infancy, they had learned to love. ”

“ The cauld blae North was streaming forth Her lights, wi' hissing, eerie din; Athwart the lift they start and shift, Like Fortune's favors, tint as win. By heedless chance I turn'd mine eyes, And, by the moonbeam, shook to see A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, Attir'd as Minstrels wont to be. Had I a statue been o' stane, His daring look had daunted me; And on his bonnet grav'd was plain, The sacred posy—“Libertie!” And frae his harp sic strains did flow, Might rous'd the slumb'ring Dead to hear; But oh, it was a tale of woe, As ever met a Briton's ear! ”

“ Our affection is not colder, and our compassion is more profound, when we contemplate the agitated and erring life of Robert Burns (1759-1796) , the Scottish peasant, who has given to the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race some of its most precious jewels, although all which this extraordinary man achieved was inadequate to the power and the vast variety of his endowments. It is on his songs that his fame rests most firmly, and no lyrics in any tongue have a more wonderful union of thrilling passion, melting tenderness, concentrated expressiveness of language, and apt and natural poetic fancy. ”

“ Not content with being gauger, farmer, and poet, Burns took a lively interest in everything affecting the welfare of the parish and the well-being of its inhabitants. For this was no poet of the study, holding himself aloof from the affairs of the world, and fearing the contamination of his kind. Burns was alive all-round, and always acted his part in the world as a husband and father; as a citizen and a man. He made himself the poet of humanity, because he himself was so intensely human, and joyed and sorrowed with his fellows. ”

“ And Robert Burns, whose broad mind and sympathetic soul made him kin to all living things, had no 82need to see the splendor and gaiety of wealth and power, to visit foreign shores and unknown lands; but the flowers, the heather, the daisies, the bleak fields, the pelting rains, the singing birds, the lowing cattle, and above all, the simple country folk seen through his eyes, and felt by his soul, and held in his all-embracing heart, were covered with a beauty and a glory that all the artificial world could not create, and that his genius has endowed with immortal life. ”

“ Did any other philosopher of the time of Burns in the universities reveal a more profound philosophy of human life, and make so many applications of it, as Robert Burns revealed in the quotations in this chapter, and [Pg 194] in the chapters on Democracy, Brotherhood, and Love?
Burns was a philosopher, an independent thinker, whose thought is more highly appreciated now than it was in the time of Carlyle.
In a letter to Mrs Graham, 1791, he wrote: ‘I was born a poor dog; and however I may occasionally pick a better bone than I used to do, I know I must live and die poor. ”

“ There is something so anomalous in the genius and the grade, in the magnificent endowments and the bare necessities of Robert Burns, that one can not now conceive how they could have been permitted to occur by his fellow-men, or tolerated by himself. ”

“ We love them both, but we cannot have them both at once and both in one.
Robert Burns, and all men like him that ever lived, were always giving from their generous souls. In the cold judgment of the world, Burns wasted many a gem upon the thoughtless, worthless crowd, who consumed a life he should have spent for nobler things. But the flower that never wastes its fragrance has no perfume to give out. If it is truly sweet, its strength is borne away on every idle wind that blows. Robert Burns with lavish bounty shed his life and fragrance on every soul he met. ”

“ Burns gave birth to another child. It is pleasant to learn that a subscription was immediately taken up for the destitute family, which placed them in comparative comfort.
"Fight who will," says Byron, "about words and forms, Burns's rank is in the first class of his art;" and this has long been the deliberate judgment of the world. No finer flower of genius than that of Robert Burns has ever blossomed, and it will be long before the world will see another as fair. ”

“ No wonder the peasantry of Scotland have loved Burns as perhaps never people loved a poet. He not only sympathized with the wants, the trials, the joys and sorrows of their obscure lot, but he interpreted these to themselves, and interpreted them to others, and this too in their own language made musical, and glorified by genius. He made the poorest ploughman proud of his station and his toil, since Robbie Burns had shared and had sung them. ”

“ Will the world ever learn when it prays to pray with Robert Burns, as man has seldom spoken to the Infinite, in whose unknown hands, we are as bubbles on the sea; to the great power, which sends us forth into the darkness to stagger through a tangled maze for a little time and then calls us back to sleep within its all-embracing heart. ”

“ But now,” he continued eloquently, his voice ringing with gladness, “the bright sunlight is peeping around the fast disappearing cloud, warming my very soul with its joyous rays. Oh, my lord, if ever the name of Robert Burns should e’en become familiar to his countrymen,’twill be through your graciousness, your benevolence, to a poor unknown, humble plowman,” and his eyes filled with tears of love and gratitude for his noble benefactor. ”

“ Is Robert Burns to be held up to the never-dying desecration of posterity, as a man steeped in evil and impiety, because, with fiery ardor, he rushed into the polemic war then raging in Ayrshire, lashed with unsparing and terrible sarcasm and wit the vices and superstitions of his age, and, unfortunately, fell a victim to the social habits of the day, before his better judgment and nobler principles had gained the moral ascendency over the burning passions of his youth? ”

