Robert Burns

by Gabriel Setoun

Even in his manner of speech he was different from men in his own walk in life. '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.'

Truly was Burns blessed in his parents, especially in his father. Naturally such a father wished his children to have the best education his means could afford. It may be that he saw even in the infancy of his firstborn the promise of intellectual greatness. Certain it is he laboured, as few fathers even in Scotland have done, to have his children grow up intelligent, thoughtful, and virtuous men and women.

Robert Burns's first school was at Alloway Mill, about a mile from home, whither he was sent when in his sixth year. He had not been long there, however, when the father combined with a few of his neighbours to establish a teacher in their own neighbourhood. That teacher was Mr. Murdoch, a young man at that time in his nineteenth year.

This is an important period in the poet's life, although he himself in his autobiography only briefly touches on his schooling under Murdoch. He has more to say of what he owed to an old maid of his mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. 'She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors.'

It ought not to be forgotten that Burns had a better education than most lads of his time. Even in the present day many in better positions have not the advantages that Robert and Gilbert Burns had, the sons of such a father as William Burness, and under such an earnest and thoughtful teacher as Mr. Murdoch. It is important to notice this, because Burns is too often regarded merely as a lusus naturæ; a being gifted with song, and endowed by nature with understanding from his birth. We hear too much of the ploughman poet. His genius and natural abilities are unquestioned and unquestionable; but there is more than mere natural genius in his writings. They are the work of a man of no mean education, and bear the stamp—however spontaneously his songs sing themselves in our ears—of culture and study. In a letter to Dr. Moore several years later than now, Burns himself declared against the popular view. 'I have not a doubt but the knack, the aptitude to learn the Muses' trade is a gift bestowed by Him who forms the secret bias of the soul; but I as firmly believe that excellence in the profession is the fruit of industry, attention, labour, and pains. At least I am resolved to try my doctrine by the test of experience.' There is a class of people, however, to whom this will sound heretical, forbidding them, as it were, the right to babble with grovelling familiarity of Rab, Rob, Robbie, Scotia's Bard, and the Ploughman Poet; and insisting on his name being spoken with conscious pride of utterance, Robert Burns, Poet.

Gilbert Burns, writing to Dr. Currie of the school-days under Mr. Murdoch, says: 'We learnt to read English tolerably well, and to write a little. He taught us, too, the English Grammar. I was too young to profit much by his lessons in grammar, but Robert made some proficiency in it—a circumstance of considerable weight in the unfolding of his genius and character, as he soon became remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expression, and read the few books that came in his way with much pleasure and improvement; for even then he was a reader when he could get a book.'

After the family removed to Mount Oliphant, the brothers attended Mr. Murdoch's school for two years longer, until Mr. Murdoch was appointed to a better situation, and the little school was broken up. Thereafter the father looked after the education of his boys himself, not only helping them with their reading at home after the labours of the day, but 'conversing familiarly with them on all subjects, as if they had been men, and being at great pains, as they accompanied him on the labours of the farm, to lead conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase their knowledge or confirm them in virtuous habits.' Among the books he borrowed or bought for them at that period were Salmon's Geographical Grammar, Derham's Physico-Theology, Ray's Wisdom of God in the Works of Creation, and Stackhouse's History of the Bible. It was about this time, too, that Robert became possessed of The Complete Letter-Writer, a book which Gilbert declared was to Robert of the greatest consequence, since it inspired him with a great desire to excel in letter-writing, and furnished him with models by some of the first writers in our language. Perhaps this book was a great gain. It is questionable. What would Robert Burns's letters have been had he never seen a Complete Letter-Writer, and never read 'those models by some of the first writers in our language'? Easier and more natural, we are of opinion; and he might have written fewer. Those in the Complete Letter-Writer style we could easily have spared. His teacher, Mr. Murdoch, furnishes some excellent examples of the stilted epistolary style that was then fashionable.

'But now the plains of Mount Oliphant began to whiten, and Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing scenes that surrounded the grotto of Calypso, and, armed with a sickle, to seek glory by signalising himself in the fields of Ceres.' Though Robert Burns never perpetrated anything like this, his models were not without their pernicious effect on his prose compositions.

When Robert was about fourteen years old, he and Gilbert were sent for a time, week about, to a school at Dalrymple, and the year following Robert was sent to Ayr to revise his English grammar under Mr. Murdoch. While there he began the study of French, bringing with him, when he returned home, a French Dictionary and Grammar and Fenelon's Telemaque. In a little while he could read and understand any French author in prose. He also gave some time to Latin; but finding it dry and uninteresting work, he soon gave it up. Still he must have picked up a little of that language, and we know that he returned to the rudiments frequently, although 'the Latin seldom predominated, a day or two at a time, or a week at most.' Under the heading of general reading might be mentioned The Life of Hannibal, The Life of Wallace, The Spectator, Pope's Homer, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Allan Ramsay's Works, and several Plays of Shakspeare. All this is worth noting, even at some length, because it shows how Burns was being educated, and what books went to form and improve his literary taste.

Yet when we consider the circumstances of the family we see that there was not much time for study. The work on the farm allowed Burns little leisure, but every spare moment would seem to have been given to reading. Father and sons, we are told by one who afterwards knew the family at Lochlea, used to sit at their meals with books in their hands; and the poet says that one book in particular, A Select Collection of English Songs, was his vade mecum. He pored over them, driving his cart or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, or sublime from affectation or fustian. 'I am convinced,' he adds, 'I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such as it is.'