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Title: The Real Robert Burns
Author: J. L. Hughes
Release Date: February 17, 2011 [EBook #35299]
Language: English
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THE REAL ROBERT BURNS
THE REAL ROBERT BURNS
BY J. L. HUGHES, LL.D.
Author of 'Dickens as an Educator,' &c.
LONDON: 38 Soho Square, W.1
W. & R. CHAMBERS, LIMITED
EDINBURGH: 339 High Street
THE RYERSON PRESS
TORONTO: Corner Queen and John Streets
Printed in Great Britain.
W. & R. CHAMBERS, LTD., LONDON and EDINBURGH.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD 7
I. THE TRUE VALUES OF BIOGRAPHY 9
II. THE EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGES OF BURNS 17
III. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BURNS 35
IV. BURNS WAS A RELIGIOUS MAN 63
V. BURNS THE DEMOCRAT 99
VI. BURNS AND BROTHERHOOD 126
VII. BURNS A REVEALER OF PURE LOVE 135
VIII. BURNS A PHILOSOPHER 167
IX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF BURNS 197
FOREWORD.
The writer of the following pages learned years ago to reverence the
memories of Burns and Dickens. Frequently hearing one or the other
attacked from platform or pulpit, and believing both to be great
interpreters of the highest things taught by Christ, as the basis of the
development of humanity towards the Divine, he resolved that some day he
would try to help the world to understand correctly the work of these two
great men. His book, _Dickens as an Educator_, has helped to give a new
conception of Dickens, as an educational pioneer and as a philosopher. The
purpose of this book is to show that Burns was well educated, and that
both in his poems and in his letters he was an unsurpassed exponent of the
highest human ideals yet expressed of religion--democracy based on the
value of the individual soul, brotherhood, love, and the philosophy of
human life.
The writer believes that gossiping in regard to the weakness of the living
is indecent and degrading, but that it is pardonable as compared with the
debasing practice of gossiping about the weaknesses of the dead. Those who
can wallow in the muck of degraded biographers are only a degree less
wicked than the biographers themselves, who sin against the dead, and sin
against the living by providing debasing matter for them to read.
The evidence to prove the positions claimed to be true in this book is
mainly taken from the poems and letters of Burns himself. Some may doubt
the sincerity of Burns. Carlyle had no doubt about his sincerity or his
honesty. He says of the popularity of Burns: 'The grounds of so singular
and wide a popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the palace
to the hut, and over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are
well worth inquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to imply
some rare excellence in these works. What is that excellence? To answer
this question will not lead us far. The excellence of Burns is, indeed,
among the rarest, whether in poetry or in prose, but, at the same time, it
is plain and easily recognised--_his sincerity, his indisputable air of
truth_.'
Speaking of the moral character of Burns, Carlyle said: 'We are far from
regarding him as guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average;
nay, from doubting that _he is less guilty than one of ten thousand_....
What he _did_ under such circumstances, and what he _forbore to do_, alike
fill us with astonishment at the _natural strength and worth of his
character_.'
Shakespeare says in _Hamlet_: 'Ay, sir, to be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.' Carlyle chose Burns as one
of ten thousand.
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. Let us learn, and ever
remember, that he was a reverent writer about religion, a clear
interpreter of Christ's teaching of democracy and brotherhood, a profound
philosopher, and the author of the purest love-songs ever written.
THE REAL ROBERT BURNS.
CHAPTER I.
THE TRUE VALUES OF BIOGRAPHY.
A man's biography should relate the story of his development in power, and
his achievements for his fellow-men. Biography can justify itself only in
two ways: by revealing the agencies and experiences that formed a man's
character and aided in the growth of his highest powers; and by relating
the things he achieved for humanity, and the processes by which he
achieved them.
Only the good in the lives of great men should be recorded in biographies.
To relate the evil men do, or describe their weaknesses, is not only
objectionable, it is in every way execrable. It degrades those who write
it and those who read it. Biography should not be mainly a story; it
should be a revelation, not of evil, but of good. It should unfold and
impress the value of the visions of the great man whose biography is being
written, and his success in revealing his high visions to his fellow-men.
It should tell the things he achieved or produced to make the world
better; the things that aid in the growth of humanity towards the divine.
The biographer who tells of evils is, from thoughtlessness or malevolence,
a mischievous enemy of mankind.
No man's memory was ever more unjustly dealt with than the memory of
Robert Burns. His first editor published many poems that Burns said on his
death-bed should be allowed 'to sink into oblivion,' and told all of
weakness that he could learn in order that he might be regarded as just.
He considered justice to himself of more consequence than justice to
Burns, or to humanity. His only claim to be remembered is the fact that he
prepared the poems of Burns for publication, and wrote his biography. It
is much to be regretted that he had not higher ideals of what a biography
should be, not merely for the memory of the man about whom it is written,
but for its influence in enlightening and uplifting those who read it.
Biographers should reveal not weaknesses, but the things achieved for God
and humanity.
Carlyle, writing of the biographers of Burns, says: 'His former
biographers have done something, no doubt, but by no means a great deal,
to assist us. Dr Currie and Mr Walker, the principal of these writers,
have both, we think, mistaken one important thing: their own and the
world's true relation to the author, and the style in which it became such
men to think and to speak of such a man. Dr Currie loved the poet truly,
more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to himself; yet he
everywhere introduces him with a certain patronising, apologetic air, as
if the polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that
he, a man of science, a scholar and a gentleman, should do such honour to
a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that his fault was not
want of love, but weakness of faith; and regret that the first and kindest
of all our poet's biographers should not have seen farther, or believed
more boldly what he saw. Mr Walker offends more deeply in the same kind,
and both err alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of his
attributes, virtues, and vices, _instead of a delineation of the resulting
character as a living unity_.'
The biographers of Robert Burns criticised reputed defects of his--defects
common among men of all classes and all professions in his time--but
failed to give him credit for his revelations of divine wisdom. They
bemoaned his lack of religion--though he was a reverently religious
man--instead of telling the simple truth that he was the greatest
religious reformer of his time in any part of the world. They said he was
not a Christian because he did not perform certain ceremonies required by
the churches, when freer and less bigoted men would have told the real
fact, that he was one of the world's greatest interpreters of Christ's
highest ideals--democracy and brotherhood. He still holds that high rank.
They related idle gossip about his vanity and other trivial stories,
instead of being content with proclaiming him the greatest genius of his
time in the comprehensiveness of his visions, and in the scope of his
powers. Some of them tried to prove that he was not a loyal man; they
should have revealed him as the giant leader of men in making them
conscious of the value of liberty and of the right of every man to its
fullest enjoyment.
The oft-repeated charge of disloyalty was disproved when the charge was
made during the life of Burns, but the false accusation has been accepted
as a fact by many people to the present time. Fortunately the records of
the Dumfries Volunteers have been discovered recently, and Mr William
Will has published them in a book entitled _Robert Burns as a Volunteer_.
They prove most conclusively that Burns was a truly loyal man. When the
Provost of Dumfries called a meeting of the citizens of Dumfries to
consider the need of establishing a company of Volunteers Burns attended
the meeting, and was chosen as a member of a small committee to write to
the king asking permission to form a company. When permission was granted
by the king, Burns joined the company on the night when it was first
organised, and sat up most of the night composing 'The Dumfries
Volunteers,' the most inspiring poem of its kind ever written. It did more
to arouse the people of Scotland and England to put down the bolshevism of
the time than any other loyal propaganda.
The minutes of the Volunteer Company in Dumfries give a perfect answer to
the basest slander ever made against Burns--that he had sunk so low as a
hopelessly vile drunkard the respectable people of Dumfries would not
associate with him; that he was ostracised by the community at large. Yet
this 'ostracised man' was chosen by the best citizens of Dumfries as one
of the committee to write to King George, and was elected as a member of
the committee to manage the company. This slander was so generally
accepted in Carlyle's time that even Carlyle himself wrote that Burns did
not die too soon, as he had lost the respect of his fellow-men, and had
lost also the power to write. His first statement is proved to have no
true foundation by the record of the Dumfries Volunteer Company, and the
second by the fact that Burns wrote the greatest poem ever written by any
man to interpret Christ's highest visions, democracy and brotherhood, 'A
Man's a Man for a' That,' the year before he died, and 'The Dumfries
Volunteers.' The second year before his death he wrote 'The Tree of
Liberty' and 'The Ode to Liberty,' and the third year before he died he
wrote the clarion call to fight in defence of freedom, 'Scots, wha hae.'
These poems have no equals in any literature of their kind. During the
same three years of his life he wrote one hundred and seventeen other fine
songs and sent them to Edinburgh for publication, the last one on the
ninth day before his death. It should be remembered, too, that Burns had
to ride two hundred miles each week in the discharge of his duty to the
government; and that after the organisation of the Volunteer Company he
had to drill four hours each week, and attend the meetings of the company
committee. The minutes of the company show he was never fined for absence.
The last meeting he attended before his fatal illness was called to
prepare a letter of gratitude to God for preserving the life of the king
when the London bolshevistic mob tried to kill him on his way to the House
of Commons. Assisting to prepare this letter to the king was the last
public act of Burns.
Had his weaknesses been tenfold what they were, his biographers should
have said nothing about them, for in spite of his human weakness he had
divine power to reveal to all men Christ's teachings--democracy and
brotherhood, based on the value of the individual soul. He was also the
greatest poet of religion, ethics, and love; and he holds a high place
among the loving interpreters of Nature.
To relate facts in his life to account for the development of his powers,
so that he was able to be so great a revealer of the highest things in the
lives of men and women, should have been the work of his biographers.
It is worthy of note that Wordsworth wrote to the publishers of the
biography of Burns in regard to the true attitude of a biographer. He
objected to recording imputed failings, and expressed indignation at Dr
Currie for devoting so much attention to the infirmities of Burns.
Chambers and Douglas were in most respects better than his other early
biographers. The Rev. Lauchlan MacLean Watt, of Edinburgh, wrote for the
Nation's Library in 1914 the sanest, truest book yet written about Burns.
CHAPTER II.
THE EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGES OF BURNS.
Many people still speak of Burns as an 'uneducated man.' Although a
farmer, he was in reality a well-educated man. He was not a finished
scholar in the accepted sense of the universities, but both in his poetry
and in his unusually forceful and polished prose he was superior to most
of the university men of his time. He had read many books, the best books
that his intelligent father could buy, or that he could borrow from
friends or from libraries. In addition to school-books, he names the
following among those books read in his youth and young manhood--_The
Spectator_, Pope's Works, Shakespeare, Works on Agriculture, _The
Pantheon_, Locke's _Essay on the Human Understanding_, Stackhouse's
_History of the Bible_, Justice's _British Gardener_, Boyle Lectures,
Allan Ramsay's Works, Doctor Taylor's _Doctrine of Original Sin_, _A
Select Collection of English Songs_, Hervey's _Meditations_, Thomson's
Works, Shenstone's Works, _The Letters by the Wits of Queen Anne's
Reign_, Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_, Mackenzie's _The Man of Feeling_,
Macpherson's _Ossian_, two volumes of _Pamela_, and one novel by Smollett,
_Ferdinand, Count Fathom_. In addition to these he had read some French
and some Latin books, guided by one of the greatest teachers of his time,
John Murdoch, who was so great that when he established a private school
in London his fame spread to France, and some leading young men, notably
Talleyrand, came to receive his training and inspiration.
William Burns read regularly at night to his two sons, Robert and Gilbert,
and after the reading the three fellow-students discussed the matter that
had been read, each from his own individual standpoint. As the boys grew
older they read books during their meals, so earnest were they in their
desire to become acquainted with the best thought of the world's leaders,
so far as it was available. David Sillar has stated that Robert generally
carried a book with him when he was alone, that he might read and think.
When Robert settled at Ellisland he aroused an interest among the people
of the district, and succeeded in establishing a circulating library.
His father, though a labourer, was supremely desirous that his family
should be educated and thoughtful. This desire prompted him to become a
farmer, that he might keep his family at home. He was an independent
thinker himself, and by example and experience he trained his sons to love
reading and to think independently. Robert never thought he was thinking
when he let other people's thoughts run through his mind.
The result of the reading and thinking which their father led Robert and
Gilbert to do was most gratifying. The influence on Robert's mind must be
recognised. He became not only a great writer in prose and in poetry, but
a great orator as well. He stood modestly, but conscious of his power, and
proved his superiority both in conversation and impromptu oratory to the
leading university men of his time in Edinburgh. Gilbert, too, became an
original thinker and a writer of clear and forceful English. In a long
letter to Dr Currie he discussed very profoundly and very independently
some deep psychological ideas in excellent language. Few men of his time
could have written more thoughtfully or more definitely. As illustrations
of Robert's learning, as well as of his independent thought in relating
the books he read to each other and to human life, two instances are worth
recording. First, in a letter to Dr Moore,[1] of London, an author of
some distinction, who had sent him a copy of one of his books, Burns said,
1790: 'You were pleased to express a wish for my opinion of your work,
which so flattered me that nothing less would serve my overweening fancy
than a formal criticism on the book. In fact, I have gravely planned a
comparative view of you, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett in your
different qualities and merits as novel writers. This, I own, betrays my
ridiculous vanity, and I may probably never bring the business to bear,
but I am fond of the spirit young Elihu shows in the Book of Job--"And I
said, I will also declare my opinion."'
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, 1788: 'Dryden's _Virgil_ has delighted me. I do
not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the _Georgics_ are to
me by far the best of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely
new to me, and has filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation....
I own I am disappointed in the _Æneid_. Faultless correctness may please,
and does highly please, the letter critic; but to that awful character I
have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not
hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think
Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the
_Odyssey_ by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently
copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything
of this owing to the translators; for from everything I have seen of
Dryden, I think him in genius and fluency of language Pope's Master.'
But a small percentage of university graduates of his time could have
written independent criticisms, wise or otherwise, of Homer and Virgil, or
even of English writers, as clearly as Burns did. They could have told
what the opinions of other people were in regard to Homer and Virgil; they
could have told what they had been told. Burns had been trained to think
by his father, and to express his own thoughts about the books he read;
they had merely been informed. The advantage in real education was greatly
in favour of Burns. Their memories had been stored with opinions of
others; his mind had been trained to read carefully, to relate the
thoughts of others to life, to decide as to their wisdom, and to think
independently himself. His education from books was somewhat limited, but
the development of his mind that came from discussions of the value of the
matter read was vital, and helped him to relate himself to men, to nature
around him, to the universe, and to God.
In schools Burns had not a very extended experience. When six years old he
was sent to a small school beside the mill on the Doon at Alloway. His
teacher gave up the school soon after Burns began to attend it. Mr Burns
secured the co-operation of several of his neighbours, and they engaged a
young man named Murdoch to teach their children, agreeing to take him in
turn as their guest, and to pay him a small salary. The fact that John
Murdoch formed a high estimate of Mr Burns is a proof of the ability and
sincerity of the father of the poet.
When Burns was seven years old his father removed to Mount Oliphant farm,
but Robert continued to attend the school of Mr Murdoch, about two miles
away, in Alloway. The books used were a spelling-book, the New Testament,
the Bible, Mason's _Collection of Prose and Verse_, and Fisher's _English
Grammar_.
Mr Murdoch gave up his Alloway school when Burns was nine years old. After
that time the teacher of his sons was their father. He taught them
arithmetic, and bought them Salmon's _Geographical Grammar_, Derham's
_Physico- and Astro-Theology_, Hay's _Wisdom of God in the Creation_, and
the _History of the Reigns of James I. and Charles I. of England_. Robert,
when eleven years old, showed a deep interest in the study of grammar and
language, and 'excelled as a critic in substantives, verbs, and
participles.' In his twelfth year he was kindled in his patriotic spirit
by the _Life of Sir William Wallace_. Wallace remained a hero to him
throughout his life. In his thirty-fifth year he wrote the grandest call
to the defence of liberty ever written, beginning:
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled.
In his eleventh year, which seemed to be a kindling epoch in his mind, his
mother's brother gave him a collection of _Letters by the Wits of Queen
Anne's Reign_. He read them over and over again, greatly delighted by both
their contents and their literary style. They had a distinct influence in
forming his own prose style, as during his twelfth year he conducted an
imaginary correspondence of quite an extensive character and in a stately
style.
When he was thirteen the greatest kindler of his early powers, John
Murdoch, became teacher of English in the Ayr High School. Robert was
sent to board with him to study grammar and composition. He received
instruction from Murdoch in French and in Latin. He continued the study of
French in the evenings at home, as he had obtained a French dictionary and
a French grammar.
His formal education, so far as it became an element in the cultivation of
his mind and the development of his supreme powers, ended with the few
weeks spent with John Murdoch in Ayr. They were epoch weeks to Burns;
transforming weeks, because of the increased range of his learning, but
made infinitely more richly transforming by the revelation of new visions
of life, and by the culture gained by association with a man of rare
ability and supreme kindling power, such as John Murdoch undoubtedly
possessed. A genius like Burns, living with a great teacher like Murdoch,
could in a month get many of the new revelations, the new visions, and the
strong impulses that should come into a growing soul as the result of a
university course.
Burns, in his seventeenth year, was sent to Kirkoswald to study
mensuration and surveying. He intended to become a surveyor. Peggy Thomson
lived next door to the school he attended. He met Peggy, loved her madly,
and found it impossible to study longer. He afterwards wrote two beautiful
poems to her. His school life for a brief period in Kirkoswald had little
influence in the development of his power, except for the organisation of
a debating society composed of a companion, William Niven, and himself.
They met weekly to hold debates, and these debates were greatly enjoyed by
Burns. His practice in debating societies afterwards organised by him in
Tarbolton and in Mauchline not only developed in him his unusual
oratorical ability, but at the same time gave him mental training of vital
importance. Impromptu speaking surpasses any other known educational
process in developing the human mind. However, Burns could neither study
for Hugh Rodger nor debate with William Niven after he fell in love with
Peggy Thomson, so, after a sleepless week, he went home.
Some may wonder, when they learn that for a time Burns took more interest
in studying Euclid's _Elements of Geometry_ than in any other department
of study in his home under his father's guidance. When the Rev. Archibald
Alison sent him his book, _Essays on the Principles of Taste_, Burns
thanked him, and in his letter said: 'In short, sir, except Euclid's
_Elements of Geometry_, which I made a shift to unravel by my father's
fireside in the winter evenings of the first season I held the plough, I
never read a book which gave me such a quantum of information, and added
so much to my stock of ideas, as your _Essays on the Principles of
Taste_.'
Burns evidently studied geometry at the time his mind was ripe for new
development by that special study. All children and young people would be
fortunate if they could be guided to the special study capable of arousing
their deepest interest, and therefore capable of promoting their highest
development, at the special period of their mental growth when that
particular study will awaken their deepest and most productive interest.
Robert's mind appears to have had a splendid power of adaptation to the
books and studies which his father secured for his sons. Gilbert says:
'Robert read all these with an avidity and industry scarcely to be
equalled; and no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so
antiquated as to damp his researches.' Dr Moore wrote to Burns in 1787: 'I
know very well you have a mind capable of attaining knowledge by a shorter
process than is commonly used, and I am certain you are capable of making
better use of it, when attained, than is generally done.'
This makes it easier to understand why Burns had a mind so well stored
with so many kinds of knowledge; and knowledge classified by himself, and
related to life, so well that he could use it readily when he required to
do so. The university men in Edinburgh marvelled more at the vastness of
his stores of different kinds of knowledge, when he met them with
dignified calmness, than they did because of his wonderful gifts of poetic
genius. Douglas says of Burns in Edinburgh: 'Burns did not fail to mix by
times with the eminent men of letters and philosophy, who then shed lustre
on the name of Scotland.'
Lockhart wrote: 'Burns's poetry might have procured him access to these
circles; but it was the extraordinary resources he displayed in
conversation, the strong sagacity of his observations on life and manners,
the splendour of his wit, and the glowing energy of his eloquence, that
made him the serious object of admiration among these practised masters of
the arts of talk. Even the stateliest of these philosophers had enough to
do to maintain the attitude of equality when brought into contact with
Burns's gigantic understanding; and every one of them whose impressions
on the subject have been recorded agrees in pronouncing his conversation
to have been the most remarkable thing about him.'
Speaking of this, Chambers properly says: 'We are thus left to understand
that the best of Burns has not been, and was not of a nature to be,
transmitted to posterity.' Why was Burns, though a ploughman, able to meet
a galaxy of leaders in different spheres of learning, and culture, and
philosophy, and outshine any of them in his own special department? The
answer is simple. He had two great teachers to kindle him and guide him in
the development of his remarkable natural powers: his father, William
Burns, and his teacher and friend, John Murdoch.
His father made it certain that he would possess a wide range of knowledge
of the best available books on religious, ethical, and philosophical
subjects--philosophy of science and philosophy of the mind; and, better
than that, he trained him definitely by nightly practice to digest, and
expound, and relate, and even dare to disbelieve, the opinions expressed
in the books he read. In nightly discussions with his father and Gilbert
his mind became keen and broad, and he became self-reliant. 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.
From John Murdoch he received the inspiration of a vital comradeship, a
fine training in English language--grammar, and a good introduction to
literature--and visions of higher relationships to his fellow-men and to
God.
However, great as Murdoch was as a kindler and a teacher, the education of
Robert Burns was mainly due to his remarkable father. Alexander Smith, in
his memoir of Burns, which Douglas claimed to be 'the finest biography of
its extent ever written,' speaking of William Burns, says: 'In his whole
mental build and training he was superior to the people by whom he was
surrounded. He had forefathers he could look back to; he had family
traditions which he kept sacred. Hard-headed, industrious, religious,
somewhat austere, he ruled his house with a despotism which affection and
respect on the part of the ruled made light and easy. To the blood of the
Burnses a love of knowledge was native, as valour in the old times was
native to the blood of the Douglases.'
John Murdoch wrote of William Burns: 'Although I cannot do justice to the
character of this worthy man, yet you will perceive from what I have
written _what kind of person had the principal part in the education of
the poet_. He spoke the English language with more propriety, both with
respect to diction and pronunciation, than any man I ever knew with no
greater advantages; this had a very good effect on the boys, who talk and
reason like men much sooner than their neighbours.'
These two quotations help us to understand William Burns as a great
teacher of his sons, and his daughters, too, although he did not deem it
quite so important to educate his daughters as his sons. It is perfectly
clear that the paternal despotism spoken of by Mr Smith, which indeed was
supposed to be necessary one hundred and fifty years ago, was not the
reason why his boys so early talked and reasoned like men. William Burns
was the elderly friend of his sons, not a despot, when he trained them to
love reading, and much better to speak freely their individual opinions
about what they read. This naturally led his sons to speak like men early
and fearlessly. Despotism on the part of the father would have had
directly the opposite effect.
Gilbert Burns sums up his father's estimate of early education and good
training when he says: 'My father laboured hard, and lived with the most
rigid economy, that he might be able to keep his children at home, thereby
having an opportunity of watching the progress of our young minds and
forming in them early habits of piety and virtue; and from this motive
alone did he engage in farming, the source of all his difficulties and
distresses.'
