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WHEN we would estimate most
correctly the size and power of a man, it is well to look at him not
only along the line of his influence, but as he starts up in his own
shape and with his own force from the level of his own surroundings. In
other words, we must pay almost as much heed to the times which
immediately preceded him as to those which he has helped to make and
mould. If anyone saw the -castle- rock of Edinburgh by merely following-
with his eye up the long ridge that lies behind it, until he came to the
fortress that crowns the precipice, he could form only a very
insufficient notion of the mass and grandeur of that central feature in
the city's splendour. The long ridge which slopes down to Holyrood from
the rampart, is largely the result of the castle-rock being there. The
whole lie of the place was determined by the influence of the solitary
crag that stood breast deep against the floods which rolled at some
preliminary stage of things from the west, and silted its mud up in this
continuous declivity behind. But approach from the vest and seethe rock
as it rears itself sheer up from the preceding level, and then it
surprises and thus seen it vindicates those who admire and praise it.
It may safely, be said
that all Scottish life and literature have taken new life and shape from
the influence of Robert Burns. They are quite different from what they
were, not only since his time, but because of him. At our own point of
view we are standing on ground the elevation and outlook of which he has
clone much to determine. So his distinctive position and power are a
little concealed by the very influence he has wielded. But get away
round and back to the other side altogether ! look at him (so to speak)
out of the first half of his .own century rather than out of the second
half of ours! place yourself in the midst of the sad, grey levels of
Scottish life and literature a hundred and fifty years ago, and thence
advance until this form of splendid manhood comes towering into sight,
and then it will be realised what manner of man Burns was. The nation
had been losing heart, for times were hard, and the resources of life in
Scotland were limited; the song and story of the day, as circulated at
the village fair and in the bothy, were coarse and shady; the parsons
were a kind of priest, hidebound in their theology, and often with
something other and lower than all before them in their personal life,
who vet were wielding a severe power with their cutty school here and
the pains of punishment hereafter; the land was held by few owners, who
were also - the makers of the laws, and both farmer and cottar were
doubly under their power; and the strength and the sweetness of the
nation's life were found in honest, patient peasants, silent and
somewhat severe, who kept God's flame burning on cottage altars, and who
were reserved and restrained both in their smiles and their tears. It
was a curious period in Scottish life—that first half of the last
century ! There was an effete Puritanism in kirk and kirk-sessions; and
in every parish there was at the same time a resentful, mocking
under-current of life playing with the commandments which the church
laid down, and finding fun in evading the minister and the elder. But
the point of equilibrium was found, and the balance maintained, and
Scotland's salvation kept in the circle "round the ingle" of which the
priest-like father and "the big ha' Bible" were the centre, and in which
the focus and moment of the Eternal were realised when "'Let us worship
God.' he says with solemn air."
Into the midst of that
life, moving somewhat slowly in a pathetic eddy, there came with Robert
Burns a sudden force. He seemed to splash into it recklessly, and he
soon, in a sense, took possession of the whole pool. Scotland never
before had felt the impact of any man, as it felt that of the ploughman
poet. Every level of life was aware of his influence; he first agitated
and then gave new current to all the thoughts and feelings of the
people, and he carried both the weakness and the strength of the nation
with him. He told the nation's sorrows, and he sang its hopes; he
condensed into his own life the best and the worst of his
fellow-countrymen, and shattered himself in the passionate process. It
was no wonder that everybody claimed him, and that he swayed with a
personal power both the weakest and the strongest. Half the village
would rise at midnight to hear him banter and scorn when he came late to
a village inn; and any ale-house club would crown him their hero. He
rode rough-shod across lines which superstitious tradition had made and
kept; and threw accepted notions into confusion all around him.
Education was superseded by his genius, and his satire slew the learning
of professions. The peasantry accepted him as the most wonderful man
they had ever seen; so did the learning and culture of Edinburgh. And we
think they both were right!
No man has been more
candid in showing himself than Burns in his letters and poems—his
letters, however, betraying him at times perhaps, and showing qualities
of temper and spirit that he would never have confessed to, and likely
enough never suspected himself of. But therein we see enough to make us
say that if ever there was a son of Adam who was many men in one, and
who lived many lives in the course of his thirty-seven years, it was our
Scottish bard. There never were fiercer contradictions and antagonisms
caged within one heaving breast than there were in his. For surely it
was one Burns who shook with too fine a tenderness in the harvest field
when he had to take a thistle out of a woman's hand and another Burns
who bled women's hearts to death; one who wept at the sight of cottage
homes among the trees and another who blighted their finest life; one
who mingled with the culture of Edinburgh all the evening and another
who vent to the tavern at midnight. It is the Burns of tenderest human
heart, of deep responsive soul who walked in glory and in joy,
"Following his plough along the mountain side," and of bold, daring
thought who affixed to man as man the value which his Creator set upon
him—it is this Burns whom his fellow-men will never cease to wonder at
and admire.
