Chapter 9
CHARACTER, POEMS, SONGS.
If this narrative has in any way succeeded in giving the lights and the shadows of Burns's life, little comment need now be added. The reader will, it is hoped, gather from the brief record of facts here presented, a better impression of the man as he was, in his strength and in his weakness, than from any attempt which might have been made to bring his various qualities together into a moral portrait. Those who wish to see a comment on his character, at once wise and tender, should turn to Mr. Carlyle's famous essay on Burns.
What estimate is to be formed of Burns--not as a poet, but as a man--is a question that will long be asked, and will be variously answered, according to the principles men hold, and the temperament they are of. Men of the world will regard him in one way, worshippers of genius in another; and there are many whom the judgments of neither of these will satisfy. One thing is plain to every one; it is the contradiction between the noble gifts he had and the actual life he lived, which make his career the painful tragedy it was. When, however, we look more closely into the original outfit of the man, we seem in some sort to see how this came to be.
Given a being born into the world with a noble nature, endowments (p. 189) of head and heart beyond any of his time, wide-ranging sympathies, intellectual force of the strongest man, sensibility as of the tenderest woman, possessed also by a keen sense of right and wrong which he had brought from a pure home--place all these high gifts on the one side, and over against them a lower nature, fierce and turbulent, filling him with wild passions which were hard to restrain and fatal to indulge--and between these two opposing natures, a weak and irresolute will, which could overhear the voice of conscience, but had no strength to obey it; launch such a man on such a world as this, and it is but too plain what the end will be. 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. They do but challenge the counter-verdict, and force men to recall facts which, if they cannot forget, they would fain leave in silence. These moral defects it is ours to know; it is not ours to judge him who had them.
While some would claim for Burns a niche among Scotland's saints, others would give him rank as one of her religious teachers. This claim, if not so absurd as the other, is hardly more tenable. The religion described by Burns in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ is, it should be remembered, his father's faith, not his own. The fundamental truths of natural religion, faith in God and in immortality, amid (p. 190) sore trials of heart, he no doubt clung to, and has forcibly expressed. But there is nothing in his poems or in his letters which goes beyond sincere deism--nothing which is in any way distinctively Christian.
Even were his teaching of religion much fuller than it is, one essential thing is still wanting. Before men can accept any one as a religious teacher, they not unreasonably expect that his practice should in some measure bear out his teaching. It was not as an authority on such matters that Burns ever regarded himself. In his _Bard's Epitaph_, composed ten years before his death, he took a far truer and humbler measure of himself than any of his critics or panegyrists have done:---
The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless folly laid him low, And stained his name.
Reader, attend!--whether thy soul Soars fancy's flight beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, In low pursuit; Know, prudent, cautious self-control Is wisdom's root.
"A confession," says Wordsworth, "at once devout, poetical, and human--a history in the shape of a prophecy."
Leaving the details of his personal story, and--
Each unquiet theme, Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,
it is a great relief to turn to the bequest that he has left to (p. 191) the world in his poetry. How often has one been tempted to wish that we had known as little of the actual career of Burns as we do of the life of Shakespeare, or even of Homer, and had been left to read his mind and character only by the light of his works! That poetry, though a fragmentary, is still a faithful transcript of what was best in the man; and though his stream of song contains some sediment we could wish away, yet as a whole, how vividly, clearly, sunnily it flows, how far the good preponderates over the evil.
What that good is, must now be briefly said. To take his earliest productions first, his poems as distinct from his songs. Almost all the best of these are, with the one notable exception of _Tam O' Shanter_, contained in the Kilmarnock edition. A few pieces actually composed before he went to Edinburgh were included in later editions, but, after leaving Mossgiel he never seriously addressed himself to any form of poetry but song-writing. The Kilmarnock volume contains poems descriptive of peasant life and manners, epistles in verse generally to rhyming brethren, a few lyrics on personal feelings, or on incidents like those of the mouse and the daisy, and three songs. In these, the form, the metre, the style and language, even that which is known as Burns's peculiar stanza, all belong to the traditional forms of his country's poetry, and from earlier bards had been handed down to Burns by his two immediate forerunners, Ramsay and Fergusson. To these two he felt himself indebted, and for them he always expresses a somewhat exaggerated admiration. Nothing can more show Burns's inherent power than to compare his poems with even the best of those which he accepted as models. The old framework and metres which his country supplied, he took; asked no other, no better, and into (p. 192) those old bottles poured new wine of his own, and such wine! What, then, is the peculiar flavour of this new poetic wine of Burns' poetry? At the basis of all his power lay absolute truthfulness, intense reality, truthfulness to the objects which he saw, truthfulness to himself as the seer of them. This is what Wordsworth recognized as Burns's leading characteristic. He who acknowledged few masters, owned Burns as his master in this respect when he speaks of him--
Whose light I hailed when first it shone, And showed my youth, How verse may build a princely throne On humble truth.