Robert, after his father's death, wrote to his cousin, and said his father
was 'the best of friends, and the ablest of instructors.'
In the sketch of his life sent to Dr Moore, of London, he wrote: 'My
father, after many years of wanderings and sojournings, picked up a pretty
large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for
most of my pretensions to wisdom.'
An important element in the education of Burns was his love of Nature.
His mind was specially susceptible to development by Nature in any of its
forms of beauty or of majesty. A friend who was his guide through the
grounds of Athole House, when he was making his tour through the
Highlands, in a letter to Mr Alex. Cunningham, wrote: 'I had often, like
others, experienced the pleasures which arise from the sublime or elegant
landscape, but I never saw those feelings so intense as in Burns.'
Burns was born and spent his early life and young manhood in a district
whose beauty has few equals anywhere. Its rivers--Ayr, Doon, Afton, Lugar,
Fail, and Cessnock; all, except Afton, within easy walking distance of his
homes in Ayrshire--with their beautifully wooded banks, were, in a very
definite way, transforming agencies in the growth of his mind, and
therefore most important elements in his highest education. The 'winding
Nith,' which flowed within a few yards of the home he built on Ellisland
farm, around the promontory on which stand the ruins of Lincluden Abbey,
and on through Dumfries, continued during the last few years of his life
the educational work of the rivers of his native Ayrshire.
The mind of Burns was brought into unity with spiritual ideals through
the influence of Nature more productively than by any other agency. He
walked in the gloaming, according to his own statement, by the riverside
or in woodland paths when he was composing his poems. While residing in
Dumfries he had a favourite walk up the Nith to Lincluden Abbey, amid
whose ruins he sat in the gloaming, and on moonlight nights often till
midnight, recording the visions that came to him in that sacred
environment of wooded river and linn (waterfall).
There was much similarity between the most vital educational development
of Burns and of Mrs Browning. In _Aurora Leigh_, the record of her own
growth, she describes her true education, although not her actual life's
history. Aurora loses her mother in her fifth year, and lives with her
father for nine great years near Florence; she says:
So nine full years our days were hid with God
Among His mountains. I was just thirteen,
Still growing like a plant from unseen roots
In tongue-tied springs; and suddenly awoke
To full life, and life's needs and agonies,
With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside
A stone-dead father. Life struck sharp on death
Makes awful lightning.
Her years till thirteen are spent mainly in her father's fine library
reading what she most loved of the treasuries of the world. Her own
statement of her father's educational guidance is:
My father taught me what he had learnt the best
Before he died, and left me--grief and love;
And seeing we had books among the hills,
Strong words of counselling souls, confederate
With vocal pines and waters, out of books
He taught me all the ignorance of men,
And how God laughs in heaven when any man
Says, 'Here I'm learned; this I understand;
In that I'm never caught at fault or doubt.'
Like Burns she reads good books with joyous interest; like Burns she has a
father deeply interested in her education who teaches her vital things;
and like Burns she loves to learn from the 'vocal pines and waters,' and
finds her richest revelations for her mind 'with God among His mountains.'
The hills of Ayrshire, the rivers, and the river-glens, whose sides are
covered with beautiful trees, were to Burns kindlers of high ideals, and
revealers of God.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BURNS.
He was a truly independent democrat. The love of liberty was the basic
element of his character. His fundamental philosophy he expressed in the
unanswered and unanswerable questions:
Why should ae man better fare,
And a' men brothers?
_Epistle to Dr Blacklock._
If I'm designed yon lordling's slave,
By Nature's law designed,
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?
_Man was Made to Mourn._
To the Right Hon. John Francis Erskine he wrote: 'The partiality of my
countrymen has brought me forward as a man of genius, and has given me a
character to support. In the Poet I have avowed manly and independent
sentiments, which I trust will be found in the Man.'
Referring to the fact that his father's family rented land from the
'famous, noble Keiths,' and had the honour of sharing their fate--their
estates were forfeited because they took part in the rebellion of
1715--he says: 'Those who dare welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy,
for what they believe sincerely to be the cause of their God and their
King, are--as Mark Antony in Shakespeare says of Brutus and
Cassius--"Honourable men."'
Though his father was not born in 1715, he undoubtedly got from his family
the principles of independence and the love of liberty which he afterwards
taught to his sons, and which Robert propagated with so much zeal.
In a letter to Mrs Dunlop he wrote: 'Light be the turf upon his breast who
taught, "Reverence thyself."'
To Lord Glencairn, after expressing his gratitude, he said: 'My gratitude
is not selfish design--that I disdain; it is not dodging after the heel of
greatness--that is an offering you disdain. It is a feeling of the same
kind with my devotion.'
In many of his letters he expresses the same sentiments. In his Epistle to
his young friend, Andrew Aiken, he advises him, among other things,
To gather gear by every wile
That's justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
In a letter to Mr William Dunbar, dealing with his consciousness of his
responsibility for his children, he wrote, 1790: 'I know the value of
independence; and since I cannot give my sons an independent fortune, I
shall give them an independent line of life.'
Writing to Mrs Dunlop about his son--her god-son--Burns said: 'I am myself
delighted with the manly swell of his little chest, and a certain
miniature dignity in the carriage of the head, and the glance of his fine
black eye, which promise the undaunted gallantry of an independent mind.'
In 'A Man's a Man for a' That' he says:
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd 'a lord,'
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that. blockhead
For a' that, and a' that,
His ribband, star, and a' that,
The man o' independent mind
He looks and laughs at a' that.
In the same great poem he crystallises a fundamental truth in the immortal
couplet:
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that. gold
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote in 1787: 'I trust I have too much pride for
servility, and too little prudence for selfishness.'
To Mrs M'Lehose he wrote in 1788: 'The dignifying and dignified
consciousness of an honest man, and the well-grounded trust in approving
heaven, are two most substantial foundations of happiness.'
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote in 1788: 'Two of my adored household gods are
independence of spirit and integrity of soul.'
To Mrs Graham he wrote in 1791: 'May my failings ever be those of a
generous heart and an independent mind.'
To John Francis Erskine he wrote in 1793: 'My independent British mind
oppression might bend, but could not subdue.'
In the 'Vision' the message he says he received from Coila, the genius of
Kyle, the part of Ayrshire in which he was born, was:
Preserve the dignity of Man, with soul erect.
Burns has been criticised for meddling with what his critics called
politics. The highest messages Christ gave to the world were the value of
the individual soul, and brotherhood based on the unity of developed
individual souls. His highest messages were understood by Burns more
clearly than by any one else during his time, and Burns was too great a
man to be untrue to his greatest visions. His poems are still among the
best interpretations of Christ's ideals of democracy and brotherhood.
The supreme aim of Burns was to secure for all men and women freedom from
the unnatural restrictions of class or custom, so that each individual
might have equal opportunity for the development of his highest element of
power, his individuality, or self-hood--really the image of God in each.
God gave him the vision of the ideal: 'Why should ae man better fare, and
a' men brothers?' and he tried to reveal the great vision to the world to
kindle the hearts of men.
Burns was a devoted son, and a loving, considerate, respectful, and
generous brother. After his father died, Robert wrote to his cousin: 'On
the 13th current I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we have
had long warning of the impending stroke, still the feelings of nature
claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments and
paternal lessons of the best of friends and the ablest of instructors
without feeling what, perhaps, the calmer dictates of reason would partly
condemn.
'I hope my father's friends in your country will not let their connection
in this place die with him. For my part, I shall ever with pleasure--with
pride--acknowledge my connection with those who were allied by the ties
of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I shall ever honour and
revere.'
On the stone above his father's grave in Alloway Kirkyard are engraved the
words Burns wrote as his father's epitaph:
O ye, whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious reverence and attend!
Here lies the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen'rous friend;
The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
The dauntless heart that feared no human pride;
The friend of man--to vice alone a foe;
For ev'n his failings leaned to virtue's side.
John Murdoch warmly approved of this epitaph of his former pupil and
friend Robert. He wrote: 'I have often wished, for the good of mankind,
that it were as customary to honour and perpetuate the memory of those who
excel in moral rectitude, as it is to extol what are called heroic
actions.'
When Burns found that the Edinburgh edition of his poems had brought him
about five hundred pounds, he loaned Gilbert one hundred and fifty pounds
to assist him to get out of debt, in order that his mother and sisters
might be placed in a position of security and greater happiness. In a
letter to Robert Graham of Fintry, explaining the circumstances that led
him to accept the position of an exciseman, he first explains that
Ellisland farm, which he rented, was in the last stage of worn-out poverty
when he got possession of it, and that it would take some time before it
would pay the rent. Then he says: 'I might have had cash to supply the
deficiencies of these hungry years; but I have a younger brother and three
sisters on a farm in Ayrshire, and it took all my surplus over what I
thought necessary for my farming capital to save not only the comfort, but
the very existence, of that fireside circle from impending destruction.'
He helped with sympathy, advice, and material support a younger brother
who lived in England. His true attitude towards his own wife and family is
shown in his 'Epistle to Dr Blacklock':
To make a happy fireside clime
For weans and wife,
Is the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.
The greatest dread of his later years was that he might not be able to
provide for his family in case of his death.
Burns was an upright, honest man. To the mother of the Earl of Glencairn
he wrote: 'I would much rather have it said that my profession borrowed
credit from me, than that I borrowed credit from my profession.'
To James Hamilton, of Glasgow, he wrote: 'Among some distressful
emergencies that I have experienced in life, I have ever laid it down as
my foundation of comfort--that he who has lived the life of an honest man
has by no means lived in vain.'
To Sir John Whitefoord he wrote in 1787: 'Reverence to God and integrity
to my fellow-creatures I hope I shall ever preserve.'
In a letter to John M'Murdo in 1793 he wrote: 'To no man, whatever his
station in life, have I ever paid a compliment at the expense of truth.'
In 'Lines written in Friar's Carse' he wrote:
Keep the name of Man in mind,
And dishonour not your kind.
To Robert Ainslie he wrote: 'It is much to be a great character as a
lawyer, but beyond comparison more to be a great character as a man.'
To Andrew Aiken, in his 'Epistle to a Young Friend,' he wrote:
Where you feel your honour grip,
Let that aye be your border.
In 'A Man's a Man for a' That' he expresses his faith in righteousness as
a fundamental element in character, where he says:
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Burns had a sympathetic heart that overflowed with kindness for his
fellow-men, and even for animals, domestic and wild. In a letter to the
Rev. G. H. Baird in 1791 he said: 'I am fain to do any good that occurs in
my very limited power to a fellow-creature, just for the selfish purpose
of clearing a little the vista of retrospection.'
It was the big heart of Burns that directed the writing of the first part
of that sentence, and his modesty that led to the expression of the second
part. The joy of remembering a good deed was never his chief reason for
doing it. In a 'Tragic Fragment' he wrote:
With sincere though unavailing sighs
I view the helpless children of distress.
A number of stories have been preserved to prove that while Burns was
strict and stern in dealing with smugglers, and others who made a practice
of breaking the law by illegally selling strong drink without licence, he
was tenderly kind and protective to poor women who had little stores of
refreshments to sell to their friends on fair and market days.
Professor Gillespie related that he overheard Burns say to a poor woman of
Thornhill one fair-day as she stood at her door: 'Kate, are you mad? Don't
you know that the Supervisor and I will be in upon you in the course of
forty minutes? Good-bye t'ye at present.'
His friendly hint saved a poor widow from a heavy fine of several pounds,
while the annual loss to the revenue would be only a few shillings.
He was ordered to look into the case of another old woman, suspected of
selling home-brewed ale without licence. When she knew his errand she
said: 'Mercy on us! are ye an exciseman? God help me, man! Ye'll surely no
inform on a puir auld body like me, as I hae nae other means o' leevin'
than sellin' my drap o' home-brewed to decent folk that come to Holywood
Kirk.'
Burns patted her on the shoulder and said: 'Janet, Janet, sin awa', and
I'll protect ye.'
In 'A Winter Night' Burns reveals a deep and genuine sympathy with the
outlying cattle, the poor sheep hiding from the storm, the wee helpless
birds, and even for the fox and the wolf; and mourns because the pitiless
tempest beats on them.
Carlyle says of 'A Winter Night' that 'it is worth seven homilies on
mercy, for it is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns indeed lives in
sympathy; his soul rushes into all the realms of being; nothing that has
existence can be indifferent to him.'
The auld farmer's 'New Year Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie,'
reveals a profound and affectionate sympathy more tender than the pity he
felt for the animals and birds that suffered from the winter storm. It is
based on long years of friendly association in co-operative achievement.
From the New Year's wish at the beginning, to the end, where he assures
her that she is no less deserving now than she was
That day ye pranced wi' muckle pride
When ye bure hame my bonnie bride;
And sweet and gracefu' she did ride
Wi' maiden air!
and tells her that he has a heapet feed of oats laid by for her, and will
also tether her on a reserved ridge of fine pasture, where she may have
plenty to eat and a comfortable place on which to rest; each verse is full
of pleasant memories.
His kindly sympathy is as appreciative as if she had been a human being
instead of a mare.
'Poor Mailie's Elegy' is a natural expression of sorrow in the heart--the
great, loving heart of Burns--for the death of the pet lamb. He says:
He's lost a friend and neighbour dear
In Mailie dead.
Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him;
A lang half-mile she could descry him;
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed;
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him,
Than Mailie dead.
So in the pathos and emotion shown for the mouse whose home his plough
destroyed at the approach of winter; for the wounded hare that limped past
him; for the starving thrush with which he offered to share his last
crust; and for the scared water-fowl that flew from him, when he regretted
that they had reason to do so on account of man's treatment of them, he
gives ample evidence of the warmth of the glow of his sympathy.
One of the most prominent characteristics of Burns was loyalty to his
native land. One of his earliest dreams, when he was a boy, was a hope
that some day he might be able to do something that would bring honour to
Scotland. In his Epistle to Mrs Scott of Wauchope-House he says:
I mind it weel, in early date,
When I was beardless, young, and blate, bashful
* * * * *
When first amang the yellow corn
A man I reckoned was,
* * * * *
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 usefu' plan or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least.
The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide
Amang the bearded bear, barley
I turned the weeder-clips aside
And spared the symbol dear:
No nation, no station,
My envy e'er could raise;
A Scot still, but blot still, without
I knew nae higher praise.
The boy who had such a reverent feeling in his heart for the thistle, the
symbol of his native land, that he did not like to cut it, continued
throughout his life to have a reverence for the land itself, and tried to
honour it in every possible way.
He did make the book and sing the songs that brought more lasting glory to
Scotland than any other work done by any other man or combination of men
in his time.
He wrote more than two hundred and fifty love-songs, and he refused to
accept a shilling for them, though he needed money very badly. Many of his
love-songs were the direct out-pouring of his heart, the overflow of his
love for Nellie Kirkpatrick and Peggy Thomson, the girl lovers of his
boyhood; and for Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs
M'Lehose; but most of his love-songs were 'fictitious,' as he said they
were in the inscription on the copy of his works presented to Jean
Lorimer, the Chloris of his Ellisland and Dumfries period. They were
written mainly to provide pure language and thought for fine melodies of
Scotland composed long before his time; but the words of the songs that
were sung to them were indelicate. He wrote his unequalled songs for
Scotland's sake, and by doing so he gave to Scotland the gift of the
sweetest love-songs ever written. But for these sacred songs his patriotic
spirit resented the idea of acceptance of material reward. No higher
revelation of genuine patriotism was ever shown than this.
Burns was a sensitive and very shy man. He is commonly supposed to have
been just the opposite. He was brought up in a home at Mount Oliphant
where he rarely associated with other people. Months sometimes passed
without an evening spent in any other way than in reading and discussions
of the matter read by his father, Gilbert, and himself; so in boyhood and
early youth he was reserved. When he began to go out among other young men
his comparatively developed mind, his very unusual stores of
knowledge--not merely stored, but classified and related--and his
extraordinary power of eloquence made him at once a leader and a
favourite, so he soon overcame his reserve and shyness with young men. It
was not so with young women. He had been trained to wait for introductions
to them. He was walking past Jean Armour, when she was at the town pump at
Mauchline getting water to sprinkle the clothes on the bleaching-green,
without speaking to her, and she spoke to him, recalling a remark she
heard him make at the annual dance on the evening of the fair. He was
twenty-five, and she was eighteen. He would have passed close to her in
respectful silence if she had not spoken.
Sir Walter Scott wrote: 'I was told, but did not observe it, that his
address to females was extremely deferential.'
Scott did not mean to suggest a doubt about what he was told, but just to
intimate that he had not had opportunity to observe the fact. Scott met
Burns only once in company, and Scott was a boy at the time.
He dearly and reverently loved Alison Begbie when he was twenty-one. She
was the first woman whom he asked to become his wife. She was a servant in
a farm-house on the banks of Cessnock Water, in the neighbourhood of
Lochlea farm. He was twenty-two when he asked her to marry him, and he was
so shy, even at that age, that he could not propose when he was with her.
She did not accept his offer. Few women of his acquaintance would have
refused to accept his written proposal. Probably none of them--not even
Alison Begbie--would have refused him if he had been able to overcome his
shyness, and had proposed in person instead of by letter.
He wrote five letters to Alison Begbie, and definitely asked her to marry
him in the fourth letter. In the first he said: 'I am a stranger in these
matters, as I assure you that you are the first woman to whom I ever made
such a declaration, so I declare I am at a loss how to proceed. I have
more than once come into your company with a resolution to say what I have
just now told you; but my resolution always failed me, and even now my
heart trembles for the consequence of what I have said.'
The following copies of the letter containing his proposal (the fourth),
and of his reply to her refusal, if read carefully, should reveal several
admirable characteristics of Burns.
'LOCHLEA, 1781.
'MY DEAR E.,[2]--I have often thought it a peculiarly unlucky
circumstance in love that, though in every other situation in life,
telling the truth is not only the safest, but actually by far the
easiest way of proceeding, a Lover is never under greater difficulty
in acting, or more puzzled for expression, than when his passion is
sincere, and his intentions are honourable. I do not think that it is
very difficult for a person of ordinary capacity to talk of love and
fondness which are not felt, and to make vows of constancy and
fidelity which are never intended to be performed, if he be villain
enough to practise such detestable conduct; but to a man whose heart
glows with the principles of integrity and truth, and who sincerely
loves a woman of amiable person, uncommon refinement of sentiment,
and purity of manners--to such a one in such circumstances I can
assure you, my Dear, from my own feelings at this present moment,
_Courtship_ is a task indeed.
There is such a number of foreboding fears, and distrustful anxieties
crowd into my mind when I am in your company, or when I sit down to
write to you, that what to speak or what to write I am altogether at
a loss.
'There is one rule which I have hitherto practised, and which I shall
invariably keep with you, and that is, honestly to tell you the plain
truth. There is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of
dissimulation and falsehood, that I am surprised they can be used by
any one in so noble, so generous a passion as Virtuous Love. No, my
dear E., I shall never endeavour to gain your favour by such
detestable practices. If you will be so good and so generous as to
admit me for your partner, your companion, your bosom friend through
life, there is nothing on this side of eternity shall give me greater
transport; but I shall never think of purchasing your hand by any
arts unworthy of a man, and, I will add, of a Christian. There is one
thing, my Dear, which I earnestly request of you, and it is this:
that you would soon either put an end to my hopes by a peremptory
refusal, or cure me of my fears by a generous consent.
'It would oblige me much if you would send me a line or two when
convenient. I shall only add further, that if a behaviour regulated
(though perhaps but very imperfectly) by the rules of Honour and
Virtue, if a heart devoted to love and esteem you, and an earnest
endeavour to promote your happiness; if these are qualities you would
wish in a friend, in a husband, I hope you shall ever find them in
your real friend and sincere lover.'
After her refusal he wrote:
'LOCHLEA, 1781.
'I ought in good manners to have acknowledged the receipt of your
letter before this time, but my heart was so shocked with the
contents of it, that I can scarcely yet collect my thoughts so as to
write to you on the subject. I will not attempt to describe what I
felt on receiving your letter. I read it over and over, again and
again, and though it was in the politest language of refusal, still
it was peremptory; you "were very sorry you could not make me a
return, but you wish me--what without you I can never obtain--you
wish me all kinds of happiness." It would be weak and unmanly to say
that without you I never can be happy; but sure I am, that sharing
life with you would have given it a relish that, wanting you, I can
never taste.
'Your uncommon personal advantages, and your superior good sense, do
not so much strike me; these possibly in a few instances may be met
with in others; but that amiable goodness, that tender, feminine
softness, that endearing sweetness of disposition, with all the
charming offspring of a warm, feeling heart--these I never again
expect to meet with in such a degree in this world. All these
charming qualities, heightened by an education much beyond anything I
have ever met with in any woman I ever dared to approach, have made
an impression on my heart that I do not think the world can ever
efface. My imagination had fondly flattered itself with a wish--I
dare not say it ever reached a hope--that possibly I might one day
call you mine. I had formed the most delightful images, and my fancy
fondly brooded over them; but now I am wretched for the loss of what
I really had no right to expect. I must now think no more of you as a
mistress, still I presume to ask to be admitted as a friend. As such
I wish to be allowed to wait on you, and as I expect to remove in a
few days a little farther off, and you, I suppose, will perhaps soon
leave this place, I wish to see you or hear from you soon; and if an
expression should perhaps escape me rather too warm for friendship,
I hope you will pardon it in, my dear Miss ---- (pardon me the dear
expression for once),
'R. B.'
Those who say that these letters 'have an air of taskwork and constraint
about them' should remember that Burns formed the style of his
letter-writing when but a boy from a book containing the letters of
leaders of Queen Anne's time, which was given to him by his uncle. His own
letters on all subjects are written in a dignified style. It is worth
noting that Motherwell, who criticised the style of the letters, says of
them: 'They are, in fact, the only sensible love-letters we have ever
seen.'
Though naturally a very shy man, he grew to be happier as his powers
developed. In his teens and young manhood he had fits bordering on
despondency. But he passed through them and became more buoyant in spirit,
and, though poor, was contented.
In 'My Nannie O' he wrote:
Come weel, come woe, I care na by,
I'll tak what Heaven will sen' me.
In 'It is na, Jean, thy Bonnie Face,' he said:
Content am I if Heaven shall give
But happiness to thee.
This shows that consideration for others was one of his sources of
happiness.
In his 'Epistle to James Smith' he wrote:
Truce with peevish, poor complaining!
Is Fortune's fickle Luna waning?
E'en let her gang!
Beneath what light she has remaining
Let's sing our sang.
Dr John M'Kenzie of Mauchline, in 1810, thirteen years after the death of
Burns, described a visit made to see his father when he was ill. In it he
says: 'Gilbert, in the first interview I had with him at Lochlea, was
frank, modest, well-informed, and communicative. The poet seemed distant,
suspicious, and without any wish to interest or please. He kept himself
very silent in a dark corner of the room; and before he took any part in
the conversation, I frequently detected him scrutinising me during my
conversation with his father and brother.
