BURNS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1828.]

with the Ayr Writers, and the New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with, shall have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed from his juxtaposition, it will be difficult to measure him by any true standard, or to estimate what he really was and did, in the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for literary historians; and repeated attempts will give us repeated approximations.

In the modern arrangements of society, it is | tocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally no uncommon thing that a man of genius must, like Butler, "ask for bread and receive a stone;" for, in spite of our grand maxim of supply and demand, it is by no means the highest excellence that men are most forward | to recognise. The inventor of a spinningjenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggravation of the injustice, that there is generally a posthumous retribution. Robert Burns, in the course of nature, might yet have been living; but his short life was spent in toil and penury; and he died, in the prime of his manhood, miserable and neglected; and yet already a brave mausoleum shines over his dust, and more than one splendid monument has been reared in other places to his fame: the street where he languished in poverty is called by his name; the highest personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his commentators and admirers, and here is the sixth narrative of his Life, that has been given to the world!

Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologize for this new attempt on such a subject: but his readers, we believe, will readily acquit him; or, at worst, will censure only the performance of his task, not the choice of it. The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either trite or exhausted; and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet: and this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's: For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay, perhaps, painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. Suppose that some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbour of John a Combe's, had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his game, and written us a Life of Shakspeare! What dissertations should we not have had,-not on Hamlet and The Tempest, but on the wool-trade, and déer-stealing, and the libel and vagrant laws! and how the Poacher became a Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities! In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the companions of his pilgrimage, the honourable Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, and the Dumfries Aris

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 essentially important thing:Their own and the world's true relation to their 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 patronizing, apologetic air; as if the polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of science, a scholar, and 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 several supposed attributes, virtues, and vices, instead of a delineation of the resulting character as a living unity. This, however, is not painting a portrait; but gauging the length and breadth of the several features, and jotting down their dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay, it is not so much as this: for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the mind could be so measured and gauged.

Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced him to be: and in delineating him, he has avoided the method of separate generalities, and rather sought for characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a word, for aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he looked and lived among his fellows. The book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, we think, into the true character of Burns, than any prior biography: though, being written on the very popular and condensed scheme of an article for Constable's Miscellany, it has less depth than we could have wished and expected *The Life of Robert Burns. By J. G. Lockhart, LL. B. from a writer of such power; and contains rather more, and more multifarious, quotations,

Edinburgh, 1828.

than belong of right to an original production. | own intrinsic merits, and may now be well Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own writing is gene- nigh shorn of that casual radiance, he appears rally so good, so clear, direct, and nervous, that we seldom wish to see it making place for another man's. However, the spirit of the work is throughout capdid, tolerant, and anxiously conciliating; compliments and praises are liberally distributed, on all hands, to great and small; and, as Mr. Morris Birkbeck observes of the society in the backwoods of America, "the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight of for a moment." But there are better things than these in the volume; and we can safely testify, not only that it is easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may even be without difficulty read again.

An

not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he did little: He did much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert, where no eye but his had guessed its existence; and we may almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without help, without instruction, without model; or with models only of the meanest sort. Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that educated man stands, as it were, in the midst the problem of Burns's Biography has yet of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled been adequately solved. We do not allude so with all the weapons and engines which man's much to deficiency of facts or documents, skill has been able to devise from the earliest though of these we are still every day receiv- time; and he works, accordingly, with a ing some fresh accession,-as to the limited strength borrowed from all past ages. How and imperfect application of them to the great different is his state who stands on the outside end of Biography. "Our notions upon this sub- of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must ject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if be stormed, or remain for ever shut against an individual is really of consequence enough him? His means are the commonest and to have his life and character recorded for rudest; the mere work done is no measure of public remembrance, we have always been of his strength. A dwarf behind his steamopinion, that the public ought to be made ac-engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf quainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did coexisting circumstances modify him from without; how did he modify these from within? With | what endeavours and what efficacy rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them? In one word, what and how produced was the effect of society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society? He who should answer these questions, in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and many lives will be written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, ought to be written, and read, and forgotten, which are not in this sense biographies. But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these few individuals; and such a study, at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but scanty and feeble; but we offer them with good-will, and trust they may meet with acceptance from those for whom they are intended.

will hew them down with the pick-axe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad with his arms.

It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, of penury and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments: Through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his eagle eye discerns the true relations of the world and human life; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the irrepressible movement of his inward spirit, he struggles forward into the general view, and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his labour, a gift, which Time has now pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome, drudging childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died Burns first came upon the world as a prodi- in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask if it gy; and was, in that character, entertained by be strange that his poems are imperfect, and it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tu- of small extent, or that his genius attained no multuous wonder, speedily subsiding into.cen- mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun shone as sure and neglect; till his early and most through a tropical tornado; and the pale mournful death again awakened an enthu-Shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shroudsiasm for him, which, especially as there wased in such baleful vapours, the genius of Burns now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the "nine days" have long since elapsed; and the very continuance of this clamour proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his

was never seen in clear azure splendour, enlightening the world: But some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through; and, it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colours into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears!