“ The real Burns was not the dropper of tears over ploughed-under weeds but the man who brought in the neighbours for a [Pg 308] kirn-night and kissed the lasses after every dance; the man who sat by farmers’ ingles and on ale-house benches listening to the racy earthy talk of his people and storing his mind with folk sayings and old songs. He was not ashamed of being a Scottish peasant, the heir of all the picturesque and frequently bawdy tradition of Scots folk literature. Neither was the man who wrote, ‘But yet the light that led astray Was light from Heaven’, ashamed of his human nature. ”

“ If in your bounds ye chance to light Upon a fine, fat fodgel wight, O' stature short, but genius bright, That's he, mark weel; And wow! he has an unco sleight O' cauk and keel. By some auld, houlet-haunted biggin, Or kirk deserted by its riggin, It's ten to ane ye'll find him snug in Some eldritch part, Wi' deils, they say, Lord save's! colleaguin At some black art. Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha' or chaumer, Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamour, And you, deep-read in hell's black grammar, Warlocks and witches, Ye'll quake at his conjuring hammer, Ye midnight bitches. ”

“ He who respects virtue and purity in himself will respect those qualities in others; and a nation permeated with the philosophy of Burns would be the noblest nation that the sun ever yet shone upon.
But it is not merely that Robert Burns teaches his fellow-peasants and citizens to fling out of their bosoms the fiends of envy and self-depreciation; taught by those errors for which he has been so severely blamed, he has become, without question, the most efficient, wise, and tender counselor that they ever had. He knows all their troubles and temptations, for he has experienced them ”

“ These quotations should help two classes of men: the ‘unco guid,’ who believe evil stories, most of which had no real foundation; and those professed lovers of Burns who love him for his weaknesses. The real Robert Burns was not weak enough to suit either of these two classes. ‘Less guilty than one in ten thousand’ is a high standard.
To do something to help all men and women to a juster understanding of the real Robert Burns is the aim of the writer. ”

“ In measuring the power and character of Robert Burns, we must remember the hard and cruel conditions of his life, and judge of his great achievements in the light of these.
The ways of destiny have ever been beyond the ken of man; now and then, at rare, long intervals, she descends upon the earth, and in her arms she bears disguised a precious gift, which she lavished upon a blind, unwilling world. She passes by the gorgeous palaces and beautiful abodes of men, and drops the treasure in a manger or a hut ”

“ In 1786 it seemed evident that when the former things passed away it would be into the darkness in which men and nations prefer to bury the ruder and more discreditable features of their early days. That the memory of the discarded heritage should be embalmed as a precious possession, and that the old world should be forever surrounded by the romantic glory of a golden sunset was due more to Robert Burns than to any other person. He made the Scots conscious of the richness of their national tradition. ”

“ Emerson said that an institution was the lengthened shadow of a single man: Scottish song as the world knows it today is the lengthened shadow of Robert Burns. What he did not actually write is so coloured by his influence that it could not exist without him. With the exception of Lady Nairne’s, his was the last poetry written in the old folk tradition. The romantic sentimentality which tinges Burns’s songs at their weakest, overspreads many of Lady Nairne’s ”

“ Quo' she, “A sodger ance I lo'ed, Forget him shall I never: Our humble cot, and hamely fare, Ye freely shall partake it; That gallant badge—the dear cockade, Ye're welcome for the sake o't.” She gaz'd—she redden'd like a rose— Syne pale like only lily; She sank within my arms, and cried, “Art thou my ain dear Willie?” “By him who made yon sun and sky! By whom true love's regarded, I am the man; and thus may still True lovers be rewarded. “The wars are o'er, and I'm come hame, And find thee still true-hearted; Tho' poor in gear, we're rich in love, And mair we'se ne'er be parted.” ”

“ A review of the Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lockhart, LL. B. Edinburgh, 1828.
[2] There is one little sketch certain “English gentlemen” of this class, which, though adopted in Currie’s Narrative, and since then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible disposition to regard as imaginary: “On a rock that projected into the stream they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular appearance. He had a cap made of fox-skin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enormous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns.” ”

“ Margaret Chalmers, Burns confines himself mainly to her mental and spiritual charms. This was clearly a distinctive characteristic of nearly the whole of his love-songs. No other man ever wrote so many pure songs without suggestion of the flesh as did Robert Burns. ”

“ His uncomb'd, hoary locks, wild-staring, thatch'd A head, for thought profound and clear, unmatch'd; Yet, tho' his caustic wit was biting-rude, His heart was warm, benevolent and good. O Dulness, portion of the truly blest! Calm, shelter'd haven of eternal rest! Thy sons ne'er madden in the fierce extremes Of Fortune's polar frost, or torrid beams; If mantling high she fills the golden cup, With sober, selfish ease they sip it up; Conscious the bounteous meed they well deserve, They only wonder “some folks” do not starve! ”

“ Oh that men everywhere were moved by the deep tenderness and the all-embracing sympathy of poor Robert Burns, who could apologise with real feeling to a frightened field-mouse whom he had accidentally upturned with his plough. ”

“ He had not merely stored knowledge in his mind, he had wrought the knowledge into his being, as an element of his growing power. Like great players of chess who sometimes meet several opposing players of eminence at the same time and vanquish them all at one period of play, Burns could meet the leaders of many departments of progress, culture, and philosophy at the same time, and stand calm and serene in glory with each leader on the crest of his own special mountain of knowledge. ”