'But afterwards, when the conversation, which was on a medical subject,
had taken the turn he wished, he began to engage in it, displaying a
dexterity of reasoning, an ingenuity of reflection, and a familiarity with
topics apparently beyond his reach, by which his visitor was no less
gratified than astonished.'
Burns lived next door to Dr M'Kenzie after he was married the second time
to Jean Armour. They were great friends. Burns wrote a masonic poem to
him, and called him 'Common-sense' in 'The Holy Fair.'
In the letter from which the above quotation is made, Dr M'Kenzie says
Robert took his characteristics mainly from his mother, and that Gilbert
resembled his father.
Burns looked like his mother, and inherited his temperamental
characteristics mainly from her.
Burns had a definitely religious tendency as one of his strong
characteristics when he was a child. In the sketch of his life that he
wrote to Dr Moore, of London, when he was twenty-eight years old, he says
that as a boy he possessed 'an enthusiastic idiot-piety. I say idiot-piety
because I was then a child.'
He wrote several religious poems while living on Lochlea farm and on
Mossgiel farm. 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' was written at Mossgiel.
Throughout his life his religious tendency was one of his characteristics.
This will be considered more fully in the chapter on 'Burns's Great Work
for Religion.'
Burns was the warm, personal friend of the 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. Cunningham, Rev. Archibald Alison, Sir
John Sinclair, Rev. John M'Math, and the best ministers of the 'New
Licht,' or progressive class; the leading professors in Edinburgh
University, and the leading schoolmasters in his neighbourhood. In fact,
he was loved and respected by leaders of all classes except the 'Auld
Licht' preachers. He lives on and becomes more popular as he becomes
better known.
His one characteristic that would most fully represent him and his work
for God and humanity is his propelling tendency to be a reformer of
conditions. He accepted no existing conditions as good enough. He saw
quickly and clearly the defects of conditions as they existed, and he
never hesitated to attack any evil that he could help to overthrow. He
saw that individual freedom and pure religion were vital and essential
elements of human progress and happiness. He saw with unerring vision the
lack of freedom and of vital religion in the lives of the people; so to
make all men free, to give all children equal opportunity to develop the
best in their souls, and to purify religion from superstition, hypocrisy,
bigotry, and kindred evils that were blighting it, became his highest
purposes.
What was the character of Burns in the estimation of the leading people of
his own time? On replying to a request that he would use his influence in
favour of Burns for an appointment Sir John Whitefoord wrote: 'Your
character as a man, as well as a poet, entitles you, I think, to the
assistance of every inhabitant of Ayrshire.'
Sir John owned the Ballochmyle estate near Mauchline, and was one of the
leading country gentlemen of Ayrshire in his time.
Mr Archibald Prentice, editor of the _Manchester Times_, was the son of a
prominent man who lived about half-way between Mauchline and Edinburgh, at
Covington, in Lanarkshire. Mr Prentice, senior, was a great admirer of
Burns, as were leaders everywhere. Mr Archibald Prentice, writing about
his father's affectionate respect for Burns, said; 'My father, though a
strictly moral and religious man himself, always maintained that the
virtues of the poet greatly predominated over his faults. I once heard him
exclaim with hot wrath, when somebody was quoting from an apologist,
"What! do _they_ apologise for _him_! One half of his good, and all his
bad divided among a score of them, would make them a' better men!"
'In the year 1809 I resided for a short time in Ayrshire, in the
hospitable house of my father's friend Reid, and surveyed with a strong
interest such visitors as had known Burns. I soon learned how to
anticipate their representations of his character. The men of strong minds
and strong feelings were invariable in their expressions of admiration;
but the _prosy_, consequential _bodies_ all disliked him as exceedingly
dictatorial. The men whose religion was based on intellect and high moral
sentiment all thought well of him; but the mere professors [of religion]
"with their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces" denounced him as
worse than an infidel.'
The progress of religious reformers has always been a thorny one. The
Master, Christ Himself, was crucified by the 'Auld Lichts' of His time,
and they stoned Stephen to death. So, through the centuries unprogressive
theologians have persecuted and often murdered the religious reformers,
who saw the evils in theology, and wished to remove them from the creeds
that blighted men's souls. They burned Latimer in England; and Luther in
Germany was saved by the action of his friends by shutting him in Wartburg
Castle for protection. Religious reformers in the time of Burns were not
burned or stoned to death, but they were persecuted and prosecuted before
the Church Courts by men who did not approve of their higher visions of
truth. Burns himself was regarded as unorthodox, but his creed is much
more in harmony with the religious thought of to-day than it was with the
creed of the 'Auld Licht' preachers. One of the marvels of human
development through the ages has been that the bigoted theologians of each
succeeding century resented the attempts of men with clearer vision to
reform their creeds.
Men who truly believe in God cannot believe that any creed made by men can
be infallible; they should know that from generation to generation
humanity consciously grows towards the Divine, and that as they climb they
see in the clearer spiritual air new visions of higher meaning in regard
to life and to vital religion, revealing to each man new conceptions of
his duty to God and to his fellow-men.
Lovers of Burns reverence his memory because he was so great and so wise a
reformer, and did so much to make men truly free, and to make religion a
more vitally uplifting agency in the hearts of men.
CHAPTER IV.
BURNS WAS A RELIGIOUS MAN.
'Burns a religious man!' scoffers exclaim. 'He was a drunkard.' Burns was
a moderate drinker compared with most of the ministers of his time. If
drinking whisky was a disqualification for religious character in the time
of Burns, a large proportion of the ministers of his time were
disqualified. Burns should not, in all fairness, be judged by the
standards of our time. More than fifty years after Burns died it was
customary for even Methodist ministers in Canada, when visiting the
members of their churches, to accept a little whisky punch as an evidence
of good fellowship and comradeship. This custom persisted in Scotland and
England for more than a century after Burns died, and in many places it
exists still. In a letter to Mr William Cruickshank in 1788 he said: 'I
have fought my way severely through the savage hospitality of this
country--the object of all hosts being to send every guest to bed drunk if
they can.'
Burns was not speaking of hotel-keepers, but of homes of people of high
respectability. He wrote in 1793: 'Taverns I have totally abandoned, but
it is the private parties in the family way among the hard-drinking
gentlemen of the country that do me the mischief.'
He did occasionally go to the Globe Tavern in Dumfries after 1793, when
the guest of visitors who came to Dumfries solely for the purpose of
meeting him and having the honour of entertaining him.
In his short life of Burns, Alexander Smith says: 'If he drank hard, it
was in an age when hard drinking was fashionable. If he sinned in this
respect, he sinned in company with English Prime Ministers, Scotch Lords
of Session, grave dignitaries of the Church in both countries, and
thousands of ordinary blockheads who went to their graves in the odour of
sanctity, and whose epitaphs are a catalogue of all the virtues.'
Burns spoke with all sincerity, in a letter to his friend Samuel Clark of
Dumfries, when he wrote: 'Some of our folks about the Excise office,
Edinburgh, had, and perhaps still have, conceived a prejudice against me
as being a drunken, dissipated character. I might be all this, you know,
and yet be an honest fellow; but you know that _I am an honest fellow_,
and am nothing of this.' His superiors in the Excise department gave him
a high record for accuracy and honesty in his work.
Other objectors say: 'He could not be religious, because he attacked
religion.' This statement is not correct. He attacked the evils that in
his time robbed religion of its vital power, but never religion. Emerson
says: 'Not Luther, not Latimer, struck stronger blows against false
theology than did the poet Burns.'
To Clarinda, Burns wrote: 'I hate the superstition of a fanatic, but I
love the religion of a man.'
In his poem 'The Tree of Liberty' he lays the blame of the terrible
degradation of the French peasantry on
Superstition's wicked brood.
In his 'Epistle to John Goudie' he speaks of
Poor gapin', glowrin' superstition.
He attacked superstition, but not religion.
He attacked hypocrisy, and true men are grateful to him because he did so.
In his 'Epistle to Rev. John M'Math,' the 'New Licht' minister of
Tarbolton, Burns says:
God knows I'm not the thing I should be,
Nor am I ev'n the thing I could be;
But twenty times I rather would be
An atheist clean,
Than under gospel colours hid be
Just for a screen.
He ridiculed hypocrisy, and we are grateful to him for doing so. Nothing
more contemptible than a religious hypocrite can be made of a being
created in the image of God. Hypocrisy is not religion.
He attacked bigotry, one of the most savage monsters that ever tried to
block the way of Christ's highest teaching, the brotherhood of man. No
phenomenal religious absurdity is more incomprehensible than the idea that
Christianity can be promoted by the multiplication of religious
denominations; especially when, as in the time of Burns, and long after
his time, leaders of so-called Christian denominations refused to have
fellowship with each other, or to unite on a common platform in working
for the promotion of Christian ideals. How trivial the formalisms of
theologians seem that kept men apart whom Christ desired to become
co-operative and loving brothers, working harmoniously together for the
achievement of the great visions he revealed!
He wrote to Clarinda, 1788: 'I hate the very idea of a controversial
divinity; and I firmly believe that every upright, honest man, of whatever
sect, will be accepted of the Deity.'
In his 'Epistle to John Goudie' Burns calls bigotry
Sour bigotry on its last legs.
He wrote this in 1785, and much more than a century later bigotry is still
on its legs, but it is tottering to its final overthrow. Burns attacked
bigotry, but not religion.
He attacked the doctrine of predestination, as taught in his time, a most
soul-dwarfing doctrine, calculated to rob humanity of motives to stimulate
it to greater and nobler efforts to achieve for God. He makes Holy Willie
say he deserved damnation five thousand years before he was born. Few
people now regard predestination as an element in vital religion.
He attacked one of the most horribly blasphemous doctrines ever preached,
but preached in the time of Burns, and long after:
That God sends ane to heaven and ten to hell
For His ain glory.
He puts this impious doctrine into the mouth of Holy Willie. More than
half a century after the time of Burns, preachers in the presence of
mothers of their dead babies taught that the babes could not go to heaven
because they were too young to be 'believers in Christ;' and being unable
to account for their statements logically, would say, 'God did these
things for His own glory.' Burns attacked such horrible teaching, but in
doing so he was not attacking religion.
Burns did not believe in the use of the fear of hell as a means of
promoting true religion. There is no soul-kindling power in fear. Fear is
one of the most powerful agencies of evil in preventing the conscious
development of the soul, and of the faith that each soul should have in
God as the source of power, in Christ as the revealer of individual power,
and in himself as God's partner. Fear is a negative agency that appeals to
the weaker side of character. Humanity will not be able to make the rapid
progress towards the Divine that it should make until fear ceases to be a
motive in the minds of men, women, and children. In his great 'Epistle to
a Young Friend' Burns says:
The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip
To haud the _wretch_ in order. keep
Burns proved himself to be a philosopher when he attacked the common plan
of using fear o' hell to make men religious. This was not attacking
religion.
The Rev. L. MacLean Watt says: 'While the professional Christians of
Scotland were fighting about Hell, the humble hearts by the lowly
firesides, with the open book before them, were enriched by the knowledge
of heaven; and while the hypocrites in holy places were scourging those
who were in their power with the thorns of Christ, there were cotters in
their kitchens that had found the healing and the balm of the warm blood
of a Redeemer who died on Calvary for _a wider world_ than theologians
seemed to know.'
Speaking further of the theologians of the time of Burns the Rev. Mr Watt
says: 'Their idea of God was shaped in fashion like themselves--merciless,
remorseless, hating, and hateful; His only passion seeming to their narrow
souls to be damnation and torture of the wretched, lost, and wandering.
Their preachers loved to picture the souls of the condemned swathed in
batches lying in eternal anguish of a most real blazing hell as punishment
for some small offence, or as having been outcast from grace through the
wanton exercise of divine prerogatives. To commend such a God for worship
were like praising and complimenting the cruel child who, for sport, spent
a whole day plucking the limbs and wings from the palpitating body of some
poor, helpless insect. It was a false and blasphemous insult to the human
intelligence.'
Burns had the good fortune to be a cotter, trained by a father who was a
remarkably able man, a great teacher, and a reverently religious man of
very advanced ideals; and it took a century or more of theological
evolution to bring the religious teaching of the world up to the standards
of belief of the Ayrshire cotter.
He attacked the doctrine of Faith without Works. In a letter to Gavin
Hamilton, one of the leading men of the town of Mauchline, a warm,
personal friend of the poet, and an advanced thinker among 'New Licht'
laymen, he wrote in a humorous but really profound way: 'I understand you
are in the habit of intimacy with that Boanerges of Gospel powers, Father
Auld. Be earnest with him that he will wrestle in prayer for you that you
may see the vanity of vanities in trusting to, even practising, the carnal
moral works of charity, humanity, and generosity; things which you
practised so flagrantly that it was evident you delighted in them,
neglecting, or perhaps profanely despising, the wholesome doctrine of
_faith without works_, the only hope of salvation.'
Burns did not say a word against faith in Christ, or love for Christ, or
reverence for the teaching of Christ. So true a Christian as Dean Stanley
said Burns was a 'wise religious teacher.' Burns deplored the fact that
the love of Christ--the highest revelation of love ever given to the
world--should be limited to saving the individual believer from eternal
punishment. That was degrading the highest love into selfishness. Burns
pleaded for loving service for humanity, and for Christ's highest
revelation, brotherhood, as evidence of vital Christian-hood; not merely
'sound believing.' This was not attacking religion. He attacked the men
who attacked other men, like Gavin Hamilton among laymen, and Rev. Dr
M'Gill of Ayr among ministers, because they had advanced ideas regarding
religion.
He attacked the gloom and awful Sunday solemnity of those who professed to
be religious. The world owes him a debt of gratitude for helping to remove
the shadows of religious gloom from human lives. In his poem 'A
Dedication,' addressed to Gavin Hamilton, he advises him ironically, in
order that he may be acceptable to Daddy Auld and others of the 'Auld
Licht' creed, to
Learn three-mile pray'rs an' half-mile graces,
Wi' weel-spread looves, an' lang, wry faces; palms
Grunt up a solemn, lengthened groan,
And damn a' parties [religious] but your own;
I'll warrant then you're nae deceiver,
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer.
If true religion means anything vitally hopeful to a man, it should mean
what Burns said it meant to him in a letter to Mrs Dunlop: 'My dearest
enjoyment.'
In his wise poem, 'Epistle to a Young Friend,' he says:
But still the preaching cant forbear,
And ev'n the rigid feature.
He attacked the 'unco guid,' who delighted to tell how good they were
themselves, and how many were the weaknesses and evil-doings of their
neighbours. He had no more respect for the self-righteous than Christ had.
The fact that he attacked and exposed them, and spoke kindly and
reasonably to them, in his great 'Address to the Unco Guid,' is an
evidence that in this respect at any rate he was a true Christian. One of
the most comprehensively Christian doctrines ever written is the verse:
Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each heart--its various tone,
Each spring--its various bias.
Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.
There is sound philosophy in the first verse of the poem addressed to the
unco guid:
The rigid righteous is a fool,
The rigid wise another.
He often advised the 'douce folks' to be considerate of those who had
greater temptations than they knew; and advised them to try to help them
to overcome their temptations, and with Christian comradeship win their
admiration and sympathetic co-operation in some department of achieving
good.
In the time of Burns nothing would have surprised a wayward man or woman
more than to have received genuine sympathy and respectful comradeship
from members of the Church, the institution that claimed to represent
Christ, who told the story of the one stray lamb, and the story of the
prodigal son; the Great Teacher who said, 'Let him that is without sin
cast the first stone.'
Burns attacked superstition, hypocrisy, bigotry, predestination (taught in
its most repellent form in the time of Burns), the equally repellent
doctrine that 'God sends men to hell for His own glory;' fear of hell as a
basis of religious life; faith without works; religious gloom; and the
spirit of the unco guid. He helped to free religion from these evils more
than any other man of his time did; but that was just the opposite to
attacking religion.
In the 'Holy Fair' and 'The Twa Herds' he criticised with biting sarcasm
certain things connected with religion in his time, from which it is now
happily free. But he did not attack religion. The Rev. L. MacLean Watt,
when summing up the great work Burns did for true religion, especially in
'The Holy Fair,' 'The Twa Herds,' and 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' says: 'It
was in consequence of this ecclesiastical contact that he was, ere long,
involved in a bitter and incessant warfare with the mediæval shadows of
ultra-Calvinism, which laid upon the people the bondage of a rigid
predestinarianism, the terrible result of which in parochial religion was,
that it became a commonplace in the matter of conduct that it did not
matter what you did so long as you believed certain hard and fast tenets
dealing with the purpose of God and the future of the human soul. This
could not but inevitably lead to the observation of grave discrepancies
between creed and conduct; and the setting up of the greatest hypocrisies,
veiled in the cloak of religiousness, that yet, with searching eye of
judgment, sat testing the conduct of better men. Burns was one of the
better men.'
His own attitude towards true religion is shown in his 'Epistle to the
Rev. John M'Math,' a progressive Presbyterian minister in Tarbolton. In it
he says:
All hail, Religion! maid divine!
Pardon a muse sae mean as mine,
Who in her rough, imperfect line
Thus daurs to name thee;
To stigmatise _false friends_ of thine
Can ne'er defame thee.
He stigmatised false friends of religion, but not religion itself.
There are some who yet say 'Burns could not have been a religious man,
because he was a sceptic.' Burns was an independent thinker. His mind did
not accept dogmas or creeds without investigation. In his father's fine
school he was not trained to think he was thinking, when he was merely
allowing the ideas of others to run through his head on the path of
memory. Burns was not trained to believe that he believed, but to think
till he believed; and to accept in the realm beyond his power to reason
great fundamental principles that supplied the conscious needs of his own
heart, as those principles are revealed in the Bible.
In a letter to Mrs Dunlop he wrote: 'I am a very sincere believer in the
Bible; but I am drawn by the conviction of a man, not by the halter of an
ass.'
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, 1788: 'My idle reasonings sometimes made me a
little sceptical, but the necessities of my own heart always gave the cold
philosophisings the lie.'
To Mr Peter Stuart he wrote, referring to the poet Fergusson, 1789: 'Poor
Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is;
and if there be a good God presiding over all Nature, which I am sure
there is--thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world, where worth
of the heart alone is the distinction of man.'
To Mrs Dunlop, to whom more than to any other person he revealed the
depths of his heart, he wrote again, 1789: 'In vain would we reason and
pretend to doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but when I
reflected that I was opposing the most ardent wishes, and the most darling
hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all human belief, in all
ages, I was shocked at my own conduct.'
To Robert Aiken he wrote, 1786: 'Though sceptical in some points of our
current belief, yet I think I have every evidence for the reality of a
life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence.'
To Dr Candlish, of Edinburgh, he wrote, 1787: 'Despising old women's
stories, I ventured into the daring path Spinoza trod, but my experience
with the weakness, not the strength, of human power _made me glad to grasp
revealed religion_.'
To Clarinda he wrote, 1788: 'The Supreme Being has put the immediate
administration of all this for wise and good ends known to Himself into
the hands of Jesus Christ, a great personage whose relation to Him we
cannot comprehend, but whose relation to us is that of a Guide and
Saviour.'
In his epistle to his young friend Andrew Aiken, he sums up in two lines
his attitude to scepticism:
An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange
For Deity offended.
The men who believe most profoundly are those who honestly doubted in
early life, but who naturally loved truth, and sought it with hopeful
minds till they found it. Burns was not a sceptic. He was a reverently
religious man. No man could have written 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' who
was not a reverently religious man. His father, from the earliest years,
when his children were old enough to understand them, began to teach them
fundamental religious principles. They took root deeply in Robert's mind.
William Burns preferred not to use the 'Shorter Catechism,' so he wrote a
special catechism for his own family. It is a remarkable production for a
man in his position in life. It deals with vitally fundamental principles,
and shows a clear understanding of the Bible.
Burns wrote several short religious poems in his early young manhood,
probably his twenty-second and twenty-third years, showing that his mind
was deeply impressed by the majesty, justice, and love of God. Two of
these poems are paraphrases of the Psalms.
The fact that religion was one of the most important elements of his
thought and life is amply proved by the five letters he wrote to Alison
Begbie in his twenty-first and twenty-second years--even before he wrote
his early religious poems. Love-letters though they were, they related
nearly as much to religion as to love. Some people have tried to say
irreverently smart things about the absurdity of writing about religion in
letters to his loved one. Both the religion and the love of his letters to
the first woman he ever asked to marry him are too sacred to provoke
ridicule in the minds of men with proper reverence for either religion or
love. No one can carefully read these five letters without having a
deeper respect for Burns, the young gentleman who loved so deeply that he
regarded love worthy to be placed in association with religion. Religion
was the subject that had been given first place in his life and thought by
the teaching and the life of his father, who had meant infinitely more to
him than most fathers ever mean to their sons.
In his epistle to Andrew Aiken he recommends, in the last verse but one,
two things of vast importance 'when on life we're tempest-driv'n': first,
A conscience but a canker. without
Second,
A correspondence fixed wi' Heaven
Is sure a noble anchor.
Many people read the last couplet without consciously thinking what a
correspondence fixed with Heaven means. Clearly it may have three
meanings: prayer, communion in spirit with the Divine, and similarity to
or harmony with the divine spirit.
Burns had family worship in his home every day to the end of his life when
he was not absent, and though some scoffers may smile, he was earnest and
sincere in trying to conduct for himself and for his family a
'correspondence fixed with heaven' in a spirit of communion with the
Divine Father. He had other altars for communion with God in addition to
his home. He composed his poems in the gloaming after his day's work, in
favourite spots in the deep woods, where he was 'hid with God' alone. God
revealed Himself to Burns in the woods and by the sides of his sacred
rivers more fully than in any other places. One of the most sacred shrines
in Scotland is the great root under one of the mighty beeches of the fine
park on Ballochmyle estate, on which Burns sat so often to compose his
poems in the long Scottish twilights, and later on in the moonlight, when
he lived on Mossgiel farm. Then next night, at his desk over the stable at
Mossgiel, he would rewrite them and improve their form.
No man but a religious man would have written, in his 'Epistle to a Young
Friend,' as Burns did to Andrew Aiken:
The great Creator to revere
Must sure become the creature.
When in Irvine, in his twenty-third year, he wrote a letter to his father.
As usual, he wrote not of trivial matters, but of the great realities of
time and eternity. Among other serious things he wrote: 'My principal,
and, indeed, my only pleasurable, employment is looking backwards and
forwards in a moral and religious way.' In the same letter he wrote:
The soul, uneasy and confined, at home
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.[3]
Burns follows this quotation by saying to his father: 'It is for this
reason that I am more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the
7th Chapter of Revelation than with any ten times as many verses in the
whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble enthusiasm with which they
inspire me for all that the world has to offer.'
His imagination enabled him to see clearly the glories of joy, and
service, and association, and reward, in the heavenly paradise, as
revealed in those triumphant verses.