Here was a man, a son of toil, looking out on the world from his cottage, on society low and high and on nature homely or beautiful, with the clearest eye, the most piercing insight, and the warmest heart; touching life at a hundred points, seeing to the core all the sterling worth, nor less the pretence and hollowness of the men he met, the humour, the drollery, the pathos, and the sorrow of human existence; and expressing what he saw, not in the stock phrases of books, but in his own vernacular, the language of his fireside, with a directness, a force, a vitality that tingled to the finger tips, and forced the phrases of his peasant dialect into literature, and made them for ever classical. Large sympathy, generous enthusiasm, reckless abandonment, fierce indignation, melting compassion, rare flashes of moral insight, all are there. Everywhere you see the strong intellect made alive, and driven home to the mark, by the fervid heart behind it. And if the sight of the world's inequalities, and some natural repining at his own obscure lot, mingled from the beginning, as (p. 193) has been said, "some bitternesses of earthly spleen and passion with the workings of his inspiration, and if these in the end ate deep into the great heart they had long tormented," who that has not known his experience may venture too strongly to condemn him?
This prevailing truthfulness of nature and of vision manifested itself in many ways. First. In the strength of it, he interpreted the lives, thoughts, feelings, manners of the Scottish peasantry to whom he belonged, as they had never been interpreted before, and never can be again. Take the poem which stands first in the Kilmarnock edition. The Cotter's Dog, and the Laird's Dog, are, as has been often said, for all their moralizing, true dogs in all their ways. Yet through these, while not ceasing to be dogs, the poet represents the whole contrast between the Cotters' lives, and their Lairds'. This old controversy, which is ever new, between rich and poor, has never been set forth with more humour and power. No doubt it is done from the peasant's point of view. The virtues and hardships of the poor have full justice done to them; the prosperity of the rich, with its accompanying follies and faults, is not spared, perhaps it is exaggerated. The whole is represented with an inimitably graphic hand, and just when the caustic wit is beginning to get too biting, the edge of it is turned by a touch of kindlier humour. The poor dog speaks of
Some gentle master, Wha, aiblins thrang a-parliamentin, For Britain's guid his saul indentin--
Then Caesar, the rich man's dog, replies,--
Haith, lad, ye little ken about it: For Britain's guid!--guid faith! I doubt it. Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, (p. 194) An' saying aye or no's they bid him: At operas an' plays parading, Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading! Or, may be, in a frolic daft, To Hague or Calais takes a waft, To make a tour an' tak a whirl, To learn _bon ton_, an' see the worl'. Then, at Vienna or Versailles, He rives his father's auld entails; Or by Madrid he takes the rout, To thrum guitars and fecht wi' nowt.
* * * * *
For Britain's guid! for her destruction! Wi' dissipation, feud an' faction.
Then exclaims Luath, the poor man's dog,--
Hech, man! dear sirs! is that the gate They waste sae many a braw estate! Are we sae foughten and harass'd For gear to gang that gate at last?
And yet he allows, that for all that
---- Thae frank, rantin', ramblin' billies, Fient haet o' them's ill-hearted fellows.
"Mark the power of that one word, 'nowt,'" said the late Thomas Aird. "If the poet had said that our young fellows went to Spain to fight with bulls, there would have been some dignity in the thing, but think of his going all that way 'to fecht wi' nowt.' It was felt at once to be ridiculous. That one word conveyed at once a statement of the folly, and a sarcastic rebuke of the folly."
Or turn to the poem of _Halloween_. Here he has sketched the Ayrshire peasantry as they appeared in their hours of merriment--painted with a few vivid strokes a dozen distinct pictures of country lads and (p. 195) lasses, sires and dames, and at the same time preserved for ever the remembrance of antique customs and superstitious observances, which even in Burns's day were beginning to fade, and have now all but disappeared.
Or again, take _The auld Farmer's New-year-morning Salutation to his auld Mare_. In this homely, but most kindly humorous poem, you have the whole toiling life of a ploughman and his horse, done off in two or three touches, and the elements of what may seem a commonplace, but was to Burns a most vivid, experience, are made to live for ever. For a piece of good graphic Scotch, see how he describes the sturdy old mare in the plough setting her face to the furzy braes.
