A dram was memento mori;
But a full flowing bowl
Was the saving his soul,
And port was celestial glory!
CHAPTER V
DESCRIPTIVE AND NARRATIVE POETRY
The “world of Scotch drink, Scotch manners, and Scotch religion” was not, Matthew Arnold insisted, a beautiful world, and it was, he held, a disadvantage to Burns that he had not a beautiful world to deal with. This famous dictum is a standing challenge to any critic who regards Burns as a creator of beauty. It is true that when Burns took this world at its apparent worst, when Scotch drink meant bestial drunkenness, when Scotch manners meant shameless indecency, when Scotch religion meant blasphemous defiance, he created [The Jolly Beggars], which the same critic found a “splendid and puissant production.” We must conclude, then, that sufficient genius can sublimate even a hideously sordid world into a superb work of art, which is presumably beautiful.
But the verdict passed on the Scottish world of Burns is not to be taken without scrutiny. A review of those poems of Burns that are primarily descriptive will recall to us the chief features of that world.
Let us begin with [The Cotter's Saturday Night], Burns's tribute to his father's house. Let us discard the introductory stanza of dedication, as not organically a part of the poem. The scene is set in a gray November landscape. The tired laborer is shown returning to his cottage, no touch of idealization being added to the picture of physical weariness save what comes from the feeling for home and wife and children. Then follow the gathering of the older sons and daughter, the telling of the experiences of the week, and the advice of the father. The daughter's suitor arrives, and the girl's consciousness as well as the lover's shyness are delicately rendered. Two stanzas in English moralize the situation, and for our present purpose may be ignored. The supper of porridge and milk and a bit of cheese is followed by a reverent account of family prayers, the father leading, the family joining in the singing of the psalm. And as they part for the night, the poet is carried away into an elevated apostrophe to the country whose foundations rest upon such a peasantry, and closes with a patriotic prayer for its preservation.
The truth of the picture is indubitable. The poet could, of course, have chosen another phase of the same life. The cotter could have come home rheumatic and found the children squalling and the wife cross. The daughter might have been seduced, and the sons absent in the ale-house. But what he does describe is just as typical, and it is beautiful, though the manners and religion are Scottish.