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, 1788: 'Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only
been all my life my chief dependence, but my dearest enjoyment.... An
irreligious poet would be a monster.'
In his 'Grace before Eating' he reveals his gratitude and conscious
dependence on God:
O Thou, who kindly dost provide
For every creature's want!
We bless Thee, God of Nature wide,
For all Thy goodness lent.
In 'Winter: a Dirge' he says, in reverent submission to God's will:
Thou Power supreme, whose mighty scheme
Those woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest, they must be best,
Because they are Thy Will.
In a poem to Clarinda he wrote, recognising the blessing of Gods universal
presence, not in awe so much as in joy:
God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste, as in the city full;
And where He vital breathes, there must be joy!
In the 'Cotter's Saturday Night' he teaches absolute faith in God, and
indicates man's true relationship to the Divine Father:
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray,
Implore His counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain, that sought the Lord aright.
Writing in condemnation of a miserably selfish miser, he said:
See these hands, ne'er stretched to save,
Hands that took, but never gave;
Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,
Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest;
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest.
And are they of no more avail,
Ten thousand glittering pounds a year?
In other worlds can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here?
O, bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched Vital Part is driven!
The cave-lodged beggar, with a conscience clear,
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to heaven.
The philosophy of his mind, and the affectionate sympathy of his heart
made Burns believe that unselfish service for our fellow-men should be one
of the manifestations of true religion.
In the fine poem he wrote to Mrs Dunlop on New Year's Day, 1790, he says:
A few days may, a few years must,
Repose us in the silent dust.
Then is it wise to damp our bliss?
Yes--all such reasonings are amiss!
The voice of Nature loudly cries,
And many a message from the skies,
That something in us never dies;
That on this frail, uncertain state
Hang matters of eternal weight;
That future life in worlds unknown
Must take its hue from this alone;
Whether as heavenly glory bright,
Or dark as Misery's woeful night.
Let us the important Now employ,
And live as those who never die.
Since, then, my honoured first of friends,
On this poor living all depends.
Any honest man who reads those lines must admit that Burns was a man of
deep religious thought and feeling.
Mrs Dunlop, to whom he wrote so many letters, was one of the leading women
of Scotland in her time. She was a woman of great wisdom and deep
religious character. Like the other great people who knew Burns, she was
his friend. Many of his clearest expressions of his religious opinions are
contained in his letters to her. In a letter to her on New Year's morning,
1789, he said: 'I have some favourite flowers in Spring, among which are
the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the foxglove, the wild brier-rose, the
budding birk [birch], and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over
with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the
curlew in the Summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of
grey-plover in an Autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul
like the enthusiasm of Devotion or Poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to
what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery that, like the Æolian
harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these
workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself
partial to these proofs of those awful and important realities--a God that
made all things--man's immaterial and immortal nature--and a world of weal
or woe beyond death and the grave--these proofs that we deduct by dint of
our own powers of observation. However respectable Individuals in all ages
have been, I have ever looked on Mankind in the lump to be nothing better
than a foolish, head-strong, credulous, unthinking Mob; and their
universal belief has ever had extremely little weight with me. Still, I am
a very sincere believer in the Bible.'
In September 1789 he wrote to Mrs Dunlop: 'Religion, my dear friend, is
true comfort! A strong persuasion in a future state of existence; a
proposition so obviously probable, that, setting revelation aside, every
nation and people, so far as investigation has reached, for at least four
thousand years, have, in some mode or other, firmly believed it.'
To Mrs Dunlop, in 1792, he wrote: 'I am so convinced that an unshaken
faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary by making us
better men, but also by making us happier men, that I shall take every
care that your little god-son [his son], and every creature that shall
call me father, shall be taught them.'
One of his most beautiful religious letters was written to Alexander
Cunningham, of Edinburgh, in 1794: 'Still there are two pillars that bear
us up amid the wreck of misfortune and misery. The _one_ is composed of
the different modifications of a certain noble, stubborn something in man,
known by the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity. The _other_ is made
up of those feelings and sentiments which, however the sceptic may deny
them, or the enthusiast may disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced,
original and component parts of the human soul; those _senses of the
mind_, if I may be allowed the expression, which connect us with and link
us to, those awful, obscure realities--an all-powerful and equally
beneficent God, and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first
gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope beams on the field; the
last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds which time can never cure.
'I do not remember, my dear Cunningham, that you and I ever talked on the
subject of religion at all. I know some who laugh at it, as the trick of
the crafty FEW, to lead the undiscerning MANY; or at most as an uncertain
obscurity, which mankind can never know anything of, and with which they
are fools if they give themselves much to do. Nor would I quarrel with a
man for his irreligion, any more than I would for his want of a musical
ear. I would regret that he was shut out from what, to me and to others,
were such superlative sources of enjoyment. It is in this point of view,
and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the mind of every child of
mine with religion. If my son should happen to be a man of feeling,
sentiment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his enjoyments. Let me
flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is just now running
about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent, glowing heart; and an
imagination, delighted with the painter and rapt with the poet. Let me
figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to inhale the balmy gales,
and enjoy the glowing luxuriance of the spring; himself the while in the
blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all Nature, and thro' Nature up
to Nature's God; his soul, by swift delighting degrees, is rapt above this
sublunary sphere, until he can be silent no longer, and bursts out into
the glorious enthusiasm of Thomson:
'"These, as they change, Almighty Father--these
Are but the varied God; the rolling year
Is full of thee."
'and so on, in all the spirit and ardour of that charming hymn.
'These are no ideal pleasures; they are real delights; and I ask what of
the delights among the sons of men are superior, not to say equal, to
them? And they have this precious, vast addition, that conscious Virtue
stamps them for her own, and lays hold on them to bring herself into the
presence of a witnessing, judging, and approving God.'
In 1788 he wrote to Clarinda: 'My definition of worth is short: truth and
humanity respecting our fellow-creatures; reverence and humility in the
presence of that Being, my Creator and Preserver, and who, I have every
reason to believe, will be my judge.'
Again to Clarinda he wrote in 1788: 'He who is our Author and Preserver,
and will one day be our Judge, must be--not for His sake in the way of
duty, but from the natural impulse of our hearts--the object of our
reverential awe and grateful adoration. He is almighty and all-bounteous;
we are weak and dependent; hence prayer and every other sort of devotion.
"He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
everlasting life;" consequently it must be in every one's power to embrace
His offer of everlasting life; otherwise He could not in justice condemn
those who did not.'
Again in 1788 he wrote to Clarinda: 'In proportion as we are wrung with
grief, or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a Compassionate Deity, an
Almighty Protector, are doubly dear.'
To Mrs Dunlop, in 1795, a year and a half before he died, he wrote: 'I
have nothing to say to any one as to which sect he belongs to, or what
creed he believes; but I look on the man who is firmly persuaded of
Infinite Wisdom and Goodness superintending and directing every
circumstance that can happen in his lot--I felicitate such a man as having
a solid foundation for his mental enjoyment; a firm prop and stay in the
hour of difficulty, trouble, and distress; and a never-failing anchor of
hope when he looks beyond the grave.'
This quotation emphasises his lifelong faith in God, and his belief in his
own immortality. It also shows his perfect freedom from bigotry, and the
broadness of his creed.
In his first 'Commonplace Book' he wrote: 'The grand end of Human being is
to cultivate an intercourse with that Being to whom we owe life, with
every enjoyment that renders life delightful; and to maintain an
integritive conduct towards our fellow-creatures; that by so forming Piety
and Virtue into habit, we may be fit members for that society of the
Pious, and the Good, which reason and revelation teach us to expect beyond
the grave.'
There are no truly good men who will yield to the temptation to speak
sneeringly of any man who fails in his life to reach his highest ideals.
The little-minded men who may sneer at Burns, when they read this
quotation written in his youth, should read his 'Address to the Unco Guid'
over and over, till they get a glimmering comprehension of its meaning.
Whatever the puny minds may be focussed on in the life of Burns, they
should be 'mute at the balance.' They should remember that Burns did more
than any man of his time for true religion, and that to the end of his
life his mind and heart overflowed with the same faith and gratitude to
God that he almost continuously expressed throughout his life.
A final quotation from the letters of Burns about religion may fittingly
be taken from a letter to Robert Aiken, written in 1786: 'O thou unknown
Power! Thou Almighty God who hast lighted up Reason in my breast, and
blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order
and regularity necessary for the perfection of Thy works, yet Thou hast
never left me nor forsaken me.'
Burns was a reverently religious man. Dean Stanley said: 'Burns was a wise
religious teacher.' Principal Rainy objected to Dean Stanley's view
because 'Burns had never become a member of a church on profession of
Faith in Christ.' Professor Rainy either did not remember, or had never
realised, that Burns had done more to reveal Christ's highest
teachings--the value of the individual soul, and brotherhood--than any
other man in the church, or out of it, in Scotland in his time; and also
did more to make religion free from false theology and dwarfing practices,
than any other man of his time, or of any other time in Scotland.
Rev. L. MacLean Watt, of Edinburgh, in his most admirable book on Burns,
answers Principal Rainy's objections with supreme ability, as the
following quotations amply prove: 'Because a man does not categorically
declare his belief in Christ, as that belief is formulated in existing
dogmatic statements of theological authority, it does not mean that he
abhors that belief; nor even though he withhold himself from explicitly
uttering that confession of the Christian faith, does it preclude him from
being a religious teacher. A man may have an enormous influence as a
religious teacher, and yet never have made a formal statement of
Christianity, nor signed a Christian creed.'--'The measure of a man's
faithfulness to the better side of his nature is not to be gauged by the
depth of his fall, but the height to which he rises.... Burns was,
unfortunately, confronted by a narrow and self-righteous set, who were
enslaved to doctrine and dogma, rather than to the practice of the
Christian life with charity and humanity of spirit, part and parcel of a
system of petty tyrannies and mean oppressions, the exercise of which made
for exile from the fold, because of the spiritual conceit and sectarian
humbug which created such characters as "Holy Willie," and the "Unco
Guid," with the superior airs of religious security from which they looked
down on all besides.'
We should test neither the terrible theologians of his time--those men who
attacked Burns and called him irreligious, because he had a clear vision
of a higher, holier religion than the one they preached--nor Burns himself
by the conditions of our own time. It is unjust both to Burns and to his
enemies to do so.
A comparison of the religious principles of the best Christians in the
world nearly a century and a half after his time will show, however, that
the creed of the present is more--much more--like the creed of Burns than
the creed of the dreadful theologians of his time. The creed of the
religious leaders a century hence will be still more like the creed of
Robert Burns than is the creed of to-day.
The following creed is taken from the letters of Burns, expressed in his
own language, except the last article, which is found in longer form in
many of his letters, and more nearly in 'The Hermit,' in which he says:
Let me, O Lord! from life retire,
Unknown each guilty, worldly fire,
Remorse's throb, or loose desire;
And when I die
Let me in this belief expire--
To God I fly.
THE CREED OF ROBERT BURNS.
1. Religion should be a simple business, as it equally concerns the
ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich.
2. There is a great and incomprehensible Being to whom I owe my
existence.
3. The Creator perfectly understands the being He has made.
4. There is a real and eternal distinction between vice and virtue.
5. There must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave.
6. From the sublimity, the excellence, and the purity of His
doctrines and precepts, I believe Jesus Christ came from God.
7. Whatever is done to mitigate the woes, or increase the happiness
of humanity, is goodness.
8. Whatever injures society or any member of it is iniquity.
9. I believe in the immaterial and immortal nature of man.
10. I believe in eternal life with God.
Carlyle expressed regret that 'Burns became involved in the religious
quarrels of his district.' This statement proves that Carlyle failed fully
to comprehend the religious character of Burns. His chivalrous nature was
partly responsible for his entering the battle waged by the 'Auld Lichts'
against his dear friend the Rev. Dr M'Gill of Ayr and Gavin Hamilton of
Mauchline; but his chief reason was his innate determination to free
religion from the evils taught and practised in the name of religion in
his time. He had the soul of a reformer, and the two leading elements in
his soul were Religion and Liberty for the individual. It would have
robbed the world of one of the greatest steps in human progress towards
the Divine made in the eighteenth century, if Burns had failed to be true
to the greatest things in his mind and heart.
Carlyle had clearly not studied the religious elements in either the poems
or the letters of Burns, or he could not have written his comparison
between Burns and Locke, Milton, and Cervantes, who did in poverty and
unusual difficulties grand work. He asks: 'What, then, had these men which
Burns wanted? Two things; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable
for such men. They had a true religious principle of morals, and a single,
not a double, aim in their activity. They were not self-seekers and
self-worshippers; but seekers and worshippers of something far better than
self. Not personal enjoyment was their object; but a high heroic idea of
Religion, of Patriotism, of Heavenly Wisdom in one form or the other form
ever hovered before them.
It passes understanding to comprehend how Carlyle could regard Burns as a
'selfish' man, or a man with 'a double aim'--that is, two conflicting and
opposing aims that he wasted his power in trying to harmonise.
Burns had three great aims: Purer Religion, a just Democracy, and closer
Brotherhood; but these aims are in perfect harmony.
Carlyle ends the contrast between Burns and his model trio--Locke, Milton,
and Cervantes--by saying of Burns: 'He has no religion; in the shallow
age, where his days were cast, Religion was not discriminated from the New
and Old Light _forms_ of Religion; and was, with these, becoming obsolete
in the minds of men.'
'The heart not of a mere hot-blooded, popular verse-monger, or poetical
_Restaurateur_, but of a true poet and singer, worthy of the old religions
heroic, had been given him, and he fell in an age, not of heroism and
religion, but of scepticism, selfishness, and triviality, when true
nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow,
dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of Pride.'
In a just comparison between Burns and the three named by Carlyle, Burns
will need no apologists. Burns, directly in opposition to the statement
of Carlyle, was more vitally religious and less selfish than any of them.
When twenty-one years of age he said, in one of his beautiful love-letters
to Alison Begbie: 'I grasp every creature in the arms of universal
benevolence, and equally participate in the pleasures of the happy, and
sympathise with the miseries of the unfortunate.' This alone proves that
Burns was one of the least selfish men who ever lived.
As an heroic teacher of vital religion Burns was infinitely greater than
any other man of his time, and has been much more influential since his
time in promoting Christ's ideals than the men named by Carlyle. He was a
fearless hero, and so meets the requirements specified by Carlyle,
because, when he recognised the evils connected with religion in his time,
when true religion was, to use Carlyle's words, 'becoming obsolete,' he
valiantly attacked them, hoping to enable his fellow-men to see the vision
of true religion which his father had given him by his life and teaching.
There was absolutely no justification for calling Burns a mere
verse-monger. To write such a wild nightmare dream about Scotland's
greatest and most self-less poet was unworthy of one of Scotland's leading
prose-writers.
It seems almost ludicrous to take notice of the assertion that Burns had
not a high ideal of patriotism, as compared with the three ideal men of
Carlyle--Burns, whose love for Scotland was a sacred feeling, a holy fire
that never ceased to burn. This criticism needs no answer now.
CHAPTER V.
BURNS THE DEMOCRAT.
No man ever comprehended Christ's ideals regarding democracy more fully
than did Burns. Christ based His teaching of the need of human liberty on
His revelation of the value of the individual soul. Burns clearly
understood Christ's ideals regarding individual freedom, and faithfully
followed Him.
The message of Coila in 'The Vision' to Burns was:
Preserve the dignity of man
With soul erect.
This was the central thought in the work of Burns regarding the freedom of
all mankind: freedom from oppression by other men; freedom from the
bondage imposed on the peasant and the labouring man by customs organised
by so-called 'higher classes'; freedom from the hardship and sorrow of
poverty; freedom for each child to grow under proper conditions of
nourishment, of physical development, and of educational training.
His whole nature was stirred to dignified indignation and resentment by
class distinctions among men and women who were all created in the image
of God, and who, in accordance with the teaching of Christ, should be
brothers. He despised class distinctions which were made by man, whether
the distinctions were made on the basis of rank or wealth. He was ashamed
of the toadies who reverenced a lord merely because he chanced to be born
a lord, and pitied those who accepted without protest inferiority to men
of wealth. He was so true a democrat that he freely and respectfully
recognised the worth of members of the aristocracy or of the wealthy class
whose ability and high character made them worthy of respect; but he held
in contempt those who assumed superiority simply because of rank or gold.
One of his most brilliant poems is 'A Man's a Man for a' That.' In it he
gives comprehensive expression to his opinions, based on the fundamental
principle,
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is King o' men for a' that.
Is there for honesty poverty,
That hangs his head an' a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by;
We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure, an' a' that;
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that. gold
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that: blockhead
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that;
The man of independent mind
He looks and laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might, above
Gude faith he maunna fa' that. must not try
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that.
Labouring man on farm or in factory, this is your charter. Let this be
your creed. Sing this great democratic hymn at your gatherings--ay, sing
it in your homes with your children, and each time you sing it, it should
kindle some new light in your soul that will bring you new vision of the
greatest fact in connection with human life and duty, that you are alive
to be God's partner, and that while you remain honest, and unselfishly
consider the rights of others, as fully as you consider your own, you are
entitled to stand with kings, because you are an honest man.
The discussion between Cæsar the aristocratic dog and Luath the cotter's
dog is a fair representation of class conditions in Scotland in the time
of Burns. Cæsar describes the laird's riches, his idleness, his rackèd
rents, and the compulsory services required from the poor tenants; dilates
on the wastefulness in connection with the meals even of the servants in
the homes of the great; and expresses surprise that poor folks could exist
under their trying conditions.
Luath admits that sometimes the strain on the cotter was very severe:
digging ditches, building dykes with dirty stones, baring a quarry, 'an'
sic like,' as a means of sustaining a lot of ragged children with nothing
but his hand labour. He acknowledges that, when ill or out of work, it
sometimes seems hopeless; but, after all, though past his comprehension,
the poor folks are wonderfully contented, and stately men and clever
women are brought up in their homes.
Cæsar then expatiates on the contemptuous way the poor are 'huffed, and
cuffed, and disrespecket.' He especially sympathises with the poor on
account of the way tenants are treated by the laird's agents on
rent-day--compelled to submit to their insolence, while they swear and
threaten to seize their property; and concludes that poor folks must be
very wretched.
Luath replies that, after all, they are not so wretched as he thinks; that
their dearest enjoyments are in their wives and thriving children; that
they often forget their private cares and discuss the affairs of kirk and
state; that Hallowe'en and Christmas celebrations give them grand
opportunities for happiness that make them forget their hardships and
sorrows, and that during these festivals the old folks are so cheery and
the young ones are so frolicsome that he 'for joy has barket wi' them!'
Still, he admits that it is owre true what Cæsar says, and that many
decent, honest folk 'are riven out, baith root and branch, some rascal's
pridefu' greed to quench.'
Cæsar then describes the reckless way in which the money received from
the poor cotters was wasted at operas, plays, mortgaging, gambling,
masquerading, or taking trips to Calais, Vienna, Versailles, Madrid, or
Italy; and finally to Germany, to some resort where their dissipations may
be overcome by drinking muddy German water.
Luath is surprised to learn that the money for which the cotters have
toiled so hard should be spent so wastefully; and wishes the gentry would
stay at home and take interest in the sports of their own country, as it
would be so much better for all: laird, tenant, and cotter. He closes by
saying that many of the lairds are not ill-hearted fellows, and asks Cæsar
if there is not a great deal of true pleasure in the lives of the rich.
Cæsar replies:
Lord, man, were ye but whyles where I am,
The gentles ye wad ne'er envy them.
Admitting that they need not starve or work hard through winter's cold or
summer's heat, or suffer in old age from working all day in the wet, he
says:
But human bodies are sic fools,
For a' their colleges and schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them,
They mak enow themsels to vex them;
An' aye the less they hae to sturt them,
In like proportion less will hurt them.
A country fellow at the pleugh,
His acres till'd, he's right eneugh;
A country girl at her wheel,
Her dizzens dune, she's unco weel;
But gentlemen, and ladies warst,
Wi' ev'n-down want o' wark are curst.
They loiter, lounging, lank and lazy;
Tho' deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy;
Their days insipid, dull, an' tasteless;
Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless.
An' even their sports, their balls and races,
Their galloping through public places,
There's sic parade, sic pomp an' art,
The joy can scarcely reach the heart.
The ladies arm-in-arm in clusters,
As great and gracious a' as sisters;
But hear their absent thoughts o' ither,
They're a' run deils and jads thegither.
Whyles, ower the wee bit cup an' plaitie,
They sip the scandal-potion pretty;
Or lee-lang nights, wi' crabbet leuks,
Pore ower the devil's pictured beuks; cards
Stake on a chance a farmer's stackyard,
An' cheat like ony unhanged blackguard.
There's some exceptions, man an' woman;
But this is gentry's life in common.
Burns was a philosopher, and he knew such conditions were wrong, and that
they should not be allowed to last. They are better, after more than a
century, since Burns became the champion of the poor; but the great
problem, 'Why should ae man better fare, and a' men brothers?' is not
properly answered yet. The wisest among the aristocracy know this, and
admit it, and sincerely hope that the inevitable evolution to juster
conditions and relationships may be brought about by constitutional means,
and not by revolution.
Professor Dugald Stewart, of Edinburgh University, wrote: 'I recollect
once he told me, when I was admiring a distant prospect in one of our
morning walks, that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure
to his mind none could understand who had not witnessed, like himself, the
happiness and the worth which they contained.'
It was not the unhappiness of the peasantry that stirred the democratic
heart of Burns. It was 'man's inhumanity' to his fellow-men; the
assumption of those belonging to the so-called upper classes that they had
a divine right to hold higher positions than the common people, and that
the poorer people should be contented in the 'station to which God had
called them,' that led Burns to write so ably in favour of democracy. He
recognised no human right to establish stations to which people were
called, and in which they should remain, in spite of their right to fill
any positions for which they had proved their fitness. He could not be so
irreverent or so unreasonable as to believe God could establish the
conditions found all around him, so he claimed the right of every child to
full opportunity for its best development, and to rise honourably to any
position to which it could attain.
In a letter to Miss Margaret Chalmers, 1788, he wrote: 'What signify the
silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the idle trumpery of greatness? When
fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same
benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation of
everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy--in the
name of common-sense, are they not equals?'
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote in 1788: 'There are few circumstances, relating to
the unequal distribution of good things of this life, that give me more
vexation (I mean in what I see around me) than the importance the opulent
bestow on their trifling family affairs, compared with the very same
things on the contracted scale of the cottage. Last afternoon I had the
honour to spend an hour or two at a good woman's fireside, where the
planks that composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and
the gay table sparkled with silver and china. 'Tis now about term-day [a
regular time twice a year was fixed for hiring servants], and there has
been a revolution among those creatures [servants], who, though in
appearance partakers, and equally noble partakers, of the same nature as
Madame, are from time to time--their nerves, sinews, their health,
strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay, a good part of their very
thoughts--sold for months and years, not only to the necessities but the
caprices of the important few. We talked of the insignificant creatures;
nay, notwithstanding their general stupidity and rascality, did some of
the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his
breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished
wretches, their impertinent wives, and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull
does on the little, dirty anthill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in
the carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of
his pride.'