Thou never braing't, an' fetch't, and fliskit, But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit, An spread abreed thy weel-fill'd brisket, Wi' pith an' pow'r, Till spritty knowes wad rair't and riskit, An' slypet owre.
To paraphrase this, "Thou didst never fret, or plunge and kick, but thou wouldest have whisked thy old tail, and spread abroad thy large chest, with pith and power, till hillocks, where the earth was filled with tough-rooted plants, would have given forth a cracking sound, and the clods fallen gently over." The latter part of this paraphrase is taken from Chambers. What pure English words could have rendered these things as compactly and graphically?
Of _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ it is hardly needful to speak. As a work of art, it is by no means at Burns's highest level. The metre was not native to him. It contains some lines that are feeble, whole stanzas that are heavy. But as Lockhart has said, in words already quoted, there is none of his poems that does such justice to the (p. 196) better nature that was originally in him. It shows how Burns could reverence the old national piety, however little he may have been able to practise it. It is the more valuable for this, that it is almost the only poem in which either of our two great national poets has described Scottish character on the side of that grave, deep, though undemonstrative reverence, which has been an intrinsic element in it.
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. He awoke a sympathy for them in many a heart that otherwise would never have known it. In looking up to him, the Scottish people have seen an impersonation of themselves on a large scale--of themselves, both in their virtues and in their vices.
Secondly, Burns in his poetry was not only the interpreter of Scotland's peasantry, he was the restorer of her nationality. When he appeared, the spirit of Scotland was at a low ebb. The fatigue that followed a century of religious strife, the extinction of her parliament, the stern suppression of the Jacobite risings, the removal of all symbols of her royalty and nationality, had all but quenched the ancient spirit. Englishmen despised Scotchmen, and Scotchmen seemed ashamed of themselves and of their country. A race of literary men had sprang up in Edinburgh who, as to national feeling, were entirely colourless, Scotchmen in nothing except their dwelling-place. The (p. 197) thing they most dreaded was to be convicted of a Scotticism. Among these learned cosmopolitans in walked Burns, who with the instinct of genius chose for his subject that Scottish life which they ignored, and for his vehicle that vernacular which they despised, and who, touching the springs of long-forgotten emotions, brought back on the hearts of his countrymen a tide of patriotic feeling to which they had long been strangers.
At first it was only his native Ayrshire he hoped to illustrate, to shed upon the streams of Ayr and Doon, the power of Yarrow, and Teviot, and Tweed. But his patriotism was not merely local; the traditions of Wallace haunted him like a passion, the wanderings of Bruce he hoped to dramatize. His well-known words about the Thistle have been already quoted. They express what was one of his strongest aspirations. And though he accomplished but a small part of what he once hoped to do, yet we owe it to him first of all that "the old kingdom" has not wholly sunk into a province. If Scotchmen to-day love and cherish their country with a pride unknown to their ancestors of the last century, if strangers of all countries look on Scotland as a land of romance, this we owe in great measure to Burns, who first turned the tide, which Scott afterwards carried to full flood. All that Scotland had done and suffered, her romantic history, the manhood of her people, the beauty of her scenery, would have disappeared in modern commonplace and manufacturing ugliness, if she had been left without her two "sacred poets."
Thirdly. Burns's sympathies and thoughts were not confined to class nor country; they had something more catholic in them, they reached to universal man. Few as were his opportunities of knowing the (p. 198) characters of statesmen and politicians, yet with what "random shots o' countra wit" did he hit off the public men of his time! In his address to King George III. on his birthday, how gay yet caustic is the satire, how trenchant his stroke! The elder, and the younger Pitt, "yon ill-tongued tinkler Charlie Fox," as he irreverently calls him--if Burns had sat for years in Parliament, he could scarcely have known them better. Every one of the Scottish M.P.'s of the time, from--
That slee auld-farran chiel Dundas
to--
That glib-gabbit Highland baron The Laird o' Graham,
and--
Erskine a spunkie Norlan billie,
--he has touched their characters as truly as if they had all been his own familiars. But of his intuitive knowledge of men of all ranks, there is no need to speak, for every line he writes attests it. Of his fetches of moral wisdom something has already been said. He would not have been a Scotchman, if he had not been a moralizer; but then his moralizings are not platitudes, but truths winged with wit and wisdom. He had, as we have seen, his limitations--his bias to overvalue one order of qualities, and to disparage others. Some pleading of his own cause and that of men of his own temperament, some disparagement of the severer, less-impulsive virtues, it is easy to discern in him. Yet, allowing all this, what flashes of moral insight, piercing to the quick! what random sayings flung forth, that have become proverbs in all lands--"mottoes of the heart"!