The widest readings in
history and literature have brought men to nothing so perfectly amazing
as Robert Burns and his song. It was a dull, dreary stretch of Time—that
eighteenth century in which he was born. The life of church and cottage
in Scotland was monotonous and hopeless. Birds sang, rivers flowed, and
flowers grew, and human life was married and given in marriage, and no
one saw the beauty or sang the glory of it all. But all of a sudden a
ploughboy appeared in our Scottish fields, who was a gift of many great
men in one. He was a patriot:
"E'en. then a wish—I mind
its power—
A wish that to my latest hour
Shall strongly heave my breast—
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake,
Some useful plan or beuk could make,
Or sing a sang at least.
The rough bur-thistle, spreading wide
Amang the bearded hear,
I turned the weeder-clips aside,
And spared the symbol dear."
He was fuller of pity
than a woman. The mouse and the daisy and the wounded hare made appeal
to his sensitive, quivering, tearful heart; and the noise of the winter
wind made this farmer's lad wistful and sad, as he thought at night of
"Ilk happing bird, wee
helpless thing,
That in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing,
An' close thy e'e?''
and he was as much a
philosopher and a statesman as a sensitive and tender poet. Dugald
Stewart regarded it as a mere chance that his unrivalled powers came out
in poetry. He sounded the death-knell of a mere clothes-philosophy, long
before Carlyle, when he slung sharp stones at hypocrisy in the church
and riddled cant into holes whenever it came within his range. He
anticipated much political turmoil and readjustment that await us when
with his large silent eye holding suppressed fire he saw his father
struggle in vain with his land and his lease.
"I've noticed, on our
Laird's court-day,
And mony a time my heart's been wae,
Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash,
How they maun thole a factor's snash
He'll stamp and threaten, curse and swear,
He'll apprehend them, poind their gear
While they mann stan', Wi' aspect humble
An' hear it a', and fear and tremble."
He realised the beauty
and dignity that were in humblest human life when lived truly, and he
appreciated the value that there was in the national tradition and
custom of our then despised little country; and he stood forth and
vindicated and made them all glorious. Nothing was trivial, or common or
unclean to him. He in his best moments—the moments of his power, the
moments when he was true to himself—combines qualities within his own
unique and dazzling personality which, both in themselves and in their
sudden and unexpected manifestation, make Robert Burns not only one of
our greatest Scotsmen, but one of the most wonderful of men. If any one
wishes to know what is meant by Genius—rich, rare, copious and untutored
Genius—let him set in his surroundings and study in its own
circumstances the life and work of this peasant ploughman. Instinctively
and without the slightest effort he appropriated and, with the skill of
the finest art, he inwove with his own song any stray threads of genuine
gold that he found adhering to the unworthy drift of Scottish verse that
had come in his way. Lord Tennyson said that Burns did for Scottish
poetry in this and in other ways what Shakespeare did for English drama.
But did poet's praise ever rise higher or judge more justly than when
the same voice said " Read the exquisite songs of Burns ; in shape each
of them has the perfection of the berry, in light the radiance of the
dewdrop."
As a lyrist Burns has no
rival. More spontaneous verse, the unbidden and irresistible overflow
and outflow of the heart, never has been given us. The art and craft of
verse-making were only and altogether his own; he discovered the method
for himself. He knew as little of the laws of verse, its metrical feet
and its cesura, as the mavis or the child, and yet when emotion came
over him he needed like them to make music. So with snatches of old
tunes in his head, and swaying his body to their rhythm, his words began
to dance into order and grace ; and with this subdued hum of quiet
delight came relief to his swelling soul in the pathos or joy of his
lyrics. Even the scraps of his unfinished poems have the charm of rarest
melody:
The stibble rig is easy
ploughed,
The fallow land is free,
But shame upon the handless coof,
That canna labour lea."
Or take this
nature-picture, in which the breath of many of Scotland's holy mornings
is detained for all time:
Upon a simmer Sunday
morn,
When Nature's face was fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
An' snuff the caller air.
The rising sun owre Galston muirs
\Vi' glorious light was glintin',
The hares were hirplin' down the furs,
The laverocks they were chantin'.''
Or this other vignette of
early winter:-
When lyart leaves bestrew
the yird,
Or wavering like the bauckie-bird,
Bedim cauld Boreas' blast.
When hailstones drive wi' bitter skyte,
And infant frosts begin to bite,
In hoary cranreuch drest."
Or this couplet, which
for the pathos of it—the deep, subdued sympathy of it—stands almost
unrivalled in poetry:
The sun had closed the
winter day,
Time curlers quat their roarin' play,
An' hunger'd maukin ta'en her way
To kailyards green,
While faithless snaws each step betray
Whare she has been.
The thresher's weary
flingin' tree
The lee lang day had tired me,
Amid, when the day had clos'd his e'e,
Far i' the west, Ben in the spence right pensivelie
I gaed to rest."