Such experiences added fuel to the divine purpose in his mind to free a
large portion of his fellow-countrymen from the bonds that had been bound
on their bodies and souls by long years of class presumption and heartless
tyranny, which, till Burns attacked them, had grown more unjust and
contemptuous as generation succeeded generation.
Burns's reverence for real manhood, a basic principle of true democratic
spirit, is shown in the closing verse of his 'Elegy on Captain Matthew
Henderson':
Go to your sculptured tombs, ye Great,
In a' the tinsel trash o' state!
But by thy honest turf I'll wait,
Thou man of worth!
And weep the ae best fellow's fate
E'er lay in earth.
To John Francis Erskine he wrote, 1793: 'Burns was a poor man from birth
and an exciseman from necessity; but--I will say it--the sterling of his
honest worth no poverty could debase, and his independent British mind
oppression might bend, but could not subdue.... Can I look tamely on and
see any machination to wrest from them the birthright of my boys--the
little, independent Britons, in whose veins runs my own blood?... Does
any man tell me that my full efforts can be of no service, and that it
does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of a
nation? I can tell him that it is on such individuals as I that a nation
has to rest, both for the hand of support and the eye of intelligence. The
uninformed Mob may swell a Nation's bulk, and the titled, tinsel, courtly
throng may be its feathered ornament; but the number of those who are
elevated enough in life to reason and reflect, yet low enough to keep
clear of the venal contagion of a court--these are a nation's strength.'
He wrote the letter, from which this is an extract, because some
super-loyalists were trying to undermine his reputation on account of his
independence of spirit and his democratic principles, with a view to
having him removed from the paltry position he held as an Excise officer.
He was proudly, sensitively independent. He inherited his temperamental
characteristics from his mother. He was happier defending others than
working for himself. Writing to the Earl of Eglintoun, he said: 'Mercenary
servility, I trust, I shall ever have as much honest pride as to detest.'
Writing to Mr Francis Grose, F.S.A., in 1790, about Professor Dugald
Stewart, he said: 'Mr Stewart's principal characteristic is your favourite
feature--that sterling independence of mind which, though every man's
right, so few men have the courage to claim, and fewer still the
magnanimity to support.'
In 1795, the year before his death, he wrote three poems favourable to the
election of Mr Heron, the Whig candidate. In the first poem he said:
The independent commoner
Shall be the man for a' that.
Mrs Riddell, writing of Burns after his death, said: 'His features were
stamped with the hardy character of independence.'
He was a democrat whose democracy was based on the rock of independence
and a character that 'preserved the dignity of man with soul erect.'
Burns saw both sides of the ideal of freedom. He hated tyrants, and he
despised those who tamely submitted to tyranny. The inscription on the
Altar to Independence, erected by Mr Heron at Kerroughtree, written by
Burns, reads:
Thou of an independent mind,
With soul resolv'd, with soul resign'd;
Prepar'd Power's proudest frown to brave,
Who wilt not be, nor have a slave;
Virtue alone who dost revere,
Thy own reproach alone dost fear--
Approach this shrine, and worship here.
The man of whom Burns approved was 'one who wilt not _be_ nor _have_ a
slave.'
In 'Lines Inscribed in a Lady's Pocket Almanac' he says:
Deal Freedom's sacred treasures free as air,
Till Slave and Despot be but things that were.
In the 'Lines on the Commemoration of Rodney's Victory' he wrote:
Be Anarchy cursed, and be Tyranny damned; condemned
And who would to Liberty e'er be disloyal
May his son be a hangman--and he his first trial.
Burns was a philosopher whose mind had been trained to look at both sides
of a question, and estimate truly their relationships to each other. Even
in one of his beautiful poems to his wife, written after he was married,
'I Hae a Wife o' My Ain,' he wrote:
I am naebody's lord,
I'll be slave to naebody.
While Burns was an intense lover of freedom, he had no sympathy with those
who would overturn constituted authority. He wished to achieve the freedom
of the people, but to achieve it by constitutional means. He was a
national volunteer in Dumfries, and he composed a fine patriotic song for
the corps to sing. He revealed his balanced mind in the following lines in
that song:
The wretch that would a tyrant own,
And the wretch, his true-born brother,
Who would set the mob aboon the throne, above
May they be damned together.
Burns had as little respect for a king who was a tyrant, as he had for a
tyrant in any other situation in life; but he clearly saw the wicked folly
of allowing mob-rule to be substituted for constitutional authority.
In the Prologue written to be spoken by an actor on his benefit night,
Burns wrote:
No hundred-headed Riot here we meet
With decency and law beneath his feet;
Nor Insolence assumes fair Freedom's name.
Here, again, he records the dominant ideal of his mind through life; but
at the same time he utters a warning against ignorant and wild theorists,
who, in their madness, would overthrow civilisation.
He overflows again on his favourite theme in the 'Lines on the
Commemoration of Rodney's Victory,' when he was proposing toasts:
The next in succession I'll give you's the King!
Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he swing!
And here's the grand fabric, the free Constitution,
As built on the base of our great Revolution.
The love of liberty grew stronger in his heart and in his mind as he grew
older. In his songs, and in his letters, he frequently moralised on
independence of character and the value of liberty. In a letter to the
_Morning Chronicle_ he said, 1795: 'I am a Briton, and must be interested
in the cause of liberty.'
To Patrick Miller he sent a copy of his poems in 1793, accompanied by a
letter expressing gratitude for his kindness and appreciation of him 'as a
patriot who in a venal, sliding age stands forth the champion of the
liberties of my country.'
In his love-song, 'Their Groves o' Sweet Myrtle,' he compares the boasted
glories of tropical lands with the beauty of his beloved Scotland, and
boasts in pride of the charms of the
Lone glen o' green breckan, ferns
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom,
and of the sweetness of
Yon humble broom bowers,
Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk, lowly, unseen.
He cannot close the song, however, without claiming that beautiful as are
the 'sweet-scented woodlands' of these foreign countries, they are, after
all, 'the haunt of the tyrant and slave,' and that
The slave's spicy forests, and gold-bubbling fountains,
The brave Caledonian views wi' disdain;
He wanders as free as the winds of his mountains.
Burns celebrated the success of the French Revolution in a poem entitled
'The Tree of Liberty.' His heart bled for the peasantry of France, whom
the aristocrats had treated so contemptuously, and with such lack of
consideration, and cruelty. He rejoiced in the overthrow of their
oppressors, and the establishment of a republican form of government. In
this poem he gives credit to Lafayette, the great Frenchman who had gone
to assist the people of the United States in their brave struggle to get
free. He asks blessings on the head of the noble man, Lafayette, in the
verse:
My blessings aye attend the chiel
Wha pitied Gallia's slaves, man,
And staw a branch, spite o' the deil, stole
Frae yont the western waves, man.
Fair Virtue watered it wi' care,
And now she sees wi' pride, man,
How weel it buds and blossoms there,
Its branches spreading wide, man.
* * * * *
A wicked crew syne, on a time,
Did tak a solemn aith, man, oath
It ne'er should flourish to its prime,
I wat they pledged their faith, man.
Awa they gaed, wi' mock parade,
Like beagles hunting game, man,
But soon grew weary o' the trade,
And wished they'd stayed at hame, man.
Fair Freedom, standing by the tree,
Her sons did loudly ca', man;
She sang a song o' liberty, Marseillaise
Which pleased them ane and a', man.
By her inspired, the new-born race
Soon drew the avenging steel, man;
The hirelings ran--her friends gied chase
And banged the despot weel, man.
* * * * *
Wi' plenty o' sic trees, I trow,
The warld would live at peace, man;
The sword would help to mak' a plough;
The din o' war wad cease, man.
The greatest poem Burns wrote to rejoice at the victorious progress of
humanity towards freedom was his 'Ode to Liberty,' written to express his
supreme gratification at the success of the people of the United States in
their struggle for independence from England. He wrote it, as he wrote
most of his poems during his life in Dumfries, in the moonlight in
Lincluden Abbey ruins, on the Nith River, just outside of Dumfries. He
introduces the ode in a poem named 'A Vision.'
He tells that, at midnight, while in the ruins, he saw in the roofless
tower of the abbey, a vision:
By heedless chance I turned my eyes,
And, by the moonbeam, shook to see
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, ghost
Attired as minstrels wont to be.
Had I a statue been o' stane,
His daring look had daunted me;
And on his bonnet graved was plain,
The sacred posy, 'Libertie.'
And frae his harp sic strains did flow
Might rouse the slumbering dead to hear;
But oh! it was a tale of woe,
As ever met a Briton's ear!
The ghost tells the story of the tyranny England exercised over the people
of the United States, and of the breaking of the tyrant's chains. Burns
had no more respect for despotism by an English king than he had for the
despotism of a tyrant in any other land. He knew the people of the
American colonies were right. England's greatest statesman, Pitt, had
said so, when the colonists, driven to desperation, rebelled; so the
ghost's revelation should be to a liberty-loving Briton's ear 'a tale of
woe.'
The ode begins:
No Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
No lyre Æolian I awake;
'Tis liberty's bold note I swell;
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exultant bring,
And dash it in the tyrant's face,
And dare him to his very beard,
And tell him he no more is feared--
No more the despot of Columbia's race!
A tyrant's proudest insults braved,
They shout--a People freed! They hail an Empire saved.
* * * * *
But come, ye sons of Liberty,
Columbia's offspring, brave and free.
In danger's hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know and dare maintain 'the Royalty of Man.'
So the poem proceeds, till he appeals to King Alfred, and finally to
Caledonia:
Alfred! on thy starry throne,
Surrounded by the tuneful choir,
The bards that erst have struck the patriotic lyre,
And rous'd the freeborn Briton's soul of fire,
No more thy England own!
Dare injured nations form the great design,
To make detested tyrants bleed?
Thy England execrates the glorious deed!
Beneath her hostile banners waving,
Every pang of honour braving,
England, in thunder calls, 'The tyrant's cause is mine!'
That hour accurst how did the fiends rejoice,
And hell, through all her confines, raise the exulting voice!
That hour which saw the generous English name
Linkt with such damned deeds of everlasting shame!
Thee, Caledonia! thy wild heaths among,
Fam'd for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of Freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead,
Beneath that hallow'd turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace! in thy bed of death.
Ye babbling winds! in silence sweep,
Disturb not ye the hero's sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath.
Is this the ancient Caledonian form,
Firm as the rock, resistless as the storm?
He loved to stir the liberty-loving spirit of his beloved Caledonia, so to
her sons he makes the final appeal in his great ode. He wrote in a similar
strain in the Prologue written for his friend Woods, the actor:
O Thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand
Has oft been stretched to shield the honoured land!
Strong may she glow with all her ancient fire!
May every son be worthy of his sire!
Firm may she rise with generous disdain
At Tyranny's, or direr Pleasure's, chain;
Still self-dependent in her native shore,
Bold may she brave grim Danger's loudest roar,
Till fate the curtain drop on worlds to be no more.
He reached the highest degree of patriotic fervour, and his clearest call,
not only to Scotsmen, but to all true men, to be ready to do their duty
for justice and liberty, in 'Bruce's Address at Bannockburn.'
In a letter to the Earl of Buchan, 1794, enclosing a copy of this poem, he
wrote: 'Independent of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met with
anything in history which interests my feelings as a man equal with the
story of Bannockburn. On the one hand a cruel, but able, usurper, leading
on the finest army in Europe, to extinguish the last spark of freedom
among a greatly daring and greatly injured people; on the other hand, the
desperate relics of a gallant nation, devoting themselves to rescue their
bleeding country or perish with her. Liberty! thou art a prize truly and
indeed invaluable, for never canst thou be too dearly bought.'
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!
Now's the day and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour!
See approach proud Edward's power--
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's King and Law,
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Free-Man stand, or Free-Man fa'?
Let him follow me!
By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your Sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they _shall_ be free!
Lay the proud Usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us Do--or Die.
'So may God ever defend the cause of Truth and Liberty as he did
that day.
'ROBERT BURNS.'
Because he was so outspoken in regard to democracy, some men assumed he
was not a loyal man. The truth is, that he always loved his country, but
he ardently desired to improve the conditions of the great body of his
countrymen. Complaints were made about his disloyalty to the Excise
commissioners under whom he worked. These complaints were investigated,
and Burns was found to be a loyal man.
When the call came from the Government for volunteers, Burns joined the
Dumfries Volunteers. In his great song composed for these volunteers he
strongly expresses his loyalty, both to his country and to his king, in
the following quotations:
We'll ne'er permit a foreign foe
On British ground to rally.
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted. must
Who will not sing 'God save the King,'
Shall hang as high's the steeple!
But while we sing 'God save the King,'
We'll ne'er forget the people.
To Robert Graham of Fintry, 1792, he wrote: 'To the British Constitution
on revolution principles, next after my God, I am most devoutly
attached.'
Again, a month later, he wrote to Mr Graham: 'I never uttered any
invectives against the King. His private worth it is altogether impossible
that such a man as I can appreciate; but in his public capacity I always
revered, and always will, with the soundest loyalty, revere the Monarch of
Great Britain as (to speak in Masonic) the sacred Keystone of our Royal
Arch Constitution. As to reform principles, I look upon the British
Constitution, as settled at the Revolution, to be the most glorious
Constitution on earth, or that perhaps the wit of man can frame.
* * * * *
'I never dictated to, corresponded with, or had the least connection with,
any political association whatever--except that when the magistrates and
principal inhabitants of Dumfries met to declare their attachment to the
Constitution, and their abhorrence of riot.'
He had strong desires to effect many reforms in public life, but he was an
intelligent believer in the British Constitution, and had no faith in any
method of achieving reforms in the Empire except by constitutional
measures. He was a radical reformer with a grand mental balance-wheel; and
such reformers make the best type of citizens, ardent reformers with cool
heads and unselfish hearts.
Carlyle strangely misunderstood the spirit of democracy in Burns, although
he justly wrote, long after the poet's death: 'He appears not only as a
true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the
eighteenth century.'
What were the achievements, in addition to his poetic power, that made
Burns 'one of the most considerable men of the eighteenth century?' Mainly
the work he did to develop in the souls of men a consciousness of
fundamental principles of democracy, and higher ideals of vital religion;
yet Carlyle does not approve of his efforts to reform either social or
religious conditions. As the centuries pass, the work of Burns for
Religion, Democracy, and Brotherhood will be recognised as his greatest
work for humanity.
Carlyle's belief was that Burns wrote about the wrongs of the oppressed
because he could not become rich. In that belief he was clearly in error.
The love of freedom, justice, and independence was a basic passion in the
character of Burns. The anxiety of Burns regarding money was not for
himself, but for his family in case he should die. Several times he
referred to this in letters to his most intimate friends.
CHAPTER VI.
BURNS AND BROTHERHOOD.
In the third letter Burns wrote Alison Begbie, the first woman he asked to
marry him, he said: 'I grasp every creature in the arms of Universal
Benevolence, and equally participate in the pleasures of the happy, and
sympathise with the miseries of the unfortunate.'
This statement of one of the fundamental principles which guided him
during his whole life is a profound interpretation of the teachings of
Christ in regard to the attitude that each individual should have, must
have, in order that brotherhood may be established on the earth. He taught
universal benevolence and vital sympathy _with_--not _for_--humanity; not
merely when sorrows and afflictions bring dark clouds to hearts, but in
times of happiness and rejoicing; affectionate sympathy, unostentatious
sympathy, co-operative sympathy that stimulates helpfulness and
hopefulness; sympathy that produces activity of the divine in the human
heart and mind, and leads to brotherhood.
The amazing fact is, not that Burns wrote such fundamental Christian
philosophy in a love-letter, but that a youth of twenty-one could think it
and express it so perfectly.
To Clarinda he wrote, 1787: 'Lord! why was I born to see misery which I
cannot relieve?'
Again, in 1788, he wrote to her: 'Give me to feel "another's woe," and
continue with me that dear-loved friend that feels with mine.'
To Mrs Walter Riddell he wrote, 1793: 'Of all the qualities we assign to
the Author and Director of Nature, by far the most enviable is to be able
"to wipe away all tears from all eyes." O what insignificant, sordid
wretches are they, however chance may have loaded them with wealth, who go
to their graves, to their magnificent mausoleums, with hardly the
consciousness of having made one poor, honest heart happy.'
In 'A Winter Night,' the great poem of universal sympathy, he says:
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress;
A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss.
He closes the poem with four great lines:
But deep this truth impressed my mind--
Thro' all His works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.
In the same poem he paints the characters who lack loving sympathy, and
whose lives and attitudes towards their fellow-men separate men, and break
the ties that should unite all men, and thus prevent the development of
the spirit of brotherhood. After describing the fierceness of the storm
and expressing his heartfelt sympathy for the cattle, the sheep, the
birds, and even with destructive animals such as prey on hen-roosts or
defenceless lambs, his mind was filled with a plaintive strain, as he
thought of the bitterness of man to his brother man, and he proceeds:
Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting,
Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows.
The depth and universality of his sympathy is shown in 'To a Mouse,' after
he had destroyed its nest while ploughing:
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!
In his 'Epistle to Davie,' a brother poet, he emphasises the value of true
sympathy, that should bind all hearts, must yet bind all hearts in
universal brotherhood, when he says:
All hail! ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow!
Long since, this world's thorny ways
Had numbered out my weary days,
Had it not been for you.
In his 'Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry,' after describing the thrifty
but selfishly prudent, 'who feel by reason and who give by rule,' and
expressing regret that 'the friendly e'er should want a friend,' he
writes:
But come ye, who the godlike pleasure know,
Heaven's attribute distinguished--to bestow!
Whose arms of love would grasp the human race.
In the opinion of Burns, they are the ideal men and women who best
understood, and most perfectly practised, the teaching of Christ.
In one of his epistles to his friend Lapraik he says:
For thus the royal mandate ran,
When first the human race began:
The social, friendly, honest man,
Whate'er he be--
'Tis _he_ fulfils great Nature's plan,
And none but he.
The influence of any act on society, on the brotherhood of man as a whole,
was the supreme test of Burns to distinguish between goodness and evil.
To Dr Moore, of London, he said: 'Whatsoever is not detrimental to
society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the giver of all good
things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with
thankful delight.'
To Clarinda he wrote: 'Thou Almighty Author of peace, and goodness, and
love! Do thou give me the social heart that kindly tastes of every man's
cup! Is it a draught of joy? Warm and open my heart to share it with
cordial, unenvying rejoicing! Is it the bitter potion of sorrow? Melt my
heart with sincerely sympathetic woe! Above all, do Thou give me the manly
mind, that resolutely exemplifies in life and manners those sentiments
which I would wish to be thought to possess.'
In 'On the Seas and Far Away' he says:
Peace, thy olive wand extend,
And bid wild war his ravage end;
Man with brother man to meet,
And as a brother kindly greet.
In the 'Tree of Liberty' he says, if we had plenty of the trees of Liberty
growing throughout the whole world:
Like brothers in a common cause
We'd on each other smile, man;
And equal rights and equal laws
Wad gladden ev'ry isle, man.
To Clarinda, when he presented a pair of wine-glasses--a perfectly proper
gift to a lady in the opinion of his time--he gave her at the same time a
poem, in which he said:
And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your mind;
And pledge them to the generous toast,
'The whole of human kind!'
In his 'Epistle to John Lapraik,' after describing those whose lives do
not help men towards brotherhood, he describes those who are true to the
great ideal:
But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms,
Who hold your being on the terms,
'Each aid the others,'
Come to my bowl, come to my arms,
My friends, my brothers.
Burns gives each man the true test of the influence of his life for the
promotion of true brotherhood in the short line, 'Each aid the others.'
That line is the supreme test of duty, and is the highest interpretation
of Christ's commandment to His disciples, and through them to all men,
'Love one another, as I have loved you.' Vital love means vital
helpfulness.
Dickens gives the same great message as Burns when, in describing Little
Dorritt, he says: 'She was something different from the rest, and she was
that something for the rest.' This is probably the shortest sentence ever
written that conveys so clearly the two great revelations of Christ:
Individuality and Brotherhood.
There are some who dislike the expression 'Come to my bowl.' They should
test Burns by the accepted standards of his time, not by the standards of
our time. The bowl was the symbol of true comradeship in castle and cot,
in the manse and in the layman's home, in the time of Burns.
No other writer has interpreted Christ's revelations of Democracy and
Brotherhood so clearly and so fully as Robert Burns. He sums up the whole
matter of man's relationship to man in 'A Man's a Man for a' That,' in the
last verse:
Then let us pray that come it may--
As come it will for a' that--
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. pre-eminence
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
He revealed his supreme purpose in 'A Revolutionary Lyric':
In virtue trained, enlightened youth
Will love each fellow-creature;
And future years shall prove the truth--
That man is good by nature.
The golden age will then revive;
Each man will love his brother;
In harmony we all shall live,
And share the earth together.
While the so-called religious teachers of the time of Burns were dividing
men into creeds based on petty theological distinctions, Burns was
interpreting for humanity the highest teachings of Christ: Democracy based
on recognition of the value of the individual soul, and Brotherhood as the
natural fruit of true democracy.
CHAPTER VII.
BURNS A REVEALER OF PURE LOVE.
Many people yet believe that Burns was a universal and inconstant lover.
He really did not love many women. He loved deeply, but he had not a great
many really serious experiences of love. He loved Nellie Kirkpatrick when
he was fifteen, and Peggy Thomson when he was seventeen. He says his love
of Nellie made him a poet. There is no other experience that will kindle
the strongest element in a human soul during the adolescent period so
fully, and so permanently, as genuine love. Love will not make all young
people poets, but it will kindle with its most developing glow whatever is
the strongest natural power in each individual soul. Parents should foster
such love in young people during the adolescent period, instead of
ridiculing it, as is too often done. God may not mean that the love is to
be permanent, but there is no other agency that can be so productive at
the time of adolescence as love that is reverenced by parents who, by due
reverence, sympathy, and comradeship, help love to do its best work.
These two adolescent loves did their work in developing Burns, but they
were not loves of maturity. From seventeen till he was twenty-one he was
not really in love. Then he met, and deeply and reverently loved, Alison
Begbie. She was a servant girl of charm, sweetness, and dignity, in a home
not far from Lochlea farm. He wrote three poems to her: 'The Lass o'
Cessnock Banks,' 'Peggy Alison,' and 'Mary Morrison.' He reversed her name
for the second title, because it possessed neither the elements of metre
nor of rhyme. He gave his third poem to her the title 'Mary Morrison' to
make it conform to the same metre as 'Peggy Alison.' There was a Mary
Morrison who was nine years of age when Burns wrote 'Mary Morrison.' She
is buried in Mauchline Churchyard, and on her tombstone it is stated that
she was 'the Mary Morrison of Burns.' His brother Gilbert knew better. He
said the poem was written to the lady to whom 'Peggy Alison' was written.