Such are-- (p. 199)
O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursel as ithers see us: It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion;
Or the much-quoted--
Facts are chiels that winna ding And downa be disputed;
Or--
The heart ay's the part ay That makes us right or wrang.
Who on the text, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," ever preached such a sermon as Burns in his _Address to the unco Guid_? and in his epistle of advice to a young friend, what wisdom! what incisive aphorisms! In passages like these scattered throughout his writings, and in some single poems, he has passed beyond all bonds of place and nationality, and spoken home to the universal human heart.
And here we may note that in that awakening to the sense of human brotherhood, the oneness of human nature, which began towards the end of last century, and which found utterance through Cowper first of the English poets, there has been no voice in literature, then or since, which has proclaimed it more tellingly than Burns. And then his humanity was not confined to man, it overflowed to his lower fellow-creatures. His lines about the pet ewe, the worn-out mare, the field-mouse, the wounded hare, have long been household words. In this tenderness towards animals we see another point of likeness between him and Cowper.
Fourthly. For all aspects of the natural world he has the same (p. 200) clear eye, the same open heart that he has for man. His love of nature is intense, but very simple and direct, no subtilizings, nor refinings about it, nor any of that nature-worship which soon after his time came in. Quite unconsciously, as a child might, he goes into the outward world for refreshment, for enjoyment, for sympathy. Everywhere in his poetry, nature comes in, not so much as a being independent of man, but as the background of his pictures of life and human character. How true his perceptions of her features are, how pure and transparent the feeling she awakens in him! Take only two examples. Here is the well-known way he describes the burn in his _Halloween_--
Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, As thro' the glen it wimpl't; Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays, Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't; Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle: Whyles cookit underneath the brass, Below the spreading hazel, Unseen that night.
Was ever burn so naturally, yet picturesquely described? The next verse can hardly be omitted--
Amang the brachens on the brae, Between her an' the moon, The deil, or else an outler quey, Gat up an' gae a croon: Poor Leezie's heart maist lap the hool; Near lav'rock height she jumpit; But miss'd a fit, an' in the pool Out-owre the lugs she plumpit, Wi' a plunge that night
"Maist lap the hool," what condensation in that Scotch phrase! (p. 201) The hool is the pod of a pea--poor Lizzie's heart almost leapt out of its encasing sheath.
Or look at this other picture:--
Upon a simmer Sunday morn, When Nature's face is fair, I walked forth to view the corn, And snuff the caller air. The risin' sun owre Galston muirs Wi' glorious light was glintin; The hares were hirplin down the furrs, The lav'rocks they were chantin Fu' sweet that day.
I have noted only some of the excellences of Burns's poetry, which far outnumber its blemishes. Of these last it is unnecessary to speak; they are too obvious, and whatever is gross, readers can of themselves pass by.
Burns's most considerable poems, as distinct from his songs, were almost all written before he went to Edinburgh. There is, however, one memorable exception. _Tam o' Shanter_, as we have seen, belongs to Ellisland days. Most of his earlier poems were entirely realistic, a transcript of the men and women and scenes he had seen and known, only lifted a very little off the earth, only very slightly idealized. But in _Tam o' Shanter_ he had let loose his powers upon the materials of past experiences, and out of them he shaped a tale which was a pure imaginative creation. In no other instance, except perhaps in _The Jolly Beggars_, had he done this; and in that cantata, if the genius is equal, the materials are so coarse, and the sentiment so gross, as to make it, for all its dramatic power, decidedly offensive. It is strange what very opposite judgments have been formed of the intrinsic merit of _Tam o' Shanter_. Mr. Carlyle thinks that it might have (p. 202) been written "all but quite as well by a man, who, in place of genius, had only possessed talent; that it is act so much a poem, as a piece of sparkling rhetoric; the heart of the story still lies hard and dead." On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott has recorded this verdict: "In the inimitable tale of _Tam o' Shanter_, Burns has left us sufficient evidence of his abilities to combine the ludicrous with the awful and even the horrible. No poet, with the exception of Shakespeare, ever possessed the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions. His humorous description of death in the poem on Dr. Hornbrook, borders on the terrific; and the witches' dance in the Kirk of Alloway is at once ludicrous and horrible." Sir Walter, I believe, is right, and the world has sided with him in his judgment about _Tam o' Shanter_. Nowhere in British literature, out of Shakespeare, is there to be found so much of the power of which Scott speaks--that of combining in rapid transition almost contradictory emotions--if we except perhaps one of Scott's own highest creations, the tale of Wandering Willie, in _Redgauntlet_.