But to begin to quote
from Burns is to begin an endless joy—whether one seeks for aphorisms in
verse for irony of long, sharp, unerring tooth; for sobs of sorrow that
tell of a large round heart breaking and that will not break for a
humour that twinkles with the pawkiest glee, or for the notes of a
marching music to which men will advance to their true and God-given
liberty. So we must forbear. Suffice these few extracts to show the
alchemy of word and feeling which this great phenomenal man, who stood
sheer Lip and alone in the middle of last century, had discovered and
was able to work with, and who at his own best can be ranked only with
the world's best.
While Burns was striking
notes which have their response in men's hearts, deeper than where
nationality has its play, and more in the very essence of the human
soul, he was in a very especial degree doing permanent work in the life
of Scotland. He rallied the national spirit when it was flagging, and
Scotsmen closed ranks to his strong assertion of patriotism and stood
compact and unified. They felt a pleasant and proud constriction at
their heart, when Burns rang his foot on the Scottish soil and told the
world the beauty of their native land, the conscious dignity of their
history, the sweetness of the daughters of their cottage homes, the
sanctities of their hearth, the pleasant frolic of their homely
festivals, and the daring troth which their sons plight when they woo
and wed—
"Till a' the seas rin
dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt with the sun.''
Scotsmen stood inches
higher all along the line of their nationality, and touched one another
shoulder to shoulder with a united purpose, when Burns asserted himself
and them against the whole world. He put a new throb into the breast of
honest poverty against all corners he measured the rustic of the
Scottish fields against the soft-fed Frenchman—
"As feckless as a
withered rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;"
and he did not fear to
pit against big England his own Coila single- handed--
"Her moors red-brown wi'
heather bells,
Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells
Where glorious Wallace
Aft bure the gree, as story tells
Frae Southron billies."
He interpreted and
justified Scotland to herself, and he wrote for her a new ''magna charta"
of world-wide reference and for all time.
The field of Scotsmen was
just beginning in Burns' day to be the world. The voice of new lands was
then heard calling for colonists. The long old order was just be-
ginning on a large scale to change, and Scotsmen were going forth and
abroad to shape new countries. They vent far from their home-land, but
their love for it was of so fine a quality that it never was snapped by
the farthest stretching. Burns was invaluably dear to them then. He gave
them fresh memory and love of Scotland every day. Burns gives the
masonic touch and masonic bond that make Scotsmen brothers all the world
round. They were nearer home and nearer one another whenever they read
his book or hummed his song. He had so distilled the spirit of their
national history, he had so perpetuated by his imaginative art the
habits and customs of the people, he had told with such vividness and
fulness and truth the story of the Scottish heart in its sorrow and its
joy, and it was all done so simply and melodiously, that Scotland lived
in their heart in his words like a continual music. They saw Scotland
with his larger eyes, and they loved it in his larger love. In the
remotest province or the farthest island a Scotsman cannot woo his bride
without Burns helping him to feel and speak, and he cannot take her home
without Burns' ideal before his eyes:
To make a happy fireside
clinic
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublinie
Of human life;"
and if he succeeds where
others have failed, the memory of counsels about " the pith o' sense,
the pride o worth" and ''the stalk of cane hemp" may have had their
secret influence deeper than he knew—his hereditary traditions and his
silent learning at home that lay buried in his being like seed having
been quickened by the touch of some of these magic words, and because he
has been able to:
"Better reck the rede
Than ever did the adviser."
It is often said "Accept
Burns' bequest to humanity in his poems and songs, and let the man
himself alone!" That is a vain word to speak. The world will not listen
to it; it could not obey that counsel if it tried. We now, with all our
quick interest in the scenes he depicts and the customs he commemorates,
are far more interested in the man himself than in all he tells us about
and says; we never can read long in his book without turning back to his
portrait at the beginning and trying to see the manner of man he was.
This will be humanity's habit to the end. The interest in what he writes
about—of Scottish life and customs —will gradually become historic, for
even now the ways of Scotland in kirk and home, on Sabbath day and week
day, are rapidly changing; but the swift, intense, passionate life of
the man himself will so vibrate through his writings, that to the end
men will ask about him many hard questions. The question will be asked
and asked justly, what this rare man made of himself and all his
heavenly endowment; and they who have searched this matter out the
farthest, have found so much that they feared to search farther. We dare
not judge him; we are forbidden to judge any man; we have not the deep
divine data which make it possible to judge, and there is penalty for
those who think they can and who try. But we may distinguish and wisely
separate between this extraordinary man at his best and at his worst,
whilst we turn from the personal mystery as insoluble and leave it
calmly in the bands of One who gave the man his nature with both its
rapture and its peril. The two human poles between which that life
turned—with such summer and such winter, such storms and such calm, such
nights of gloom and such days of glory in its year—were the holy home of
his father and the waning days at Brough near the end when the Bible was
his constant companion. Between two such points of cardinal spiritual
power, this life so full of speed and so oft aflame, seems to have had
strong keeping, and we may say as we leave this whole subject, what
Wordsworth said as he left the poet's grave—
"Sighing I turned away;
but ere
Night fell I heard or seemed to hear
Music that sorrow comes not near—
A ritual hymn, Chanted in love that casts out fear
By seraphim." |