It is impossible to believe that Burns would write 'Mary Morrison' to a
child only nine years old.
Burns wrote five love-letters to Alison Begbie. Beautiful and reverent
letters they were, too. In the fourth, he asked her to become his wife. In
Chapter III. it has been explained that he was too shy, even at
twenty-two, to ask the woman whom he loved to marry him when he was with
her. This does not indicate that he had a new love each week, as many yet
believe. Miss Begbie refused to marry him, and his reply should win him
the respect of every reasonable man or woman who reads it. It is the
dignified and reverent outpouring of a loving heart, held in control by a
well-balanced and considerate mind.
Although Burns had no lover from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, he
wrote love-songs during those years, but even his mother could not tell
the name of any young woman who kindled his muse during these four years.
Neither could the other members of his family.
He wrote one poem, 'My Nannie O,' during this period. He first wrote for
the first line:
Beyond the hills where Stinchar flows.
He did not like the word 'Stinchar,' so he changed it to 'Lugar,' a much
more euphonious word. He had no lover named 'Nannie.' Lugar and Stinchar
were several miles apart. He was really writing about love, not the love
of any one woman, during those four years; and he was writing about other
great subjects more than about love, mainly religious and ethical ideals.
From the age of twenty-two he was for three years without a lover. At
twenty-five he met Jean Armour, then eighteen. Jean spoke first to the
respectfully shy man. At the annual dance on Fair night in Mauchline,
Burns was one of the young men who were present. His dog, Luath, who loved
him, and whom he loved in return, traced his master upstairs to the dance
hall. Of course the dance was interrupted when Luath got on the floor and
found his master. Burns kindly led the dog out, and as he was going he
said, 'I wish I could find a lassie to loe me as well as my dog.' A short
time afterwards Burns was going along a street in Mauchline, and was
passing Jean Armour without speaking to her, because he had not been
introduced to her. She was at the village pump getting water to sprinkle
her clothes on the village green, and as he was passing her she asked,
'Hae you found a lassie yet to loe you as well as your dog?' Burns then
stopped and conversed with her. She was a handsome, bright young woman.
Their acquaintance soon developed a strong love between them, and resulted
in a test of the real manhood of the character of Burns. When he realised
that Jean was to become a mother, he did not hesitate as to his duty. He
gave her a legal certificate of marriage, signed by himself and regularly
witnessed, which was as valid as a marriage certificate of a clergyman or
a magistrate in Scottish law.
Jean's father compelled her to destroy, or let him destroy, the
certificate. This, and her father's threatened legal prosecution, nearly
upset the mind of Burns. He undoubtedly loved Jean Armour. In a letter
written at the time to David Brice, a friend in Glasgow, he wrote: 'Never
man loved, or rather adored, a woman more than I did her; and, to confess
a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after
all.... May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I
from my very soul forgive her; and may His grace be with her, and bless
her in all her future life.'
He had arranged to leave Scotland for Jamaica to escape from his mental
torture, when two things came into his life: Mary Campbell, and the
suggestion that he should publish his poems. The first filled his heart,
the second gave him the best tonic for his mind--deeply and joyously
interesting occupation.
Mary Campbell, 'Highland Mary,' he had met when she was a nursemaid in the
home of his friend Gavin Hamilton. Meeting her again, when she was a
servant in Montgomery Castle, he became acquainted with her, and they soon
loved each other. It is not remarkable that Burns should love Mary
Campbell, because she was a winsome, quiet, refined young woman, and his
heart was desolate at the loss of Jean Armour. He, at the time he made
love to Mary, had no hope of reconciliation with Jean. The greater his
love for Jean had been, and still was, the greater his need was for
another love to fill his heart, and he found a pure and satisfying lover
in Mary. Their love was deep and short, lasting only about two months. Two
busy months they were, as Burns was preparing his poems for the Kilmarnock
edition, till he and Mary agreed to be married. They parted for the last
time on 14th May 1785. The day was Sunday. They spent the afternoon in the
fine park of Montgomery Castle, through which the Fail River runs for a
mile and a half. In the evening they went out of the grounds about half a
mile to Failford, a little village at the junction of the Fail with the
Ayr. The Fail runs parallel to the Ayr, and in the opposite direction
after leaving the castle grounds, until it reaches Failford. There it
meets a solid rock formation, which compels it to turn squarely to the
right and flow into the Ayr, about three hundred yards away. At a narrow
place where the Fail had cut a passage through the soft rock on its way to
the Ayr, Burns and Highland Mary parted. He stood on one side of the river
and Mary on the other, and after they had exchanged Bibles, they made
their vows of intention to marry, he holding one side of an open Bible and
she the other side. Mary went home to prepare for her marriage, but a
relative in Greenock fell ill with malignant fever, and Mary went to nurse
him, and caught the fever herself and died.
The poems he wrote to her and about her made her a renowned character.
When in 1919 a shipbuilding company at Greenock, after a four years'
struggle, finally purchased the church and churchyard in which Mary was
buried, with the intention of removing the bodies to another place, the
British Parliament passed an Act providing that her monument must stand
forever over her grave, where it had always stood.[4] Though she held a
humble position, the beautiful poems of her lover gave her an honoured
place in the hearts of millions of people all over the world.
Burns did not go to Jamaica, although he had secured a berth on a ship to
take him to that beautiful island. Calls came to him just in time to
publish an edition of his poems in Edinburgh. He answered the calls,
startled and delighted Edinburgh society, published his poems, and met
Clarinda.
Mrs M'Lehose was a cultured and charming grass-widow. She had been courted
and married by a wealthy young man in Glasgow when she was only seventeen
years of age. Though a lady of the highest character, on the advice of
relatives and friends she left her husband. He then went to Jamaica.
Burns and Mrs M'Lehose mutually admired each other when they met, and
their friendship quickly developed into affection. Under the names of
Sylvander and Clarinda they conducted a love correspondence which will
probably always remain the finest love correspondence of the ages.
Clarinda was a religious and cultured woman; Burns was a religious and
cultured man, so their letters of love are on a high plane. Clarinda wrote
very good poems as well as good prose, and Burns wrote some of his best
poems to Clarinda. His parting song to Clarinda is, in the opinion of many
literary men, the greatest love-song of its kind ever written. Those who
study the Clarinda correspondence will find not only love, but many
interesting philosophical discussions regarding religion and human life.
Thus ends the record of his real loves, notwithstanding the outrageous
misstatements that his loves extended, according to one writer, to nearly
four hundred. He had just four deep and serious loves, not counting the
two deep and transforming affections of his adolescent period for Nellie
Kirkpatrick and Peggy Thomson. He loved four women: Alison Begbie, Jean
Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs M'Lehose. At the age of twenty-one he loved
Alison Begbie, and, when twenty-two, he asked her to marry him. She
declined his proposal. He was too shy to propose to her when he was with
her. Get this undoubted fact into your consciousness, and think about it
fairly and reasonably, and it will help you to get a truer vision of the
real Burns. Read the proposal and his subsequent letter on pages 51-55,
and your mind should form juster conceptions of Burns as a lover and as a
man. You will find it harder to be misled by the foolish or the malicious
misrepresentations that have too long passed as facts concerning him as a
lover.
From twenty-two to twenty-five he had no lover; then he loved and married
Jean Armour. No act of his prevented that marriage-contract remaining in
force. When her father forced the destruction of the contract, and much
against his will, and in defiance of the love of his heart, he found that
he had lost his wife beyond any reasonable hope of reconciliation and
reunion, and was therefore free to love another, he loved Mary Campbell,
and honourably proposed marriage to her. She accepted his offer, but died
soon after. He was untrue to no one when he took Clarinda into his heart.
Of course he could not ask her to marry him, as she was already married.
The first three women he loved after he reached the age of twenty-one
years were Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, and Mary Campbell. The first
refused his offer; he married the second, and was forced into freedom by
her father; the third accepted his offer of marriage, but died before they
could be married. The fourth woman whom he loved loved him, but could not
marry him, a fact recognised by both of them. There is not a shadow of
evidence of inconstancy or unfaithfulness on his part in the eight years
during which he loved the four women--the only four he did love after he
became a man.
It may be answered that Burns was not loyal to Jean Armour because he
loved Mary Campbell and Clarinda after he was married to Jean. Burns
absolutely believed that his marriage to Jean was annulled by the burning
of the marriage certificate. He would not have pledged matrimony with Mary
Campbell if he had known that Jean was still his wife. When Mary died, and
he found Jean's father was willing that he might again marry Jean, he did
marry her in Gavin Hamilton's home. In writing to Clarinda he forgot
himself for a moment and spoke disrespectfully of Jean, but his prompt and
honourable action in marrying her soon after showed him to be a true man.
It should ever be remembered that Burns was in no sense a fickle lover. To
each of the three women whom he loved, his love was reverent and true. He
had a reverent affection for Alison Begbie after she refused him; he loved
Jean Armour after she allowed their marriage-certificate to be destroyed;
and he loved Mary Campbell, not only till she died, but to the end of his
life. The fact that he sat out in the stackyard on Ellisland farm through
the long moonlit night, with tears flowing down his cheeks, on the third
anniversary of her death, and wrote 'To Mary in Heaven,' proves the depth
and permanency of his love.
In 'My Eppie Adair' he says:
By love and by beauty, by law and by duty,
I swear to be true to my Eppie Adair.
In these lines Burns truly defines his own type of love.
It is true that Miss Margaret Chalmers told the poet Campbell, after Burns
died, that he had asked her to marry him. His letters to her are letters
of deep friendship--reverent friendship--not love. It is true that the
last poem he ever wrote was written to Margaret Chalmers, and that in it
he said:
Full well thou knowest I love thee, dear.
But it must be remembered that Burns had been married to Jean and living
happily with her for eight years, so the love of this line was not the
love that is expected to lead to marriage, but an expression of reverent
affection. The whole tenor of this last poem of his life indicates that
he thought her feeling for him was cooling, and his deep affectionate
friendship urged him to plead with her for a continuance of their
long-existing and quite unusual relationship.
Many people will doubtless say, 'What about Chloris?' Chloris was his name
for Jean Lorimer, the daughter of a friend of his who dwelt near him when
he lived on Ellisland farm after his second marriage to Jean Armour.
Chloris was a sweet singer and player, who frequently visited Mrs Burns,
and who sang for Burns, sometimes, with Mrs Burns the grand old Scottish
airs that had long been sung to words that were not pure, and to which he
was writing new and pure words nearly every day. A number of these songs
were addressed to Chloris, but in a book of his poems presented to Miss
Lorimer he states clearly that the love he appeared to be expressing for
her was an assumed, or, as he called it, a 'fictitious,' and not a real
love.
When Burns had earned five hundred pounds by the sale of the Edinburgh
edition of his poems, he decided 'that he had the responsibility for the
temporal and possibly the eternal welfare of a dearly loved
fellow-creature;' so again giving proof of his honest manhood and
recognising his plain duty, he married Jean Armour a second time, in the
home of his dear friend Gavin Hamilton. Of the first three women whom he
loved one refused him, one died after their sacred engagement, and the
third he married twice. The fourth and last woman that he loved could not
marry.
Any one of the first three would have made him a good wife, but no one
could have been more considerate or more faithful than the one he married.
Could any reasonable man believe that if Burns had really loved other
women, as he loved Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs
M'Lehose, the names of the other women would not have been known by the
world? He never tried to hide his love. He wrote songs of love with other
names attached to them, used for variety. In a letter to a friend he
regretted the use of 'Chloris' in several of his Ellisland and Dumfries
poems, and to her directly he said they were 'fictitious' or assumed
expressions of love. Notwithstanding the foolish or malicious statements
that Burns had many lovers, he had but four real loves. One would have
been his limit if the first had accepted him and lived as long as he did.
It has been said that 'the love of Burns was the love of the flesh.' It
is worth while to examine the love-songs of Burns to learn what elements
of thought and feeling dominated his mind and heart. He wrote two hundred
and fifty love-songs, and only three or four contain indelicate
references; even these were not considered improper in his time.
What were the themes of his love-songs? What were the symbols that he used
to typify love? There is no beauty or delight in Nature on earth or sky
that he did not use as a symbol of true love. He saw God through Nature as
few men ever saw Him, and he therefore naturally used the beauty and
sweetness and glory of Nature to help to reveal the beauty and sweetness
and glory of love, the element of the Divine that thrilled him with the
deepest joy and the highest reverence.
In his first poem, written when he was fifteen, describing his
fourteen-year-old sweetheart, he says:
A bonnie lass, I will confess,
Is pleasant to the e'e;
But without some better qualities,
She's no a lass for me.
* * * *
But it's innocence and modesty
That polishes the dart.
'Tis this in Nelly pleases me,
'Tis this enchants my soul;
For absolutely in my breast
She reigns without control.
Of Peggy Thomson, his second love, he wrote:
Not vernal showers to budding flowers,
Not autumn to the farmer,
So dear can be as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely charmer.
Of Alison Begbie he wrote in 'The Lass o' Cessnock Banks':
But it's not her air, her form, her face,
Tho' matching beauty's fabled queen;
'Tis the mind that shines in ev'ry grace,
And chiefly in her rogueish een.
In 'Young Peggy Blooms' he describes her:
Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass
With early gems adorning.
Her eyes outshine the radiant beams
That gild the passing shower,
And glitter o'er the crystal streams,
And cheer each fresh'ning flower.
In 'Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary?' he says:
O sweet grows the lime and the orange,
And the apple o' the pine;
But a' the charms o' the Indies
Can never equal thine.
The following are emblems of beauty in the 'Lass o' Ballochmyle':
On every blade the pearls hang.
Her look was like the morning's eye,
Her air like Nature's vernal smile.
Fair is the morn in flowery May,
And sweet is night in autumn mild.
Describing 'My Nannie O' he says:
Her face is fair, her heart is true;
As spotless as she's bonnie, O;
The opening gowan, wat wi' dew, daisy
Nae purer is than Nannie O.
In 'The Birks [birches] of Aberfeldy' he speaks to his lover of 'Summer
blinking on flowery braes' and 'Playing o'er the crystal streamlets;' and
the 'Blythe singing o' the little birdies' and 'The braes o'erhung wi'
fragrant woods' and 'The hoary cliffs crowned wi' flowers;' and 'The
streamlet pouring over a waterfall.' Love and Nature were united in his
heart.
In 'Blythe was She' he describes the lady by saying she was like beautiful
things:
Her looks were like a flower in May.
Her smile was like a simmer morn;
Her bonnie face it was as meek
As any lamb upon a lea;
and the 'ev'ning sun.'
Her step was
As light's a bird upon a thorn.
He wrote 'O' a' the Airts the Wind can Blaw' about Jean Armour after they
were married, while he was building their home on Ellisland. He says in
this exquisite song:
By day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.
I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair;
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green; woodland
There's not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.
To Jean he wrote again:
It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face,
Nor shape that I admire;
Although thy beauty and thy grace
Might weel awake desire.
Something in ilka part o' thee
To praise, to love, I find;
But dear as is thy form to me,
Still dearer is thy mind.
In 'Delia--an Ode,' he uses the 'fair face of orient day,' and 'the tints
of the opening rose' to suggest her beauty, and 'the lark's wild warbled
lay' and the 'sweet sound of the tinkling rill' to suggest the sweetness
of her voice.
In 'I Gaed a Waefu' Gate Yestreen' he says:
She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled;
She charmed my _soul_, I wist na how.
It was the soul of Burns that responded to love. Neither Alison Begbie nor
Mary Campbell excelled in beauty, and no one acquainted with their high
character could have had the temerity to suggest that love for them was
'the love of the flesh.' His beautiful poems to Jean Armour place his love
for her on a high plane. He was a man of strong passion, but passion was
not the source of his love.
In 'Aye sae Bonnie, Blythe and Gay' he says:
She's aye sae neat, sae trim, sae light, the graces round her hover,
Ae look deprived me o' my heart, and I became her lover
'Ilka bird sang o' its love' he makes Miss Kennedy say in 'The Banks o'
Doon.' As the birds ever sang love to Burns, he naturally makes them sing
love to all hearts.
In 'The Bonnie Wee Thing' he gives high qualifications for love kindling:
Wit, and grace, and love, and beauty
In ae constellation shine;
To adore thee is my duty,
Goddess o' this soul o' mine.
In 'The Charms of Lovely Davies' he says:
Each eye it cheers when she appears,
Like Phoebus in the morning,
When past the shower, and ev'ry flower
The garden is adorning.
The last three poems from which quotations have been made were written
about two ladies whose lovers had been untrue to them: the first about
Miss Kennedy, a member of one of the leading Ayrshire families; the other
two about Miss Davies, a relative of the Glenriddell family.
In a letter to Miss Davies he said:
'Woman is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of
precedency among them, but let them all be sacred. Whether this last
sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original
component feature of my mind.'
Burns was not in love with either Miss Kennedy or Miss Davies, but he
explains the writing of the songs to Miss Davies, in a letter enclosing
'Bonnie Wee Thing,' by saying, 'When I meet a person of my own heart I
positively can no more desist from rhyming on impulse than an Æolian harp
can refuse its tones to the streaming air.'
One of his most beautiful poems is 'The Posie,' which he planned to pull
for his 'Ain dear May.'
The primrose I will pu', the firstling o' the year,
And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear,
For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer.
I'll pu' the budding rose, when Phoebus peeps in view,
For it's like a baumy kiss o' her sweet, bonnie mou';
The hyacinth's for constancy, wi' its unchanging blue.
The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair,
And in her lovely bosom I'll place the lily there;
The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air.
The woodbine I will pu', when the e'ening star is near,
And the diamond draps o' dew shall be her een sae clear;
The violet's for modesty, which weel she fa's to wear.
I'll tie the posie round wi' the silken band o' luve,
And I'll place it in her breast, and I'll swear by a' above
That to my latest draught o' life the band shall ne'er remove,
And this will be a posie to my ain dear May.
In 'Lovely Polly Stewart' he says:
O lovely Polly Stewart,
O charming Polly Stewart,
There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May
That's half so fair as thou art.
The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa's,
And art can ne'er renew it;
But worth and truth, eternal youth
Will gie to Polly Stewart.
In 'Thou Fair Eliza' he says:
Not the bee upon the blossom,
In the pride o' sinny noon;
Not the little sporting fairy,
All beneath the simmer moon;
Not the minstrel, in the moment
Fancy lightens in his e'e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gies to me.
In 'My Bonie Bell' he writes:
The smiling spring comes in rejoicing,
The surly winter grimly flies;
Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
And bonie blue are the sunny skies.
Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning,
The evening gilds the ocean's swell;
All creatures joy in the sun's returning,
And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell.
'Sweet Afton' was suggested by the following: 'I charge you, O ye
daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not, nor awaken my love--my dove, my
undefiled! The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.'
In descriptive power and in fond and reverent love no poem of Burns, or
any other writer, surpasses Sweet Afton. Authorities have been divided in
regard to the person who was the Mary of Sweet Afton. Currie and Lockhart
declined to accept the statement of Gilbert Burns that it was Highland
Mary. Chambers and Douglas, the most illuminating and reliable of the
early biographers of Burns, agree with Gilbert. One of Mrs Dunlop's
daughters stated that she heard Burns himself say that Mary Campbell was
the woman whose name he used to represent the lover for whom he asked such
reverent consideration. He had no lover at any period of his life on the
Afton. He had but one lover named Mary, and she stirred him to a degree of
reverence that toned the music of his love to the end of his life. Mary
Campbell was alive to Burns in a truly realistic sense when he wrote the
sacred poem 'Sweet Afton.'
In 'O were my Love yon Lilac Fair' he assumes that his love might be
A lilac fair,
Wi' purpling blossoms in the spring,
And I a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing.
In the second verse he says:
O gin my love were yon red rose if
That grows upon the castle wa';
And I mysel' a drop o' dew,
Into her bonie breast to fa'!
Could imagination kindle more pure ideals to reveal love than these? In
'Bonie Jean--A Ballad' he gives two delightful pictures of love:
As in the bosom of the stream
The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en;
So trembling, pure, was tender love
Within the breast of Bonie Jean.
* * * * *
The sun was sinking in the west,
The birds sang sweet in ilka grove; every
His cheek to hers he fondly laid,
And whispered thus his tale of love.
In 'Phillis the Fair' he writes:
While larks, with little wing, fann'd the pure air,
Tasting the breathing spring, forth did I fare;
Gay the sun's golden eye
Peep'd o'er the mountains high;
Such thy morn! did I cry, Phillis the fair.
In each bird's careless song glad did I share;
While yon wild-flow'rs among, chance led me there!
Sweet to the op'ning day,
Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;
Such thy bloom! did I say, Phillis the fair.
In 'By Allan Stream' he describes the glories of Nature, but gives them
second place to the joys of love:
The haunt o' spring's the primrose-brae,
The summer joys the flocks to follow;
How cheery thro' her short'ning day
Is autumn in her weeds o' yellow;
But can they melt the glowing heart,
Or chain the soul in speechless pleasure?
Or thro' each nerve the rapture dart,
Like meeting her, our bosom's treasure?
In 'Phillis, the Queen o' the Fair' he uses many beautiful things to
illustrate her charms:
The daisy amused my fond fancy,
So artless, so simple, so wild:
Thou emblem, said I, o' my Phillis--
For she is Simplicity's child.
The rosebud's the blush o' my charmer,
Her sweet, balmy lip when 'tis prest:
How fair and how pure is the lily!
But fairer and purer her breast.
Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour,
They ne'er wi' my Phillis can vie:
Her breath is the breath of the woodbine,
Its dew-drop o' diamond her eye.
Her voice is the song o' the morning,
That wakes thro' the green-spreading grove,
When Phoebus peeps over the mountains
On music, and pleasure, and love.
But beauty, how frail and how fleeting!
The bloom of a fine summer's day;
While worth, in the mind o' my Phillis,
Will flourish without a decay.
In 'My Love is like a Red, Red Rose' he uses exquisite symbolism:
My luve is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
My luve is like a melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
In the pastoral song, 'Behold, my Love, how Green the Groves,' he says in
the last verse:
These wild-wood flowers I've pu'd to deck
That spotless breast o' thine;
The courtier's gems may witness love,
But never love like mine.
In the dialogue song 'Philly and Willy,'
_He says_,
As songsters of the early spring
Are ilka day more sweet to hear, each
So ilka day to me mair dear
And charming is my Philly.
_She replies_,
As on the brier the budding rose
Still richer breathes and fairer blows,
So in my tender bosom grows
The love I bear my Willy.
In 'O Bonnie was yon Rosy Brier' he says:
O bonnie was yon rosy brier
That blooms so far frae haunt o' man;
And bonnie she, and ah, how dear!
It shaded frae the e'ening sun.
Yon rosebuds in the morning dew,
How pure amang the leaves sae green;
But purer was the lover's vow
They witnessed in their shade yestreen.
All in its rude and prickly bower,
That crimson rose, how sweet and fair.