On the songs of Burns a volume might be written, but a few sentences must here suffice. It is in his songs that his soul comes out fullest, freest, brightest; it is as a song-writer that his fame has spread widest, and will longest last. Mr. Carlyle, not in his essay, which does full justice to Burns's songs, but in some more recent work, has said something like this, "Our Scottish son of thunder had, for want of a better, to pour his lightning through the narrow cranny of Scottish song--the narrowest cranny ever vouchsafed to any son of thunder."--The narrowest, it may be, but the most effective, if a man desires to come close to his fellow-men, soul to soul. Of all forms of literature the genuine song is the most penetrating, and the most (p. 203) to be remembered; and in this kind Burns is the supreme master. To make him this, two things combined. First, there was the great background of national melody and antique verse, coming down to him from remote ages, and sounding through his heart from childhood. He was cradled in a very atmosphere of melody, else he never could have sung so well. No one knew better than he did, or would have owned more feelingly, how much he owed to the old forgotten song-writers of his country, dead for ages before he lived, and lying in their unknown graves all Scotland over. From his boyhood he had studied eagerly the old tunes, and the old words where there were such, that had come down to him from the past, treasured every scrap of antique air and verse, conned and crooned them over till he had them by heart. This was the one form of literature that he had entirely mastered. And from the first he had laid it down as a rule, that the one way to catch the inspiration, and rise to the true fervour of song, was, as he phrased it, "to _sowth_ the tune over and over," till the words came spontaneously. The words of his own songs were inspired by pre-existing tunes, not composed first, and set to music afterwards. But all this love and study of the ancient songs and outward melody would have gone for nothing, but for the second element, that is the inward melody born in the poet's deepest heart, which received into itself the whole body of national song; and then when it had passed through his soul, sent it forth ennobled and glorified by his own genius.
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 strong and keen beyond (p. 204) 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. Between these two he composed from two to three hundred. It might be wished perhaps that he had written fewer, especially fewer love songs; never composed under pressure, and only when his heart was so full he could not help singing. This is the condition on which alone the highest order of songs is born. Probably from thirty to forty songs of Burns could be named which come up to this highest standard. No other Scottish song-writer could show above four or five of the same quality. Of his songs one main characteristic is that their subjects, the substance they lay hold of, belongs to what is most permanent in humanity, those primary affections, those permanent relations of life which cannot change while man's nature is what it is. In this they are wholly unlike those songs which seize on the changing aspects of society. As the phases of social life change, these are forgotten. But no time can superannuate the subjects which Burns has sung; they are rooted in the primary strata, which are steadfast. Then as the subjects are primary, so the feeling with which Burns regards them is primary too--that is, he gives us the first spontaneous gush--the first throb of his heart, and that a most strong, simple, manly heart. The feeling is not turned over in the reflective faculty, and there artistically shaped,--not subtilized and refined away till it has lost its power and freshness; but given at first hand, as it comes warm from within. When he is (p. 205) at his best you seem to hear the whole song warbling through his spirit, naturally as a bird's. The whole subject is wrapped in an element of music, till it is penetrated and transfigured by it. No one else has so much of the native lilt in him. When his mind was at the white heat, it is wonderful how quickly he struck off some of his most perfect songs. And yet he could, when it was required, go back upon them, and retouch them line by line, as we saw him doing in _Ye Banks and Braes_. In the best of them the outward form is as perfect as the inward music is all-pervading, and the two are in complete harmony.
To mention a few instances in which he has given their ultimate and consummate expression to fundamental human emotions, four songs may be mentioned, in each of which a different phase of love has been rendered for all time--
Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,
Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,
Go fetch to me a pint o' wine;
and that other, in which the calm depth of long-wedded and happy love utters itself, so blithely yet pathetically,--
John Anderson, my Jo, John.
Then for comic humour of courtship, there is--
Duncan Gray cam here to woo.
For that contented spirit which, while feeling life's troubles, yet keeps "aye a heart aboon them a'," we have--
Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair.
For friendship rooted in the past, there is-- (p. 206)
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
even if we credit antiquity with some of the verses.
For wild and reckless daring, mingled with a dash of finer feeling, there is _Macpherson's Farewell_. For patriotic heroism--
Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled;
and for personal independence, and sturdy, if self-asserting, manhood--
A man's a man for a' that.
These are but a few of the many permanent emotions to which Burns has given such consummate expression, as will stand for all time.
