These are sentiments with which I rejoice to hear the sympathy of this great assemblage thus unequivocally expressed—for my words but awaken thoughts lodged deep in all considerate hearts. For which of us is there in whom, known or unknown, alas! there is not much that needs to be forgiven? Which of us that is not more akin to Burns in his fleshly frailties then in his diviner spirit? That conviction regards not merely solemn and public celebrations of reverential memory—such as this; it pervades the tenor of our daily life, runs in our heart’s-blood, sits at our hearths, wings our loftiest dreams of human exaltation. How, on this earth, could we love, or revere, or emulate, if, in our contemplation of the human being, we could not sunder the noble, the fair, the gracious, the august, from the dregs of mortality, from the dust that hangs perishably about him the imperishable? We judge in love, that in love we may be judged. At our hearthsides, we gain more than we dared desire, by mutual mercy; at our hearthsides, we bestow and receive a better love, by this power of soft and magnanimous oblivion. We are ourselves the gainers, when thus we honour the great dead. They hear not—they feel not, excepting by an illusion of our own moved imaginations, which fill up chasms of awful, impassable separation; but we hear—we feel; and the echo of the acclaim which hills and skies have this day repeated, we can carry home in our hearts, where it shall settle down into the composure of love and pity, and admiration and gratitude, felt to be due for ever to our great poet’s shade.
In no other spirit could genius have ever dared, in elegies and hymns, to seek to perpetuate at once a whole people’s triumph, and a whole people’s grief, by celebration of king, sage, priest, or poet, gone to his reward. From the natural infirmities of his meanest subject, what King was ever free? Against the golden rim that rounds his mortal temples come the same throbbings from blood in disease or passion hurrying from heart to brain, as disturb the aching head of the poor hind on his pallet of straw. But the king had been a guardian, a restorer, a deliverer; therefore his sins are buried or burned with his body; and all over the land he saved, generation after generation continues to cry aloud—“O king, live for ever!” The Sage who, by long meditation on man’s nature and man’s life, has seen how liberty rests on law, rights on obligations, and that his passions must be fettered, that his will be free—how often has he been overcome, when wrestling in agony with the powers of evil, in that seclusion from all trouble in which reverent admiration nevertheless believes that wisdom for ever serenely dwells! The Servant of God, has he always kept his heart pure from the world, nor ever held up in prayer other than spotless hands? A humble confession of his own utter unworthiness would be his reply alike to scoffer and to him who believes. But, unterrified by plague and pestilence, he had carried comfort into houses deserted but by sin and despair; or he had sailed away, as he truly believed for ever, to savage lands, away from the quiet homes of Christian men—among whom he might have hoped to lead a life of peace, it may be of affluence and honour—for his Divine Master’s sake, and for sake of them sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. Therefore his name dies not, and all Christendom calls it blest. From such benefactors as these there may seem to be, but there is not, a deep descent to them who have done their service by what one of the greatest of them all has called “the vision and the faculty divine”—them to whom have been largely given the powers of fancy and imagination and creative thought, that they might move men’s hearts, and raise men’s souls, by the reflection of their own passions and affections in poetry, which is still an inspired speech. Nor have men, in their judgment of the true Poets, dealt otherwise with them than with patriot kings, benign legislators, and holy priests. Them, too, when of the highest, all nations and ages have reverenced in their gratitude. Whatever is good and great in man’s being seems shadowed in the name of Milton; and though he was a very man in the storms of civil strife that shook down the throne at the shedding of the blood of kings, nevertheless, we devoutly believe with Wordsworth, that
“His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.”
But not of such as he only, who “in darkness, and with danger compassed round,” soared “beyond this visible diurnal sphere,” and whose song was of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we keep descending from height to height in the regions of song, we desire to regard with love the genius that beautifies wherever it settles down; and, if pity will steal in for human misfortunes, or for human frailties reproach, our love suffers no abatement, and religious men feel that there is piety in pilgrimage to such honoured graves. So feel we now at this commemoration. For our Poet we now claim the privilege, at once bright and austere, of death. We feel that our Burns is brought within the justification of all celebrations of human names; and that, in thus honouring his memory, we virtuously exercise the imaginative rights of enthusiasm owned by every people that has produced its great men.