But love is far a sweeter flower,
Amid life's thorny path o' care.
In 'A Health to Ane I Loe Dear'--one of his most perfect love-songs--he
says:
Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
And soft as their parting tear.
* * * * *
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing
Than aught in the world beside.
In 'My Peggy's Charms,' describing Miss 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.
My Peggy's face, my Peggy's form,
The frost of hermit age might warm;
My Peggy's worth, my Peggy's mind,
Might charm the first of human kind.
I love my Peggy's angel air,
Her face so truly, heavenly fair.
Her native grace, so void of art;
But I adore my Peggy's heart.
The tender thrill, the pitying tear,
The generous purpose, nobly dear;
The gentle look that rage disarms--
These are all immortal charms.
In his 'Epistle to Davie--A Brother Poet' Burns, after detailing the many
hardships and sorrows of the poor, forgets the hardships, and recalls his
blessings:
There's a' the pleasures o' the heart,
The lover and the frien';
Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part,
And I my darling Jean.
It warms me, it charms me,
To mention but her name;
It heats me, it beets me, kindles
And sets me a' on flame.
O all ye powers who rule above!
O Thou whose very self art love!
Thou know'st my words sincere!
The life-blood streaming through my heart,
Or my more dear immortal part
Is not more fondly dear!
When heart-corroding care and grief
Deprive my soul of rest,
Her dear idea brings relief
And solace to my breast.
Thou Being, All-Seeing,
O hear my fervent prayer;
Still take her, and make her
Thy most peculiar care.
Three years after the death of Highland Mary, Burns remained out in the
stackyard on Ellisland farm and composed 'To Mary in Heaven.' Nothing
could more strikingly prove the sincerity, the permanence, the purity, and
the sacredness of the white-souled love of Burns than this poem:
Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray,
That lov'st to greet the early morn,
Again thou usher'st in the day
My Mary from my soul was torn.
O Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
That sacred hour can I forget?
Can I forget that hallow'd grove
Where, by the winding Ayr, we met
To live one day of parting love?
Eternity can not efface
Those records dear of transports past;
Thy image at our last embrace;
Ah! little thought we 'twas our last!
Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore,
O'erhung with wild-woods, thickening green;
The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar
Twined amorous round the raptured scene:
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,
The birds sang love on every spray;
Till too, too soon, the glowing west,
Proclaimed the speed of wingèd day.
Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes,
And fondly broods with miser-care;
Time but th' impression stronger makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.
My Mary, dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
The general themes of this sacred poem, written three years after Mary
Campbell's death, are the preponderating themes of his love-songs. No
love-songs ever written have so little of even embracing and kissing as
the love-songs of Burns, except the sonnets of Mrs Browning.
It is worthy of note that Mary Campbell was not a beauty--her attractions
were kindness, honesty, and unselfishness; yet, though happily married
himself, he loved her, three years after her death, as profoundly as when
they parted on the Fail, more than three years before he wrote the poem.
CHAPTER VIII.
BURNS A PHILOSOPHER.
The fine training by their father developed the minds of both Robert and
Gilbert Burns as original, independent thinkers, chiefly in regard to
religious, ethical, and social problems. Professor Dugald Stewart, of
Edinburgh University, expressed the opinion that 'the mind of Burns was so
strong and clear that he might have taken high rank as a thinker in any
department of human thought; probably attaining as high rank in any other
department as he achieved as a poet.' The quotations given from his
writings in the preceding pages prove that he was a philosopher of unusual
power in regard to Religion, Democracy, and Brotherhood.
Lockhart said, speaking of the ranking of Burns as a thinker, compared
with the best trained minds in Edinburgh: 'Even the stateliest of these
philosophers had enough to do to maintain the attitude of equality when
brought into contact with Burns's gigantic understanding.'
Many of his poems are ornamented and increased in value by flashes of
philosophic thought. His 'Epistle to a Young Friend' is a series of
philosophical statements for human guidance.
Ye'll find mankind an unco squad, strange
And muckle they may grieve ye, much
I'll no say men are villains a';
The real hardened wicked,
Wha hae nae check but human law,
Are to a few restricket; restricted
But, och! mankind are unco weak, very
An' little to be trusted;
If self the wavering balance shake
It's rarely right adjusted.
He takes a kindly view, that men as a whole are not so bad as pessimists
would have us believe; that there are comparatively few that have no
respect for the Divine Law, and are kept in check only by the fear of
human law; but mourns because most men yet think more of self than of
their neighbours, to whom they may be of service, and sees that, where our
relations with our fellow-men are not satisfactorily balanced, the
destroyer of harmony is universally selfishness in one form or another.
The fear o' Hell's a hangman's whip
To haud the wretch in order.
Even yet this is advanced philosophy, that fear, being a negative motive,
cannot kindle human power or lead men to higher growth. So far as it can
influence the human soul, its effect must be to depress it. Not only the
fear of hell, but fear of anything, is an agency of evil. Some day a
better word than fear will be used to express the proper attitude of human
souls towards God.
But where you feel your honour grip
Let that aye be your border.
What you think of yourself matters more to you than what others think of
you. Let honour and conscience be your guide, and go not beyond the limits
they prescribe. Stop at the slightest warning honour gives,
And resolutely keep its laws,
Uncaring consequences.
In regard to religious matters, he gave his young friend sage advice:
The great Creator to revere
Must sure become the creature;
But still the preaching cant forbear,
And ev'n the rigid feature.
The soul's attitude to the Creator is a determining factor in deciding its
happiness and growth. Reverence should not mean solemnity and awe.
Reverence based on dread blights the soul and dwarfs it. True reverence
reaches its highest when its source is joy; then it becomes productive of
character--constructively transforming character. The formalism of
'preaching cant' robs religion of its natural attractiveness, especially
to younger people; the 'rigid feature' turns those who would enjoy
religion from association with those who claim to be Christians, and yet,
especially when they speak about religion, look like melancholy and
miserable criminals whose final appeal for pardon has been refused.
Burns's philosophy would lift the shadows of frightfulness from religion
and let its joyousness be revealed.
An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange
For Deity offended.
A correspondence fixed wi' heaven
Is sure a noble anchor.
To Burns, the relationship of the soul to God was of first importance. He
cared little for man's formalisms, but personal connection with a loving
Father he regarded as the supreme source of happiness. Only a reverent
and philosophic mind would think of prayer as 'a correspondence with
heaven.'
Burns holds a high rank as a profound philosopher of human life, of human
growth, and of human consciousness of the Divine, as the vital centre of
human power.
Burns was a philosopher in his recognition that productive work is
essential to human happiness and progress.
In 'The Twa Dogs' he makes Cæsar say:
But human bodies are sic fools,
For a' their colleges and schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them,
They mak enow themselves to vex them;
An' ay the less they hae to sturt them, trouble
In like proportion less will hurt them.
* * * * *
But gentleman, and ladies warst,
Wi' ev'n-down want o' wark are curst.
Burns had real sympathy for the idle rich. He saw that idleness leads to
many evils, and that probably the worst evils, those that produce most
unhappiness, are those that result from neglecting to use, or misusing,
powers that, if wisely used, would produce comfort and happiness for
ourselves as well as for others. He believed that every man and woman
would be happier if engaged in some productive occupation, and that those
who do not use their hands to produce for themselves and their fellows are
'curst wi' want o' wark.'
This belief is based on an old and very profound philosophy, that is not
even yet understood as widely and as fully as it should be: the philosophy
first expounded by Plato, and afterwards by Goethe and Ruskin, that 'all
evil springs from unused, or misused, good.' Whatever element is highest
in our lives will degrade us most if misused. The best in the lives of the
idle sours and causes deterioration instead of development of character,
and breeds discontent and unhappiness, so that days are 'insipid, dull and
tasteless,' and nights are 'unquiet, lang and restless.'
Burns showed that he understood this revealing philosophy in 'The Vision.'
In this great poem he assumes that Coila, the genius of Kyle, his native
district in Ayrshire, appeared to him in a vision, and revealed a clear
understanding of the epoch events of his past life and their influence on
his development, and gave him advice to guide him for the future. In one
verse he says:
I saw thy pulse's maddening play
Wild send thee pleasure's devious way,
Misled by fancy's meteor-ray,
By passion driven;
But yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.
He was attacked and criticised severely for the statement contained in the
last two lines. The statement is but philosophic truth that his critics
did not understand. Fancy and passion are elements of power given from
heaven. Properly used they become important elements in human happiness
and development. Improperly used they produce unhappiness and degradation.
Burns understood clearly the philosophic basis of modern education, the
importance of developing the individuality, or selfhood, or special power
of each child. The poem he wrote to his friend Robert Graham of Fintry,
beginning:
When Nature her great masterpiece designed
And framed her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She formed of various parts the various man,
is a philosophical description of how Nature produced various types of
men, giving to each mind special powers and aptitudes. The thought of the
poem is the basis of all modern educational thought: the value of the
individuality of each child, and the importance of developing it.
He expresses very beautifully the philosophy of the ephemeral nature of
certain forms of pleasure in eight lines of 'Tam o' Shanter':
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or as the snowfall in the river,
A moment white, then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit e'er you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm.
Burns understood the philosophy of the simple life in the development of
character and happiness.
In 'The Cotter's Saturday Night,' after dilating on the glories of simple,
reverent religion, as compared with 'Religion's Pride,'
In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion's every grace except the heart,
he prays for the young people of Scotland--
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content;
And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.
He understood the value of simplicity in life as well as in religion, and
expressed it in admirable form.
'The Address to the Unco Guid' has a kindly philosophic sympathy running
like a stream of light through it; the profound sympathy of the Master who
searched for the one stray lamb, and who suggested that he who was without
sin should cast the first stone. The last verse especially contains a
sublime human philosophy, that if studied till understood, and then
practised, would work a greatly needed change in the attitude of the rest
of humanity towards the so-called wayward. It is one of the strange
anomalies of life that, generally, professing Christian women have in the
past been the last to come with Christian sympathy of an affectionate, and
sisterly, and respectful quality to take an erring sister in their arms to
try to prove that she still possessed their esteem, and to rekindle faith
in her heart.
His poem to Mrs Dunlop on 'New Year's Day, 1790;' 'A Man's a Man for a'
That;' 'A Winter Night;' 'Sketch in Verse;' and 'Verses written in
Friar's Carse Hermitage,' all show him to have been a philosophic student
of human nature.
A few quotations from letters to his friends will show his philosophical
attitude to general matters, as the quotations from his letters showed the
clearness and trueness of his philosophy regarding religion, democracy,
and brotherhood.
Burns saw man's duty to his fellows and to himself in this life.
In a letter to Robert Ainslie, Edinburgh, 1788, he wrote: 'I have no
objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I
appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the
same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and
disintegrative depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of
profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every
possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I
wish that which piety believes, and virtue deserves, may be all matter of
fact. But in all things belonging to, and terminating in, the present
scene of existence, man has serious business on hand. Whether a man shall
shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or
shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he
shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, or at least enjoy himself in the
comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle
of poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a
self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and
remorse--these are alternatives of the last moment.'
Since the time of Burns men and women, both in the churches and out of
them, have learned to set more store on the importance of living truly on
the earth, and have ceased to a large extent to think only of a life to
come after death. Men and women are now trying in increasing numbers to
make it more heavenly here.
Burns taught a sound philosophy of contentment as a basis for happiness.
He wrote to Mr Ainslie in 1789: 'You need not doubt that I find several
very unpleasant and disagreeable circumstances in my business [that of a
gauger], but I am tired with and disgusted at the language of complaint at
the evils of life. Human existence in the most favourable situations does
not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills;
capricious, foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills, as if they
were the peculiar property of his own particular situation; and hence
that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily
does ruin, many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is almost
without exception a constant source of disappointment and misery. So far
from being dissatisfied with my present lot, I earnestly pray the Great
Disposer of events that it may never be worse, and I think I can lay my
hand on my heart and say "I shall be content."'
Good, sound philosophy of contentment! Not the contentment that does not
try to improve life's conditions, but the wise contentment that recognises
the best in present conditions, instead of foolishly resenting what it
cannot change.
Burns taught the philosophy of good citizenship.
In 1789 he wrote to Mr Ainslie: 'If the relations we stand in to King,
country, kindred, and friends be anything but the visionary fancies of
dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity,
humanity, and justice be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be
said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female whose
tender, faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little
innocents who are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his God,
the subjects of his King, and the support, nay the very vital existence,
of his country in the ensuing age, is the type of truest manhood.'
This quotation from a letter written to a warm, personal friend from whom
he was not seeking any favours gives an insight into a rational mind loyal
to God, loyal to his king, loyal to his country, and lovingly loyal to his
wife and family.
In a letter to the Right Rev. Dr Geddes, a Roman Catholic Bishop resident
in Edinburgh, a very kind friend to Burns, he wrote, 1789: 'I am conscious
that wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my
welfare. It gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last [at
Ellisland], stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not
only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination to attend to those
great and important questions: What I am? Where I am? For what I am
destined? Thus with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily
guess, my reverend and much honoured friend, that my characteristical
trade is not forgotten; I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to
the Muses. I am determined to study Man and Nature, and in that view,
incessantly to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me
to produce something worth preserving.'
Bishop Gillis, a Roman Catholic Bishop who lived more than sixty years
after the death of Burns, said, in reference to the letter from which this
quotation was made: 'If any man, after perusing this letter, will still
say that the mind of Burns was beyond the reach of religious influence,
or, in other words, that he was a scoffer at revelation, that man need not
be reasoned with, as his own mind must be hopelessly beyond the reach of
argument.'
In a letter to his friend Cunningham he wrote, 1789: 'What strange beings
we are! Since we have a portion of conscious existence equally capable of
enjoying pleasure, happiness, and rapture, or of suffering pain,
wretchedness, and misery, it is surely worthy of inquiry whether there be
not such a thing as a science of life; whether method, economy, and
fertility of expedients be not applicable to enjoyment, and whether there
be not a want of dexterity in pleasure which renders our little scantling
of happiness still less; and a profuseness and intoxication in bliss which
leads to satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence.
'There is not a doubt but that health, talents, character, decent
competency, respectable friends, are real, substantial blessings; and yet
do we not daily see those who enjoy many, or all, of these good things,
and _notwithstanding_ contrive to be as unhappy as others to whose lot few
of them have fallen? I believe one great source of this mistake or
misconduct is owing to a certain stimulus, with us called ambition, which
goads us up the hill of life--not as we ascend other eminences, for the
laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the
dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures,
seemingly diminutive in other stations, &c.'
His philosophy clearly recognised the evils of unduly centring our minds
and hearts on pleasure, and thus not only robbing ourselves of
development, and humanity of the advantage of the many things we might do
in our overtime devoted to pleasure, but destroying our interest in the
things that were intended to give us happiness.
He also recognised fully the evils of selfish ambition which aims at
attaining higher positions than others; which climbs, not to get into
purer air to see more widely our true relationships to our fellow-men, but
for the degrading satisfaction of being able to look down with a
hardening pride that separates humanity into groups instead of uniting all
men in brotherhood. A man whose heart and mind are engrossed by base
material aims cannot grow truly, and he loses the advantages that should
have come to him from the elements of blessing he possesses by misusing
them for selfish ends.
In another letter he wrote: 'All my fears and cares are of this world; if
there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it. I hate a man
that wishes to be a Deist; but, I fear, every fair, unprejudiced inquirer
must in some degree be a sceptic. It is not that there are any very
staggering arguments against the immortality of man, but, like
electricity, phlogiston, &c., the subject is so involved in darkness that
we want data to go upon.'
His philosophy left him no fears for what comes after death. He had deep
faith in the justice of God. 'I believe,' he said, 'that God perfectly
understands the being He has made.' Believing this, and believing also
that God is just, he feared not the future. Burns, as he said to Mrs
Dunlop, was 'in his idle moments sometimes a little sceptical.' But they
were only moments. He knew there were problems he could not solve, and so,
as he wrote to Dr Candlish, 'he was glad to grasp revealed religion.' A
thoughtful man requires more faith in revealed religion than a man who
does not really think, but only thinks he is thinking, when other people's
thoughts are running through his head. Burns needed strong faith, and he
had it even about religious matters he could not explain. 'The necessities
of my own heart,' as he wrote to Mrs Dunlop, 'gave the lie to my cold
philosophisings.' His 'Ode to Mrs Dunlop on New Year's Day, 1790,' said:
The voice of Nature loudly cries,
And many a message from the skies,
That something in us never dies.
He accepted by faith the 'messages from the skies,' and in his soul
harmonised the messages with the 'Voice of Nature,' even though his
philosophic mind searched for proof of problems he could not solve.
In a letter to Peter Hill, 1790, he wrote: 'Mankind are by nature
benevolent creatures, except in a few scoundrelly instances. I do not
think that avarice for the good things we chance to have is born with us;
but we are placed here among so much nakedness and hunger and poverty and
want, that we are under a damning necessity of studying selfishness in
order that we may EXIST. Still there are in every age a few souls that all
the wants and woes of life cannot debase into selfishness, or even give
the necessary alloy of caution and prudence. If ever I am in danger of
vanity, it is when I contemplate myself on this side of my disposition and
character. God knows I am no saint; I have a whole host of follies and
sins to answer for, but if I could (and I believe I do, as far as I can),
I would 'wipe away all tears from all eyes.'
Burns was not self-righteous. He moralises in this quotation not as one of
the 'unco guid,' but as a man on what he thought was one of life's most
perplexing problems, poverty. He saw the problem more keenly than most men
see it yet. It was not the poverty of Burns himself that, as Carlyle
believed, made him write and work for freedom and justice for the
labouring-classes. It is quite true, however, that one of his reasons for
pleading for democracy was the poverty among the peasantry of his time. He
saw the injustice of conditions, and admitted in his poem to Davie, a
brother poet, that
It's hardly in a body's power
To keep at times from being sour,
To see how things are shared.
Burns recommended the philosophy of right, not expediency in public as
well as private matters.
He wrote a letter to Mrs Dunlop in 1790, in which he said: 'I believe, in
my conscience, such ideas as, "my country; her independence; her honour;
the illustrious names that mark the history of my native land," &c.--I
believe these, among your _men of the world_; men who, in fact, guide, for
the most part, and govern our world, are looked on as so many
modifications of wrong-headedness. They knew the use of bawling out such
terms to rouse or lead the Rabble; but for their own private use, with
almost all the _able statesmen_ that ever existed, or now exist, when they
talk of right and wrong, they only mean proper and improper; and their
measure of conduct is not what they ought, but _what they dare_. For the
truth of this, I shall not ransack the history of nations, but appeal to
one of the ablest judges of men, and himself one of the ablest men that
ever lived--the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. In fact a man that could
thoroughly control his vices, whenever they interfered with his interest,
and who could completely put on the appearance of every virtue as often as
it suited his purposes, is, on the Stanhopian plan, _the perfect man_, a
man to lead nations. But are great abilities, complete without a flaw, and
polished without a blemish, the standard of human excellence? This is
certainly not the staunch opinion of _men of the world_; but I call on
honour, virtue, and worth to give the Stygian doctrine a loud negative!
However, this must be allowed, that, if you abstract from man the idea of
an existence beyond the grave, then the true measure of human conduct is
_proper and improper_; virtue and vice, as dispositions of the heart, are,
in that case, of scarcely the same import and value to the world at large
as harmony and discord in the modifications of sound; and a delicate sense
of honour, like a nice ear for music, though it may sometimes give the
possessor an ecstasy unknown to the coarser organs of the herd, yet,
considering the harsh gratings and inharmonic jars in this ill-tuned state
of being, it is odds but the individual would be as happy, and certainly
would be as much respected by the true judges of society, as it would then
stand, without either a good ear or a good heart....
'Mackenzie has been called "the Addison of the Scots," and, in my opinion,
Addison would not be hurt at the comparison. If he has not Addison's
exquisite humour, he as certainly outdoes him in the tender and the
pathetic. His _Man of Feeling_--but I am not counsel-learned in the laws
of criticism--I estimate as the first performance of the kind I ever saw.
From what book, moral or even pious, will the susceptible young mind
receive impressions more congenial to humanity and kindness, generosity
and benevolence--in short, more of all that ennobles the soul to herself,
or endears her to others, than from the simple, affecting tale of poor
Harley?
'Still, with all my admiration of Mackenzie's writings, I do not know if
they are the fittest reading for a young man who is about to set out, as
the phrase is, to make his way into life. Do you not think, Madam, that
among the few favoured of heaven in the structure of their minds (for such
there certainly are) there may be a purity, a tenderness, a dignity, and
elegance of soul, which are of no use, nay, in some degree absolutely
disqualifying, for the truly important business of making a man's way into
life?'
Burns understood the underlying philosophy of sensitiveness.
In a letter to Miss Craik, 1790, he wrote: 'There is not among the
martyrologies ever penned so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.
In the comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not what they are
doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our
kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility,
which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions
than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to
some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays,
tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the
frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the
intrigues of wanton butterflies--in short, send him adrift after some
pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet
curse him with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that
lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing
on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight
nearly as miserable as a poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy
pleasures the Muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils.
Bewitching poesy is like bewitching woman: she has in all ages been
accused of misleading mankind from the counsels of wisdom and the paths of
prudence, involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty,
branding them with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of
ruin; yet, where is the man but must own that all our happiness on earth
is not worth the name--that even the holy hermit's solitary prospect of
paradisaical bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun rising over a
frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures
that we owe to the lovely Queen of the heart of Man!'
He based the last two lines in his 'Poem on Sensibility' on this
philosophy:
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure,
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.
His 'Parting Song to Clarinda' reveals in the four lines, said by Sir
Walter Scott 'to contain the essence of a thousand love-tales,' how
deepest love may bring darkest sorrow:
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
In a letter to Crawford Tait, Esq., Edinburgh, 1790, requesting a
sympathetic interest on behalf of a young man from Ayrshire, he says: 'I
shall give you my friend's character in two words: as to his head, he has
talents enough, and more than enough, for common life; as to his heart,
when Nature had kneaded the kindly clay that composes it, she said, "I can
no more."
'You, my good Sir, were born under kinder stars; but your fraternal
sympathy, I well know, can enter into the feelings of the young man who
goes into life with the laudable ambition to _do_ something, and to _be_
something among his fellow-creatures; but whom the consciousness of
friendless obscurity presses to the earth, and wounds to the soul!
'Even the fairest of his virtues are against him. That independent spirit,
and that ingenuous modesty--qualities inseparable from a noble mind--are,
with the million, circumstances not a little disqualifying. What pleasure
is in the power of the fortunate and the happy, by their notice and
patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the heart of such
depressed youth! I am not so angry with mankind for their deaf economy of
the purse--the goods of this world cannot be divided without being
lessened--but why be a niggard of that which bestows bliss on a
fellow-creature, yet takes nothing from our own means of enjoyment? We
wrap ourselves up in the cloak of our better-fortune and turn away our
eyes, lest the wants and woes of our brother-mortals should disturb the
selfish apathy of our souls.'