In no mention of his songs should that be forgotten which is so greatly to the honour of Burns. He was emphatically the purifier of Scottish song. There are some poems he has left, there are also a few among his songs, which we could wish that he had never written. But we who inherit Scottish song as he left it, can hardly imagine how much he did to purify and elevate our national melodies. To see what he has done in this way, we have but to compare Burns's songs with the collection of Scottish songs published by David Herd, in 1769, a few years before Burns appeared. A genuine poet, who knew well what he spoke of, the late Thomas Aird, has said, "Those old Scottish melodies, sweet and strong though they were, strong and sweet, were, all the more for their very strength and sweetness, a moral plague, from the indecent words to which many of them had long been set. How was the plague to be stayed? All the preachers in the land could not divorce the grossness from the music. The only way was to put (p. 207) something better in its stead. This inestimable something better Burns gave us."
So purified and ennobled by Burns, these songs embody human emotion in its most condensed and sweetest essence. They appeal to all ranks, they touch all ages, they cheer toil-worn men under every clime. Wherever the English tongue is heard, beneath the suns of India, amid African deserts, on the western prairies of America, among the squatters of Australia, whenever men of British blood would give vent to their deepest, kindliest, most genial feelings, it is to the songs of Burns they spontaneously turn, and find in them at once a perfect utterance, and a fresh tie of brotherhood. It is this which forms Burns's most enduring claim on the world's gratitude.
INDEX (p. 209)
Adair, Dr., 76. Addington, Mr., 69-70, 144, 171. _Address to the Deil_, 23. _Address to the Unco Guid_, 58, 199. Aiken, Robert, 29. Ainslie, Mr., 60, 72, 91. Aird, Thomas, 194. Alison, Rev. A., 128-129. Alloway Kirk, 121; Kirkyard, 16. Alloway Mill, school at, 5. _A Man's a Man for a' that_, 167. Armour, Jean, 26-27, 62-63, 83-84, 85-88, 141, 160. Armour, Mr., 26, 33, 83-84, 96. Athole, Duchess of, 65. Athole, Duke of, 67. _Auld Lang Syne_, 206. Auld Lights, The, 18. Ayr, river, 27.
_Banks o' Doon_, 123-124, 161, 205. _Bard's Epitaph_, the, 190. Begbie, Ellison, 12. Begg, Mrs. (Burns's sister), 25, 62. Belches of Invermay, The, 75. _Birks of Invermay, The_, 75. Blacklock, Dr., 38, 48-49, 104. Blair Castle, 65, 67. Blair, Dr. H., 38, 44, 48, 50-51, 56-57. _Bonnie Peggie Alison_, 12. _Brigs of Ayr_, 58. Brow, 179, 184. Brown, Agnes (Burns's mother), 3. _Bruar Water, Humble Petition of_, 66-67. Bruce, Mrs., of Clackmannan, 77-78. Bruce, Robert, 78, 157. Burnes, James (Burns's cousin), 183. Burness (or Burnes), William (Burns's father), 2-3, 6-7, 14-15. Burns, Gilbert, 5, 9-12, 26, 36, 85, 99-100. Burns, Mrs. _See_ Armour, Jean. Burns, Robert, biographies of, 1; birth, 2; parentage, 2-3, 6-7, 14-15; successive homes: Mount Oliphant, 4-9, Lochlea, 9-15, Mossgiel, 15, 20, 22, 24; school-days, 5-7; household reading, 6-7; early love affairs, 8-10, 12, 26-30; youthful dissipation, 10, 13-15; Burns as a farmer, 15-16, 20-21, 95, 98-99, 132-133; religious controversy, 17-20; poetic aspirations, 21; two prolific years, 22-26; Jean Armour, 26, 27; resolves to emigrate, 27, 30, 32, 34; Kilmarnock edition of the poems published, 30-34; literary earnings, 32, 58-59, 85, 152; immediate popularity, 33-34, 37, 39; his manners, 36; first winter in Edinburgh, 42-59; literary and legal lights, 44-46; the lion of the season, 48-57; his appearance, 49-50, 118, 170; tavern life, 57-58; second edition of the poems, 58-59; Border and Highland