That I for joy hae barkit wi them.
The whole of this poem is fraught with the noblest and the most endearing humanity—a humanity most varied and most musical in its tones—running quickly along all the chords of sadness and of merriment, throwing forth a harmony of charity and heart-breathing kindness, in which grave sounds and gay mingle together, but not one vibration ungenial or discordant. That Burns should give to dogs sentiments thus characteristic of a sweet and generous temper, corresponds entirely to the feelings with which he regarded that animal, as illustrated in a passage which I have lately found, taken from a newspaper.
The following original anecdote of Burns is in a work entitled the “Philosophy of the Seasons,” by Rev. Henry Duncan:
“I well remember with what delight I listened to an interesting conversation which, while yet a school-boy, I enjoyed an opportunity of hearing in my father’s manse, between the poet Burns and another poet, my near relation, the amiable Blacklock. The subject was the fidelity of the dog. Burns took up the question with all the ardor and kindly feeling with which the conversation of that extraordinary man was so remarkably embued. It was a subject well suited to call forth his powers, and when handled, by such a man, not less suited to interest the youthful fancy. The anecdotes by which it was illustrated have long escaped my memory; but there was one sentiment expressed by Burns with his characteristic enthusiasm which, as it threw a light into my mind, I shall never forget. “Man,” said he, “is the God of the dog. He knows no other; he can understand no other; and see how he worships him! With what reverence he couches at his feet; with what love he fawns upon him, with what dependence he looks up to him, and with what cheerful alacrity he obeys him. His whole soul is wrapped up in his God; and the powers and faculties of his nature are devoted to his service; and these powers and faculties are exalted by the intercourse. It ought just to be so with the Christian: but the dogs put the Christians to shame.”
It is thus, that the spirit of human love, the truest element of poetic beauty, can ennoble and consecrate all it touches; it is thus that Burns elevates the most lowly objects; the farmer’s mare, proud in her age and services; the little cowering mouse, houseless and frightened; the dying ewe; the wounded hare; the simple daisy; rustic sweethearts and rustic beggars; all were endeared to his generous imagination, and over them, while words have meaning, there will be laughing eyes, and serious faces.
Burns has been great in whatever poetry he attempted, but in lyric poetry, he is greatest of all. The songs of Burns, in every point of view, are truly wonderful compositions. We are at a loss which most to admire, their number and variety, or their individual perfection. The lyre of Burns incessantly changes its tone, and in every change it throws forth a flood of new inspiration. Great indeed is the task to give poetic and condensed expression to those thousand impulses that ever heave within us, and are evanescent as the ocean wave; to furnish fitting words for the ideal and fervid longings which millions feel, but cannot utter for themselves; to embody in lasting form, innumerable and undefined desires; to touch chord after chord of memory and emotion, and to awaken the divine music that slumbers in the soul; in a word, to give melody and speech to the complicated heart of man: great is the task, but Burns has accomplished it.
Burns—great in sadness and great in humor; so human in his melancholy, so loving in his laughter. When we hear the pleasant peal of his hearty mirth, our bosoms dilate, until we could embrace our species in affection. When, changing his tone, we feel the breath of his indignation or listen to his cry against oppression, our pulse beats quicker and our blood flows faster. Burns, bard of the brave and fervent soul, destined to move humanity as long as language shall endure; as long as the love of liberty, of independence, of fearless honesty, or patriotic courage, shall have a refuge in our world.
Burns is a nobleman of nature;—a man for the toilsmen of earth to look upon and hope. In humble, rustic life, under the thatched roof, which gave the peasant his shelter; in the field where the heir of labor in the sweat of his brow fulfilled the original destiny of man, Burns fed inspired thoughts, and laid the foundation of a deathless fame. True, his life was short in years; but how passing long was it in emotions, in capacious and crowded fancies. His spirit was goaded, no doubt, with the vulgar cares of poverty, and the worse results of passion; but it was glorified also with conscious genius; he could retreat from the vexations of the world to the sanctuary of his enriched imagination, and there, amidst all the evils of his outward condition, he could find in poetry its own exceeding great reward. Through all the sorrows that overspread his short but rapid course; amidst all the clouds that hung heavily over his path, glimpses of joy were ever and anon bursting on his enraptured eye, which it is given only to the favored ones to behold. And who would not, if he could, have a soul so adorned with the beautiful, rather than without it, be overburdened with the load of external fortune? Had Burns been merely a man of title, he had been forgotten as all titled dust since the days of Nimrod; as unknown as the dukes of Edom; a pompous funeral and a lying epitaph would have given him to oblivion. As it is, the recollection of him is garnered in the choicest corners of the heart, and his name is linked forever to the music of sweetest sounds.
I am now at the close of my task. I have gone through it lovingly, and with reverence; sensible along the way of much goodness in my subject, and not forgetful, either, of some evil also. That many faults are in the compositions of Burns, I apprehend most clearly; and that sad irregularities were in his life, it requires small trial of candor to confess; but to have spread them out in ostentatious commentary would have served no purpose of this article, and gratified no desire of the reader. I am not blind to those errors; I propose no excuse; I deprecate no just condemnation, and I have been forbearing from no moral indifference, no moral insensibility. But dealing with the memory of genius, I reflected that the man was before his God, and the poet had met the sentence of the world. For wisdom, or for warning, the events of his life are sufficiently familiar—he that runs may read, their moral meaning let him read and ponder—let him learn, and let him be better. But I have no sympathy with that vampire-like spirit which disentombs the faults of the illustrious dead to feed the nauseous appetites of itself or others; I tread upon the grave with caution and compassion; and while I do not regard genius as repealing the law of virtue, neither do I regard it as beyond the law of mercy. We need, all of us, great tenderness from those who surround us; we need much, too, from those who survive us. If we require charity from men, who give them nothing, let us grant it to those who have enriched us, and enriched the ages. In the noble and eloquent verses of Halleck, we, too, say of Burns:
His is the language of the heart,