Burns was a deep character student, and he was able to adjust the balance
fairly when weighing the characteristics that count for success in public
life, in business, and in private life. He always recommended honesty, and
always admired that independent spirit and that ingenuous modesty
inseparable from a noble mind. Much as he admired them, however, he
clearly understood that these admirable qualities might prevent the
perfect development of a soul if they made a man morbidly sensitive, or
interfered in any way with his faith in himself.
Speaking of 'independence and sensibility,' the same qualities he
discussed in the letter quoted (to Mr Crawford Tait), he says in a letter
to Peter Hill, Edinburgh, 1791, addressing poverty: 'By thee the man of
sentiment, whose heart flows with independence, and melts with
sensibility, inly pines under the neglect or writhes in bitterness of soul
under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth.'
Burns taught the just philosophy of gratitude to God.
In a letter to Dr Moore, of London, he wrote, 1791: 'Whatsoever is not
detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the
Giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His
creatures with thankful delight.'
We cannot yet estimate the philosophic vision of Burns. It will grow
clearer as century follows century. Carlyle said of him: 'We see that in
this man was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep
earnestness, the force, and passionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him,
and a consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drop of the summer
clouds.'
So much for his heart; what says Carlyle about his mind?
'Burns never studied philosophy.... Nevertheless, sufficient indication,
if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his works; we discern the brawny
movements of a gigantic though untutored strength; and can understand how,
in conversation, his quick, sure insight into men and things may, as aught
else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his time and country.
'But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well as
strong. The more delicate relations of things could not well have escaped
his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The logic of the
senate and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient; nay,
perhaps the highest truth is that which will most certainly elude it, for
this logic works by words, and "the highest," it has been said, "cannot be
expressed in words." We are not without tokens of an openness for this
higher truth also, a keen though uncultivated sense for it having existed
in Burns. Mr Stewart, it will be remembered, wondered that Burns had
formed some distinct conception of the doctrine of Association. We rather
think that far subtler things than the doctrine of Association had from of
old been familiar to him.'
Carlyle's last statement is correct. He admits the great essential truth
that Burns was a subtle philosopher. What a pity that such a man as
Carlyle should have thought it necessary to say that Burns 'never studied
philosophy.' The statement is incorrect, but, if it had been correct, why
make it? and why call his mental strength 'untutored,' and his 'keen sense
of the highest philosophy' 'uncultivated'?
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 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. But I will indulge the flattering faith that my
poetry will considerably outlive my poverty; and without any fustian
affectation of spirit, I can promise and affirm that it must be no
ordinary craving of the latter that shall ever make me do anything
injurious to the honest fame of the former. Whatever may be my
failings--for failings are a part of human nature--may they ever be those
of a generous heart and an independent mind.'
Speaking of the moral character of Burns, Carlyle is wise and just. He
says: 'We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as
guiltier than the average; nay, from doubting that he is less guilty than
one of ten thousand tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where the
Plebiscite of common civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us
less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually
unjust in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, of which
this one may be stated as the substance; it decides, like a court of law,
by dead statutes; and not positively, but negatively, less on what is done
right than on what is or is not done wrong.... What Burns did under his
circumstances, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment
at the natural strength and worth of his character.'
Burns was naturally a student gifted with a great mind. His splendid mind
was trained to act logically by his remarkable father, and quickened and
illuminated by his great teacher John Murdoch. He was a great philosopher,
not merely because he read Locke's 'Essay on the Human Understanding' when
a boy, but because during his short life he read with joyous interest many
books of a philosophical character, and what is of infinitely greater
importance, he interpreted all he read with an independent mind, and
related all truth as he understood it to human life. He could discuss even
the principles of Spinoza, and 'venture into the daring path Spinoza
trod.' Yet, as he told Dr Candlish, of Edinburgh, he merely 'ventured in'
to test Spinoza's philosophy, which he soon found to be inadequate to the
true development of the human soul, and therefore he 'was glad to grasp
revealed religion.' Not merely as a great poetic genius, but as a profound
philosophic teacher of religion, democracy, and brotherhood--the most
essentially vital elements related to the highest development of the souls
of men and women--will the real Robert Burns become known as he is more
justly and more deeply studied.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF BURNS.
BORN 1759--DIED 1796.
_6 Years Old._
At six years of age he was sent to a school in a little home near Alloway
Mill for a few months. Then the school was closed, and William Burns, his
father, and a few neighbours engaged a remarkably fine teacher named John
Murdoch to teach their children.
_7 Years Old._
When Burns was seven years old his father moved to Mount Oliphant farm,
about two miles from Alloway. Robert continued to attend Murdoch's school.
_8 Years Old._
He continued to attend Murdoch's school.
_9 Years Old._
Murdoch, his beloved teacher, left Alloway. He had not only been the
teacher of Burns, but had lent the boy books, among them being _The Life
of Hannibal_. Burns said this book 'was the earliest I recollect taking
any pleasure in.' Murdoch presented him with an English grammar and a book
translated from the French, named _The School for Love_. His imagination
during this period was kindled by many legends, ghost stories, tales, and
songs told and sung by an old lady, Betty Davidson, who lived in the
family home.
_10 Years Old._
Read and studied with his father, discussing freely the merits of the
books read.
_11 Years Old._
He studied, and continued to study with enthusiasm, English grammar, and
had become an unusually excellent scholar for his age in English. His
father regularly taught his family after Murdoch left Alloway. A deep and
lasting impression was made on Robert's mind during this year by a
_Collection of Letters_, written by the leading authors of Queen Anne's
reign.
_12 Years Old._
Worked on the farm, and read with his father at night. Wrote many letters
to imaginary correspondents.
_13 Years Old._
He was sent for a few weeks to a school in Dalrymple to learn penmanship.
John Murdoch was appointed teacher in the High School at Ayr. He became
again a visitor to the Burns' home, in which he was a most welcome guest.
He presented Pope's works to Robert. During this year Burns continued an
imaginary correspondence with many people, and began to form a style
moulded by the Letters of the great prose-writers of Queen Anne's time.
_14 Years Old._
Boarded with Murdoch in Ayr for a few weeks, to devote himself to a deeper
study of English. Studied French a little, and gave a little attention to
Latin. The best influence of his brief period with Murdoch was the
kindling of his vision with higher ideals of life, his relationship to his
fellow-men, and his duty to God.
_15 Years Old._
Began to take his place as an independent thinker with men, and surprised
them by his wide knowledge and his unusual powers of expression and
impression. Took his share in reaping the grain on the farm, and fell in
love with his harvest mate, Nellie Kirkpatrick, who bound and shocked, or
stooked, what he reaped. She was a good-looking girl of fourteen, who sang
well. Burns said her love made him a poet. He composed his first poem,
'Handsome Nell,' as a tribute to her. His love for her undoubtedly kindled
him at the centre of his power, as a true love that is respectfully
treated by parents always does for a youth during the adolescent period.
_16 Years Old._
He laboured hard on the farm, but was worried by his father's poverty, by
the poorness of the soil of Mount Oliphant farm, and especially by the
harsh and over-bearing manner in which his father was treated by the
landlord's agent. Hard labour and possibly insufficient nourishment for a
youth growing rapidly, coupled with his humiliation at the conduct of the
agent, and his sorrowful sympathy, affected his health. He became
depressed and moody, and suffered from headaches and palpitation of the
heart. He had become acquainted with a few respectable women in Ayr, one
of whom lent him the _Spectator_ and Pope's _Homer_. These he read and
digested with a growing interest, and used with rapidly developing power.
_17 Years Old._
Was sent to the school of Hugh Rodger at Kirkoswald to learn mathematics,
especially mensuration and surveying. He enjoyed the work and made rapid
progress. He formed a friendship with William Niven, who went to the same
school; and in order to develop his powers as an independent thinker and a
public speaker, he and Willie organised a debating society of two, which
met in formal debate once a week. This developed his intellectual powers
more than the study of mathematics. His school-days in Kirkoswald came to
a sudden ending when he met Peggy Thomson, who lived next to the school.
His second adolescent love came unexpectedly, and with great force. He
says Peggy Thomson's charms 'Overset his trigonometry, and set him off at
a tangent from his studies.' He tried to study, but at the end of the week
gave it all up and went home.
His schoolmaster learned about the debates between him and Willie Niven,
and determined to put an end to such waste of time from the study of
mathematics. He charged Niven one day with the crime of debating, and
demanded the subject for the next debate. Willie told him the subject for
to-morrow was, 'Resolved that a great general is of more use to the world
than a good merchant.' 'Nonsense,' thundered the teacher; 'everybody ought
to know that a general is of far more importance to the world than a
merchant.' Burns promptly said to the teacher, 'You take the general's
side, and I will take the merchant's side, and let us see.'
Burns spoke with such wide information, such fine reasoning and such
splendid eloquence, that he soon had the boys cheering him wildly. This
annoyed the master, and he became so angry that he dismissed the school
for the day.
Even at the early age of seventeen he had few rivals as a public speaker
and debater. He took lessons in a dancing-school at Tarbolton, when he
returned from Kirkoswald, to improve his social manners. During this year
he read Thomson's works, Shenstone's works, a _Select Collection of
English Songs_, Allan Ramsay's works, Hervey's _Meditations_, and some of
Shakespeare's plays.
_18 Years Old._
The family moved to Lochlea farm, about four miles from Mauchline. Up to
this time he had been an awkward and bashful youth. He began now to be
more at ease with the opposite sex after he had been introduced to them.
He had no real lover, however, between 17 and 21.
_19 Years Old._
About this time he made a plan for a tragedy. He never finished it, and
preserved only a fragment, beginning, 'All devil as I am.'
_20 Years Old._
A year of work, reading, and visions that were but the bases of higher
visions yet to come.
_21 Years Old._
He, with his brother Gilbert and five other young men, founded a debating
club in an upstairs room of a private house in Tarbolton. He read
persistently; held a book in his left hand at meals; and usually carried a
book with him while walking. About this time he began to be known as a
critic of the preaching and practices of the 'Auld Licht' preachers, and
enjoyed shocking those who were, in his judgment, not vital, but only
professing, Christians, who did nothing to prove the genuineness of their
religion. In this year his heart was kindled by the first love of his
manhood.
_22 Years Old._
He read Sterne's works, Macpherson's Ossian, and Mackenzie's _The Man of
the World_ and _Man of Feeling_. He said 'he valued the last book more
than any other book, except the Bible.' His mind turned to religious
subjects very definitely at this period. He developed a deep and reverent
affection for Alison Begbie, who was a servant on a farm not far from
Lochlea farm. The farm was on Cessnock Water. He wrote three poems to her:
'The Lass of Cessnock Banks,' 'Peggy Alison,' and 'Mary Morrison.' His
letters to her reveal the two great dominant elements in his mind and
heart at that time: a deep and respectful love, and some of the highest
ideals of vital religion.
In this year love again stirred him to write poetry. He said it became 'a
darling walk for his mind.' 'Winter--a Dirge' belongs to this period.
_23 Years Old._
This was an eventful year. Alison Begbie had declined his offer of
marriage. Had she married him and lived he would have had but one love
after maturity. He ventured into business in Irvine. He says his partner
'was a scoundrel of the first water, who made money by the mystery of
thieving.' Their shop was burned, and he found himself not worth a
sixpence. He read two novels, _Pamela_, and _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, and
_Fergusson's Poems_, which filled him with a deeper determination to write
poetry. He wrote several religious poems this year.
_24 Years Old._
He became a Freemason in Tarbolton, and devoted a good deal of time to the
order. He did not write much poetry. His mind was occupied by religious
matters, and he had an impression that his life was not going to last very
long. This idea haunted him for two or three years after his maturity. He
contemplated death as a rest, but he continued to store his mind and think
independently. Dr Mackenzie, who attended his father on his death-bed
towards the end of the year, wrote, 'that on his first visit he found
Gilbert and his father friendly and cordial, but Robert silent and
uncompanionable, till he began discussing a medical subject, when Robert
promptly joined in the discussion, and showed an unexpected and remarkable
understanding of the subject.' During this year he wrote 'My Father was a
Farmer' and 'The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie.'
_25 Years Old._
His father died in February, leaving the family very poor. Robert and
Gilbert rented Mossgiel farm, about two miles from Mauchline, and the
family moved there. Robert determined to be a scientific farmer. He read
the best books he could get on agriculture; but bad seed, bad weather, and
late harvest left the brothers only half an average crop. He continued to
work on the farm, but evidently began to realise more clearly the kindling
call to poetry as the special work of his life. During the next twelve
years he produced a continuous out-pouring of wonderful poems, although
about half of the twelve years he worked as a farmer on Mossgiel and
Ellisland farms, and most of the rest of the time worked hard as a gauger,
riding two hundred miles each week in the performance of his duties. In
this year he wrote 'The Rigs of Barley,' composed in August; 'My Nannie
O,' 'Green Grow the Rashes,' 'Man was Made to Mourn,' 'The Twa Herds,' and
the 'Epitaph on My Ever Honoured Father.' In this year he met Jean
Armour, and soon loved her.
_26 Years Old._
He wrote many poems during this year, the most important being 'Epistle to
Davie, a Brother Poet,' 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' 'Death and Doctor
Hornbook,' three long 'Epistles to John Lapraik,' 'Epistle to William
Simpson,' 'Epistle to John Goldie,' 'Rantin', Rovin' Robin,' 'Epistle to
Rev. John M'Math,' 'Second Epistle to Davie,' 'Farewell to Ballochmyle,'
'Hallowe'en,' 'To a Mouse,' 'The Jolly Beggars,' 'The Cotter's Saturday
Night,' 'Address to the Deil,' and 'The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning
Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie.'
_27 Years Old._
This was an eventful and productive year for Burns. Quickly following each
other came 'The Twa Dogs,' 'The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer,' 'The
Ordination,' 'Epistle to James Smith,' 'The Vision,' 'Address to the Unco
Guid,' 'The Holy Fair,' 'To a Mountain Daisy,' 'To Ruin,' 'Despondency: an
Ode,' 'Epistle to a Young Friend,' 'Nature's Law,' 'The Brigs of Ayr,' 'O
Thou Dread Power!' 'Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr,' 'Lines on Meeting
Lord Daer,' 'Masonic Song,' 'Tam Samson's Elegy,' 'A Winter Night,' 'Yon
Wild Mossy Mountains,' 'Address to Edinburgh,' and 'Address to a Haggis,'
with love-songs and many minor pieces.
Burns had given Jean Armour a certificate of marriage, and he nearly lost
his mental balance when, at her father's order, she consented to have it
burned. Fortunately for him two things aided in preserving his balance:
the publication of the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, and his love for
Mary Campbell, 'Highland Mary.' No man ever needed a love, deep and true,
to save him more than Burns did. He believed Jean was lost to him for
ever. He was not a faithless but a needy lover when he found a responsive
heart in Highland Mary. They made their marriage vows on the Fail, Sunday,
14th May 1786. Mary went home to prepare for marriage, but caught a fever
and died. Burns went to Edinburgh later in the year to publish a second
edition of his poems, as the first edition had been so well received. In
Edinburgh he was the hero of the highest and most thoroughly educated
classes. He wrote several fine poems to Mary Campbell.
_28 Years Old._
Three thousand copies of his poems were published in April in Edinburgh,
netting him over five hundred pounds. He made two triumphal tours--the
Border Tour and the Highland Tour. As Mary Campbell was dead, his love was
kindled by Clarinda, Mrs M'Lehose, with whom he conducted an intensive
love correspondence, and to whom he wrote several beautiful love-songs. As
she was a married woman who was separated from her husband, Burns could
not marry her. In this year he wrote the 'Inscription for the Headstone of
Fergusson,' 'Epistle to Mrs Scott,' 'The Bonnie Moor Hen,' 'On the Death
of John M'Leod,' 'Elegy on the Death of James Hunter Blair,' 'The Humble
Petition of Bruar Water,' 'Lines on the Fall of Fyers,' 'Castle Gordon,'
'On Scaring Some Waterfowl,' 'A Rosebud by My Early Walk,' 'The Banks of
Devon,' 'The Young Highland Rover,' 'Birthday Ode,' and many short pieces
and love-songs, among them 'The Birks of Aberfeldy.'
_29 Years Old._
Rented Ellisland farm, on the Nith, near Dumfries. Married Jean Armour
(second marriage to her) in April, and left her in Mauchline till he
could build a home for her on Ellisland, which was ready in December.
Building his new home, stocking and managing the farm, and riding fifty
miles occasionally to his Jean, made his year so busy that he wrote little
poetry, but exquisite love-songs. The estate of Glenriddell, owned in the
time of Burns by Robert Riddell, bordered on Ellisland farm. Robert
Riddell was a fine type of Scottish gentleman, and Burns and he became
warm friends. Among the best poems of this year, not love-songs, are
'Verses written in Friar's Carse Hermitage,' 'Epistle to Robert Graham of
Fintry,' 'The Day Returns,' 'A Mother's Lament,' 'The Fall of the Leaf,'
'Auld Lang Syne,' 'The Poet's Progress,' 'Elegy on the Year 1788,' and
'Epistle to James Tennant.'
_30 Years Old._
Wrote many love-songs for Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, though busily
engaged in farming, and, in addition, a new Psalm for the Chapel of
Kilmarnock; a sketch in verse to Right Hon. C. J. Fox, 'The Wounded Hare,'
'The Banks of Nith,' 'John Anderson my Joe,' 'The Kirk of Scotland's
Alarm,' 'Caledonia,' 'The Battle of Sherramuir,' 'The Braes o'
Killiecrankie,' 'Farewell to the Highlands,' 'To Mary in Heaven,' 'Epistle
to Dr Blacklock,' and 'New Year's Day, 1790.'
_31 Years Old._
Found his farm 'a ruinous affair.' Accepted a position as an exciseman at
fifty pounds a year. Had to ride two hundred miles each week. Continued
writing love-songs for Johnson's Museum (without pay), and wrote in
addition, 'Tam o' Shanter,' 'Lament of Mary Queen of Scots,' and 'The
Banks of Doon.'
_32 Years Old._
Continued to write love-songs, among the most beautiful being 'Sweet
Afton' and 'Parting Song to Clarinda.' In addition, wrote 'Lament for
James, Earl of Glencairn,' 'On Glenriddell's Fox Breaking his Chain,'
'Poem on Pastoral Poetry,' 'Verses on the Destruction of the Woods near
Drumlanrig,' 'Second Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry,' 'The Song of
Death,' and 'Poem on Sensibility.'
_33 Years Old._
Wrote many love-songs, among them 'The Lea Rig' and 'Highland Mary.' His
other poems were mainly election ballads. His love-songs were now written
mainly for Thomson's _National Songs and Melodies_. He still refused pay
for his songs.
_34 Years Old._
Still, notwithstanding his very busy life, he sent a continuous stream of
songs to Edinburgh. Other poems of the year were 'Sonnet Written on the
Author's Birthday,' 'Lord Gregory,' and 'Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled.'
In this year he moved to the house in which he died, and in which Jean
died thirty-eight years afterwards.
_35 Years Old._
In this year Burns, to supplement 'Scots, wha hae' (the greatest
bugle-song of freedom), wrote two grand poems on Liberty: 'The Ode to
Liberty' and 'The Tree of Liberty;' and 'Contented Wi' Little and Cantie
Wi' Mair.' In this year he declined an offer from the London _Morning
Chronicle_ to become a regular contributor to that paper.
_36 Years Old._
Love-songs, and election ballads in favour of his friend Mr Heron, were
his most numerous poems this year. In addition to other minor pieces he
wrote a fine poem to his friend, Alexander Cunningham, 'Does Haughty Gaul
Invasion Threat,' and the most triumphant combined interpretation of
democracy and brotherhood ever written, 'A Man's a Man for a' That.'
_37 Years Old._
Early in the year his health gave way, and he died, 21st July 1796. Though
apparently a strong man, it is reasonable to believe that he had a
constitutional tendency towards consumption. His father died from this
dread disease, and his grandmother (his mother's mother) died at
thirty-five from the same cause. Burns inherited his physical and
intellectual powers mainly from his mother. Both by heredity and
contagion, therefore, he was made susceptible to influences that develop
consumption. He continued to write poetry, chiefly love-songs, during his
illness. His last poem was written, nine days before his death, to Miss
Margaret Chalmers, for whom he had a reverent affection.
No reference has been made in this sketch of his development to the prose
written each year. Five hundred and thirty-four of his letters have been
published. They are written in a stately style, and most of them contain
philosophic discussions of religion, ethics, or democracy.
A shy, sensitive, retiring boy; a deep-thinking, persistently studying,
eloquent, still shy youth; a brilliant reasoner, a thinker ranking with
leaders in his neighbourhood, meeting each on equal terms, and easily
proving his superiority by his remarkable knowledge of each man's special
subject of study, and by his still more remarkable powers of independent
thinking and clear revelation of his thought in his young manhood, but
still at twenty-two too shy to propose to the first lover of his maturity;
always a reverent lover of Nature, whose mind saw God in beauty, in
dawn-gleam and eve-glow, in tree and flower, in river and mountain; he
studied, thought, and expressed his thoughts in exquisite poetry, and,
according to those who knew him best, in still richer and more captivating
conversation, until at twenty-seven he stood in the midst of the most
learned professors of Scotland and outclassed them all. No single
professor of the galaxy of culture in which he stood, modest and
dignified, could have spoken so wisely, so profoundly, so easily, and
with such graceful manner and charming eloquence on _so many subjects_ as
did Burns.
It is a marvel that grows greater the more we try to understand it, that a
boy who left school when he was nine years old, and, except for a few
weeks, did not go to school again; and who, from nine years of age to his
thirty-second year, was a steady farm-worker, with the exception of a
brief interval during which he was engaged publishing his poems; and was a
gauger from thirty-two to thirty-six, should have been able to write so
much immortal poetry and so much instructive prose in such a short time.
One of the most interesting of all the pictures of the lives of the
world's literary leaders is the picture of Robert Burns, after a day of
toil on the farm, walking from Mossgiel farm, when his evening meal was
over, two miles to his favourite seat in the woods on Ballochmyle estate,
and sitting there on the high bank of the Ayr in the long Scottish
gloaming, and often on in the moonlight, 'shut in with God,' revealing in
sublime form the visions that thrilled his soul. During the last few years
of his life he walked from his home to Lincluden Abbey ruins on his
favourite path beside the winding Nith to spend his gloaming hours alone,
and composed there some of his masterpieces.
Short was his life, but he lives on in the hearts of succeeding
generations. He lives on, too, in his permanent influence on religion,
freedom, and brotherhood.
THE END.
Edinburgh: Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
Footnotes:
[1] Dr Moore was the father of Sir John Moore, the British general who was
killed at Corunna in the Peninsular War.
[2] Her name was spelled Alison or Elison.
[3] One of John Murdoch's quotations used as a headline to be copied in
his copy-book.
[4] The lovers of Burns afterwards got permission to remove the monument
and remains of Highland Mary to a more suitable location.
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