tours, 60, 63-78; Burns's descriptions of scenery, 71-72; disappointing poetic fruits, 73; knighted by Mrs. Bruce, 78; second winter in Edinburgh, 79-93; reasons for his stay, 79; hypochondria and despondency, 81; Mrs. M'Lehose, 82-84; appointment in the excise, 84; marriage, 85-88; change in the attitude of Edinburgh society, 89-90; some reasons for it, 90-92; life at Ellisland, 94-134; Burns's farm, 95; discomfort and despondency, 96-97; happiest period of his life, 99, 102; house at Ellisland, 101-102; as an exciseman, 105-106; restlessness and discontent, 113, 115-116; _Tam o' Shanter_, 120-122; dramatic aspirations, 126; gives up his farm, 133; migration to Dumfries, 135; downward course, 138, 162, 164, 172; social discredit, 139, 173; politics, 139, 142-149, 161, 168-169, 171; friendship with the Liddels, 140, 162, 179-180; Mrs. M'Lehose reappears, 140-141; relations with Johnson and Thomson, 150-154, 159; excursion into Galloway, 156-157; an unhappy time, 161-164; declining health, 165, 174; joins the volunteers, 169-170; last illness, 176-179; poverty and anxiety, 180-184; death, 185; Burns's grave, 186-187; character, 188, 189. As a poet: satires, 19-20, 31-32, epistles, 23, pure landscape not his forte, 71, 72, at his best in the Scottish dialect, 73, 151, tenderness towards animals, 106-108, 179, Bacchanalian songs, 110-112, Burns in the hour of inspiration, 121-122, elegies, 123, circumstance and mental habits forbade long poems, 126, love songs, 140-141, 160-161, in the act of composition, 159-160, piercing insight and large sympathy, 192, truthfulness of nature, 193, caustic wit, 193, the interpreter of Scotland's peasantry, 196, the restorer of her nationality, 196-197, catholicity, 197-198, intense love of nature, 200, Burns as a song-writer, 202-206.
Campbell, Mary. _See_ Highland Mary. Carlyle, Thomas, 17, 54, 129, 131-132, 156-157, 169, 202. Cathcart, Miss, 66. Chalmers, Margaret, 80-81, 84, 87, 183. Chambers, Dr., 11, 27, 39 _et passim_. Clarinda. _See_ M'Lehose, Mrs. Clark, William, 117-118. Commonplace Book, Burns's, 55-56, 115. _Cotter's Saturday Night, The_, 20, 23, 25, 37, 70, 195. Cowper, 47, 48. Craig, Mrs., 184. Creech, Mr., 56-59, 79, 85, 153. Crochallan Club, The, 58, 61, 63, 91. Cruikshank, Mr., 78. Cunningham, Alexander, 163. Cunningham, Allan, 75, 89, 96, 97, 125, 133 _et passim_. Currie, Dr., 174.
Daer, Lord, 35, 156. Dalrymple, Mr., 46. Dalswinton, 94. Davidson, John (Souter Johnnie), 122. _Death and Dr. Hornbook_, 23, 58, 70. _Death of Poor Mailie, The_, 9. _Deil's awa' wi' the Exciseman, The_, 145. _Despondency, Ode to_, 31. Don, Lady Harriet, 127. Doon, Brig of, 2, 3, 4. Dumfries, Burns's life at, 135-154; social condition of, 136. Dundas, Mr. Henry, 67, 92, 143, 171. Dunlop, Mrs., 34, 36-37, 96; letters to, 54, 86, 89, 96, 100, 109, 113, 114, 149, 165, 169, 174, 175, 183.
Ecclefechan, 168-169. Edinburgh, Burns's first winter in, 42-59; tavern life in, 57-58; second winter in, 79-93. Eglinton, Lord, 58. Ellisland, 56, 61, 80, 85, 89, 94-134. Epistles, Burns's, 23-24. Erskine, H., 45-46. Erskine of Mar, Mr., 148. _Essay on Taste_, Alison's, 128-129.
_Farmer's Address to his Mare_, 23, 108, 195. Ferguson, Dr. Adam, 48, 53. Fergusson, the poet, 44, 191. French Revolution, Burns's sympathy with, 144-146, 157.
Galloway, Burns's tour in, 155-156. "Geddes, Jenny," 128. Glencairn, Lady, 104. Glencairn, Lord, 46, 56, 123. Globe Tavern, the, 116, 128, 137-138, 176. Gordon Castle, 68-69. Gordon, Duchess of, 46, 69. Gordon, Duke of, 68. Gow, Neil, 73-74. Graham, Douglas (Tam o' Shanter), 122. Graham, Mrs., 66. Graham of Balnagown, 66. Graham of Fintray, Mr., 67, 84, 103, 120, 147, 172. Greenfield, Mr., 56-57. Grose, Captain, 108-109, 120-121.
