University of Virginia Library

BURNS.

There are certain sentiments which “give the world
assurance of a man.” They are inborn, not acquired.
Before them fade away the trophies of scholarship and the
badges of authority. They are the most endearing of human
attractions. No process of culture, no mere grace of
manner, no intellectual endowment, can atone for their
absence, or successfully imitate their charms. These
sentiments redeem our nature; their indulgence constitutes
the better moments of life. Without them we grow
mechanical in action, formal in manner, pedantic in mind.
With them in freshness and vigor, we are true, spontaneous,
morally alive. We reciprocate affection, we luxuriate
in the embrace of nature, we breathe an atmosphere of
love, and glow in the light of beauty. Frankness, manly
independence, deep sensibility and pure enthusiasm are
the characteristics of the true man. Against these fashion,
trade and the whole train of petty interests wage an
unceasing war. In few hearts do they survive; but
wherever recognized they carry every unperverted soul

back to childhood and up to God. They vindicate
human nature with irresistible eloquence, and like the
air of mountains and the verdure of valleys, allure
us from the thoroughfare of routine and the thorny
path of destiny. When combined with genius, they
utter an appeal to the world, and their possessor becomes
a priest of humanity, whose oracles send forth an
echo even from the chambers of death. Such is Robert
Burns. How refreshing, to turn from the would-be-prophets
of the day, and contemplate the inspired ploughman!
No mystic emblems deform his message. We have no
hieroglyphics to decipher. We need no philosophic critic
at our elbow. It is a brother who speaks to us;—no singular
specimen of spiritual pride, but a creature of flesh
and blood. We can hear the beatings of his brave heart,
not always like a “muffled drum,” but often with the joy
of solemn victory. We feel the grasp of his toil-hardened
hand. We see the pride on his brow, the tear in his
eye, the smile on his lip. We behold not an effigy of
buried learning, a tame image from the mould of fashion,
but a free, cordial, earnest man;—one with whom we can
roam the hills, partake the cup, praise the maiden, or
worship the stars. He is a human creature, only overflowing
with the characteristics of humanity. To him
belong in large measure the passions and the powers of
his race. He professes no exemption from the common
lot. He pretends not to live on rarer elements. He expects
not to be ethereal before death. He conceals not
his share of frailty, nor turns aside from penance. He
takes `with equal thanks' a sermon or a song. No one
prays more devoutly; but the same ardor fires his earthly
loves. The voice that “wales a portion with judicious
care,” anon is attuned to the convivial song. The same
eye that glances with poetic awe upon the hills at twilight,
gazes with a less subdued fervor on the winsome
features of the Highland lassie. And thus vibrated the
poet's heart from earth to heaven,—from the human to the
godlike. Rarely and richly were mingled in him the
elements of human nature. His crowning distinction is
a larger soul; and this he carried into all things,—to the
altar of God and the festive board, to the ploughshare's
furrow and the letter of friendship, to the martial lyric
and the lover's assignation. That such a soul should
arise in the midst of poverty is a blessing. So do men
learn that all their appliances are as nothing before the creative
energy of nature. They may make a Parr; she
alone can give birth to a Burns. It is to be rejoiced at
that so noble a brother was born in a “clay-built cottage.”
Had his eyes first opened in a palace, so great a joy would
not have descended upon the lowly and the toil-worn.
These can now more warmly boast of a common lineage.
Perchance, too, that fine spirit would have been meddled
with till quite undone, had it first appeared in the dwelling
of a wealthy citizen. Books and teachers, perhaps,
would have subdued its elastic freedom,—artificial society
perverted its heaven-born fire. Better that its discipline
was found in “labor and sorrow,” rather than in social
restraint and conformity. Better that it erred through excess
of passion, than deliberate hypocrisy. So rich a
stream is less marred by overflowing its bounds than by
growing shallow. It was nobler to yield to temptation
from wayward appetite than through “malignity or design.”
More worthy is it that melancholy should take
the form of a sad sympathy with nature, than a bitter hatred
of man; that the flowers of the heart should be
blighted by the heat of its lava-soil, than wither in the
deadening air of artificial life. Burns lost not the susceptibility
of his conscience, or the sincerity and manliness
of his character. In a higher sphere of life, these
characteristics would have been infinitely more exposed.
The muse of Burns is distinguished by a pensive tenderness.
His mind was originally of a reflective cast. His
education, destiny and the scenery amid which he lived
deepened this trait, and made it prevailing. True sensibility
is the fertile source of sadness. A heart constantly
alive to the vicissitudes of life and the pathetic appeals of
nature, cannot long maintain a lightsome mood. From
his profound feeling sprang the beauties of the Scottish
bard. He who could so pity a wounded hare and elegize
a crushed daisy, whose young bosom favorites were Sterne
and Mackenzie, lost not a single sob of the storm, nor
failed to mark the gray cloud and the sighing trees. In
this intense sympathy with the mournful, exists the germ
of true poetical elevation. The very going out into the
vastly sad, is sublime. Personal cares are forgotten;
and as Byron calls upon us to forget our “petty misery”
in view of the mighty ruins of Rome, so the dirges of
Nature invite us into a grand funereal hall, where mortal
sighs are lost in mightier wailing. This element of pensiveness
distinguishes alike the poetry and character of
Burns. He tells us of the exalted sensations he experienced
on an autumn morning, when listening to the
cry of a troop of grey plover or the solitary whistle of the
curlew. The elements raged around him as he composed
Bannockburn, and he loved to write at night, or
during a cloudy day, being most successful in “a gloamin'
shot at the muses.”

