ROBERT BURNS.
"Oh, ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neebors' fauts and folly,—
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water,
The heapèd happer's ebbing still,
And still the clap plays clatter,—
"Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals,
That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door
For glaikit Folly's portals!
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
Would here propone defences,
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
Their failings and mischances."
Alas for it! we must all say, in dwelling upon the life of poor Burns, that he so frequently needed to appear as counsel for poor mortals—in his own behoof; and that "their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, their failings and mischances" should form so large a portion of the record of that life, which under other circumstances might have been one of the most brilliant and beautiful of all in the annals of genius. For Burns, although born to such a lowly life, and having in his youth so few advantages of education or general culture, might by sheer force of genius have attained as proud a position as any man of his time, had he but learned to rule over himself in his youth, and not given full rein to those passions which his "veins convulsed," and which "still eternal galloped."
Could he but have governed himself—
"When social life and glee sat down
All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmogrify'd, they've grown
Debauchery and drinking,"—
there would have been a far different story to have told of the life of Robert Burns.
What ripe fruits of his genius we might have had, had he not burned out the torch of that brilliant intellect at the early age of thirty-eight. What poems he might have written—he who did immortal work with all his drawbacks—had he kept his brain clear and his life sweet even for the short span of life allotted him! How high might he have soared in the years which he might have hoped from life, had he but moved at a slower pace, in those reckless years, the record of which is so painful to the great world of admiring and pitying friends, who cherish his memory so tenderly. Yet there is in his case everything to mitigate a severe judgment upon his youthful follies; and the great world has always judged him leniently, knowing the story of his early life, and the temptations which at that day must have surrounded a youth of his temperament among the peasants of Scotland. Of the strength of those temptations we probably can form but a slight idea.
"What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."
And surely, there must have been much that was worthy of honor and esteem, even of reverence, in the heart of the man, to have brought the whole world to his feet, in spite of the faults and follies to which we allude in passing, but upon which we have no disposition to dwell. As a friendly hand long ago wrote, after visiting his poor, mean home and his unhonored burial place:—
"We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbily-housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and as his only ostensible occupation gauging the whiskey which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble, than when the actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned as brightly as it did while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon."
To do even faintest justice to the memory of the poet, we must go to Ayr, and look upon the humble cottage which was his birthplace. It consisted of but two small rooms paved with flag-stones, and with but one window of four small panes, while the thatched roof formed the only ceiling. The whole place is inconceivably small for the dwelling of a family, for there is not even an attic-room, or any other spot where children could have been hidden away. In such a hut as this it is hard to conceive of a family being reared in purity and delicacy, even though the parents should have done their best by their children, and been, like the father of Burns, prudent and well-disposed.
This housing of the poor is of immense moral significance in all cases; and it is growing to be a recognized fact that no help which can be rendered them is of much avail, when they are left in these little, one or two room dwellings.
There were seven children in the Burns household, and during the childhood of Robert the family were very poor; and he and his brother were expected to do the work of men, at the age of thirteen. He had some schooling before that age, and must have improved his time, for he could read and spell well, and had some knowledge of English grammar.
Near by the cottage flows the beautiful Bonny Doon, through deep wooded banks, and across it is an ancient ivy-covered bridge with a high arch, making a very picturesque object in the landscape, which is one of great loveliness. Kirk Alloway is not far away,—the smallest church that ever filled so large a place in the imagination of the world. The one-mullioned window in the eastern gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side next the road; there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it,—and this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk immortalized by the pen of Burns.
The father of Burns has been thus described by one who knew him well:—
"He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in leading his children in the path of virtue, not in driving them as some parents do to the performance of duties to which they are themselves averse. He took care to find fault but seldom; and therefore when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of disapprobation was felt; a reproof was severely so; and a stripe even on the skirt of the coat, gave heartfelt pain."
He was, indeed, a frugal, industrious, and good man, and his wife seems to have been a woman of good report; so that the little group of children, in spite of their poverty, were really happily situated in life, compared with many of their neighbors. There was always a tinge of melancholy in Robert's disposition, however, and in his earliest youth he used to embody it in verse. The sensibility of genius was his by birthright, and the depressions and exaltations of spirit which marked his later life began at a very early day. He himself describes his earliest years thus:—
"I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiot piety."
Again he says:—
"This kind of life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave—brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme."
It was at this time that he first fell in love, and it may be added that after this he was never out of that interesting state. He says:—
"My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom,—she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious rattan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment."
To a later period than this belongs the episode of Highland Mary, of which the
"Banks and braes and streams around
The castle of Montgomery"
still whisper to the lovers of Burns, as they keep a solemn tryst with old-time recollections there.
"How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,
How rich the hawthorn's blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasped her to my bosom!
The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o'er me and my dearie;
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary."
It was the sweetest and tenderest romance of his life; and it is with unbidden tears that the world still remembers that there
"fell death's untimely frost,
That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay
That wraps my Highland Mary."
After a hundred years there are still hearts that take a tender interest in poor Mary's fate, and that feel for poor Robbie as he wrote:—
"Oh, pale, pale now those rosy lips
I aft hae kissed sae fondly,
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly!
And mouldering now in silent dust
That heart that lo'ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom's core
Shall live my Highland Mary."