_Halloween_, 23, 194, 200. Hamilton, Charlotte, 80-81, 183. Hamilton, Gavin, 19, 30, 76, 80. Hazlitt, 12. Heron of Heron, 169. Heron Robert, 33, 57, 58. Hemans, Mrs., 157. Highland Mary, 27-31, 34, 112-113. _Highland Mary, Lament for_, 27, 31-32, 113. _Holy Fair, The_, 19-20, 25, 31. _Holy Willie's Prayer_, 19, 31. Hume, David, 44.
Irvine, 13-14, 26, 41.
Jacobitism, Burns's, 142-143. Jeffrey, 52, 177. _John Anderson my Jo_, 114. Johnson, Dr., 45. _Johnson's Museum_, 73, 75, 114, 150-151. Johnson, the engraver, 73, 150, 179. _Jolly Beggars, The_, 23, 25, 126, 201. _Justice of Peace_ (Langhorne's), 53.
Kilmarnock edition of the poems, 30-33, 191. Kirkoswald, 10, 13, 122. _Kirk's Alarm, The_, 109.
_Land o' Cakes_, 108-109. _Lass of Cessnock Water, The_, 12. Laurie, Dr., 38, 48. Lewars, Jessie, 178, 185. Lewars, Mr., 105. Lochlea, 9-15. Lockhart, Mr., 20, 27, 48, 62, 67, 87, 127, 145. _Lounger, The_, 45, 47.
M'Culloch, David, 164. Mackenzie, H., 45, 48. M'Lehose, Mrs., 82-85, 140-141. _Macpherson's Farewell_, 71. _Mary in Heaven_, 73, 112, 114, 120, 161. _Mary Morrison_, 11-12. Masterton, Allan, 110. Mauchline, 15, 62, 99. Maxwell, Provost, 115. Mendelssohn, 179. Miller of Dalswinton, Mr., 85, 95, 98, 133. Milton, 55, 63. Mitchell, Collector, 175, 182. Monboddo, Lord, 45, 48. Moore, Dr., 72, 125. Mossgiel, 15, 20, 22, 24, 38, 61. _Mountain Daisy, The_, 23, 36. Mount Oliphant, 4-9. _Mouse, To a_, 23, 108. Murdoch, Burns's tutor, 5-7. _My Nannie, O_, 9, 11.
"Nell, Handsome," 7-9. New Lights, 18-19, 34, 109. "Nicht wi' Burns," a, 130-131. Nicol, Mr., 61, 63, 66, 68-70, 72, 91. North, Christopher, 42.
_Of a' the airts_, 161. _Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast_, 178. _Ordination, The_, 19, 25, 58.
Paine, Tom, 146. Pindar, Peter, 152. Poems, Kilmarnock edition, 30-33, 191; second edition, 58-59. Politics, Burns's part in, 139, 142-149, 161, 169, 171. Prentice, Mr., 42. Punch-bowl, Burns's, 96, 131-132.
Ramsay, Allan, 21, 23, 44, 75, 191. Ramsay of Ochtertyre, 119, 125. _Rankine, Epistle to John_, 16. Richmond, John, 43. Riddel, Mrs. W., 141, 179-180. Riddel of Friars' Carse, 98, 162. Riddel, Walter, 139, 162. Robertson, Dr., 44-48. "Rosamond," the brig, 145. _Ruin, Ode to_, 31.
Samson, John, 43. _Scots wha hae_, 155-157, 206. Scott-Douglas, Mr., 27-28, 124. Scott, Sir W., 52, 54, 75-76, 197. Selkirk, Lord, 155. Sidmouth, Lord. _See_ Addington, Mr. _Silver Tassie_, the, 114. Skinner, Bishop, 74. Smith, Adam, 45. Smith, Betty, 99, 101. Songs, Burns's, 202-205. Stewart, Dugald, 34-36, 43-44, 46, 51, 56-57. Syme, Mr., 154-155, 170.
_Tam o' Shanter_, 120-122, 125, 191, 201-202. Tarbolton, 10. Thomson, Geo., 126, 151-153, 156, 161, 165, 171, 177, 182-183. Tours, Border and Highland, 60-78. _Twa Dogs, The_, 23, 31, 70, 193, 194. _Twa Herds, The_, 19. Tytler, Mr. Fraser, 48.
_Vision, The_, 23.
Walker, Prof., 49, 51, 66, 174. Wallace, William, 21, 36, 197. Wee Vennel, the, 135, 137. _Whistle, The_, 111-112. _Willie brewed a peck o' maut_, 110-112. Wilson, John (painter), 31. _Winter Night, The_, 108. Wolcot, Dr. _See_ Pindar, Peter. Woodley Park, 140, 162. Wordsworth, 71, 157-159, 190.
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