And with a more especial propriety do we claim this justice in our triumphal celebration of poets, who, like Burns, were led by the character of their minds to derive the matter and impulse of their song, in a stricter sense, from themselves. For they have laid bare to all eyes many of their own weaknesses, at the side of their higher and purer aspirations. Unreserved children of sincerity, by the very open-heartedness which is one great cause of their commanding power, and contagiously diffuses every zealous affection originating in their nobility of nature—by this grown to excess, made negligent of instinctive self-defence, and heedless of misconstruction, or overcome by importunate and clinging temptations—to what charges have they not been exposed from that proneness to disparaging judgments so common in little minds! For such judgments are easy indeed to the very lowest understandings, and regard things that are visible to eyes that may seldom have commerced with things that are above. But they who know Burns as we know him, know that by this sometimes unregulated and unguarded sympathy with all appertaining to his kind, and especially to his own order, he was enabled to receive into himself all modes of their simple, but not undiversified life, so that his poetry murmurs their loves and joys from a thousand fountains. And suppose—which was the case—that this unguarded sympathy, this quick sensibility, and this vivid capacity of happiness which the moment brings, and the frankness of impulse, and the strength of desire, and the warmth of blood, which have made him what he greatly is, which have been fire and music in his song, and manhood, and courage, and endurance, and independence in his life, have at times betrayed or overmastered him—to turn against him all this self-painting and self-revealing, is it not ungrateful, barbarous, inhuman? Can he be indeed a true lover of his kind, who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?—who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?—scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses’ confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think, and speak, and write of Robert Burns?—He who has reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its taskwork, care to its burden—nay, I would say even—grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has sanctified for ever the poor man’s Cot—by such a picture as only genius, in the inspiring power of piety, could have painted; has given enduring life to the image—how tender and how true!—of the Happy Night passing by sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed Day, by God’s appointment breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest—nowhere else so profoundly—and may it never be broken!—as over the hills and valleys of our beloved, and yet religious land!
It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns, and his best critics, have not done, or desired to do, justice to his character as well as to his genius; and, according as the truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken, has he appeared the nobler and nobler man. All our best poets, too, have exultingly sung the worth, while they mourned the fate of him, the brightest of the brotherhood. But above, and below, and round about all that they have been uttering, has all along been heard a voice, which they who know how to listen for it can hear, and which has pronounced a decision in his favour not to be reversed; for on earth it cannot be carried to a higher tribunal. A voice heard of old on great national emergencies, when it struck terror into the hearts of tyrants, who quaked, and quailed, and quitted for aye our land before “the unconquered Caledonian spear”—nor, since our union with noblest England, ever slack to join with her’s and fervid Erin’s sons, the thrice-repeated cry by which battle-fields are cleared; but happier, far happier to hear, in its low deep tone of peace. For then it is like the sound of distant waterfalls, the murmur of summer woods, or the sea rolling in its rest. I mean the Voice of the People of Scotland—the Voice of her Peasantry and her Trades—of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—her Working Men.
I presume not to draw their character. But this much I will say, that in the long run they know whom it is fitting they should honour and love. They will not be dictated to in their choice of the names that with them shall be household words. Never, at any period of their history, have they been lightly moved; but, when moved, their meaning was not to be mistaken; tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of death; though force may wrench the weapon from their hands, no force can wrench the worship from their hearts. They may not be conversant with our written annals; but in our oral traditions they are familiar with historic truths—grand truths conceived according to the People’s idea of their own national mind, as their hearts have kindled in imagination of heroic or holy men. Imaginary but real—for we all believe that men as good, as wise, as brave, have been amongst us as ever fancy fabled for a people’s reverence. What manner of men have been their darlings? It would be hard to say; for their love is not exclusive—it is comprehensive. In the national memory live for ever characters how widely different!—with all the shades, fainter or darker, of human infirmity! For theirs is not the sickly taste that craves for perfection where no frailties are. They do not demand in one and the same personage inconsistent virtues. But they do demand sincerity, and integrity, and resolution, and independence, and an open front, and an eye that fears not to look in the face of clay! And have not the grave and thoughtful Scottish people always regarded with more especial affection those who have struggled with adversity—who have been tried by temptations from without or from within—now triumphant, now overcome—but, alike in victory or defeat, testifying by their conduct that they were animated by no other desire so steadily as by love of their country and its people’s good? Not those who have been favourites of fortune, even though worthy of the smiles in which they basked; but those who rose superior to fortune, who could not frown them down. Nor have they withheld their homage from the unfortunate in this world of chance and change, if, in abasement of condition, by doing its duties they upheld the dignity of their own nature, and looked round them on their honest brethren in poverty with pride.
And how will such a people receive a great National Poet? How did they receive Burns? With instant exultation. At once, they knew of themselves, before critics and philosophers had time to tell them, that a great Genius of their own had risen, and they felt a sudden charm diffused over their daily life. By an inexplicable law, humour and pathos are dependent on the same constitution of mind; and in his Poems they found the very soul of mirth, the very soul of sadness, as they thought it good with him to be merry, or to remember with him, “that man was made to mourn.” But besides what I have said of them, the people of Scotland hold in the world’s repute—signally so—the name of a religious people. Many of them, the descendants of the old covenanters, heirs of the stern zeal which took up arms for the purity of the national faith—still tinged, it may be, by the breath of the flame that then passed over the land—retain a certain severity of religious judgment in questions of moral transgression, which is known to make a part of hereditary Scottish manners—especially in rural districts, where manners best retain their stamp. But the sound natural understanding of the Scottish peasant, I use the liberty to say, admits, to take their place at the side of one another, objects of his liberal and comprehensive regard, which might appear, to superficial observation and shallow judgment, to stand upon such different grounds, as that the approbation of the one should exclude the admiration of the other. But not so. Nature in him is various as it is vigorous. He does not, with an over-jealous scrutiny, vainly try to reduce into seeming consistency affections spontaneously springing from many sources. Truth lies at the bottom; and, conscious of truth, he does not mistrust or question his own promptings. An awful reverence, the acknowledgment of a Law without appeal or error—Supreme, Sacred, Irresistible—rules in his judgment of other men’s actions, and of his own. Nevertheless, under shelter and sanction of that rule, he feels, loves, admires, like a man. Religion has raised and guards in him—it does not extinguish—the natural human heart. If the martyrs of his worship to him are holy—holy, too, are his country’s heroes. And holy her poets—if such she have—who have sung—as during his too short life above them all sang Burns—for Scotland’s sake. Dear is the band that ties the humbly educated man to the true national poet. To many in the upper classes he is, perhaps, but one among a thousand artificers of amusement who entertain and scatter the tedium of their idler hours. To the peasant the book lies upon his shelf a household treasure. There he finds depicted himself—his own works and his own ways. There he finds a cordial for his drooping spirits, nutriment for his wearied strength. Burns is his brother—his helper in time of need, when fretfulness and impatience are replaced with placidity by his strains, or of a sudden with a mounting joy. And far oftener than they who know not our peasantry would believe, before their souls awakened from torpor he is a luminous and benign presence in the dark hut; for, in its purity and power, his best poetry is felt to be inspired, and subordinate to the voice of heaven.