In the monument to Burns, near his old home, are deposited the two volumes of the little pocket Bible which Burns gave to Mary when they pledged their faith to one another. It is poorly printed on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture is written within each cover by the poet's hand, and fastened within is a lock of Mary's golden hair. It is fitting that some memorial of her should find a place in that splendid monument which the Scottish people erected to his memory, after his life of poverty and sorrow had been brought to an untimely end.
Burns in his twenty-third year took the farm at Mossgiel, where he first became acquainted with Jane Armour. This lady was the daughter of a respectable mason in the village of Mauchline, where she was the reigning beauty and belle. It was almost love at first sight upon the part of both, and a close intimacy soon sprung up between them. Burns was very handsome at this time, gay and fascinating in manners, and a more experienced and highly-placed woman than Jane Armour might have been excused for loving the wild young poet. For wild he undoubtedly was, even at this time,—so much so that her parents objected to the friendship. He was nearly six feet high, with a robust yet agile frame, a finely formed head, and an uncommmonly interesting countenance. His eyes were large, dark, and full of ardor and animation. His conversation was full of wit and humor. He was very proud, and would be under pecuniary obligation to no one. He was also very generous with his own money. Of the first five hundred pounds which he received for his poems, he immediately gave two hundred to his brother Gilbert to help toward the support of their mother; and he was always as ready to share whatever sum he had with those he loved.
The consequences of the intimacy between the poet and Jane Armour were soon such as could not be concealed, and the farm having been a disastrous speculation in the hands of Burns, he was not in a situation to marry, although extremely anxious to do so. It was therefore agreed upon between them that he should give her a written acknowledgment of marriage, and then sail for Jamaica, and push his fortunes there. This arrangement, however, did not suit the lady's father, who had a very poor opinion of Burns's general character, and he prevailed upon Jane to destroy this document. Under these circumstances she became the mother of twins, and great scandal followed Burns even to Edinburgh, where he had been induced to stop instead of sailing for Jamaica. But his poems, which he succeeded in publishing at this time, gave him a name and some money, and he returned to Mossgiel, and getting her father to consent, married Jane, and moved on to a farm six miles from Dumfries. He had become a lion, and the tables of the neighboring gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the great had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of conviviality, and Burns took his part in the hilarity of the table, soon with very direful consequences to himself and his family. He made many resolutions of amendment; but temperance was a very rare virtue in those days, and Burns, who could not bear it, was expected to drink just as much as those who could bear it, and who could afford it. His genius suffered from this irregular life, and in a little while he was not capable of doing justice to himself in his writings; but he continued to be good company at table, and to be invited with the local magnates, long after he had become a confirmed drunkard. The farm was given up, and he soon depended entirely upon his seventy pounds a year, the pay of an exciseman. He felt his degradation very deeply, and had fearful struggles with his temptation, but was always overborne. The horrible sufferings of genius in such thraldom have never been adequately represented, nor indeed can they ever be. When the will has become so enfeebled that no real resistance can be made, while yet pride and kind-heartedness survive, the agony of such a man is appalling. He loves his family, he knows better than any other all they suffer for his sake; he determines a thousand times to reform, only to find himself powerless to do so. He strives with more than the heroism of a martyr many times, but he is beaten. We often blame him for his defeat, but there comes a time to such a man when defeat is inevitable. Happy he who makes his manful struggle while there is yet time. Poor Burns, alas, did not. He went from bad to worse, while his wife and five small children suffered as the families of such men always suffer. From October, 1795, to the January following, an accident confined him to his house. A few days after he began to go out, he dined at a tavern, and returned home about three o'clock of a very cold morning, benumbed and intoxicated. This was followed by rheumatism. He was never well again, though he lived until the end of June. His mind during all this time was wrung with the most poignant agony in regard to the family he must leave,—for he knew he should not recover. It is heart-rending to read of his sufferings and remorse, and to know that on the morning of her husband's funeral Mrs. Burns gave birth to another child. It is pleasant to learn that a subscription was immediately taken up for the destitute family, which placed them in comparative comfort.
"Fight who will," says Byron, "about words and forms, Burns's rank is in the first class of his art;" and this has long been the deliberate judgment of the world. No finer flower of genius than that of Robert Burns has ever blossomed, and it will be long before the world will see another as fair. But, as Mr. Lockhart observes, "To accumulate all that has been said of Burns, even by men like himself, of the first order, would fill a volume." Not even the most carping critic has ever questioned his genius. The "Cotter's Saturday Night," and "Tam O'Shanter," and "Highland Mary," would stand before the world to refute such a critic; and it would be a venturesome man indeed who would care to contend for such a proposition as that Robert Burns was not a great poet. That he was a great wit is also as well established, and that he might have been a great master of prose is equally unquestionable. That he was great in his life we dare not affirm, but that his life has a great claim upon our charity we will gladly allow. Few writers have been better loved than he. There is a personal warmth in all that he wrote, and we feel that we knew him in a sort of personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and heard his voice; and we always have a feeling that he is addressing us in our own person. All of the many pilgrims who visit the places he made immortal have something of this feeling, and the banks of Doon are as classic now as the lovely Avon. And whenever we are tempted to look upon the darker sides of his life-picture, we may well refrain, and repeat his words:—
"Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler, sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,
To step aside is human;
One point must still be greatly dark,—
The moving why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it."