There was a through and pervading honesty about
Burns,—that freedom from disguise and simple truth of
character, to the preservation of which rustic life is eminently
favorable. He was open and frank in social intercourse,
and his poems are but the sincere records and
outpourings of his native feelings.

Hence he almost invariably wrote from strong emotion.
“My passions,” he says, “raged like so many devils
until they found vent in rhyme.” This entire truthfulness
is one of the greatest charms of his verse. For the
most part song, satire and lyric come warm from his
heart. Insincerity and pretension completely disgusted
him. Scarcely does he betray the slightest impatience of
his fellows, except in exposing and ridiculing these traits.
Holy Willie's prayer and a few similar effusions were
penned as protests against bigotry and presumption.

Burns was too devotional to bear calmly the abuses of region.

But satire was not his element. Rather did he love to
give expression to benevolent feeling and generous affection.
The native liberality of his nature cast a mantle of
charity over the errors of his kind, in language which, for
touching simplicity, has never been equalled.

Burns had a truly noble soul. He cherished an honest
ride. Obligation oppressed him, and with all his rusticity
he firmly maintained his dignity in the polished circles

of Edinburgh. Like all manly hearts, while he
keenly felt the sting of poverty, his whole nature recoiled
from dependence. He desired money, not for the distinction
and pleasure it brings, but chiefly that he might
be free from the world. He recorded the creed of the
true man;—
His susceptibility to Nature was quick and impassioned.
He hung with rapture over the hare-bell, fox-glove, budding
birch and hoary hawthorn. Though chiefly alive to
its sterner aspects, every phase of the universe was inexpressibly
dear to him.
How delightful to see the victim of poverty and care thus
yield up his spirit in blest oblivion of his lot. He walked
beside the river, climhed the hill and wandered over the
moor, with a more exultant step and more bounding heart
than ever conqueror knew. In his hours of sweet reverie,
all consciousness was lost of outward poverty, in the richness
of a gifted spirit. Then he looked upon creation as
his heritage. He felt drawn to her by the glowing bond
of a kindred spirit. Every wild-flower from which he
brushed the dew, every mountain-top to which his eyes
were lifted, every star that smiled upon his path, was a
token and a pledge of immortality. He partook of their
freedom and their beauty; and held fond communion
with their silent loveliness. The banks of the Doon became
like the bowers of Paradise, and Mossgiel was as a
glorious kingdom.
That complete self-abandonment, characteristic of poets,
belonged strikingly to Burns. He threw himself, all sensitive
and ardent as he was, into the arms of Nature.
He surrendered his heart unreservedly to the glow of social
pleasure, and sought with equal heartiness the peace
of domestic retirement.
He sinned, and repented, with the same singleness of
purpose, and completeness of devotion. This is illustrated
in many of his poems. In his love and grief, in his
joy and despair, we find no medium;—
Perhaps the freest and deepest element of the poetry of
Burns, is love. With the first awakening of this passion
in his youthful breast, came also the spirit of poetry.
“My heart,” says one of his letters, “was complete tinder,
and eternally lighted up by some goddess or other.”
He was one of those susceptible men to whom love is no
fiction or fancy; to whom it is not only a “strong necessity,”
but an overpowering influence. To female attractions
he was a complete slave. An eye, a tone, a
grasp of the hand, exercised over him the sway of destiny.
His earliest and most blissful adventures were following
in the harvest with a bonnie lassie, or picking
nettles out of a fair one's hand. He had no armor of
philosophy wherewith to resist the spell of beauty. Genius
betrayed rather than absolved him; and his soul found
its chief delight and richest inspiration in the luxury of
loving.
And yet the love of Burns was poetical chiefly in its expression.
He loved like a man. His was no mere sentimental
passion, but a hearty attachment. He sighed
not over the pride of a Laura, nor was satisfied with a
smile of distant encouragement. Genuine passion was
only vivified and enlarged in his heart by a poetical mind.
He arrayed his rustic charmer with few ideal attractions.
His vows were paid to
Her positive and tangible graces were enough for him.
He sought not to exalt them, but only to exhibit the fervor
of his attachment. Even in his love was there this
singular honesty. Exaggerated flattery does not mark
his amatory poems, but a warm expression of his passionate
regard, a sweet song over the joys of affection. Perhaps
no poet has better depicted true love, in its most
common manifestation. Of the various objects of his regard,
the only one who seems to have inspired any purely
poetical sentiment was Highland Mary. Their solemn
parting on the banks of the Ayr, and her early death, are
familiar to every reader of Burns. Her memory seemed
consecrated to his imagination, and he has made it immortal
by his beautiful lines to Mary in Heaven. Nor
was the Scottish bard unaware how deep an inspiration
he derived from the gentler sex. He tells us that when he
desired to feel the pure spirit of poetry and obey successfully
its impulse, he put himself on a regimen of admiring
a fine woman.
And of all the agencies of life there is none superior to
this. Written eloquence, the voice of the bard, the music
of creation, will often fail to awaken the heart. We cannot
always yield ourselves to the hidden spell. But in the
soft light of her eye genius basks, till it is warmed into a
new and sweeter life. The poet is indeed kindled by
communion with the most lovely creation of God, He
is subdued by the sweetest of human influences. His
wings are plumed beside the fountain of love, and he soars
thence to heaven.