We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it ა exposition rather than admiration that our

readers require of us here; and yet to avoid thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of the some tendency to that side is no easy matter. wind." A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be We love Burns, and we pity him; and love struck, and the sound it yields will be music! and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it But observe him chiefly as he mingles with is sometimes thought, should be a cold busi- his brother men. What warm, all-compreness; we are not so sure of this; but, at all hending, fellow-feeling, what trustful, boundevents, our concern with Burns is not exclu- less love, what generous exaggeration of the sively that of critics. True and genial as his object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, maiden, are. no longer mean and homely, but but as a man, that he interests and affects us. a hero and a queen, whom he prizes as the He was often advised to write a tragedy: time paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of and means were not lent him for this; but Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the the deepest. We question whether the world smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene; lovely to him: Poverty is indeed his compawhether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with nion, but Love also, and Courage; the simple Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock, feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell "amid the melancholy main," presented to the under the straw roof, are dear and venerable reflecting mind such a "spectacle of pity and to his heart; and thus over the lowest profear," as did this intrinsically nobler, gentler, vinces of man's existence he pours the glory and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away of his own soul; and they rise, in shadow and in a hopeless struggle with base entangle- sunshine, softened and brightened into a ments, which coiled closer and closer round beauty which other eyes discern not in the him, till only death opened him an outlet. highest. He has a just self-consciousness, Conquerors are a race with whom the world which too often degenerates into pride; yet it could well dispense; nor can the hard intel- is a noble pride, for defence, not for offence, lect, the unsympathizing loftiness, and high no cold, suspicious feeling, but a frank and but selfish enthusiasm of such persons, inspire social one. The peasant Poet bears himself, us in general with any affection; at best it may we might say, like a King in exile: he is cast excite amazement; and their fall, like that of among the low, and feels himself equal to the a pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sad- highest; yet he claims no rank, that none may ness and awe. But a true Poet, a man in be disputed to him. The forward he can rewhose heart resides some effluence of Wis-pel, the supercilious he can subdue; pretendom, some tone of the "Eternal Melodies," is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on a generation : we see in him a freer, purer, development of whatever is noblest in ourselves; his life is a rich lesson to us, and we mourn his death, as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us.

sions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the "insolence of condescension" cannot thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he Such a gift had Nature in her bounty be- wanders not apart from them, but mixes stowed on us in Robert Burns; but with queen-warmly in their interests; nay, throws himself like indifference she cast it from her hand, into their arms; and, as it were, entreats them like a thing of no moment; and it was defaced to love him. It is moving to see how, in his and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we darkest despondency, this proud being still recognised it. To the ill-starred Burns was seeks relief from friendship; unbosoms himgiven the power of making man's life more self, often to the unworthy; and, amid tears, venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows was not given. Destiny, for so in our igno- only the name of friendship. And yet he was rance we must speak,-his faults, the faults quick to learn;" a man of keen vision, before of others, proved too hard for him; and that whom common disguises afforded no concealspirit, which might have soared, could it but ment. His understanding saw through the have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glori-hollowness even of accomplished deceivers; ous faculties trodden under foot in the blos- but there was a generous credulity in his som, and died, we may almost say, without Heart. And so did our Peasant show himself ever having lived. And so kind and warm a among us; "a soul like an Eolian harp, in soùl; so full of inborn riches, of love to all whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed living and lifeless things! How his heart through them, changed itself into articulate flows out in sympathy over universal nature; melody." (And this was he for whom the and in her bleakest provinces discerns a world found no fitter business than quarrelling beauty and a meaning! The "Daisy" falls with smugglers and vintners, computing exnot unheeded under his ploughshare; nor the cise dues upon tallow, and gauging alebarrels ! ruined nest of that "wee, cowering, timorous (In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowbeastie," cast forth, after all its provident fully wasted: and a hundred years may pass pains, to “thole the sleety dribble, and cran- on, before another such is given us to waste. reuch cauld." The "hoar visage" of Winter delights him: he dwells with a sad and oftreturning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for it raises his

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that

This may appear a very simple principle, and one which Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery is easy enough: but the practical appliance is not easy; is indeed the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive with, and which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from the false; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. With either, or, as more commonly happens, with both, of these deficiencies, combine a love of

wanted all things for completeness: culture, | response within us; for in spite of all casual leisure, true effort, nay, even length of life. varieties in outward rank, or inward, as face His poems are, with scarcely any exception, answers to face, so does the heart of man to mere occasional effusions, poured forth with man. little premeditation, expressing, by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humour of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted him to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of his genius To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have; for, after fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they distinction, a wish to be original, which is selstill continue to be read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more and more extensively; | and this not only by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the most hard, unlettered, and truly natural class, who read little, and especially no poetry, except because they find pleasure in it. 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?

dom wanting, and we have Affectation, the bane of literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. How often does the one and the other front us, in poetry, as in life! Great poets themselves are not always free of this vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after excellence will sometimes solace itself with a mere shadow of success, and he who has much to unfold, will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for instance, was no common man: yet if we examine his poetry with this view, we shall find it far enough from faultless. Generally speaking, we should say that it is not true. He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong waters, stimu

To answer this question will not lead us far. The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or prose; but, at thelating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in dissame time, it is plain and easily recognised: his Sincerity, his indisputable air of Truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling: the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is the scenes he has lived and laboured amidst, that he describes those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it, too, with such melody and modulation as he can; "in homely rustic jingle;" but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me flere, is applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every poet, to every writer, we might say: Be true, if you would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition, of his own heart; and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In culture, in extent of view, we may stand above the speaker, or below him; but in either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, will find some

like or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men, we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not these characters, does not the character of their author, which more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humours, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last three-score and ten years. To our minds, there is a taint of this sort, something which we should call theatrical, false, and affected, in every one of these otherwise powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan, especially the latter parts of it, is the only thing approaching to a sincere work, he ever wrote; the only work where he showed himself, in any measure, as he was; and seemed so intent on his subject, as, for moments, to forget himself. Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, heartily detested it: nay,' he had declared formal war against it in words So difficult is it even for the strongest to make this primary attainment, which might seem the simplest of all: to read its own consciousness without mistakes, without errors' involuntary or wilful! We recollect no poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides with us to the last, with such a total