And will such a people endure to hear their own Poet wronged? No, no. Think not to instruct them in the right spirit of judgment. They have read the Scriptures, perhaps, to better purpose than their revilers, and know better how to use the lessons learned there, applicable alike to us all—the lessons, searching and merciful, which proscribe mutual judgment amongst beings, all, in the eye of absolute Holiness and Truth, stained, erring, worthless: And none so well as aged religious men in such dwellings know, from their own experience, from what they have witnessed among their neighbours, and from what they have read of the lives of good and faithful servants, out of the heart of what moral storms and shipwrecks, that threatened to swallow the strong swimmer in the middle passage of life, has often been landed safe at last, the rescued worshipper upon the firm land of quiet duties, and of years exempt from the hurricane of the passions! Thus thoughtfully guided in their opinion of him, who died young—cut off long before the period when others, under the gracious permission of overruling mercy, have begun to redeem their errors, and fortified perhaps by a sacred office, to enter upon a new life—they will for ever solemnly cherish the memory of the Poet of the Poor. And in such sentiments there can be no doubt but that all his countrymen share; who will, therefore rightfully hold out between Burns and all enemies a shield which clattering shafts may not pierce. They are proud of him, as a lowly father is proud of an illustrious son. The rank and splendour attained reflects glory down, but resolves not, nor weakens one single tie.
Ay, for many a deep reason the Scottish people love their own Robert Burns. Never was the personal character of poet so strongly and endearingly exhibited in his song. They love him, because he loved his own order, nor ever desired for a single hour to quit it. They love him, because he loved the very humblest condition of humanity, where every thing good was only the more commended to his manly mind by disadvantages of social position. They love him, because he saw with just anger, how much the judgments of “silly coward man” are determined by such accidents, to the neglect or contempt of native worth. They love him for his independence. What wonder! To be brought into contact with rank and wealth—a world inviting to ambition, and tempting to a thousand desires—and to choose rather to remain lowly and poor, than seek an easier or a brighter lot, by courting favour from the rich and great—was a legitimate ground of pride, if any ground of pride be legitimate. He gave a tongue to this pride, and the boast is inscribed in words of fire in the Manual of the Poor. It was an exuberant feeling, as all his feelings were exuberant, and he let them all overflow. But sometimes, forsooth! he did not express them in sufficiently polite or courteous phrase! And that too was well. He stood up not for himself only, but for the great class to which he belonged, and which in his days—and too often in ours—had been insulted by the pride of superior station, when unsupported by personal merit, to every bold peasant a thing of scorn. They love him, because he vindicated the ways of God to man, by showing that there was more genius and virtue in huts, than was dreamt of in the world’s philosophy. They love him for his truthful pictures of the poor. Not there are seen slaves sullenly labouring, or madly leaping in their chains; but in nature’s bondage, content with their toil, sedate in their sufferings, in their recreations full of mirth—are seen Free Men. The portraiture, upon the whole, is felt by us—and they know it—to demand at times pity as a due; but challenges always respect, and more than respect, for the condition which it glorifies. The Land of Burns! What mean we by the words? Something more, surely, than that Fortune, in mere blindness, had produced a great poet here? We look for the inspiring landscape, and here it is; but what could all its beauties have availed, had not a people inhabited it possessing all the sentiments, thoughts, aspirations, to which nature willed to give a voice in him of her choicest melody? Nothing prodigious, after all, in the birth of such a poet among such a people. Was any thing greater in the son than the austere resignation of the father? In his humble compeers there was much of the same tender affection, sturdy independence, strong sense, self-reliance, as in him; and so has Scotland been prolific, throughout her lower orders, of men who have made a figure in her literature and her history; but to Burns nature gave a finer organization, a more powerful heart, and an ampler brain, imbued with that mystery we call genius, and he stands forth conspicuous above all her sons.