The poetical temperament is now better and more generally
understood than formerly. Physiologists and moral
philosophers have labored, not without success, to diffuse
correct ideas of its laws and liabilities. Education now
averts, in frequent instances, the fatal errors to which beings

thus organized are peculiarly exposed. No one has
more truly described some features of the poet's fate
than the author of Tam O'Shanter and the Cotter's Saturday
Night:—
The love of excitement, the physical and moral sensibility,
the extremes of mood, which belong to this class of
men, require a certain discipline on the one hand and indulgence
on the other, which is now more readily accorded.
Especially do we look with a more just eye upon the
frailties of poets. It is not necessary to defend them.
They are only the more lamentable from being connected
with high powers. But it is a satisfaction to trace their
origin to unfavorable circumstances of life and peculiarities
of organization. Burns labored under the disadvantage
of a narrow and oppressive destiny, opposed to a sensitive
and exalted soul. From the depths of obscure poverty
he awoke to fame. Strong and adroit as he was at
the several vocations of husbandry, he possessed no tact
as a manager or financier. With the keenest relish for
enjoyment, his means were small, and the claims of his
family unceasing. Susceptible to the most refined influences
of nature, quick of apprehension, and endowed with
a rich fancy, his animal nature was not less strongly developed.
His flaming heart lighted not only the muse's
torch, but the tempest of passion. He often sought to
drown care in excess. He did not faithfully struggle
with the allurements which in reality he despised. How
deeply he felt the transitory nature of human enjoyment,
he has told us in a series of beautiful similes:—
Tossed on the waves of an incongruous experience, elevated
by his gifts, depressed by his condition, the heir of
fame, but the child of sorrow—gloomy in view of his actual
prospects, elated by his poetic visions,—the life of
Burns was no ordinary scene of trial and temptation.
While we pity, let us reverence him. Let us glory in
such fervent song as he dedicated to love, friendship, patriotism
and nature. True bursts of feeling came from
the honest bosom of the ploughman. Sad as was his career
at Dumfries, anomalous as it seems to picture him
as an exciseman, how delightful his image as a noble
peasant and ardent bard! What a contradiction between
his human existence and his inspired soul! Literature
enshrines few more endeared memorials than the poems
of Burns. His lyre is wreathed with wild-flowers. Its
tones are simple and glowing. Their music is like the
cordial breeze of his native hills. It still cheers the banquet,
and gives expression to the lover's thought. Its
pensive melody has a twilight sweetness; its tender ardor
is melting as the sunbeams. Around the cottage and
the moor, the scene of humble affection, the rite of lowly
piety, it has thrown a hallowed influence, which embalms
the memory of Burns, and breathes perpetual masses for
his soul.