AN APOLOGY FOR BURNS.
Burns, to be justly judged, must be estimated by a reference to the times in which he lived. If James I. and Sir Matthew Hale believed in witchcraft, and were agents in the burning of helpless, ignorant, and decrepit old women, was it not the cruel superstition and vice of their time? If Calvin condemned Servetus to the stake—aside from any personal motive, or from his own views of Christianity, "without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace"—was not the destruction of heretics equally the vice of his time? If the immortal Bacon—the "wisest, greatest, meanest (?) of mankind"—disgraced the judgment-seat, and stained his own great name—not, we believe, to pervert, but to expedite justice—was not bribery, which stained the ermine on infinitely meaner shoulders, also the vice of his time? If the great political martyrs, Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney, accepted bribes from Louis XIV.—as shown by Mr. Macaulay, on the authority of Barillon, which authority we ourselves have consulted with astonishment and regret—was such corruption not also the vice of their time, in which nearly the whole House of Commons participated? If the pious Addison was addicted to wine, and, as that vain and courtly sycophant, Horace Walpole, sneeringly asserted, "died drunk," was it not a propensity and a morbid craving, engendered by a diseased physical organization, and was not wine-bibbing pre-eminently the vice of his day? In those days, when Pope or Swift penned maudlin notes to Arbuthnot, night's candles being burnt out, and jocund day standing tiptoe on the misty mountain-top, and in drunken hilarity went reeling to bed, were not such orgies, in their day, almost without shame and without reproach? When the excellent and venerable Lord-President Forbes, as shown in Mr. Burton's valuable Memoir, was kept in a state of feverish crapulence for a whole month at a time, was not dissipation emphatically the raging and besetting sin of his day? But not to multiply more modern instances—and many such might be adduced—we would pause, to ask the charitable reader: Is Robert Burns to be held up to the never-dying desecration of posterity, as a man steeped in evil and impiety, because, with fiery ardor, he rushed into the polemic war then raging in Ayrshire, lashed with unsparing and terrible sarcasm and wit the vices and superstitions of his age, and, unfortunately, fell a victim to the social habits of the day, before his better judgment and nobler principles had gained the moral ascendency over the burning passions of his youth? Following out this view of the infirmities of men, we are prepared to look with sad complacency on the rudeness and superstition of Johnson—the madness and misery of poor Chatterton, who "perished in his pride"—the gourmandizing of Pope—the sublime wailings of disappointed ambition in Young—the baffled rage and insanity of Swift—the misery of the exquisite Elia—the hallucinations of the inspired Coleridge, whose whole life was a distempered dream—the bright morning dream of Keats—the cruel disappointment and heart-breaking of poor Haydon, when he stood in solitude among his great pictures, and saw the whole world of London flocking to gaze on General Tom Thumb!—the solitary pride of Wordsworth—the egotism of the Ettrick Shepherd—the intolerance of Scott—the mirth and melancholy of Hood, who has given to the world the most powerful and pathetic song that has sounded from the poetic lyre in our day, illustrating the sad truth, that
"Laughter to sadness is so near allied,
But thin partitions do their bounds divide"—
in short, all the long and sorrowful catalogue of "mighty poets in their misery dead"—that terrible death-roll, inscribed with "fears of the brave and follies of the wise," and written within and without with mourning, and lamentation, and woe.
And so of Robert Burns. From his earliest years, we learn, he was subject to palpitation and nervous excitement. The victim of hypochondria, with fitful glimpses or sunbursts, lighting up the waste of life with ineffable beauty and love, to escape from its terrible shadow, which haunted him through life, he, unfortunately, was driven to take refuge from himself in the excitement and vivacity of the social board, as Johnson fled from himself to the tavern dinner, to revel in his astonishing powers of conversation, while Burke and Beauclerk quailed under the eye of the critical dictator.
But Robert Burns was no drunkard, in the ordinary sense of drunkenness. From his physical organization, he paid dearly for every such, even the smallest deviation. It is the sentiment of social enjoyment, not the sensuality of the sot or drunkard, that inspires his convivial songs, however much they may be misunderstood; and it can not be denied that he purified, with exquisite genius and taste, the lyrical literature of his country, which, in Allan Ramsay's time, as shown by the "Tea-Table Miscellany," was polluted by false and filthy wit and obscenity. We may have written strongly, but we wish the reader to understand that we are writing from the best authority, and in the spirit of truth and sincerity. We wish to record our emphatic protest against the injustice hitherto done to the memory and name of Burns. Not only was he left to die in poverty and neglect, but he was singled out as a stricken deer from the herd, the galling arrows of the hunters entering into his soul, and, we fear, yet vibrating in the hearts of his near and dear friends.